Nothing Left to Burn Page 21

  Epilogue

  At the end of the year, I decide to resurrect a failed novel I had begun writing in my sophomore year of college, after Lucky had died. It was about a fire chief named Derek Knefler and his arsonist father. On the weekends and the early mornings after I return home from the Sentinel, I sometimes rewrite scenes, but something always seems wrong. I write one of my old professors and ask for advice. He writes back and encourages me to abandon the fictionalized story and simply tell the truth. When I finish reading the letter, I place it on the kitchen table, where my mother discovers it.

  On a Sunday morning in early January, I walk into the living room to read the Sunday newspapers. Nena and my mother are already sitting on the couch.

  “Are you two going to church?” I ask.

  “Sit down for a moment,” Nena says. “Your mother and I have something we’d like to talk to you about.”

  I sink into my father’s old recliner and wait. They look concerned, and my stomach tenses, preparing for the worst.

  “You know that your father was a good man,” Nena says. “He was confused, with the fire company and all, but in his heart, he loved you.”

  “I guess so,” I say. He had been good to the fire company and the town, but it seemed that all he ever did for my mother and me was leave. Sometimes, when I heard my friends talk about their fathers, it was hard for me to imagine that my father loved me — I was still angry that the firehouse had robbed so much of his time from me. Yet I knew that he was a deeply conflicted man, pulled in many directions.

  “Well, there’s something you don’t know about your father,” my mother says.

  For a moment, I think that perhaps all of it — Lucky and his fires — has been a lie. My father had never admitted it, nor had Lucky or Helen. I’d only heard the story from my mother’s side of the family. Maybe it has been an elaborate plot, one to turn me against Lucky for some reason. But that doesn’t make sense — it wouldn’t explain the rubble still left in our yard.

  “We never wanted to tell you this,” Nena says. “But your mother found that letter your professor wrote to you and —”

  My mother interrupts. “Are you writing a book about this family?”

  Aside from newspaper articles, I had never shown them a single word of anything I’d written. We never talked about my father or Lucky; it had become the unspoken and I didn’t want to resurrect something my mother clearly didn’t want to discuss.

  I nod. “I’m writing about it.”

  “You can’t write about it,” Nena says. “Can you imagine how your father would react to something like that?”

  “Well, no,” I say. “I don’t know. Sometimes it feels like I didn’t know him at all.”

  Nena looks at the floor and begins to cry. My mother crosses her arms and leans forward, as if nursing a stomach cramp.

  “What are you two talking about? I don’t get it. What don’t I know?” I say.

  “Those fires that Lucky set,” my mother says, pausing for a moment. “Your father helped Lucky start some of them.”

  As she tells me the story, I imagine this scene.

  One day in the 1960s, probably not long after Lucky burned his car and that shed, Buster, Helen’s brother, stopped by to borrow a circular saw from his brother-in-law. He first knocked on the door of the family’s house — no answer. Buster looked around for a few moments and then thought he heard laughter coming from inside Lucky’s workshop.

  As Buster walked closer, he realized that it was young Denton’s laugh — an easily recognizable high-pitched giggle. Lucky’s probably playing with the kid, Buster thought. He smiled and stepped into the doorway, ready to surprise my father. But instead, he only stood and watched.

  Lucky sat on the cement floor of the workshop, holding Denton, maybe seven years old at the time, in his lap. At first, it looked the two were pushing Matchbox cars on the floor. Lucky patted the mop of brown hair on his son’s head.

  “That’s a good boy,” he said. “It’s fun, isn’t it? Do you like it?”

  “Yeah,” Denton said, amazement in his voice.

  Buster noticed the red and yellow gasoline can that sat next to Lucky. Strange place to put that, he thought. But then he saw what looked like a pool of water on the ground.

  Lucky leaned his head toward Denton’s, tender and soft, and spoke to him in an almost singsong voice.

  “Remember when Daddy’s car caught on fire?”

  The child nodded.

  “There was gasoline in that car,” Lucky said. “And it burned so hot. I could feel the heat of the flames. So always be careful with fire. You can get hurt very, very badly.”

