The Night the Feed Store Burned

The Curfew

They let her see him in a small concrete visiting room with a scratched plexiglass window and a telephone handset on each side. Wade Corliss sat down across from her in an orange jumpsuit, his bandaged hands resting on the counter, and picked up the phone without much interest. Then he saw who it was, and something wary and surprised moved across his face.

“Miss Nora?” he said.

“Hi, Wade.”

He looked at her through the scratched plexiglass. “You still carry the mail?”

“Every day but Sunday.”

He almost smiled. “You used to bring Grandma her Reader’s Digest. She’d read me the jokes on the porch.” The almost-smile faded. “Why are you here?”

Nora did not waste time. She laid it out for him, all of it, quietly and in order, the way Rick Ostrander had laid it out for her in the ruins. The space heater. The cot. The safety glass broken inward from the dock side, with scraps of gray fleece caught on the wires. The scorched door handle. The forty feet between the office door and where they had found Wendell. Wendell’s phone on the dock. The 911 call at 1:09, two minutes before the running figure on the video.

She told him she had listened to the recording twice. She told him she knew his voice.

Wade did not say anything while she talked. He sat very still with the phone to his ear and his eyes fixed on the counter in front of him. But when she got to the part about the recording, he closed his eyes. And when she finished, he sat for a long time with his eyes still closed, breathing slowly.

“Is Mr. Teague okay?” he said finally.

“He’s going to be fine. He’s eating sausage biscuits and yelling at the nurses.”

Wade let out a breath that was almost a laugh. Then he opened his eyes and looked at her through the plexiglass, and his face crumpled.

“I couldn’t sleep,” he said. “I don’t sleep much. Haven’t since I got out. It’s worse in winter. I lie there and it’s quiet and I start thinking about pills, and my hand starts aching where the log got it, and I start thinking I could make one phone call, I know who to call.” He swallowed hard. “So I walk. My sponsor told me to. When it gets bad, get up and walk till it passes. I walk all over town at night. Every night, pretty much. I know it’s against my curfew. I know. But it was that or use.”

Nora nodded. She didn’t say anything.

“That night I was walking down Front Street,” Wade said, “and I saw this orange light flickering in the back of the feed store. In the office window. And I knew Mr. Teague was in there. Nobody else knew, but I knew.” He was talking faster now, the words spilling out. “I ran around back. The door was locked. The window was all smoke. I could hear Biscuit in there going crazy. I punched the glass out and reached in and grabbed the handle, and it was so hot, Miss Nora. So hot. I couldn’t let go of it though. I had to turn it.”

He looked down at his bandaged hands.

“The whole office was smoke. I couldn’t see anything. I just got down on the floor and crawled toward where the cot was and found his foot. He was so heavy. I don’t know how I got him out. I just did. I dragged him out on the dock and as far from the door as I could and he wasn’t waking up. His phone was in his shirt pocket. I called 911. Then I heard the sirens coming.” He stopped. His voice dropped almost to a whisper. “And I knew if they found me there, at one in the morning, with my record, that was it. I’d go back. So I ran.”

“And Biscuit followed you,” Nora said gently.

“She came out the door behind us. I didn’t even see her. She followed me all the way home. I tried to send her back, but she wouldn’t go. She was scared. She was shaking.” Wade wiped his eyes with the back of one bandaged wrist. “I wrapped my own hands. I know how; they taught us inside. I figured I’d bring her back in the morning, say I found her wandering. Then the deputies came.”

He looked at Nora through the glass.

“Please don’t tell them,” he said. “Please. I know how it looks. I’d rather they think I did it and let me go for lack of evidence than tell the truth and go back for two years. I can’t go back there, Miss Nora. I can’t. I worked so hard.”

“I can’t go back there, Miss Nora. I can’t. I worked so hard.”

Nora looked at him for a long time. A thin, exhausted twenty-five-year-old boy in an orange jumpsuit with burned hands, begging her not to tell anyone he was a hero.

“Wade,” she said quietly. “Listen to me. The fire marshal already knows it was accidental. Nobody’s going to charge you with arson. That part’s over. But your parole officer already knows you were there, too. I told her this morning.” She saw his face fall and held up a hand. “And she’s not going to report you for walking at night. She’s going to report you for running into a burning building and saving a man’s life. There’s a difference. The parole board has to hear it.”

Wade stared at her.

“Nobody in Calder Ridge will believe it,” he said. “You know they won’t.”

“Then let me try,” Nora said.