"Dad, there"s a glow in the sky."

"Where?"

"Off to the right."

He says, "That can"t be us. Penn Villas is more ahead."

But Emberly Avenue turns right more acutely than he had ever noticed, and the curving streets of Penn Villas do deliver them toward a dome of rose-colored air. People, black shapes, race on silent footsteps, and cars have run to a stop diagonally against the curbs. Down where Emberly meets Vista Crescent, a policeman stands, rhythmically popping into brightness as the twirling fireengine lights pa.s.s over him. Harry parks where he can drive no further and runs down Vista, after Nelson. Fire hoses lie across the asphalt, some deflated like long canvas trouser legs and some fat as cobras, jetting hissingly from their joints. The gutter gnashes with swirling black water and matted leaves; around the sewer drain, a whirlpool widens out from the clogged center. Two houses from their house, they encounter an odor akin to leaf-smoke but more acrid and bitter, holding paint and tar and chemicals; one house away, the density of people stops them. Nelson sinks into the crowd and vanishes. Rabbit shoulders after him, apologizing, "Excuse me, this is my house, pardon me, my house." He says this but does not yet believe it. His house is masked from him by heads, by searchlights and upward waterfalls, by rainbows and shouts, by something magisterial and singular about the event that makes it as hard to see as the sun. People, neighbors, part to let him through. He sees. The garage is gone; the charred studs still stand, but the roof has collapsed and the shingles smolder with spurts of blue-green flame amid the drenched wreckage on the cement floor. The handle of the power mower pokes up intact. The rooms nearest the garage, the kitchen and the bedroom above it, the bedroom that had been his and Janice"s and then his and Jill"s, flame against the torrents of water. Flame sinks back, then bursts out again, through roof or window, in tongues. The apple-green aluminum clapboards do not themselves burn; rather, they seem to shield the fire from the water. Abrupt gaps in the shifting weave of struggling elements let shreds show through of the upstairs wallpaper, of the kitchen shelves; then these gaps shut at a breath of wind. He scans the upstairs window for Jill"s face, but glimpses only the stained ceiling. The roof above, half the roof, is a field of smoke, smoke bubbling up and coming off the shadow-line shingles in serried billows that look combed. Smoke pours out of Nelson"s windows, but that half of the house is not yet aflame, and may be saved. Indeed, the house burns spitefully, spitting, stinkingly: the ersatz and synthetic materials grudge combustion its triumph. Once in boyhood Rabbit saw a barn burn in the valley east of Mt. Judge; it was a torch, an explosion of hay outstarring the sky with embers. Here there is no such display.

There is s.p.a.ce around him. The spectators, the neighbors, in honor of his role, have backed off. Months ago Rabbit had seen that bright island of moviemakers and now he is at the center of this bright island and still feels peripheral, removed, nostalgic, numb. He scans the firelit faces and does not see Showalter or Brumbach. He sees no one he knows.

The crowd stirs, ooh. He expects to see Jill at the window, ready to leap, her white dress translucent around her body. But the windows let only smoke escape, and the drama is on the ground. A policeman is struggling with a slight lithe figure; Harry thinks eagerly, Skeeter, but the struggle pivots, and it is Nelson"s white face. A fireman helps pin the boy"s arms. They bring him away from the house, to his father. Seeing his father, Nelson clamps shut his eyes and draws his lips back in a snarl and struggles so hard to be free that the two men holding his arms seem to be wildly operating pump handles. "She"s in there, Dad!"

The policeman, breathing hard, explains, "Boy tried to get into the house. Says there"s a girl in there."

"I don"t know, she must have gotten out. We just got here."

Nelson"s eyes are frantic; he screeches everything. "Did Skeeter say she was with him?"

"No." Harry can hardly get the words out. "He just said things were bad."

In listening, the fireman and policeman loosen their grip, and Nelson breaks away to run for the front door again. Heat must meet him, for he falters at the porchlet steps, and he is seized again, by men whose slickers make them seem beetles. This time, brought back, Nelson screams up at Harry"s face: "You f.u.c.king a.s.shole, you"ve let her die. I"ll kill you. I"ll kill you." And, though it is his son, Harry crouches and gets his hands up ready to fight.

But the boy cannot burst the grip of the men; he tells them in a voice less shrill, arguing for his release, "I know she"s in there. Let me go, please. Please let me go. Just let me get her out, I know I can. I know I can. She"d be upstairs asleep. She"d be easy to lift. Dad, I"m sorry. I"m sorry I swore at you. I didn"t mean it. Tell them to let me. Tell them about Jill. Tell them to get her out."

Rabbit asks the firemen, "Wouldn"t she have come to the window?"

The fireman, an old rodent of a man, with tufty eyebrows and long yellow teeth, ruminates as he talks. "Girl asleep in there, smoke might get to her before she properly woke up. People don"t realize what a deadly poison smoke is. That"s what does you in, the smoke not the fire. " He asks Nelson, "O.K. to let go, sonny? Act your age now, we"ll send men up the ladder."

