“Hoyt.” Lamar lowered his voice. “This is Boone, not some goddamn firebug. Somebody burned our barn, but it wasn’t him, and you know it.”

“Who did then?” Hoyt said. “Where did it start?”

“Call the fire marshal,” Lamar said. “He can tell you once he gets back from vacation.”

“Don’t need him to tell me, since I just locked up the real arsonist.”

“Who’s that?” I asked.

“Why, your good friend Stumpy Meeks.” Hoyt tugged on the brim of his hat and nodded. “Thanks for the coffee. Y’all have a nice day.”

3

After breakfast was finished, I leaned on the hood of my truck drinking a bottle of beer. The odor of leftover sweat mixed with wood smoke, the worn cloth of the turnouts, and the battered boots that had protected my feet.

I took a deep breath and let it out slowly.

“What’s wrong?” Mom came around the truck and took a seat next to me. “Sounds like you lost you best friend in the world.”

 “Worse. My research was ruined by the fire.” There was more anger in my voice than I expected. “I know that breaks your heart.”

“Actually,” she said, “it does. I watched you pour your heart and soul into that project. Even if your research was disgusting, I’m still proud of the work you did.”

Her words sunk in. I nodded and smiled.

 “You could always start over.”

“I wouldn’t be able to get it together in time for the Olympiad,” I said. “I’ll have to hand in my data and hope even though I didn’t make the Olympiad, Dr. K still accepts the report and lets me pass the class.”

“You are just like your daddy, you know.” Mom pointed to the field where five head of Black Angus. “I liked the cowboy in your father. Don’t laugh. It’s hard to think about a man who now works for an international bank as a cowboy. That’s because you’re only looking at the clothes, not the man who wears them. Close your eyes for a second. Feel the wind blowing? Catch the smell of the hay and the dirt? Now imagine your father on a horse, wearing a Stetson and chaps.”

“Chaps?”

“Wipe that smirk off your face. Imagine that field is the prairie, and there are a thousand head of Angus you’ve got to drive to market, and with the only thing in front of you is the wide-open frontier waiting to be explored. That’s what drew me to your daddy. He was a cowboy, and my whole life was new frontier.”

“So what broke you up?”

“That’s the problem with cowboys. When you live for the saddle, you see the rest of the world as a cow. I’m nobody’s cow.”

I laughed out loud.

So did she. “That didn’t come out right, but you catch my drift. Lamar’s proud of you.”

“He said that?”

“Lamar doesn’t say what he’s thinking. You have to read his signals.”

“If he’s proud of me, why am I not back on the squad?”

“I guess he thinks you’re not ready yet. Or he’s not ready yet. In Lamar’s eye, you’re not the worst kind of firefighter. He saves that spot for the guys who played it safe, who don’t do the grunt work or pack gear.”

 I knew that type. They were fire voyeurs, willing to watch, but never willing to step into the fire with his brothers. Last one in, first one out. That kind of guy would get you killed. Which was different from a man willing to get himself killed trying to be a hero. Heroes were dangerous, too. In their own way.

“Now tell me about this pretty little Cedar and you.”

“What about Cedar and me?”

She cocked an eyebrow. “Since you’ve been back home, exactly zero girls had come around, and now I’ve seen you two together more than twice. That adds up to Cedar and you.”

“It’s only been a week, Mom, and I’m not sure it’s going to work out.”

“Are you blind? She’s crazy about you.”

I shook my head. “I thought so, too. Now, I don’t know. I told her something important, and she just left me hanging.”

“What did I say about reading people’s signals? Try reading hers.”

“It’s not that easy. She mixes them up a lot.”

“If it were easy, it wouldn’t be worth it, right?” she said. “Now get off your butt. Time for class.”

“But I stink like smoke,” I said. “I need a bath.”

“Sorry. I had to shut down the well pump to use the pond water.”

“No shower?”

“Maybe you could use the school’s? They still have showers in the rec center, right? It’s your choice, Boone.”

I could either stink like sweaty charcoal all day or get naked in a locker room.

“Some choice,” I said.

“That’s how life is,” she said. “The hard choices are between the bad and the worse, not the good and the better.”

4

Forty-five minutes later, I walked into the rec center’s locker room. I’d used up every bit of reserve, and even after wolfing down three coffees and a box of nutrition bars, I was so wrung out, I felt almost liquid. The whole time I was in the shower, was afraid I might go down the drain with the water.

Every muscle in my body hurt, all of them. Fighting fires was a huge adrenaline rush, especially when it was your own property. How had the fire started? Lamar thought the source was a bad light socket in the loft, but I had to wonder about the timing.

Maybe it was an electrical fire.

Maybe not.

I came out of the shower sopping wet, head bent low and moaning, and groped around for the towel I left hanging on a hook.

“Looking for this?” Ronnie said, holding up the towel. It was dirty and wrinkled like he had rubbed it all over floor.

Just what I needed. Wet, naked, and ragged out with a ticked off redneck holding my towel.

“Whitey tighties?” Donnie stepped into the shower area, holding up my underwear. “It figures a sailor would be wearing man panties.”

“You like them?” I said. “Keep them. As a souvenir.”

I shook like a wet dog, flinging water out of my hair and all over the place. As the twins ducked, I walked past them to the lockers and started getting dressed.

Ronnie tried to pop me with the dirty towel.

I grabbed the end of the towel and jerked it free. “What do you morons want?” I tossed the towel into the locker and pulled on my shirt. “All the oil is sold out, amigos.”

Donnie slammed me against the lockers. “Who you calling a moron?”

“Let go of me,” I said, my voice calm and unwavering.

It was a warning, not a request.

“Or what? Get your slant-eyed friend to use kung fu on us?”

“I said, let go of me.” My voice took on the hard edge of a man used to giving orders and having them obeyed. “Last time I’m going to say it, before you end up in the hospital.”

This seemed to confuse Donnie. He looked back at Ronnie, who was busy dumping my book bag on the floor. Textbooks, notes, and pencils fell on the tiled floor, along with the newspaper article about Mrs. Vega.

Ronnie picked up the newspaper. “You wanna know what we want?” he said, his face getting redder every second. “We want this shit to cease.”

“What shit?” I said and pushed Donnie away.

“This dead Mexican shit. Yesterday, somebody filed a complaint against Eugene. Now, he’s suspended while the captain investigates. That complaint needs to disappear. You got it?” He tossed the paper into the bowl and flushed it. “If that complaint don’t disappear, that’s going to be your head going around the bowl and down the hole. Got that, liberal?”

“Liberal?” I said, “Why do y’all keep calling me that? It doesn’t hurt my feelings, you know.”

“Because you ain’t got sense to know when you’re insulted. Come on, Don. We got other fish to fry.”

“I bet you do!” I yelled after them. “Probably a couple of barns, too!”

They used the side door, which led to the emergency exit near the parking lot. I heard the alarm sound. After they left, I picked up all my stuff and shoved it into my backpack.

Stupid ass rednecks. If they thought threatening me would change anything, they were dumber than they looked.