CONTINUED: Twinkies

While I watched Marty wolf down his second package of Twinkies one morning,  I began to think about change.  Twinkies were exactly the same as when we were in the seventh grade. While everyone I knew and the rest of creation never stopped changing, Twinkies  had remained the same.  The only other part of my life that never changed were my memories.  They were fixed, although by now fading.

We were sitting in his rowboat on a small lake and I was thinking of our conversation the night before about all the fun we had since seventh grade, from calling up girls together to camping out up in the South Woods.

When I spoke later, I think I woke him up.

"So, is this as much fun as when we were sixteen?"

"No," he said, "at sixteen I was out here on the lake with my old girlfriend."

"Come to think of it," I said, "so was I."

Marty smiled and pulled his cell phone from his pants pocket. "Do you think we should call up our old girl friends?" he said.

"They may still live in the area, somewhere around town," I said.

"I think yours does," he said. "Mine may not be far away."

Marty put his phone away and for a time we were silent again as we cast fly and lure, lost in our own thoughts.  I had lied, just a little.  Sally and I had sat on the dock.  We were fifteen and sixteen.  She would have never gotten in a rowboat and gone out on the lake with me alone.  Her parents were too concerned for her well being to put her in the hands of a boy whose sanity they surely wondered about. Had we rowed out fifty feet and her mother heard of it there would have been hell to pay.  Then too, leaving us alone with each other happened only within the prescribed format of a date or a dance.  Only as we got older was I allowed to whisk her off alone in my father’s car. 

At the time neither of us appreciated such restrictions, implemented for both our physical safety as well as our moral virtue.  I have to assume when Sally and I each became a parent our minds changed.  Mine did.  Our parents’ watchfulness helped us to enter our adulthood with options that otherwise might have been lost to the demands of our hormones.  One false step and a young woman could find herself pregnant.  She might have to work to support a child and thereby lose the opportunity for college or give up the personal freedom needed to invest in the start of a career. The chances of meeting a mature and responsible mate might considerably diminish.  Marty and I were  lucky. We had parents who cared and we married the daughters of parents who did likewise.

But it would be nice to renew old acquaintances.  Some might feel we should leave old flames in the ashes of our past, but as my old friend and I sat out on the lake I got to thinking that we had recently turned seventy and that made things somewhat different than if we had all been in our thirties.

“I don’t think our wives would mind if we called up our old girlfriends just to say ‘Hi,’” I said.

“You don’t?”  said Marty. “Which universe are you living in?”

“But this is just as old friends, not lovers,” I said.

“I assume that’s your story and you’re sticking to it?”

“OK, we could call their husbands first," I said, "and explain we're just sitting out here fishing and thinking about their wives."

"Oh. OK," he said.

"They would probably understand."

"You think?” he said,  shaking his head, “I doubt it.“

"I mean, after all, the women should see us now. Don't you agree?"

"No, I don’t."

"But we're mature now, accomplished, successful," I said.

"We're also fifty pounds heavier, sagging and balding."

"Well, maybe they are too." I said.

"Precisely," he said as he glanced at me.

It hadn’t occurred to me we would look that different.

"Right,” I said.  “None of us are Twinkies.”.

“Pardon?”

“Twinkies,”  I said, “they never change.”

“People do,” said Marty.

We continued to fish while I walked around in my head, thinking about old times. Ten minutes later I reached in my pocket and felt for my cell phone.  Pulling it out and flipping it open, I saw the nearest cell tower nudging up the reception bar and I called Information.

Sally had married a young man I remembered from Boy Scouts long ago.  He and I lived in different parts of the city and were not in the same troop, but I saw him once each year at the town-wide Scout celebration night.  He often received another award while I sat on the sidelines wondering how the heck anyone found enough time to pursue all that glory.  He had worked hard on his Scout craft and wore a sash with more Merit Badges sewn on than I had ever seen before or since.  I might have remembered more about his Scouting exploits than about his bride, my old girl friend. I would never forget his name.  I had their telephone number in sixty seconds.

 “I found her,” I said to Marty.

