Fellow Mortals Read Online Free PDF Page B

and prechecked the mail for number ten: Billy and Sheri Kane. Power bill, phone bill, credit report, and something from the courthouse: a black-letter day. The grass turned scrabbly right at the property line. There was a band of dirt that led to a newly poured sidewalk square, another span of dirt, and finally a road patch—probably the scars of a dug-up sewer pipe. The house itself looked worse. Cockeyed steps, decrepit siding, an American flag so grubby Henry felt they ought to burn it out of respect.
    He left their mail inside the screen door, which was so badly dented that it wouldn’t fully shut. Kicked, Henry thought, and then he registered a sound—a crackling he’d been hearing for a while unaware. He looked up the street and there was fire in the bushes—in the little group of boxwoods at Sam and Laura Bailey’s—sending smoke and orange flames into a hedgerow of yews. The yews were burning, too, right against the house.
    “Holy shit,” Henry said.
    He dropped the mailbag and ran. It must have been a match, he thought, remembering the mulch, but even with the drought he couldn’t believe how ferociously it spread. He squinted at the heat from several feet away, moved closer upwind, and beat the fire with his sweater, but the sweater caught, too, and he was forced to let it go. The boxwoods vanished in a flare. Then the fire caught the yew and really cut wild, covering the wall like water rushing up.
    He ran to number eight and looked for Joan, who was exactly where he had left her, smiling in her chair.
    “Oh!” she said, surprised to see him back.
    Henry glanced next door, dizzy at the sight.
    “I need your phone.”
    He banged the door and strode halfway into the living room before noticing her face. Joan backed away, smiling but alarmed, growing smaller by the second near a shelf of figurines.
    “There’s a fire,” Henry said. “You got to leave. Where’s your sister?”
    “In the shower.”
    “Where—”
    “There’s a fire?”
    “Where’s the shower!?” Henry yelled. She pointed up. “Call 911,” he said.
    He took the stairs two at a time and stumbled at the top, slipping three steps and murdering his shin. He found the bathroom door and knocked with his fist.
    “Nan!”
    “Who’s there?”
    “It’s Henry Cooper … the mailman. You got to come out.”
    The hall was narrow and dim. Smoke drifted in—he could feel it in his eyes. The window by the stairs darkened intermittently. He leaned against the door and heard the shower curtain slide.
    “Who’s there?” Nan said, closer to his ear.
    “You got to get dressed, we got to go.”
    A smoke alarm tripped. He heard Joan calling from below, and when he hurried to the stairs and leaned over the rail, she was looking up and quaking like a child he’d forgotten.
    “Did you call the fire department?”
    “Where’s Nan?”
    “Did you call 911?”
    She clasped her hands and nodded.
    “Get out of the house,” he said.
    “The porch…,” she answered, looking out front. He ran downstairs. Fire rippled at the door, billowing the curtains, more than he expected. Another smoke alarm blew, right above his ear.
    “Wait in the yard,” he said, moving her along. “Go, I’ll get your sister.”
    He ran back up and checked the window at the top. The Baileys’ whole wall was hidden by the smoke. He returned to the bathroom and rattled the knob.
    “Miss Finn .”
    “Go away!” Nan said. “Joan? Joan!”
    “Back up!” Henry yelled.
    He rammed against the door.
    It was flimsy hollow-core and fractured when he hit it. Screws and bits of wood skittered off the sink. Nan trembled in a robe, hair raggedy and wet, all collarbone and eyeball and wispy in the steam. She aimed a hair dryer level to his head, like a gun.
    “Whoa,” he said, showing her his palms.
    The window up the hall trembled at the heat. He moved fast, stooping low to get his arm around her hips, and then he tipped her up and hauled her out the bathroom on his