Lost Man's River(273)

Faced with the empty doorway, Ad called his brother’s name and heard no answer. Recounting this, he broke out in a sweat, starting to shudder. “ ‘Take care of yourself, Ad!’ That’s all he said! And he went in there and set that house afire!” Ad stared at them in disbelief. “I mean, seein him lug that gasoline in there, I thought, What in the heck can that old feller be up to? He sure is pretty strong for an old-timer!

“Then it hit me! I ran toward the porch, hollering Stop! I yelled with all my might! That door stayed black and empty. And right about then there came this big soft boom—”

“—darned cigarette!” cried Andy.

“—and the heat exploded through the door, it burned my face!” Like a child witness, frantic to exorcise what had frightened it, Ad waved away their voices, raising his own. “And that’s when he shrieked how he’d dropped the gun, how he couldn’t see!”

In moments, the front room filled with fire, driving him back out onto the porch as the first flames licked through the smoke behind the window. Fire rushed upward through the house in a deep thunder. But over that thunder Ad imagined he heard screaming, and he screamed back, though what he might have screamed he did not know.

Andy House said, “Addison? I knew this house. That screechin you heard might of been the workin of that iron-hard old pine in so much heat. Them uprights and old beams—”

“It was my brother! Burning alive! I couldn’t get to him!” He sank down, face sunk in his hands as he coughed and blithered.

“Never heard no shot? Think that old gun misfired? Jesus!”

“Oh, Lord, Mister Colonel! We’re so sorry!”

Sally Brown had stood there with closed eyes, pressing her fingers to her temples, but now she came weeping to hug Lucius.



Addison had run around the house to the kitchen door and poked his head in, calling. But there was no outcry anymore, only that thunder and loud crackling of pine, and the beams creaking, the black choking smell of burning pitch. By the time he retreated (he couldn’t help but notice), the fire leaping upward from the windows was charring and curling his new paint. Through the old shingles, the roof seemed to glow, as if the house were swelling with trapped heat, holding its fiery breath. Then flames licked out in devil’s tongues along the peak. Through a thickening pall, the hollowed house loomed and vanished like an apparition.

As if drawn to the boom and thunder of the firestorm, the helicopter came whacketing in over the treetops like a tornado. A wild light blinded him, and whips of fire flayed his skin “like the terrible swift sword in the old hymn!” He screamed for mercy, certain this machine had come to hunt him down. Cringing from the heat and noise, too frightened to run out into the open, he was driven by terror to hide himself in the old cistern, clinging like a frog to the slimy wall. He screeched with all his might for the Lord’s mercy, not only for himself but for that agonized old man whose mortal cries had died but whose coil lay charring in hellfire.

Here Ad broke down again. They retreated a little, giving him time. Lucius said softly, “Nothing you could do, Ad. Don’t torment yourself.”

Ad did not believe that the helicopter had caused the fire, for it had materialized after that huge soft explosion. Yet he was convinced that as it passed, he had glimpsed something falling in a long swift arc, for the house had shuddered in a deep rumbling boom, followed by a rush of fire and black smoke, then a rain of burning bits and shingles. A minute later, when he dared to lift the cistern cover, the burning house was gone as if evaporated. There was only that devouring heat and the low rushing of the burning timbers. Where the house had been, through the oily emptiness and cindered air, he could see a swimming bird, far our on the broad bend of the river.

“Firebomb,” Whidden pronounced. “I had that idea the minute I seen that first quick flare at Lost Man’s. Maybe the old man blew up that gas can, but it looks to me like they firebombed just to make sure. Or maybe,” he continued, trying to make sense of it, “the gas can touched off some explosives. Speck told me they was concentratin on the automatic weapons, cause there weren’t no time to transfer all them cargos.”

“That’s right!” Ad cried. “Those crates inside were stacked right to the ceiling!”

“Made a dawn run a whole day early to catch ’em inside,” Whidden decided. “And when they seen the smoke, they bombed her anyway, cause that was their damn orders. Very childish men. Enjoy all them big shiny toys, enjoy destruction, but they want it all wrote down on a paper, want it all official. Who or what might be inside, that ain’t their business.”