Between, Georgia (30 page)

As he neared the square, he could see an orange glow filling up the sky. He ran toward the center fountain. The Dollhouse Store was a mass of flames. The fire had already spread sideways to the wall of his bookstore. The bottom floor of Bernese’s store was engulfed, and as he watched, the flames were reaching from the wooden trim to lick at the brick storefront. Flames were creeping up the frame side to the roof, and the windows in the apartment above bowed inward from the heat. There was no getting in there, and as far as he knew, there was no reason to try.

The museum was blazing, too. For the moment, it seemed to be mostly on the side closest to the store, but the museum house was all frame and gingerbread, so the fire was moving fast. He saw Isaac coming toward him across the square, wearing a plush burgundy robe. His pale feet were bare and veined in translucent blue. He hobbled across the grass, the light from the fire washing him in tones of rose and gold. He had a cell phone clutched to his ear.

Henry hoped to God Isaac was calling 911 and not Bernese.

He stared at the burning museum, glad at least that it was empty, and then he realized it wasn’t only the terrariums burning up. Almost all of my mama’s original dolls were in there, on display and stored upstairs.

He turned away from Isaac and ran as fast as he could, directly toward the burning museum.

CHAPTER 19

AS JONNO EXITED the highway, I could see the lights of the fire trucks and police cars coming from the square.

I was leaning forward, hands pressed into the dashboard as if I were shoving the Impala forward. From the top of my throat all the way to my stomach’s pit, my body buzzed and trembled. I felt like I was full of bees.

“Pull over here,” I said as we reached the turn into the parking lot behind the church. There was no getting any closer. Before the wheels stopped turning, I was out of the car and sprinting down Philbert.

The church was blocking my view of the museum and Bernese’s store, but I could see the orange glow of fire, and the rising smoke was like columns of darker black against the night sky, blocking out starlight.

As I came around the corner, I could see that the museum and the Dollhouse Store were awash in flames. Half of Henry’s store was blazing, too. The firemen were working to put a water wall in between Henry’s store and the Sweete Shoppe; they weren’t trying to put out the fire so much as contain it until it burned itself out. A second truck was working on the museum.

I looked wildly around, trying to find someone I knew. Strangers in uniforms and slick coats were bustling back and forth, anony-mous and busy, and then I saw the Marchants standing by the curb in their fluffy robes and slippers. They were holding hands.

Their daughter, Ivy, was beside them, her hands clamped over her mouth as if her throat were also full of bees and she had permanently committed to not letting even one escape. I heard someone calling my name in a deep, croaking voice I did not recognize.

I turned toward the sound and saw Henry. He was sitting on the floor of an ambulance parked on Philbert. His feet hung down over the back bumper. Both doors were open, and I could see an EMT behind him, digging in the equipment. Henry had an oxygen mask on, and his face and clothes were striped black with soot and ash.

I ran up to him and said, “Oh, God, Mama’s dolls. Does she know? Where’s my family?”

He pulled the mask off for a second and croaked out, “She’s somewhere here. She knows, but—” He broke off and started choking. He sounded awful. I pressed the oxygen mask back to his face.

“I have to find her,” I said, crazed.

But he grabbed my wrist. From behind the mask he said, “Listen. I was in there.”

“The bookstore? Henry, I have to find Mama!” But he didn’t release me, and I noticed that under the ash and grime, Henry was developing a glorious shiner. “What happened to your eye?”

He waved it off. “Teak happened. Screw it. Listen. You have to tell your mama.” He started hacking, and the EMT looked up from her equipment and said in a fussy, isn’t-he-cute tone, “Keep that mask on. Breathe deep.”

Henry rolled his eyes.

I glanced over at the burning store, putting it together. “Teak Crabtree is here? Teak did this?”

“The animal dolls,” Henry said from behind the mask.

“Wait, you mean you were in the museum?” I said. I stopped pulling away from his grip and listened.

“I got a lot of the animals out. As many as I could carry. They are sitting in rows on Isaac’s sofa, creeping him right the hell out.

I broke the case.” He coughed. “Isaac hates that grasshopper doll.”

“Henry, does Mama know you got them?” I said.

