The End of the Game

The End of the Game

 

It became a game with Nate and the kids. You saw an old cigarette lying somewhere, you stepped on it. You twisted your toe back and forth and crushed it into powder, made sure that none of those dirty bums on the street corners and wandering in the alleys could find it and make use of it. You were doing it for their own good, really. For the good of the world. Not only would they not have the extra garbage, the smoke and the tar, in their lungs, but no innocent passerby would get an unexpected face full of cigarette smoke. It was a win-win situation.

Of course, the bums and beggars wouldn’t see it that way. Nate had sometimes seen them pick up the tiniest stubs of cigarettes, with no more than half an inch of tobacco left on the end, and put a match to them. It made him sick to think about it. Who even knew whose mouth that cigarette had been in? Probably some filthy scumbag, putting his or her lips all over it, covering it with who knew what kind of bacteria or what disease. And then some hobo was willing to put it in his mouth, just for five or six puffs of cancer-causing smoke. Pitiful. Nothing but pitiful.

There was an almost unused cigarette in the ashtray outside the post office when they stopped to check their box, and little Tim, only six years old, got to it before Nate and knocked it down on the concrete with a flick of his finger, crushing it with his heel, pulverizing it. Nate had seen that there was still smoke curling out of it, and that made him laugh. For all they knew, its owner had just set it down to go into the post office.

They went on inside, Nate, eight year old Rob, and Tim, going to the post office box to see what Christmas cards might have come today. Most of them that were coming were probably already taped on the inside of their front door. After all, it was Christmas Eve, and anyone with a lick of sense would have gotten them out long ago so they could be enjoyed. He turned the key and popped open the box, reaching in to pull out three pieces of mail, two ads and—well, sure enough, one last card.

“Dad!” Tim grabbed his father’s sleeve and jerked it a couple of times, pulling his attention away from the card. Tim was nodding his head toward the door, in the same direction that Rob was also looking. This time the smoker was not a hobo, but some tall, silver-haired man in a business suit who had just gone past them and out the door, and he stopped at the big ashtray and made an angry face. When he looked back into the post office, Nate and the boys peeled their eyes away, pretending they hadn’t seen him. But he knew it was them. They had seen that in his eyes.

And that made it that much funnier. After the slick businessman left, they all went back outside, laughing.

As the shopping day dragged on, Nate started wearing down. They were trying to get all of their last minute purchases done, the same way Nate did every year. Jeneal was back home, cooking pies and wrapping presents. Christmas Day was drawing way too close and way too fast.

Nate started getting a headache. He always did when it came to shopping. Just the very act of driving around this busy town this time of year, having people pull in front of him, or worse yet, turn in front of him without warning. Or, the cardinal sin, going ten miles under the speed limit when he was in a big hurry to get to another store before it had a chance to close. What he needed was some caffeine. A Coca Cola, to be precise. Nothing could knock out one of these headaches like a Coke.

But at lunch, he and the boys had grabbed a sixty-cent burger at Frank’s Drive-In, and he had thought he would cut out some calories by having a water instead of a soda. Now he was paying for it. He should have known better. A harried day of shopping? A sure ticket to a stress headache. And for Nate, nothing could cure a headache like that better than a cool, sparkling bottle of Coca Cola. Well, they still had a couple more stores to get to, and they were running low on time. He would just stop at Nelson’s Food Town on the way home. He was going to get his Coke, one way or another.

On the way across the next parking lot, Rob spotted a bum, intently scouring the asphalt on the far side of the lot. Rob pointed. “Dad, look! Some bum looking for cigarettes.” There was a well-trained boy!

“Pathetic,” said Nate, by way of acknowledgement. “I hope you boys see how addictive cigarettes can be. There is no reason to ever put that first one in your mouth. Filthy habit.”

“We won’t, Dad!” averred Tim. “It stinks!”

Nate and Rob agreed wholeheartedly. And as they were heading across the lot, having had to park clear over in front of Toys R Us because the spots in front of the jewelry store were all taken, Tim spied a cigarette. He was the winner once more, because it was once again one of the really long ones, which someone couldn’t have taken more than one or two puffs from before snuffing it out and dropping it. It was lying a foot out from a light pole, probably the same pole where it had been put out. Perhaps the wind had just now caught it and dragged it away from the base of the pole, for it was in pristine condition.

The vagrant spotted the cigarette just about the same time as Nate and the boys, and across the lot he started. His whole face seemed to light up, as if he had spied a nugget of gold.

“Dad, he’s coming to get it!” said Rob, an urgency to his voice. “He’s going to see you.”

Nate looked at the man, then at his boys. They had been in training too long. He couldn’t just let this one slide. The boys were counting on him, and he had to teach them not to be afraid. After all, they were in the right. And besides, this guy was nothing but a bum, probably one hundred forty pounds if he had been wearing cement shoes. What was he going to do, beat Nate up?

Feeling his heart pounding with the adrenaline of the moment as the bum got twelve feet away, Nate reached out with his foot, put his toe on the cigarette, and ground it as hard and deliberately as he could into the asphalt.

In spite of himself, he looked up, and his eyes caught one of the saddest, most disappointed looks he had ever seen on the face of another human being. The old man was at least in his fifties but looked much older. He wore a green knit cap with white snowflakes on it and a filthy gray coat. His face was sallow and his whiskered cheeks hollow. He stared at the demolished cigarette, then raised lost looking gray-blue eyes to stare into Nate’s face. His whole body seemed to sink down, to shrink. His face looked like it actually sagged. Reaching up, he scrubbed at his wrinkled mouth, then, with one more long, hurt look into Nate’s eyes, he turned and shuffled away.

The boys started giggling. “Wow, you got him!” Nate heard Rob say, a sentiment that was quickly taken up by little Tim.

But Nate couldn’t erase the old man’s face from his mind. Suddenly, he didn’t feel so triumphant. Inside his guts, a strange lump had formed, and he felt somehow sick and sad. It was a feeling he couldn’t explain. As they walked the rest of the way to the jewelry store, he turned once more to see the old man amble away to disappear between two cars. He had won, he told himself. He had kept that filthy man from pounding another nail in his coffin. And who knew how many other shoppers he had spared from having to stomach the old man’s cigarette smoke? He should have been laughing with the boys. But there was something in the old man’s dejected face that he just couldn’t shake. It was almost as if the man had one hope left, and Nate had cruelly crushed it.

The boys picked out a fabulously beautiful set of opal earrings for their mother. She was going to love them. With most of the cash he had left, Nate paid for the earrings, then had the clerk wrap them up in pretty, dark blue wrapping. It glimmered in the store’s bright white lights as if it were covered in varnish.

They went outside and hurried across the lot, climbing into their Buick, an almost brand-new seventy-six, bought just last year, and completely free of the stench of cigarette smoke. The boys were smiling and laughing, excited about the coming of Christmas. They had forgotten all about the old man and the cigarette. But Nate hadn’t.

After one last scan of the parking lot, empty now of all but parked cars, he drove to the pullout. As he turned his head left to check for traffic, he saw the old man sitting on the parking in the snowy grass. Just sitting there with his hind end in the frozen grass, his knees bent, his arms hugging them to his body. He stared out into the road. He had that forlorn look of a man who has lost all hope in life. Was it because of the cigarette? One cigarette? Did that one little bit of tobacco hold that kind of power over that old man? How could anyone be so addicted to something? It really was sad. It was a disgusting habit, not good for him in the least. It was too bad Nate couldn’t find a way to show the man how foolish it was to smoke. His life would be so much better.

