Free Over and Under by Todd Tucker

would not last. I reeked because of the snake, and something else, something bubble gum-sweet that took me a second to identify. It was the odor of burning varnish.
    Finally, inevitably, I heard the muted ringing of the telephone next to my parents’ bed through the wall. It rang again, and again, finally pulling my father from sleep. I heard him fumble for the handset and answer with a hoarse “hello.” More mumbling was followed by a wide awake “Jesus Christ!” He hung up. Mom asked a question. Change spilled from his pockets as he pulled on yesterday’s pants. I heard heavy footsteps across the bedroom, and then a pause.
    Into that series of familiar noises came a sound unusual but still recognizable. I heard my father drag a heavy box out from under his bed, open it, close it, and then slide the box back. I knew the sound. My father was getting into his footlocker, the only private space he had in the house. The footlocker contained two old love letters from Mom, four Purdue yearbooks, three issues of
Playboy
, and one .38 Smith & Wesson revolver.
    Don Strange was dead. He had returned to the plant after the meeting with my father. Dad said that he had no idea why, that ever since his wife had died Mr. Strange had trouble sleeping and was always going to the plant at odd hours, to catch up on paperwork or look over some piece of machinery that had popped into his head in the middle of the night. My mother needed reassurance that Mr. Strange wasn’t working at the plant that night because of her, that he hadn’t followed her order, as relayed by my father, to keep plant business at the plant. My father swore up and down that he had ignored my mother’s request, an oversight for which she was profoundly, tearfully grateful. It was almost dawn by then, the woods outside our house turning from black to washed-out gray. Mom poured coffee as Dad told us what he had seen down the hill.
    “By the time I got there, every volunteer fireman in Borden was standing along Sixty,” he said. “Their trucks were blocking the road, every one of them with its light on top, swirling around, making it hard to see anything.” Dad’s voice was scratchy. “The hook and ladder was through the gate already, all their hoses were running through the front door by the lobby. Something was leaking—there was ahuge puddle of water that almost covered the front lot. I fought my way to the front of the crowd by the fence, and found Dave Grosheider,” he said. Grosheider was our fire chief.
    “Dave told me there’d been some kind of explosion, a hole blown in the back wall, and that they had extinguished a small fire out on the back loading dock. He asked me about hazardous materials in the plant, that kind of thing, told me that he had three search parties inside the factory already, looking around, making sure there weren’t any more fires. I started to tell him where the gas shutoffs are, the main breaker panels, where the drums of naphtha and alcohol are. Then there was kind of a murmur through the crowd, and everyone looked up.” Dad sighed jaggedly before he continued. It was the saddest, most defeated sound I ever heard my father make.
    “One of the search parties was coming out the front door. The fireman in front was carrying a body. He’d taken his coat off and laid it across his arms, so I couldn’t see much, but I could tell it was a person—I could make out the shape of a head beneath the coat, and I saw feet hanging out the other end.” Dad rubbed his bloodshot eyes. “He looked so tiny, we all thought he had a child in his arms.”
    “Who did it?” I asked too suddenly.
    “Maybe nobody did it,” said Mom. “Maybe it was an accident. One of those furnaces blew up before, you remember that? When all the windows along Sixty broke?”
    “No, he’s right, it was somebody.” Dad looked at me a little curiously. “And we know who. Mack Sanders lost his ball cap running away. His name was written inside of it.