Chapter 4

Monday she went to the courthouse and filed a written records request for the department's run sheet for her fire.

The clerk, Mrs. Ivey, read it twice with her glasses on a chain, the way Ruth Ann read a grocery list.

"Honey, the volunteer departments keep their own records. We get the chief's report and we file it."

"Then who do I ask?"

"You ask the chief."

She asked the chief at the December commission meeting.

The old courthouse room had wood paneling and folding tables and a flag in the corner. Three commissioners, a stenographer, maybe twenty people in metal chairs, most of them there about a road issue. Ruth Ann signed the public comment sheet and sat with her notebook on her knees until her name was called.

She stood at the microphone and read from the notebook, because she wanted the times right.

"On the night of November twelfth, the tanker from Two Rivers arrived on County Road Nine at approximately nine twenty. I watched it sit on the road for twenty-two minutes. I never saw a hose. My hydrant cap has not been turned - the paint seal is unbroken. I am asking for the run sheet for my fire, and I am asking whether that tanker's pump was tested this year."

The room got very quiet, the way a room does when somebody says out loud a thing everyone has been stepping around.

Bo Traywick stood up from the second row, jacket on, folder in his hand.

"Mrs. Coker lost her home. I understand she wants answers." He turned so he was talking to the commissioners and to the room. "The department is volunteer. We answer three hundred calls a year on equipment older than half the men running it. If Mrs. Coker would like, I'll sit down with her privately and go through the whole file, page by page."

Somebody in the back said, "Amen to that," and there was a small laugh, not unkind, which was worse.

Commissioner Ledbetter thanked her for thirty-one years in the school cafeteria and asked if anyone else had public comment.

The paper ran four lines about it: Resident Questions Fire Response.

Her daughter called that night and said, "Mama. Come live with us."

Ruth Ann said she'd think about it.

She was walking to her truck in the courthouse lot when Marlene Estep came out of the dark between two cars, still in her auxiliary vest, holding her keys with both hands.

"Don't ask for the run sheet," Marlene said. "He'll never give it to you."

"Then what do I ask for?"

Marlene looked back at the courthouse door.

"The carbon," she said. "Ask for the carbon."