Kathleen Creighton - One Summer’s Knight

Sadness tightened her throat and lay heavy in her chest. Oh, sweetheart, these burdens of mine are way too big for your shoulders. Please don’t try to bear them for me. You’re only nine years old. I’ll make it up to you, she promised her son silently. We’re going to come through this all right.

Since tacos were way too messy to eat in the car, even one as decrepit as the Olds, Summer parked it and they went inside. She wasn’t particularly eager to get home, anyway, and with the animals at Dr. Mott’s, she could think of no reason to rush. It hadn’t always been so. Once, “home” had meant her nest, her haven, her place of belonging. These days, “home” was the soul-sapping bleakness of a cramped mobile home, where every rust streak and shriveled blade of grass was a reproach and a reminder of her failures. And where, more recently, the ringing of the telephone carried with it the electric shock of fear.

But, she reminded herself, at least now I have a lawyer. A good lawyer. Riley Grogan. His confidence and quietness filled her. In her mind, his eyes regarded her-cool, blue and appraising. Unexpected warmth flooded her cheeks and spread into her chest

I’ll find a way to pay him, she vowed. I know he doesn’t believe that, but I will.

Though it would be difficult, she acknowledged, since he lived so far away. Well, of course, she had no idea where he actually lived, but his law offices were in Charleston, so she had to assume he lived somewhere nearby. What must his home be like, a single man, a wealthy man, with no kids and no pets? It was hard for her to imagine. As elegant and imposing as the man himself was, probably. But godawful lonely. Maybe.

“Mom?”

She started and focused guiltily on her son, who had obviously just asked her a question of some importance. The children had been bickering over the movie monster action figures that had come in their kids’ meals when she’d tuned them out and given her mind permission to wander. But how had she gotten so far off the mommy-track?

“Yes, hon-I’m sorry. What?”

“I said, do you think Jason’s mom will still let us swim in their pool?” His red-gold hair hung slack, waving a little, as he tilted his head sideways to accommodate a bite of taco. His blue eyes regarded her somberly as he chewed, then swallowed with an audible gulp. “Mom, what am I gonna do if I can’t practice? I’ll be so out of shape, I’ll never be able to make the swim team again. And it’s all because dodo, here-” he gave his sister a fierce nudge in the side with his elbow “-just had to go and squirt grape juice all over dumb old Jason.”

“Quit it,” Helen whispered, nudging him back and fixing him with a narrow-eyed glare. “Or I’ll have my Godzilla chomp you to pieces.”

“Big deal,” said David with a shrug. “Your Godzilla is six inches tall. He couldn’t chomp a bug.”

“Yeah, well, you just wait. When I grow up I’m gonna have a real Godzilla, and he’s gonna eat your head.”

“Ooh, I’m shaking.”

“Well, you better be. Because-”

“Hey, guys,” said Summer. “You know what I think?” Two pairs of eyes regarded her, one expectant, one wary. “I think we’re going to have to do some apologizing to Jason and his mom. How ’bout you?”

“Not me, I didn’t do anything,” said David. Helen made a hideous face. “And,” he added spitefully, “I hope your face freezes like that. How’d you like that, huh?”

“It won’t!”

“Sure it will. If you don’t believe me, just ask Granny Calhoun.”

“Will not!”

“Ok-ay, time to go home,” said Summer firmly. She gathered up their trash and deposited it in the receptacle and herded the children, still nudging each other and whispering dire threats they thought she couldn’t hear, out to the car.

