Bleeding Kansas (48 page)

Lara staggered around to the front of the house and found the pillar she'd shinnied up before. Her knees were shaking.
Stop that!
she ordered her body.
Pull yourself up.

Chip, in basic training, had written that in an e-mail home:

Get used to it now, Lara admonished herself, and managed to pull herself onto the porch outside the bathroom window. She pushed the window open and slipped inside. She could hear Junior and Eddie banging on the doors and windows below. In another minute, Junior would start breaking the glass. Panic swept through her. She hobbled down the grand staircase, through the dining room and into the kitchen, and heaved open the great flour bins where Una Fremantle had hidden the Free Staters from Quantrill's mob. She crouched down into the bin just as the first piece of glass splintered.

A
T THE BONFIRE,
Robbie had sat on the ground next to the perfect red heifer. He was so tired he didn't know if he would ever get to his feet again. His last act before collapsing was to take off his jacket and rub down Nassie with it.

“You get that jacket filthy and you're paying to clean it yourself, young man, out of that money your father gave you. You ruin it, don't expect us to buy you a new one,” Nanny clacked at him.

He stared at her, too dumbfounded to respond. The horrible scene in the church, the mad hunt across the Ropeses' fields for the calf, and the calf herself, sides lathered in sweat, covered with mud, her red skin torn in a dozen places from tangling with barbed wire, all seemed to mean nothing to his grandmother. Her circle of hate was so tightly wrapped around her that she couldn't see anything outside it.

Finally, he sank to the ground. Robbie wrapped his arms around the calf's flank; she was so exhausted, she was lying down. It wasn't her fault everyone around her had gone insane. She was just a helpless calf who'd never been allowed to live in the sunshine.

As they walked the heifer to the fire, Dad had said he was going to put her down. Dad said there was no way to keep the Jews from finding out that Elaine had touched her. “All my hopes went up through that damned bitch's hole, her and Jim Grellier's brat of a daughter,” he'd said to Nanny. “I bet Grellier set his girl on Robbie just to make a fool of me.”

Robbie would stay here all night, until all the witches and all the Christians had left; then he'd take Nassie into the Fremantles' barn. He'd get Chip's sleeping bag down from the loft and spend the night next to the poor calf. Leaning against her side, he drifted into sleep.

Eddie's cry to Junior didn't rouse him, but his brother's bellowed response did. Robbie groaned—he didn't want to watch Junior do one more horrible thing, but if his brother was going to shoot Nasya Robbie would have to try to protect her. He sat up. To his relief, he saw Junior moving away from him and the calf. He was about to lie down again when he caught sight of Lara through the apple trees. Junior and Eddie were heading after her.

Robbie struggled to his feet. His legs were thick and heavy, as if they were logs from the bonfire. No one, none of the witches, not Nanny or his father, seemed to notice him. Only Amber Ruesselmann saw him plod dully along in Junior's wake. She cried out to him to come back to Jesus, come back to her—to leave Lara Grellier to Satan, with the other witches.

The words felt like something physical: wet saplings flaying his skin. He didn't ever want to hear Amber's voice again, or Pastor Nabo's. Or his father's or Nanny's, and certainly not Junior's, but he was doomed to live with them forever. Robbie didn't turn around, didn't see Amber run to her mother and gesture at him and the nightmarish parade he was following.

Junior was moving much faster than Robbie could at this point. Robbie could hear him, yelling insults as if he were on the football field, but he lost sight of his brother in the trees. By the time he reached the incinerator in the back garden, where the Fremantles used to burn papers and other trash, he couldn't see Junior or Lara. He hoped Lara had managed to get away from them; Junior and Eddie were so wound up with rage and desire, they might tear her apart. Lara the deer in the path of coyotes. That thought made him force his legs into a tottering run, but he could only move like Nanny, like an old person with swollen ankles.

He made it to the front of the house in time to see Junior swing a branch and splinter the etched glass in the double doors. Junior stuck an arm through the shards, trying to open the lock. The door was barricaded, and he couldn't budge it.