“And what are you going to do with her?”  he said.

“Just call up and say ‘Hi’.” I answered.

“I have an idea,” he said.  “Why don’t we rehearse this?”

“What do you mean?”

“You play yourself,” he said, “and I’ll play Sally.”

Marty raised his fist to his ear and used a falsetto voice as high as he could muster.

“Hello-o-o.  This is Sa-a-lly.”

I laughed and played along.

“Hi Sally, this is Dave.”

“Dave!  Where have you been?  You were supposed to mow the lawn this morning and you didn’t show up.  I’m going to fire your ass, Dave, if you miss me once more—“

“Hold on.  Sally didn’t talk like that.”

“But it’s fifty years later,” said Marty.

“Start again,” I said.  “Hi Sally, this is Dave.”

“Dave who?”

“Dave from your teenage years.  We used to date.  I gave you my class ring.  We were—“

“I don’t have your class ring, Dave.  I threw it out.”

“Wait minute, Marty—“

“Wendell found it in my jewelry box and became incensed.”

“Who is Wendell?”  I said.

“Whatever her husband’s name is,” said Marty.

“This isn’t helping,” I said.

 Marty continued in a high pitched sing-song voice, now with a southern accent.  “And then Wendell said if ah ever had any sorta contact with you, Dave … any at all, even if ma car broke down in the swamp out yonder and you happened by … he would absolutely never give me my allowance again. Ever!”

“What allowance?”

“A guy with a name like Wendell would certainly give her a thousand or two a week.”

“Really,” I said, witheringly.

“At least.”

“OK.”

“How much would you have given her?” said Marty.

“I’ve never thought about it.”

“Uh huh,” he said.

“How should I know how much?”  I said.

“Face it, you cheap bastard,” said Marty.  “You would have been good for no more than a hundred bucks a week … tops.”

“That would have been a lot of money back then,” I said.

“Maybe,” he said.  “OK, fifty bucks.  More likely thirty.”

“What the hell does it matter, anyway, Marty?”

“Because it’s the first question Sally will ask you, right after she realizes you’re not the guy who mows her lawn.  ‘Dave,’ she’ll say, ‘how much of an allowance would y’all have given me?’”

“She wasn’t like that, Marty.”

“It’s fifty years later,” he said.

I put my phone back in my pocket.

“You’re not gonna call her?” he said.

“I’m sure she’s still a nice girl,” I said.  “She doesn’t need us bothering her.”

“Then maybe I’m wrong,” he said. “Maybe she’s a twinkie.,” he said.

“We’d be the twinkies, Marty. Still calling up girls we went to school with.”

copyright 2015, David Griffin

The Windswept Press

Murrells Inlet, South Carolina

windsweptpress.com

CONTINUED: Blame

         I’d wait up for him to get home before I slept. Scared,  I went to bed about ten at night, but I wouldn’t sleep till I heard him stumble up the steps into the kitchen. In the winter, he loaded the stove up with coal for the night and then staggered to bed.  I always got up and made sure the door was locked and checked that  he closed the damper down on the stove.  A few times he left it wide open. I never forgot the night I fell asleep and didn’t hear him come in.  I woke up coughing.  Da was retching in his bed and the house was filled with smoke.  In the kitchen the stove had a cherry red ring around it and a chair he’d left too close was smoking as the varnish melted.  After that I couldn’t sleep at night until I got up and checked everything after he came home and fell in bed.  I had dreams of trying to get out of our burning house.  I never escaped, blocked by flames at the front door and the back.  The fire came toward me and I couldn’t bring myself to run headlong through the flames to where the door would have been.

      Maybe that’s what happened with the Reilly girl across the street.  Her old man forgot to close the damper and burned the house down.  She was killed in the fire.  We were in the nuns’ school together that year and I was about seven years old.  I saw her playing with a doll on her front porch the afternoon before the fire.  Not many hours later a team of horses came charging down the street.  I woke up and looked out the window.  Lanterns swung on the side of the steam pumper. Men in another wagon jumped to the ground and ran up to the Reilly house.  They never got inside.  The flames blasted out the doors and windows on the front wall as though Reilly’s home was a huge furnace with he doors left open.  By morning the place was leveled.

