Cold Fire

disturbing than the sound itself. The cries had been like the hiss of a sparking fuse as it burned down toward an explosive charge. As long as she could hear the sound, the explosion was still preventable.
    “And that's why I figure Jim thought he should've been able to save them,” Henry said. “Because he could do those little things with his mind, float and move things, he thought he should've been able maybe to jam the bullets in that crazy man's gun, freeze the trigger, lock the safety in place, something, something …”
    “Could he have done that?”
    “Yeah, maybe. But he was just a scared little boy. To do those things with pennies and records and cake tins, he had to concentrate. No time to concentrate when the bullets started flying that day.”
    Holly remembered the murderous sound: chuda-chuda-chuda-chuda …
    “So when we brought him back from Atlanta, he would hardly talk, just a word or two now and then. Wouldn't meet your eyes. Something died in him when Jamie and Cara died, and we could never bring it back again, no matter how much we loved him and how hard we tried. His power died, too. Or seemed to. He never did one of his tricks again, and after a lot of years it was sometimes hard to believe he'd ever done those strange things when he was little.”
    In spite of his good spirits, Henry Ironheart had looked every one of his eighty years. Now he appeared to be far older, ancient.
    He said, “Jimmy was so strange after Atlanta, so unreachable and full of rage … sometimes it was possible to love him and still be a little afraid of him. Later, God forgive me, I suspected him of…”
    “I know,” Holly said.
    His slack features tightened, and he looked sharply at her.
    “Your wife,” she said. “Lena. The way she died.”
    More thickly than usual, he said, “You know so much.”
    “Too much,” she said. “Which is funny. Because all my life I've known too little.”
    Henry looked down at his culpable hands again. “How could I believe that a boy of ten, even a disturbed boy, could've shoved her down the mill stairs when he loved her so much? Too many years later, I saw that I'd been so damned cruel to him, so unfeeling, so damned stupid. By then, he wouldn't give me the chance to apologize for what I'd done … what I'd thought. After he left for college, he never came back. Not once in more than thirteen years, until I had my stroke.”
    He came back once, Holly thought, nineteen years after Lena's death, to face up to it and put flowers on her grave.
    Henry said, “If there was some way I could explain to him, if he'd just give me one chance….”
    “He's here now,” Holly said, getting up again.
    The weight of fear that pulled on the old man's face made him appear even more gaunt than he had been. “Here?”
    “He's come to give you that chance,” was all that Holly could say. “Do you want me to take you to him?”
     

----
     
    The blackbirds were flocking. Eight of them had gathered now in the sky above, circling.
    Once upon a midnight dreary,
    while I pondered, weak and weary
    Over many a quaint and curious volume
    of forgotten lore —
    While I nodded, nearly napping,
    suddenly there came a tapping,
    As of some one gently rapping,
    rapping at my chamber door.
    To the real birds above, Jim whispered, “ 'Quoth the Raven, Nevermore.' ”
    He heard a soft rhythmic creaking, as of a wheel going around and around, and footsteps. When he looked up, he saw Holly pushing his wheelchair-bound grandfather along the walkway toward the bench.
    Eighteen years had passed since he had gone away to school, and he had seen Henry only once before in all this time. Initially, there had been a few telephone calls, but soon Jim stopped making those and, eventually, stopped accepting them as well. When letters came, he threw them away unopened. He remembered all of that now—and he was beginning to remember why.
    He began to rise. His legs would not support him. He remained on the bench.
     

----
     
    Holly parked the wheelchair facing Jim, then sat beside him. “How you doing?” Nodding dumbly, he glanced up at the birds circling against the ashen clouds, rather than face his grandfather.
    The old man could not look at Jim, either. He studied the beds of flowers intently, as if he had been in a great rush to get outside and have a look at those blooms and nothing else.
    Holly knew this was not going to be easy. She was sympathetic toward each of the men and wanted to do her best