Nate looked at the boys. They hadn’t even noticed the old man sitting there. With a sigh, he tried to push all thoughts of the old man aside, and catching an opening in the stream of traffic, he gunned the Buick and pulled out.

His head was pounding horribly now. He had to get that caffeine. A Coca Cola. Even a Pepsi would do at this point. Anything to get rid of this headache.

Still unable to shake the picture of the old, broken-looking man, he stopped at the grocery store. Reaching into his pocket, he pulled out everything he had and counted it. One dollar and thirty-four cents. More than enough for a fifteen cent bottle of pop for all three of them.

He walked straight to the pop cooler and pulled out an icy cold Coca Cola. It was the most beautiful little bottle he had ever laid his eyes on. It was all he could do to keep from popping it open right there and taking a big, long swallow.

And then he stopped. His hand seemed frozen to that bottle. All of a sudden, all he could see was the face of the vagrant, sitting there in the snow, hugging his knees to his body, staring with those vacant eyes at the cars as they passed him. The world seemed to have forgotten that man.

Without any conscious thought, a vision of another little man streamed into his mind, another little man seemingly forgotten by much of the world, lying in a pile of hay in a manger some two thousand years ago. Forgotten, at least, by the wealthy of the world. But not by the poor. Those were his people. The only ones who really cared. The ones who were willing to share with him all that they had, even if they hardly had anything at all.

“Dad? Can we?”

The voice of little Tim suddenly registered on Nate, and he looked down at him. “Sorry. What’s that, little man?”

“Can we get a pop too?”

Feeling a surge of emotion, Nate dropped to a knee, and he hugged Tim and Rob to him. He held onto them tightly, and being the boys they were, they naturally hugged him back. Finally, he let go of them and looked into their bewildered eyes. “Let’s wait, boys. I think we need to do something else with our money this time.”

There was a ridiculing thought pounding at Nate right now, pounding in his aching head. What about Nate Harrison? What about his addiction? His addiction to the Coca Cola. He had needed it, he thought, like he needed life itself. And yet he had been so quick to judge the addiction of other people to their cigarettes—possibly the only thing they might have all day that would keep them warm. The only thing that might calm their shaking nerves, or give them any hope in life. That Coke would surely cure Nate’s headache. But who in the world was he to say that he needed it more than that old man had needed his cigarette?

He carried his pop to the checkout stand, where he glanced over the display of cigarettes behind the clerk. Saratogas caught his attention, and he asked her for a pack.

The boys just stared at their father as if he had gone crazy. Nate had too big of a lump in his throat to explain anything right then, and they didn’t dare ask.

He paid fifteen cents for the Coca Cola and thirty-six for the pack of Saratogas, and then they went and got back in the car. By now, the boys could not contain their curiosity. But even so, they couldn’t mention the fact that their father had actually purchased cigarettes—the “great evil.”

“What are we going to do?” asked Rob with a huge hint of caution in his tone.

“You’ll see, boys. It’s a surprise.”

They drove until they saw the big golden arches of McDonald’s restaurant, where Nate pulled in, even though the boys knew their mom was preparing a nice supper for them. McDonald’s was running a huge advertising campaign that year, pushing the “Mac Attack,” and it seemed like everyone was buying Big Macs. And why not? What a great deal they were, at only forty-eight cents for the old, famous “two all-beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles, onions on a sesame seed bun?”

They went inside and fought the crowd, finally paying the forty-eight cents for a Big Mac and twenty for fries, then picking up their food and heading back out into the frigid evening, which was now growing dark. Christmas lights starting to glow into life everywhere, their big, bold colors deepening the blue shadows around them in the snow.

Nate drove straight back to the jewelry store parking lot, his heart pounding the whole way. Traffic was worse than ever, but for some reason, in spite of his feeling of urgency, he didn’t feel the anger rising inside him like before.

When he pulled into the parking lot, he was disappointed not to see the old man sitting there on the grass anymore. With bright store lights all around them, and Christmas ones glittering now against a myriad of snowflakes, big as duck feathers, that tumbled lightly out of the blue-gray evening sky, Nate sat there scouring the lot. Slowly, he drove between the lines of cars until finally he spotted the old man. Only now he was with another one, this one a Negro, probably close to his age. His dark brown face had a light gray scouring pad on its lower half, and a dirty yellow ski hat covered his head.

Breath coming to him at a cost, Nate parked behind two vehicles, hoping they wouldn’t need to leave right away. With his heart still pounding, he looked at the boys as he pulled out a bottle opener and popped the lid off the Coca Cola. He then put it in the McDonald’s bag and pulled the pack of cigarettes out of the grocery bag, laying it aside. He was going to tell the boys to stay in the car, but at the last second he said, “Maybe you kids should come too.” The boys just stared at him, wonder in their eyes. When they looked over into the shadows at the two old vagrants, there was a look of fear in their eyes. Hoboes like these had only ever been a source of mystery and humor. To them, these men were almost not even like real people. With a sick feeling filling his heart, Nate knew he had made it that way.

They all got out together, and Nate strode across the sidewalk and onto the grass to the old man and his companion, hearing the boys run to keep up. The old men turned as one when they heard their shoes crunching in the snow behind them. Both of them stared at him, the look in their eyes cautious. They probably figured he was going to tell them they couldn’t be there.

Instead, he held up the McDonald’s bag in one hand, and in the other hand the pack of Saratoga cigarettes. “I got you this,” he said. He suddenly felt very unsure of himself, very out of place here.

The old man just stared back at him, unmoving. The colored man looked at his friend, finally nudging him. “Hey, brother. He got somethin’ there for you. Go get it, man. Go on.”

The old man turned his head and looked at his friend, seeming for a moment to be beyond comprehension. The Negro nudged him again. “Go on, brother.”

At last, the old man slowly shuffled forward to Nate, staring at the unopened package of cigarettes. “What are you doing this for?”

“It’s Christmas,” said Nate, thinking how much more meaning those words suddenly held for him.

“Are you kidding me?”

Nate smiled. “No! No, I’m not kidding. Here. Merry Christmas. I got you this food too. I thought you looked hungry.”

Without warning, the old man’s eyes filled up with tears. His chin began shaking as he stared at the McDonald’s bag. His hand, like his chin, started to tremble as he reached out and took the cigarettes. “You don’t have to buy me any food,” he said, licking his lips. “You don’t owe me anything.”

“I know I don’t have to. I wanted to. Isn’t that what Christmas is all about? Sorry I only have enough food for one of you,” he said, glancing at the man’s Negro friend. “I thought you were alone.”

“Aw, shucks,” said the Negro. “I be fine! I already ate.”

Nate looked at him doubtfully. If anything, the man looked scrawnier than the white one, even inside a long, heavy black coat.

“Well, anyway,” said Nate. “Merry Christmas.”

“Thank you. Thank you, sir,” said the old man. His wrinkle-creased cheeks were now glistening.

“No, my friend. Thank you.”

“Me? What for?”

“For waking me up.”

Even though they could not pretend to understand what he meant, the two old men kept nodding and thanking Nate and the boys until they got back in the car. Nate noticed now that his headache was completely gone. He hadn’t felt so good about himself in a long time. He drove across the parking lot, but instead of leaving, on a whim he stopped. He peered back through the thickening snowflakes and the evening’s gloom, and in the shadows beside the jewelry store he saw the old man hand the Coke to his friend, and the Negro took a long swallow before handing it back. Then the first one tore the Big Mac in half, handing one of the halves to his friend.

