Free Death Sentence by Jerry Bledsoe Page B

house, and the arrival of his friend Julius Hagins gave him the excuse. He stepped onto the porch with Julius, but as they stood talking, Ronnie’s eyes were drawn to his house.
    Unexpectedly, he found himself striding determinedly across the field toward the house, wishing as he went that he had not spent the weekend away from home. He couldn’t even picture his last image of his father. What had he been doing? What had they last said to one another? Whatever it was, it hadn’t seemed important at the time. Now it was vitally so, and he couldn’t remember. He had reached the carport when a familiar voice stopped him.
    “Ronnie!”
    He turned and saw his grandfather hurrying toward him.
    “Are you going in there?” Murphy asked.
    Ronnie nodded.
    “Are you sure you want to?”
    “Yeah, I want to see it.”
    “I’ll go with you then.”
    Ax marks scarred the kitchen door where the firemen had chopped it open. That was strange, Ronnie thought. Had his mother locked the door when she closed it?
    The sun was setting, and electricity had been shut off to the house. Soot covered everything inside, making the house seem even darker. The acrid smell of smoke was nearly overwhelming. The floor was standing in water. No sign of fire damage was evident, however, until they started down the hallway and caught a glimpse of his parents’ bedroom. The mattress where his father had been sleeping was as charred as a slice of burned toast. Ronnie’s own room, just across the hallway, was blackened, all of his clothes and possessions ruined.
    As Ronnie surveyed the damage, he suddenly remembered the pets, the family’s Siamese cat, Sadie, and Termite, the poodle they were keeping for his mother’s sister, Arlene. Nobody had said a word about them, and he hadn’t seen them anywhere. He found them under Pam’s bed, huddled side-by-side, dead, like his father, from the smoke.
    Ronnie’s first tears came as he carried Sadie from the house. She was his daddy’s cat really. She loved to curl up in his lap while he watched TV, or lie beside him as he slept on the couch. She usually woke him, licking his face until he stirred.
    With help from his grandfather and his friend, Ronnie buried Sadie and Termite in the back yard, and as he shoveled the dirt on the graves, he felt almost as if he were burying his father as well.
    The funeral was at Parkton Baptist Church on Wednesday, one month before Thomas’ thirty-eighth birthday. He was buried only a few feet from his father in the town’s small cemetery, within sight of the big white house where he and his wife and children had spent the years of their greatest happiness.
    Volunteers had cleaned and made emergency repairs to the Burke house, allowing Velma and the children to continue to stay there, and that night, in the lonely period after all the visitors had departed, Ronnie and his mother sat at the kitchen table drinking coffee and talking. His mother had taken his father’s death hard, and Ronnie was worried about her. He knew that she would be looking to him for stability, for guidance, that she would be more dependent on him than ever.
    She shouldn’t pay attention to anything her in-laws had said, Ronnie told her. She couldn’t have known that something like that might happen. And she shouldn’t feel bad about not being able to save his daddy. If she had tried, she probably would be dead herself.
    Ronnie thought that his mother should go back to work immediately. He and Pam would return to school. Resuming normal activities and staying busy would help to keep their minds off their grief.
    “We’ve got to move on from this,” he said.
    And then words came that he hadn’t intended to speak: “At least Daddy’s drinking won’t be a problem anymore.”
    Although he felt too much guilt to admit it, from the moment he had learned of his father’s death, despite the pain, he had felt a wave of relief. Perhaps peace and happiness could now be restored in his family.
    “I