“Like last Halloween,” Evelyn put in, “when they played a tape of the old Orson Welles War of the Worlds.”

“It’s not Halloween,” Dex said.

She gave him an angry glare. “So what are you saying, that it’s legitimate? We’re suddenly at war with Spain?”

“I don’t know. I don’t understand it. I don’t know what the hell it’s about, Evie. But let’s not make up an explanation when we don’t have one.”

“Is that what you think I’m doing?” She raised her voice, and it might have become an argument—not a real argument, Dex thought, but one of those peevish debates with more of fear than hostility in it —but she was interrupted by the keening of the Two Rivers Volunteer Fire Department, both trucks rolling out of the Armory Street fire hall and speeding past on Beacon Road.

“Well, thank God,” she said. “Somebody’s doing something at last.”

“Wait a minute,” Howard said, and there was an expression of sick foreboding on his face.

“It’s the fire department,” Evelyn told him. “They must be headed for the Indian reserve.”

“God, no,” Howard said. And Dex watched in perplexity as the younger man stood and ran for the door.

Dick Haldane struggled out of a confused sleep at eight a.m., and from the front window of his house, with the view overlooking the brickworks and the west end of Lake Merced, he saw smoke rising from the old Ojibway reserve.

Haldane had the misfortune of being the acting chief of the Two Rivers Volunteer Fire Department. The chief and most of the Fire Board trustees were in Detroit until Monday for a conference on ISO grading policy. And it looked as if an emergency had fallen into his lap in the meantime: the electricity didn’t work and neither did the phones.