Episode 41: Fire Part 1 (Rhyss)

“How’s that water heater working?”

They were in the part of the night that favored the sea air. Rhyss’s breath tasted like brine instead of industry.

“Great,” he said. “Thanks.”

He watched Bertrand Gable the Second tie twine around a stick and lead it to the far side of the hedge.

Rhyss didn’t think they were catching anything tonight, especially not that possum. He’d read once that they’d been around for millions of years. No animal that had survived for so long was going to fall for a trap made out of a trash can and some string. Even if there was food.

“I know what my son did to you,” Bertrand said.

“Oh,” Rhyss said.

“I wish he’d said no when Ulysses did it to him years before that.” He straightened and coiled the twine over and over again. “Your dad’s lucky he’s dead. He didn’t have to watch you go through that.”

Rhyss didn’t know what to say to that.

“Are you sure the possum will come?” he asked.

“Oh she’ll come. All those food scraps? I collected from half the neighborhood, all week.”

Rhyss hadn’t realized it was such a big deal. “I didn’t donate anything.”

“I didn’t ask you to,” he said.

They sat on the ground on the other side of the hedge. No one said anything.  Rhyss got two bug bites.

Bertrand Gable the Second shifted. “Do you smell smoke?”

“No,” Rhyss replied.

And then he did. Not smoke like someone had a wood fire going in their yard, which people sometimes did in the summer if they felt like getting arrested.

This was caustic.

One time the neighbors behind Rhyss’s house had gotten bed bugs. They’d burned their couch and mattresses in the yard. The smell had lingered in Rhyss’s throat days afterword.

“Look,” Bertrand Gable the Second pointed into the space between some row houses. The street beyond was dark, but it flickered. He stood up. “Someone’s house is on fire,” he said.

He ran and Rhyss followed. Four waist-high chain-link fences stood between them and the road but they jumped all of them like they weren’t even there.

Rhyss stopped when they reached the road. The house across the street and three down from his had flames shooting out of the second-floor window.

Rhyss realized Bertrand Gable the Second hadn’t stopped – he’d run right up to the front porch.

Rhyss ran after him. Bertrand Gable the Second threw a brick through the window and then Rhyss used a piece of broken wood to help him clear glass away.

There was a family in this house: A man, his daughter, and her two kids.

“Call the fire department,” Bertrand Gable the Second told him. He disappeared up the stairs of the house.

Every house on this street had the same layout. Rhyss ran to where the phone should be in this house. It wasn’t there.

He coughed.

He ran to his house, because he couldn’t just break into someone else’s house.

He called the emergency number, 000.

“Triple-zero, what is your emergency?”

“There’s a fire on Endicott,” he said. “In a house.”

“Please remain on the line.”

He waited.

He took the phone upstairs with him to check on his mom. She slept in the darkness, on the safe side of the street.

Back in the kitchen, he said into the silent phone, “Hello? Am I still supposed to wait?”

No one responded.

He heard sirens heading in from the west.

He hung up the phone and ran back onto the street. The daughter was banging on the door of the house to the right of hers. The two kids – boys – sat on the sidewalk huddled under a blanket.

Rhyss crossed the street and banged on the door of the house to the left.

Row houses, especially old ones like these, had a way of burning down an entire block.

No one answered. He pounded harder.

He saw smoke coming off the roof over this house.

He kicked the door to force it open, like in movies. It didn’t open, but pain shot up his right shin like he’d jumped onto it from too high up. He fell backward and clutched it before he recovered and stood again.

This time he broke the window and scrambled into the house. Up the stairs, which were on the same wall, with the same peeling paint, as his house.

“Fire!” he yelled in the upstairs hallway.

The sirens were getting closer from outside.

“Your roof is on fire,” Rhyss said to Mrs. Beauvale.

He heard sounds from the other two rooms and knew the kids were getting up.

“My cat!” she said. She slipped on a threadbare brown bathrobe and stepped into tattered slippers.

Rhyss knew her cat. It was big and orange and wild.

If anything could catch the possum, it was that cat.

He helped her get her kids out of the other two rooms. There were nine of them, ranging from two to thirteen. The oldest two helped carry some of the younger kids.

They made it outside in a chaos of crying toddlers and blaring sirens, just as the first fire truck pulled onto the street.

