Rachel’s own mother returned every amends letter she had written. The only letter not returned contained a check for one thousand dollars. Either Laverna Flood was psychic, or she read them all along, steaming and resealing the envelopes. The check was cashed. Rachel came to the fire hall to find her, figuring that although her mother would most likely be drunk, there would be witnesses, in case things took a violent turn.
Rachel was nervous as she regarded the fire hall, and it was an uncomfortable feeling. She felt no fear for more than a year, managed to replace it with her version of faith. Rachel didn’t have much experience feeling things—it was only in the last few years that the suit of armor she had worn since junior high had begun to be removed, piece by piece. She hardened herself from an early age, to protect herself from an occasionally cruel mother and a constantly judgmental town. Feeling would have left her vulnerable, and she had no interest in being a victim. She needed to injure and destroy and move quickly, before she was caught and figured out. In the last year, most of her homework involved grace, and acceptance, and moving on. But she could not move on from this.
The fire hall was roasting, shimmering with heat from the two metal barrels stuffed with kindling and the cardboard detritus from cases upon cases of beer. Both garage doors were wide open—she could see the snow falling outside, the wind catching it and sending it into curlicues. The space smelled of heavy machinery and light housekeeping, of mousetraps that were never emptied, bathrooms that only men would use. It was uncomfortably hot; she needed space, so she pushed herself through the crowd and found a place against a wall, the metal cool from the winter storm whipping around outside.
She stood there, trying to make eye contact. Few would look at her, and if they did, it was to stare and they seem startled. Hers was a face everyone in the room would always remember. She did not look like anybody else in Quinn, an alien among the rough, the common, and the interrelated. She was tall, broad through the shoulders for a woman, but her hips were narrow. She had big feet, and small breasts, and a stubborn mound of beer belly, even after a year. It was the only round part of her; she was a woman made of severe angles. She was a natural blonde and a notoriously cheap date, and at one time, she believed that these were her only redeeming qualities.
The volunteer firemen were celebrating their fortieth anniversary. Someone had decided that the Quinn Volunteer Fire Department was formed, more or less, in 1951. There had never been any reliable record keeping, but they had designated this night a special occasion. There was going to be a raffle for a gun. Rachel had been bullied into buying ten raffle tickets, at one dollar a piece, by four schoolchildren, filthy ones, who refused to leave her alone, despite her attempts to explain to them that she was a vegetarian and a firm believer in gun control.
The only other person standing alone was her new neighbor. As she had moved boxes from her truck, Bert Russell watched from a dirty living room window. Rachel had worked at her mother’s bar as a teenager, and she had served Bert often. Even though Rachel sought out older lovers, the nine-year age difference was not enough for her to flirt with him, because he was short and coarse and homely. He had nothing she had wanted as a teenage girl, just a disability check. His thick nose hooked down, nearly covering his grim mouth. When he got drunk, he sat at the bar silently, marinating in his past. All these years later, Rachel could finally sympathize.
She approached him carefully, stood next to him without speaking, as he drank and stared at the cement floor.
“I guess we’re neighbors now,” said Rachel. He glanced at her out of the side of one eye. “I didn’t know you were a fireman.”
“I’m not,” he said.
“How have you been?”
This was met with silence. Bert came from one of the oldest families in Quinn, and certainly the most tragic. He had earned the right to be taciturn.
“Gosh,” said Rachel. “I can’t believe it’s been nine years.”
“Stop talking,” said Bert. Rachel did not want to be seen alone. She remained standing next to him, because he was a native, and that offered her some cover. Bert’s father had been a hunting guide, specializing in finding black bears for drunken, fat assholes from the East Coast, and made thousands of dollars putting down the bears the tourists had grazed with bullets. They were terrible shots and too fat to chase the wounded bears. It was Bert Senior’s job to track them down and finish them off, sever the head or the paw. The souvenir depended on the cost of the package the fat asshole had purchased. Bert Senior left the rest of the body in the woods to rot.