A knock on the door, then... a wild-eyed man falls into the room. There is black on his white face, eyes big and round... wet, saliva slobbering down onto his shirt. He says, “Fire!” spewing spittle onto my eleven-year-old face, then he goes down hard and stays there, flat on the floor.
I take six children, hand to hand to hand to hand to hand to hand. We form a line into the hallway, mean smoke rolling over, through and into our bodies. “Don’t let go! Hold on!”
Wild man screaming, “Come back! The stairs are on fire!” And the fire slaps at us from the stairway a hard hot hand hurting us, eating the hair off our faces and arms. We fall back into the apartment just as the wild man stands up and leaps out the kitchen window. I look out; we’re on the fourth floor. Wild man don’t look so wild no more.
One of the children cried, “The fire’s in the closet!” Flames were coming through the floor there. They were hot tongues licking at us, making obscene cracking noises, devouring everything, hungry still... for us. Time went very slow then. I reached under the kitchen sink for rags. Thousand of cockroaches came swarming out, rats with sharp needle teeth and long hairless snake tails. I soaked the rags with cold water.
Wet is good... cold is better. I told the children to lie on their bellies on the floor by the window and breathe into the wet rags. They were terrified of the rats and the bugs and the smoke and the wild man with the white black face and his wet eyes. How could he just jump out the window?
Our frantic mother finally aroused our drunken father. He jumped up howling, “What the hell?!?” He knocked her off the bed, then fell on top of her “Stupid bitch!”
The fire in the closet, halfway up the door now, caught his eye. “Why didn’t you say something?” he cried. He came into the kitchen as I was pouring water over the backs of my three sisters and three brothers. It was the twelfth of February. They were all shivering and crying. “Listen boy, I’m going out that window! I want you to drop each of your brothers and sisters out of the window.. then make sure your mother jumps out! She’s afraid of heights, so you might have to help her!”
(He winked at me) “I’ll catch you guys, okay?”
He did too. When it came time for my mother and myself to make our leap of faith we were arguing about who would go first. I was afraid if I left her she wouldn’t jump. Fire came crawling through the floor in the kitchen and I made her promise to jump. Then down I went. I was eleven-years-old and big for my age but my alcoholic father, true to his word, caught one hundred and forty pounds of me. After some coaxing, Momma jumped too. He caught every last one of us. He was a roofer so he knew how to catch falling things.
He had casts on his feet and one arm for a long time after that. He and that wild man who came to warn us were our own private heroes. There was a guy who checked each of us out after we were caught. He got interviewed by the local papers and took credit for rescuing us. I showed the articles to my dad but he didn’t care. He and the wild man stayed drunk for three months. They were heroes at the Highland Bar where they always went to drink. That was down on Fifteenth Street in lower downtown. I remember sitting in there with them and all the ladies with tattoos would keep buying them boiler makers. I think the bar is still there. My father isn’t. I wonder if the nice tough ladies are.
Funny thing about all this was, the only kid who cried when she went out the window was my second youngest sister who was two-years-old at the time. She was being potty trained and just happened to be
sitting on the potty in the kitchen when all this hell broke loose. Momma used to hold her up to that window when she’d have an ‘accident’ and tell her, “Next time you mess up, out you go!” She must have figured this was it ‘cause she howled like a banshee all the way down. After that fire in nineteen sixty-two she quit having ‘potty accidents’ although she’s weird nervous and crazy religious to this day.
Some church ladies heard about us ‘losing everything’ in the fire. They gave our daddy some money so he could stay drunk for a long time. We lived in a chicken coop behind my Uncle Tom’s trailer on Goat Hill for a few cold months. Fire tempers the spirit. Ice applies a cold edge to it. Catastrophe makes heroes out of assholes. Fear creates a spectacle from the mundane incident. Falling answers weird dream questions about toilet training. Time washes away all sin so we sinners can do it again and again. Amen.
What Fire (Interview)
(Q) What role did you play in the event?
(A) I was an observer.
(Q) But you were involved in the event...
(A) Yes...
(Q) What did you observe?
(A) I saw me.
(Q) How can you see yourself?
(A) How can you see anything else?
(Q) Don’t answer my questions with questions!
(A) What?
(Q) That! Don’t do that!
(A) Okay... so..
(Q) So, if you’re watching yourself, then you can’t be you. So, who are you?
(A) I’m the one who watches me.
(Q) Okay, fine... Did you ever see you start any fires?
(A) No, I ate fire... but that was much later. Yeah, I never like.. set things on fire. No,
(Q) Do you know anyone who did?
(A) I believe my brother did.
(Q) Why?
(A) He was taught at a very young age by firemen to set fire to buildings and cars, all sorts of things.
(Q) Firemen taught him this?
(A) Yeah, it was kind of a deed-reward trip. He set one off when he was five-years-old. It was getting out of control, so he smashed one of those fire alarm boxes and watched the trucks and men come and put the fire out.
(Q) Wasn’t he afraid?
(A) Of what?
(Q) That the firemen would figure out he set the fire?
(A) Naw... he was fascinated by the sirens and the hoses, all the noise and attention his fires got. He liked to watch his little fires. He never thought of the next step until he had one get out of hand.
(Q) Are you telling me he continued to set fires?
(A) Well, sure... after he got paid for that one.
(Q) Wait a minute; who paid him?
(A) This big shot fire chief guy. He sees this little scrawny five-year-old freckled face staring up at him from the curb. He says, “Hey kid, you know anything about this here fire? My brother says, “Yes Sir, I smashed that alarm box with a rock to report it.” Well, the guy gave him a silver dollar and a ride home in the fire-truck.
(Q) What did your parents have to say about that?
(A) Mom was working and Dad was at the bar. I was at home with our younger brotherand sister. I was oldest, six-years-old at the time, so I was babysitting them. It was neat to have a hero for a brother and a dollar bought a lot of penny candy in 1956. First time we had a whole dollar to ourselves. Our Dad would have taken it from us if he knew we had it.
(Q) So, you didn’t report any of this to your parents?
(A) Well, no... we didn’t..
(Q) Why not?
(A) I told you; our Dad would have taken the money from us... and..
(Q) And what?
(A) What?
(Q) I think you know... there’s something else..
(A) There’s always something else, man.
(Q) Was your brother still setting fires in 1962?
(A) I don’t know... let me think.. are you saying my brother burned us down?
I’ll have to ask him about that.
(Q) Is there anything else you’d like to share with me?
(A) There’s not a damned thing I would like to share with you!
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