Читать книгу Sky Lake Summer - Peggy Dymond Leavey - Страница 5

The fire bell rang for hours that night. Flames leapt from the walls of the house on the rock, shooting up through the roof and into the sky. To the boy, frozen at a window on the opposite side of the lake, even the clouds over there were on fire. A flotilla of boats had gathered below the rock face, silhouettes in the eerie light, tossing on a lake flecked with gold.

There was nothing they could do, the men said later, shaking water from their raincoats as they gathered downstairs in his father’s store. Shivering, the boy crouched on the stairs, listening to the rough sound of the men’s voices, their coughing, watching the steam which rose from their hair and the way the tobacco smoke curled around the lamp on the ceiling. No way to reach the house, they said, no place to land. Even the dock had disappeared. High above them, the fire had raged, unabated.

“Dang fool place ever to build a house anyway,” one of the would-be rescuers pronounced, and this was followed by mutters of agreement. The boy’s mother, tight-lipped, dressed in her housecoat, moved among them, a tea towel clamped to the top of the coffee pot.

At daybreak, only a pall of smoke hung over the scene on the other side. By noon, even that was gone.

“But those people,” the boy’s mother wondered out loud. “Did those people get out?” No one seemed to know.