One beetle-backed fireman chops at the front door. The gla.s.s from the three panes shatters and tinkles on the flagstones. Another fireman emerges from the other side of the roof and with his ax picks a hole above the upstairs hall, about where Nelson"s door would be. Something invisible sends him staggering back. A violet flame shoots up. A cannonade of water chases him back over the roof ridge.

"They"re not doing it right, Dad," Nelson moans. "They"re not getting her. I know where she is and they"re not getting her, Dad!" And the boy"s voice dies in a shuddering wail. When Rabbit reaches toward him he pulls away and hides his face. The back of his head feels soft beneath the hair: an overripe fruit.

Rabbit rea.s.sures him, "Skeeter would"ve gotten her out."

"He wouldn"t of, Dad! He wouldn"t care. All he cared about was himself. And all you cared about was him. n.o.body cared about Jill." He writhes in his father"s fumbling grasp.

A policeman is beside them. "You Angstrom?" He is one ofthe new style of cops, collegiate-looking: pointed nose, smooth chin, sideburns cut to a depth Rabbit still thinks of as antisocial.

"Yes."

The cop takes out a notebook. "How many persons were in residence here?"

"Four. Me and the kid -"

"Name?

"Nelson."

"Any middle initial?"

"F for Frederick." The policeman writes slowly and speaks so softly he is hard to hear against the background of crowd munnur and fire crackle and water being hurled. Harry has to ask, "What?"

The cop repeats, "Name of mother?"

"Janice. She"s not living here. She lives over in Brewer."

"Address?"

Harry remembers Stavros"s address, but gives instead, "Care of Frederick Springer, 89 Joseph Street, Mt. Judge."

"And who is the girl the boy mentioned?"

"Jill Pendleton, of Stonington, Connecticut. Don"t know the street address."

Age?"

"Eighteen or nineteen."

"Family relationship?"

"None."

It takes the cop a very long time to write this one word. Something is happening to a corner of the roof the crowd noise is rising, and a ladder is being lowered through an intersection of searchlights.

Rabbit prompts: "The fourth person was a Negro we called Skeeter. S-k-double-e-t-e-r."

"Black male?"

"Yes."

"Last name?"

"I don"t know. Could be Farnsworth."

"Spell please."

Rabbit spells it and offers to explain. "He was just here temporarily."

The cop glances up at the burning ranch house and then over at the owner. "What were you doing here, running a commune?"

"No, Jesus; listen. I"m not for any of that. I voted for Hubert Humphrey."

The cop studies the house. "Any chance this black is in there now?"

"Don"t think so. He was the one that called me, it sounded as if from a phone booth."

"Did he say he"d set the fire?"

"No, he didn"t even say there was a fire, he just said things were bad. He said the word "bad" twice."

"Things were bad," the cop writes, and closes his notepad. "We"ll want some further interrogation later." Reflected firelight gleams peach-color off of the badge in his cap. The corner of the house above the bedroom is collapsing; the television aerial, that they twice adjusted and extended to cut down ghosts from their neighbors" sets, tilts in the leap of flame and slowly swings downward like a skeletal tree, still clinging by some wires or brackets to its roots. Water vaults into what had been the bedroom. A lavish c.u.mulus of yellow smoke pours out, golden-gray, rich as icing squeezed from the sugary hands of a pastry cook.

The cop casually allows, "Anybody in there was cooked a halfhour ago."

Two steps away, Nelson is bent over to let vomit spill from his mouth. Rabbit steps to him and the boy allows himself to be touched. He holds him by the shoulders; it feels like trying to hold out of water a heaving fish that wants to go back under, that needs to dive back under or die. His father brings back his hair from his cheeks so it will not be soiled by vomit; with his fist he makes a feminine knot of hair at the back of the boy"s hot soft skull. "Nellie, I"m sure she got out. She"s far away. She"s safe and far away."

The boy shakes his head No and retches again; Harry holds him for minutes, one hand clutching his hair, the other around his chest. He is holding him up from sinking into the earth. If Harry were to let go, he would sink too. He feels precariously heavier on his bones; the earth pulls like Jupiter. Policemen, spectators, watch him struggle with Nelson but do not intervene. Finally a cop, not the interrogating one, does approach and in a calm Dutch voice asks, "Shall we have a car take the boy somewhere? Does he have grandparents in the county?"

"Four of them," Rabbit says. "Maybe he should go to his mother."

"No! "Nelson says, and breaks loose to face them. "You"re not getting me to go until we know where Jill is." His face shines with tears but is sane: he waits out the next hour standing by his father"s side.

The flames are slowly smothered, the living-room side of the house is saved. The interior of the kitchen side seems a garden where different tints of smoke sprout; formica, vinyl, nylon, linoleum each burn differently, yield their curdling compounds back to earth and air. Firemen wet down the wreckage and search behind the gutted walls. Now the upstairs windows stare with searchlights, now the lower. A skull full of fireflies. Yet still the -crowd waits, held by a pack sense of smell; death is in heat. Intermittently there have been staticky calls over the police radios and one of them has fetched an ambulance; it arrives with a tentative sigh of its siren. Scarlet lights do an offbeat dance on its roof. A strange container, a green rubber bag or sheet, is taken into the house, and brought back by three grim men in slickers. The ambulance receives the shapeless package, is shut with that punky sound only the most expensive automobile doors make, and again, the tentative sigh of a siren just touched -pulls away. The crowd thins after it. The night overflows with the noise of car motors igniting and revving up.

