Burning Truth, page 14
“Is that another word for stupid?”
“No, Austin, it means you went on instinct, so I want to know what fed your instinct.”
“If we knew that, we’d always trust it,” Austin said.
“Very astute observation, young man,” Anderson said. “So, whatever it was that drove you inside a building that was ready to collapse, you did it, you found the victim pinned beneath a heavy beam and instead of radioing for help, you took it upon yourself to save the man.”
“There was no time to ask for help. Like you said, the roof was collapsing.”
“And later, when you found out it was your father who you rescued?”
“It didn’t matter. I did my job, period.”
“What does your father say about the experience? Why was he there to begin with?”
“He said he was reminiscing. He’d just gotten back to White Pine recently, and it was the first place he wanted to see. I think he was staying there, even though it was largely uninhabitable. Who knows, maybe he had some happy memories there as a child, I didn’t ask.”
“You haven’t talked to him?”
“Despite the fact he’s living at my house, no, I’ve tried to avoid him.”
“Why is that?” Anderson asked, “if you don’t mind my prying.”
Austin shrugged. “I haven’t talked to him because I hate him. He abandoned us, just like that old house, and I have no doubt that he’ll eventually leave us just as scarred as that old place.”
“Meaning you don’t trust him,” Anderson said.
The fire inspector was obviously playing the heavy here, having taken command of the interview from Chief O’Connell. What Austin couldn’t figure out was why they wanted to know so much about Allan Walker and why he might have been nosing around his own property, even if he hadn’t been there in twenty years. Was it coincidence that Allan’s return coincided with the house going up in flames? Was it an accident, perhaps from a lit cigarette or a dropped match? Had Allan watched helplessly as fresh flame caught the dry embers? A sudden chill ran through Austin, and he peered up with wide, fearful eyes at the two men who stared back at him.
“You think he set it deliberately?”
The men looked at each other, the inspector nodding at O’Connell. “It’s a theory.”
“But why?”
“Allan Walker has led a checkered life, in and out of prison his whole life, never for too long but always being sent back, mostly on parole violations. Arson has never been part of repertoire, but desperate times make men take that next step. We’d like you to do some digging, see what you can find out,” Anderson said. “Don’t be obvious, we don’t want to spook him if it’s true. Man like him, he’s prone to run.”
“What about the police?”
“They have their own investigation, based on our report right here,” Anderson said, “but first we want to see if we can glean some, shall we say, insider info.”
“So you want me to sell out my father.”
Chief O’Connell was brutal in his reply. “Why not. Didn’t he abandon you?”
Austin was dismissed a few minutes later, his mind swirling with conflict. It’s not that he feared his father, he didn’t even respect him, and if he was guilty of setting fire to the house then he had to pay the price. But at what price? Destroying his wife once again, leaving her renewed hopes like the forgotten, cold ashes still to be found at the old house. And just how was he to get his father to open up to him—forthright, honestly, when Austin hadn’t exactly welcomed him with open arms? Contempt had been more like it, silence usually winning out over starting an argument. He found he just didn’t care what this man’s excuse was for disappearing on them all these years ago. Forgiveness had a statute of limitations.
Austin stepped out of the fire station to a soggy morning, the second in a row, with rain pelting down on White Pine, encroaching heavy gray clouds giving the village a greater sense of isolation from the rest of the world. As though what happened here existed in their minds as much as in reality. He dashed out, turning the coat of his collar up, barely protecting him from the rain as he made his way to his car. Safely behind the wheel, he wiped at the condensation on the windshield, turned the engine and then realized he had no idea where he was going. Back home, where no doubt his mother and father were sharing a second cup of coffee as she lamented the lost years between them. Austin couldn’t see him joining them, even if he was doing it with ulterior motives.
He also didn’t want to alert his mother to what the chief had charged him with.
Austin Walker realized he was on a cover mission. Operation: Betrayal.
