Weeks, months, an entire winter and most of spring had gone by since we'd heard anything from Dan. Secretly I hoped he was dead. But then he showed up one morning. The pear tree was in bloom and the town was on fire. Or half of it, he said. Half the town was ablaze.

He stood in the doorway, his gigantic face floating there like the end of the world. Cara pulled a chair out from the kitchen table and told him to sit down. He hesitated a moment, eyeing her like a dog might eye its master, but then he sat in the chair and Cara tossed the last sip of her coffee out the window and set the cup on the sill, where she would no doubt leave it in the expectation that it would wash itself out and place itself on the drain board.

"Don't get up," she urged, and he didn't. She strode out of the room.

"Half the town's on fire?" I said.

He nodded.

"Which half?"

I didn't want to be someone who joked about people burning to death in old buildings, but it looked like maybe I was. Before Dan could stop frowning and muster up a response, Cara came back with a pair of scissors and began a haircut on him in absolute silence. The rabbit she'd been about to skin lay on the kitchen table with its eyes open. None of this had been part of its plan this morning.

Turned out a madman had gone on the loose setting buildings on fire, and they burned as though they were built for that purpose. The church went up like God didn't care anymore. According to Dan the madman set the old supermarket alight in several places from the inside, wandering through and just torching it wherever he felt like. It'd been empty for years and the roof had buckled under snow. Sometimes people slept in there, but no one had died because the madman was not the shy, stealthy type of arsonist. No, he raged and hollered as he went about his calling. He goaded his onlookers with insults, finger-pointing, the stomping of feet. While Dan was telling us these things Cara cut his hair. He talked and talked in his quiet, halting way, and she talked a little too, and when she was done with him she told us to swap places. She would cut my hair now.

Cara was always trying to shanghai me into some chair so she could lop my hair off, but I didn't see why I needed a haircut just because Dan had come home and the town was on fire.

"Hair's useless," she said. "Especially that lank, greasy mane of yours."

Dan remained seated, almost bald now. His head looked solid all the way through like a potato or some other kind of underground vegetable. A turnip maybe. Cara stood there, scissors in hand, staring at me. Glaring at my hair.

I liked my hair. It was really the only thing I had going for me.

"Nobody cares about your scars, you know," said Cara.

I cared about my scars, which was why I kept them hidden, but I still had the energy to pretend I didn't. If she cut all my hair off, though, I knew I might die from the exposure. All that light getting in would crush my soul.

"What happened to the madman?" I asked Dan, quietly. "Did they catch him?"

"Oh, you know how that sort of thing ends."

"I really don't, Dan."

"Gang of kids started chasing him around. Then one hit him in the head with a rock and he went staggering about, though he wasn't yelling now. Couple of big guys wrestled him to the ground. I didn't get mixed up in that. Then somebody shot him."

Cara laughed. "Who was it who shot him?"

"Oh, just some guy with a gun."

"That doesn't narrow it down much."

"He die?"

"Not right away."

"Yeah?"

"Oh, he laid there a bit, kicking around, then he stopped that and just kind of... Well, he just kind of laid there. Wasn't screaming no more. He was dead. But the town's still burning, so I guess he got what he wanted."

"Somebody was always going to set that town on fire," said Cara. "I was afraid it might even be me."

"Thanks very much for the haircut, Cara. I appreciate it."

"It was my pleasure, Dan. Whatever you need, you just ask. Don't be shy."

She laid the scissors down, thank God. But then she picked up her knife and cut a hole in the fur on the rabbit's back and reached her fingers inside and yanked in either direction. The skin tore apart and slid over the head one way and the hind legs the other. The meat under the skin glistened and the neck was stringy without cover. It didn't look like a neck anymore. It didn't look like anything you could put a word to. Dan and I watched silently as Cara took up her knife again and severed the rabbit's head.


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