Dead as a Doornail

today, to my relief. He was smiling as he smacked away at the charred boards of the back porch with a sledgehammer. Though the day was very cool, Terry wore only a sleeveless T-shirt tucked in his jeans. It covered most of the dreadful scars. After greeting himand registering that he didn’t want to talk, I went in through the front door. I was drawn down the hall to the kitchen to look again at the damage.
    The firefighters had said the floor was safe. It made me nervous to step out onto the scorched linoleum, but after a moment or two, I felt easier. I pulled on gloves and began to work, going through cabinets and cupboards and drawers. Some things had melted or twisted with the heat. A few things, like my plastic colander, were so warped it took me a second or two to identify what I was holding.
    I tossed the ruined things directly out the south kitchen window, away from Terry.
    I didn’t trust any of the food that had been in the cabinets that were on the outer wall. The flour, the rice, the sugar—they’d all been in Tupperware containers, and though the seals had held, I just didn’t want to use the contents. The same held true of the canned goods; for some reason, I felt uneasy about using food from cans that had gotten so hot.
    Fortunately, my everyday stoneware and the good china that had belonged to my great-great-grandmother had survived, since they were in the cabinet farthest from the flames. Her sterling silver was in fine shape, too. My far more useful stainless tableware, much closer to the fire, was warped and twisted. Some of the pots and pans were usable.
    I worked for two or three hours, consigning things to the growing pile outside the window or bagging them in Jason’s garbage bags for future use in a new kitchen. Terry worked hard, too, taking a break every now and then to drink bottled water while he perched on the tailgate of his pickup. The temperature rose to the upper sixties. We might have a few more hard frosts, and there was always the chance of an ice storm, but it was possible to count on spring coming soon.
    It wasn’t a bad morning. I felt like I was taking a step toward regaining my home. Terry was an undemanding companion, since he didn’t like to talk, and he was exorcising his demons with hard work. Terry was in his late fifties now. Some of the chest hair I could see above his T-shirt neck was gray. The hair on his head, once auburn, was fading as he aged. But he was a strong man, and he swung his sledgehammer with vigor and loaded boards onto the flatbed of his truck with no sign of strain.
    Terry left to take a load to the parish dump. While he was gone, I went into my bedroom and made my bed—a strange and foolish thing to do, I know. I would have to take the sheets off and wash them; in fact, I’d have to wash almost every piece of fabric in the house to completely rid it of the smell of burning. I’d even have to wash the walls and repaint the hall, though the paint in the rest of the house seemed clean enough.
    I was taking a break out in the yard when I heard a truck approaching a moment before it appeared, coming out of the trees that surrounded the driveway. To my astonishment, I recognized it as Alcide’s truck, and I felt a pang of dismay. I’d told him to stay away.
    He seemed miffed about something when he leaped out of the cab. I’d been sitting in the sunshine on one of my aluminum lawn chairs, wondering what time it was and wondering when the contractor would get here. After the all-round discomfort of my night at Jason’s, I was also planning on finding somewhere else to stay while the kitchen was being rebuilt. I couldn’t imagine the rest of my house being habitable until the work was complete, and that might be months from now. Jason wouldn’t want me around that long, I was sure. He’d have to put up with me if I wanted to stay—he was my brother, after all—but I didn’t want to strain his fraternal spirit. There wasn’t anyone Iwanted to stay with for a couple of months, when I came to consider the matter.
    “Why didn’t you tell me?” Alcide bellowed as his feet touched the ground.
    I sighed. Another angry man.
    “We aren’t big buddies right now,” I reminded him. “But I would have gotten around to it. It’s only been a couple of days.”
    “You should have called me first thing,” he told me, striding around the house to survey the damage. He stopped right in front of me. “You could have died,” he said, as if it was