Combustible (A Boone Childress Novel) Read Online Free Page B

about got yourself killed over a possum?”
    “Thought it was a house cat,” Boone said.
    “And why ,” Lamar said from behind them, “would you risk your life to rescue a goddamn cat?”
    “Because it was alive !” Boone said. “Because we don’t leave anything living to die in fire!”
    In his mind’s eye, he pictured the fire that had killed his friend. But he knew Lamar, who was born and raised a farm boy, had a hierarchical view of an animal’s value in the world. Human life was sacred and worth risking yourself to save. Animals, well, they were good to have around, and you never willingly hurt one. But when it came down to it, no animal was worth the life of a person.
    “I heard screaming,” Boone said. “It sounded like a baby.”
    Lamar took Boone’s helmet out of his hands. “Did I not tell you this house was abandoned? Did you not hear me right?”
    “You told me and I heard you ,” Boone said, “but I also heard screams, and how could I determine that it was only a possum? Besides, if this house is abandoned, how did it and the other two buildings catch fire simultaneously?”
    Lamar looked at the scorched possum, still f rozen in fear but hissing a warning. He turned back at the fire, which radiated waves of heat. “That’s for the fire investigators to figure out. Like I told you a hundred times, we don’t ask how the fire started, just how fast we can put it out.”
    “Like I told you,” Boone sa id, “I’ll never stop asking how.”
    “Stick to your guns,” Julia said and patted him on the ass.
    Lamar cleared his throat and handed Boone the helmet. “Take the first aid kit out of my truck and clean up that scratch. Get back to work ASAP. There’s hose to clean up, and you got to get back to the school.”
    “Yes, Cap,” he said and headed for Lamar’s truck at the front of the house. He gave the possum a wide berth as it crouched in the shadows and continued to hiss.
    “Hey, rookie,” Otto called.
    Boone turned to answer as Otto opened the hose nozzle on him. A charged stream blasted his helmet off and knocked him down. Water sprayed up his nose and into his mouth. He choked and spat to get it out.
    Julia laughed. “Welcome to the brotherhood, possum.”
     
     
     
    A few minutes later, Boone had a tube of antibacterial ointment in one hand and a bandage strip in the other. He bent down by the side mirror of Lamar’s truck, trying to place the bandage, though he was distracted by the reflection of Julia stripping down to her civvies. His brain told his hands to go left, but they followed the mirror image instead.
    A man with a round potbelly in a white wife beater T-shirt walked up to the truck. “You need a hand with that?”
    “H ey, Stumpy,” Boone said. “Yeah, I can’t get my hands to go in the right direction.”
    “I got that problem myself,” Stumpy said, taking the bandage from Boone, “but it usually ain’t from looking into a mirror. This might sting some.”
    “Tsss!” Boone sucked air through his teeth. Yeah, it stung. More than a little. “What brings you out here?”
    “You best watch for infection,” Stump said after he stuck the bandage on the wound and gave it a good slap. “Possums carry diseases, you know. This one feller I know got the gangrene from it and had to get his thumb amputated.”
    Stump was well known in Frisco, a good ol’ boy who could fix anything he wanted, if you could get him to want to. He dropped out of high school to work the family fields, but then his daddy died and the government bought out the tobacco allotments. Folks said he gambled away most of the money and then drank up what was left.
    “I was staying in that old Airstream trailer on the back of the property. I was the one who called in the fire.”
    “You don’t say?” Boone said.
    “Don’t you go looking at me like that. Ain’t me who started it, I promise you that. I was sound asleep when the boom went off. Practically knocked me off the couch. Well,