Chapter One*********************
He has gathered up the discarded things, their leavings, rave posters, and take-out bags, and the ragged blankets of the lost children. He has carried them here from the far reaches of the house and piled them in the center of this room.
Outside, cool liquid air has descended and touched the earth and all that is on it, in this place, with its soft, wet soul. The transparent cloud condenses on the remaining windowpanes and glitters in the reach of the streetlights, seeps into the moss, which has grown to cover the window ledge beneath the roof where the eave has sunk and the gutter is rotted away.
The neighborhood is deeply quiet. Below, on the flat by the river, city towers blink as cleaning crews move from office to office. The nightlife, half-hearted at midweek even during peak hours, is completely stilled. It is the insomniac and suicide hour.
He is not a smoker, but he always keeps the lighter with him. It is an old-fashioned lighter, a refillable one, a sort of family heirloom. He is anxious, eager for the flames. It has been a long time. He strikes the lighter and yellow flame hums. He holds the flame to a frayed blanket edge. The threads shrink away, curl, disappear.
"Come, come," he coaxes. "Come little flame." And the flame catches and runs along a tear in the blanket, grabs hold of a crumpled poster and leaps up.
He backs away, slowly, pauses in the doorway to watch the flames rise and dance. And raises his arms into the air, runs his fingers through the smoke, runs ahead of the flame, pied piper of dragons, he runs into the night.
Ed Holliday smelled the smoke before he saw the glow from the third story window of the old Bartlett house. His first thought was good riddance; maybe the street kids would stay away from the neighborhood without the old place to crash in. His second thought was, what if one of those poor kids was in there sleeping? He was dialing 911 on his cell phone and almost ran the stop sign on King. He had to slam on his brakes to avoid hitting the VW hippie van crossing in front of him. It surprised him. The van was the only vehicle he had encountered since leaving the freeway.
"Emergency."
"I want to report a fire."
"Where are you located, sir?"
"Between King and Twenty-fourth. It's the old Bartlett place."
"Is that Southwest King?"
"Yes. Look there could be somebody in there."
"Yes, sir. We've notified the fire department." The operator instructed him to go home and not impede the emergency vehicles. Ed was home already, pulling into his drive, and he could hear the blast of the fire engine horns as they crossed the first intersection. The station was only five blocks away. Too close to bother with sirens, especially at this hour. But the police had made no such concession to the neighborhood. Ed heard the police siren begin from some far street and build toward him. He stood beside his car and watched the fire trucks arrive. Flames had eaten through the roof of the house and, vitalized with this abundant source of oxygen, flowed along the roofline.
The iron gates were locked. Though the lock had never proven sufficient against homeless kids, it held back the fire trucks for a few precious seconds. Two firemen broke the lock with a crowbar and the first truck pulled into the drive and up to the house, over decades of fallen branches and ankle-deep leaves.
Ed flinched at the sound of shattering glass. He thought about running to help, until he realized that it was just windows bursting from the heat, instead of some kid trying to fight his way out. And the windows kept breaking and the glass kept falling, glinting in the red swirling lights like frozen rain.