Eddie was cackling with excitement. “Do you see her, Junior? Do you see her?”

Junior didn't answer, just moved to his left, to the windows that opened into the formal front parlor. He used his branch again. When he'd splintered the glass in one window, he stepped back and kicked it in all around the frame, then shoved his heavy body through. Once he was inside, he put out a hand to pull Eddie through after him.

Robbie shambled behind them, up the stairs to the veranda. He swung one leaden leg over the windowsill and felt the glass slice into his pant leg. He managed to drag himself into the parlor. He could hear Junior and Eddie knocking over furniture and breaking china, but he couldn't tell where they were.

Robbie knocked his shin against the old piano, reeled away from it only to bang into the marble mantle over the fireplace, and finally found a light switch. It turned on a single bulb in an old chandelier, but it gave off enough light for him to find the door leading to the front hall.

Above him, he heard Eddie cry, “She ain't here, Junior. I don't see the Grellier witch anywhere. But the big one, she's in here. She's asleep in here.”

His brother's heavy footsteps pounded down the hall over Robbie's head. “Whoa, we caught ourselves the biggest witch of them all, the one Pastor says is totally under Beelzebub's control. Come on, cunt, wakey, wakey. Time to face the court.”

Junior grunted as he pounded on Elaine; Robbie could picture him trying to move her. “Ah, hell, Eddie, bitch is passed out cold on the floor. Here's a quart of vodka, she must'a drained the whole bottle. We'll have to smoke her out.”

“Smoke her out?” Eddie's voice went up a half register in excitement. “How we gonna do that?”

“Set the place on fire. That'll give her a foretaste of hell, should bring the old cow to her feet fast enough. I just need to find me some matches—there's enough papers in here to burn down a town, if we can get them going.”

Junior's feet thundered along the floorboards again. Robbie heard him pounding down a far flight of stairs. There were three other doors into the front hall besides the one Robbie had used. He saw a sliver of light under the far door to his left. He pushed it open. He was in a room with a long table and a dozen chairs. Beyond it, he saw his brother in the kitchen.

“Candles, matches, everything we need. Okay, boy.”

“No, Junior, don't!” Robbie managed to shout.

Junior turned around. “Hey, shrimp, about time you showed up. You decide you're on the side of the angels after all? Come and get a candle. Help Eddie and me smoke out the Wicked Witch of the West.”

Robbie hobbled into the kitchen and knocked the candles out of his brother's hand. “You—shit for brains! This is arson. This is a house, it's where the Fremantles used to live. How could you do this? You can go to jail for this! Where's Lara? Have you hurt her?”

Junior hit him so hard that Robbie fell over. “Whose side are you on, brat boy? Ours or those devil worshippers who ruined our calf? You going to be in heaven when the Lord comes in glory or stuck in the mud with the mud people?”

“Jesus hates people who kill other people,” Robbie shouted, getting up on his hands and knees.

Junior kicked him in the testicles with the toe of his boot. Robbie collapsed, screaming in pain. Through his fog of agony, he heard Eddie Burton cry out, “Jesus loves Junior, He gave us the calf, she made a miracle for us, she gave us her blessing! She didn't bless you, shrimp twerp, she sent you a witch, a Grellier girl witch.”

“That's right, boy, that's right. Jesus loves us, but He can't stand loser crybabies, that's for sure.” Junior scooped up the candles. Putting an arm around Eddie, he led him up the back stairs.

Robbie rolled over onto his side. The pain was so immense that everything else faded behind it.
Find Lara, stop Junior, save Nassie
—those were little pinpricks of thought that he couldn't hold on to. When he heard Lara's voice near him, calling his name in an urgent whisper, he thought at first he was dead and in heaven with her.

“Robbie! I'm in the flour bin, but I can't open it from the inside.”