In class the Reilly girl had sat on the opposite side of the room from me.  The next day she just wasn’t there anymore, and I wouldn’t go near her desk over in front of the radiator. When we made a big circle to pray the Angeles at noon, I wouldn’t stand near where she used to sit. When Sister Amolia asked me to fetch the dictionary from the stand next to the radiator, I sat still at my desk with my head down and ignored her.  When she stood up and came down the aisle to my desk and tried to pull my chin up to look at her, I ran from the room because my eyes were wet.  She sent a note home to Da. He swore and threw it in the stove. He  didn’t like any of the priests or nuns. I watched the note burn on top of the coals and wondered if a person burned up like that in hell.

            If Ma hadn’t been at work that afternoon, she would’ve talked to me and then sent a note back to Sister.  Ma was a nice lady and I was always proud of her.  People said she kept a fine home and she was a great cook.  When Ma was alive we weren’t broke all the time.  Until she passed away two years before, she worked down at the fish pole factory and tied the little eyelets on the rods that held the fishing line.  She’d be proud to know I was turning thirteen in two months. She always called me her little man.  I didn’t mind  helping Da and me pay for our rent and food, but if Ma was alive I wouldn’t have had to get up at 4:30 in the morning to sell newspapers on the street.  And survive the wrath of Brother Barnabas when I was late.

For all his slapping and hitting I liked Brother Barnabas.  He was a brave man.  I remember the time he took on a gang of a dozen bullies who came to our school yard one afternoon.  He waded into the middle of them punching and kicking and throwing the smaller ones in the air.  Twice he flipped boys off his shoulders and fought like a bear as the wolf pack tried to devour him.  Finally, a few of us timid classmates joined in his defense and together we beat the thugs off.  When it was over, Brother Barnabas lay on the ground bleeding and black and blue.  And laughing.  “We killed the little bastards,” he said.  That phrase endeared him to us more than anything else he ever said.

      Before school began in the morning I ran down to the Herald and got a bag of newspapers.  I signed a slip that promised to pay the next day and walked the whole shebang up Genesee Street, selling the news to whoever would give me a couple of pennies for the paper. I brought home the coins to Da.  He counted them out and handed me the money to put in the old teapot on the window sill, ready to go to the man at the Herald the next day. When I leaned over the radiator to reach up on the sill I always thought of the little Reilly girl.

            The Tuesday the Flats burned down, I wasn’t thinking about fires as I walked up Genesee Street and wished more folks were out to buy my papers. But the few people I saw were all bundled up against the cold.  They were in a hurry to get where they were going and wouldn’t stop to fish a couple of coins out of their pockets for the newspaper. I began to think of my bed at home, lumpy as it was.  How I wished I had been home in bed and never saw the lady on the balcony.  When I thought of her I didn’t feel so good.

            Half way up the hill at City Hall that day I knew I wouldn’t sell all my papers  so I decided to keep going.  Da wouldn’t holler at me about the money if I tried.  I walked on up to Oneida Square and the Civil War Monument on the west side of the circle. I was tired and my toes hurt, so I sat on the monument’s cold stone bench between one of the soldier statues  and a lady with hardly any clothes on.  Her face looked like Ma’s and I reached up and touched her arm.  It was as cold and hard as the arm I touched at Mom’s funeral when I reached into the casket before Da grabbed me and spun me away. 

            I was half asleep most days selling papers, but it was so peaceful in the early morning. Not many people were out and there was a low rumble from the factories that ran all night over on the west side, out Whitesboro Street. In the cold winter air a train whistle screeched from far down the valley and I’d hear the soft swish of tire rims when a weary horse pulled a hack through the snow.