Now it was Nate’s turn to have tears fill his eyes. The boys were staring over the dash at the two old men, standing there in the cold shadows and sharing their meal.

Tim looked up at his dad for a long time before speaking. “Daddy, why did we do that?”

Nate’s voice almost broke when he looked down at his boys, thinking of all he had taught them in the past. There was a knot in his throat past which he almost could not speak. “I thought of the baby Jesus, Tim,” he said. His breaking voice wouldn’t let him say anything more. And through the tears in his eyes he could hardly focus on the boys anymore.

“I thought cigarettes were bad, though,” said Rob.

“Well, son, they aren’t good for our bodies. But... Jesus came here to teach us not to judge people. I’ve been doing a very bad thing with you boys. I’ve been teaching you to be cruel to others. When we get home, you boys and I and your mom are going to have a nice talk, okay?”

The boys, still confounded, both nodded. They had no more words, and no way to understand this sudden change in their father. To them, they were only beginning to understand that the “game” was over.

Nate gazed at the two old men, sharing their meager meal there in the cold blue shadows. He thought of the old clothes he had bagged up a week ago and had yet to take to the second hand store. He thought of the thermometer he had glanced at earlier, which even before the snow started falling had read thirty degrees. He thought of the warm food Jeneal must be getting ready to put on the table, and of the homey smell that would greet them as they walked into the house.

The two old men smelled like stale cigarette smoke and wine—two smells that had never been in Nate and Jeneal’s house since they bought it. Two smells that wouldn’t go too well with hash browns, corn and biscuits and gravy. But then, how well did the smell of hot animals, sheep, cows and donkeys, go with the birth of the most important, the most perfect man who had ever come to earth?

Nate drove back across the parking lot slowly. He hoped Jeneal had cooked enough for two more mouths, but it didn’t really matter. If that old man could tear a Big Mac in half and share it and his drink with a friend, and if Jesus Christ could share his perfect blood with his brothers and sisters, not one of whom really deserved it, then the least Nate Harrison could do was to share some old clothes, a warm house and a meal with two fellow human beings. Children of God.

He knew what this night meant: the end of the game. It was the beginning, for Nate Harrison, of a whole new kind of game. He only prayed he was not too late.

THE HANGING -- A Western story

                          The Hanging

　

　

Apologizing don’t come easy for me. It never has. That night we fought again, and for me it was one time too many. What I said I said in anger, but I’ve never been one to say I’m sorry. I walked out of the house, and I never looked back. The thing that hurt worst was seeing my kids standing in the doorway to their room, staring at me with the hurt in their eyes as I slammed the door.

One of the blackest nights I can remember lay like a tarpaulin over our ranch house. I could hardly see our old shed even from ten yards away, and Duke, my buckskin, was a misty ghost in the pasture. Rain pattered like mouse feet on the back of my coat and on the brim of my hat. It touched my face and cooled my anger, but like forged steel it also hardened my resolve. Rachel had hurt me, and had hurt her in turn. I swore I would never go back to her.

The shed smelled of the hay and straw, must and horse sweat of years. Smelled of oats and sugar cubes and oiled leather. Smelled of the old pine wood boards that kept the rain off my back for a couple of minutes while I picked up the heavy Cheyenne saddle and horse hair bridle and pulled a Navajo saddle blanket from the rail by the door.

Then once more I walked into the night, my boot soles straining for traction against the mud of the yard. I went between the bars of the gate and spoke Duke’s name, and he came to me like the faithful horse he had always been. I saddled him there in the middle of the grassy, muddy pasture. Then I rode from there and left the gate hanging open.

On the way into town I had to trust to Duke’s instinct to find the road. It was so dark it would have given some folks the jeepers, dark like the river bottoms on a moonless night or like the inside of a midnight hayloft full of new summer hay. I was riding hunched in the saddle, hiding my face against the rain, hoping the saloon would still be open in Heron. I had no desire to rustle shelter on a night like this, and I sure didn’t intend to ride the whole night soaking wet. Even if Fred Lee was at the saloon, a man I couldn’t stand, I had every intention of spending the entire night there in that barroom.

Suddenly, I heard a horse whinny, and my own answered back as he jerked to a stop. I looked up to see a dark shadow through the falling rain, then a flash of light accompanied by an explosion. Whoever it was then fired once more.

I struggled against my coat to draw my Merwin and Hulbert from its holster. I didn’t know who I was shooting at, but I knew he was shooting at me. Even if I had been in a good mood that was enough reason to shoot back.

Three times I fired, then four. I couldn’t tell if I hit the man. It was so dark, and with the flashes of light from my gun barrel I was soon blinded. But in moments I heard a whinny and the thunder of hooves, and then the road, as far as I could see, was empty again.

I could have gotten off my horse to check the road, to see if I had dropped the stranger from his saddle. But I wasn’t about to go lumbering in the dark and the rain looking for a hulk of shadow that might be lying there with a gun cocked and ready. With a curse, I put spurs to Duke, and he galloped off down the road, his hooves making sucking noises in the mud.

It was half an hour before I made out the lights of town through the rain, which now was falling harder and was starting to feel like it had some texture to it. It was cold enough it wouldn’t have surprised me to see it turn to snow.

At the Night Tower Saloon I pulled up, soaked and weary and a little scared about my recent encounter. I lashed Duke to the rail there in the rain and left him standing while I climbed onto the soggy porch and shoved inside the big main room, frowsty with the stale odors of alcohol and smoke. There was only one patron in there, a quiet shadow on the far side of the room, slouched over a dark table.

The bartender, to my poor luck, was Fred Lee. Fred and I had decided when I first moved to Heron half a year back that we didn’t like each other. He was a man who liked to be in charge, but not the type other folks liked to have lord it over them. He swaggered a lot, threw a lot of knowing comments and lies aroundI was sorry to see him there, because I had wanted to tell someone about my encounter on the road, but it wasn’t going to be Fred.

I ordered a bottle of whisky and a glass and took it to a far corner of the room to nurse it, the opposite corner from the other patron at his lonely table. I had no more than sat down and felt the warmth of the first shot trickling down my throat than I heard a flurry of galloping hoofbeats enter the street. I looked up curiously, pouring my next round as I watched the door to see if the riders would stop here. They sounded to be in a powerful hurry, probably to get out of that miserable mushy rain.

Sure enough, the horses stopped in front, and other than voices in the storm there was no sound for a few moments until boots tromped across the porch and the door slammed open. I was surprised to see three men shoving through the door almost as one, all armed with either rifle or shotgun. I warily lowered my glass as they fanned out from the door, and three more came in between them, scanning the room. All eyes lit on me.

One mustached man with a white hat darkened by rain, its edges glowing a dull yellow in the lamplight, leveled his shotgun straight at me, and I know my jaw dropped. "Get up out of that chair real slow."

I had no words. A man looking down the twin bores of a shotgun finds little to say, at least in those first moments of surprise. In the back of my mind I was aware that some of the men had crossed to Fred Lee, the bartender, but the man in the fore of my mind was this gent in a long, wet duster holding the shotgun at my chest.

"That your buckskin out there?" the man asked. His voice was a course drawl.