  Denton looked at Lucky’s face and nodded again.

  Lucky pulled a pack of matches from the front of his shirt pocket. He struck the match and it hissed to life.

  “Watch what happens when fire touches the gasoline,” Lucky said.

  Lucky dropped the match onto the small pool — poof. The flames danced for a few minutes and then burned out.

  “Whoa,” Denton said. “That’s cool.”

  Lucky smiled. He bounced the boy on his knee a few times until he laughed. “You like that? You think you’d like to try it?”

  “Yeah,” Denton said.

  “Lucky Varner,” Buster shouted, making his presence known.

  My grandfather turned, thrust the child onto the floor, and then scrambled to his feet. “We were just playing,” Lucky said.

  Buster, strong from growing up on a farm, grabbed the back of Lucky’s neck.

  “Dad,” Denton cried.

  Buster pushed Lucky through the open door and then shoved him onto the ground.

  Lucky lay still for a few moments.

  “You burned your own car?” Buster asked. “Did you burn your car?”

  Lucky rolled over and squinted — his glasses had fallen off. He held up a hand, shielding his eyes from the sun, maybe readying himself in case Buster tried to throw a punch.

  “Yes,” Lucky said.

  “Do not ever talk to that boy like that again,” Buster said. “If I ever see you talking to him about fire again, I’ll kill you. I don’t want to ever see you at my house either. You step foot on my property, you’re dead.”

  “Not long after I had you, Buster stopped at our old trailer and told me this story,” my mother says. “He thought I should know the truth about Lucky. And he told me to never leave you alone with your grandfather.”

  “Lucky never went to their house, did he?”

  “No,” my mother says. “Buster hated him. He said that he would have shot him.”

  “But how do you know Dad started any fires?”

  “Buster said that he did. And that’s all he said, just that your father did help Lucky start some of those fires.”

  We sit in silence a moment. I don’t believe what they have told me. My father had been the fire chief — he didn’t start fires, he put them out. It just didn’t make sense. Plus, Buster had been an alcoholic. He’d died of cirrhosis not long after my father had been buried. Surely he had concocted the story. But it also makes sense. My father’s obsession with the fire company was just a metaphor for how hard he strove to make up for what he had done.

  “Did Dad ever tell you that he did it?” I ask.

  “No,” my mother says. “He never once spoke of it. And I think that even if he hadn’t died so young, he still would have taken it to the grave. He wouldn’t have told me.”

  “How many fires did he help start?”

  “I don’t know. Buster didn’t say. He just said that Lucky made your father help.”

  “Did he help burn their houses down?”

  “I don’t know,” my mother says. “And there’s no one left to ask either. I don’t even know if Helen knows about this. But she’d never tell you if she did.”

  So this was why my father had become a fireman, not only to save the family’s name but to save himself, to douse his conscience for what he had done. I never understood wh
y he loved that firehouse so much, why he left so often — now I knew.

  “Why didn’t you ever tell me any of this?” I ask.

  “We didn’t want you to be mad at him,” my mother says. “We were afraid that you would hate him.”

  “Hate him? I hated that he left all the time, because of that firehouse. But it wasn’t his fault. None of it was his fault. Lucky made him like that.”

  My grandmother shakes her head. “I really felt sorry for your father. He was such a good man. He would give you the shirt off his back. But what that family did to him was terrible. They brainwashed him.”

  “It was child abuse,” I say. Lucky might not have hit my father — though that certainly wouldn’t have surprised me — but coaxing his child to set fires went beyond being pathological or cruel. That seemed like pure evil. No wonder my dad’s brothers had left so soon after high school; they probably couldn’t get away fast enough. Perhaps Lucky had simply wanted my father for a patsy — if the investigators did suspect arson, Lucky could have lied and said his son had done it by accident, or maybe even on purpose. But if that had been his intention, he’d never followed through.

  “Don’t you see why you can’t write about this?” my mother says. “Nobody around here knows about this. A lot of people really liked your father. They’d have never thought he would have done something like this.”

