We fight the fire all night, my family and me and the men from the fire department. Apple Creek holds it, a wall of hellish light burning bright behind black trees of the far bank.
It is an hour before dawn when the wind picks up again and carries the cinders across the creek to the roof of our house. There, in the shingles above the attic, where the snakes sleep and the screech owls nest, a small fire starts. Just a few quivering flames at first. Then it spreads. Suddenly Stairways is on fire.
Dad races inside and next we know he and Ma and Doc Mayfield come out carrying Mrs. Madliner between them in Grandma Elliot’s old quilt.
The firemen work fast. Ladders and a pump. Cold creek water arcs through the night. Our stone house is strong. But the roof above the porch catches and now it’s burning; our home is burning. Black smoke pours from the windows. There’s a sound of groaning timbers; the bones of our old house are giving way. The men fight on. Another pump, more water. The porch collapses, its black skeleton crumpling in on itself, and I know that we’ve lost our house.
A bleak and gray light has started in the east, but by the time the dawn arrives, the fire has eaten our house. Early morning sun breaks over a fire-blackened stone shell. After more than two hundred years, Stairways is no more.
Knee-Deep Meadow is charred to a crisp, pockets of smoldering embers still spitting smoke that rises in thin columns high into a hazy morning sky.
The fire is out. But we’ve lost our home.
Chapter 25
THE GAME PRESERVE
Mr. Halleck’s house is enormous. It’s so big each of us boys could have our own bedroom if we wanted it. All four of us decide to stay in one room. It’s got a tall window that faces west. Ma and Dad take a room just across the hall.
Mr. Halleck has offered to let us stay here long as we need. Dad begins calling for apartments in town the very first day after the fire.
Two days after the fire, a police cruiser draws up to the metal gate in the stone wall that surrounds Mr. Halleck’s house and grounds. Dad lets them in and directs them up the lane to the house.
We meet them in the dining room. Ma and Dad and me.
Detective Ingleside is short, with a high and tight haircut. Like a Marine. He wears a gray suit and a black tie and surveys the room through heavy-lidded eyes. If he’s impressed, he don’t show it. The uniformed police officer with him is very impressed. He keeps looking out the window at the view of the valley. At one point he whistles.
Townie.
Detective Ingleside asks me about the night of the fire, about finding Mr. Madliner.
“Son, you say you found him by the side of the house?”
“Yes sir, but I was looking for my dog.”
“Did you see anyone else there?”
“No sir. Well, a shape, maybe. But it was gone quick.”
He jots something down in his book. The officer with him folds his arms.
Ma asks them if they’d like a cup of coffee. The officer says yes. Detective Ingleside says no.
“But you and your brother saw the boy Caleb later that evening, is that correct?”
“Yes sir.”
“Across the creek?”
I nod.
“What was he doing?”
“Running.”
“Running where?”
“I don’t know. My dog was with him. He was trying to shepherd him away from that fire. Butch is like that. He’s always looking after people.”
Detective Ingleside don’t seem to pay any attention to my talk about Butch. He goes back to asking questions about Caleb. “Your brother swam across the creek to try to get Caleb to come back with him. Caleb resisted. They began to fight. You swam over to help your brother. And you pulled Caleb into the creek with you?”
I nod again.
“But you never saw him after that?”
I shake my head.
Detective Ingleside looks at Dad. He leans in and folds his hands over the corner of the table and looks at me with gray eyes.
“And you’re sure you didn’t see him after that?” he asks. “Maybe swimming downstream in the creek? Maybe crawling out on your bank with you and then running off?”
I shake my head. “No sir.”
He looks at Dad again.
“Jack doesn’t lie, Detective,” says Dad.
He looks back at me.
“Son, this is important. We have strong reason to believe that boy Caleb killed his father. Murdered him, you understand? Now, we know Caleb had it rough from his old man. We know he took a lot of wallops from him, and more than he ought. But that’s no excuse for killing. Now, Caleb may be a friend of yours, but that doesn’t make it okay to lie—”
“Caleb Madliner ain’t no friend of mine!” I explode. “And I’m not lying! I pulled him off that bank and he disappeared into the creek, and that’s a fact! And what makes you so sure Mrs. Madliner didn’t kill her husband, anyway?”
Ma comes in with the coffee then. Hearing my words, she starts and spills some down her front.
Ingleside looks at me and frowns.
“Mrs. Madliner is an invalid. She’s wheelchair bound, partly because of her time with Mr. Madliner. We believe he hit her too. At any rate, the woman can’t walk. It’s highly unlikely she—”
But now it’s my turn to cut him off. “She can too walk! I saw her do it! All us boys did. Midnight at the Ticking Tomb, we saw her. Right after Frankie laid down over Hiltch’s grave to summon his widow witch. She came and we thought she was the witch. She cried over a grave and then she walked off, same as you or me!”
My father sits utterly still, watching me with a face as smooth as water.
But Ingleside sits back in his chair. Beside him the officer takes the coffee cup from Ma and sips it. Ingleside looks at him, and he looks back.
Ma says to the policemen, “I think he’s a little worked up now.”
“I am not worked up!” I insist. “These people don’t believe me, but I’m telling the truth!”
Detective Ingleside puts his notebook away. “If we can talk to the other son now, Mr. Elliot.”
“Of course,” Dad tells him, though his eyes are still on me.
Ma reaches for me. “Come on, John Thomas.”
“Tell them to go and ask Mrs. Madliner!” I cry. “Go find her! Bring her back from the hospital and ask her! She can walk. I’m telling you, she can walk!”
Detective Ingleside smiles thinly and dips his close-shaven head. “I’m sure she can, son.”
That night we eat pizza for dinner in the dining room, surrounded by tall, dark cabinets filled with pale porcelain plates. The table is long and could sit nearly three times as many people as we’ve got.
“Found two places in town to look at,” Dad says over his crust. “Your mother and I will drive in and take a look tomorrow morning.”
Will puts his fork down. Pete chews slowly. I got no appetite. My slice of pizza grows cold on my plate, little pools of oil drying into shiny pieces on the cheese, like wax from a candle.
“How long will we have to stay there?” Pete asks.
“What do you care?” I ask. “You’re leaving in a few days anyhow.”
Ma sets down her fork. “John Thomas, you apologize to your brother at once. At once.”
I frown. I look at Pete. “I’m sorry.”
He looks down. “It’s fine, Jack.”
Dad finds me after dinner, in the hall upstairs.
“Jack.”
“I already told Pete I was sorry,” I tell him. “I know he feels like he has to go. For you. For Grandpa Elliot too. To make you both proud.”
Dad is a silent, dark shape in the hallway. “I want to ask you about Elmira Madliner.”
That stops me.
“You said you saw her walking.”
“At the cemetery. Walking just as plain as you or me. And looking at graves.”
I cannot see my father’s face in the dark, but I feel the change come over it. A sense of pity. There in old Mr. Halleck’s house, I get the feeling that Dad has guessed all along that she could walk.
“Why was she there, Dad?” I ask him. “What was she doing?”