The kids joined the other two kids on the sidewalk. One of them covered the youngest with the blanket while the rest stood around.

As he watched the firefighters swarm the truck like ants, he looked around and realized the thirteen-year-old Beauvale girl was dressed in only underwear.

He went into his house again and got a pair of Jill’s pajamas and his hooded sweatshirt and two more blankets.

He walked back out on his front porch. There was a firewoman at the door.

“Did you call Triple-zero?” she asked him.

 Uh, yeah.” He hoped he wasn’t about to get in trouble for hanging up.

His eyes scanned the street. All the kids were together. The mom from the original fire stood near them now, talking to an officer.

Mrs. Beauvale was pointing towards her house. Rhyss had the suspicion she was trying to convince someone to rescue her cat. The firefighter she spoke to shook his head and pointed at her kids where they hovered on the sidewalk, and walked away.

“When did you first notice the flames?”

“I didn’t,” Rhyss said. “Bertrand Gable the Second-” his breath caught.

He stared out at the street, looking for the two faces he knew weren’t there.

“There’s a man! He went into that house!”

The firewoman turned to look at the house. Flames billowed from every opening.

“There’s no one in that house,” she argued.

“Yes there is!” He started across the street.

She grabbed his arm. He could have pushed her away easily, but he let her stop him.

“There’s nobody left in that house. You see those flames? It’s over eleven hundred degrees in that house, everything is on fire.”

He’d just been with Bertrand, not even ten minutes ago. He stared at the house.

He tried to figure out how that could be right. Maybe they’d gone out the back door, he decided. Maybe they were going to come around the side of the block any time now.

People on both sides of the street were pouring out of their houses now. The street filled with people. It was like a somber neighborhood block party, except their neighborhood would never have one of those.

The teenage Beauvale girl approached the fireman. “My mom doesn’t know this,” she said, “but my boyfriend is still in my house.”

“Where? What’s his name?”

“Tommy. He was hiding in the bathroom so I wouldn’t get in trouble.”

The firewoman ran across the street.

In under a minute, Rhyss estimated, three firefighters approached the Beauvale house wearing masks and tanks.

Someone must have told Mrs. Beauvale why. She came over with her slipper and smacked the teenager with it. “You had a boy over?” she yelled. She chased the teenager off across the street towards where the other kids huddled.

Rhyss saw the woman from the house where the fire started. She talked to the boss of the firemen for a moment and then started to cry.

Two ambulances parked behind the fire trucks.

Ms. Anney crossed the lawn and sat on Rhyss’s porch step. He joined her there as they watched. He swallowed. “Bertrand-” he started.

“I heard,” she said.

“And the grandpa from that house,” Rhyss added.

Ms. Anney rested her hand on the clothes and blanket Rhyss had brought out. He’d forgotten about them. “What are these for?”

He picked them up. “I’ll be back,” he said.

He crossed the street and gave the clothes to the Beauvale teenager. After she dressed, he handed her the blanket. She didn’t say anything.

He crossed back over to his porch and watched.

“Did you catch that possum?” Ms. Anney asked.

Rhyss shook his head. “We just got the trap set up when he saw the fire.”

Part of the Beauvale house collapsed, scattering sparks and burning pieces into the air and onto the yards and street. The firefighters ran out.  

Rhyss heard sirens in the distance. This time they approached from the north.

He turned and looked at Ms. Anney. “Have you seen Emily? Antoine said she left.”

She looked out at the fire for a while before she answered. When she did, she put her hand on his leg and for a minute he forgot she was a battle tank.

“Rhyss, baby…Antoine reported her missing this morning.”

He closed his hands into fists and felt the memory of the asphalt against the bare skin of his chest. Missing, like Jill. Gone.

“Did they find any leads?” he asked, hopeful. Maybe it wasn’t the cult, maybe she wouldn’t be sacrificed so someone else could have a longer life. Maybe it wasn’t her dangerous job, with risks everywhere.

His anger tightened like a noose around him. Jill, his mom, school, the fire…now Emily. It was too much.

“They might bother with Emily,” Ms. Anney said. She sounded skeptical.

He frowned at that. “Why? They didn’t with Jill.”

“That,” Ms. Anney said, “wasn’t an election year.”

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