Rosie’s Datsun was parked in front of the Plantagion warehouse. The glass reception door had been forced open and inside, through another open door behind Vivian’s desk, I could see the warm orange of reflected fire softly hazing the air back in the warehouse proper.
Marla and I went inside. I was hoping against hope that the fire would be small, something that could be handled, that I could put out before it caused any significant damage. But as we went through the doorway it was obvious I was out of luck. The warehouse was bigger than ours, and where ours was now bare of almost everything a plant business needed, this one was stuffed with it. Down one wall a shelving unit held stacks of planters, neatly arranged sacks of potting mix, and trays of the smaller plants that were used to dress displays. Along the opposite wall rows of weeping figs and dracaena and kentia palms stood ten and twelve deep.
Rosie was not far from the doorway, a yard or two along the corridor of concrete floor that ran between the plants and the shelving unit. She turned to us as we came in and pointed mutely toward the far end of the building. Stan was down there, frozen in front of a section of the larger plants, watching in horror as fire tore backwards through them.
I shouted but he didn’t move, so I ran the length of the warehouse. Stan stayed transfixed until I reached him, but when I hauled him back against the shelving unit he turned toward me and wailed. The sound went on and on as though it was something beyond physical, beyond lungs and vocal chords, was instead a wind of terror and sadness direct from his soul. The sheer uncontrollability of it frightened me and I shook him to make him stop. At the entrance to the warehouse Marla and Rosie screamed for us to get out.
The temperature was now too high to bear and the smoke that the green leaves of the plants threw off had begun to choke us. I took a handful of Stan’s shirt and dragged him toward the doorway. Burning plants fell into our path and as the smoke became too thick to see through I felt a jolt of fear that we might not make it out. But then the sprinkler system kicked in and water fell from the roof in a solid curtain of mist, flattening the smoke, hissing against the burning plants.
We made it to the doorway and I turned to look back. The fire was already dying. Some of the plants had burned themselves out and the rest had too little fuel left on them to fight the water for long. The wall on the plant side of the warehouse was scorched black to the height of the roof and the stock of plants was completely destroyed, but there was little chance that anything was going to reignite.
The four of us ran from the building. Marla drove her own car and I drove Rosie’s with Stan and Rosie in the back. As we pulled away I took a last look at the warehouse. The only sign of the fire that had blazed inside it so recently was a halo of smoke around the roof. We left there quickly. If the building had a sprinkler system it probably also had some sort of alarm. I led our two-car convoy around the perimeter of the precinct and then out, away from Oakridge.
The road we took cut through virgin countryside in a long series of twists that eventually connected with the Oakridge Loop a few miles north of our own Plantasaurus warehouse. I turned south there and headed for home. It was about the longest way you could take to Empty Mile but it meant we’d miss the Oakridge volunteer fire brigade if they were responding. And the police too, if it was that kind of alarm.
We didn’t talk much in the car. Stan sat against Rosie, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees, glasses off and the heels of his hands pressed against his eyes. He rocked back and forth as much as the space in the small car would allow. He kept his eyes covered until we got back to Empty Mile.
In the cabin we all sat around the table. I made hot chocolate but Stan wouldn’t touch his and Rosie said she didn’t like milk. I tried to talk to Stan, to somehow break the shell of guilt that was so obviously hardening about him. But he was too horrified at what he’d done.
“Those photos made me go crazy.”
“I don’t want you to freak out about this, Stan. No one got hurt. The sprinklers put it out. A few plants got burned, so what? The warehouse was fine-other than the smoke it wasn’t damaged at all.”
“What would you have done, Johnny?”
“If the photos were of Marla I would have gone crazy too.”
“I must be out of control.” Stan lifted his hands and slapped the sides of his head rapidly and groaned. “What’s going to happen to me?”
“No one saw us. No one’s going to know who lit the fire. They’ll just think something blew out in the building and started it.”
“But if you do something that terrible how can something not happen to you?”
“I told you, no one saw us.”
“I don’t mean that, Johnny. I mean the world. Something in it sees what we do. Maybe it doesn’t see normal stuff, but something as huge as this…”
Stan looked wide-eyed around the room. He was overtired and emotionally battered. Marla had some sleeping pills and I gave him one and put him to bed. Rosie got in with him, I was glad she was staying. Her warm body next to him would be a better comfort than any words or drug I could give him.
When they were settled I drove Millicent’s car across the meadow to her house. She was sitting in the front room wrapped in her shawl, a small kerosene stove burning across the floor from her. The stove’s wick needed trimming and the air in the room smelled of fumes.
I told her where Stan and Rosie had gone in the car and what had happened when they got there. And I told her as well about the photographs that had sparked it off.
“I suppose you haven’t called the police about the son of a bitch.”
“I can’t really do that now.”
“Might have been a better idea than letting Stanley run off.”
“It wouldn’t have made any difference. I know this guy. He’d say Rosie agreed to do it. Even Rosie says he didn’t force her, she did it to protect Stan’s business. Stan and Rosie aren’t the type of people who can go up against someone like Jeremy Tripp. Believe me.”
Millicent shook her head to herself. “That poor girl.”
“She’s sleeping now. She’s going to be okay. She was more upset about Stan than she was about herself.”
“You’d think if you were like Rosie or Stan life would go a little easier on you. But it doesn’t. Mostly it seems to go the other way.”
I gave her back the keys to the Datsun and left her staring at the blue flame of the heater, her fingers playing restlessly across the material of her shawl.
CHAPTER 29
I spent the night listening for cars, expecting a cavalcade of them to come thundering across the meadow at any moment, carrying cops and a warrant for our arrest. But the night passed undisturbed and when I woke the next morning I lay for a while daring to hope that we might have escaped the warehouse fire undetected.
It was a Saturday. Marla at home and no Plantasaurus work-what little we had left of it. I thought I was the first one up but when I went out onto the stoop Stan was sitting in a patch of sunshine wearing his Batman costume. He had his eyes closed behind the mask and didn’t realize I was there. His face was turned to the sun and his right hand was closed in a loose fist on his knee. Slowly, as I watched, he brought his hand up and I saw that his fingers were wrapped around a large brown moth. He pushed it into his mouth and started chewing, scrunching his face as he forced himself to eat the insect.
“What are you doing!”
He swallowed and shuddered, then opened his eyes and blinked and looked emptily at me.
“I don’t know, Johnny.”
“Jesus, Stan… Look, dude, don’t worry about last night. Jeremy Tripp deserved it. It’s not something you have to feel bad about.”
“Why’s everything going wrong? I used to be happy, then all of this bad stuff happened. I don’t understand it, Johnny.”