Child of Fire by Harry Connolly

comb-over and set some papers on the bar beside him. They exchanged terms of endearment in a tone that suggested it was a habit for them and little more. The man tapped the papers. “What’s this?”
    “Financial papers and a birthday card for Paul,” she said.
    For a moment he looked as if he was going to ask for details, but instead he shrugged and picked up the pen. When he got to the card, he said: “Ten years old already? Is he coming home this summer?”
    The woman sighed. “His scholarship covers a summer program in Atlanta, and he’s going.”
    The man sighed, too, and signed the card.
    As the woman walked out of the bar, the three men in the booth burst out laughing. They sounded loud, raw, and somewhat drunk. One called another a “fucking moron.”
    The bartender was just about to place my beer in front of me. She turned toward them, bared her teeth, and said: “Keep it down or take it somewhere else!” She didn’t have to raise her voice.
    They quieted down. The bartender set the beer in front of me, then served up a big glass of ice with a splash of water. “Sorry about that. Sometimes it’s like a chimp house in here.”
    “I like noisy chimps. You know where they are. It’s the quiet chimps you have to watch out for.”
    She smiled at me. “I’m Sara,” she said.
    “Ray.”
    “New in town?”
    “Absolutely.”
    “I guess you came to apply at the toy plant?”
    I shrugged. “Everyone keeps suggesting that.”
    “Well, don’t,” a man behind me said.
    One of the three men from the back booth had come to the bar with an empty pitcher. Sara took it from him without comment and began filling it from the cheap end of the tap.
    He was tall and rangy with a small scarecrow’s head, and he stood closer to me than he needed to. I guess he wanted to look down on me while we talked.
    “You’re the first one to suggest I stay away,” I said. “Something wrong with the company?”
    “Not a thing,” the scarecrow said. “I just don’t want to see some stranger blow into town and take something that belongs to a local.” Sara set the pitcher in front of him. “Thanks, little lollipop. If you get tired of these two, I have some prime lap space reserved for you back at the booth.”
    “Boy, you are one word away from being tossed out like trash. Don’t make me call the Dubois brothers.”
    Brothers? Thinking back to the cops I’d seen at Harlan’sshooting, they certainly could have been brothers, with Emmett the oldest. I filed that information away.
    The scarecrow winked and sauntered back to the booth.
    Sara grimaced. “I ought to ban them for good.”
    “Is this your place?”
    “Yep,” she said. She absentmindedly twisted the rings on her left ring finger. “Ever since Stan died.”
    “How long ago?”
    “Nearly two years now,” she said. “He was a good man. We worked hard. But lately the whole town’s been going to hell.”
    “Why? It sounds like there’s lots of work up at the toy factory. My boss and I were up at the offices this morning.” I watched Sara and the old man closely. Neither reacted to that last statement at all. Neither said,
This morning? When all those women burned to death?
Apparently, neither knew about it, hours after it had happened. “They bring a lot of jobs here, don’t they?” I continued. “Shouldn’t the town be thriving?”
    She shrugged.
    “We’re a timber town,” the victim at the end of the bar said. “We’re not a toy town.”
    “How do you mean?”
    “A job isn’t just a job,” he said. His voice was thick and his words slow. Sara stayed close to him, listening just as closely as I was.
    “A job is an identity,” the man continued. “You don’t put down a chainsaw and then pick up a sewing machine. Making doll clothes isn’t the same as clearing trees. If you switch from one job to the other, you turn into a different person.” He stumbled over that last word, but he was at least making sense.
    “Why don’t you guys