‘It’s nice that you feel that way,’ Johnny said. Suddenly he was frightened to find himself close to tears. In the last six or eight months it seemed to him that his emotional control had slipped several notches.
‘You’ve been good for Chuck. I don’t mean just teaching him to read. In a lot of ways.’
‘I like Chuck.’
‘Yes,’ she said quietly. ‘I know you do.’
Roger came back with the cribbage board and a transistor radio tuned to WMTQ, a classical station that broadcast from the top of Mount Washington.
‘A little antidote for Elton John, Aerosmith, Foghat, et al,’ he said. ‘How does a dollar a game sound, Johnny?’
‘It sounds fine.’
Roger sat down, rubbing his hands. ‘Oh, you’re goin home poor,’ he said.
6.
They played cribbage and the evening passed. Between each game one of them would go downstairs and make sure no one had decided to dance on the pool table or go out back for a little party of their own. ‘No one is going to impregnate anyone else at this party if I can help it,’ Roger said.
Shelley had gone into the living room to read. Once an hour the music on the radio would stop and the news would come on and Johnny’s attention would falter a little. But there was nothing about Cathy’s in Somersworth – not at eight, nine, or ten.
After the ten o’clock news, Roger said: ‘Getting ready to hedge your prediction a little, Johnny?’
‘No.’
The weather forecast was for scattered thundershowers, clearing after midnight.
The steady bass signature of K.C. and the Sunshine Band came up through the floor.
‘Party’s getting loud,’ Johnny remarked.
‘The hell with that,’ Roger said, grinning. ‘The party’s getting drunk. Spider Parmeleau is passed out in the corner and somebody’s using him for a beer coaster. Oh, they’ll have big heads in the morning, you want to believe it. I remember at my own graduation party…’
‘Here is a bulletin from the WMTQ newsroom,’ the radio said.
Johnny, who had been shuffling, sprayed cards all over the floor.
‘Relax, it’s probably just something about that kidnapping down in Florida.’
‘I don’t think so,’ Johnny said.
The broadcaster said: ‘It appears at this moment that the worst fire in New Hampshire history has claimed more than seventy-five young lives in the border town of
Somersworth, New Hampshire. The fire occurred at a restaurant-lounge called Cathy’s. A graduation party was in progress when the fire broke out. Somersworth fire chief Milton Hovey told reporters they have no suspicions of arson; they believe that the fire was almost certainly caused by a bolt of lightning.’
Roger Chatsworth’s face was draining of all color. He sat bolt upright in his kitchen chair, his eyes fixed on a point somewhere above Johnny’s head. His hands lay loosely on the table. From below them came the babble of conversation and laughter, intermingled now with the sound of Bruce Springsteen.
Shelley came into the room. She looked from her husband to Johnny and then back again.
‘What is it? What’s wrong?’
‘Shut up,’ Roger said.
‘…. is still blazing, and Hovey said that a final tally of the dead will probably not be known until early morning. It is known that over thirty people, mostly members of the Durham High School senior class, have been taken to hospitals in surrounding areas to be treated for burns. Forty people, also mostly graduating students, escaped from small bathroom windows at the rear of the lounge, but others were apparently trapped in fatal pile-ups at the…
‘Was it Cathy’s?’ Shelley Chatsworth screamed. ‘Was it that place?’
‘Yes,’ Roger said. He seemed eerily calm. ‘Yes, it was.’
Downstairs there had been a momentary silence. It was followed by a running thud of footsteps coming up the stairs. The kitchen door burst open and Chuck came in, looking for his mother.
‘Mom? What is it? What’s wrong?’
‘It appears that we may owe you for our son’s life,’ Roger said in that same eerily calm voice. Johnny had never seen a face that white. Roger looked like a ghastly living waxwork.
‘It burned?’ Chuck’s voice was incredulous. Behind him, others were crowding up the stairs now, whispering in low, affrighted voices. ‘Are you saying it burned down?’