He finally pushed himself to his hands and knees and followed her voice to the bin. Clutching his sore scrotum with one hand, he pulled on the handle and the bin swung forward. Lara emerged, covered in spiderwebs and the white remains of a hundred years of flour.

“Oh, Robbie, you poor thing, I could hear him. He really hurt you, didn't he? I'm so sorry.” She put her ghostly arms around him and smoothed his dirty hair.

They clutched each other, not speaking, until Lara said, “I heard him and Eddie, but I couldn't make out what they were saying. Where did they go? Is it safe to leave?”

“He went upstairs with Eddie,” Robbie said. “They found Elaine. She was passed out, I guess, and—Lara, Junior said he was going to set fire to the room. That's when he hit me, when I tried to stop him. We've got to call Sheriff Drysdale.”

“Maybe we should drive back to my place,” Lara said, unable to imagine how she and Robbie could stop Junior. “My truck's out front. My dad should be home by now, he'll know what to do.”

She helped Robbie to his feet. The worst of the pain had passed. He hobbled with her to the side door. She opened the bolts, and they went out onto the small porch.

“Oh, no,” Lara whispered.

The crowd from around the bonfire was pouring through the orchard. The Ruesselmanns, Pastor Nabo, and a dozen others were already standing between Lara and Robbie and her truck. They backed into the kitchen again before anyone spotted them. They heard a loud shout from the people nearest the front of the house, and the whole group swarmed away from the kitchen toward the front. Lara and Robbie slipped out the door again, hoping to cross the yard and get to her truck before the mob turned back toward the kitchen.

Lara had her keys out and was climbing into the truck when she saw flames leap up in the house's corner window. Junior appeared at another window, waving a burning candle.

He kicked out the glass and yelled to the people below, “We're smoking out the biggest witch. We'll see if the little one follows after her.”

The crowd cheered, as if Junior had sacked an opposing quarterback. He did a victory dance and disappeared from view.

Lara pushed her keys into Robbie's hand. “Elaine, they'll kill her. And Abigail's diaries. My mom will never forgive me, she'll go away forever—I have to rescue them.”

Before Robbie could make sense of what she was saying, let alone realize what she was doing, Lara had run back across the yard and up the stairs to the kitchen door.

J
IM AND
S
USAN
saw the glow of the fire as they drove up the county road but thought it was just the Samhain bonfire. When they came to the long line of abandoned vehicles, they were puzzled but not especially alarmed. Jim figured it was some nighttime vigil involving Arnie's calf, which he was frankly sick of. At the turnoff to Arnie's, they saw the squad car with its flashing lights.

“Arnie is pulling out all the stops,” Jim said.

Behind him, a truck was honking and flashing its brights in his rearview mirror. He stuck out an arm to wave it around, figuring it was some kid in a hurry. The driver pulled up next to him.

“Jim.” It was Peter Ropes. “That bonfire over at Fremantles' is way out of control. They managed to set the house on fire. I called the Eudora Fire Department, but I'm heading over to see if I can help.”

“The Fremantle house?” Susan spoke with the first real emotion Jim had heard from her in months. “Oh, no! Jim—we need to go over there!”

“We'll join you in a minute,” Jim called to Peter. “Let me just check on Lara—she's been home alone all night. Although she may be over at the fire,” he added to Susan.

He called the house on his cell phone, and then called Lara's phone. When she didn't answer either number, he turned around and followed Peter down the road to Fremantles'.

At the entrance to the drive, they almost collided with Lara's truck, which was heading for the road at high speed. Jim slammed on his breaks and honked, and his daughter came to a halt.

He jumped down and ran to her window. And found himself looking at Robbie Schapen.

“Mr. Grellier!”

“Where's Lara?” Jim demanded.

“She went back to the house. She sent me to find you. How did you know—”

“What's going on here?” Jim saw the fire playing along the upper story and licking the eaves under the roof. He couldn't understand the throng of people, milling around, even cheering when they blocked a woman with a bucket from getting close to the house.