"Yeah, sure." My eyes flickered toward the door. Questions were bouncing around inside my head, but I was still too stunned to out with them.

The man’s head moved in a slight nod. "Take off your coat, real slow. And take off any guns you’re wearin’."

"What’s this about?" I finally managed.

"Damnit, move!" His voice had raised. I don’t know if he was only mad or if there was fear in that voice, too. It sounded like both.

"All right, I’m movin’," I said. "Take it easy. I’m not lookin’ for trouble."

By now several of the other men had formed a half circle around me. Only my back was uncovered by guns, being against the wall.

I was vaguely aware of Fred Lee telling some of the other men that I had just ridden in and that he didn’t know me very well. He was telling them I’d always been a surly sort.

I carefully took off my coat and laid it on the table. I took off my gun belt with my left hand and laid it over the top of the coat. My belt knife was hooked on it, and the only thing I had left that could be considered a weapon was a little jackknife in my left pants pocket. Again, with my eyes staring right into the man with the shotgun, I said, "What’s goin’ on here? Who are you?"

"We’re the rest of the boys from the Rafter K, the ones you didn’t kill."

I stared hard. My mind raced back. The man in the road! "You talkin’ about that fellow out on the road? Hell, he fired first! I was only defending myself."

The shotgun man peered at me queerly, but then his face hardened again. "Get his gun, Luke," he said out of the corner of his mouth. A thin man with wrinkle gashes beneath both cheekbones and a mustache that seemed to cover his face came warily around and shucked my gun from the holster. Then he backed away, his own pistol in his fist.

The shotgun man stared me down. "I’m Tick Hollister. Old man Sheets was my boss."

That didn’t mean much to me, except that I had heard the name Sheets down at the Cattleman’s Saloon. He was one of the more prosperous ranchers around and seemed to be well thought of by locals. Rachel and me hadn’t been in Heron long enough to know much about anyone other than some of the folks in town like Fred Lee.

Hollister held his shotgun out to Luke when he got backed up to him. "Here, hold onto this, will yuh?"

Luke just nodded and took the shotgun. He raised it up to his shoulder and trained it on my face. He looked like he was about to shoot a rattlesnake.

Hollister opened up the Merwin and Hulbert and peered closer. Then his face hardened, and he looked back up at me, his eyes narrow and full of hate. "There were four shots fired out of a forty-four when Mike Sheets died," he said, talking to the room. "This gent has four spent shells in his gun. And it’s a forty-four."

My innards churned. I had never reloaded after exchanging shots with the man in the road! It had been too wet and dark, and I had wanted nothing but to get away from there and get to town.

"I told you, I shot at a man on the road on the way into town. He came out of nowhere and took a couple shots at me."

Hollister scoffed. "My hell, mister! Do we look like a pack of fools? It’s darker than the inside of a gut out there. You didn’t shoot at no man on no road. Mike Sheets was sittin’ at his kitchen table when you shot ’im."

"I’m tellin’ you the truth!" I said, my fear making my voice come out sounding hoarse and high. "Yeah, it was dark. He looked like just a shadow, but he shot at me and I shot back."

I glanced quickly around the room, trying to see what lay in all their faces. In a couple of them I thought I might have seen a hint of doubt. Most of them were hard as ice.

"Let’s hang ’im now an’ be done with it," one younger man said, taking a step forward. "I’ll go get a rope."

"I say we get the sheriff an’ let him handle this!" one of them said from the back. He sounded almost scared to say the words, so I had a feeling he stood alone in his notions of justice. He pushed his way through to the front. "What if he’s tellin’ us the truth?"

"He’s lyin’!" Hollister snarled. "His story don’t add up."

"I seen this man around town," said another man, a pudgy fellow with big dark pockets under his eyes and the incongruous look of a hardened drover about his build. "He’s got ’im a wife an’ kids. I’d sure feel better about waitin’ for the sheriff, too."

"Sure, Jim. The sheriff’s half a day’s ride from here!" Luke barked. "What are we waitin’ for?"

Hollister was staring at me. He was listening to the others, but I could see the wheels of his mind churning. "You got a wife and young’uns? Where at?"

"South of town," I replied, feeling the first surge of hope I had felt all night. "Rachel’s her name."

Hollister’s mouth twitched. After studying him and all of those with him I had come to the conclusion that he was the leader of this flock. In the first place, he had to be a good fifteen years older than his nearest contender, and in the second place it was plain they all listened to him and watched to see how he would act. He was the man I would have to convince.

"A lot of killers have wives," Luke growled. "Do we let ’im go because of that? Old Mike had a wife, too."

"Hang ’im!" shouted the man who had been eager to find a rope.

"Simmer down, Cole," Hollister said. "We gotta be sure."

"How?" Cole growled. "Let a court handle it? I’ve seen the way they handle things!"

"Hush! What time is it? Luke, you got a watch? How long till daylight?"

Luke watched me while he dug inside his coat. His eyes held mine while the shotgun rested across his forearm. He had never bothered to take the hammers off cock, and I half expected to hear it go off. He flicked open the watch and peered at it in the dim light. "It’s only a quarter to midnight, Tick. If these clouds hang on it ain’t gonna be light for maybe eight hours. What’re you figurin’ on?"

Hollister looked cross. "I don’t know. I think we got our man, but what if we don’t? What if Tobe and Jim are right? That’s a hell of a load to haul around on your conscience the rest of your life."

"You ain’t gonna prove nothin,’ Tick," said the hot puncher, Cole. "Any tracks left around the place has sure washed out by now, his or his horse’s. That Merwin of his is a forty-four, an’ what’s more common than a forty-four? That’s what a lawyer would argue. We waste time an’ let him live till the sheriff gets here he’s likely to ride away scot-free. There ain’t enough evidence to hold a man on in court. But we know the truth!"

I stared at Cole. How could a man be so full of hate? He didn’t even know me.

"What if we go look around on the road, see if we can find any sign that he mighta really had a run-in with some stranger?"

Luke jerked his eyes over at him. "You gotta be kiddin’, Tick! I’d never call you a fool, but you know there ain’t gonna be no sign on the road. Cole’s right. The only thing we’re gonna get by waitin’ around is Mike’s killer goin’ free. It’s pretty dang coincidental four shots was fired into Mike an’ now this here galoot has four fired rounds in his gun. That’s proof enough for me."

Hollister turned suddenly to Fred Lee. "Hey, Fred! Did he tell you when he come in here about havin’ a problem on the road with anybody?"

"No way. He came in all surly, got his whisky, and sat down there. He didn’t hardly say nothin’."

I could see Tick Hollister’s face settling into hard lines as he turned back to face me. I think that was the turning point for him, the point where he made up his mind I was guilty.

"You can’t tell me a man would have a fight like that on the road to town an’ not come in an’ tell nobody about it. That just ain’t human nature, bucko. Cole, go get the rope!"

The pudgy-faced puncher, Jim, jumped forward, looking quickly from me to Hollister. "Wait! Let me an’ Tobe go ride the road, see if we can find a sign. Maybe he actually hit this other feller. Or maybe he hit his horse an’ it’s lyin’ around there dead. We’re all gonna feel pretty sick about this if we find out he wasn’t lyin’."