The sun was still high and hot at that hour of the evening in late June, and once they were in the car the children’s quarrel died of heat exhaustion Summer drove with the windows down, since there was no one to see her who was going to give a rip what shape her hair was in. Beyond the city’s outskirts, strip malls, fast-food restaurants and gas stations quickly gave way to scattered businesses housed in metal or cinder-block buildings set far back from the road. Freestanding yellow signboards on the grass along the highway advertised used-tire specials, live nudes and the redeeming power of faith in identical black-and-red block letters. Sickly petunias bloomed beside driveways in planters made from old tires, and kudzu encroached on vacant lots littered with trash and old campaign signs. Normally the sight of all that lush squalor filled Summer with a contradiction of feelings, a kind of depressed restlessness that was similar to the way she felt when she walked into her rented mobile home-a futile urge to tidy something she knew no amount of tidying was ever going to make beautiful. But this evening she saw the yellow polka dots of dandelions in the grassy verges and felt an uplift of spirits that was almost like hope. She’d taken steps. It was going to be okay.

Just as she was turning onto her street, she met two fire trucks, sirens silent, big engines grumbling, making their way back to the barn.

“Wow, look,” David cried, popping up in his seat so he could see better. “I bet those are the same ones we saw. That fire must have been right around here someplace. Can we go see it, Mom? Please?”

Summer sighed and said, “Oh, David…”

She guided the Olds around the gentle curve that marked the beginning of their residential neighborhood, a long row of mobile homes and modest houses, unfenced and widely spaced, separated by grass-pocked gravel driveways and marked by tipsy roadside mailboxes. Up ahead she could see another fire truck parked in the road, its lights still flashing.

“Mom, look.” David’s voice faded. Silence filled the car.

Summer drove slowly forward, only dimly aware that her heart had begun to pound. She saw people coming toward her now, people she didn’t know-her neighbors, walking alone with their arms folded, shaking their heads, or in twos and threes, talking among themselves, walking down the road, turning into driveways, cutting across lawns. Children on bicycles, pumping hard, racing their dogs home. The excitement, whatever it had been, was obviously over now.

Summer pulled the Olds onto the grassy shoulder and parked. A fireman in protective gear glanced at her, then went on with what he was doing, gathering up, tidying up, putting things away. She turned off the motor, opened the door and got out.

“Mom, that’s our-”

She turned, arms braced on the door frame, to face her children-Helen standing with her arms on the back of the seat in front of her, staring over it with round, avid eyes; David’s face, pale as the moon, his mouth a thin, frightened line. “Stay here,” she grated through clenched jaws. “You…stay…in…this…car.”

She slammed the car door and walked up the street toward the fire truck. Her legs felt strange, as if her knees had been hinged with rubber bands.

Someone approached her-a police officer. She hadn’t noticed the two radio patrol cars parked beyond the fire truck. “Ma’am, I’m gonna have to ask you to stay back outta the way-”

Summer shook her head. “That’s my house,” she said. “I live here.”

The policeman put his hand on her elbow, at the same time gesturing with the other to someone she couldn’t see. “Uh-huh. Okay, ma’am. You want to tell me your name, please?”

“‘Yes. I’m Mrs. Robey. Summer. And this is my house.”

It was hardly true; the ugly little trailer would never be anyone’s house, ever again. Where it had stood was a blackened skeleton, a sodden, stinking, smoking gash in the landscape surrounded by yellow police ribbon. The stench of destruction was overpowering; she wanted to gag.

“May I please… I need to sit down.”

And then she was in the back of a patrol car, and someone-a policeman-was offering her something in a small paper cup. Water. She took it and drank without tasting, then murmured, “Thank you.”

A soft voice, thick and Southern, said, “Ma’am, I’m gonna need to ask you some questions, okay? You feel up to it, or you wanna take another minute?”

She shook her head. “No, that’s okay, I’m fine.” She focused her eyes on the policeman’s face, observing that he was young, black, and didn’t look like he was enjoying himself much.

The reason for that became clear a moment later when he cleared his throat, shifted his feet and said, “Ma’am-can you tell me if there was anybody that might’ve been…uh, in the building?” He coughed and made it simpler. “Was…anybody home?”

Summer stared at him. Bile rose in her throat She swallowed and said hurriedly, “No. No, there’s only me and my children-they’re over there, in the car. I just picked them up from day camp.” She stopped, then added as if it might be of importance, “We stopped for tacos.”