“It's Junior, he went in there with Eddie. Elaine stole Nassie, and Junior wants to burn her to death and—”

“But Lara, where is she?”

“We were leaving, we were going to find you.” Robbie was breaking down. “Then she saw the fire. She said Mrs. Grellier would never forgive her if the diaries were destroyed.”

Susan had climbed out of the truck and joined them. “Abigail's diaries? She went back in there for Abigail's diaries?”

“I didn't hear the name, I didn't know what she was talking about, I didn't know what to do. I can't fight Junior, so I was coming to get you. But Junior, he's in there with Eddie, they're setting fire to everything and—”

Jim ran back to his truck, but Susan sprinted across the lawn. By the time he reached the giant cottonwood, Jim couldn't see his wife. The front doors of the house were burning now, and Junior, Eddie at his side, appeared at the kitchen door, waving a burning chair in the air. The crowd cheered again as he set the door on fire.

Jim charged up the steps, but Junior blocked his way. “Now you eat Schapen dirt, Jim Grellier.”

“The witches are in there, the big fat one, and little skinny Lala. They'll smoke to death and burn in hell forever,” Eddie screeched.

Peter Ropes ran to help Jim; Clem and Turk Burton suddenly appeared as well. The crowd saw a battle was under way. They didn't know the issues, but they surged up to take on anyone who was trying to fight Junior.

Jim backed away for a moment, looking for his wife. A surge from the mob thrust him back into the fight. He didn't know until later that Junior threw Susan out of the kitchen when she had run up a minute earlier. She didn't try to fight him but ran around to the back of the house to the cellar doors. The bolts were loose; she hefted one door up and slid down the coal chute. The floor was muddy, and the smell of mold was thick. Little furry creatures were squeaking around her, moving away from the burning front of the house.

This was the cellar where Una Fremantle had hidden her children when Quantrill's raiders came through. Susan's fingers felt on the left for the joists to the small rooms that used to hold coal and root vegetables in the winter. Six more paces to the kitchen stairs. They rose steeply along the north wall. Fifteen of them and then the kitchen door. She pushed against it, but it didn't open. She shoved, but it was nailed shut. Oh, yes, Jim and Blitz—they'd done it one night when Gina had been frightened by a prowler. Who was probably Lara, sneaking into the house, hiding Abigail's diaries.

Susan made her way back down the stairs and went into the front half of the basement. It was warm in here from the fire overhead, but there was no help for it. She'd have to go up this way.

Her fingers, as sensitive as a counterfeiter's, felt along the walls, finding the furnace room. The Fremantles had put this system in fifty years ago. It was antiquated now, the air vents too big to be fuel-efficient, but now that was a good thing. Susan felt for the metal tentacles, reaching up an arm and finding the one that went straight overhead into the back parlor. She ran her fingers along it for the join that Mr. Fremantle had soldered when the tube split; the metal would be weak there. She pushed against it and felt it give a little.

Above her, she could hear pounding feet and animal-like cries—Junior fighting someone. She slammed her shoulder into the weld. This time, it gave, and she kicked away the bottom half of the tube, which was connected to the boiler.

The top half dangled above her. She reached inside, found a metal ridge, and pulled herself up inside the tube. It was a tight fit. Good thing she had lost all that weight or she'd never have made it. Bad thing she'd lain around and let her muscles go; she was struggling and trembling as she inched up the tube. She kept putting her hand up, checking for the grate. The air above her was hot but not unbearable.
Thank you, Jesus, for small mercies. I'm grateful for them.

When she found the grate, she leaned against the tube so it would take the weight of her hips. She needed to put all the muscle she had left into pushing up, pushing against the cast-iron grate, pushing against the cherrywood table that stood over it. Just when she thought her back would tear in half, metal and table gave, toppled over.
I'm grateful,
she thought again, and laughed, a little hysterically, at the pun.