He shook his head, grinning. “Isaac was still talking with the cops.” He couldn’t stand not telling me, I could see it. He took a deep hit of oxygen and pulled the mask right back off. “It was like being on a movie set. I couldn’t believe I was in a room that was actually on fire. I had my T-shirt tied over my mouth—”

“Fat lot of good that did you,” the EMT said. She was about my age, with a glossy cap of blond curls. “Please keep that mask on.”

Henry obediently put the mask on for another breath and then said, “The sprinkler system came on—”

“The insurance company made us get that,” I said. “Bernese was furious. It cost a mint.”

“It gave me time to get into the carousel room,” Henry rasped.

“All the while I was hearing this banging noise, boom, boom, boom. No idea what that was. It sounded like they were making popcorn in hell.”

“Bullets!” I said. “Bernese buys them by the case and keeps them at her store.”

“Right. They scared the crap out of me, going off in long chains. I thought—” Henry’s gaze shifted off me, to the left, and he stopped talking abruptly. He wasn’t coughing; he simply stopped. All the animation leached out of his dirty face, and he became as bland and expressionless as a waxwork. When his eyes met mine again, it was as if whoever lived behind them had flipped a sign from OPEN to CLOSED.

I looked over my shoulder and saw that Jonno had come up behind me. “Hey, man,” he said to Henry.

Henry gave him a nod, not speaking, and pointed at the mask.

“Hey, no, that’s okay,” said Jonno. “Keep sucking up the good stuff.”

Henry nodded once, his eyes narrowing.

Jonno said, “Nonny? I found your mama. Bernese brought her to sit down over near the Marchants. She’s ruined.”

“I need to go talk to her,” I said to Henry.

He nodded and said, “Yes, you do. Sorry I wouldn’t shut up.

Go.”

The EMT started to say something, but I had to get to Mama.

I followed Jonno a few feet, ducking around two policemen. And then I saw her. She was sitting with Genny on the curb. Genny had both her arms around Mama and was holding her so tight, and Mama was rocking back and forth. Her eyes were squashed shut and her mouth was open and she looked like she was wailing, but she was silent.

Bernese stood beside them. Her eyes blazed as brightly as her store.

As I came toward them, Bernese looked up and saw me. “This was Crabtrees,” she said. “A whole slew of those Alabama Crabtrees. Henry told the cops. They already went and got two of them from over at Ona’s house.”

“Oh, shut the fuck up, Bernese,” I said, and I sank down on Mama’s other side. I drew my heart on her shoulder, and she made my name sign and then clutched at me. I rocked her, my arms wrapping around her over Genny’s arms. She started signing, shaping
Gone, all gone, gone
again and again. I tried to give her my hands, to sign to her, to tell her about her animals, but she ignored my hand and kept rocking, signing almost to herself.

I realized I had forgotten to put back the head I had chosen for Bernese’s buyer. I let go of Mama long enough to dig down deep into my purse. Sure enough, I found the box with Josephine’s head and hands inside, carefully wrapped and labeled. I’d been so distracted that I’d been walking around for days with a museum piece worth thousands of dollars stuffed in the bottom of my handbag. I pushed the box into Mama’s hands, and she clutched it, instantly recognizing the familiar size and texture of the box.

She turned it in her hands until she found the label and then ran her fingers down the Braille, her lips shaping a loose and silent word. Genny relaxed her grip and sat up straighter, staring at the box.

You forgot to put her back,
Mama signed.
Josephine.

I nodded into her hands, and while I had her attention, I signed quickly,
And Henry Crabtree got some of your animal dolls
off the carousel. It isn’t much, I know.

Mama took a deep breath and clutched the lone box, shuddering. Tears were streaming unchecked down her face. I pressed close into her side and sat quietly with her while she wept, Genny leaning into her other side. Mama rocked the box as if it were a baby, her arms folding all the way around it to hold herself.

Another car was coming up Philbert. The headlights were shining our way, making me squint until they abruptly clicked off.

Bernese had stalked away while I was talking with Mama, but she reappeared out of the crowd and came over to me. “The cops say there’s two more Crabtrees loose around somewhere. They got gas right across the street and torched everything in this world that matters to your mama and me. Everything that matters in this world.”

I buried my head in my hands. “When is this going to stop?”