I could see Hollister waver again, and he looked over at Luke. "He’s right, Luke. I ain’t gonna take that one chance away from him. All right, Jim. You an’ Tobe, Frank and Cole go ride the road on both sides an’ look around. Take some lanterns from the livery with you. We’ll look tonight, an’ we’ll keep lookin’ for two hours after daylight. Then if nothin’ turns up we take him down by the river and decorate a tree. I’ll be damned if I’ll let a man kill a boss as fine as Mike Sheets an’ then just ride free."

I was still stunned. I stood there cold now on the outside and in, shaking like I had the ague. My breath was coming short, and my heart was pounding fast. I was going to die. They would find nothing on the road. I didn’t think I had hit the man, and his horse sure never gave any indication of being hit. I had no more than ten hours to live.

It’s funny what goes through a man’s head when he knows he going to die. Here I had just had that hellacious fight with Rachel, here I had planned on never going back there, and suddenly I knew that was all I wanted to do. Everything I had in life that mattered was back on that little ranch, between Rachel and those three little kids. We had argued, a few too many times, I had been stubborn, and because of that I was here and I was going to die. And Rachel wouldn’t even know until it was too late. What was she going to do? How would she make a living out there? Would she have to remarry? Would she have to move herself and the kids to town?

"I’ve never begged for anything, mister," I said to Hollister when only he and Luke were left standing there. "And I hope you won’t consider this beggin’ now. But just in case you’re wrong, just on that one chance . . . I’ve gotta see my wife again?"

Luke flexed his jaws and spat. He looked over at Hollister. Hollister’s face was hard, but in his eyes there was an uncertainty I knew he couldn’t shake. It was the one thread of mercy I knew I could count on.

"How do we find her?"

I released a breath. A flicker of hope ran through me from my toes clear up through the top of my hat. I might die, but at least I could tell Rachel some things. I could tell her I was . . . I was sorry. I could even tell her I loved her, and the children too. Half an hour ago that hadn’t made one bit of difference to me, but now it meant everything. It was the only important thing in my whole world. Not my pride. Not my stubbornness. Only to let Rachel know I had been wrong. To let her know it for the first time in my mule-headed life.

After Luke left to fetch Rachel, I sat there at that table, staring at the floor, at the tabletop, at my coat, my hat, the ceiling. I looked at everything but Hollister, and he probably thought I was guilty just because I couldn’t meet his eyes. But looking at him took Rachel out of my mind, and the kids, and right now they were all I wanted to think of. I didn’t want to think of that rope around my neck. I’d seen plenty of men hang, legally and illegally. One way didn’t look as painful, but neither way looked pretty.

Luke came back long before the other punchers did. But I didn’t think it could be long until dawn. He came back in, and he was alone. My throat seemed to close over. Rachel had refused to come.

Luke looked at me, then finally over at Hollister. His eyes returned to me. "Your wife’s outside. She said she wanted a minute to prepare herself."

Rachel appeared in the doorway. She came around the corner of the doorframe with her chin held high, her riding hat and coat all soaked, but her face proud. She looked at me, and her eyes were cool as ice. "Can we talk in private?" she asked Luke.

Luke turned to look at Hollister. After a moment, Hollister said, "Well, I guess we could tie him up somewhere so he couldn’t try to get away."

Rachel’s attention had turned to the older man. "Are you in charge here?"

"I’m the foreman on the Rafter K, yes. I’m Tick Hollister, ma’am."

I could see Rachel flexing her jaws. She pushed back a strand of her honey-colored hair and took a few steps forward, holding out a steady hand. "I’m Rachel Morgan. Dan is my husband."

Hollister was openly taken aback by Rachel’s outstretched hand, but he hastily removed his hat and took it. "Yes, ma’am. I’m sorry about all this, but . . . everything looks pretty plain."

"You’ve made a mistake, Mr. Hollister. I promise you my husband would never kill anyone." Her face and her voice were both as cool as could be.

"Yes, ma’am," Hollister replied, dropping his hand away and swiping at his mustache. "Luke, get some piggin strings, would you? Tie his hands up."

"I got no piggin strings."

"Well . . ." Hollister looked around helplessly, avoiding Rachel’s eyes. Finally, he met her steady gaze. "Ma’am, I’m afraid we can’t leave you alone with your husband if we can’t find some way to secure him."

"Then it must be that way," she said instantly.

From across the room I heard something slide across the bar top, and I looked over to see Fred Lee with his hand on a shotgun lying on its side with its barrels pointed toward me.

"I’ll make sure he don’t leave, boys. If that counts with you."

"Shotgun counts for a lot." Hollister looked over at me. "You an’ the barkeep friends?"

"Not hardly," I replied.

"I can’t stand the man," Fred put in. "I’m just tryin’ to help out. And I don’t ever miss anything I shoot at, neither."

Hollister looked at Luke, as if for approval, and Luke just shrugged. Hollister looked around the room, toward the door, then around the room again. It was obvious he didn’t want to go outside.

"There’s my bedroom right there," Fred said, pointing to a door at the far end of the bar. "You can sit in there while you wait if you want."

Hollister nodded thanks, and the two of them went and disappeared behind that door. The room fell silent. The man at the other table had long since left in the excitement, and that left only me, Rachel, and Fred.

Rachel sat down across from me. Her eyes searched mine, and I could see no vestige of anger in hers. But I didn’t know what she was looking for, and with her eyes on me this way I didn’t know if I could still say what I wanted to. But it didn’t matter. I had to force myself to say it. For Rachel’s coming here had changed nothing with these hard cowpunchers. In a few hours I would be dead, a cottonwood blossom, to be blunt.

I felt my hand reaching across the table as if it had a mind of its own. It lay across Rachel’s hand that rested on the table. She met my eyes, and mine held. Knowing I would soon be dead gave me a strength in my words that I had never known. "I’ve always been stupid, Rachel. But I’ve always loved you. I couldn’t ever say it. I’ve always loved you. I always will love you. I’m sorry. I can never tell you how sorry I am for everything."

Rachel was strong, and I was so proud of her. I saw her chest rise with a deep breath, and for a moment I saw her eyes glitter. Then she looked away, her jaw clamped. She didn’t speak, but I understood.

She pulled her hand away and got up, pacing the floor. She came back and sat down, staring at the top of the table. But me, I stared at Rachel. I wanted to keep every detail of her in my brain. I wanted her to be the last thing in my thoughts when my horse went out from under me.

"Who’s with the children?"

Rachel didn’t raise her eyes. "They left one of the cowboys there. They were all asleep. They cried themselves to sleep after you left."

"Jack will be strong for you, Rachel. He’ll be a man for you. Stand by him while he fights with this. Let him work it through. He’ll think the world took his pa away."

Again, she just flexed her jaws. She looked up, then quickly back down.

We sat there for what seemed an eternity. Every time I looked at Fred he was staring at me over the top of that shotgun, that smug look on his face, his lips smirking beneath his bristly brown mustache.

I saw daylight begin to creep into the room, a diffused, gray daylight coming through clouds that probably would not let this day see the sun. I was still wet, and it was deathly cold in the room. My feet were numb, my mind too. I heard a lone horse gallop down the street and stop in front.

Soon, Cole came inside. He looked around, surprised, then looked over at Fred. Fred jerked his thumb. "They’re in there." Cole went into Fred’s bedroom and shut the door.

Rachel suddenly got up and went to the door, walking right in. When she came back out she was holding her chin high again, her cheeks white. Instead of walking to my table, she walked to the window, and putting her fingers up on the sill she stared out.

