Chapter 7

Spinster Barbie Cole sat in her lumpy recliner watching the sparrow outside the window of her upstairs bedroom. The bird was hopping all over, pecking at different places on the ground in hopes of finding something to eat. When it discovered some sunflower seeds, it began bobbing its head up and down nibbling at them. Barbie imagined that the bird was happy as it filled its stomach. Water sat in a small green bowl she put on the ground near the seed earlier that afternoon, waiting for the bird to drink and bathe after its meal.

Her house was situated on a one acre lot and with its banana yellow paint, hip roofs, expansive porch, and twin turrets, it was the most recognizable one on the street. A once vibrant but now overgrown assortment of flowers and shrubs were placed around the perimeter of the house, and mature maple, oak, and birch trees were interspersed around the lot. A once lush, thick lawn covered the rest of the grounds, but neglect and insects were making it thin and looking stressed.

Barbie was eighty-one; her eyesight and hearing were still good, and she was able to get around on her own. Conversely, her brain activity was as frayed as the dress she wore. She needed constant reminders to perform her daily functions, especially when eating. She started her meals focused on the act of eating but soon forgot what she was doing and stared absently out the dining room windows. Friends and nurse’s aides took turns reminding her to eat, but Barbie often needed more than one prompting per forkful.

Barbie’s trance-like appearance while staring out her window was belied by what was going on inside her brain. Memories of her childhood often flashed before her eyes in a dizzying display. Some memories may have been based on actual occurrences. She had no way of knowing; no one did. She didn’t remember any of them when people prodded her back to reality anyway, and even if she did, no one was left in her life that might have been able to corroborate them.

An only child, her loving parents had no siblings to dote on her. Fortunately for Barbie, her parent’s home was located in a neighborhood full of children and she never lacked for a playmate.

In her younger adult years she had an active social life. She went with friends to New York to shop or watch a play, attended church get-togethers, dined out, and visited friends. She also spent hours tending her flowers and keeping her house spotlessly clean. Her life was full, and most nights she went off to sleep easily.

That was no longer the case. As she aged, the hours spent tending her flowers and cleaning her house naturally became less and less. At eighty-one she no longer had the stamina to take care of her house. Most of her friends were dead.

Something that gave her comfort now was having a reading chair next to a window in her bedrooms, each giving her different views of her property. She alternated between the bedrooms, and often paused from her reading to communicate with the natural beauty around her. She mentally smelled her flowers, floated above the lawn, and implored the stars to take her away. Keeping busy and keeping her mind active kept her alive. But there came a time each night when she had to turn the lights out and face the darkness alone.

Then came the fire. One muggy summer’s night a violent thunderstorm exploded outside her bedroom, startling but not awakening Barbie, for she had not yet fallen asleep. Bolting upright in her bed, her heart pounding and her eyes bulging, she watched lightning strike after lightning strike illuminate the area around her. The storm’s fury and noise lasted for fifteen minutes, by which time Barbie was worn out from worry, for she was certain that the lightning was going to strike her house. When it was over, she believed, none had struck.

Thunderstorms were one part of nature that she never talked nicely to, for, it seemed to her, it never talked nicely to her. It took half an hour for her to calm her nerves and, with the help of a sleeping pill, fall off to sleep. With all the noise from the storm, she had never heard the tree limb crack and fall onto the front roof, nor did she smell the fire that was quickly claiming it.

Fortunately, her neighbor did. The man who lived across the street worked late that night. It was pouring so hard when he got home that the wipers on his car were unable to keep up with the rain and he was not able to see anything that was more than ten feet away. Although less than a mile from home, the conditions were so bad that he stopped his car, pulled as far off the road as possible, put the hazard lights on, waited for the rain to ease, and hoped no other car came his way. Ten minutes later the rain eased. Before pulling into his driveway, he looked out the side window of his car and noticed an orange glow coming from Barbie’s roof.

Immediately he put the transmission into reverse, and drove across the street to Barbie’s house. Getting out of his car and confirming the fire, he called 911. Running up the stairs, he knocked loudly on the door, but Barbie was too deep in sleep to respond.

Making his way around to the back of the yard he saw that the flames had not yet reached that side of the house. He ran up those porch steps and tried to open the door he knew was locked. Hearing no sirens, he knew he had to take action. The quickest way up to the bedrooms was by climbing a trellis on the side of the porch, which with the wet leaves growing up it took him far longer to ascend than he wanted.

Once on the roof of the porch, he began knocking on all the bedroom windows to alert Barbie, while checking to see if they were locked at the same time. One was not, so he pushed it open, climbed into the room and began yelling Barbie’s name.

In her bedroom, Barbie began to stir. Her neighbor kept yelling her name, and after not finding her in two bedrooms, he located her. He yelled her name again and she groggily mumbled something. He went to the bed and began to shake her shoulders, all the while yelling her name.

She finally opened her eyes and screamed in panic at the sight and touch of someone in her bedroom. He told her what was happening and that she had to come with him, now. Looking across the hall he saw flames making their way to the back of the house. He still had not heard sirens.

