A Boy and a Burning Barn

“Okay I want to hear what happened, but if you make stuff up I’ll know.”

Billy Stubbs wouldn’t know the truth from a fairy tale, but there’s no need to stretch this story, and I told him that. We swapped sandwiches. I don’t like tuna. Billy hates peanut butter. “Ma sent me to stay with my Grandma for a month. She’s old and she could use the help.” Billy nodded. He asked to hear about the barn. I knew he would. But I was in no hurry.

“Grandma’s old barn was no great shakes, but it had cool stuff. It hadn’t been used for years. The door wouldn’t close. There was a hay mow with no hay and holes in the floor, a ladder leading up to it with rungs broken or missing, lots of barn boards loose or gone, but it was still standing.”

“Were there spiders?” Billy hated spiders. Snakes are my problem.

“Tons of webs all across the opening. I had to walk through them every time I went in. Oh yeah, and I saw spiders too.” That gave Billy a little shudder.

“What’s your gran like?” he asked curiously.

“Super cool,” I said honestly. “She’s run the quarry ever since Grandpa died. When a big rock gets stuck in the crusher and the men can’t get it out, she walks up to the top with a sledge hammer and breaks it up. She knows just where to hit it.”

“I don’t know if I believe you.”

Predictable, so predictable. Billy, I knew, had never seen a limestone quarry, let alone a crusher. “Well you don’t have to. It’s true. And I can stop right now.” Billy didn’t want that. He’d seen the newspaper story.

“Okay maybe I believe you about the sledge hammer.”

“Maybe I think your grandmother wears army boots. Mine uses a sledge hammer and she runs a stone quarry.”

Billy was thoughtful. “How big a rock?”

“Big as a Volkswagen.”

“No way.”

“Way.”

No argument from Billy. “The newspaper said there was a dog.”

“He’s the greatest dog you’ve ever seen. Grandma heard about this breeder out west. They sell dogs to the police. So she wrote and asked for a German Shepherd that would eat an intruder alive and ask questions after. He came on a plane. His name’s Whiskey.”

“Why’d she want a dog like that?”

“She lives alone, and on the escape route from the prison.”

Billy’s eyes narrowed. “Which prison?”

“The one with the hockey team owner. My cousin played a softball game there and I went along. I got to see him at a distance.”

“Cool.” Billy was hooked now.

“Grandma said last escape tools were stolen from the barn. Must’ve been the convict.”

“So she has a killer guard dog.”

“Yeah, and Whiskey’s a bit crazy. It was my job to burn the garbage in the incinerator back of the barn. Every time I did the dog went nuts, jumped over my head and barked up a storm. When I lit the fire, he howled and leapt then he took some burning paper in his mouth and blew smoke out his nose.”

Again with the narrow eyes. “Did not.”

“Swear to God. He could be in the circus except he’d bite everybody, probably kill them.”

“It said there was an escape while you were there. Were you scared?”

“Yes and no. Yes, because every morning Grandma said, ‘At least we weren’t murdered in our beds!’ and Grandma’s no wallflower. But no, because I knew Whiskey would bite a convict in the jugular, or maybe in the nuts.”

“What if the convict had a gun?” Billy thought that was a smart question.

“Not likely, just escaping from jail. But I did think about it and I was a bit worried for Whiskey.”

Billy nodded sagely. Did you get to go to the quarry? Did you see the crusher work?

“Course,” I said easily. “My ma had only one condition. I couldn’t be anywhere near the blasting. She made Grandma promise too.”

“Blasting?” Billy was surprised.

“Yeah, blasting, you have to blow the rock up into smaller rocks so it can fit through the crusher. Blasting. You know, blasting?”

“Well what with?” he was amazed.

“Dynamite of course, Grandma has plenty. It lasts for a year, y’know,” I answered casually, seeing the impression I was making.

“Man, now I believe you. You could’ve told me you watched the blasting.”

Billy didn’t think that one through. I did. Billy would’ve told his mother, who would’ve told ma, and … you catch my drift.

“What’s it look like? Is it like the stuff on the Road Runner and Wiley Coyote?”

It was a good question. “The sticks are like that.” The blasting caps are smaller. You use the caps to set off the sticks. The caps explode all right, but the real damage comes from the sticks. I begged Grandma to let me watch. She said no, my uncle lost his sight and almost died from a blasting cap.”

“Your uncle who’s blind?”

“That’s the one.”

“Where’s she keep the dynamite?”

“She keeps the blasting caps in the trunk of her car so she doesn’t forget them when she needs them. She keeps more caps and all of the sticks in the barn, locked up.”

Billy was worked up now.

“Well what if they go off?”

“The sticks don’t go off unless the blasting caps go off. The blasting caps don’t go off unless you hit them.”

“Well what if she hits a pothole?”

“Grandma knows what’s safe and what’s not. She said to me, ‘put the groceries in the trunk, but put the bag with the cans in the back seat.”

“Geez,” Billy whistled. “So how did it happen?”

“Grandma had to stay in the hospital overnight for some heart tests. You’re right, there was an escaped prisoner. So Grandma said ‘you stay in the house and you keep the dog right with you. Stay inside both of you. Don’t even think of going near the barn. This convict is a desperate character. If you see a stranger call the police.’ She made me promise.

“In the middle of the night Whiskey started barking to beat the band, wouldn’t stop. He put his front paws on the window sill and looked towards the barn. I went to look and it was on fire! I ran downstairs and picked up the phone. It’s a party line. Mrs. A down the road was right there. I said the barn’s on fire. Help! She said she’d called the fire department and I should stay inside. I did too. I didn’t want the dog to get hurt, and that fool would have run right into the burning barn. Then there was the biggest explosion you every heard. The dynamite was in a wooden box, and the fire must have set it off. There were boards flying through the air for a hundred yards.

“The firemen got here quick, but the barn was pretty much a write-off, pieces of wood flung all over, right up to the house.

“When it was over, the fire chief, Mr. French, motioned me to come to his truck. He knew about our dog. I left Whiskey inside and went to talk to him.”

“Young man,” he said, “first of all, the convict has been arrested, just two miles down the road. He admits lighting a cigarette in your barn and running away when the wood caught on fire.” It was a relief that he was caught, I thought.

“Now I want you to answer carefully, young man,” he continued. “Can you think of any reason that the barn boards are scattered all over creation?”

“I imagine the fire set off the dynamite Grandma kept in the barn,” I said truthfully.

“No,” he said immediately, “that’s not right. I know your grandmother well. When the insurance investigator gets here you’re not saying anything as foolish as that. So let me ask you again. Do you know of any reason the wood is flung so far?”

I looked him in the eye. “No sir, I don’t. The wood was very old. Maybe it was brittle and very light.”

“Good,” he nodded appreciatively. “And where, young man, did your grandmother keep the explosives for her business?”

I took a moment. “She just bought what she needed. She didn’t keep dynamite around. She said it wasn’t safe.”

“You’re a good boy. Come with me. I’ll give you a ride to the hospital so you can tell her what happened.”

Billy was amazed, and since he’d read about the fire in the paper, he had no reason to doubt what he had just heard. “What’d you tell her?” he asked.

“I said ‘Grandma, they’ve caught the escaped convict but he was staying in our barn. He lit a cigarette and now the barn’s burned down. Nothing left.’”

“What’d she say?”

I paused, you know, for effect. “She asked if the dog was all right, and I said yes. Then I asked her if she was mad about the barn. She asked if Mr. French had asked me about the explosion and what had I said. I told her. She smiled and said I was a good boy and Mr. French is a good man. Then she said, ‘I’m insured.’”