My throat ached dully like my chest. My whole body was numb, perhaps more with fear than with the cold. Finally, I stood up and walked toward her. I stopped at her left shoulder.

"They’ve scoured the road with lanterns and torches," she said, not even turning to look at me. "They found no evidence of what you told them."

I had no answer. I grimaced, turned and went back to the table. I sat down and for the first time since the cowboys had shown up I downed a glass of whisky and poured another, staring at it there on the table before me.

An hour later, another horse came in. The man came through the door, and it was the man I assumed to be Frank, who I had never heard speak that night. He gave me a hard, hateful look across the room, and that said all I needed to hear from him. After getting the word from Fred, he also went to the bedroom and disappeared.

The next half hour dragged by. Rachel wouldn’t come back to the table. She wouldn’t even look at me. Her face was as unmoved as a dead woman’s. She just stared out the window, and once in a while she would remove her hat and brush aimlessly at it, straighten her hair a little and put the hat back on her head.

I sat at the table and felt the noose tighten around my neck. I kept my poker face intact as well, but with every moment I could feel my life slipping away. Images kept coming to my mind, images I had to throw away. Jack, Alyssa, little Danny. Their faces kept coming to me, smiling at me sometimes, sad others. At last I let them come to me and stay, because I knew I would never see them in real life again. These punchers would not wait that long, and they would not let that kind of emotion enter into the job they figured they were chosen to perform. If they saw my children later they could feel sad for them, but they wouldn’t take the chance of their sad faces clouding their judgment now.

I would never see my kids again.

I bit my lip and took another swallow of whisky, thinking about that big year-old stud running with the wild herd that I had been wanting to catch and geld for my own remuda. The spring on the south side of the property was looking like a fountain last I checked it, and the herd on that side was sleek and healthy going into winter. I had a saddle sitting in the shed that I had wanted to repair for . . . Jack. A young, strong, stubborn face like his father’s jumped into my mind, and I clung to it for a moment, then took another swig of whisky. I grimaced, looked down at my shaking hands.

The light coming through the window was not sunlight, but it was the kind of light you know comes from a sun hiding only behind clouds, not one hiding below the horizon. And then I heard the sound of two horses plodding quietly. That would be Jim and Tobe.

I got up woodenly and walked the length of the room to Rachel, where she was staring out the window, fidgeting with her reticule. Through the raindrops on the window I could see a dusting of white on the mountains, but none had stayed on the street. It was just a mass of mud. Tobe and Jim were walking their horses, and they drew in at the hitch racks in front of the saloon. They looked at each other and then glanced up to see us staring at them. Both of them looked quickly away. They got off their horses, and Tobe came up onto the porch, then paused to wait for Jim, who was fussing with his cinch. Tobe said something, and Jim looked up at him, then came up onto the porch slowly, forcing himself not to look our way. They came inside, and both glanced toward us, then scanned the room.

Their faces were confused. "Where’re the others?" Tobe asked.

"In my room," Fred replied smugly. "Don’t worry." He gave the shotgun a couple of taps. "I’ve been watchin’ the killer."

Jim frowned, and he and Tobe walked toward the door.

I hurriedly looked back at Rachel. She was frowning, tugging at a loose thread in one seam of her reticule, a thread that weakened the reticule in no way whatsoever.

I placed shaky hands on both of Rachel’s shoulders, and she turned around. She still didn’t look up at me. "I have to make the most of this. You know this is the last time we’ll ever see each other."

A picture of the times we’d shared together, of the children who had come to grace our home, of the land we’d cleared together came running into my head, and for the first time in many minutes our eyes met, and both of us had to fight back the tears. I was losing my Rachel, my children, my everything. How was she going to live? I had ruined her life. Mine didn’t matter. She would have to stay here and fight for her every meal, for her dignity, for her soul. What had I done? God, what had I done?

Tears trickled down my cheeks, and Rachel fell into my arms. Her breathing told me she was doing everything she could not to break down. She was clutching me around the middle like she meant to break my ribs.

The door opened across the room, and all was silent, but then one set of boots tromped across the floor and out the door, and once he was outside I saw the wearer of them was Cole. He went to tug a coiled rope off his saddle, his face grim.

Someone walked over and stood beside us for a moment, and then I heard Tick Hollister’s voice. "Sorry, ma’am. But we’ve gotta go. Best you stay here."

Only a man who is about to be executed could ever know what was going through my head. I was going to show these men how strong I could be. I believed in God, and he was going to be there waiting for me, knowing innocent blood had been shed. My stomach was only filled with sick fear for those I left behind.

Hollister and Luke grasped me by the arms, and it took two of the others to pry Rachel away. I heard her finally start to sob as we cleared the front door.

The sun was streaming light through one tiny hole in the clouds when we stepped onto the soggy porch, and that one ray of light was for me.

We heard a wagon splashing up the road at a good clip, and when it came into view I saw one of my neighbors driving it, a man named Jeb Peters. He saw us and hit his horses with the ribbons, making one more burst of speed before he pulled up in front of the saloon.

"Somebody help me get this gent out of the back of my wagon! He’s shot up."

Peters jumped down and splashed around the wagon through the mud, letting down the tailgate of his wagon. Jim and Tobe and Frank followed him to the wagon while the rest of us looked on, Cole with the lasso poised in his fist.

They all looked into the back of the wagon, then back at us. "Tick, get over here!" Jim yelled.

Hollister let go of my arm and hurried down the steps. He got to the back of the wagon and looked in at what the rest of us couldn’t see. Cole had followed them too, and it was just me and Luke alone on the porch now.

Peters looked over and happened to notice me, and he waved a preoccupied greeting. "Howdy, Dan."

Then he returned his eyes to Hollister, who looked up. "He’s dead," Hollister said.

Peters nodded. "Well, I didn’t figure he’d make it all the way to town. He was bleedin’ bad. Out of his mind, he was. He kept talkin’ about some old man he had to kill. An’ some feller he ran into on the dark road that shot him for no reason. Didn’t make no sense."

Hollister’s face had gone white, and he looked up at me. I was standing alone on the porch because Luke had stepped away from me and also stood staring dumbly at the wagon bed. Fred Lee was standing in the street, and when he turned and stumbled past me back into the saloon he wouldn’t meet my eyes.

I heard my woman sobbing then, and I turned and looked into her eyes. She was standing on the porch and staring at me. She tilted her head to one side. When she threw up her arms to come to me it was like she had been holding my life there, and she offered it back to me. I took her against my chest, and we both cried while I whispered how I loved her. I didn’t care who heard.

　

                                                                       THE END
 

THE DREAM, a firefighter story

　

　

　

 

The Dream

　

It was that one call—the call a firefighter dreads the most.

Later, John lay in his bed and relived it, over and over. And he went to sleep and dreamed of it, and woke up soaked through with sweat, then cried himself to sleep, and dreamed again.

Little Lucy came to him, all thirty-five pounds of her, snuggly and warm and soft in her pink fleece sleepers, with felt hearts glued all about the neck and shoulders. She crawled into bed next to him, and he sat up to hold her. Snuggling her silky head of honey-colored hair up against his chest, she put her hand on his belly, and he prayed that she didn’t feel it when his chest started to heave with his sobs, and tears streamed down his cheeks.

The other guys at the station had wanted to play cards that night, and they begged John to take a hand. But he was no card player. It bored him like almost nothing else, even more than sitting in church bored him. It made them mad, but he won out, to the sound of jeers and cursing, Ken yelling for him to just "go back to his cave and hibernate." And Pat said he didn’t dare play cards with real men anyway because it was a foregone conclusion that he would lose.

