Kinfolk, page 27
A fire truck sat parked in the front yard. Men in fire-retardant gear were scrambling in all directions, manning miles of hoses. Shug couldn’t believe what he was seeing. He couldn’t believe how badly he had failed his daughter.
“Minnie!” he screamed.
The diesel engine thrummed and shook the earth, drowning out his voice. The hydraulic pump was roaring. Men in helmets screamed while training the blast of the hose at the fire. A man in a helmet used a ram to beat the front door. The door flew inward, as though it were made of balsa wood. Shug ran forward.
“Isn’t someone going to go in?” he shouted.
“Sir, step back,” the fireman said.
The firefighters were hacking at the wood, swinging axes wildly.
“Someone’s got to get inside!”
“You need to step back, sir.”
“Minnie! My God, Minnie! Someone needs to go in there! Right now, dammit!”
The man was shoving Shug back now. Restraining him. Shug fought the man, straining against his grasp. He was already trying to charge into the house, but five or six men were holding him back, tearing his clothing.
“Minnie!”
He screamed her name until he lost his voice.
* * *
Minnie heard someone call her name. A wave of something cool ran through her body. Something clicked inside her. An internal light switch. The knowledge that her loved ones would die if she didn’t do something. Now. And she had seconds to do it. She looked at Bun, cradled in her arms. She looked at the old man on the floor.
Her heart made a pact with her body. She would die trying to get out of here. The odds were against her; she knew this. But she had to try.
And this knowledge replaced the fear. Or maybe it drowned out the fear. Or maybe it just distracted her. Either way, her internal voice was all she could hear at that moment. The voice of reason. Or maybe the voice of complete insanity.
She squatted onto her heels. She slung the old man over one shoulder. She slung her daughter over the other shoulder.
And she ran.
* * *
Emily arrived in a panic, but the firefighters would not allow her any closer. She looked at the old farmhouse in the distance, where she had been born, and she collapsed in the yard. She fell to her knees and watched the glow of the fire in rapt anguish.
“Daddy!” she shouted.
Her whole body went numb. This could not be real. This was all just a bad dream.
She could see through the windows. The kitchen was ablaze. Her mother had not wanted her to be born in this house like sorry white trash. Civilized people went to the hospital to have babies. That’s what Emily’s mother wanted. But her mother did not get her wish. Emily had been born in the kitchen of this old Sears, Roebuck & Co. home. The table had been covered in a rubber tarp her father bought from the hardware store. When the birthing was over, her father said it looked like someone had dressed a deer in their kitchen. Emily watched flames enshroud the room of her birth.
“Daddy!” she shouted until her voice broke.
Then . . .
Emily heard one of the firemen shout. The mighty blast of white water was diverted from the front door. Men in leatherhead helmets gathered around the front of the home.
“Look!” shouted another fireman.
A silhouette came through the flames, moving slowly over the debris. The silhouette crawled over the splintered porch, carrying a grown man over her shoulder and a baby in her arms. The silhouette was tall. Broad-shouldered and stately. She emerged from the infernal Gehenna wearing a blackened nightgown. Barefoot. She stumbled onto the lawn and dropped the body of Nub Taylor onto the grass. She carefully placed Bun atop Nub’s body. Then Minnie collapsed in a coughing fit. She coughed until she vomited. Minnie kept pointing to her throat as if to say, “I can’t breathe.”
Chapter 40
When Minnie’s eyes opened, she saw a white light above her. A curious light. What was this light? It was an enveloping light. Not like a light at all but more like a world of its own. The light transformed from an encompassing brightness into a smaller, more focused, circular orb of light, hovering above her. The little ball of light moved back and forth. Side to side. Up and down. It was a tiny light, but bigger than a firefly. Her weary eyes followed the bouncing light.
It was a man with a flashlight. A man in a helmet. The man was asking her to tell him her name, but she couldn’t speak. Neither could she figure out what her name was. She was too confused. She couldn’t make her mouth form the words. Her voice was gone. Her lungs were numb with pain. Her eyes kept going blurry. She had a strong desire to sleep. It was the strongest urge to sleep she had ever felt in her life. It was pulling at her. Gnawing at her. It was making her vision blurry.
