Town Burning by Thomas Williams Read Free Book Online Page B

she called the police. What a time that was! That was the summer, too, when Bruce took the car and went for a drive—two years before he could get a license and hardly knowing how to shift gears. He got his behind warmed for that, too, although he didn’t run into anything and probably wouldn’t have been caught at all if he hadn’t driven downstreet right through the middle of town. Seven or eight people saw him and called up to tell his mother. That had been a bad summer for Bruce.
    The house began to come awake. The first sounds were floorboards creaking down the hall, then the bathroom door closing, then the toilet flushing. Another door opened. The bathroom cupboard closed with its glassy jingle and his father’s electric razor started its bee-buzz. They were not going to wake the returned traveler. All the necessary morning noises that he knew so well were a little hushed, as they used to be when he was a child and sick in bed.
    He did not worry this morning about seeing his mother. She hadn’t been as bad as he expected the night before. No crying, no noises, except he suspected a certain artificial, brave look about her as if she had heard someone say that she was taking it like a soldier. No, she was too upset to put on an act. She really was worried and afraid for Bruce. She really loved him, if it were possible to love Bruce. Or perhaps it was now possible to love Bruce, because of the threat to his life. If there was anyone in the world who wanted to love, it was his mother. For some reason—perhaps because of this too obvious surplusage of love—he continually held her off. At least he did. Maybe Bruce never did. It was a mistake to credit Bruce with his own feelings—he’d learned that early—because no matter what he expected Bruce to do, Bruce probably wouldn’t do it. It was as if Bruce looked coldly upon each experience and only then figured out how he would react. He seemed not to carry anything over from the past. Nobody ever figured Bruce, and he could think of no one who really liked Bruce. Perhaps it was because Bruce never got away from this town and the ton of known things it made him carry, like a heavy pack: not horrible things, or even very shameful things; things people might have completely forgotten. But these were his own, not Bruce’s feelings. Did anyone remember, for instance, the time he, John, at the age of four, went down the schoolyard slide after he had filled his pants? Did they remember the expression on the face of the second-grader who followed him? He did, and he remembered who the second-grader was—Junior Stevens. The expressions that passed so quickly over Junior Stevens’ face: wonder, as he felt his behind, guilty fear for a second, and then the remorseless, inevitable logic that led to John. Accusation, disgust, loud and detailed derision. Perhaps it had been forgotten—that and all the other things—or maybe the doings of a four-year-old were not held against a grown man. That might be worse. In Paris he’d had a clean slate, and that made all the difference in the world. Maybe if Bruce had been able to get away from Leah he could have started over on a different tack. Maybe…
    The doorknob turned slowly and his door opened wide enough to admit his mother’s head. She saw that he was awake.
    “Good morning, Johnny,” she said, coming in. The flowers on her rumpled, quilted housecoat matched the flowers on the wallpaper. She was tall—taller than both her sons, and her long face was coy and girlish. Her gray hair, pulled taut to her head by painful-looking curlers, was partly covered by the top of an old nylon stocking.
    “A beautiful day for your first day at home,” she said, sitting on his bed. She put out her hand to touch his forehead, and he involuntarily pulled back.
    “I haven’t got a temperature,” he said. She looked at him fondly. “What’s for breakfast?” he asked.
    “Anything you want. Ham and eggs? Pancakes? Waffles? You look