So John had returned to his room, where he made his last call of the evening to Jenny and the kids. Over the phone, they read together from the Scriptures, and then they took turns saying parts of a prayer, all five of them contributing a single piece, like putting together a jigsaw puzzle, which came together with that final middle piece that was always such a triumph: "Amen."

There was a Louis L’Amour novel on the shelf in his room, mixed in with the tomes of firefighting knowledge, the big red manuals teaching new firefighters how to use a ladder, how to roll a hose, how to dismantle a car involved in a rollover to get the victim out. He picked up the L’Amour and tried to read. It was a novel he had read as a young boy, and back then, when he was innocent, he had loved it. Now it bored him almost as much as the cards did, irritated him with its simplistic characters and the narrator’s boastful prose, and he finally set it down and read from a John Grisham novel instead, hooked from the very first page.

After the heart-wrenching, terrible call, John kept crying throughout the night. He couldn’t stop his tears. Lucy stayed with him for a long time, and his wife Jenny came to him several times and kissed him and told him it would be all right. Everything would be okay. After Lucy went to sleep, Jenny came and sat on the other side of him for a long time and held his hand and rested her head on his shoulder. The other two children, Luke and Sara, were asleep in their own beds. He wanted to get up and go see them, but he couldn’t disturb Jenny and Lucy, so he stayed in bed. And the emptiness enveloped him, and the tears welled up from inside and soaked the front of his shirt.

He dreamed a better dream when next he slept. He dreamed of Luke riding his bike for the very first time. He was such a young boy—and small even for his age. But yet he rode that bike! John embarrassed himself with the tears in his eyes as he watched that bike veer back and forth, going down the sidewalk in front of their house, his boy its only pilot. His grown-up five-year-old son. Luke had always picked things up quickly. The alphabet, his numbers, his reading. He had been reading for a year now. Obviously not John Grisham novels, but still . . . Dick and Jane was no crime, for a five-year-old.

Luke had black hair, and a mischievous smile. His lips were full and dark pink, his lashes long and curly. He was going to break a lot of hearts as he got older. His kindergarten teacher said he already had.

The dispatcher’s voice sounded frantic to John, waking him from a deep sleep. He had heard the tone alert first, but he had only been asleep for maybe an hour, lying there with the Grisham novel on his chest, and he was in the deepest part of exhausted sleep. His weight lifting routine that morning had been particularly strenuous, and before that, even before the beginning of his shift, he and Jenny had been to the gym and ridden the stationary bike for exactly an hour. A lady trainer who had been coming there with her clients for a while and had more muscular legs than his had inspired him to ride the bike, and he rode it with abandon, standing up for thirty-second stretches to pump the pedals at the bike’s highest degree of resistance. John was worn out.

So sleep came hard and deep, and the tone alert went off with its six irritating musical beeps, stirred him from the deepest sleep but confused him more than anything. Then the frantic tone of the dispatcher, Camille’s, voice began to register on his mind. She was usually calm and cool over the radio, speaking with a voice like honey, a voice that any red-blooded firefighter would be okay waking up to. This time it was different. And this time a second alarm went off for John, but this one was deep in the recesses of his brain . . .

Her words were jumbled, the call was confusing. There was a fire, heavy smoke at the front windows. There was no exact address, but the caller gave a home description and a street name, and they gave the cross street.

Numbly, knowing something was wrong but not grasping what, John followed the wave of firefighters into the apparatus room and stumbled to his turnouts. He had fallen asleep in his clothes, all but his uniform boots, and he didn’t bother to take the uniform off. It would get quickly soaked with sweat, but that was why he had always kept a spare uniform in his locker.

John’s captain, Evan, was staring at him with a strange, big-eyed look as they both scrambled into their bunkers. Trying to clear his blurry vision, John stared back. Then he dug his Nomex hood out of his pocket and snugged it down over his head to protect his neck and hair. He turned away from the strange look in Evan’s eyes as he shouldered into his turnout coat that, he noticed again with satisfaction, was growing tight across the chest and shoulders from the workout routine he had been doing for the last two years.

Grabbing his helmet, with the gloves tucked up inside it, John took the railing and heaved himself up into the back of the cab. He was conscious of Evan’s eyes still on him just before he disappeared.

John finally had to get out of bed. He forced himself to ease up out of the covers and ease Lucy’s head down on the mattress. She hardly even stirred. Jenny mumbled something, but it was incoherent, and when he whispered back to her there was no response.

He went to Sara’s room and with his hand resting on the door frame he watched her dark gray form in sleep. He could make out no detail, but he could see the lump of her six-year-old form, and he could hear her breathe. There was a time that Sara had been his shadow. She had gone everywhere with him, even if he had to go to the mechanic shop. It was enough just to be with him. She and Brute, their Doberman pinscher, would jump up every time they saw him rise, just in case he was about to embark on another adventure. And usually, before coming home, they would stop at Nancy’s Drive-Inn and get a Frostie–for John, for Sara . . . and of course for Brute. Brute always had to lap his up off the bed of the pickup, at least after the first time. The first time, Sara had been bound and determined to hand feed the then six-month-old pup with both its ears still flopped over like a hound. Before she was done, and ice cream was slopped all up and down her arm from his reckless tongue, and dog spit slimed her hand, Sara had determined that it wasn’t the wisest of plans to hold a Frostie in her hand in front of Brute.

John left the doorway and stepped into the room, clicking on Sara’s Winnie the Pooh lamp and sending soft light over her button nose and the smooth skin of her forehead. He bent and peeled down the covers so he could see her soft lips, and her little round chin, with her hands folded up under it as if in prayer. John sank onto his knees, watching her, and the eyes that he thought were now dry turned red again and rained down his cheeks until he could hardly breathe.

In the back of the fire pumper, there were three seats, one facing backward, and two forward. The other firefighter, Jason, always preferred to sit in the one facing backward, and John thought he was insane. His greatest day at the fire department was when they started buying new trucks with seats that faced forward in the back, for he got motion sickness, and those backward facing seats were merciless to him.

Camille had come over the radio again with an update, that there were flames coming from an upstairs window. This was the real deal. John had strapped his SCBA around his shoulders and was all buckled in and ready to fly from the truck. Suddenly, Jason reached across and put a hand on his knee. Jason, always smiling, wasn’t smiling now.

"You okay, buddy?"

Feeling dazed, John stared at him. "Sure. Sure, I’m okay. Sounds like a real one, huh?"

He thought he saw tears moisten Jason’s eyes, and his friend just sat there for a second, then dropped his hand from his knee and sat back to get himself buckled into his SCBA. "Yeah, bud. Yeah . . . it does."

Jason looked scared. His face seemed horribly pale, even in the dimness of the cab.

John felt his heart hammering. He felt sweaty, and his breath suddenly started to come very hard into his lungs, as if they were being crushed. He cursed himself. He had been a firefighter for eight years! Why should a routine fire call bother him? He had fought these a hundred times before. But . . . There were words ringing around in the back of his head, words he thought he might have heard but couldn’t quite make sense of. And names. The street names. Names he should know. After all, he knew this town better than anybody, from his former days as a cop on these same streets.

