The first time he saw a flame, he told himself, he would stop.

Claude

LET IT BURN, CLAUDE THOUGHT.

He was standing on the bottom porch step watching disaster unfold and trying to decide what to do. The disaster was not that the barn was going to burn; certainly not. The barn was insured, after all, and the dogs were outside and safe, even if they were running loose at the moment. At worst, losing the barn would make things inconvenient for a few months-they’d have to board the dogs somewhere, though finding families to look after them in the interim wouldn’t be that hard-but, realistically, they’d have a better, more modern barn before snow fell. Nor was the disaster what had happened to Glen; though Claude had flushed Glen’s eyes with water as soon as they’d reached the house, the quicklime had already done gruesome damage. It was hard to feel sorry for Glen. The man must have used enough Prestone out there to launch a rocket. Not what Claude had suggested at all.

No, the disaster was that Edgar kept running into the barn for those records, returning again and again to the workshop, and the filing cabinets, while smoke poured from the barn’s eaves. Edgar had even fetched the wheelbarrow from the milk house and, as Claude watched, begun rolling it in a broad arc toward the barn doors.

If all that weren’t strange enough, Glen had now taken Trudy in some sort of wrestler’s hold. In a moment, Claude was going to have to say something or do something to make Glen release her, but he didn’t know what that might be. The man had wrapped his huge limbs around Trudy and his embrace reminded Claude somehow of the tree roots at Angkor Wat, slowly crushing those ancient stone temples. The way Glen was acting, he might not stop unless he was unconscious. Yet Claude didn’t want to step in until he was sure nothing could be done about the barn. The barn had to be a lost cause. That was why he’d told Trudy the telephone line was dead. By now, it probably was dead.

There was something enthralling about the sight of smoke rising from the barn, black into black, erasing such a broad swath of stars. It reminded Claude just how big that old barn was. When he’d first arrived home he’d been struck all over again by its size; then, quickly enough, it had become ordinary in his eyes, the way it had been when he was growing up, making other people’s barns look like miniatures. The volume of smoke belching off the roof put things into perspective again and he marveled at the man who had originally built the place-what plans must he have had, to build a barn like that?

Better take a good look, Claude thought. He watched the smoke seeping from the gaps around the big mow door-the door Edgar had thrown open the night he’d pushed Papineau down the mow stairs; the door they had hauled six wagonloads of straw bales through, just two weeks earlier, in a long day of sweaty, exhausting effort. Strange: all that smoke rupturing outward, writhing and folding over itself, and yet, no sound, no flames. Claude knew enough about fire to understand that this was a phase, that the fire, or what was soon going to be a fire, was smoldering along the old timbers, probably in the straw as well, exploring hidden paths and alleyways in search of fuel and oxygen. He looked into the sky again. In the waxing moonlight, there was not a cloud to be seen.

Edgar appeared out of the smoke, pushing a wheelbarrow mounded with papers. The sight chilled Claude. Trudy, thrashing pointlessly, began shouting to Edgar to stay away from the barn. But Edgar wasn’t in any immediate danger. Only a few steps lay between the workshop and the barn doors and unless the whole structure suddenly burst into flame there was little chance of his getting caught inside. Until then, at least on the surface of things, Edgar was doing right by salvaging the files. A help later. Not imperative, but good to have.

The problem was that bottle. In truth, Claude had lost his nerve-the bottle had already been well hidden in the mow, and he knew it, but when it looked like Edgar might be snooping up there Claude had panicked and dug it out. After that night with Benson, and that bizarre reenactment, he’d been certain Edgar had found it once already. He should have poured the bottle’s contents into the creek the very next morning-he’d fantasized about doing that so many times-but he’d never answered the question of what would happen once he dumped the stuff. Would it just sink into the ground, disappear? Or would it trace some subterranean channel back to the house, to the well-to him? More important-and this was hard to admit-once whatever roiled inside that bottle was gone, it was gone for good, and the idea that it could solve his worst problems had become part of Claude’s nature. The knowledge gave him confidence, the way some men drew confidence from a wad of money in the bank or a gun in the glove compartment of their car. It had become, at times, almost a living presence to him. I exist for a reason. And then the exhilaration and self-loathing when he’d listened. But, if he was careful now, that bottle would be incinerated and, along with it, the very worst part of him.

If he was careful. He’d already made one mistake. He’d carried the bottle out of the mow only to realize how few other places he trusted. There hadn’t been time to think things through. Trudy could have walked in at any moment, and what, exactly, would he have said if she’d asked why he was carrying a bottle ribboned with Hangul lettering and with some liquid inside that looked like the purest, most distilled venom? Hiding it in the house was out of the question; it frightened him to be so near the stuff. He could barely stand to hold it in his work-gloved hands. After Gar, he’d showered until the hot water heater in his little rented apartment emptied, and when it filled, he’d emptied it all over again.

Once he’d taken that bottle out of the mow, there were few options left. The medicine room felt all wrong-Trudy went there sometimes: she might open a drawer, think, What’s this?, twist the wax-sealed stopper, raise the bottle to her nose…So it had to be the workshop, where Trudy virtually never stepped foot except passing through on her way to the mow. He’d considered, briefly, putting it in plain sight, out on the shelves, as if it were nothing of value. With so many odds and ends there, one more bottle wouldn’t stand out. But it would stand out to anyone looking for it; and his own gaze would always be drawn to it. So he’d wrapped up the bottle in an oily rag and buried it under a mass of old letters at the back of the bottom drawer of the oldest filing cabinet. No one but Edgar cared about the filing cabinets and even Edgar couldn’t possibly care about a bunch of old letters. A good place, he’d been sure of it. And yet, the moment the bottle was safely hidden, a new worry came to him and he’d walked to the medicine room, selected a syringe from a cabinet, and worked it into the bundle of rags alongside the bottle.

Claude was still standing on the porch steps, watching the scene playing out before him. One of Glen’s legs was thrown forward over Trudy’s hips and he had tilted them both so they were lying on their sides, facing the barn. Claude could barely see Trudy over Glen’s broad back. He sighed and stepped off the porch and onto the grass. Trudy had stopped struggling and lay enraptured, murmuring something like “no, no, not now,” watching Edgar as he came running out of the barn pushing another batch of records. The dogs were scrambling every which way. Two of them raced over, paused to scent Trudy and Glen, then leapt away. Claude knelt behind Glen, reached over his shoulders, and tried to peel the man’s enormous right hand away from where it was locked around his own left wrist.

“Glen, enough,” he said, surprising himself with the evenness of his voice. “Let Trudy go. We can’t help you unless you let Trudy go.”