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

These times away from Belle Haven, tending things that he had kept carefully secret, helped Joe stay out of the trouble the fire had caused among his friends and neighbors. Between sojourns, while those around him either prepared to leave or stubbornly set their anchors, Joe was quiet, mostly idle, carving small things, which he offered in trade now and then.

By March he had used up most of what he’d earned in the fall and was prepared to draw on what was left of his inheritance. But some-how Angela knew he was a bit short. Perhaps she had noticed the condition of his jeans or the splitting seams of his gloves.

“You going to call, or what?” she said to him one evening when Rachel had come down from her hill to join them at the Kitchen for poker and pie.

“Nah,” he said, throwing in his hand. “Too rich for me.”

Both women looked up in surprise, for Joe, normally thrifty, loved to gamble, win or lose.

“What’s a buck or two?”Angela asked him. After a moment she put down her cards and ducked under the counter. “Be right back,” she said.

When she returned from her apartment, she laid in front of Joe a roll of quarters and a single Krugerrand. “The quarters are for the game,” she said. “The coin will keep you going for a while, just until you can get some farmwork.”

“Where’d you get this?” he asked quietly.

“A friend gave it to me,” she replied, cutting him another wedge of pecan pie.

“Well, you hang on to it, then,” he said. “I still have some money left I can send for.”

“Just take it.” Angela picked up her cards and arranged them fanlike. “I don’t like those Kruger-whatever-you-call-’em anyway. If I were that antelope on there, I’d take a flying leap somewhere else, go play with some deer.”

“Springbok,” Joe said, smiling at her.

“Whatever. Besides,” Angela continued impatiently, “it doesn’t matter to me how much money you have left. This is mine to give, and I want to give it to you. It’s not often I can do such a thing, but I come from people who take care of their own.”

Rachel, watching them, felt like she was invisible. “That’s for Rusty’s education, Angela,” she protested. “If Joe needs anything, I can help him out better than you can.”

They both turned to look at her. Joe picked up the gold and held it out toward her. “Then maybe you could drive into Randall for me and cash this in,” he said.

Reluctantly, Rachel took the gold. “All right.”

Although Joe never really thought about it, the gold that Angela gave him kept him suspended in penury. It paid his keep through the spring, allowed him the luxury of spending the little money he earned on good wood and a few more carving tools. It kept him from altering his life. It kept him content with things the way they were. But then, in the middle of May, came the change.

It must have started during the night. When people left their houses in the morning they noticed right away that one of the boreholes right smack in the middle of Belle Haven proper was suddenly spouting smoke. Not a lot: only a wisp now and then. But within two days there was a steady thread of smoke and, worse, a stink coming up out of the ground.

Ed Zingham, who had delivered mail in Belle Haven for fifteen years, lived in the house closest to the borehole, but he’d been walking past these things out by the tunnels for years and the sight of this one did not alarm him overmuch. When the smoke thickened and the smell began to bother him, he simply shut the windows nearest the hole and tried not to think about it. The people in the two other houses nearly as close as Ed’s nervously followed his lead. They watched the borehole, listened to their monitors ticking, told themselves again and again that Ed would know something before they did.

Ed was dozing in front of an old spaghetti western one cool, wet Monday when he heard a brief squawk from down in his cellar, something like the sound of a foghorn. A moment later, the meter maid who was checking his monitor came quickly up the cellar stairs, her clipboard clutched under one arm. Ed watched as she rushed to the front door and flung it open.

“Hey!” he called, “what’s your hurry?”

“When’s the last time you were down to your cellar, Mr. Zingham?” she said, standing on the threshold.

“Um. Friday,” he said. “I spent most of the weekend over in Randall with my sister. Why? Something the matter down there?”

“How long you been home?”

“I got home early this morning, went straight back out again to do my rounds, just got in about”—he glanced at his watch—“about forty minutes ago.”

“Then I’d say you owe your sister one.” She took Ed’s coat off a hook by the door and tossed it into his lap. “Your cellar is hotter than hell,” she said. “If you’d turned on your monitor, you’d know that your carbon-monoxide level is up to fifty parts per million.”

“I turned it off for the weekend,” he said, shrugging. “It uses up a lot of electricity, you know.”

“But you didn’t turn it back on when you got home, or the alarm would have gone off. Too much trouble. Instead, you sat down in front of the television, got nice and drowsy.”

“Got a headache, is what I got.” Ed put on his coat. “So how long do I have to leave before it’s safe in here again? How ’bout I just go back to my sister’s for another day or so? Leave the windows open while I’m gone?”

She handed him his hat. “You don’t understand.” She sighed. “You can’t ever come back here again.”

When Ed tracked down Mendelson, the man was unmoved. “I’m sorry as hell, Ed, but my hands are tied. You gotta know that. You’re the one