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

As she put her arms around him, Rachel vowed never again to risk doing him the least harm. But within days she had broken her vow and left on him his freshest scar.

Chapter 43

        Joe slept at Rachel’s house that night, although in fact he slept little. For hours he lay in Rachel’s bed with her hair blanketing his shoulder and thought about the days that lay ahead. He had known for a long time that changes were coming, but it seemed that they were suddenly upon him and now he did not feel quite ready for them. It still did not seem possible that the Schooner was gone, Pal gone with it. He himself had predicted such things. Now he found them difficult to believe.

As he lay in Rachel’s bed, he thought about how he had lived his life. He thought about the things he’d done since finding Belle Haven and about how some of them had angered Rachel beyond understanding. He looked frankly and fully at what she meant to him and he to her, weighed this in several lights, imagined what would happen when she found out what he had done on his way home from California and had been doing behind her back ever since.

In the morning, after Joe had washed and dried his only clothes, he went with Rachel down into town and found a red cross painted on the door of Earl’s hardware store and another on the door to Paula’s Beauty Salon, which stood on the other side of the ruined parking lot. A chain had been fixed across the entrance to the lot, and on it was a sign saying, DANGER! KEEP OUT! Earl stood on the sidewalk a few paces back, his hands thrust into his coat pockets, watching Mendelson prod gingerly at the ground around the cave-in. Earl seemed not to hear Rachel when she spoke his name.

“Leave him be for now,” Joe said. “He needs to get used to the idea.”

Joe himself had not looked right into the lot where the Schooner had gone down. He could not bear to think that the floor of it might have grown hot, that Pal might have felt the fire coming. And, too, although he had to a great extent forsworn the lure of possessions, for him the Schooner had been a treasure. And, as such, the memory of it would always fire his heart. And so he could not look at the place where it had been.

“They say the Lord looks after fools and little children,” Mendelson said, stepping over the chain to join Joe and Rachel, walking away with them toward Angela’s. “And considering how close you came to an early grave, I guess they’re right, Joe.”

“Did you want something, Mendelson?”

“Just to remind you that you’re not eligible for any government assistance, Joe. I’m sorry as hell about that, truly I am, but technically you’re not a resident of Belle Haven. And without you telling me your last name and your social security number, I can’t do anything no way, nohow.”

“Uh-huh.” Joe opened the door to the Kitchen, let Rachel enter. “Not a problem, Mendelson.”

“Well, I didn’t really think it would be, seeing as how your girl’s all set, money-wise.”

Joe walked into the Kitchen and shut the door against the sound of Mendelson clucking his tongue as if he had run out of things to say but was still too full of noise to keep silent.

Fewer people in Belle Haven might have meant fewer people at Angela’s, if not for the smell of cinnamon and coffee, the taste of good, hot food, the soothing wash of conversation: these were things that stood up to the fire and the fear of it. So there were quite a few people in the Kitchen that morning, a block away from the lot where the Schooner had been, and Angela was hot and busy. But at the sight of Joe, she said, “Hang on” to a man ordering flapjacks and sausage and came around the counter to kiss Joe and take his hands. “You’re looking bright-eyed and bushy-tailed this morning, my darlin’.”

Joe smiled at her.

“What can I get you two?”

“An apron,” said Rachel, and Angela did not protest. “You, Joe?” she asked.

“Tea, when you have a second.” Before she turned away, he said, “And what would you say, Angela, if I asked you to close up for a few hours tomorrow?”

“What for?”

“Something important.”

“Ask me again later,” she said, distracted by the man wanting flapjacks.

While Rachel helped Angela and Dolly, Joe sat at a small corner table, drinking his tea. Then, “I’ll do the dishes when I get back,” he told Angela, kissed Rachel’s cheek, and left. But it was nearly lunchtime before they saw him again. It took him a good deal longer than he had thought it would to talk with the other people who had come to be his best and only friends, asking them to spare him some time, some trust, and to take, in trade, some of the luck with which he had been blessed.

“What’s all this about, Joe?”

“I told you, Rachel. I want you to come somewhere with me tomorrow. It’s a surprise.” They were sitting in Rachel’s kitchen, sharing a chicken pie they had made together and trying not to listen for the sound of Pal at the door.

“Angela’s coming too?”

“And Rusty. And Dolly. And a couple of other people.”

“Who?”

“Mrs. Sapinsley,” whose garden Joe had worked so often that he thought of it as his, too. “Earl and Mag,” whose condemned hardware store had provided him with the tools to do what he loved. “And Frank,” who had been one of the first to welcome Joe to Belle Haven.

“You taking us to the circus?”

“The circus?”

“That’s what my dad did when things weren’t going particularly well, for whatever reason.” Rachel pushed her food around on her plate. “He’d hustle me and my mother into the car, wouldn’t tell us where we were going, and we’d end