“Don’t close your eyes, miss,” said the man.
She tried to speak, but she coughed instead. The coughing never stopped.
Minnie closed her eyes and gave in to the sleep.
“No, ma’am. Don’t close your eyes. Stay with me.”
But it was too late. Minnie was asleep. Although it was restless sleep. She saw her mother in her dreams. The woman was wearing a green dress. She was standing in a wide-open field. Her dress was whipping in the wind. Her face looked years younger than the tired face Minnie had come to know. Minnie wanted to speak to her mother, but her voice wouldn’t work. She saw her father too. He was wearing a yellow shirt. Short sleeves. He was young. Handsome. At least she assumed it was her father. She’d never laid eyes on him before. He looked like what she’d imagined.
Her eyes opened again.
This time she saw two men over her. Men dressed in blue, wearing badges. And her world was twisting sideways. As though she were being sucked through space and time. Or transported on a stretcher.
“What’s happening?” she tried to say.
She closed her eyes.
It was the world of white again. She saw her mother looking down at her, leaning in to her face. Beaming. Minnie wanted to tell her mother how sorely she missed her. How life had been since she went away. She wanted to tell her all about Nub and Bun and Benny and Emily and Leigh Ann, and all the new things she’d been doing since she’d made these new friends. But only coughs came out of her mouth.
Her eyes opened.
She was still in an all-white place. Heaven, maybe? Definitely not the other place. She heard beeping. Machines, perhaps? Were there fluorescent light bulbs and beeping machines in heaven? Nurses and doctors were gathered around her, using medical supplies, and the strong smell of disinfectant was filling her nostrils.
“Minnie,” a man’s voice said to her. “Can you hear me?”
She closed her eyes again. It felt so good to close her eyes. She heard the voice of her mother. The voice of her late grandmother. The voice of a man. The voice of her baby crying.
“Minnie,” said a voice. “Can you hear me?”
She coughed hard but could not get a full breath.
“I need the pulse oximeter, stat!” the dreamy voice said.
It was a strange thing for someone to be saying. What was an oximeter? What did stat mean? What was going on?
“Her pulse is below forty! Oxygen is sixty! We’re going to have to bag her. Get me the bag!”
Her life had been so beautiful. It hadn’t been perfect. But it wasn’t supposed to be. It all made sense now. Only imperfection is beautiful.
“Pulse is down to thirty. Dropping, dropping. Bag her! Now!”
Everything vanished into a miasma. The medical men. The voices. The image of her mother. The world of white. All gone.
“I’m losing her!”
Chapter 41
Park Baptist Memorial Hospital was a squatty brick building on Phillips Avenue made of tan brick and ugly bulbous windows. It had a flat roofline, no landscaping, and the whole place adhered strictly to a style of architecture that could be loosely defined as Adult Correctional Facility. The place had been built in 1947 out of pure necessity. Park residents got tired of traveling to Birmingham whenever their kids broke a bone or stepped on a rusty nail. The McDaniels family spearheaded the project. They fronted $680,000 to break ground on the hospital and started the proverbial ball rolling. The McDanielses were staunch Freewill Baptists. Ergo, the place was Baptist.
Nub had worked on the hospital construction crew along with hundreds more grunts from around town. A lot of guys who worked at the paper mill built this place. They even let Nub man an earth mover when the lot was being leveled. Greater thrill hath no man than to operate heavy machinery. To ride atop a 205-horsepower machine with 460,100 pounds of operating weight is bliss of the most primal variety.
The hospital was always busy. Not just with patients. The cafeteria at Park Baptist Memorial got most of the action because they were famous for their fish sticks. People raved about them. Although Nub wasn’t sure why. There was nothing special about Canadian-caught whitefish, deep-fried in Baltimore, flash-frozen, delivered via freezer truck to Atlanta, then shipped to a Jacksonville food supplier before riding eight hours in a hot truck to rural Alabama.