      I stood up from the stone bench quickly when I smelled smoke in the air.  It was a sharp smell, not at all like wood or coal smoke. A bell clanged about a block away and horses neighed and in another minute all hell broke loose as the team of horses and men from the fire department’s Engine Company No.1 pounded through the square.  The few people crossing  the roadway scattered like pigeons and the rear wheels of the pumper wagon slid sideways when the driver hauled the reins sharply to the left and forced the beasts up Genesee Street. Holy Cripes, they were pulling the huge fire engine pumper, a Cole Brothers Steamer. The firemen’s wrenches and hammers and spikes clanged against the copper sides of the big steam dome.  It sounded like cannibals banging on a big pot as they waited for their dinner. Every dog in the neighborhood chased the two wagons and the steam pumper. A man ran by and shouted “The Flats is on fire!”

       I’d be late for school if I chased after the fire engine, but The Genesee Flats was the new seven story apartment house, the tallest building in Utica. Brother Barnabas was always preaching about us growing to be men and we were to act like it.  “Take responsibility and help those in need,” he said.  I wasn’t very big for my age, but I wasn’t a weakling kid.  To be honest, Reilly’s fire and their girl crossed my mind. I wasn’t sure I wanted to be at a fire, you know?  People lose things at a fire … like their homes and … each other.  But I really wanted to see that engine build up a head of steam and watch it pump water from the hydrant through the hoses.  I read in the paper it could shoot a stream of water out the nozzle a hundred feet.

    Mothers in kerchiefs and kids just pulling on their coats stumbled out of the nearby houses and joined a group of  young men running up the street to The Flats. I should have gone back down the hill to school, but I didn’t. Instead I threw down the rest of my papers and ran like the dickens to catch up with all of them … the pumper, the men and women and kids and the dogs.

     I came up to the Flats at a run.  Fireman pulled their hatchets and pike poles from the wagon and then just stood around waiting for orders.  In the lantern lights I could barely see them.  Their peaked hats and canvas coats were painted with black stuff to keep from getting soaked.  It was too dark to see the building very well, but a few lamps shined out of the windows as shadows moved in front of them inside the apartments. The firemen didn’t seem to know what to do.  There was a fire right in front of them. A few of the men strolled up to the big fancy front door, as if they were about to politely tell the residents their building was on fire.  Maybe they wanted to say please just get  dressed and meet across the street for morning tea, while someone searches out the cause of the smoke.

Someone yelled, “It’s just a smoker, probably rags in the cellar.”

I asked a fireman why the ladder wagon was sent when I couldn’t see any flames.  There was a hose wagon, too.

“Second alarm,” he said.  The small sprayer rig had been sent an hour before when the night watchman smelled smoke, but no fire was found

“There’s a lot of smoke now,” I said.
     He didn’t answer me.

 “Where are all the people from the Flats?” I said, looking around and seeing only the firemen and neighbors on their front porches.

“Inside,” he said. “I guess they don’t think the fire is serious.”

Soon the smoke began to roll out from the The Flats to the road.  It seeped around us and under the fire wagons . The horses became jittery and snorted. They didn’t like smoke and they may have sensed what was coming. Men began to drag ladders toward the building.

 “Out here, Millie,” a man’s voice shouted from somewhere above me. I heard a scream and then wailing, but no one came out the doorways.   Voices in the dark seemed to come from up in the trees,  cries and yells for help.  I got a little rattled. And then lots of people came out of the doors on the front of The Flats and down into the road. They joined neighbors who now began to crowd around the wagons, but still there were voices up above.

About twenty feet in front of me a loud thud shook the ground as a trunk crashed down and split open.  It dropped right out of the sky. Clothing spilled out.  From the blackness above more shoes and coats and books rained down.  A lady’s dress floated toward me. It seemed so strange.  They were trying to save their belongings.

The morning sky got lighter and I could finally see the front of The Flats towering seven stories above us. Except for all of the balconies, it looked like a castle built with large red stones.  At one end of the building, a man dangled on a rope made of sheets and clothing. I laughed.  It was funny and it wasn’t. I wanted to shout out, “Go back inside. There aren’t any flames.”  Only a smoker, I wanted to tell him, but the steam pump was starting up and he would not have heard me.  I told myself only a couch was burning.  The firemen probably would haul it out in the snow in a few minutes and everyone would have a good laugh and go back to bed. 

