Life Expectancy

finished painting the potbelly pig and started work on a portrait of the baby. Perhaps she had restricted herself to animal subjects for too many years, because on her new canvas, our sweet little girl had a weird resemblance to a bunny rabbit.
        Annie didn't keep us as busy as I expected. She was a perfect baby.
        She didn't cry. She hardly fussed. She slept through the night-baker's night, from nine in the morning until four o'clock in the afternoon- better than any of us.
        I almost wished she would turn cranky just to distract me from thoughts of the fugitive Beezo.
        Even with a police officer in the house at all times, I was glad that I had a pistol of my own and that I had taken instruction in its proper use.
        I noticed that Lorrie always kept a sharp knife close at hand-and an apple that she said she intended to peel and eat "in a little while."
        By Saturday morning, the apple had withered somewhat, and she exchanged it for a pear.
        Usually you peel fruit with a paring knife. Lorrie preferred the blade named for the butcher.
        Dad, bless his heart, came home with two baseball bats. They weren't those modern aluminum kind, but solid-wood Louisville Sluggers. He'd never had an interest in guns and had no time to learn. He gave one bat to Mom.
        No one asked him why he hadn't bought a third bat for Grandma. With no strain at all, each of us could conjure up a vivid mind movie to explain his decision.
        Finally the terrible day came.
        Monday was a day off for Dad, and from midnight Sunday until dawn on January 19, the six of us gathered in the dining room. We fortified ourselves with cookies and kugelhopf and streusel and pots of black coffee.
        We kept the drapes tight shut. The conversation was as fluent as ever, but we spoke in softer voices than usual, and from time to time we all fell silent, heads cocked, listening to the settling noises of the house and to the snuffling wind in the eaves.
        Dawn came without a clown.
        The sky had aged again, gray and bearded.
        Our police guards changed shifts. The officer leaving took a bag of cookies with him; the new arrival brought an empty bag with him.
        As the rest of the world went to work, our bedtime came. Only Grandma and the baby were able to sleep.
        Monday morning waned without incident.
        Noon came, and afternoon.
        Guards changed again at four o'clock, and little more than an hour later, the early winter twilight descended.
        The uneventfulness of the day did not reassure me. Quite the opposite.
        As we came to the last six hours, every nerve in my body wound tighter than an efficiency expert's watch spring.
        In that condition, I would most likely use my pistol only to shoot myself in the foot. Another moment of family history worthy of a needlepoint pillow.
        At seven o'clock, Huey Foster called to inform me that our house on Hawksbill Road was ablaze. Firemen reported that the intensity of the flames indicated arson.
        My first impulse was to race out to the fire, be there, do something.
        Officer Paolini-who happened to be our bodyguard that shift- made a convincing case that Beezo might have set the fire with the purpose of drawing me out in the open. I stayed with my wife, my daughter, my well-armed family.
        By eight o'clock, we learned that our house had burned to the ground with such fury that nothing remained but hot coals. Evidently the interior had been liberally doused with gasoline before the match had been struck.
        No furniture could be salvaged. No kitchen utensils, no clothes. No mementoes.
        We returned to the dining-room table, this time for dinner, no less worried, no less alert. When ten o'clock came without further activity, however, we began to wonder if the worst that would happen had already passed.
        Losing your house and all of your possessions in a fire is not a good thing, granted, but it's a lot better than being shot twice in the leg and immeasurably better than having your beautiful infant daughter kidnapped by a maniac.
        We were prepared to make this bargain with fate: Take the house and all our possessions, no hard feelings, as long as we know we'll be safe until the third of Grandpa Josef's terrible days-Monday, December 23, 2002. That price for nearly four years of peace seemed cheap.
        By eleven