Nub was eating his fish sticks while lying in a bed in the Baptist Memorial burn unit. Leigh Ann sat near the bedside, feeding him one stick at a time. Little House on the Prairie was playing on the television above him. Laura Ingalls was running through a meadow that was supposed to be Minnesota but looked more like a sun-scorched Hollywood back lot.
“It never snows on this stupid show,” said Leigh Ann.
“Hmm?” he said with a mouthful.
His jaw hurt to move, and his chest hurt to breathe. The smoke had done a number on his lungs. He had also broken his collarbone when he fell. He was in a torso cast, so he looked like a pantomime, frozen midroutine. They said Leigh Ann had spent forty-four hours at his bedside. They said she held his hand for two whole days. She had friends bring her food. She slept here. She had not showered. She had not changed. She only left to use the bathroom.
“It never snows on this show,” she said. “My uncle lived in Minnesota. He said it snows all year long. But on this show it’s always sunny and bright, and everyone is suntanned.”
Nub forced himself up in his bed. His collarbone felt like it was going to snap in two. But it was worth it for the view. Leigh Ann looked soothing to his scalded eyes.
“What are you still doing here?” he said.
“The better question is, what are you still doing here?”
“I come here a lot,” he said. “This is my home away from home.”
She smiled. “You’re very lucky to be alive.”
He could tell by the pallor of her face that she’d been crying.
Leigh Ann placed another fish stick in his mouth. He was more than capable of feeding himself, of course, but he let her feed him and pretended to be a little worse off than he actually was.
After a few minutes, Leigh Ann was replaced with two Ash County deputies. They were not nearly as nice-looking as his caregiver had been. They wore khaki uniforms and square-toe Ropers. They removed their Stetsons to reveal matted hair.
Deputy Gordon Burke was the older of the two.
“We ought to quit this charade and move in together,” said Nub.
“You’d get sick of me,” said Burke. “I don’t put the toilet seat down.”
“I never even lift it up.”
“We were hoping to get a statement, Mr. Taylor,” said the younger deputy. “Do you feel up to telling us what happened a couple nights ago?”
“Sure,” he said. “Someone set fire to my house. Tried to kill me. Tried to kill three of us. I almost died. Any questions?”
The younger of the two removed a notepad from his chest pocket. “Do you have any idea who this arsonist was?”
“I know exactly what you know.”
The two deputies looked at each other.
“Anything you can tell us might be helpful,” said Burke.
“Okay. Deer mice are the most common mammal in North America.”
Gordon pulled a chair beside Nub’s bed. “What’s the last thing you remember?”
“I remember seeing a man on my lawn, holding a gas can. He called me Sugar.”
“Sugar?”
“That’s what he said.”
The young deputy made a note. “Any idea who he could’ve been?”
“Just making a wild guess here, Officer Junior, but I’d say he wasn’t with the local Rotary Club chapter.”
The young notetaker made a note.
“Are you actually writing that down?”
The deputy looked embarrassed.
“Did you see the man’s vehicle?” said Gordon.
“I didn’t see a vehicle at all. He must have walked.”
The kid scribbled more notes.
The younger deputy spoke. “Is there anyone with a grudge against you? Anyone who has been making threats?”
“Half the county has a grudge against me, kid. Give it time; you will, too, one day.”
The two deputies looked at each other again.
“Look,” said Nub, “I don’t know who it was. Maybe start with Phillip Deener. And let’s not rule this out—his dear old dad tried to kill me at the basketball game.”
The young deputy shook his head. “Nope, it wasn’t Bill Deener. He was at a game in Prattville. And Phillip was at the movies with a girl. Several witnesses saw him.”
Nub felt his vision blur slightly from the heaviness of the medication taking effect. It was not an altogether unpleasant experience, but it also made him a little nauseous.
“Nub,” said Gordon, “I realize you’ve been through a lot. But before we go, is there anything else you can remember?”
Nub leaned backward in his bed. The world started to spin around in that opiate haze of marshmallow weightlessness.
