The Night the Feed Store Burned

Room 212

Wendell Teague was in Room 212 at Cox South in Springfield, sitting up in bed with a plastic oxygen cannula under his nose and a tray of untouched Jell-O in front of him. He looked smaller than Nora had ever seen him, and older, but his eyes were clear, and when she came in the door he scowled at her.

“If you brought me flowers,” he said in a hoarse croak, “take them back. I’m not dead.”

“I didn’t bring flowers,” Nora said. “I brought you a sausage biscuit from the Ridge Café. Don’t tell the nurses.”

Wendell’s scowl softened slightly. He took the biscuit and unwrapped it with shaking fingers and ate half of it in silence. Nora pulled a chair up beside the bed and waited.

“Is it gone?” he asked finally, not looking at her. “The store. All of it?”

“All of it,” Nora said gently. “The walls are standing. The rest is gone. I’m sorry, Wendell.”

He nodded slowly. He looked out the window for a long time at the gray Springfield parking garage.

“Seventy-four years,” he said. “My daddy built that place with his own hands when I was seven years old. I swept that floor every day of my life.” His voice cracked. “Marjorie and I met at that counter. She came in to buy chicken feed for her mother.”

Nora didn’t say anything. She had delivered the sympathy cards to Wendell’s mailbox when Marjorie died two winters ago. There had been over two hundred of them. She had carried them up to the porch herself in two grocery bags because they wouldn’t fit in the box.

“Wendell,” she said carefully. “I need to ask you something, and I need you to tell me the truth. The fire marshal found a cot in your office. Next to a space heater.”

Wendell went very still. Then his face, which had been gray, went slowly red, from his collar all the way up to his bald head.

“That’s nobody’s business,” he said.

“It’s my business. I’m the fire chief.”

Wendell glared at her. Then, slowly, the glare crumbled. He put the rest of the biscuit down on the tray and looked at his hands, spotted and veined, resting on the white hospital blanket.

“I couldn’t sleep in that house,” he said quietly. “After Marjorie. Fifty-three years we slept in that bed. I’d lie there and listen to it being quiet. Her side of the bed all smooth.” He swallowed. “The first night I went down to the store to check on the chick tank and I just lay down on the floor in the office and went to sleep. Slept like a baby. So I brought a cot. That’s all. Nobody knew. I’d go home in the morning and shave and change my shirt and come back and open up like always.”

“For two years?”

“About that.” He didn’t look up. “I know how it sounds. A grown man too scared to sleep in his own house.”

Nora reached over and put her hand on his.

“It doesn’t sound like that,” she said. “It sounds like a man who misses his wife.”

“It sounds like a man who misses his wife.”

Wendell’s eyes filled. He pressed his lips together hard and nodded.

“Wendell,” Nora said after a moment. “What do you remember about that night?”

He frowned, concentrating. “I closed up at six. Fed Biscuit. Watched the news on that little TV in the office. Turned on the heater, it was cold, I remember that. Went to sleep around ten.” He shook his head slowly. “Then nothing. Then I woke up in the ambulance with a mask on my face. That’s all.”

“You don’t remember getting out of the building?”

“No.”

“You don’t remember walking out onto the dock?”

“Nora, I don’t remember a thing.”

She hesitated. Then she took out her phone and opened a document she had gotten that morning from Pam Ridley, the night dispatcher at the Hollis County 911 center. It was the call log from the night of the fire.

“The 911 call came in at 1:09,” she said. “It didn’t come from the Gas-N-Go, or from any house on Front Street. It came from your cell phone, Wendell.”

Wendell stared at her.

“My phone was on the desk,” he said slowly. “In the office. Charging. Where it always is.”

“The firefighters found it on the loading dock,” Nora said. “Next to you. Somebody used your phone to call 911 at 1:09 in the morning. Two minutes before that boy in the gray hoodie came running out of the alley.”

“That wasn’t me,” Wendell said. “I was asleep. I was out cold. I couldn’t have called anybody.”

“I know,” Nora said. “That’s what I came to ask you.”

She leaned forward.

“Wendell. Who else knew you slept at the store?”

The old man was quiet for a long time. The oxygen hissed softly in the cannula. Down the hall, a monitor beeped.

“Just one person,” Wendell said finally. “The boy that unloads my trucks. Wade. He came back for his gloves one night last fall, after closing, and caught me setting up the cot. I made him swear not to tell.” He looked up at Nora, and suddenly his face changed. “Where is he? Is Wade all right? Why hasn’t he come to see me?”

Nora looked at him for a long moment.

“Wendell,” she said quietly, “he’s in the county jail. Everybody in Calder Ridge thinks he burned down your store.”