A half-hour later, two more fire companies turned into the lane. As soon as they saw the fire, the men turned off the sirens. The barn was lost, they knew, and all they could do was protect the other buildings.
Neighbors came and asked how it started or where Peter was. The older men saw calves and chickens in the alfalfa where Kate had driven them, and they sent boys out to check on these animals. Later, these neighbors would fashion a pen in the tractor shed, but now they simply leaned against their pickups and watched the blaze. Mostly they stayed silent, or they talked in low voices about the animals. They could see the milkers down in the meadow, the raw sores where a few were burned. They wondered if they’d have to be put down, or if Ada or Mark Hoover could heal them. They knew Ada and Mark could take out fire by using Bible verses and old chants for healing burns. But sometimes the burns were too severe. And not everyone believed.
Others joined the watchers—women and children, relatives and friends. They heard the sirens or saw the smoke from five miles away. When new people arrived, they greeted each other, their bodies already turning toward the fire. The women touched their faces or pulled their children close. The men spat and swore under their breath. All of them grew silent in their watching.
Light from the fire made their faces glow, and as day fell away to darkness, firelight cast strange shadows among them. Even when the watchers stilled, their shadows shifted and moved, twisting away from the smoke and blaze and the fire trucks’ revolving lights. Night’s cool air touched their backs, and women drew collars tight against their chins. The men shifted, glanced at each other, and watched another fire truck pull in. For a moment, their shadows disappeared in the truck’s headlights. Their eyes followed the firemen as they ran new lines, stumbling in their heavy gear to open valves, the water disappearing into the fire.
As the watchers stood in the shadows, they considered how much they could spare to give to the Franklins to help them through the coming year. The entire world of this one place—all its animals and people and plants—everything passed through this building’s doors. The barn was a bank of hay and wheat, corn and oats, now all gone.
But mostly, the watchers considered their own luck, their own good fortune. The women whispered quiet prayers. In their pockets, the men touched a buckeye, fingering the smooth nut, wearing away its ridges.
Like a mighty, anchored ship, the barn slowly sank. First the roof fell, then the sides, each collapse creating a shower of sparks hurling upward into the night. One side leaned and fell outward, and the men rushed away to return with their hoses to douse the blackened boards. Each collapse exposed the bones and ribs of the barn, mortised posts and beams all pegged together more than a hundred years ago. Those beams charred and ignited also, and soon they became wicks for this immense and hungry fire.
3
For a few minutes, Ada and her mother stood in silence behind the fire trucks. The men all looked tiny before the tower of flames, and they all looked the same in their heavy coats and shiny hats. Yet Ada knew one of them was Jesse. She just couldn’t tell which one. Jesse with his thick mustache and broad shoulders. Jesse who almost got her to say yes. Jesse who had other women saying yes.
The wind picked up and the inferno thundered. Sparks ascended to fall over them as ash. When one of the barn walls crashed to the ground, Ada flinched. Her mother stared straight into the blaze, a blankness on her face Ada couldn’t read.
From down the road another siren approached, this time an ambulance. Mid Kelso, their neighbor, worked her way through the people. Ada guessed she had made the call to the fire station.
“You OK?” Mid asked when she reached them.
Kate only nodded, her arms folded in front of her.
“Mama’s hands are burned,” Ada said. “Come on, Mama. We can’t do any more, and I need to look at your hands.” Mid gently turned her away from the roar and heat and shouts of men. As the women passed through the crowd, hands reached out to touch them, fingers lingering on their shoulders.
Ada glanced back and saw the medics with their bags, searching for anyone injured. She didn’t want their help, not yet.
In the kitchen, she told her mother to sit and asked Mid to watch the door, to not let anyone in yet. “I need to powwow over Mama’s burns.”
Ada washed her hands and began her silent prayer, the one she always repeated before doing a chant. Lord, make me thy instrument. Give me strength to heal Mama’s hands. All power to you, in Holy Jesus’ name. Amen.
But something wasn’t right. Something was missing.
As she dried her hands, Ada repeated the prayer. Usually by “amen,” her hands tingled and heated up, and she knew the Spirit was in her. But now, no tingle, no warmth, nothing. Where are you, God? The question opened the flood of sound swirling inside, that immense roar that slipped along the rafters of her thoughts. For a moment, she crouched again by the barn wall and saw that burned hole in her dress, the swinging, flame-covered door. Those chained-in cows stared at her, their blue-black pupils bottomless pools deep enough to drown in.
No, she whispered, and the roar quieted. But it didn’t disappear.
Ada drew a glass of water, hands trembling. All the while she kept tamping down the rumble in her head by saying her prayer: Make me thy instrument. Help me do right. Her fingers never tingled.
Ada put down the glass and turned. Her mother lifted her head, expectant and crying, the pain, at last, surging through her body. Ada pulled a chair to sit facing her so that their knees touched.
Just do the motions. Say the chant and maybe the powwow will work.
Gently she picked up her mother’s left wrist and placed it in her lap. The hand was so raw that she whispered, “Mama!” Her mother’s eyes didn’t waver, sure of her daughter.
The skin was all charred away. Only black and red flesh remained, no pink, no blisters even, like her brother’s burn from years ago. Fluid seeped onto Ada’s lap, staining her skirt. On her mother’s palm, the worst burns formed ovals in the shape of a chain.
Ada had to close her eyes. Uncle Mark had taught her to look directly into the wound, to face the Devil, but she couldn’t. When she looked at her mother’s hand, the rumbling fire roared again. She pinched the bridge of her nose, listened to her own breathing, tried to hear God’s voice above all the din. But the rumble wouldn’t stop.
Just say the chant, she kept thinking. Just get through this. Then, God, where are you?
With her mouth inches from the wound, she whispered the secret words Uncle Mark had taught her. You just have to have faith. Have to have faith.
Ada paused to wave her right palm slowly over the burn. She leaned again and repeated the chant, lips almost kissing the wound. Three times she waved her hand over her mother’s palm, and three times she leaned in to speak directly to the fire. She told the Devil to leave this place; she asked the Lord to come heal this burn. In the quiet of the room, she heard her mother breathing, heard the mantel clock, the distant shouts and low rumble from outside. Ada knew her chant wasn’t working.
When she finished, Ada only glanced at her mother. Nothing had changed.
Then Ada went against her uncle’s teachings once more and did something she had never done before—she repeated the chant a fourth time. Again, nothing. At the very least, the chant should stop the pain, and at its best, the words sometimes even healed the flesh. But for