THE INCIDENT AT THE MANDERS FARM

1

While Cap discussed her future with Al Steinowitz in Longmont, Charlie McGee was sitting on the edge of the motel bed in Unit Sixteen of the Slumberland, yawning and stretching. Bright morning sunlight fell aslant through the window, out of a sky that was a deep and blameless autumn blue. Things seemed so much better in the good daylight.

She looked at her daddy, who was nothing but a motionless hump under the blankets. A fluff of black hair stuck out-that was all. She smiled. He always did his best. If he was hungry and she was hungry and there was only an apple, he would take one bite and make her eat the rest. When he was awake, he always did his best.

But when he was sleeping, he stole all the blankets.

She went into the bathroom, shucked off her underpants, and turned on the shower. She used the toilet while the water got warm and then stepped into the shower stall. The hot water hit her and she closed her eyes, smiling. Nothing in the world was any nicer than the first minute or two in a hot shower.

(you were bad last night)

A frown creased her brow.

(No. Daddy said not.)

(lit that man’s shoes on fire, bad girl, very bad, do you like teddy all black?)

The frown deepened. Unease was now tinctured with fear and shame. The idea of her teddy bear never even fully surfaced; it was an underthought, and as so often happened, her guilt seemed to be summed up in a smell-a burned, charred smell. Smoldering cloth and stuffing. And this smell summoned hazy pictures of her mother and father leaning over her, and they were big people, giants; and they were scared; they were angry, their voices were big and crackling, like boulders jumping and thudding down a mountainside in a movie.

(“bad girl! very bad! you mustn’t, Charlie! never! never! never!”)

How old had she been then? Three? Two? How far back could a person remember? She had asked Daddy that once and Daddy said he didn’t know. He said he remembered getting a bee sting and his mother had told him that happened when he was only fifteen months old.

This was her earliest memory: the giant faces leaning over her; the big voices like boulders rolling downhill; and a smell like a burned waffle. That smell had been her hair. She had lit her own hair on fire and had burned nearly all of it off. It was after that that Daddy mentioned “help” and Mommy got all funny, first laughing, then crying, then laughing again so high and strange that Daddy had slapped her face. She remembered that because it was the only time that she knew of that her daddy had done something like that to her mommy. Maybe we ought to think about getting “help” for her, Daddy had said. They were in the bathroom and her head was wet because Daddy had put her in the shower. Oh, yes, her mommy had said, let’s go see Dr. Wanless, he’ll give us plenty of “help,” just like he did before… then the laughing, the crying, more laughter, and the slap.

(you were so BAD last night)

“No,” she murmured in the drumming shower. “Daddy said not. Daddy said it could have… been… his… face.”

(YOU WERE VERY BAD LAST NIGHT)

But they had needed the change from the telephones. Daddy had said so.

(VERY BAD!)

And then she began to think about Mommy again, about the time when she had been five, going on six. She didn’t like to think about this but the memory was here now and she couldn’t put it aside. It had happened just before the bad men had come and hurt Mommy.

(killed her, you mean, they killed her)

yes, all right, before they killed her, and took Charlie away. Daddy had taken her on his lap for storytime, only he hadn’t had the usual storybooks about Pooh and Tigger and Mr. Toad and Willy Wonka’s Great Glass Elevator. Instead he had a number of thick books with no pictures. She had wrinkled her nose in distaste and asked for Pooh instead.

“No, Charlie,” he had said. “I want to read you some other stories, and I need you to listen. You’re old enough now, I think, and your mother thinks so, too. The stories may scare you a little bit, but they’re important. They’re true stories.”

She remembered the names of the books Daddy had read the stories from, because the stories had scared her. There was a book called Lo! by a man named Charles Fort. A book called Stranger Than Science by a man named Frank Edwards. A book called Night’s Truth. And there had been another book called Pyrokinesis: A Case Book, but Mommy would not let Daddy read anything from that one. “Later,” Mommy had said, “when she’s much older, Andy.” And then that book had gone away. Charlie had been glad.

The stories were scary, all right. One was about a man who had burned to death in a park. One was about a lady who had burned up in the living room of her trailer home, and nothing in the whole room had been burned but the lady and a little bit of the chair she had been sitting in while she watched TV. Parts of it had been too complicated for her to understand, but she remembered one thing: a policeman saying: “We have no explanation for this fatality. There was nothing left of the victim but teeth and a few charred pieces of bone. It would have taken a blowtorch to do that to a person, and nothing around her was even charred. We can’t explain why the whole place didn’t go up like a rocket.”

The third story had been about a big boy-he was eleven or twelve-who had burned up while he was at the beach. His daddy had put him in the water, burning himself badly in the process, but the boy had still gone on burning until he was all burned up. And a story about a teenage girl who had burned up while explaining all her sins to the priest in the confession room. Charlie knew all about the Catholic confession room because her friend Deenie had told her. Deenie said you had to tell the priest all the bad stuff you had done all week long. Deenie didn’t go yet because she hadn’t had first holy communion, but her brother Carl did. Carl was in the fourth grade, and he had to tell everything, even the time he sneaked into his mother’s room and took some of her birthday chocolates. Because if you didn’t tell the priest, you couldn’t be washed in THE BLOOD OF CHRIST and you would go to THE HOT PLACE.

The point of all these stories had not been lost on Charlie. She had been so frightened after the one about the girl in the confession room that she burst into tears. “Am I going to burn myself up?” She wept. “Like when I was little and caught my hair on fire? Am I going to burn to pieces?”

And Daddy and Mommy had looked upset. Mommy was pale and kept chewing at her lips, but Daddy had put an arm around her and said, “No, honey. Not if you always remember to be careful and not think about that… thing. That thing you do sometimes when you’re upset and scared.”

“What is it?” Charlie had cried. “What is it, tell me what is it, I don’t even know, I’ll never do it, I promise!”

Mommy had said, “As far as we can tell, honey, it’s called pyrokinesis. It means being able to light fires sometimes just by thinking about fires. It usually happens when people are upset. Some people apparently have that… that power all their lives and never even know it. And some people… well, the power gets hold of them for a minute and they…” She couldn’t finish.

“They burn themselves up,” Daddy had said. “Like when you were little and caught your hair on fire, yes. But you can get control of that, Charlie. You have to. And God knows it isn’t your fault.” His eyes and Mommy’s had met for a moment when he said that, and something had seemed to pass between them.

Hugging her around the shoulders, he had said, “Sometimes you can’t help it, I know. It’s an accident, like when you were smaller and you forget to go to the bathroom because you were playing and you wet your pants. We used to call that having an accident-do you remember?”