Short Stories from Wing's Authors.

The Homecoming

by

Joan Fox

Belinda pulled slowly into the lower end of the gravel driveway and cut the engine. A pile of old, yellowed newspapers plus rained-on periodicals lay scattered beneath the crushed aluminum mailbox. She sat in the cab just breathing deep and slow and looking around for a few minutes. Finally, she threw open the door and took her time stepping down from the truck’s cab and approached the mailbox. She attempted to pry open the bent door to check if there might possibly any mail left inside, but it wouldn’t open. Giving up, she stooped and gathered up the debris around its base and threw the crumpled papers and magazines into the back of the old pickup with the rest of her belongings.

Feeling slightly dizzy, she briefly rested her rump against the fender, drawing in a wheezing breath, shaking her head from side to side to help clear it. When she did, something caught her eye. Some realtor had left a lopsided ‘For Sale’ sign planted in the front yard facing the road. Might as well take that down, she thought. Reaching for the placard with big red letters, ‘SOLD’ plastered across the realtor’s name, she jerked it out of the lawn. What lawn? She laughed silently to herself, gazing at two-foot high weeds.

Belinda glanced up and threw a long glance of trepidation toward the sorry-looking, two-story house sitting by itself on a gentle rise. She never bothered to do a walk-through before her purchase since the old house was being sold ‘as-is.’

“What you see, is what you get!” the realtor told her when she signed the sales contract.

The house looked forlorn. And deserted. She wondered when the last tenants had moved out, leaving the house to take care of itself. They didn’t do a good job of it. A ground floor windowpane was broken, another cracked. A ragged curtain inside that room waved at her, flapping lightly in the breeze. She counted the number of windows across the front of the house’s chipped, painted façade, her mind’s eye visualizing where every room was situated. Hers had been a corner bedroom on the second storey, the one to her right as she faced the house.

Resting a spread palm against her forehead to shade her eyes, Belinda squinted against a flash of sunlight from its bright afternoon rays. Brilliant gold and reds reflected in the large, center pane of one of the upstairs’ windows, imitating burning flames raging wildly inside. For a brief second, Belinda panicked, sucking in an audible gasp quite unconsciously. She squeezed her lids shut to extinguish a second view of the horrid sight in front of her. She even again felt a forgotten rush of terror moving through her nerves and across her body almost on cue. She shuddered visibly, and grabbed onto the tailgate of the pickup to steady herself. Memories tightened a steel band of pain around her chest.

Belinda had left the house and gone to a party with friends that night--a last party before she and her classmates went their individual ways after high school graduation. The party at the Jamieson’s farm had been at the edge of town. The rock ‘n’ music blasted out of speakers from inside the house, too loud to muffle any piercing shrieks from fire sirens.

Festivities lasted later than usual, classmates doing camaraderie hugs and goodbyes as long as possible. Laughter, dancing, and even a few stolen kisses broke up the party an hour after midnight. Belinda had stayed later than she might until their girlfriend who had a driver’s license was ready to leave and would deposit her and a few others at their homes.

“Come on, Belinda. It’s early yet. The rest of us decided we’re going to the diner for a nightcap,” her best friend, Julie Warren, had coaxed. “Only coffee, of course.” She grinned and grabbed hold of Belinda’s arm.

“I really should be getting back, Julie. Gramma’s home alone with Billy and Mike. You know how they can get into mischief. They’re such smarty alecky kids these days,” Belinda said with a wry grin. “They think they can do whatever they feel like since they’re eight and ten.”

“But, it’s our last weekend together, Binny,” her friend whined, her face screwed into a childish pout. “I won’t see you again for months! Come on! I’m going to miss you so much.”

“Me, too, but, oh, all right. But let’s not stay out much later, O.K?”

It was nearly two o’clock when a car full of teenage girls started down the narrow, gravel road leading to the Bennett house, furthest in from the main road. The girls were still busy talking and giggling, not paying attention too much else outside the car.

“Take it careful here, Betts,” Julie cautioned, sitting in the passenger’s seat next to the driver as they rounded a sharp curve. The driver slowed down as they neared Belinda’s destination. Not until then did Julie notice the rosy glow lighting the sky atop the rise behind the house.

“Omigod!” she screamed. “Binny! Look! I think your house is on fire!”

Betty slammed on the brakes. It took a few seconds for the three girls in the rear seat to gather their wits. Sitting in the middle spot, Belinda clawed her way over the girl next to her and pushed open the car’s back door. She was already on her way up the hill, sprinting along the long driveway in seconds, yelling at the top of her lungs all the way.

Four more girls spilled out of the car behind her. Their shouts followed Belinda’s frantic race toward the house. The house was not totally consumed as yet. Most of the flames and smoke seemed to be concentrated on the second floor.

“Gramma! Gramma! Wake up! Let me in!” Belinda screamed in frustration, pounding on the solid front door while tears poured out of her eyes and rolled down her cheeks.

The boys must have locked the front door as a joke when she left for the party. Her grandmother always waited up and left the door unlocked until Belinda got home.

Still puffing air, four winded girls halted in terror at the base of the porch steps. Thinking fast, Julie leapt to help Belinda. But pushing against the door didn’t budge it. Almost as frenzied as her friend, Julie looked for something to use to smash a window. She spied a wispy-looking corn broom leaning against the back of the porch. Grabbing it, she punched a hole in a large, single pane with the wooden handle. Glass shattered, a noisy crash and tinkling shards were drowned by the hissing and crackling of flames coming from the two-storey colonial’s center stairwell.

Julie cleared the sharp, jagged edges of the bottom pane out of the window’s wooden frame, and Belinda carefully squeezed through, still shouting for her grandmother. The black, acrid smoke choked her, but still she pushed forward and upward. “Binny, come back! I hear the fire trucks. You can’t go up there!” Julie shouted to Belinda but to no avail.