I stayed near the firemen, hoping they would ask me to help out. Brother Barnabas would be proud if I told him I carried a hose or one end of a ladder.  I was almost a man, after all.  Just a few years away. 

The men pulled the hoses toward the building without asking my help.  I noticed their stern faces and I didn’t ask them if they needed me.

The sun rose and more people on the first and second floors began to crawl down from the balconies like insects.  They had waited too long and now the smoke was everywhere inside the Flats.  They let themselves down on sheets and blankets to the tops of the ladders. On the higher floors people wailed and shouted for help.  Firemen began to tie ladders together to make them longer.

 I wondered if anyone was looking at me.  Why wasn’t I helping?   It’s not a real bad fire.  They’ll get out.  I probably ought to get to school.

People who made it to the ground tried to find their families. A lady grabbed me and asked if I’d seen her brother. She asked a few times and finally I tried to calm her down instead of ignore her.

“It’s not real fire, a bad fire,” I said. “I’d go in and help people out, but I shouldn’t get in the way.”

She looked at me, silent.

“But there’s no flames.” I said, looking at the ground. “It’ll be all right.”.

 The smoke smelled awful, just like at the Reilly girl’s house. And there was crackling and snapping and moaning.  The moans seemed to come from the family without shoes standing in the road between the ladder and the hose wagon, but I soon discovered the sound came from the trees.  They would bend in toward the fire as the shades on the apartment windows blew in and flapped into the rooms. A wind was sucking through the trees into the building.  It made a noise worse than banshees.

The moans began to sound more often and my stomach started to turn. I didn’t want to watch the people hanging from the windows and balconies any more. I knew I should go home. I needed to get to school. Somebody might get killed and I didn’t want to be there.  I was just a kid and I couldn’t help. I had to get out of there and go back and get the papers I threw on the ground.

A younger man and a very large lady stood on a fourth floor balcony as smoke billowed out behind them from their apartment.  She wore a hat like my mother’s before she died, God rest her soul as she walks with all the saints in Paradise. The man was helping the woman climb on to the railing to get on a rope of sheets and blankets he must have tied.  He coaxed her up on the railing, but she slid back on the balcony. She was so big.  I wondered how he would ever get her down.  I turned my eyes away.

Two firemen ran up to me and began yelling about fire engines. I thought they wanted to tell me something, but they only happened to stop in front of me. One man wanted to call for more engines. The other said there was no need. He said all they had to do was find the couch or chair someone had dropped a cigar into and all would be well. He ran off and the other man, a tall fellow who reminded me of my Uncle Jack, asked me if I knew how to use the alarm box up the street on the corner. He wanted more engines.

“I guess you just pull it,” I said, and he told me how to break the glass and turn the crank.  

I wasn’t sure I wanted to and he knew it. I wanted to get out of there. The horses were really getting nervous, snorting and stamping. The men didn’t seem to know what they were doing and as we stood there an old fellow jumped from a first floor window and shouted out in pain when he hit the ground with a crack.  The sound made my teeth hurt, but it wouldn’t be the worst I would hear that day.  The fireman said to not be afraid. He put his hand on my shoulder.

 “Go crank the alarm,” he said. “You’ll be saving lives, son.”

“But it’s only a smoker, isn’t it?” I said.

He turned and left.

I sat down on the low pipe fence surrounding the building. Firemen were trying to get as many men as possible to lift the new aerial ladder truck over the fence and up near the building so they could rescue those on the upper floors.  People called from the balconies. Some looked like they were still trying to figure it all out. Others were just plain scared and shouted for help. Only a few came down on ropes made from blankets and drapes and even pants.

The old man who had jumped from his window and hit the frozen ground was still yelling for help.  Smoke was rolling out the window above him along with red hot embers. I could feel the heat then.  I should have gone over to help him away from the building.  I wanted to, but it was like I was stuck where I sat on the low fence.  I yelled at the old man to crawl away, but I guess he couldn’t.  Smoke began to push out the windows even faster.   

