I grab Frankie’s suitcase and lead him for the house. Butch comes with us, sniffing Frankie’s pant leg. Dragging Frankie’s suitcase up the porch steps, I tell him Butch ain’t ever hurt anybody, which is mostly true.
Our house is two hundred years old. Made from stone, it didn’t have electricity when Ma and Dad first moved in. Electrical company man was too afraid to run cables through the attic because of the snakes, so Ma took his ladder, hitched up her skirts, and did it herself.
People throughout the county call our house Stairways because of the steep spiral staircase that rises up from the parlor, up through three floors, all the way to the room where my brothers and I sleep under the attic. Other things sleep in the attic, above the rafters. Snakes shed their papery skins on hot summer nights （sometimes I can hear them if I lie still and hold my breath）， and come wintertime, the screech owls keep me awake all night.
My brothers and me like the room just fine anyway. Our bedroom window lets us look down on our yard and the lane, and Apple Creek beyond that. The window is convenient for sneaking out late at night, too, by way of the gutter down to the porch roof.
“This is where we sleep,” I tell Frankie as we puff up the last of those steep steps. “Those bunk beds are Pete and Will’s. That bed right there is mine. You’ll sleep on the mattress by the window.”
He looks at the mattress, then at me.
“You can look at any of Pete’s records, but don’t touch any of Will’s newspaper clippings about Bobby Kennedy or he’ll get awful sore.”
Will positively loves Bobby Kennedy, one of the men running for president, and reads anything he can find about him—books, newspapers, magazines. He’s got campaign posters on the wall, with pictures of the senator in a suit and tie waving, and he even has a blue-and-white campaign pin on his bookshelf. ALL THE WAY WITH RFK it reads. Dad likes Bobby Kennedy about as much as he likes Bob Dylan. He says he’s a runt whose family is ruining the country. Dad wants Nixon to win the election.
A breath of wind comes through the window, and a few stray drops of rain pitter-patter the windowsill.
“Well, I’ll let you get unpacked, but be downstairs for dinner in a few. Ma will want to see you. Dad, too, I guess.” I try to think if there’s anything else. “Don’t take too long. Remember there’s cobbler.”
I close the door and start back down the twisting stairs. As I go, a sound from inside the room comes to me. Could be it’s a cough from all that road dust. Or maybe it’s the sound you make when you’ve been trying real hard to hold back crying and all at once you can’t hold it any longer and it just comes out.
I think back to Ma’s saying, and I wonder what reason God could possibly have for sending Frankie our way now.
Maybe it’s to help me save Pete’s life.
Chapter 2
MA
“Why is Frankie’s city burning up?” I ask Ma as we set the picnic table on our porch for dinner.
“Because some people lit fires,” Ma says. “And fires burn.” She brushes away a daddy longlegs spider and sets down a pitcher of iced tea. “Knives face the other way, John Thomas.”
Only Ma calls me by my full name, John Thomas. I hate it.
I go around the table switching the knives while the storm purrs to itself, like a giant cat. It’s hiding behind the pines on the other side of our hill, waiting.
“How does lighting fires do anybody any good?”
I can smell the storm’s electricity in the air, can feel it along my arms and the back of my neck. Out in our yard, the trees look silvery, their thirsty leaves curling skyward. Ma stands and watches the world surrender to the green dark. When she puts her hands on her hips, I know one thing for sure: Ma will never surrender.
“When a person feels trampled under, sooner or later, something bad happens.” Ma turns and her eyes find mine, and it seems my shoes are nailed to the floorboards then. “If you go long enough thinking you don’t have a say in your life, you reach a point where you’ll do anything to show others that you do. And when that time comes, you don’t care what it is. If it’s lighting fires, you light fires.”
Behind her, the trees are swaying. A warm breeze is blowing, growing stronger. Her dark hair moves in it as her green eyes steal some of the storm’s strength for herself. I don’t feel funny saying that my mother is the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen.
“Don’t you go askin’ Francis about this,” she warns.