“Saints above, why, it’s Elmira Madliner,” he exclaims.
I have not seen Mrs. Madliner since that night at the Ticking Tomb. We thought she was a witch come to kill us for disturbing her dead husband’s rest. Now she lies still and helpless, eyes closed, her lips tracing words I can’t hear. Elmira Madliner is flesh and blood sure enough, but she’s like Hiltch’s witch in one way now. Her husband is dead too.
Doc Mayfield takes her pulse. Then he tells Ma he has to check her for other injuries and asks her to help him remove some of her clothes. Ma puts me out onto the porch then, out into the warm night.
Will and Anna May are there. Pete leans against the railing, arms folded, his face turned to the meadow. Frankie paces the yard. When I come out they all rush to me, wanting to know what happened. Everyone but Frankie.
I tell them as best I can and make it the whole way through without crying.
“But where is Caleb?” Will asks when I finish. His voice is cold.
I shake my head. “I never saw him.”
Will and Pete look at each other. Both of them put the pieces together. Mr. Madliner dead. Caleb missing. Madliner House burning.
“My God,” Will whispers. “Caleb Madliner has killed his own father!”
Pete is silent for a long moment. He seems about to speak when suddenly we hear sirens in the night. The fire trucks are giving warning as they race along Hopkins Road. They are racing toward us.
Frankie hears their howling with an odd look on his face. He’d hopped a train and traveled hundreds of miles to get away from his burning city. The fires found him anyway.
“If the fire spreads to the meadow, it will be partly our fault,” he says.
Will’s head snaps up. “What are you talking about?” he demands.
Frankie goes on in a quiet voice. “It’s the brush at the bottom of Madliner Hill that’s fueling the fire now. We tossed those branches there, after we cut that oak down.”
My brothers look at him.
I realize then that Frankie is right. It’s an awful thing to realize you’ve made fuel for the fire that’s about to burn your house down. All that kindling needed was for somebody to light it, and I suppose that murderin’ Caleb was happy to oblige.
Will draws Anna May close as the fire trucks come up our lane, spinning lights stabbing into the smoky dark. But we don’t need fire trucks to tell us what’s coming. Bits of what seems to be burnt paper float like snow across our yard.
Chief Coop meets Dad in the drive. We hear him loud and clear.
“Fire’s burning this-a-way, Gene,” he says. “We aim to dig a trench on the other side of Apple Creek and slow it down before it reaches the water. That will give you all two lines of defense instead of one.”
“We’ll be right there,” Dad tells him.
“Appreciated,” Chief Coop says and turns back to his trucks. He whistles and waves his arms.
The firefighters come out of their metal boxes. Their bulky, helmeted shapes tramp down our hill and disappear into black trees. We hear them splashing through the shallow part of Apple Creek. A minute later, we see them rise again onto the far bank and march in a thin line into Knee-Deep Meadow’s orange haze.
Sam comes around the barn. He’s got every last bucket and pail we own in his arms. He dumps them into the grass.
“Pick yer favorite.”
I fall in next to Frankie as we follow the firefighters down to the creek. We are a ragtag army: my father and brothers, Anna May and old Sam, Frankie and me. For a time, nobody talks and all we hear is the shovels and buckets clinking in the dark.
“I’m sorry,” I say to Frankie as we enter the trees. “I should have listened to you.”
“You made it back safe. That’s what counts,” he replies. “It’s just . . . there’s some things you can’t ever unsee.”
I know what he means. Long as I live, I’ll never be able to forget Mr. Madliner sitting against that oak stump and that bullet hole in his head. It will stay with me forever.
“You knew there was something awful there, didn’t you?” I ask.
“There wasn’t going to be anything good. That’s for darn sure.”
The path drops under us and I feel cold creek air on my face. The hairs on my arms and the back of my neck stand up. We are coming to the creek, and I think to myself that this is our shield against the fire. Apple Creek is our armor. A wall of water.
Apple Creek won’t stop a bullet.
The thought shoots out of the mist. Strikes me square in the chest. If Caleb killed his father, then somewhere out there in the dark is a boy with a gun. A gun and a twisted mind. He might be anywhere by now. Tracking along some distant highway to a faraway place or waiting for us in the reeds at the bottom of the path.