Those Who Favor Fire by Lauren Wolk (easy readers .TXT) 📕

“And what sort are you, Angela?”

“Hang on a minute.” She went back to the farmers, took their order. “I,” she said, cracking their eggs onto the grill, “am the sort who’s gotten very good at knowing when to throw in the towel. And I’m not there yet, that’s for damned sure.”

“Don’t you think you ought to get Rusty and your mother out of here?”

Angela put bread into the toaster.

“I like you, Joe. You know that, right?”

“I guess.”

“You guess. Shit, boy, you know I do. But keep your goddamned nose out of my business.” She flipped the eggs with one smooth turn of her wrist. “ ’Course I’m worried. But we like it here. And besides, what choice do we have? No one in their right mind’s going to buy a square foot of Belle Haven land until this fire’s dead and gone. Certainly not my disreputable hash house. So you want to tell me how we’re supposed to start over somewhere else?”

He put down his fork and wiped his mouth. “What about the Schooner?”

Angela turned from the grill to look at him. “What about it?”

“It’s not much, but if you have to go somewhere else, it will get you there.”

Angela frowned at him. The eggs sputtered for attention. “You offering me your Schooner?”

“If you need to get out in a hurry,” he said.

She looked at him some more, thinking it through. “You planning to buy a place with your trust money?”

“Don’t worry about me,” he said, impatient.

Angela watched the bacon fry. “Thanks.”

“Don’t mention it. What do I owe you?”

“Not a thing,” she answered. “It’s on the house.”

They talked for a while until Angela got too busy and Dolly came downstairs with Rusty to help out.

Before he left he asked, “All right if I park the Schooner here for a bit while I look for someplace more permanent?”

“I have a better idea,” Angela said, carrying a plate of flapjacks to a man in a bright orange feed cap. “See if Earl will let you park at the back of his lot. It’s never been full, not once in all these years. Tell him you’ll stock shelves for him one night a week, something of that sort. He’s likely got an outlet you can plug into, long as you pay for the juice. And when it’s too cold to put a hose on his outside tap, you can use my shower upstairs if we’re not in it, no charge.” She came closer and lowered her voice. “You can even, ah, wash up in the back whenever you need to.”

“Thanks. I’ve got that part under control, Angie.”

“Enough said.”

“All right, then,” he agreed, smiling, pulling on his earlobe. “I’ll go talk to Earl.”

“Fine with me,” Earl said, dusting a pyramid of paint cans. “Long as you don’t mind paying for the electric and the water. Never mind using the lot. That’s what it’s there for.”

“How about I shovel your walkways come winter and keep the lot clear?”

“Now, there’s a thought,” Earl said, his eyes gleaming. “There is a thought.”

“It’s a deal, then,” Joe said. “Let me know if you hear of anyone hiring, Earl. I need a bit of a job.”

“I’ll do that,” Earl said.

As it turned out, Joe simply began to do what he’d done before: some of this, some of that, plenty to keep himself in soup and bread, soap and razors, new laces for his boots, the occasional carving tool, gasoline and oil for the Schooner. He mowed lawns, drove old ladies to the A&P and home again, picked late peaches and early apples. School started after Joe had been back only a few days, and Angela again offered to feed Joe for time spent with Rusty and his books.

“That’s ridiculous,” Joe said. “I’m the one getting an education. Rusty’s smart as a whip. He doesn’t need my help.”

“Don’t argue with me.”

“Fine. Okay.” He held up his hands. “If you really want to make a trade, Rusty can watch Pal for me once a week. I’ve got some stuff to do out of town, and she hates driving.”

“Pal drives?”

“Very funny.” He was surprised when she didn’t ask what he’d be doing out of town, but he was also relieved. There would be a time and a place to tell her, but this wasn’t it. “And I will use your shower, if you don’t mind. But that’s more than enough. Way more.”

And so things went.

A few weeks earlier Joe would have mourned the loss of his lovely camp: the sound of the stream and the blowing trees, the sight of deer at the edge of the woods, the fireplace he’d built, the place he’d made for himself, bit by bit. But he had come back to Belle Haven treasuring more than anything else the people he encountered, even those who failed to win his affections, for they all impressed him with their inimitable bones, the oddity of their notions, with their very human fragility. And of all the people in his life, he marveled at himself most of all. At the smoothness of his fingernails, the random lunacy of his dreams, the way the smell of oranges made him think of his mother.

He still knew how to appreciate the beauty and the genius of trees, blackbirds, other live things. He still loved music and color and art of all kinds—his own included. But the impressions these things left on him were as important to Joe as the things themselves. The memory of them as precious. And the idea of things to come as rewarding as their arrival. He asked little of the world, cared little if he left it different in his wake.

Rusty, Rachel, Holly, Angela, Ian, and his father, in their various ways, had taught him to waste no time, for there was none to waste. They had taught him to do whatever made his sleep easy and his appetite strong. They had taught him to yearn but not to crave. To feed and feel as