She heard the wooden table crack as it landed. Una brought that table with her from Boston. The Marquis de Lafayette had taken tea at it, or so Una always bragged to Abigail. Now it was broken, but it would burn soon, anyway.

Susan hoisted her skinny body through the opening, tripped on the grate, and cut her ankle. She felt the blood wet around her foot, but the foot wasn't broken, she could put full weight on it.

“Lara! Lara, it's Mom. Where are you?”

She strained to listen, trying to hear her daughter above the crackling of the fire and the noise of the crowd. She called again and again but heard nothing.

The whole front of the house was on fire now. She couldn't use the front staircase, and flames were lapping the north side. The back parlor was full of smoke, but the blaze gave her some light, too. She took a moment to take off her jacket, pull her sweatshirt off to wrap around her face, and put the jacket back on to protect her skin from the embers falling into the room from the outer walls.

Stay down for smoke. Move slower but safer on your knees.
The instruction she had given Etienne and Lara when they were little. In the country, no fire truck will come in time to save you. Children have to be able to save themselves. But that was impossible, children can't save themselves. And their mothers were pretty useless protection, too.

Not today, though. She would save Lara today. Her daughter was alive; Susan was certain of that. She was in the house and alive. If her remaining little chick had died, she, Susan, would have known, would have felt all that was left of her heart die in that instant, so she knew Lara was in here waiting for her.

Susan crawled from the back parlor to Judge Fremantle's study and through there to the tiny bathroom the Fremantles installed in the 1920s. She ran water in the rusty shower, stood under it to soak herself thoroughly, then went up the back stairs.

The smoke was thicker here, so thick she started to choke. The fire had grabbed the front of the house, devoured the bathroom there, and run along the long wood floor. Flames were dancing around the doorway to the master bedroom, licking along the polished walnut base of the drinking fountain.

“Lara! Lulu!” she called over and over.

She crawled past the room Gina had used as her study. Through the haze of smoke, she saw Elaine Logan's bulk. Elaine was sitting on the floor, kissing her hands.

“Elaine!” Susan cried. “Elaine, where's my daughter?”

“Dante,” Elaine crooned. “I found my baby's picture. Gina stole him from me, but he's come back to me, he's come back to his lily maid, Elaine the lovable, Elaine the fair. He never loved anyone but me, did you, my darling?”

“Elaine!” Susan screamed. “Get up! Where's Lara?”

Elaine didn't look at her, just kept kissing the snapshot in her fingers. Susan went far enough into the room to see that her daughter wasn't hidden behind Elaine's bulk. Choking from the smoke, weeping with despair, she crawled back into the hall and called again to her daughter.

Over the crackling of the fire, over the sirens of the arriving fire brigade, she finally heard Lara answer. Susan found her daughter huddled underneath the faded prom dress in the closet of the far back bedroom, clutching Abigail's tin trunk. Susan pressed Lara against her breast so hard that their hearts beat through each other's chests.

“Mom? Mom? Oh, Mom, I thought—I'm sorry, Mom, I'm sorry. I put Abigail's trunk in here, and now I can't get out. I'm sorry, I'm sorry—I tried to rescue Elaine but I couldn't move her, and then I got trapped in here and now I'll kill you, too.”

“Oh, Lulu, these papers, they weren't worth the price of your life. No one is going to die in here. Not you, not me, not Elaine, if we can get the fire brigade. We're getting out. We're going home, you hear?”

The smoke and heat in the hall were too intense now for them to risk returning to the stairs. Light was filtering into the room from the flames along the roof and the strobes of the fire trucks on the far side of the house. Susan tore the gray prom dress into strips and knotted them together. She tied one end around the legs of the bed and opened the window. She could hear the shouts from the front of the house and the kitchen, but the window opened away from all the action. No one was underneath.

She tied the makeshift rope around Lara's chest and lowered her daughter, Susan's unused muscles trembling with the effort. “Undo the knot, Lulu,” she shouted when Lara was on the ground. “Undo the knot and find your daddy.”