Lee Martin - Late One Night

Captain heard the back door open and close. He went to his window and peeled back the curtain. He watched his father walking down the path he’d cleared through the snow so he could get to the burn barrel. He had a paper grocery bag full of trash in his left hand, the bomber jacket in his right. He put it all in the barrel.

Then he set it on fire. He stood there, his head bowed toward the flames, and Captain knew he was praying.

Captain turned away from the window, no longer wanting to see the flames rising above the top of the burn barrel. Even in the closed house, he could hear his father coughing. He could smell the same bad odor the air held the night Della’s trailer burned, but now he knew the stink was coming from the vinyl on his bomber jacket.

He opened his closet, and stepped inside. He closed the door and crouched down on the floor in the dark.

Della was his friend. More than that, she loved him. He knew that, and when he was with her, he remembered how it was when his mother was still alive. That’s what Della gave him — that mother’s love — and when he finally crossed the road that night, he only meant to help her. Her car wasn’t in the lane. His father had noticed that just before their argument over the goats had started, pointing out that it was so cold that Della and the kids had gone to spend the night somewhere else, probably with Lois and Wayne. Captain thought it was the exact right time to do a good turn for Della.

The deputy sat across from Ronnie. He said, “You went back out there that night, didn’t you?”

Ronnie nodded. “I was in a state when I left there that afternoon. I won’t deny that. It was over between Della and me — she’d made that plain — and I guess it caught me by surprise even if I’d thought that’s what I wanted. Pissed me off, is what it did. A crazy idea came to me. You have to understand I wasn’t thinking right. I stewed about it all evening, and then finally I made up my mind I’d do it.”

“Do what, Ronnie?”

“I’d call and see if Della and the kids were in the trailer or if they’d gone to her folks. I’d buy five gallons of gas, and if no one answered the phone, I’d go out there and burn the place. If she was going to push me, then I was going to push back. I’d put her in a mess. I’d make her sorry.”

“So you told Brandi you were going out for a drive?”

Ronnie nodded. “I pulled on my boots. I’d made up my mind.”

“But you never told Brandi that?”

“I stopped at Casey’s and called Della. No one answered. I bought that gas and drove on out the blacktop. When I got to the trailer, it was dark, and Della’s car wasn’t in the lane. She always left it in the lane, and it wasn’t there. So I felt certain she’d taken the kids and gone to Lois and Wayne’s. I parked a ways down the road. The neighbors had enough to gossip about. People like Missy Wade. I didn’t want her seeing my car pulled in the lane and wondering what was what.”

Just as he got the gas can out of his car, he said, he heard a door slam shut across the road at the Rowe house, and that was enough to spook him. “That’s when I hauled that gas can through the ditch and angled through the front yard.” He tromped through the snow and got in behind the trailer where he thought no one would see him. “I just stood there a while, catching my breath, listening, just letting things calm down.”

So, yes, Ronnie was there that night, out there behind the trailer. Brandi was retelling the story — the one he’d told her — to Angel and Missy, but she wouldn’t tell it all. No, there were parts of it she wouldn’t want the girls to ever know, parts that shamed Ronnie, parts that Brandi didn’t want to think about ever again. Angel sat on the edge of the bed. Missy stood just inside the door. Lois hadn’t said a word all the way from Phillipsport to Goldengate, and she’d refused to come inside, preferring instead to wait in the van until Missy came out to drive her home. It was then that Lois would say to Missy, “I don’t know how you can be a friend to her. Not after what she did to Della.”

How would Missy ever be able to explain what rose in her as she watched Angel help Brandi with her pajamas, and then, once she was in bed, pull the covers over her with such care? How strongly Missy felt Brandi’s need, and in that moment she let sorrow have every bit of her until it could have no more. She grieved for Della and her children, for Angel and the girlhood she was leaving behind too soon.

Standing there, looking at Angel and Brandi in the lamplight, listening to Brandi’s soft voice, watching Angel reach out and brush a few strands of wayward hair from Brandi’s face, Missy understood in a way she never quite had that life — everyone’s life — came down to this. The chance to do something good, to let people know they weren’t alone. To do it with no thought of what advantage or reward might come to you. To do it because you knew everyone was sometimes stupid, deceitful, selfish, weak. To do it because you knew you were one of those people, no matter how spotless your life. Sooner or later, trouble would find you, either of your own device or a matter of circumstances. Love was sacrifice and forgiveness. She’d heard it in church, read it in her Bible, listened to it from her parents, but somewhere along the line — somewhere in the midst of losing the babies she thought she was meant to have — she’d forgotten it all. She’d become bitter, and this business with Ronnie leaving Della for Brandi had brought out all her anger. She’d been determined to save Angel and her sisters. She’d had no way of knowing that all along it was Angel who was saving her, bringing her back to being a better person than she’d been in too long, bringing her — the thought startled her at first, but then she settled into its comfort — as close as she would ever be to feeling like a mother.

“He went out there that night,” Brandi said to Angel, “because he loved you. He knew the furnace in the trailer was acting up, and he wanted to know you were all right. All of you. All you kids and, yes, even your mom. He wanted to make sure nothing was wrong.”

It wasn’t true — though there was at least a bit of truth in it — but Brandi convinced herself that God would forgive her this one lie, all for the sake of the future.

It was cold, and the wind was coming in gusts, and Ronnie was shivering from the thought of what he was about to do. He noticed a cardboard box on the back steps, a box of ashes.

“The wind had caught some embers,” he said, “and from time to time a shower of sparks sprayed up into the air. I didn’t care. I knew what I’d come to do, and that box of ashes didn’t mean anything to me.”

He unscrewed the cap off the gas can spout and got at it. The old upholstered chair he’d dragged out behind the trailer in the fall just before he’d found out that Della had lied to him and wasn’t taking her birth control pills was still there. He doused it with gasoline, knowing it would soak into the foam and burn hot and quick when he finally lit it. He went down the length of the trailer, slinging gas up onto the hardboard siding, pouring it along the bare ground where the roof’s overhang had kept snow from collecting. The tall grass was dry and brittle. He heard his breath and the noise the can made as it emptied, popping every once in a while as its volume decreased. He smelled the gas, and he felt the wind burning his bare ears. He didn’t have on any gloves, but it wouldn’t be until later that he’d feel the sting in his hands.

“I stopped to rest.” He looked away from the deputy and closed his eyes, playing it all out again in his head. “I still had about half of that can left. I set it down, and I put my hands on my knees. That’s when I saw it.”