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

“Shut up and let me finish before this place gets busy.”

“You want your apron back?” Rachel asked as Angela slid off her stool.

“Nah. Keep it on,” she replied. “Suits you.”

Rachel smiled all the way through a second cinnamon roll while Angela, mixing pancake batter in a huge bowl, told her the story of Belle Haven’s newest arrival.

“Just Joe. Frank doesn’t remember the name on the card. The kid cut it up and threw it out, and Frank can’t be persuaded to troll his Dumpster for a second look. Old bastard. Anyway, the boy says his name is Joe, just Joe, but if there’s one thing he’s not, it’s a Joe.”

“This according to Ed.”

“Right. But Ed’s got very good judgment.”

“Absolutely,” Rachel said, still smiling. She couldn’t remember when she’d enjoyed a breakfast more.

“After Frank hauled him off the bridge and gassed him up, he sent him out to Ian Spalding’s place. Haven’t been any campers out there for months ’cause the hot spots make them nervous, but he’s still got hookups and privies on a real nice piece of ground near the crick.”

Angela heard the bell on her door jangle and turned to take a look. “Well, speak of the devil,” she muttered.

Rachel saw Joe for the first time in the polished side of a ten-slice toaster and therefore spent the next few minutes thinking he was fat. Out of the corner of her eye, she watched Angela hand him a menu and pour him a cup of coffee. She was afraid that if she looked at either of them she’d burst out laughing. So she leaned over the counter, hooked a dishcloth with her fingernail, and began to wipe down the countertop. She polished a pair of salt and pepper shakers, decided to top them up, but Angela, suspicious of her motives, reached over and took them out of her hands.

“Thank you, Rachel,” she said. “I must’ve missed this pair.” But Rachel was not to be so easily put off.

“May I take your order now?” she said, turning, and looked straight into the eyes of the man who called himself Joe.

He had had better nights. Once he’d arrived at Spalding’s defunct campground he had managed to find the spot that Mr. Spalding had assigned him and had then unpacked the groceries he’d bought at the Belle Haven A&P, filling his sink with ice and perishables until his tiny fridge was up and running. Bolstered by a cheese sandwich and a tepid beer, he filled his water tank, got his generator going, and, having finally read the owner’s manual cover to cover, unlocked the mysteries of on-the-road hygiene. The toilet and all its attendant complexities still gave him pause, however, so he thrashed his way through the impressive collection of spiderwebs that seemed to be doing as much as nails to hold the nearest privy together and speedily took the first steps toward relieving himself.

It was damp and gloomy in the privy, though, and he simply could not force himself to sit down on the moldy seat below which untold horrors lurked. Even more appalling was the thought of shining his flashlight into the unspeakable pit. So he set it down, clambered up onto the wooden bench, and carefully, carefully stood up—all the while terrified that the old and soggy wood would suddenly give way and he would plunge down into the noisome depths. Standing so that he was straddling the despicable toilet seat, he was unknowingly veiled with the cobwebs gracing the rafters, only vaguely aware of something clinging lightly to the helixes of his ears.

As he lowered his pants, he felt an almost overwhelming need to talk to himself aloud. To say things like, “What in hell am I doing in a privy—a privy—in the middle of this godforsaken wilderness?” But he took pains to keep silent. He had never yet talked to himself. He would not start now.

Slowly, he crouched above the toilet seat, lowering his pants to his ankles in order to free up his legs. Almost immediately, he heard the approaching drone of a mosquito and knew, when it abruptly ceased, that it had landed on him somewhere. It wasn’t until he felt an astonishingly painful jab in his left buttock that he realized where. As he reached awkwardly back to defend himself, he was yanked off balance by the pants that hobbled him. With a purely involuntary scream, he pitched forward, knocking the flashlight over and slamming into the privy door with his head and shoulder. The door flew open like a torpedo hatch, and he landed on the mossy ground, bounced once, and skidded into a tangle of thorny bushes. The bounce, which had knocked the breath out of him, left him heaving and gasping, tucked up like a fetus, his pants still down around his ankles.

Ian Spalding was getting old, and his eyesight wasn’t what it had once been. But he knew his way around his land. Glasses were a pain in the ass, he thought as he headed out to check on his new and only tenant. It was warm and still, and he was enjoying the feel of the night as he walked down the grassy lane that cut through the woods to the campsite. He stopped now and then to listen for the whisper of bats, to refresh himself with the sight of stars. As he approached the campsite, he almost turned back: it was one of his favorite indulgences to lie full-length in his unmown yard with nothing between him and the star-spangled sky, a pipe warming his palm, and sometimes the sound of owls, waking from their dreams.

This Joe who had come to him so suddenly was a nothing sort of boy. Handsome, yes, but that wasn’t something he had earned. Arrogant, the way he had come straight out of the blue, saying I want this and I want that with every other breath. Hardly