Hard News

Twinkies, which she loved. She started working on one and then wandered around the small kitchen to see what she could find to play with.
    Not a lot. There was, however, a large filleting knife on the counter that intrigued her. She picked it up and pretended it was a sword, like in one of Rune’s books, stabbing the refrigerator a few times.
    Rune, watching this, was making more noise, and started jiggling around, rocking and swaying back and forth.
    The girl then looked into drawers and opened up some pretty-much-unused cookbooks, looking for pictures of ducks, dragons or princesses. The books contained only photos of soups and casseroles and cakes and after five minutes she gave up on them and started playing with the knobs on the stove. They were old and heavy, glistening chrome and trimmed with red paint. Courtney reached up and turned one all the way to the right. Way above her head was a
pop
. She couldn’t see the top of the stove and she didn’t know what the sound came from but she liked it.
Pop
.
    She turned the second knob.
Pop
.
    Rune’s voice was louder now though the little girl still couldn’t understand a word of it.
    With the third
pop
she got tired of the stove game. That was because something else happened. There was suddenly a red glare from above her head, a hissing sputter, then flames.
    Courtney stepped back and watched the juice carton burn. The flaming wax shot off the side of the carton like miniature fireworks. One piece of burning cardboard fell onto the table and set a week-old
New York Post
on fire. A cookbook
(A Hundred Glorious Jell-O Desserts)
went next.
    Courtney loved the flames and watched them creep slowly along the table. They reminded her of something … A movie about a baby animal? A deer? A big fire in a forest? She squinted and tried to remember but soon lost the association and stood back to watch.
    She thought it was great when the flames quickly peeled away the Breeds-of-Dog contact paper Rune had painstakingly mounted on the walls with rubber cement.
    Then they spread up to the ceiling and the back wall of the houseboat.
    When the fire became too hot Courtney moved back a little farther but she was in no hurry to leave. This was wonderful. She remembered another movie. She thought for a minute. Yeah, it was like the scene where Wizardoz was yelling at Dorothy and her little dog. All the smoke and flames … Everybody falling on the floor while the big face puffed and shouted … But this was better than that. This was better than Peter Rabbit. It was even better than Saturday morning TV.

    chapter 26    
     
    THE TOURISTS COINCIDENTALLY WERE FROM OHIO, RUNE’S home state.
    They were a middle-aged couple, driving a Winnebago from Cleveland to Maine because the wife had always wanted to see the Maine coast and because they both loved lobster. The itinerary would take them through New York, up to Newport, then on to Boston, Salem and finally into Kennebunkport, which had been featured in
Parade
magazine a year before.
    But they made an unplanned stop in Manhattan and that was to report a serious fire on the Hudson River.
    Cruising up from the Holland Tunnel, they noticed a column of black smoke off to their left, coming, it seemed, right out of the river. They slowed, like almost everybody else was doing, and saw an old houseboat burning furiously. Traffic was at a crawl and they eased forward, listening for the sirens. The husband looked around to find a place to pull off to get out of the way of the fire trucks when they arrived.
    But none did.
    They waited four, five minutes. Six.
    She asked, “You’d think somebody’d’ve called by now, wouldn’t you, dear?”
    “You’d think.”
    They were astonished because easily a hundred cars had gone by but it seemed that nobody had bothered to call 911. Maybe figuring somebody else had. Or not figuring anything at all, just watching the houseboat burn.
    The husband, an ex-marine and head of his local Chamber of Commerce, a man with no aversion to getting involved, drove the Winnebago up over the curb onto the sidewalk. He braked to a fast halt in front of the pier where the flames roared. He took the big JCPenney triple-class fire extinguisher from the rack beside his seat and rushed outside.
    The wife ran to a pay phone while he kicked in the front door of the houseboat. The smoke wasn’t too bad inside; the hole in the rear ceiling of the houseboat acted like a chimney and was sucking most of it out.