“I gotta let him take—his own chance.” Jimmie turned toward Biff.
Jimmie’s face was pale as death. Beads of perspiration stood on it, beads that merged and dropped unnoticed down his cheeks. His mouth had split back from his teeth.
His eyes were as bleak as if there were nothing but blackness in their places. It was an expression of incalculable agony. Biff had never dreamed of such pain. He was sure—during one terrible moment of hatred—that his brother had turned into an abysmal coward. But as he looked at that unbearable expression he knew he was wrong. Jimmie was standing like that because he had to. Because it was more important—somehow—for him to stand still, in a safe place, than to go to the aid of the old man.
Biff began to sob, without knowing it.
But Jimmie did not budge.
He waited, bareheaded. He watched small flames rise up in the room where the dim light was. The light moved to another room. Then the old man showed at the window with his lantern. He was fumbling with the catch when the blast downstairs dropped him, and the floor, into a sea of fire. The entire building caught. Its roof split. Its pent heat towered in the air.
Biff also stood still, staring at the building that was the pyre of his town’s greatest man. Then, numbly, he looked down. His brother had fallen.
Jimmie lay still. His fists were doubled. They beat the earth. His face was flat-pressed upon it. His shoulders stirred with the torment of strong muscles. For a long time the two men stayed that way—together and alone, behind the blistering extravaganza. Biff slowly stirred into himself an understanding of what he had seen. A man, he thought crazily, does have a greater love than to lay down his life for a friend. Jimmie had a greater love—even than that.
So Biff waited till Jimmie was through with it, till he went slack and silent. The fire was jumping less prodigiously and the engines were moving around the ends of it.
Biff bent over and tapped Jimmie. “Cigarette, old man?”