Belinda didn’t hear the sirens or the girls yelling from outside the house. All she could think of was reaching her grandmother and her two young brothers as she crawled through the dark air swirling around her. Billows of foul smoke choked her as heat seared both her throat and eyes. She struggled up the flight of stairs to the second storey landing, her eyes tearing so much that she could barely see. She had nothing to cover her mouth and nose either. Her lungs were wracked by hacking coughs, scarcely able to breathe.

Belinda tried not to inhale the smoky air. At the same time she kept calling, “Gramma! Mikey! Billy!” At wits end she heard her own distraught bawling ringing in her ears. When she entered the house, it was dark, and she was so disoriented it was like being lost in a dense, dirt-colored fog. “Gramma! Billy! Where are you, Mikey? Answer me!”

She turned left and ran a trembling palm along a hallway wall until she reached what felt like a doorway. Thank God! She must be at her grandmother’s room. Gramma always closed her door before going to bed.

Belinda encountered empty space.

Oh no! Addled, she could see nothing because of the thick, billowing smoke. She panicked, then realized it must be the bathroom, not her grandmother’s room.

Stumbling past, she almost forgot her grandmother’s room would be next along the hall. She pushed the door open and shouted, “Gramma!” Flames licked at the furniture on the other side of the room, hissing aloud as they reached for the ceiling. The blaze was bright enough, but Belinda didn’t see her grandmother in the room.

“Maybe Gramma got out! Oh please, Lord, let it be true!”

Her brothers’ room was situated across the hall, a short way further. Out of the blue, she remembered that doors are supposed to be kept shut to contain a fire. She slammed her grandmother’s bedroom door shut and fumbled for the doorknob to the boys’ room.

“Ouch, dammit!” She yelped in pain when she grabbed it, quickly letting go. The metal was as hot as Hades! Choking and sucking air into her lungs, tears streamed down her soot blackened cheeks. Nearly exhausted, Belinda sank to her knees.

Omigod! Her two brothers were still in there, and she couldn’t get their door open! She pounded then clawed on the wood feebly until she could pound no more.

The firemen reached Belinda, semi-unconscious, lying on the hallway floor, sobbing her heart out. Outside on the lawn, her girlfriends knew that her grandmother and her brothers had gotten out of the house safely. It was Billy, the oldest at ten years who ran to a neighbor’s house to call the fire department. Thank goodness, Mikey and Gramma were at the Kincaid’s house farther down the road, safe, also. Even Muggsy, the cat, had made it out without harm.

It was a shame Belinda’s parents never purchased life insurance when they were killed at the age of thirty-nine in a freak drowning accident. At the time, they didn’t think they needed it. Luckily, Gramma had paid the fire insurance premium over the years, or Belinda and the boys would have been left with nothing to make the house habitable again.

When the adjuster from the insurance company approved the claim, the needed repairs were underway before Belinda left for college.

Encouraged to move and live with her son and daughter-in-law and bring her other two young grandsons with her, Belinda’s grandmother did so. The house in which Belinda had grown was put on the market and sold quickly. The new owners must’ve moved out of it for some reason, though, because new tenants moved in, Belinda had learned.

That was ten years ago.

Belinda now glanced at the house a second time. She had not come back during those ten years--not once--to the house or the town. Four years of college, three jobs and one bad marriage that lasted three years, had finally brought her home--to the doorstep of the old homestead.

What in the world made her plunk down the last bit of her cash to buy the place back?

She had closed the purchase of the dilapidated house in town an hour ago. Now it belonged to her. Lock, stock, and barrel. Those and all the problems she would surely encounter the minute she walked in through the front door.

Belinda hopped in the truck and drove it up the drive. When she emerged from the pickup, mounted the porch steps, put her key in the lock of the front door, and walked inside, the tight bands of pain she remembered crushing her chest almost miraculously eased. It was weird--almost eerie. Though her brain had quickly recaptured the powerful stench of acrid smoke, recalled the orange flames leaping up the walls of her grandmother’s bedroom, her panicky palpitations had passed.

Looking around the small foyer with its scarred stairwell and peeling wallpaper, the old house seemed to welcome her like an old friend. Belinda inhaled a musty odor from the close-up rooms, but she felt a comforting semblance of peace here surrounded by the walls and homey atmosphere in which she grew up, made friends, and then left to start a new life.

Gazing up the stairwell leading to the second floor brought back vivid images of her trying to save her relatives. She hadn’t managed to so only because they had saved themselves.

But the people in town praised her courage just the same. She had become a local heroine. The newspaper’s star reporter interviewed Gramma, Billy, and Mikey. There was a picture on the front page of Belinda and the other four girls. The main thing was that no one was hurt, the newspaper reported.

Unless you could call that annoying cough that continued to bother her and made her feel so much weaker the last few months. When she was settled, she would stop in to see Doctor Barrows if he was still practicing in town.

Belinda wheezed, her breath rasping noisily from deep in her lungs, but without any noticeable pain this time. She smiled inwardly, resting her weight on one foot. She was glad after all that she had decided to come back home. She had things to accomplish in her life yet, friends to visit and be reacquainted with, a book to finish soon. And maybe even take a trip to some exotic spot elsewhere.

Still she felt…strange. She had had a peculiar premonition about this place as she was coming up the drive; that she would never leave this house a second time, if ever.

Belinda Bennett Howell gently closed the front door behind her, inhaled another deep breath, and mounted the first steps to the second floor to revisit her old bedroom, the one situated in the house’s front corner. She’d just lie down for a little while. To rest, before she tackled the rest of her life.