Something I've Been Meaning to Tell You

any legs! He’s not going to walk out of there, is he? He’s in there yet.”
    “Jesus,” a man said reverently. “Jesus, he’ll be fried!”
    The sound the fire made was surprising. It was like something scraping, like boards, or a lawn mower being dragged over concrete. I had never thought a fire would sound like that. A harsh, busy noise, the sort people call a racket. Inside this racket was Stump Troy yelling, was he calling out for help? If he was, the fire was too loud for him, nobody could hear.
    It was not yet midnight, so most people had not gone to bed, or had been ready to get up again. The road was clogged with cars now. Many people were just sitting in the cars, watching, but there were plenty of them out, too, wandering after the firemen or standing against the fence, their faces lighted up. Even children did not run around, the fire took too much of their attention. I saw Robina’s young brothers and sisters, some of them at least. They must have seen the fire from their place—by this time there would be a proclamatory light in the sky—and walked all this way to it, through the bush at night. Robina saw them too and called to them at once.
    “Florence! Carter! Findley! You stay back out of this!”
    They were staying back anyway, they were not as near as we were.
    She did not ask where Jimmy and Duval were, who would surely not have wanted to miss a sight like this. I yelled it for her.
    “Florence! Where are Jimmy and Duval?”
    Robina with a swing of her one full arm caught me across the face, across the mouth, the hardest blow I had ever felt, or was likely to feel. It was so sudden I thought it had something to do with the fire (for people all along had been saying, “Watch out, the whole thing’s going to give way, boards’ll fly!”) or that Robina’s arm had shot out to keep something else from hitting me. At the same moment, it seemed, the roof at last did give way, and people ran, backing off. Flames tore through at the sky. There was also, and almost at the same time, a shout from another part of the yard, though I did not understand till later what this shout was for. I even thought, in my confusion, that it had to do with Robina hitting me. It was really for Howard Troy, who had made a dash from where he had been sitting right into the flaming, collapsing doorway, far too late to save anybody, if that was his intention, too late to be saved himself.
    There were explanations offered for this later. One was that he meant to run the other way, away from the fire, but in his temporary craziness ran instead straight into it. Another was that he heard his father yelling for him and still thought he could get him out. Or thought he heard him yell. Stump Troy would have been in no condition to yell, by then. This explanation would have made Howard Troy heroic, and it was not popular, though a few surprising people hung onto it, among them my mother.
    Another explanation was that Howard Troy had set the fire himself, perhaps after an argument with his father, perhaps for no particular reason, but to demonstrate what he could do, had been all this time preparing and waiting to do, while people rightly mistrusted him. There was backing for this opinion, because of an empty gasoline can. Those who believed that the fire had been set argued sometimes that Stump himself might have set it, or ordered it, a trick to get the insurance. He had meant to be outside or had counted on Howard to get him out, and Howard through cowardice or ill-timing had failed him. On account of remorse, then, or fear of facing the authorities, Howard had run into the fire.
    At the time, however, there were no explanations. All that people could do was hurry and tell other people, who might not have seen. I was not surprised. The fire itself, and the blow across my face, had cut me off from further surprise. I held my hands to my mouth, but for a wonder my teeth were not loosened; the only blood came from a small cut on the inside of my lip, where the edge of a tooth had caught it.
    Robina seemed all at once to be sick of the fire. She pulled me with her out the gateway and along the road. My mother’s car was not to be seen.
    “She’s gone home ahead of us,” Robina said. “I don’t blame her. Those fools can stand there all night if they want to. I know what they’re waiting on. They’re waiting to see them take out the body. Bodies,” she corrected herself. “They can wait.”
    I did not answer, or