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

to bay, but each of them rich and smooth and polished. She made him wish he were an artist, or a father, or a gardener capable of raising up out of rawness something so refined.

She frowned when she saw him. Then Ian called her name, she saw that the two of them were together, and she laughed out loud. The sound of her came tumbling through the motley chaos of the barroom. And in a moment she was by his side.

It seemed quite mysterious to Joe that in the hours he’d spent away from Rachel she’d somehow latched on to his soul. He now suspected that it had been she who had led him to the Queen Anne’s lace that grew alongside the stream. She who had prodded him out into the unmown fields where the cicadas screamed for summer and the hawks killed with grace. She who had lured him into his simple companionship with Ian and, now, into an unkempt bar, which for all its shortcomings promised to be the site of his undoing.

“Now I know what’s so special about Thursday nights in Belle Haven,” he said blandly, his breath shallow. “I thought Angela wanted you to set her hair or something.”

“Oh, I get it,” Rachel said, smiling wrathfully. “Bingo. Tractor pulls. Church socials. Home perms. Boy, Joe, you sure got us pegged.”

“Now, now, Rachel, cut the boy some slack,” Angela said, waving at the bartender.

“For the love of Pete,” Joe spluttered. “You are without doubt the most thin-skinned woman I have ever met.”

“Thin patience,” Rachel said coolly. “You have a habit of making things a little harder for yourself, Joe. Go easy. Try to think before you speak.”

“Fair enough.” He sighed. “Buy you a drink?”

“All right,” Rachel said, willing, it seemed, to speed the water under the bridge.

It wasn’t until Joe took out his wallet to pay for their drinks that he remembered his budget. “To hell with it,” he muttered to himself, anchoring a twenty under his empty bottle.

It took a while for him to feel as cavalier about a turn in the spotlight. “You want me to be a what?” He laughed, choking on his beer.

“A Pip,” Rachel repeated. “You and Ian. You don’t even have to sing. Just do that rolling thing with your hands. Angela and I’ll do the rest.”

After several drinks and much persuasion, he finally agreed. “I’m going to regret this,” he said through his teeth. And when, a few minutes later, Amelia called out, “Rachel, Angela, Ian, and Joe. Come on up here, now. The midnight train to Georgia’s movin’ on out,” they had to drag Joe off his stool.

“Wait a minute,” he bawled when Amelia handed him a microphone. “I thought I didn’t have to sing.” But Rachel, holding the other microphone, only smiled. The band began to play. Angela laid her palms on her lean hips, tapped her booted toes. Ian trotted first to one side, then the other, hands rolling. He was making trainlike noises. “Whoo. Whoo. Whoo.”

“L.A.” Rachel sang, rather badly,

proved too much for the man.

He couldn’t make it, so he’s leaving a life he’s come to know.

He said he’s going back to find what’s left of his world.

The world he left behind, not so long ago …

Angela made a fair echo as Rachel sang. Ian stumbled around behind them, botching the lyrics and grinning. And Joe stood silent, rooted, watching the three of them in astonishment.

He could find in them no vestige of modesty or even self-awareness. They were immersed in the song, right from the get-go, all smiling, all having the time of their lives. As they warmed to the song, Joe noticed in the eyes of the onlookers an amused admiration for his companions, derision for himself.

I am smarter than any of these people, he reminded himself. Richer. Better. Pretty soon I’ll be gone. I’ll never see any of them again as long as I live.

And with that, he surrendered to the moment, gave himself up to fate, and began, slowly, to dance.

It would take him years to reach the conclusion that had he not been such a bred-in-the-bone snob, he would never have allowed a song, a woman, a run-down watering hole called the Last Resort to pierce the thick muscle of his heart and lay their claim. He would never have let his laughter reach up into his eyes. He would never have danced, sung, celebrated as he did that night.

Later, when Rachel and Angela left the men at the table to sing alone together, Joe wondered at the song they had chosen. But he felt inexplicably close to tears as they sang “Moon River,” a song he had never really listened to before, a song that first silenced the people in that bar, then gently warmed their throats, brought them up off their stools singing, sent them slowly out into the night air dancing, closed Rachel’s throat and made her stand there and cry while Angela wrapped her arms around her, singing as if her heart were breaking.

Two drifters, off to see the world.

There’s such a lot of world to see.

We’re after the same rainbow’s end

waitin’ ’round the bend,

my Huckleberry friend,

Moon River

and me.

And when the song was over and Rachel had dried her eyes with her hands, Joe could not speak for minutes on end, could not look at them, at any of them, could not swallow or lift the mighty weight of his arms. For he had found himself, somewhere in the midst of that lovely old song, begging for a way to draw out this night. To keep his feet upon this undemanding floor. To stay inside the Last Resort until the rest of the world had found a way to match its matchless charm.

Chapter 15

        Had Joe gone straight from the Last Resort to his bed that night, to sleep, to an awakening less magical, less potent than the undiluted night, his memories might have passed themselves off as dreams. He might have come to doubt what had