It was something Allan Walker knew much about.
Suddenly Austin knew just where to go, and he pulled out of the fire station lot, cutting through back roads and winding along the foothills of the mountain range that encircled the White Pine valley. At last he turned onto a dead end street, where the very last house was not even a shell anymore, reduced by flames to a pile of charred wood that had turned memories into ash. Not caring about the falling rain, he hopped out and stood before the edge of the property. The grass was brown from the winter, blackened from the fire. It was hard to tell whether the wet wood was the result of the workmanship of the fire department, or the effects of Mother Nature’s incumbent storm. He supposed it didn’t matter how something got destroyed, it was the fact that it was gone.
“It’s a shame, isn’t it?”
Startled, Austin spun around at the sound of the voice, failing to realize it came from in front of him.
“I’m over here.”
Austin faced forward, took a step in the misty rain, seeing first a shadowy figure before it came into better focus. What was he doing here?
“Dad?”
“I think that’s the first time you’ve called me that,” said Allan Walker.
Not to be taken by surprise, Austin said, “Nah, I’m sure I used it when I was a child.”
“You know what I mean, son.”
“Don’t call me that.”
“You called me Dad, it’s only fair. And it’s the truth.”
“The only truth is that you left us, and I don’t understand why you came back.”
“Because when a man has regrets, he wants to see if he can right them.”
“He can’t,” Austin said.
“Tell me that when you’re my age, tell me you won’t have any regrets about life.”
Austin took another step forward, edging down the worn walkway that had once led to the front door. It’s where his feet had been planted ten days ago. Now he was back, revisiting the scene of the fiery crime, if the fire inspector was to be believed. Someone had intentionally torched the house and it was Austin’s job to find out if the arsonist was the man standing before him. It was an unenviable situation.
“What are you doing here?” Austin asked.
“I could ask the same of you,” he said, his eyes growing cautious.
“Sometimes I return to the scene of a fire, it helps gives me perspective on the job I did. Helps me learn and hopefully not make the same mistakes I made. Uh, this is my second stop, I just came from the site of the Lucky Scent factory.”
“No you didn’t,” he said.
“Excuse me?”
“Don’t lie to me, Austin. You were at the fire house.”
“How do you know that?”
“The phone call this morning, your mother answered it, didn’t she?”
She had, and she’d called upstairs to Austin because he’d still been in bed, telling him it was the chief on the other end. Austin had taken the call in his room…had he heard his mother disconnect on the other line? “You were listening to the call?”
“I like to stay informed,” he said.
“No, you were spying on me.”
“I wanted to talk to you, Austin, privately, away from your mother.”
“You mean you didn’t want her to hear what you’ve done. Tell me, Allan, is she aware of your prison record?”
Allan took a step closer, impervious to the rain and puddles. Austin was younger, he knew he was stronger, but if he’d learned anything about desperate men it’s that they were unpredictable, and Allan Walker wore the look of desperation as well as he did his sinister smile. My God, this man was his father, and he’d failed at it once, and now here he was doing it again. Only this time is seemed like he was taking pleasure in his misery.
“Stay away from me,” Austin said, backing up.
“I’m not going to hurt you, you’re my son.”
That made Austin laughed out loud. “That’s all you do, hurt people. Mom.”
“Your mother understands,” he said.
“Understands what? Mom knows nothing about what you’ve done.”
“What I’ve done, hmm, that’s interesting. And you’re going to tell her…what, exactly?”
Tell her what, Austin thought, and realized that’s just what Allan was doing. Attempting to get him to reveal the real reason he’d returned to the scene of the fire and what was discussed in the meeting this morning. Surely he’d seen the fire inspector’s official vehicle. All at once Austin knew the awful truth: his father had burned this place down deliberately, and if so, why had he remained inside? Was it his plan all along to be rescued by the fire department and return to Alberta’s arm riding a wave of sympathy? Was it chance that Austin had rescued him, or had he somehow manipulated that situation, too?
