Father carried a thick plank under his arm, but nothing else. It was a very clumsy weapon, if it was a weapon. We crossed to the cold store. The smell of damp chicken manure hung over it. Father knelt in the grass and drew breaths as if he was keeping count of them.
"I gave them every chance to go. Even offered them my cayuka." He crushed a mosquito and showed me the black stain on his finger, as he had done before. "Don't pity insects. That's my blood."
I nodded. I was afraid of the sound my voice would make.
"But they refused. You heard them. They're planning to fasten on us like they fastened on to those Indians. Remember those poor pathetic men, squatting in the dirt with their crazy mutts? Charlie, it was the Indians who were the prisoners!"
"They looked scared."
"Did they?" Father hung his head. "I'm not often wrong, but when I am, I'm as wrong as I can be."
This was a confession. I could not think of anything to say to make it easier for him.
"I don't usually make mistakes. You know that. But this is a lulu."
He was now staring at Fat Boy. He hunched his shoulders, and in the old hoarse joshing voice he used for testing me, he said, "Can you get up that ladder and shove this beam through the brackets on the hatchway door, without making a sound?"
"I guess so."
"You'd better be more certain than that, Charlie, because if you wake those bugs up they're going to start shooting."
He handed me the beam. It was heavy, but it smelted sweet, a roasted-nut aroma — it had been freshly sawed.
"You could get us all killed," he said.
I wanted to drop the beam and run.
"Up you go."
We crept to the ladder, and he took hold of it. I climbed past him and received a wave of heat from his body, the reddened sweat of his worry, which was like a vapor of blood in the air. Then I was cooled by the light breeze on the midsection of the ladder. I was glad it was dark — I could not see the ground clearly, only the moon-white flickers, like doves pecking in the grass, and gobs of putty-colored light on the trees. The fingers of my free hand were pale. They trembled on the rungs.
Nearer the hatchway, I imagined that I could hear the men snoring just inside Fat Boy, on the upper platform, in the tangle of pipes. Months before, I had seen these coils and pans, and I believed I had had a glimpse of Father's mind. I could not separate them, and now it seemed awful that these intruders were there, stinking and waiting and refusing to go. Men he hated had penetrated this private place.
There were iron bracket straps fixed to the jamb. Father must have hammered them there this afternoon. I had never seen them before. We had no locks in Jeronimo. This was the first.
I lifted the wood beam, set it against the door above the brackets, and slid it down. It was a perfect fit. But as soon as I did it, I realized how final it was. It had sealed the door — barricaded it, as Father would have said. My legs went weak and began to wobble. I descended the ladder quickly, expecting that at any moment there would be a crash, and gunfire.
"Stand back."
Father moved the ladder away from Fat Boy and eased it into the grass. He put his mouth against my head.
"You didn't climb that ladder."
His breath scalded my ear.
"You didn't bar that door."
He took my arm and squeezed it.
"We don't have any locks in Jeronimo."
He had gripped my arm so tightly I thought the bone would snap. He was leading me to the firebox. We had no shadows.
"I wanted you here to test your eyes. My guess is that they're as good as mine. I'll bet you can see the same things I can. Look there."
Still holding my arm in his left hand, he motioned with his other hand. Beyond the blunt finger stump was the firebox.
"Somebody's left a fire burning," he said.
But there was no fire.
I said, "I can't see it."
My hand went dead. He was squeezing hard.
"Look," he said, and struck a match and put it to a packed mass of kindling. It was all prepared — kindling, sticks, twigs, cut limbs, and split logs on top. "Somebody lit a fire here — and I told them not to."
"Yes."
He released my arm, but I could not feel a thing in my hand. It was as if, in the dark, he had pinched it off.
"No fires, I said." His face was wild.
The kindling wood must have been soaked in oil, because it went wheesht as it burst into flames and set the sticks and split logs above it chattering on fire, louder than Father's whisper. It roared against the bricks, and when Father shut the firebox door, I could hear it in the chimney, and the faintly foolish glugs of the liquid stirring in Fat Boy's pipes — swallows and burps, so sad tonight.
"We'll just have to let it burn. It's chock-full of logs. There's nothing we can do to stop it."
His voice was smaller than the rumble around us.
"Some devil has done this."
"The men—" But what could I tell him that he did not already know? He knew the men inside would freeze solid. I wanted to say something, because I saw them clearly, stretched out and gray, with frost on their faces.
"Start counting, Charlie. By the time you get to three hundred, there won't be any men in there."
He said no more. He led me back to the house in silence. He was gulping, as if he was counting too. The crackle of the fire, the swelling of Fat Boy's pipes, the creak of joints — it was like the quickened tick-tock of measured time.
Before we reached the house, we heard a rapping, a hammering inside Fat Boy — gun butts against the walls. Father went on gulping and started toward Fat Boy.
"If they lie down they'll be all right."
The hammering became frantic.
"They're trying to smash it." Father was not alarmed. He had built it himself, of mahogany planks on a bolted frame. He knew how strong Fat Boy was.
Four gunshots popped inside, then more. But they were muffled by the double walls, and I was not even sure they were shots until Father said the men were firing their guns.
"Allie, are you all right?"
It was Mother, standing on the Gallery in her white nightgown.
Father replied, but his words were drowned by the very loud noise that followed the shots — a great slamming inside Fat Boy. It was like barrels bumping downstairs over and over again. The trapped men were trying to fight their way out, beating on the door. They fired their guns, and the metal rang as their bullets hit pipes — and still the barrel-thud on the thick walls.
"Keep counting, Charlie."
Clover, April, and Jerry appeared with Mother on the Gallery. April was crying, and the others were saying, "Where's Dad?" and "What happened to Charlie?"
"What all this racky puppysho?" Mr. Haddy was behind us in his sleeping clothes — undershirt and striped shorts. He danced back and forth with fear.
"Get your head down, Figgy. Everything's going to be fine. A few minutes more—"
"What cracking?"
"Crickets."
But the noise grew louder, and there were tunnel yells, like buried-alive men screaming into dirt. That and the chiming of pipes. I knew those pipes — if you touched them, the cold metal tore the skin from your fingers. The whole building shook. The tin roof rattled. The noise in that darkness made Fat Boy seem huger than ever. The strangled echoes of so much drumming and fright, and the gunshots, made holes in the night air. The struggle was like hell in an immense coffin that had been nailed shut on people who were half alive.
"They're damaging him," Father said. He was not frightened, but hurt and angry. "They won't he down. They're going to put a hole in him."