  “But Mom, he was a kid then,” I say. “It wasn’t his fault.”

  I shake my head, stunned by all of this. All the resentment I had held for my father over the years melted to sorrow and pity. I thought of those faith healers on television — they touched the ill on the forehead, and at that instant the sick were supposedly cured. After my mother told me the truth about Lucky and my father, it was as if I could see them both for the first time.

  I stand up, walk outside, and look toward the pile of rubble left over from one of the houses Lucky had burned.

  • • •

  My stories at the Sentinel continue to focus on fires and death. More people overdose or are killed in car accidents. One night, a transformer blows up in Lewistown and burns down a garage and part of a house. Lorrie weaves past downed power lines and firemen, snapping photos, while I talk to Lewistown’s fire chief, a man I’d heard my father talk about many times.

  “Denton Varner?” the chief asks. “Oh, yeah, I remember him. Good fireman and a great man.”

  I still write the stories, but my obsession seems to fade. After my mother tells me about my father, I no longer feel the need to immerse myself in understanding and sharing the world I cover as a reporter. The fires feel more distant now, as if I have less at stake. Work at the Sentinel becomes just a job. But the desire to leave home seems more pressing than ever. In February, Pennsylvania slips into a cold spell with the temperature staying below freezing for thirty-five straight days. I yearn for the warmth of someplace new.

  In that dead-cold snap, I drive to an accident scene, walk a half mile over ice and snow, and finally see an upside-down Jeep in a creek bed. The driver lost control on a patch of ice and flipped off the bridge but walked away unscathed. I take a few photos and talk to the police about the specifics so I can write my article.

  As I walk away, I see one of my father’s old friends, Brad Boyer, the only one who still sent us Christmas cards each year. I remember Brad helping my father work on that old Case lawn mower. One summer afternoon, when a thunderstorm churned across the sky, the three of us waited out the rain and lightning inside the small toolshed my father had built. I remember Brad’s frosted white hair and kind blue eyes.

  “Brad?”

  He turns and smiles. “Jay? I saw your name in the paper. Wondered if I might run into you. How’s your mother doing?”

  “She’s good,” I say. “Clips all my articles.”

  Brad smiles, as if remembering something. He looks me in the eye and says, “You know, your father would have really gotten a kick out of knowing you were covering things like this.”

  “You think?”

  “You kidding me? He talked about you all the time. In fact, I gave him twenty bucks to put into a savings account for you. Do you remember that? Your dad wanted you to have some money set aside for college. Not a day goes by that I don’t think about him.”

  “I know what you mean,” I say. “Every time I go to a fire or car accident, I think of him.”

  “Me too,” Brad says. “I miss him. A lot of guys, they still talk about Denton. Can you believe that? Shows you how much he meant to people.”

  People still fight for Mifflin County — a group of businessmen work to revitalize downtown Lewistown, the school board talks of building a new high school, and the police continue busting drug dealers. As spring warms the air, a glaze of nostalgia seems to set in. Even with its myriad problems, Mifflin County still feels like the only place I could ever live. But finally, I decide that I have to move on, away from my father’s shadow and the memories of the town.

  I quit the Sentinel on the second day of July. My co-workers throw me a party complete with cake and balloons. We exchange e-mail addresses and phone numbers and promise to stay in touch. By five, everyone but the evening shift has left. Throughout that week, I had trained my replacement, a recent college graduate named Nate. He sits at the desk next to mine and types obituaries while I read over police reports.

  Nate stops typing and looks at me. He adjusts his glasses and says, “These suck. How many do we usually get?”

  “Depends,” I say. “Some nights none, other nights a lot. After holidays are the worst. I think people hold off on dying. And if it’s a warm Christmas, get ready for the spring.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “Green Christmas, fat cemetery,” I say. “It’s an old saying around here.”

  “Jesus, that’s morbid.” He waves a hand at his computer and says, “These are such a waste of news space.”

  “Look at it this way,” I say. “At least everyone will read your work. People always want to know who died.”

