To Build a Home

6 | Burning House

I had no intention of breaking the law when I woke up in the morning. But one lie sparked a small fire and the flame grew into another and another until, well, you've probably guessed the rest.

I was driving back to the house when I noticed Darren's truck parked outside the hardware store on Route 56. The radio was playing something I had never heard before, there was a fiddle and a banjo, and the early afternoon sun made it impossible to drive without the visor down. Phil's smile was plastered on both the driver and passenger doors of the blue truck, a huge sticker with his freshly-whitened teeth.

I couldn't go a mile in Windber without seeing my brother's face. He was on the lawn of almost half the houses around town and there were tiny fliers in the windows of most of the businesses and on the counters. There was even a large billboard on the main road. I wondered if they'd stay like that, a community shrine, or if eventually, a new face would make its way around town.

I pulled into the lot and parked next to the truck. I got out of my car and leaned against it with my eyes closed and face tilted up to the sun. It felt hot on my skin. Ten minutes later Darren emerged from the store with a bag in his hand and an intense look on his face. It must have been his get-shit-done face, all crinkled in the brow and serious. He stopped walking midway to the parking lot when he finally noticed me tanning and then smiled when the shock wore off.

"You got a screwdriver in there?" I asked, pointing behind me to the toolbox in the back of the truck.

"Of course," he said. "Wouldn't be a carpenter without one."

"Let's go on an adventure."

We took my car and Darren's screwdriver to where Route 56 meets the creek. I couldn't tell him where we were going because I knew he wouldn't come or he would try to stop me. But in order to pull it off, I would need his help. I wasn't the handy brother.

"Could you at least give me a hint?" he asked as I drove.

"Wouldn't you rather be surprised?" I looked away from the road and smiled at him, a creepy, wide-eyed, mischievous smile with the corners of my lips all the way up to my ears.

"With you? Never."

There was a faint buzz coming from somewhere in the car and Darren turned down the volume of the radio. "What's that sound?"

"Probably my phone," I said. "In the glovebox."

Darren reached for the glovebox, but I asked him to leave it there. I told him I hadn't touched my phone since leaving New York and I wasn't ready for what was waiting for me; the calls, the texts, the emails, the posts. He respected my request. I turned up the volume and we let the music and our thoughts fill the car.

"Hey, Darren, can I ask you a question?" I said. "Why did you use Phil's face on the advertisements and not yours?"

He looked out the window and then back at me. "It made the most sense. I'm not an actual Baker brother, only in spirit. And Phil loved the attention."

"Not you, though..."

"I'm more of a behind-the-scenes guy."

"The foundation."

"No more construction metaphors, please." We both laughed because we both thought of my brother. I could tell by the way Darren's eyes wandered.

"We're here," I said, as we pulled up to my parents' old house. I parked on the street in front of the for-sale sign.

Darren looked at the sign. "Do you have an appointment?"

I held up the screwdriver and got out of the car. "Even better."