Who by Fire Read Free

end of September.
    “Clint Comstock and his assistant will be at your house in an hour,” a fellow said on the phone.
    Ella ran to her car and raced to the Lower Place. She found Tom and Kees in a field of wheat, rubbing kernels into their palms and chewing them. Tom looked up, saw her, started over.
    “Goddamn him,” Tom said when she’d told him. “He should’ve given us more notice.”
    “I don’t even have time to bake.”
    “Give him last week’s scone same as you give me. Don’t bend over backwards.”
    She waved him off—not his business. She jumped in the car, U-turned, and returned up the road.
    Ella was barely back home when the white car pulled into the yard. She answered the door and invited the two men in. She said for them to sit at the table, and Mr. Comstock sat in Tom’s place. It seemed rude to ask him to move so she didn’t. She had a fire in the stove and a pot of coffee ready to perk. She set out small plates, knives and butter, along with the plate of dry scones.
    Clint Comstock was tall and broad shouldered, possibly less broad shouldered than his western jacket pretended. Under it was a bone-coloured shirt. He had on blue jeans with a razor-sharp crease. He wore his blond hair brushed back same as Tom, but the Texan controlled his hair with pomade, a sickening smell like the beginning of rot. He was so red across the cheekbones, like he had gone at himself with a wire brush.
    That Mr. Comstock was sitting in Tom’s place seemed not to matter until Tom arrived. After introductions, Tom had to sit on the children’s side, and Ella could see it made him ill at ease. She had the odd thought that someone who did not know them, coming into the house, might assume it was Comstock’s home, that she was Comstock’s wife. Tom would look like a shy visitor, maybe a vagrant looking for a job.
    As soon as Ella poured the coffee, the Texan pushed the cup forward on the table and set his hands behind it, fingers laced. He spread his elbows wide so they almost went to the table’s corners. He had by now taken a scone. He’d broken it in two and buttered it, but had put the pieces back on his plate without taking a bite.
    The younger man had a brush cut, so close you could see the middle bone of his head. Comstock introduced him, but Ella promptly forgot the name. She felt she was supposed to forget. This one rustled around in a briefcase and set out writing pad and pen.
    From the start, Ella could see that Clint Comstock was a mixture of politeness and pushiness. In the introductions he’d called them Mr. and Mrs. Ryder, but abruptly switched to Tom and Ella without being asked. Now, he looked Tom in the eye and pushed himself forward so his chest was tight to the table. This caused Tom to slide his chair back, cross his legs, and start rolling a cigarette. When Comstock spoke, he mostly addressed Tom, but swung around every few sentences to toss a few words at Ella. This part was just small talk. He adjusted himself to indicate when he was moving on to business.
    “I wanted to say hello to our nearest neighbours. It’s nice of you folks to make time for me.”
    Without looking, he reached to his assistant, who put a sheet of paper in his hand. Comstock set it on the table and twisted it around so the print was right side up for Tom.
    “You can keep this. It includes what we call plant specifications. A copy of it was filed with your government in Edmonton. Your health minister and the minister of mines and minerals signed it. So did your premier, Mr. Manning. Yours is a farmers’ government, isn’t it.”
    “Started that way,” said Tom, showing a bit of his real self. “Sometimes they forget.”
    Comstock pointed at one of the numbers. “When we’re up and running, we’ll be processing hundreds of thousands of cubic feet of gas a day. That’s to start with.”
    “You mean it’ll get bigger?” Tom said.
    “That’s right. In a year or two, we’ll move to the second