Richard Ford: Wildlife

Warren Miller came out of the front door of his house in a hurry then. He had put on the coat that went with his suit pants, and he had a woman with him, a tall, slender woman with a long, pale face, who had on a man’s wool overcoat and silver high-heeled shoes. I recognized the shoes as the ones in Warren’s closet. He was moving her in a hurry, with his big limp, down the wooden front steps past where my father and I were, and out onto the driveway away from the house, which he probably thought was burning down but wasn’t. He had his hand in the middle of her back. When he got her out to the sidewalk at the end of the driveway, he turned and he looked at us and at the house which still had some blue flames flickering and smoking on the outside walls, but which was mostly not on fire anymore. People up and down the street had come out of their houses and into their yards, including the two older people from next door, who I recognized and who went across the street to watch from the yard there. I could hear someone, a woman’s voice, yelling, ‘Come see this. You won’t believe it. Oh, my Lord.’ I began to hear sirens closer and the engines of the pumper truck as it came across the bridge with a bell ringing. And I stood there beside my father, waiting to see what would happen.

‘This will turn out better than it seems,’ my father said. He was looking around. He must’ve been amazed at what he’d done, at all the people who were looking at him and at me.

‘It’ll be all right,’ I said. ‘Not that much happened.’

‘I wish it was all right now,’ he said. ‘I wish.’

Warren said something to the tall woman in the man’s coat. I thought it was his coat, though it was not the one my mother had worn. The woman said something to him and looked at my father and me and shook her head. Then Warren Miller began limping toward us, up onto the grass of his own yard in the melting snow. We were just waiting for him, I guess, and for something to happen to us — for the police or the fire department to come, or whatever would happen officially. My father had decided to stay where he was and to take what was coming to him. He had no place to go. This must’ve seemed as good as any other place.

‘You’re a goddamned drunk, aren’t you?’ Warren Miller said, before he even got to us, while he was still limping across his yard. He was mad. I saw that. His voice seemed deeper than it had when I was in his house the night before. His face was pale and damp. ‘God damn it, Jerry,’ he said. ‘You’re all drunked up, and you’ve ruined my house.’

My father didn’t say anything to answer. I don’t know what he could’ve said. But when Warren Miller got to where we were — my father sitting on the edge of the porch and me beside him — he grabbed my father by his shirt front, just grabbed up the front of it, and hit him in the face with his fist, hit him so hard my father rocked backward. Though he didn’t go far back because Warren kept hold of him. Warren pulled his fist back to hit my father in the face again, but I reached up and put my hands over my father’s face, and said very loudly, ‘Don’t do that. Don’t do it again.’

And Warren Miller turned loose of his shirt instantly and put both his hands into his coat pockets. Though he didn’t leave, he stayed where he was, did not even move back a step. His glasses looked dirty and fogged up, and his face was wet and so was his suit coat. He was breathing hard. I looked out where people were standing in the street. Someone there was pointing at us or at Warren Miller, who had hit my father. I saw a boy running across the yards to get to a place where he could see better. I heard sirens coming, and I could taste smoke.

‘God damn it, you have a son here, Jerry,’ Warren Miller said. ‘I don’t know why you’d do a thing like this.’ He was staring at my father, who was blinking his eyes. He wasn’t bleeding and there were no marks on his face where Warren had hit him, but he must’ve been dizzy or sick from it. I wanted to tell Warren to leave, that we were finished, but it was his house we were sitting in front of.

‘Who’s that?’ my father said. He was looking at the woman waiting out on the sidewalk in the long coat and the silver shoes.

‘What do you mean?’ Warren Miller said. He seemed astonished. ‘That’s none of your business who that is. It’s not your wife.’ He was still angry, I could feel it just being beside him. ‘I’ve got a pistol inside there, Jerry,’ he said. ‘I could shoot you and nobody’d say anything. They’d probably be glad.’

‘I know that,’ my father said, though I was shocked to hear that.

‘How old are you, for God’s sake?’ Warren Miller said.

‘Thirty-nine,’ my father said.

‘Weren’t you a college man? Didn’t you attend a college?’ Warren Miller said.

‘Yes,’ my father said.

Warren Miller turned and looked out in the front yard then. Some cars had stopped and the fire truck was blowing its horn to clear a way down the street. But the fire had put itself out by then. The snow had done it, and there wasn’t any need to have firemen come.

Warren Miller looked at me, his hands still in his pockets. His blue eyes were wide behind his glasses. ‘I knew you were in the house today,’ he said. ‘I could’ve broken in there, but I didn’t want this to get out of hand.’ He shook his head. ‘I ought to beat the hell out of you right now.’ Then he looked at my father again. I think he was trying to decide what to do, and didn’t exactly know what the right thing was. It was a peculiar moment for all of us. ‘You should’ve known about this, Jerry,’ Warren Miller said. ‘God damn you. You can’t stop these things. You can’t go off from home and expect people to just stay put. You can’t blame anybody but yourself. You’re a fool is what you are. And that’s all you are.’

‘Maybe so,’ my father said. ‘I’m sorry.’ He was staring down. Out in the town I could hear other sirens, ones that had nothing to do with us, but with other people in town who were afraid of fires starting.

‘She was throwing things up to see where they’d land,’ Warren Miller said. ‘It was over before you even knew about it. At least as far as I was concerned.’ He turned and looked at the street again.

Headlights from the fire trucks lit the pavement. I could hear the big engines throbbing. In the yard across the street a man was using a hose to wet his roof. Two firemen were walking out of the dark, wearing their big firemen’s hats and coats and boots and holding fire extinguisher cans and flashlights. The flames were all out on the house, now. Some neighbors were talking to the firemen who were on the truck. Someone laughed out loud.

‘What did you think?’ Warren Miller said to my father, who was sitting with his burned hands in his lap, his face beginning to swell from where he’d been punched. ‘Don’t you think this is a pretty big mistake? What do you think all these people think of you? A house-burner like this. In front of his own son. I’d be ashamed.’

‘Maybe they think it was important to me,’ my father said. He wiped his hands over his damp face then, and took a deep breath and let it out slowly. I could hear it go out.

‘They think nothing’s important to you,’ Warren said loudly. ‘They think you wanted to commit suicide, that’s all. They feel sorry for you. You’re out of your mind.’

He turned around and limped out into the front yard where snow was beginning to frost up on the damp grass, and the firemen were halfway up toward the house, pointing their flashlights in front of them and smiling and beginning to talk. They seemed to know Warren Miller. Warren Miller knew people. And we, my father and I, and my mother, didn’t know anyone. We were alone there in Great Falls. Strangers. We only had ourselves to answer for us if things went bad and turned against us as they had done at that moment.