Free Nobody's Child by Austin Boyd Page A

There was no way to fight this. She could only watch.
    Sticks of dried tobacco lit up like huge blazing cigars. Up to eight stalks of tobacco, pierced at their base and slid on each split oak stick, hung upside down in cascading rows from floor to ceiling. Through the brilliantly lit holes in the old log barn, Laura Ann could see stick after stick of bone-dry tobacco flare up. Flames engulfed each successive row and churned up the tinder of prime burley, flames rippling layer by layer toward the top of the barn. Licking tongues of fire poked at the rusty metal roof, caving it in as the support burned away.
    She stood alone in the field, blistering in the heat of the huge fire. Red-hot sheets of rusty roof tin fell inward, plummeting to the bottom as pillars of fire shot out the top. Like a jet engine, the fire roared, sucking the air around her. A blazing yellow-red bolt licked at the sky fifty feet above.
    Beyond the flame, she saw lights. The insane bouncing of a truck racing across their frozen dirt road, headed straight for her. In the distance, she could see the green of the truck in the dim light of her burning crop. Ian’s work truck. He’d come.
    Fear gripped her in the jaws of a brutal reality. She stood in the heat of a fire that consumed her only legitimate chance at saving the farm. A financial reprieve, to fulfill her promise to Daddy. She turned toward the house, strangely dark, and without power.
    Ian’s wild ride down the hill ran its course and his truck skidded to a stop. He jumped from the truck, running toward her.
    â€œLaura Ann!” he yelled, arms outstretched.
    She stood like a statue, turning her eyes back to the flames, one arm extended to him. He stopped at her side, then wrapped her in his arms. They watched together in silence.
    One by one, logs cut by her great-great-great-grandfather fellinward, the top row of the barn drawn into the conflagration. History burned away before her. When at last a single flashing red light showed at the top of the hill, the barn was reduced to embers. The siren seemed distant, even the caress of Ian’s hand on her head unfelt, while she watched the last of the flames consume the base of the old barn.
    In the glow of the dying fire, she saw a chain. Links joined links, like hands of men at work together in an ancient fire brigade, leading beyond the fire into the dark of the forest, until they disappeared in an unknown history. The link closest to her melted in slow motion, smelted in the dull orange of the barn’s smoldering foundation. It drooped, and then ran like hot metal into the red embers of her only cash crop.
    The chain ended with her. She saw no future, no path beyond.
    Ian waved his flashlight back and forth as they scoured the snow for footprints together. A fresh dusting of powder covered the fields, and new layers of thick snowflakes fell each minute. Walking a few feet to Ian’s right, Laura Ann sighed, desperate for any clue. As good a tracker as he was, she knew that any possible traces of an arsonist would soon be obliterated by a blanket of white.
    â€œI can barely make out the prints with this light,” Ian said.
    Deputy Sheriff Rodale shrugged, trudging along a few steps behind them, hands in his pockets.
    â€œSomeone approached the barn from over there.” Ian stopped and pointed in the direction of the farm road. “They came and went in a single track, but once they reached the road the boot prints were wiped out by our vehicles. They probably anticipated that.” He gestured to the top of the ridge and the direction of the intruder’s path.
    The deputy shook his head and muttered something that Laura Ann could not make out, then thanked Ian for his help and walked back to his cruiser. He left without even a word of condolence for Laura Ann. The firemen departed long ago, but at least they cared.
    Ian brushed flakes of fresh snow off her jacket and put an arm about her. “Nothing we can do