Jonno squatted down beside me on the curb and put one hand on my shoulder. I lifted my head long enough to push his hand off me. I saw Bernese note the motion, but she said nothing.

The car I’d seen was Trude’s old Packard. I saw her running up Philbert toward us. Her whole face seemed composed of circles, her eyes stretched as round as quarters, her mouth open in a wide O of surprise. She was heading straight toward us.

Bernese saw her, too. “Perfect. My sister gets eaten, my other sister loses her life’s work, my store burns down, and Trude gets to show up just in time to have the vapors.”

Trude came clattering up, staring wildly from the blazing Dollhouse Store to my face and then back again. She leaned down and grabbed my arm so hard I felt her grip all the way to my bone.

She jerked me to my feet. Her face was inches from my own.

“Ivy called my machine, said the square was on fire,” she panted. “She hung up before I could get to it. Tell me you got Fisher out of there.”

“Fisher’s safe at home in bed,” Bernese snapped.

At the same time I said, “Got her out of where?”

“The store!” said Trude. “Bernese’s store!”

“Fisher’s not in there,” Bernese said.

“She was,” Trude said to Bernese. She yanked on my arm.

“Did you get my message?”

“Message?” I said. Something black and tarry was grasping at my heart, pulling it downward in my chest.

“On your cell?” Trude said, frantic.

I turned to Bernese. “You saw Fisher at home? Right before you came down here?”

Bernese nodded. “Isaac called and told me what was going on.

I was in a hurry to get down here, but I peeked in. She was snug as a bug in her bed. I left Lou at home in case she woke up.”

“No,” said Trude. “She was night-walking. I saw her go in the store.”

My heart was swelling, and the tarry fingers on it levered it down into my gut, pressing the breath out of me. “Call Lou,” I said.

Bernese, looking alarmed now, pulled her cell phone out of her bag and hit the speed dial for home. I counted through the twenty endless seconds it took Lou to pick up.

Bernese said, “Hey, it’s me. Trot on down the hall and look in on Fisher.” We waited another small eternity, and then the side of Bernese’s mouth quirked up and she nodded. “That’s what I thought.” She held the phone away from her face and said to me,

“Safe in bed.”

Trude’s death grip eased, and I wrenched my arm away from her and grabbed the phone. “Lou?” I said. “Lou, go pull the covers back.”

“I’ll wake her,” he said.

“Just do it.” I was practically screaming. Trude was pulling at her lower lip, and Bernese’s eyes were on my face.

“All righty,” said Lou, and I waited what must have been a million years, an ice age, for him to cross the room. There was a moment of baffled silence, and then Lou said, “Oh my goodness.” And I knew.

I couldn’t know, and I didn’t want to. I hurled the phone away from me and heard it clatter and crack in the road.

“Nonny?” said Bernese from very far away. She sounded both scared and uncertain. I looked at the store, and it seemed to my eyes to be a solid block of fire, but that didn’t matter. It was all very easy and clear. Fisher was in there, and I had to go get Fisher.

I started running, thinking this was all very simple: I would go in there and I would get Fisher, Fisher who hated to be held, and she would struggle and be irritated, so I would have to take her out on piggyback. I would bring her down the stairs and out the door and they would put an oxygen mask on her like Henry and she would say, “It was hot in there,” and it would all be fine.

I could not feel my feet hitting the earth as they took me toward the store. I thought I heard someone say “Miss?” Other people were yelling things like “Hey” and “Stop” and “You can’t.”

But I could. I would.

I came even with the fountain, flying toward Fisher, flying to reach into all that liquid flame and lift her out of there, perfect and whole and perfectly herself, and then something slammed into my side, and the ground rose up to meet me and I plowed hard into it.

“Nonny, no,” croaked Henry Crabtree, and I twisted in his arms, beating at him, hitting his face where Teak had hit him. I hit him hard and again and then again, but he didn’t let go of me.

He was about my size but so amazingly strong. So much stronger.

I couldn’t understand how he could be so strong, how he could hold me down so easily when I was this mighty. I was so invinci-ble it was obvious that I could go into the mass of flames and pluck my girl out if only he would let go of me. But he wouldn’t.

So I fought him, trying to scratch his eyes out of his head, and he was saying “No” to me, but there could not be a no. There could only be Fisher, and only I could go and get her.