The young policeman drew himself up, looking considerably happier at that news. “Yes, ma’am, well, that’s good. I’m sure glad to hear it.” He coughed, then frowned again. “Your, uh, neighbors said they thought you folks had some pets?”

“Yes.” Funny, how she seemed not to be feeling this. As though she were in a plastic bubble, and the policeman’s words just bounced off without touching her. “They were at a friend’s house. I was away over the weekend.”

There was the soft hiss of an exhalation. “Well, ma’am, sounds like you were real lucky.” Summer looked at the officer, who gazed back at her with shadows in his eyes, the shadows, maybe, of memories of other disasters and people who hadn’t been as lucky. “Sorry for your loss,” he said in a more formal tone.

“Thank you,” said Summer. She looked down at the paper cup, which she had crumpled in her hand. “Is there anything else you need right now? I’d like to get back to my children.”

“Oh-sure.” He stood back away from the open door to make room for her, then reconsidered. “Uh…listen, do you have someplace to go? Somebody you can call? Any kinfolk in the area?” Summer shook her head. “What about friends?”

Friends. She thought about it. She’d been here almost a year, and who did she know? Well enough to ask for a favor of this magnitude? The answer was, with the possible exception of the Motts: nobody.

The Motts. Summer’s mind filled with the image of Debbie Mott’s plump, self-satisfied face, and her stomach recoiled. Never, she thought, in a million years. “We’ll be okay,” she said softly. “I guess we’ll probably go to a motel.” Her mouth formed the words, but her brain didn’t comprehend their meaning. Not their real meaning. She was safely encased in that nice little plastic bubble of shock.

The policeman nodded and took something out of his uniform pocket-a card. He handed it to her and said kindly, “Okay, then, I’ll let you get on back to your kids. Ma’am, this here’s the address and phone number of the local Red Cross. You go on down there and show them the police report-we’ ll see you have a copy-and they’ll fix you up with whatever you need, okay?”

Summer nodded. The Red Cross. Reality tried to push its way into her bubble along with that name. It’s true. I’m a victim. She pushed the thought ruthlessly, angrily away.

“Just one more thing.” The policeman ducked down so that his head and shoulders filled the car door’s opening. “You got any reason you can think of why somebody might want to do this?”

“Do this?” Summer stared at him. In her cocooned state, understanding came slowly. “Do you mean…it wasn’t…the fire didn’t…just happen?” Trailers burned all the time-she heard about them often on the news.

The policeman’s face was impassive. “We won’t know that for sure, ma’am, not until the investigators finish their job. But right now I have to say, it does look suspicious.”

She desperately needed a breath, but something cold and heavy was occupying the space where her lungs should have been. She shook her head and choked out the word “No.”

Apparently taking that as her answer to his original question, the officer straightened once more, at the same time reaching in his breast pocket again, this time for his notebook. “Well, okay, then. We’re just gonna need for you to leave us a number, someplace where we can get ahold of you. Work number’d be fine.”

“Uh, sure. I work for Dr. Jerry Mott-you know, the mobile vet? I guess you can reach me there. If not, he’ll know how to get in touch with me.” She gave him the number and watched him jot it carefully down in his notebook before returning it to his pocket. She cleared her throat. “Can I go now?”

“Sure.” He stepped back, offering her his hand. She ignored it, instead levering herself out of the patrol car under her own power. Except that she felt it wasn’t really her own power, but something outside herself, some unseen puppet master manipulating the nerves, tendons and muscles that operated her body, made it stand erect and begin walking down the sloping, grass-furred driveway. Told it to step carefully around the bare patches where the water from the fire hoses had turned the red clay to sticky, slippery muck. Surely it must have been some other guidance system-automatic pilot?-that told her to stop at the bottom of the driveway and open the mailbox and look inside, just as she did every day when she came home from work. Her own consciousness was still encased in its soft, safe place.