Conflagration

XXIV

The phone resting in the Jeep's cupholder vibrated for several seconds as Bill turned down Francois Road.

                                                                                  AMBER Alert:

Schodack, TN LIC/AKX – XXXX

                                                                         (TN) Toyota T100, Truck

He began to tremble again after the deputies finished questioning him and he gripped the steering wheel hard to prevent his hands from shaking. He pulled up alongside the mail truck and when he got out he thought he was going to be sick for a second time. Cold sweat on his forehead and under his arms. Had his thoughts not been elsewhere he may have noticed the tire tracks angling around the back of the house. He dropped his keys three times trying to slip them into the deadbolt before he managed to open the front door.

He took two steps into the living room and stopped. The TV was on and the window beside it was half open. A breeze was blowing through.

"Hey Billy."

Sam sat at the kitchen table before a handful of empty beer cans. A small duffel bag rested in front of him and it looked like he'd been staring at it in silence. Bill reached up and clutched his chest.

"Damnit Sam. I almost killed you."

"How?"

"You just been sitting here? Drinking all my mom's beer?"

"Yeah."

"What're you doing sneaking around?"

"Didn't have nowhere else to go."

"You what? What's in the bag?"

And then Sam looked at him. Both eyes were black pits about the color of coal. What Bill saw there made him afraid. He looked empty. Like his soul had been exorcised and this collection of skin and tissue was all that remained. A crunching mechanical sound rang out from the TV and a banner ran across the bottom of the screen like ticker tape announcing the same message he'd received on his phone.

"It's been goin about every five minutes." He looked down at his lap with great solemnity. "Lord Billy. It's all on me. I fucked this whole thing up."

Bill stared at him for a moment and then fished a beer of his own out of the fridge. He took a deep breath and sat beside Sam at the table.

"Alright," he said. "Tell me."

"It's them."

"I know it's them. That's what I'm tryin to tell you."

The two had talked until the sun began to come in sideways through the slits in the blinds. They kept the TV on but it was muted. They eyed each alert that was issued in case something had come up. The Sheriff's department was organizing a volunteer search party that would gather in town later that night. Distant sounds of helicopters overhead.

"How can you be sure? Everyone around here's got an old truck somewhere."

Sam had moved to water and sipped it gingerly. "I worked on that old man's land last summer. He kept that truck tuned up in one of his sheds. Purple stripe across it and everything. Like somethin from the nineties."

"So what?"

"So what is that his niece is that mute girl who kicks around with Bryce Dunham. And I just stole fifty grand from them while they were meth'd out of their skulls. Probably makes sense that they'd do somethin so damn stupid. I only had a few lines and look what I done."