A fireman came up the side of the building.  He reached out his hand and the old man stuck out his arm.  The fireman grabbed the old fellow by the wrist and dragged him across the snow to me.  He said nothing and left.  The old man was crying in pain.  What could I do?  I had no bandages or whiskey. 

“You’ll be all right,” I said.  “I’ll go get you some help.”

I stood and left him.  Somebody would come along and tend to him.  I was going home.  I was just a kid.  What could I do?

After a few steps, I knew I shouldn’t leave.  But the smoke from the building was getting thicker and blacker. I didn’t feel so good. I knew I should help.  Somehow. I didn’t know what to do. I leaned up against the high wheel of the hose wagon and I did what only a Catholic or a Hottentot would do.  I said a prayer to my mother.

  If I went home and told Da about this, he’d say I should have never followed the fire engine. If I went to school and told Brother Barnabas, I knew what he would say. He’d want to know if I helped out with the injured. I couldn’t lie to him. I turned and ran up the street to the alarm box. I was so worked up when I got there I couldn’t break the glass with the mitten still on my hand. I found a stone and broke the little window and cut my finger. The tiny crank inside didn’t want to move.   I banged on it with the heel of my hand and tried it again.  It twisted and I heard a clunk inside the box.

            I walked back toward the apartment house. The sun was up and shining under a bright blue sky. Smoke billowed out the side windows of the Flats and drifted up the street through the green Hemlocks rooted in the snow covered ground.  Icicles glistened in the sun on homes across the wide street from The Flats.  A perfect late winter day, except for the smoke and the cries for help.
            The firemen were busy getting people down ladders from the lower balconies.  Higher up, residents finally used blankets and drapes to work their way down as a few brave souls had tried earlier, tying and re-tying their rope, one floor at a time as they dropped from  balcony to balcony.  Neighbors had come out on their porches and into the road and some stood at the foot of the building, calling up to those still on the balconies to get a move on.  But some of the residents stood as still as death on their balconies, fully dressed in their morning clothes, gripping the railings but doing nothing.  One man sucked on a cigar as smoke billowed out from the balcony above him.

            Unless they climbed down or found a route through the smoke filled hallways, nothing could be done for all these people who were so close I could have talked  to them.  It was as if I watched them on a sinking ship from a short distance across the water at sea and they couldn’t get off and swim me.

            If I lived to be 90 years old I’d never forget what happened next.  The young trees near the building suddenly bent way over toward the fire. Louder and louder they moaned as a strong wind sucked through them …. and Wooooosh! One huge sheet of flame shot up from the roof of the building and out every window I could see on the seventh floor. At the same time showers of sparks curled out many of the lower windows scattering in the face of the incoming wind. Window shades ripped themselves into postage stamp pieces.  I fell backward and plopped down in the snow on my butt.

  Holy Mother Mary, I’d never heard or seen anything like it! All the voices on the balconies and down on the ground hushed for a moment. Then a loud groan went up, a sob from the crowd of neighbors and firemen and victims. Embers and pieces of shade and roofing fluttered to the ground as the blow-up wound down and flames began to lick out the windows and balcony doors behind the victims.

A man on one of the balconies collapsed, sinking to his knees but holding on to the railing with gloved hands.  A woman jumped from the second floor screaming.  I didn’t hear her hit the ground. I heard myself mumbling, “oh, no … oh, no.”  I fell all the way back flat on the snow and looked up at the sky.  I didn’t want to see any more of the burning building and the people. I had to get out of there. In a moment I took a deep breath and sat up, my eyes avoiding the scene.  Brother Barnabas would think me a coward. Maybe I was. But this was a huge fire. The biggest building most of us had ever seen was now the biggest fire most of us would ever witness.  People were going to die and I didn’t want to watch it. 

But I could not abide telling Brother Barnabas I didn’t try to help.  After a few more deep breaths, I got up and walked back toward the Flats. More fire wagons began arriving, but they brought nothing that would help rescue those on the upper floors.  On the lower floors fireman came on the balconies and began leading people back inside. They were wrapping their heads in towels and shirts. They must have found routes down the stairs, because I saw other firemen lead people out the first floor doors. Maybe I could help.

