sure their trip to the City had helped him, so sure, so sureâ
A nervous and confused Irish setter dashed into the path of Rosewoodâs truck. She did exactly what one would expect of the Kennel of Joyâs founder and presidentâshe stomped on the brake pedal and swerved the wheel. The Ranger skidded, careening wildly, its right fender fracturing the setterâs skull. Rosewood heard the emphatic smack of metal meeting bone. Her truck kept sliding, the dogâs corpse sprawled across the bumper. The guardrail splintered like Styrofoam.
She screamed, overcome by the same chaotic falling sensation sheâd recently experienced on the Chariots of Ezekiel ferris wheel. Her truck hit the Algonquin and sank. Darkness suffused the cab, as if someone had thrown a blanket over the sun. The dead setter floated up past the windshield like a wraith rising from a grave. Water squirted in around the door frames, spraying Rosewoodâs chest and face. Frantically she felt her way through the gloom, seized the window crank, and gave it a turn. The mechanism froze, befouled with silt. The water reached her knees. She wrapped her fingers around the door handle. Yanked. Pushed. Jerked. Shoved. The door wouldnât budge, not one inch. The water caressed her stomach.
Holding her breath, she lurched toward the passenger door. She grabbed the window crank. Stuck. The water encircled her neck. She clawed at the handle and threw herself against the door. Nothing. The Algonquin rushed up her nose, down her throat, into her lungs.
A splendid golden carp was the last thing Corinne Rosewood saw in her lifeâa lost and forsaken creature who, seeking to rejoin its school, had fought its way a half mile up the Algonquin, getting farther from home with each twist and turn of its shining body.
Chapter 3
P RIOR TO HIS DIAGNOSIS of prostate cancer, the worst thing that had ever happened to Martin was the loss, at age fourteen, of his cherished childhood home. Heâd actually stood and watched as two bulldozers knocked it down, their fearsome steel scoops toppling the walls and leveling the foundation. By this time Martinâs family no longer owned the place, his father having sold it to a wealthy chiropractor named Harold Clevinger for twelve thousand dollars, a sum with which Walter Candle had immediately acquired a more conventional domicile across the street. The chiropractorâs first move was to obliterate the Candle dwellingâthe property per se was what enchanted him, Waupelani Creek and its palisade of weeping willowsâand erect in its stead a serpentine, one-floor monstrosity suggesting nothing so much as a spine that Clevinger had failed to straighten.
Martinâs family couldnât fault the chiropractorâs decision to call in the bulldozers, for the edifice in question had been constructed in 1935 to accommodate Abaddon Fire Company Number One and its modest two-engine fleet. When the building was abandoned a decade later, Martinâs father had purchased it for a mere forty-five hundred dollars, deploying studs and plasterboard to convert the firefightersâ upper-level dormitory into a maze of domestic spaces: bedrooms, bathrooms, dining area, kitchen. As a Sunday school teacher, Walter Candle was delighted with the idea of living in a firehouse. He saw himself as a kind of spiritual firefighter, forever dousing the burning desires and blazing temptations that flared in his pupilsâ hearts.
Martin loved the firehouse no less than his father. He was particularly enamored of the main siren, its domed carapace straddling the peaked roof like a helmet protecting the head of an infantryman. The siren was broken beyond repair, and no one in the family pretended otherwise, and yet he fantasized that one day, somehow, the device would spring to life, releasing a banshee cry so loud his sister would wet her pants.
And so it was that when Martin, ear pressed to his telephone receiver,
A nervous and confused Irish setter dashed into the path of Rosewoodâs truck. She did exactly what one would expect of the Kennel of Joyâs founder and presidentâshe stomped on the brake pedal and swerved the wheel. The Ranger skidded, careening wildly, its right fender fracturing the setterâs skull. Rosewood heard the emphatic smack of metal meeting bone. Her truck kept sliding, the dogâs corpse sprawled across the bumper. The guardrail splintered like Styrofoam.
She screamed, overcome by the same chaotic falling sensation sheâd recently experienced on the Chariots of Ezekiel ferris wheel. Her truck hit the Algonquin and sank. Darkness suffused the cab, as if someone had thrown a blanket over the sun. The dead setter floated up past the windshield like a wraith rising from a grave. Water squirted in around the door frames, spraying Rosewoodâs chest and face. Frantically she felt her way through the gloom, seized the window crank, and gave it a turn. The mechanism froze, befouled with silt. The water reached her knees. She wrapped her fingers around the door handle. Yanked. Pushed. Jerked. Shoved. The door wouldnât budge, not one inch. The water caressed her stomach.
Holding her breath, she lurched toward the passenger door. She grabbed the window crank. Stuck. The water encircled her neck. She clawed at the handle and threw herself against the door. Nothing. The Algonquin rushed up her nose, down her throat, into her lungs.
A splendid golden carp was the last thing Corinne Rosewood saw in her lifeâa lost and forsaken creature who, seeking to rejoin its school, had fought its way a half mile up the Algonquin, getting farther from home with each twist and turn of its shining body.
Chapter 3
P RIOR TO HIS DIAGNOSIS of prostate cancer, the worst thing that had ever happened to Martin was the loss, at age fourteen, of his cherished childhood home. Heâd actually stood and watched as two bulldozers knocked it down, their fearsome steel scoops toppling the walls and leveling the foundation. By this time Martinâs family no longer owned the place, his father having sold it to a wealthy chiropractor named Harold Clevinger for twelve thousand dollars, a sum with which Walter Candle had immediately acquired a more conventional domicile across the street. The chiropractorâs first move was to obliterate the Candle dwellingâthe property per se was what enchanted him, Waupelani Creek and its palisade of weeping willowsâand erect in its stead a serpentine, one-floor monstrosity suggesting nothing so much as a spine that Clevinger had failed to straighten.
Martinâs family couldnât fault the chiropractorâs decision to call in the bulldozers, for the edifice in question had been constructed in 1935 to accommodate Abaddon Fire Company Number One and its modest two-engine fleet. When the building was abandoned a decade later, Martinâs father had purchased it for a mere forty-five hundred dollars, deploying studs and plasterboard to convert the firefightersâ upper-level dormitory into a maze of domestic spaces: bedrooms, bathrooms, dining area, kitchen. As a Sunday school teacher, Walter Candle was delighted with the idea of living in a firehouse. He saw himself as a kind of spiritual firefighter, forever dousing the burning desires and blazing temptations that flared in his pupilsâ hearts.
Martin loved the firehouse no less than his father. He was particularly enamored of the main siren, its domed carapace straddling the peaked roof like a helmet protecting the head of an infantryman. The siren was broken beyond repair, and no one in the family pretended otherwise, and yet he fantasized that one day, somehow, the device would spring to life, releasing a banshee cry so loud his sister would wet her pants.
And so it was that when Martin, ear pressed to his telephone receiver,
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