“It was on fire,” Captain said. “My jacket sleeve. It was burning.”
So was Methuselah, the vinyl of the burning sleeve melting into his hair and the skin beneath it. Captain ran to him.
“I threw my arms around him,” he said, “and I wrestled him down. I hoped the snow would put out the fire.”
Which it did. Captain got the bomber jacket free from Methuselah. Then he let the goat up and watched it run, disappearing into the night — into the place where the darkness held, black and deep, in spite of the fire.
When Captain got back around front, his father was there, and soon Pat Wade came running from his house, and Della was handing one of the twins out to Shooter. Captain stepped up and took her in his arms, tears running down his cheeks now because he knew.
“I knew exactly what had happened,” he said. “I didn’t want to know it, but I did.”
For a good while, no one said a word. The clock ticked. The refrigerator hummed. The furnace clicked on.
Biggs waited for Captain to tell the rest of his story, but it was Shooter who spoke next. He said, “That vinyl from Captain’s coat melted into that goat’s leg, and I couldn’t get it out. When the fire marshal’s deputies started coming around, I was afraid they’d see it, and I didn’t want them to know that Captain had been anywhere near that fire. That’s why I put that goat down. I couldn’t take the chance.”
Biggs could see the guilt that must have wracked Shooter all those weeks. He could see it deep in his eyes — the pain he’d never be able to rid himself of, not even now that the story had been told. The telling only made it worse. The telling made it true.
“I had to protect Wesley,” Shooter said.
His Adam’s apple slid up and down his throat as he swallowed words he could hardly make himself say. Finally, though, he said them, and, when he did, Biggs felt his heart catch. He was a father, too.
“You’re telling me your boy started that fire,” Biggs said.
“I was afraid you’d take him away from me if the truth got out. Put him in a juvenile home. Or worse, try him as an adult and lock him up. I promised his mother I’d always look out for him.”
Biggs said to Captain, “Son, you need to tell me everything. If you started that fire, I need you to tell me exactly how you did it.”
It was a trick that Ronnie had showed him, a trick Captain had tried and tried to master and finally had.
That night behind the trailer, he said to Ronnie, “I won’t tell anyone.”
Ronnie knew he was saying he wouldn’t let it out that he’d been there, wouldn’t say a word about the gasoline. Captain was telling him he’d keep it all a secret. There was still time then to believe that such a thing was possible, that they could go their separate ways, step back into their lives and no one would be the wiser.
“You’re a good friend,” Ronnie said. “You’re better than a million of me.”
He knew he didn’t deserve such goodness. He’d come out in the night to do a bad thing, but he’d spotted that hole in the trailer’s siding, and then Captain was there, and now as much as Ronnie was relieved, he was humbled and ashamed to be standing before this simple boy who, no matter what he was up to with those goats, was good of heart enough to know there were things a man should ignore, things too ugly to let out into the air. Captain was doing him that favor, leaving him to go back into town and to do his best to face the truth about himself. He was the kind of man who could burn out his wife and kids, and Captain was passing no judgment on him for that, was telling him that would be his and his alone to live with.
“You always treated me good,” Captain said. “You let me be your right-hand man.”
Ronnie couldn’t stop himself. He asked Captain why he’d come for the goats. “Why’d you take them?”
Captain’s voice, when he finally spoke, was tinged with just the slightest air of disbelief, as if he couldn’t imagine how Ronnie didn’t know. “They need a better place,” Captain said. “It’s a cold, cold night. They need a warmer place to be.”
That was enough to break Ronnie, the fact that Captain had come to do this favor. The wind was sweeping across the open fields. Overhead, the stars were brilliant in the clear sky. He wanted to put his arms around Captain. He wanted to thank him for being there on this night when he’d come to do harm. He wanted to press the boy to him and believe that people, even him, could be good.
But instead he said, “Guess we both need to get inside where it’s warm.”
Then he gathered up the Marathon can and made his way to his car. He was moving into the wind now, and he couldn’t hear Captain calling his name. He didn’t know that the boy had taken the box of Diamond matches from his jeans pocket, didn’t know that he’d pressed the head of a match against the strike strip, didn’t know that he’d flicked it with his finger — at that moment, the wind died down, and Ronnie felt the eerie calm after all the ruckus — didn’t see that match, perfectly lit, twirling in the dark.
“Look what I can do,” Captain said. “Look what you taught me.”
But Ronnie couldn’t make out the words. He was too far away.
Captain heard the Firebird come to life, not with a revving of the engine like Ronnie usually gave it, but with a low rumble of the exhaust pipes. The Firebird’s tires cracked through the thin ice at the shoulder of the blacktop as the car eased forward. Captain went to the end of the trailer in enough time to see Ronnie creeping up the blacktop, no headlights on, the white of the snow cover on each side of the road enough to guide him before he felt it was safe to turn on his headlights and make his way back into town.
“Ronnie,” Captain said, and he felt something warm his chest, something he had no words for — he only knew it had something to do with the way his mother had always made him believe that he was special, the Captain of the Universe. He only knew it had something to do with his father and Ronnie and Della and all the kids and Missy and Pat and, yes, even with Brandi Tate. Even the goats. All of them on this cold night.
Captain held that feeling inside him. He let it lead him home. He didn’t know that his legs had brushed through the dry grass or that his boots had tracked through the gas that had pooled up on the frozen ground. He didn’t think a thing about the match he’d lit and sent twirling toward the trailer. He didn’t know that the match had fallen onto the old chair, but later he’d know — the kind of knowing you know in your knower, nary a need for proof — that the lit match had twirled and dropped through the suddenly still night and fallen in a place where the first flame, such a small thing it must have been, caught hold, took in fuel and air and before long became something headstrong and wild, nothing anyone could hope to stop.
Biggs listened to the story of the match. Then he said, “Son, where did that gas come from?”
“There was a can sitting on the ground behind the trailer.”
“You didn’t tote it from your place like your daddy thought?”
“No, it was just there.”
Shooter said, “But you gave me cause to believe—”
Biggs interrupted him. He was growing impatient. “So you poured the gasoline around the trailer?”
Captain wouldn’t answer. He got interested in the scab on his hand, picking at the crust. Biggs knew he wouldn’t answer because he hadn’t thought his story all the way through. He didn’t have an answer because he hadn’t been the one to spread that gasoline.
“Son, if there was a can of gas back there,” Biggs said, “what happened to it?”
Shooter answered for him, “I guess it burned up in the fire.”
“Fire marshal deputies went through everything left over there.” Biggs shook his head. “No gas can. You know why, son?” Biggs waited for Captain to look at him, but he wouldn’t. “Because Ronnie took that can away with him, didn’t he? He was the one who poured that gas. Isn’t that so, son? He poured it, and then, if what you’re telling me is the truth, you lit it up.”