Townie_ A Memoir - Andre Dubus [34]
They didn’t say anything, and I didn’t either. Then they were back downstairs and I walked into my room. Rain pattered against the window. The only light was gray and shadowed, and I flicked on the overhead bulb. Lately I’d been making my bed some mornings, pulling the top blanket or bedspread tight at the corners. I could see it was still made but rumpled, and there, in the middle of my mattress, was a spot of wetness the size of a quarter.
ONE WEEKDAY morning I’d somehow woken before anyone else and went down into the kitchen to see what there might be to eat. Usually the inside of the fridge was nearly empty shelves, but I was reaching for its handle anyway when I heard the hissing. I turned to see the blue flames of the front burner. It had been going all night. Inches away was a greasy Burger King bag on a stack of dirty dishes, and I rushed over and switched off the gas. The air was warm and smelled like scorched metal.
That night, long after everyone was in bed, I lay on my mattress and pictured the flames climbing the walls, thick smoke filling the hallway, snaking under our doors, blackening the glass of the windows, suffocating us before the fire even made it to where we slept. I got up and went downstairs and checked the knobs of the oven and stove. I touched each one five times, turning it to OFF and holding it there. But this did not seem to be enough. I moved to anything electrical and unplugged it, too. I started with the kitchen clock. I hurried to the lamps in the living room, even the stereo and TV, unplugging them all. Then I moved quickly to the front door and checked the lock, again having to touch the cool metal five times to make sure. I crept through the dark house to the back door and did the same there. Then I climbed the stairs and lay in bed and tried to sleep. I’d think of my brother wanting to die; I’d see the exhaust pipe and the vacuum cleaner hose, and I’d hear the drums on the radio, feel the carbon monoxide entering my lungs like a thief.
JEB AND I began building again. The backyard was small and square, probably thirty feet by thirty feet, but in the far corner away from the house was that tall beech tree. Tacked into its trunk at its base was the corner post for the side and rear fences, short rotting planks on rails, the one we hopped over to get to Cleary’s house down the back alley to Main Street. It was the one we hauled our stolen lumber over, too.
Cleary helped us. At the bottom of the avenues on Primrose Street, not far from a Catholic church and cemetery, was a lumberyard. They kept most of their wood outside under tarps surrounded by a ten-foot chain-link fence, but there was no barbed wire at the top and lately they’d been tossing used pallets on the sidewalk outside.
At night, long after we’d eaten and Mom had dozed off, Jeb and Cleary and I would run down Seventh past the lighted noise of the apartments, the dogs barking, TVs blaring. We’d get down to Primrose where every other streetlamp was out, the lumberyard lit up with only one security light over the door to the office, and we’d check the street for a passing cruiser, then stack those pallets and climb up and over, the points of the fence sometimes catching on our pants or shirts, and we’d drop down onto a stack of plywood and head for the eight-foot two-by-fours and two-by-sixes. They were pale white in the shadows and smelled like dry wood and were hard and smooth under our hands, and we yanked them from their stack and leaned them against the fence, then pushed them up and over to the first of us down on the other side.
We needed nails, too. The office and warehouse were locked and there was that light over the office door, but lying in the black shadows around the corner were discarded sections of steel bands that had been cut away from what they’d held together. There was loose rope and spools of cable, more pallets, and all along the asphalt up against the warehouse were scattered