V.

After a sleepless night on Wayne’s pullout couch, I found myself where, yesterday, our house existed. Still in soot-covered jeans and a Christmas sweater, I stood before the wreck, my breath heaving shallow in rawboned air.

Eliza and Chris were piling residue as Mom spoke with insurance agents and Josie drove home Michela. Hers was a short, baneful visit. And I wondered how insurance talks remained specific: all but my gun had been lost.

Exhausted, I glanced at harried sky above decay then offered help.

I could no longer watch suspended motion flailing like a silent film.

Every waterlogged slab felt heavy while clearing the living room floor near our hearth. Casting aside broken glass, shards of metal, ripped tarpaper; as rancid water bled on scorched foundation, I heard my cries to awake from this nightmare ignored—lost in backwards draft spiraling up the fireplace.

It was torched as charcoal, yet above the brick our pendulum clock, black with gold hands and lettering, lay slumped against the corner of a dislodged wall. Longingly I reached for another surviving good—but its edges and facing had melted in gluttonous heat—eight minutes after our departure.

Gazing at boils and sharpened points, my hands nearly their color like a gloveless chimney sweep, I stared at paralyzed hands on this melted clock—until I remembered:

“Police said a neighbor called at five of seven?”

“I think so” Mom replied, still negotiating.

“We left at quarter of seven.”

“Yes?”

“That deputy fire marshal swore I left ten minutes after you, accusing me of the crime…. Not only had our fire been reported, this clock melted at 6:53…. Those bastards were stupider than I thought.”

Nobody cared.

Mom and Eliza were outraged, demanding I “shut up” before insurance agents grew suspicious and threatened our claim.

Eliza approached, resembling Mom but smaller, her blue eyes perplexed. She informed me Dad was coming: I would take a break and help gather oysters.

I stood outside wondering: How could they? No one else sat in that car.

Apparently interrogation scars were just disruptive.

This was not how I planned to escape.

VI.

But the river was calming, tranquil on the surface though roiled beneath. In harsh light its churned depths glowed faintly: what heaven could summon in raucous December.

A low tide exposed pearl-white, translucent edges of worthy oysters. I snatched them greedily with metal tongs and filled buckets caked in mud as my wooden skiff glided through seething current.

Speaking rarely but powerfully there, Dad let nature heal—which, on his farm, never had failed.

Nothing would banish my anger—but as I stopped to rest and breathed deeply, I realized it had quieted.

Staring at nothing, into horizon, light waning, I greeted the river: a world apart, that primal awareness: salt in my lungs, slowly purifying.

As we shucked oysters, Dad’s radio played Neil Young performing “Old Man.” Rashly I had disregarded this song, thinking it overrated: people rarely like greatness.

But I felt raw enough to listen. While opening chords rang, Dad said “I loved this long before I was twenty-four.” Now I would.

The pain in his voice, channeled with clenched fists through subtle poetry, confessed in ethereal vocals, was riveting. I knew Young had truly suffered (rare in artists today), but it was understated: not proclaimed or hidden. Revealing experience for its own sake, he laid bare the “mileage” of volatile life at twenty-four.

This is how it would feel, I thought—and felt understood.

VII.

In no hurry to visit debris, I stayed on Dad’s farm, fitfully sleeping a few hours.

Images of smoldering ash plagued me, along with questions: Who or what caused the fire? How did it start and progress so quickly? Where was our cat?

Answers evaded as I writhed under blankets: mentally back in our rotting home, sensing peril.

The next morning, I waded through swollen chunks of former decoration: couch springs, broken portrait frames, iron candle fixtures blackened. Now I recognized goods that once absorbed our surrounding happiness.

Footsteps heavy, I moved like a Dickens specter through gray air filling charred outlines: a funeral march for lost childhood.

The kitchen was littered. I resolved to clear more black waste.

A terrible scream pierced unquiet stillness. I lunged toward our backyard.

Eliza was in the old utility room, hunched forward, staggering to avoid a fall into rubble. I caught her first, gripping above her elbows.

Two more screams rang while I clutched her: irregular explosions, devastating like a gun being emptied, variations of “No!”

Then a similar, anguished word escaped her twisted body.

It was the name Beau.

His legs and tail sprawled beneath sheets of fallen ceiling.

A Cause and Origin man later explained: Beau ran once the fire started but collapsed near the back door from smoke inhalation. Housing then crashed on his body, shielding Beau partially from ravenous flames.

Our cat was dead.

I threw my arms around Eliza, holding my last strength against what broke her.

As ruins spun around us, black shards hanging like smiling teeth, we clung to each other and quieted vertigo.

A friend rolled Beau into a piece of carpet then carried him away. His singed tail protruded like that of a rabid fox.

Eliza withdrew and thanked me, wiping her eyes.

Timidly she looked up and said: “This is so unfair.”

It was the kindest I had seen her.

Hours later, I received a message: Beau was in the ground.

Next Chapter: Higher Education (Chapter Ten)