“It’s best if you left again. Don’t tell us, just leave.”
“I just got back,” he said. “I’m enjoying myself, being back home.”
“You didn’t have any trouble leaving the first time.”
“Oh, Austin, your mother didn’t raise you to be so judgmental.”
“You don’t know anything about how she raised me, and you never will.”
“Coddled you is what she did, turned you into a fag,” he said with a sudden sneer. From his pocket he withdrew a box of matches, lifted one out and struck it. The flame sizzled, caused Austin’s eyes to narrow. “Back in my day, a fag was a pile of sticks. You know what you do with sticks? You light them, and you watch them burn. Maybe we should still be doing that, huh…son? Burning fags?”
Austin felt his blood begin to boil, but he pushed the words down into his gut. Allan wanted to goad him, he could see that now. He stood his ground, waiting for more.
“The other day, Austin, you were upset about that fire where you almost cost your co-worker his life…and what happens, you console yourself with your little boyfriend who comes over and fucks you right there in your mother’s shower…that’s disgusting, Austin, what you and that pervert do…did. I thought you were a man, but you’re just a little pansy. Tucker, too. Bunch of faggots run this town.”
Austin’s fist reacted faster than his mind. He connected with Allan smack in the face and knocked him hard to the ground. He knew he shouldn’t have done it, but the way his heart beat, the satisfaction he felt deep inside his broken soul seeing the man back where he’d been found, on the ground amidst burned rubble, it was somehow appropriate. If he had never gone into that house his past might have stayed buried, burned unrecognizable.
Wiping a trickle of blood from the corner of his mouth, Allan said, with obvious scorn in his voice said, “You’re no son of mine.”
Austin Walker, not usually quick-witted, had his retort ready anyway. “Finally, Dad, we agree on something.”
§ § §
He probably shouldn’t have had that last beer, his sixth.
Then again his life was filled with things he shouldn’t have done, most recently smacking his deadbeat dad in the face. He was at Sally’s Dive and had been since four in the afternoon, taking advantage of happy hour, all while avoiding going home to deal with the disappointment he’d no doubt find on his mother’s face. He couldn’t, and never would, accept this man as his father, but did that mean he had to deny his mother a chance at happiness? Allan would hurt her in the end, it’s what he did, but until then shouldn’t she be allowed to think dreams were possible even when awake? Austin was convinced Allan had set the fire, and Allan had essentially admitted it. But Austin had no proof.
“Slugger, you look like you could use a good friend, and probably a cup of coffee.”
“Sally, I think what I need is one more beer.”
“Not on my watch, kid.”
“Don’t call me that,” he said, his words slightly slurred.
“Oh, someone’s done you a wrong,” she said. “Can’t find a way to make it right?”
“What, you turning into a country music singer, Sal?”
She laughed at that one. “You hang out behind this bar long enough, you hear it all.”
Apparently she’d seen it all in her day and decided Austin wasn’t yet so incapacitated that he couldn’t handle one more beer, so she set it before him and he stared, glassy-eyed at it, as though transfixed by the beads of water sliding down the label. He picked it up, raised it to the heavens as if to finally join in on that toast to fathers he’d ignored up at the cabin, and then thought better of it. His father wasn’t dead yet, at least physically. He took a small sip, and then reconsidered his toast.
“To the Dad I should have had,” he said.
After setting down his beer, he put his bruised fist against the cold bottle.
He didn’t notice the person sliding onto the bar stool next to him, not immediately.
“Drowning your sorrows, Austin?”
He turned, focused, his mind a complete blank. “Nick, that you?”
“Am I so forgettable you don’t even recognize me anymore?”
“Sorry, I think it’s the beer,” he said, his voice slurring more. “Now there may be two of you.”
Nick Lynch waved Sally’s way and she served him a draft.
“He’s had a few,” Sally said.