 The big lady wearing the hat like my mother’s was on the string of sheets high over the stone steps in front of the fancy main door. She was coming down real slow, crying all the way.  The sheets ended about ten feet above the steps.  The younger man in his shirtsleeves at the upper end of the rope shouted down to her. I ran up the steps to a spot below her and yelled up, “Hold on.” I held out my arms.

“Just a little farther, old mother!” I shouted.  She was a big woman with bare feet and wrapped in a robe.  When the wind whipped around her, I saw far up her white heavy legs and I looked away, embarrassed.

She was down to the third floor balcony when the glass on that apartment’s door exploded.  Smoke and flames shot out toward her.  She cried out and began to cough as the smoke danced around her.  She held on for dear life. The man who had helped her over the railing disappeared above her in the smoke. 
     “C’mon! Slide! I’ll catch ya!” I shouted.  Over my shoulder I began to yell “Help, Help,” hoping a fireman would come to our aid.  I didn’t know what he would have done except try to convince the lady to let go and slide down to us.

A fireman came out on the balcony next door to the woman and called to her to swing over to him. Maybe he had a plan to get her down the staircase, I don’t know. But she’d never have the strength for it.

“C’mon, c’mon. I yelled.

 All she had to do was slide down to me and she’d be safe.  But her hands must have locked on the rope.

She glanced over at the fireman, and then down at me. She looked sick and tired. Her eyes were red and like about to pop out.

“Over here!” the fireman shouted.

“Down here, lady!” I cried

She looked again at the fireman and then down, shouting to me.  I couldn’t hear her.

“C'mon!” I yelled.  “Let go. Let go and slide.”

Maybe it was the hat, but I swear I saw my mother’s face in hers.  She pulled herself up by her arms as if she was going back up.  How such a large woman was able to do that I’ll never know. She kicked out her feet with probably the only strength she had left. I thought she was trying to shoot herself over to the fireman.  I knew she couldn’t make it there.

“NO!” I shouted. “Let go. Let go.”
She kicked again and she completely let go, falling free of the rope. The kick tumbled her over in the air and she came down head first like a battering ram.  She came so fast!  She hit the stone steps right next to me.  On her head.

What an awful sound.  I hear it when I wake in the morning and when I doze off at school.  I hear it sometimes when I walk by a factory and the machines are banging out whatever they make.

Honest! I tried, I had my hands up. I thought I was right under her. She hit before I could move sideways to catch her.  If she hadn’t kicked she would not have missed me.  I could have caught her.

I looked up and the fireman was gone.  A man and a woman ran up the steps while I stood over the big lady.  She didn’t make a sound.  She didn’t move. 

The man pulled me away and pushed me down the steps.

“That’s enough, little man,” he said. “You should have let the fireman help her.”

“You could have been killed,” said his companion, a lady with a pinched face.

She came so fast. I couldn’t believe I missed her.  The next day the Herald said she landed on her shoulder, not her head.  Well, I’ve never before heard either break.  But I have to tell you.  If you ever hear a head bust open, you’ll be sure to know it.  It sounds like nothing else in the whole world. 

I didn’t go to school that day.  I took my leftover papers back to the Herald and then I went to sit in Chancellor Park all day.  A policeman asked me what school I attended and why I wasn’t there.  When I told him I was waiting for my father, he left, walking in the direction of the Academy.  Late in the afternoon I looked up and saw a figure in black at a distance walking over Bleecker Street.  The afternoon sun was quickly dropping  and so was the temperature.  Brother Barnabas walked briskly along between the old piles of snow with nothing more than a scarf around his neck to augment the cassock he always wore in the classroom. 

The burly Irishman sat down on the bench next to me.  He  shook his head back and forth when I told him my story.  I told him everything.

“I  should not have gone,” I said when I finished.

“Well, you did,” he said, “and it’s done.”

“I can’t get that sound out of my head.”

“Stop trying,” he said. “It’ll leave when it wants to.”

I wiped my nose with the back of my hand.

“But in fact, you should have come to school instead of going to the fire, Billy,” he said.