“We have to get out of here,” he said. “Can you walk?”

She smelled smoke and it finally registered that her house was on fire.

“Yes, I can. Where is my robe? I can’t leave my house dressed only in my nightgown.”

Exasperated at this point, the man grabbed her by the elbow.

“Never mind the bathrobe; if we don’t leave now, we will burn to death,” he said.

She felt a pain in her chest after hearing this, but said nothing. She grabbed ahold of his hand and they made their way to the hall. He pulled her back into the bedroom and shut the door. She, too, had felt the heat when they got to the hall.

“Now what do we do?” she asked.

In fear he responded, “We have to leave the way I got in, across the porch roof and down the trellis. We don’t have time to do anything else.”

He was envisioning having to carry her down the trellis, doubting it would support their weight and trying to think of other options to get her off the roof. The fire was spreading quickly and they would have little time to get down from the roof.

She looked behind her, saw the smoke coming under the door, and nodded skeptically.

He ran to the window, threw it open, and told her that he would go first and then help her out. She looked into his eyes and said,

“Whatever happens, you must save yourself.”

At last, he heard sirens. Motioning with his head towards the sound, he said, “We’re both going to be all right. Follow me.”

The pain in her chest was stronger now, and she began feeling lightheaded, but she followed him out onto the porch roof. By then the firemen were driving up onto her lawn, shining lights on the house. Right away they saw the man and Barbie and quickly set a ladder in place and climbed up to them. As a fireman helped Barbie down to the ground, he confirmed with her that no one else was in the house.

Barbie was taken to the hospital because of her chest pains. Her neighbor declined to go to the hospital.

It took three hours to control the fire. As the sun began to rise, it was plain to see what the silhouettes of her former house had shown in the darkness of night—that it was a total loss.

A stent in her artery, her house gone, her flowers trampled, the grass torn up, all the stately trees near the house dead or dying, no family to help her through this horrible time—Barbie was a wreck, as trampled as her flowers, when she arrived at the Berkshire Rest Home.

After a few days, and with some dietary changes put in place, she was much improved physically. Barbie was also receiving therapy to help her work emotionally through the terrible losses she suffered. The therapist sensed that Barbie was holding back many of her thoughts and struggled to get her to open up. Fixing her emotionally might be out of the question.

Despite the yellow tape strung around the perimeter of the yard announcing the area was off limits, Barbie’s neighbor was sifting through the soil where the azaleas had been. During the spring he had planted a box in the ground that Barbie had prepared before she planted new bushes. He timed it so that his digging up the dirt coincided with hers, leaving it unnoticeable. The box was planted deep enough so that Barbie wouldn’t find it when she dug up the soil for planting.

It was a much cooler summer night than the night of the fire, and it was likely that the neighbors nearest that side of her yard had the windows open. Although they couldn’t see what their neighbor was doing, they possibly could hear him digging. And, to make that more likely, it was New England soil and he knew that he was going to hit rock sooner or later. He chose a six-inch hand shovel to dig with to minimize the noise. The box wasn’t buried deep.

He listened for the sound of voices and passing vehicles, prepared to move to the cover of a pile of burnt pieces of the roof and outer walls of the house if necessary. Once he measured from a spot he had marked on the house foundation in the spring, he began to dig. It didn’t take long before he heard the sound of the shovel hitting a stone. Cursing, he started digging a few inches to the left and soon heard the sound of the shovel hitting the box. From then on he dug with his hands to stay quiet and soon pulled the box out of the ground.

Putting the box in a plastic grocery bag, he covered up the hole and headed home. There was no need to cover his footprints since the tread of the boots he wore blended in with the remaining footprints of the firemen and other emergency personnel.

Inside the box was the signed confidentiality agreement Jerry Long had signed promising not to disclose anything related to the invention. Long knew it would be used against him some day and convinced Roy Summa to hide it for him. Why Long didn’t simply shred it, why he asked Summa to hide it, and why Summa hid it in his neighbor’s yard are unknown. If only their thoughts could be read.

The fire consumed all of Barbie’s possessions. The rest home brought an old recliner from their storage area up to her room to use, and they outfitted her with clothes that deceased patients families had left behind. She had an older roommate who was bedridden and mute. The social director engaged Barbie in as many group activities as Barbie would agree to, but there were still many lonely hours in each day for every patient and resident at the home.

One evening at dusk as she sat looking blankly out her window, Barbie had a vision of a man digging in the dirt near her azaleas. She seemed to recall going outside to speak to him; he seemed nice and explained that he was her neighbor and he saw her turning the soil over the day before and he really liked to look at her flowers when he drove by and he never had a chance to have a garden at his house and he just wanted to do some digging and he hoped she didn’t mind if he worked in her yard and he was sorry to disturb her or trespass and he was new to the neighborhood. Or something like that. She didn’t know his name, but she thought she remembered seeing him recently but didn’t know where.