He muttered, “I love you so much it hurts . . .”
The deputies cleared their throats. “Nub? Stick with us for a second longer.”
“I can’t stand that dreadful little Nellie Oleson . . .”
“Mr. Taylor?”
Nub laughed to himself, eyes closed.
The deputies sighed. The younger deputy shook Nub by the shoulder to bring him back. But Nub was already fading.
“It never snows on this stupid show.”
Chapter 42
Two days later, Minnie awoke.
Nub was sitting next to her in a wheelchair. The right side of his torso was wrapped in a plaster cast. Surprisingly, he was still mobile. His arms were burned and he looked like a man who had been rolled in bruises. But he could still get around.
“Sign my cast?” he asked.
She blinked and struggled to sit up.
“Easy,” he said. “You’re gonna be just fine. You’re not burned, amazingly. Just a little bit of smoke inhalation. And, hey, I’ve been suffering from smoke inhalation since I was thirteen years old.”
“Where’s Bun? Is she okay?”
“Emily’s got her. By the end of the day, your daughter will own seventy thousand pairs of cute shoes.”
Nub notified the nurse that Minnie had awoken by pressing the little button no fewer than several hundred times.
Minnie rubbed her head. “I don’t remember what happened.”
“I can’t help you there.”
“I just remember the gunshots.”
Nub wheeled his chair to her other side. “That was me doing the shooting.”
Minnie closed her eyes again. A machine in the room was beeping every few moments. The beeping noise was like the sound from the arcade game they had at the roller rink. Pong, the game was called.
“Why did this happen?”
“I wish I knew.”
“Why do people hate me?”
Nub wheeled his chair to her window and used his fingers to separate the blinds. He looked out. “What makes you think it’s about you? I’ve pissed off more people in ten minutes than you have in your entire life.”
Just then Emily walked through the door with her arms full. She was carrying a tray of food from the cafeteria. Mashed potatoes. Creamed corn. Collards. Yeast roll. Fried whitefish sticks aplenty. Bun was in her other arm, resting against her shoulder.
Minnie’s face ignited.
So did Emily’s. “You’re awake,” Emily said. And she began to weep. “Are you strong enough to hold Bun?”
Minnie stretched out her arms.
“Here’s Mama,” Emily whispered to the sleeping babe.
Minnie accepted Bun from Emily’s arms. She held her child and rubbed her own cheeks against the baby’s skin, speaking softly to her.
“Are you hungry?” Emily asked, placing the platter of food before Minnie. “I brought Dad fish sticks, but you look like you need them more than he does.”
Minnie accepted the food, lifted one of the fish sticks, looked at it, and took a bite. The fish had a weak flavor, but she was starving. In a few moments she had eaten all four fish sticks and was asking for more. So Emily flagged down the nurse in the hallway, and Nub went back to looking out the window. A man was seated on the bench outside, chain-smoking.
He was one of the largest men Nub had ever seen.
* * *
Burke and Roger had been with the Ash County Sheriff’s Department for a combined total of thirty-one years. Thirty years for Burke. One year for Roger. Roger was ambitious. At age twenty, he was still basically a teenager. Not even old enough to drink. But he was eager to learn all the right things, so he was welcome in Burke’s Toyota. Burke’s own kids didn’t idolize him the way Roger did. Roger had been with Burke for exactly one week and he was starstruck with the old lawman. This made Burke feel more alive than he’d felt in a long time. Burke was doing more than training the kid. He was passing the torch.
Burke and Roger drove along County Route 19 looking for anything unusual. Burke’s gut was telling him to check out the Taylor farm again. Back at the hospital, Nub told them someone had been on the lawn with a gas can. There were no vehicles nearby, Nub had said. So it only stood to reason that this person had been close by, since there were no residences around for miles. He would have either been camped somewhere or had his car parked near the Taylor home. And if that was the case, wouldn’t there be traces of a campsite? Or maybe they’d find where the perpetrator’s car had been parked. It was a long shot, but one never knows, does one?
