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

from the trees, who stole the fur from bears and ate beetles, whose instincts made them bare their teeth and run, peeing down their legs, when the earth shuddered under their feet. Something that made Joe sweat heavily and lift his head suddenly off his pillow, again and again, throughout the long and empty night.

Chapter 33

        “Ah,” said the man who answered Ian’s door, his face half-lathered, a razor in his hand. “Joe.”

“Morning, Mendelson,” Joe said.

“I heard you rattle by last night. About ten-thirty, wasn’t it?” The man spoke through the screen, did not open the door.

Joe nodded. “That’s right,” he said.

“You’ll be out by tonight, then?” It wasn’t a question. “That’ll be twenty-four hours. Actually, that’ll be about two weeks since I moved in. I was tempted to have that old heap of yours towed off long since, you know.”

Joe looked closely at the man in the doorway. The screen made him look all gray. “An odd thing to be tempted by.”

He turned and walked away, back through the woods to the Schooner, and began to break camp. He lashed his outdoor furniture to the top of the Schooner, coiled up his clothesline and stashed it inside, shook his awning free of leaves and acorns and furled it up tight. He unplugged his electric feed and retrieved the jacks that kept the Schooner level and bore some of its weight. Then he started the engine to make sure it would run. He always warmed the engine at least twice a week, listened for a lazy battery, checked what needed checking—but he’d been away for a month and was relieved when it started up. It had been much longer since he’d actually driven the Schooner anywhere, and the tires were mushy, but as he cast off it rolled smoothly over the bumpy ground, rocking a bit, unperturbed.

As he drove slowly along the narrow lane that led through the woods to Ian’s and on out to the road, Joe watched the tall grasses bend down before him. In his mirror, he caught a last glimpse of the place where he’d lived for more than two years now, of the fireplace he’d built, of the outhouse where Ian had found him in such an unusual state. He laughed aloud at the thought, his eyes full, and did not spare a glance at the man who stood out in front of Ian’s house, stiff-legged, like a dog.

Chapter 34

        To Rachel, it would always seem odd, somehow prearranged, that she was once again lying in her hammock, her mouth full of sweets, when she heard the sound of the Schooner coming into town. She heard it come down Maple Street. She heard it approaching the bridge. But this time, when it reached the foot of her hill, it turned up toward her and came on slowly, laboring, edging up over the crest of the hill like a benign beast, and finally stopped alongside her house. Joe looked small and fragile through its vast windshield, as if he were starting his boyhood all over again.

At the first rumbles of the approaching Schooner, Pal had suddenly come bounding out of the woods, nearly singing with excitement, and Rachel had felt herself surrender to Joe’s proximity. Now that he was back in Belle Haven, now that he was within her reach, all the tempests knocking up against her ribs, twisting her gut, had calmed. Away, he had seemed so prone to villainy. Returning, he was ripe for pardon. The sight of him resolved things for her, took them clean out of her hands.

When he walked across the yard to her, she knew immediately that he was changed. But when he knelt down beside the hammock in the thick grass and laid his head on her belly, she put her hands on him and did not care.

Joe and Rachel spent the rest of that day together. They were never far apart and often found themselves wedged in the same chair, or Standing flush up against each other, or even more frequently locked in deliberate embrace. They ate from the same bowl, did not answer the phone when it rang, did not go beyond the borders of her land. They lay in bed in their hot, summer skins and talked and made love over and over again.

Joe had not yet told Rachel about his weeks away, but she already knew quite a lot about them. She knew he had done something about his father. What it was she didn’t know, but she sensed in him a serenity he hadn’t had before, certainly not in the hours before he’d gone away. She realized that he had put all of that part of his past where it could not hurt him as it had before. He seemed happy in a mild, peaceful, lasting way. He seemed sure of himself. He seemed wise.

Reluctant to tell Joe about Ross and everything that had happened since that day down in Caspar’s Hollow, Rachel had decided to wait until they’d had their fill of reunion. But Joe, too, could tell that something was different. He remembered the fear with which he’d slept the night before and saw, in Rachel’s eyes, its twin. She, who had always been so certain, so self-assured, seemed newly timid. Distracted. As if she were listening for something, even in the midst of laughter.

After supper, when they took their tea out onto the front porch, Joe went to the Schooner, returned with a box, and put it into Rachel’s lap.

“Open it,” he said, and told Rachel about the gold she found inside.

“Holly doesn’t want it, and neither do I,” he said. “Do you think Angela would use it for Rusty’s education?”

“What’s to think about? Of course she would.”

“Then how about you sneak it into her tips bucket for me. You’re always messing around back there behind the counter.”

“Why don’t you just give it to her yourself?”

“Nah,” he said, seemed about to elaborate, in the end did not.

“All right,” she said