In Reach by Pamela Carter Joern Read Free Book Online Page A

to smell fire. And then, you do whatever it takes to get the hell out of this house. Now, am I clear?”
    The boys glanced at each other. He knew that look. In another five, six years they’d be looking at each other like that all the time, as if their old man was loco. Let them.
    The first week he took a lot of showers. Washed himself over and over and still could not get the stench out of his hair. When he’d finally found those two teenagers huddled together behind a closet door, their skin had been black and crispy. He didn’t tell Helen that. He’d reached out, his volunteer fireman’s glove awkward and thick and protecting him, and the boy’s shoulder caved like a marshmallow cooked too long over coals. That crinkled coating that slakes away.
    People talked about it for days. At the lunch counter in Brenda’s Café, in the vestibule of the Methodist Church, on the four corners of Main and Elm. Sweet old Mrs. Willow walked it into Tom’s pharmacy.
    “Too bad about that poor family, wasn’t it?” she said.
    He busied himself behind the counter. In his white lab coat and dark framed glasses he looked ordinary enough, his sandy hair short and neatly combed.
    “Did you know them?”
    Tom shook his head.
    “Shirttail relation to the Slokems,” Mrs. Willow said. “Only been here a couple of months.”
    Tom handed her the usual blood pressure medication.
    “I heard the mother ran straight through the fire with the two little ones. She must’ve thought those older kids would follow.” She blinked at him once, twice, her eyes magnetized behind thick lenses.
    “Will that be all?” He stood at the old-fashioned cash register, his hand poised to ring up the sale. Normally he loved the pearl keys, the ka-ching of the tray opening. He found comfort in the swivel stools and soda fountain, the amber and liquor green medicine bottles displayed on shelves. He’d collected these relics himself from small towns throughout the panhandle. Today, however, they only reminded him that he could not recreate the past. He could no more resurrect the simpler, sweeter time he’d seen in Norman Rockwell paintings than he could bring those two teenagers or his own dead parents back to life.
    “Why didn’t they go out the back door?” Mrs. Willow waited for his reply.
    Sweat trickled from his armpits. The air stale and full of soot. “I don’t know,” he said, his voice a hoarse whisper. “They probably died before the fire got to them. Smoke inhalation.”
    At night, with fire on his mind, he tucked his boys in bed. He hovered over them, one bunk, then the other, smoothed cowboy sheets around slim shoulders, brushed cheeks with his fingers.
    “Dad?” Alex said.
    “Yeah.”
    “You said we can’t take anything with us.”
    Tom hesitated. He didn’t want them having nightmares. Still.
    “That’s right.” He sat on the edge of the lower bunk.
    “What about Bilko?” Bilko, the fat calico cat.
    “Nope. Everybody gets themselves out. That’s the way it works.”
    “But, Dad,” Trent said, from the upper bunk. “What if I fell down and broke my leg? Would you help me?”
    He stood, reached out, and smoothed the wrinkles between his son’s eyes with his thumb. “’Course I would. It’s my job to help you. I’m a fireman.” The grin on Trent’s face, goofy and sweet, filled him with despair.
    “Come to bed, Tom,” Helen said. She leaned against the doorjamb, arms crossed. He lay sprawled on the couch in the back den, the TV muted but flickering with bad news. He hadn’t been able to sleep. He got up and slathered Vicks under his nose to mask the putrid odor of smoldering flesh. He made hot milk but could not drink it. He did forty push-ups.
    “They shouldn’t let people live in those shacks,” he said. He could see the worry in Helen’s eyes, the tension around her mouth. He’d been telling her for days not to drive without her seat belt. To get the carbon monoxide levels checked in the house. To wear