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

Rachel got up and took an old percolator out of a cupboard beneath the sink. “The fire started when I was ten, so I guess I was ten when this happened. Maybe eleven.” She cocked her head. “Thereabouts anyway.” She filled the percolator with water. “I was playing at my friend Lynn’s house. Lynn Cooper. She lived out near the tunnels, and north of town, where the fire started. We usually played here at my house because her brothers always pestered us, but her dog, Elvira—”

“Elvira?” he said. “They had a dog named Elvira?”

“I know. Don’t ask me. Anyway, she had a litter of new pups in the coal shed, and I wanted to see them. We kept trying to sneak a look, but Elvira went nuts if we got too close. She was a good mother.”

Rachel poured coffee directly out of a can into the basket of the percolator. She didn’t bother to measure it. Joe watched her hands as she made the coffee. She handled everything with the same sure, steady touch.

“She was a good ratter, too, which was a good thing for the Coopers. Lots of rats lived in the tunnels, and when the mines shut down and there were no more lunch scraps for the rats to eat, they had to come up for all their food. But Elvira didn’t have any trouble keeping them under control until the fire started. After that, the rats had to completely abandon the tunnels. People living near mine shafts, like the Coopers, suddenly had a real rat problem. Ever seen a mine rat?”

Joe shook his head. He thought about asking her to stop. “No, I never have.”

“Lucky you.” Rachel made a face. “Big as cats, some of them. Mean as spit. So up they came, looking for food and a new place to live. The Coopers had plenty of garden and a big barn, too. Rat heaven. Within a week of the fire starting, there were rat holes all over the place. Lynn’s father was afraid they’d find a way into the basement, especially when Elvira was so busy with her pups. And Lynn kept having nightmares about one of those enormous rats eating the puppies. So her father got it into his head to wipe out the rats, once and for all.” Rachel held the basket of coffee in one hand but had clearly forgotten it was there. She had gone pale with remembering. Joe watched the basket of coffee the way someone watches a long cigarette ash.

“First,” Rachel said, “he filled in all the rat holes he could find, except two. Then he attached a hose to the tailpipe of his truck and stuck it down one of the two open rat holes. And then he started up the truck and left it running while he ran over and stood next to the other rat hole with a paddle in his hands.”

She lowered her face to the coffee grounds, took a long breath, and, straightening up, refreshed by the smell of the grounds, dropped the basket onto its stalk inside the pot. Crammed on the lid. Plugged it in. Almost immediately, the percolator began to gurgle and spit.

“God, it was awful,” she said. “We all sat on the back steps to watch—Lynn and I, Lynn’s mother and her three brothers. Like it was 4-H or something.” Rachel made a sound like there was something clinging to the lining of her throat. Joe wondered what 4-H stood for.

“I’ll never forget … Lynn’s father was wearing waders to keep the blood off his pants, and one of the boys kept yelling, ‘Batter up!’ ”

It was at this point that Joe became aware of the eggs slowly liquefying in his stomach. Rachel, too, suddenly looked very grim. She swallowed so hard Joe could hear it above the grumble of the percolator.

“The first rat came scampering up out of that hole like the hounds of hell were after it,” she said. “Lynn’s father took a huge swing at it, but he hadn’t expected the rats to panic. He thought the exhaust would slow them down, blind them. And he missed. And in the next second he realized what he’d done.” Rachel took a quick step backward. “He started screaming for us to get in the house, but I was up off those steps and through that door before the words were out of his mouth. We all were. Then we watched from the windows.” The coffee gurgled in its pot. Joe could hardly wait for the taste of it. “There were hundreds of them. Thousands. They came out so close together it was like watching a black river gushing up from the ground. We watched for over an hour before they stopped coming up out of that hole. And they ran out into the fields, into the barn. Elvira stood in the door of the coal shed and fought off the ones that came her way. Lynn’s mother got on the phone and called the nearest neighbors to warn them what was coming. It took about a year and all kinds of exterminators, but we finally got the mine rats under control. I haven’t seen one for years. Although now and then one will show up in somebody’s garbage and everyone will act like there’s a gargoyle on the loose.” Rachel took a pot of sugar and put it on a tray. “But that’s the worst thing that’s ever happened.

“Go on out to the porch,” she said, “and I’ll bring the coffee.”

And although Joe, too, saw that things could have been much worse for Belle Haven, he took a long look through Rachel’s screen door before he opened it on this particular corner of the world.

The balance of their conversation that morning was full of the courtesy of strangers, of curiosity unappeased. They spoke some more about the town but little about themselves. Joe was reluctant to reveal his reasons for coming to this town. Rachel was so undecided about her future that