Lee Martin - Late One Night

Missy couldn’t bear the thought of that. Those girls shuttled off somewhere, put into a stranger’s house right after losing their mother and their sisters and their baby brother. That wouldn’t do. It wouldn’t do at all. She caught Pat’s eye, and she hoped her look of disapproval would tell him what she was afraid to say with words. For just a while at least, couldn’t they take care of the girls? He nodded at her, as if he knew exactly what she was thinking, and she felt a rush of love for him, this man who was dependable, someone she could count on, a different sort of man from Ronnie Black.

Pat said to Biggs, “Is that really the best idea?”

“Well now, Pat. We’ve got to find a place for them. Ronnie’s sure in no shape.”

“We’ll take them.” Missy hoped she hadn’t spoken too quickly or with too much urgency in her voice. She tried to stay calm, tried to make it clear that this was a kindness she was offering, and that if Biggs said he couldn’t allow that, she wouldn’t feel her heart come apart as she feared it might. “They can stay here with Pat and me. We’re their godparents, after all. We’ve looked after them plenty before.”

“Oh, honey, are you sure you want to take on all that?” Lois said.

“I’ve given them showers,” said Missy. “I’ve combed their hair and got them into clean things.”

Should she try to do more for them? Do the things — she could hardly bring herself to say the word — that a mother would do? She wasn’t sure. In fact, the prospect scared her to death, but she really didn’t see any other choice, and she knew she wanted to try.

“Biggs?” Pat said.

“I guess it depends on what Wayne and Lois think of the idea.”

Wayne said it was up to her. “I’ve caused enough trouble the way it is.”

Lois nodded toward the girls, who were still in a bunch by the window. “Maybe we ought to ask them what they think.”

Angel spoke for all of them. “I don’t want to go back out in the cold. It’s fine with me to stay right here.”

She was afraid to be with her father because of how much she needed him now. It scared her to death to know that he was the one she’d have to count on and the one she would more than likely have to tell at some point that a few minutes before the trailer was on fire, she woke up and, through the slit between the panels of her window curtains, she saw sparks outside. At first, still not fully awake, she thought she was seeing lightning bugs because she’d been having a dream about summer, toward twilight, and a road snaking back into the woods, and suddenly Captain was there, and she was mad at him over something; she was yelling at him, and he kept asking her why, and then he was running and she was running after him, deeper and deeper into the dark woods.

As she watched the shower of lights, she began to understand that she was seeing sparks. She sat up in bed and parted the curtain panels. She saw the cardboard box of ashes, the one her mother had told her to take out to the compost, but she hadn’t. Someone had set it outside. Who cared? Not Angel, not then, not until the trailer was on fire, and she felt certain that it was her fault. If she’d only taken the box of ashes to the compost and emptied it there, everyone would be alive. She didn’t want to be around her father. She didn’t want to tell him that, nor did she want to tell him what else she’d done. She’d gone back to bed, let herself drift into sleep once more, not thinking another thing about that box of ashes, not until her mother shook her awake and said, “We’re on fire. Angel, help me.”

She wished she could stand in Missy’s living room now, knowing that she’d done just what her mother asked, but it wasn’t the truth, not at all. She and Hannah had run out into the cold night. She’d left her mother inside the trailer to try to save the others.

How in the world would she ever tell her father, or anyone else, any of that, and how would she tell him that as she fell asleep that second time, she heard a man’s voice outside, or at least thought she did. Sugar tits , she thought she heard, the way she’d heard her father — and then Captain — say too many times to count, but now she wasn’t sure she’d heard anything at all. Maybe it was just the wind, the same wind that was tossing the sparks from the box of ashes into the air. A shower of sparks that Angel could no longer see, asleep as she was and back in the dream from which she’d awakened, back in the woods calling for Captain, not knowing where he’d gone, only knowing she had to find him.

So that’s how the girls came to be with Missy and Pat, and that’s where they were the next afternoon, a Saturday, when Ronnie got out of the hospital, his mind fairly made up that he was going to press charges against Wayne.

“The man attacked me,” he said to Brandi. Pat Wade had called last night to tell her what had happened between Wayne and Ronnie, and she’d been at the hospital ever since. “He clubbed me right there in front of my girls. I’ve been thinking on it, and I’m not sure I can let him get away with that.” Ronnie zipped up his jacket. “Where are they anyway? Who’s got them? Wayne and Lois?”

Brandi shook her head. “Wayne’s taken sick. It’s Missy and Pat who’s seeing to the girls.”

“I like Pat okay. He’s always been square with me. Missy, on the other hand — well, I know she wants to hold my feet to the fire—”

His voice trailed off, the word “fire” hanging in the air.

“Sugar,” Brandi said, “what did you mean last night when Pat first told you the trailer had burned? You said it was a good thing that Della and the kids were spending the night with her folks. Why did you think that?”

Ronnie stuffed his hands into his jacket pockets. He looked down at his feet. Finally, he raised his head and looked at Brandi. “I was out there yesterday afternoon after I got served those papers, and she said if the furnace acted up, she’d take the kids to her folks for the night.”

“But why did you think she’d had to do that?”

“I called out there last night when I was driving around. I stopped at Casey’s and used the payphone. No one answered, so I thought—”

His voice got shaky then, and he stopped trying to talk. He bit at his lip.

“Oh,” Brandi said. “I didn’t know you’d done that.”

“I just wanted to make sure they were all right.”

“It’s okay. It doesn’t make me mad. There’s been a world of hurt. Maybe it’s time now to just let things be.”

Ronnie turned away from her and stared out the window. From the third floor, he could look out over the parking lot to State Street and the Wabash Savings and Loan where Brandi worked. The time and temperature sign in front of the Savings and Loan said it was fourteen degrees, a fact that he found hard to fathom since from where he stood, the afternoon sun bright and warm on his face, it was easy to imagine the cold gone forever. It was one of those January days that broke clear after a stretch of gray skies, and if not for the puffs of exhaust from the cars and trucks moving along State Street, and the trees with their bare branches, and a woman getting out of her car in the parking lot, her hands held over her ears, he’d be able to pretend it was summer. He’d be able to picture himself in the porch swing at Brandi’s house— their house — his hand on her stomach, waiting for the baby to kick. His baby. That life coming. He’d have that blessing. But the truth was — and he knew this that day in the hospital — every step thereafter would be weighted down with the fact of the fire.

“I don’t know.” He turned back to Brandi. “I want to do what’s right. People probably wouldn’t believe it to hear me say that, but it’s true. People like Missy. People like Lois and Wayne. They’ve got their minds made up about me.”