He had noticed throughout the drive that Ken was driving recklessly, taking corners at a speed these pumpers weren’t meant for. Ken was really on one tonight. He wasn’t known to drive like this. If John had been in Evan’s place he would have yelled at him to slow it down. They couldn’t save anybody if they never made it to the call. There was no call worth getting killed over on the way. Bar none. Even a call to a bad wreck, although it sounded heartless, did not merit breaking the sound barrier. What if you ran over someone on the way, or into someone–even another fire pumper or ambulance responding to the same call? It just wasn’t worth it. But for some reason John felt this numbness in his chest, in his hands, in his face. He felt powerless to speak, to yell at Ken to slow down himself if Evan was going to refuse to tell him.

John reached out and smoothed Sara’s hair down with his callused weight lifter’s hand. Tears streamed down his face, and the whole room was a blur, but Sara’s hair was in sharp focus. The lamp light lit it dimly, and its deep, nut-brown smoothness shimmered in that light. He bent and kissed her, then stumbled out of the room to feel his way down the hall to Luke’s bedroom.

Luke was going to be his buddy, his partner through all of his school years, his hunting partner, his dog training partner—for Luke loved Brute almost as much as he did. He had to get to his boy, had to hug him, had to feel his cheek against his. But when he got to the room and flipped on the light, Luke wasn’t in bed. The bed had not even been slept in! The covers were neatly tucked under the sides of the mattress, smoothed down over the pillow. John whirled around, trying to see if Luke had fallen asleep on the floor, or in his chair. Where was his boy?

He whirled from the room and back into the hall. There, at the far end of the hall, stood Jenny and their three children. Lucy was standing just in front of Jenny’s legs, leaning back against her, and Jenny had her hands on the shoulders of Luke and Sara. They were gazing at John with concern. He started slowly down the hall toward them. Everything else was a blur, and soon, the faces of his family began to blur as well. The longer he walked, the farther away they seemed to grow, and the blurrier their faces became, all but Jenny’s. Her face came clearer and clearer, and she opened her mouth to try to speak, but he could hear no words. And then her face began to blur as well, and like a cloud of smoke, all of them began to fade and disappear until he could see the wall at the end of the hall right through their images. They all raised their hands toward him, trying to reach him, but they were getting farther and farther and farther away.

John started running, but he was running at nothing. The hall was empty now.

Ken was driving like mad. Even the ambulance, which had been out when the call came in and had turned in from a side street and had been leading them, now pulled over and let the maniac that was Ken fly past them. Looking out the window at the houses that were flying past, John began to recognize where he was. This was his neighborhood. Someone he might know was in trouble! Someone from church, maybe.

His heart began to pound even harder, and he felt the strange rush of hot tears into his eyes. Jason was still staring at him, but when he looked over his friend quickly turned his eyes away and stared out the window. He already had the thermal imager in his hand, John noticed, and it was locked there in a death grip.

They rounded a corner, close to tipping the truck over, and the street was filled with smoke and people running like ants out of a kicked anthill. Jason flew out his door, and John reached numbly around him, looking for something, but he didn’t know what. He put his helmet on and tightened the strap, then his gloves, then jerked forward to pull the SCBA out of its clamps and threw open the door.

He could hardly breathe now. He felt like he was going to pass out. What was happening to him?

Then Evan was in front of him, and he was grabbing him by the shoulders. Someone was yelling something about people still trapped inside, and somebody was crying. Another voice was screaming.

Evan shoved John back against the truck. "I said STAY HERE!" The words registered on John, but he couldn’t stay there. He was a firefighter. It was what he did. How could he stay at the truck and let his friends fight a fire that he should be at too? Just because he was feeling a little sick?

With his hand still on John’s chest, Evan whirled about, and John heard him yell at someone. An officer drew near, and John heard Evan yelling at him to keep John there. The cop nodded, and Evan whirled away.

The cop turned and said something into his radio mike, and within half a minute another cop showed up beside him. John knew them both, but he didn’t speak. He was too busy trying to breathe.

He heard someone yell, "It’s going to come down! Put your streams on the other houses!"

It dawned on him that this was Evan’s voice.

A sense of urgency came to him, and he surged forward to the fight. But the officers were ready, and both of them grabbed him by an arm and shoved him back against the truck.

John looked past the open captain’s door, and the image of the burning house came into his vision. He stared at it with vague familiarity. Those windows where the flames were shooting out. He had seen them. He had been here. This was . . .

Someone screamed again, and the two cops turned to look at him with frightened eyes and grabbed his arms harder, shoving him up against the truck. The screaming continued, louder and more insistent, and John felt his throat burning. He realized the screams were coming from him!

He could hear glass breaking, voices screaming. Other fire engines had shown up, and two ambulances, and he saw the incident commander, his battalion chief, coming hurrying by. As he passed John’s engine, he turned and stared at him, then glanced at the two cops. He rushed on without a word, his face tight.

John saw a firefighter dragging a third hose toward the house stumble and fall. He stared at where the man had fallen and cursed. That careless boy, he thought. Why was it so hard? He had told him over and over and over again to put his things away. Money didn’t grow on trees! He always had to hold back a laugh when he said that, because he remembered his own father telling him the same thing. Money doesn’t grow on trees, son. You leave your things around and they can get stolen. Look at that bike! It’s just lying there on the sidewalk. Anyone could walk away with it!

That bike . . . Luke’s bike . . . On the sidewalk.

John looked up again at the silhouette of the house, now completely engulfed in flames. Fire streams were running everywhere, but mostly directed at the houses to either side of the fire house. The only stream shooting directly onto the big, two story house, was the master stream off their own pumper. Fortunately, this area had huge country lots, and the other houses were forty or fifty yards away. But regardless, the mass of fire now threatened them even at that distance.

My house, John thought. Someone is burning my house . . .

He remembered pulling away from the police officers and running. He remembered being tackled, just as he got near Luke’s bicycle. He remembered the sounds of crackling wood, and the sounds of a wall coming down. He remembered the sound of a woman crying.

Someone picked him up and led him away. He remembered the overly bright lights as he sat in the back of an ambulance staring at the floor. Someone, somebody he was sure he recognized, was taking his blood pressure. His turnout coat was somehow off of him and lying on the bench beside him. His helmet and gloves were off. He was soaked with sweat.

There was almost no sound in the ambulance, or at least little that John could hear. Everything seemed muffled and distant. All around were flashing red lights, skittering around the inner walls of the ambulance. John stared at them in a daze. He looked at the paramedic, who wouldn’t meet his eyes. He let his numb gaze drift down to the cuff on his arm.

John walked through his house, looking for his family. All of their beds were made. They had not been slept in. He walked from room to room to room. It was cold. Cold and empty.

Suddenly, he heard a voice. "John? John!"

He turned numbly, and a woman in pink uniform pants and a white, flowered shirt was walking to him with concern in his eyes. She was a pretty girl. He thought he had seen her before.

"John, I need you to come back to your room, okay?"

He only nodded. She took his arm and led him, as if he were an invalid, down the hall and to a white room with a tall window that looked out over a valley. "You need to get some sleep, John. Try to sleep. I’ll bring you something to eat in a little while, okay?"

John stared at her as he sat down on the bed, then lay down and let her pull a sheet up over him.

He went to sleep quickly, and he dreamed. He dreamed of going on a call, the worst nightmare call a firefighter can respond to. His family was trapped in their house, and still no one knew why or how. Nobody made it out of the fire.

He cried in his dream and prayed to wake up.