Nelson says, "Dad."

"Yeah."

"That was her, wasn"t it?"

"I don"t know. Maybe."

"It was somebody."

"I guess."

Nelson rubs his eyes; the gesture leaves swipes of ash, Indian markings. The child seems harshly ancient.

"I need to go to bed," he says.

"Want to go back to the Fosnachts?"

"No." As if in apology he explains, "I hate Billy." Further qualifying, he adds, "Unless you do." Unless you want to go back and f.u.c.k Mrs. Fosnacht again.

Rabbit asks him, "Want to see your mother?"

"I can"t, Dad. She"s in the Poconos."

"She should be back by now."

"I don"t want to see her now. Take me to Jackson Road."

There is in Rabbit an engine murmuring Undo, undo, which wants to take them back to this afternoon, beginning with the moment they left the house, and not do what they did, not leave, and have it all unhappen, and Jill and Skeeter still there, in the house still there. Beneath the noise of this engine the inner admission that it did happen is m.u.f.fled; he sees Nelson through a gauze of shock and dares ask, "Blame me, huh?"

"Sort of."

"You don"t think it was just bad luck?" And though the boy hardly bothers to shrug Harry understands his answer: luck and G.o.d are both up there and he has not been raised to believe in anything higher than his father"s head. Blame stops for him in the human world, it has nowhere else to go.

The firemen of one truck are coiling their hoses. A policeman", the one who asked after Nelson, comes over. "Angstrom? The chief wants to talk to you where the boy can"t hear."

"Dad, ask him if that was Jill."

The cop is tired, stolid, plump, the same physical type as - what was his name? - Showalter. Kindly patient Brewerites. He lets out the information, "It was a cadaver."

"Black or white?" Rabbit asks.

"No telling."

Nelson asks, "Male or female?"

"Female, sonny."

Nelson begins to cry again, to gag as if food is caught in his throat, and Rabbit asks the policeman if his offer is still good, if a cruiser might take the boy to his grandparents" house in Mt. Judge. The boy is led away. He does not resist; Rabbit thought he might, might insist on staying with his father to the end. But the boy, his hair hanging limp and his tears flowing unchecked, seems relieved to be at last in the arms of order, of laws and limits. He doesn"t even wave from the window of the silver-blue West Brewer cruiser as it U-turns in Vista Crescent and heads away from the tangle of hoses and puddles and red reflections. The air tastes sulphuric. Rabbit notices that the little maple was scorched on the side toward the house; its twigs smolder like cigarettes.

As the firemen wind up their apparatus, he and the police chief sit in the front of an unmarked car. Harry"s knees are crowded by the radio apparatus on the pa.s.senger"s side. The chief is a short man but doesn"t look so short sitting down, with his barrel chest crossed by a black strap and his white hair crew-cut close to his scalp and his nose which was once broken sideways and has acc.u.mulated broken veins in the years since. He says, "We have a death now. That makes it a horse of another color."

"Any theories how the fire started?"

"I"ll ask the questions. But yes. It was set. In the garage. I notice a power mower in there. Can of gas to go with it?"

"Yeah. We. filled the can just this afternoon."

"Tell me where you were this evening."

He tells him. The chief talks on his car radio to the West Brewer headquarters. In less than five minutes they call back. But in the total, unapologetic silence the chief keeps during these minutes, a great lump grows in Rabbit, love of the law. The radio sizzles its words like bacon frying: "Mrs. Fosnacht confirms suspect"s story. Also a minor boy in dwelling as additional witness."

"Check," the chief says, and clicks off.

"Why would I burn my own house down?" Rabbit asks.

"Most common arsonist is owner," the chief says. He studies Rabbit thoughtfully; his eyes are almost round, as if somebody took a st.i.tch at the comer of each lid. "Maybe the girl was pregnant by you."

"She was on the Pill."

"Tell me about her."

He tries, though it is hard to make it seem as natural as it felt. Why did he permit Skeeter to move in on him? Well, the question was more, Why not? He tries, "Well, when my wife walked out on me, I kind of lost my bearings. It didn"t seem to matter, and anyway he would have taken Jill with him, if I"d kicked him out. I got so I didn"t mind him."

"Did he terrorize you?"

He tries to make these answers right. Out of respect for the law. "No. He educated us." Harry begins to get mad. "Some law I don"t know about against having people live with you?"

"Law against harboring," the chief tells him, neglecting to write on his pad. "Brewer police report a Hubert Johnson out on default on a possession charge."

Rabbit"s silence is not what he wants. He makes it clearer what he wants. "You in ignorance over the existence of this indictment and defiance of court?" He makes it even clearer. "Shall I accept your silence as a profession of ignorance?"

"Yes." It is the only opening. "Yes, I knew nothing about Skeeter, not even his last name."