  I wonder how many obituaries I have typed. Around a thousand, I guess. So that calculates into what — maybe ten thousand grief-stricken friends or family members? People never just died: they “passed away,” “went to be with their Lord and Savior,” “departed their earthly body,” or “entered into eternal rest.” Their hobbies included quilting, bridge, NASCAR, hunting, CB radios, and model airplanes. For every Allen Groff, James Van Ness, or Jimmy Cooper, there are dozens of others, anonymous people who died unremarkable deaths.

  Alarm codes blast from the scanner and break the silence of the newsroom. I grab a pen and notepad and wait for the dispatcher: a house fire, three fire companies responding. I jump from my chair, open a drawer in my desk and pull out a camera, and tell Nate to come along.

  Outside, the humid afternoon air smacks my face. My Tempo squeals around a curve as we speed down a street posted fifteen miles per hour. I descend a hill and watch the light at the intersection change to red. I turn right, cut through a gravel parking lot behind a fast-food restaurant, then jerk the wheel left to reach Electric Avenue. Nate holds on to the dashboard.

  “Diagonal rule,” I say. “Lorrie taught me that. If a light is red you go diagonal and then turn to get back on your route. It’s faster than waiting.”

  As we drive through Lewistown, I hear the wailing siren of a fire engine behind me. I pull to the side of the road and wait for the truck to pass, then slam the gas and follow the flashing red and white strobe lights.

  “It’s just like football,” I tell Nate. “You find a blocker and gun it. They’ll take you right to the end zone.”

  The diesel exhaust from the fire truck reminds me of the smoky smell that clung to my father’s clothes when he returned home from a fire. In the distance, white smoke rises into the blue summer sky. My heart rattles inside my chest. This one will make the front page. The bleeping scanner and then running out the door, the adrenaline rush and the bylines — after today, all of it will be gone.


  When we arrive at the fire, I park along the street and watch firemen rush past with hoses over their shoulders. I snap photos of some of the firemen as they climb onto the roof and hack holes through the shingles until deep gray smoke pours up and into the sky. The insides of the house snap. Ash and water spray mix in the air, and for a moment the scene looks almost as serene as a snow shower.

  I am carried back to that night when Lucky threw those mattresses from his truck and the Saturday mornings when he poured gasoline into the hole. In my memory, those flames crack and pop, baking whatever junk my grandfather desired to torch. Lucky stands in front of the fire, keeping watch, and the thick black smoke clogs the air, ascending. It lifts into the sky, soaring higher and higher, until there are shadows over all of us.

  My mother still wears the silver wedding band on her right hand when she shops for groceries. On anniversaries, she asks me things like “Do you know what happened twenty-four years ago today?” The half-empty bottle of honeysuckle-scented perfume my father bought her for their first Valentine’s Day sits on the bureau in her bedroom. She still sleeps on one side of the bed. And the reminders of Lucky still scar our lawn: the pile of rubble excavated from the hole, the cement floor from the garage. The ruin and ashes that define our family still seem too hot to touch.

  That summer before I leave McVeytown, we stack firewood for the winter. Pap retired from cutting wood not long after his second hip replacement, so a hired man now brings it by the pickup load. His name is Reggie McDonald and my mother heard about him from one of our neighbors. In the afternoons, after he finishes his day working for a logging company, he drives over old forest roads and deep into the woods, cutting down dead trees. For fifty dollars a truckload, he saws the pieces, splits them, and then for two weeks straight, he delivers them to our house in the evening. My mother calls him the woodman and usually carries him a glass of water when he comes.

  One night I watch them out my bedroom window. My mother stands next to him and they talk. She smiles and nods. He leans an arm against the tailgate of his truck; he wears no shirt; his arms and back ripple with hard-earned muscles. Suspender straps sag behind his jeans, which sink low on his waist and, depending on his stance, reveal a slight plumber’s crack. He’s shaved his head — it looks brown like the rest of his skin, tanned from working days under the sun — and he wears a thick, bushy black beard. He chugs the water from the glass, then wipes his mouth with the back of his wrist.