Town Burning by Thomas Williams Read Free Book Online

asked.
    “…Wait and see how Mike’s coming,” Junior mumbled.
    “You can’t help now. They’re doing all they can in there. Look how they’re suffering.” Jane pointed toward the Riders, who stared back at her, shocked by this gesture from the mourner.
    “Can’t do that,” Junior said, slowly beginning to be indignant, then becoming terribly indignant. “Our friend!” he shouted, then went on in an angry whisper: “Mike was one of us. Don’t get so damn’ superior like all the rest! One of us, too, not all yours, God damn it, you! So damned superior I We’ll wait all night and tomorrow, so shut up!” His hands crushed the brittle wicker arms of his chair, and he smiled. The Riders heard all this, and went fiercely back to their magazines, embarrassed, but with a principle to uphold.
    Jane knew them well; the lobby was too quiet and too bright. Within half an hour of whispers and creakings they had left with Junior, truculent and ashamed, giving as their last word the deep roar of their machines in the silent town.
    When Charlotte came back with the doctor they followed him down the long hall and into a little room. The doctor smiled at them and put his stethoscope firmly into his side pocket. He wore a clean white jacket he had obviously just put on, and his forehead was still red-lined from his surgical cap. He looked extremely tired.
    “Janie, this is Dr. Karmis. This is Mrs. Spinelli, Doctor, and Mr. Spinelli, his father,” Charlotte said.
    “I think I should tell you first,” the doctor said, rubbing the red line on his forehead, “that his condition is very serious. I understand that he hit a telephone pole….”
    “A mailbox,” Jane heard herself say. The doctor looked at her closely, as if he were trying to look through a fog.
    “A mailbox,” he said. “His chest is very badly crushed. Fortunately he didn’t hit his head. His lungs are punctured badly. The only thing we can do now is wait and see if he improves within the next few hours. If he improves, he may recover rapidly. I don’t want to get your hopes up, though. I want you to know we’ve done everything possible. Everything we can for him. A nurse is with him now and will stay with him.” The doctor paused, looking from one to the other.
    Finally Charlotte spoke. “Thank you, Doctor.”
    “Thank you, Doctor,” Jane said, turning toward the door.
    Mr. Spinelli put his hand out and the doctor took it, surprised, and smiled warmly.
    “We’re doing everything we can for your son,” he said. “Everything.”
    Mr. Spinelli nodded, without expression, and followed Jane out the door and up the long hall.
    In the car, going very slowly toward Leah in the morning light, Jane watched the new sun light up the tops of Vermont hills across the river. A bright, beautiful day. In Cascom, to the east, her grandfather, Sam Stevens, would have finished the chores and would now be having his second breakfast, telling his hired men what had to be done today. In Leah, people would be getting up to go to work. Mrs. Spinelli would be waiting in her kitchen. Waiting…

CHAPTER 3
    John Cotter lay in bed in his bright room, the morning sun flashing on the new wallpaper, the air still cool although the dry wind that came rolling down from the open window to his bed would soon blow hot. His watch, that had told the time in dingy stations, in bars, in his mildewed room in Paris, here told the hour of a fresh morning at home. Seven o’clock, and the house was about to wake up. He sat up in bed and looked at the back yard. The lawn had been cut recently, and this was one of the years the Cotters did not have a garden. The garden grew weeds on its uneven surface, and near the garage tough rhubarb had gone to seed. A dusty pile of kindling leaned against his father’s outdoor grill.
    Trying to remember other times he had looked out this window-other specific times: in Leah, memory tended to become one hazy scene stretching, without system, back to