“So I see. I’ll look after him, and if he becomes too much we’ll call Tucker.”
“Thanks, Nick. You’re one of the good ones.”
Her words seemed to cause a reaction in Nick, a frown that even Austin could discern.
“She’s right, Nick, you are a good guy, one of our best,” he said. “Hot, too.”
He nodded, and he drank. “Does that mean I finish last?”
“Uh-oh, trouble in paradise?”
“I doubt it was ever paradise,” Nick said. “Some things work out, some don’t.”
“Joey Silva’s a pig,” Austin said, “but he’s also sexy and fucks good.”
The beer was talking, bringing out honesty in both of them. “Crude as that sounds, yeah, it’s true. I think that’s what I got caught up in, his insatiable appetite. You kind of get sucked in that world of his….”
“All those mirrors, it’s like eight guys are fucking you.”
Nick laughed. “He’s hung enough for eight.”
“So, you and Joey, are you on the outs, or are you for-real done?”
Taking a long sip of beer, Nick stared straight ahead, like the answer was printed on the wall ahead. “I think I deluded myself, thinking he would change for me. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I knew his reputation from the start—hell, you told me to be careful, he used you during the Fire Ball contest, and then when he became interim chief that young recruit, Gil, fell hard for him, and I know they fooled around. Joey Silva just can’t keep it in his pants.”
“Maybe because it doesn’t fit,” Austin said, with a snort.
“In any case, I see what Trent and Angel have, I know there’s no way Joey would want to settle down, certainly not now, and I guess not with me. I think I’m too…
“Honorable,” Austin said.
“Maybe I just don’t like to lie, and finally that includes lying to myself. I came to White Pine to forget my past, but I never really let myself I had moved on. Life here put me in limbo, and believe me, I enjoyed myself. Sex with Joey had a way of making time somehow stand still and move forward at the same time. I know he’s moved on with another guy—that photographer, Ellis Van Pelt. Funny name, isn’t it? I think Ellis found out what a real pelt felt like.”
Austin drained the last of his beer, and when he set the bottle down it slipped out of his hand and went flying across the smooth surface of the bar. Austin reached out to try and catch it before it crashed to the floor and in doing so he lost his balance. The bottle never reached the floor, but Austin did, the bar stool falling with him, landing on top of his head. A bunch of the regulars reacted, a few helping but others mostly giving a very drunk Austin a wide berth.
“Guess I should have cut him off before that last one,” Sally said.
Nick hoisted Austin up off the ground and put a strong arm around his shoulder. He led him outside into the rain, which turned out to help the situation. Cold drops fell down on his face and he stirred from his daze, enough to let Nick led him to his car. He managed to get him in the passenger seat, went around to the driver’s side.
“Austin, are you okay? Can you focus?
“Yeah, I think that fall actually woke me up more than the rain.”
“So, where am I taking you? You’re off duty, obviously. Home?”
Austin allowed himself a laugh. He could picture it now. Coming home shit-faced, his so-called father would have a field day on him, poison his mother against him by showing what a no good son he was. First he fucks his boyfriend under her roof, then he punches his father, then he comes home drunk. Home was the last place he felt comfortable anymore.
“The station house. I’ll bunk there for the night.”
Nick nodded as he drove, and in a few minutes he’d pulled up in front of the White Pine Fire Department. Fortunately the guys were out on a call, so Nick was able to get Austin up the stairs without having to endure the humiliation his fellow brothers would put him through. Once upstairs, Austin fell to the bottom bunk, face up, staring up at the springs of the bunk above him. He thought they might be spinning. He lifted his shirt to block the image, fumbling with it until it was finally off.
“Thanks, Nick,” Austin said, running a hand across his chest.
Nick told him to think nothing of it before leaving for a moment. He returned with a wet cloth, which he placed on Austin’s forehead. He rubbed Austin’s temples, and Austin told him that was actually making him feel better.
