62. Aftermath

There’d never been a fire on this block, at least not one that anybody remembered, until that body to which they gave my name was found in the basement of that house three doors away from the one in which mother and I lived. The brick shell remained; everything else—the walls, the tables and chairs that’d been left behind, the concrete in the basement—had burned into dusty ash. Including the body, or most of it, anyway.

Word on this block said a lot of things. Someone settled a longstanding grudge. But who? Mother? The lady whose name I never knew? From what I know, no woman ever killed a man on this block, mainly because men didn’t stay long enough. Or, like Adam—actually, there was nobody else like Adam; he lived here alone in every sense of the word.

The cause of the fire, like the death of the body in the basement, was never determined—at least not officially. There was no report of an inspection; as far as anybody knows, none was ever done. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised there wasn’t much of an investigation into the death discovered underneath the house.

It’s probably just as well. Some detective, some inspector, could’ve—if he’d wanted and was allowed to do some work—find some “evidence.” The could’ve used it to prove, or at least claim, that someone died at a certain hour from blows to the head, blood loss or shock, and that the body died before it burned. Or whatever. And that the fire began whenever they said it did, sparked by spontaneous combustion. Or whatever explanation they came up with.

And difference would any of it’ve made, anyway? If that body had been mine, the cessation of its movement would’ve mattered only to two people on this block. And mother’s on her way out. For everyone else, it’s another story to exaggerate or embellish in whispers. You can’t spread anything without stretching, bending or otherwise distorting it.

I was there to revenge or collect—what? And someone stopped me. That’s one story I heard. Another: some lover, some ex-lover did it. What would that person’ve been doing on this block, anyway? What would I’ve been doing there, for that matter?

Funny how nobody asked those questions. Not the cops, not the fire inspectors; nobody. Then again, I don’t imagine that anyone on this block would’ve talked to them. I know I never would. They wouldn’t know a murder if it were mailed to them. I mean, they listed Adam as a suicide. And up to the day I left, that’s what everybody insisted—if they mentioned him at all.