“I wanted to see the pumper work,” I said lamely.

“And then you should have come away and right back down the hill.”

“I wanted to help,” I said. “I was afraid to … to say I hadn’t.”

Brother Barnabas looked directly at me and said nothing for a moment.

A cold wind began to blow as the sun dipped below the horizon.

In agony, I finally said, “I should have let the fireman help her.”

“But maybe you were right,” he said, “she  could not have made it over to him.”

“But if I’d come back to school …”

“Then it would not have been your fault,” he said. “No matter what happened to her, because you would not have been there.”

I didn’t say anything, just shook my head yes.

“Oh, is that it?” he said. “If you don’t show up, it’s not your fault.  If you never offer to help or take responsibility, then it can never be your fault.  How convenient.  Is that what you think, Billy?”

“I don’t know …” 

“OK, Bill, let’s get this out.  She’s dead.  You made a stupid mistake and thought you could catch a 300 pound cow dropping down on you from the top of a building.  Any idiot would have figured the odds differently and let the lady take her chances with the fireman.  But not you.  You knew better, right?”

Now I became angry. “I was only trying to help.  I did the best I could!”

“You did?” said Brother Barnabas?

“Yes, goddammit,”  I all but shouted. “I didn’t think she’d come so fast.  I thought I’d bump her and break her fall when she got to me.  I … I don’t know what I thought.  But she would have never, never made it up on to the balcony with the fireman.”

“Then you see … you figured the odds, you made a decision and you acted.”

“I killed her,” I said.

“No, Billy.  No, you didn’t. The fire killed her.”

 “I was square below her,” I said. “I don’t know how I missed her.”

“Maybe she missed you,” he said.

Three weeks later I dreamed of the lady who fell next to me on the stone steps.  We walked together to the firehouse across from  St. John’s church.  She pointed to a side door with a sign over it saying “Firemen Only.”  I hesitated and then went inside and climbed the stairs to where the firemen slept.  At the end of the room the fireman from the balcony sat on a bed.  He glanced at me and motioned to the sliding pole.  I stepped out over the hole in the floor and got on the pole they used at night to quickly get down to the wagons and horses. I was sliding fast when I looked down to see the little Reilly girl directly below me. I would have slammed into her and hurt her badly, maybe killed her.  With a great lunge, I kicked my legs with all my might and threw myself to the side, letting go of the pole. The kick tumbled me over in the air and I came down head first like a battering ram.  And missed her.  In the dream my head hit the floor and made that awful sound.  I haven’t heard it since.  I didn’t save the big lady’s life.  I still wonder if she saved mine.

copyright 2013, David Griffin

The Windswept Press

Murrells Inlet, SC www.windsweptrpess.com

The March 3, 1896 tragic fire at the Genesee Flats really happened in Utica, NY.  The above story is a fanciful and fictional work based on two historical characters who were not portrayed exactly as they were in life.  I don’t know William Foley’s age  and could not verify that  Mrs. David B.Hughes, age 70, was a large woman.  Three other people succumbed in the fire, a man in the shoe business and a mother and teenage daughter who were related to the Seymours, an old family in Utica.  The Genesee flats was almost immediately replaced by the Olbiston Apartments,  a building of the same architecture and finish but only 5 stories high in deference to the limits of fire equipment in the saving of lives in that era.  The Olbiston was built with the higher safety standards then recommended at the end of the 1890’s.  It has withstood the test of time and a few fires, however, and remains open to this day providing apartments for rent.

CONTINUED: Home

A small group of people from the Rochester Laotian community were also there to greet them.  They were the first to welcome them in the only language they knew.  We followed their actions by bowing our heads slightly while bringing our hands together as if in prayer.

The Chanthachakvong family's consists of Soubahn and his wife, Somchith and their children Olyvan, Vilylak,  Thippiphone, Nu, Phonketkeo, and Mee.  They carried wide smiles on their faces and gave us hearty hugs.  We were pleased that they were so friendly and happy to see us.

Preceding the family's arrival in New York, the Jewish Federation sent us handouts about the cultural practices of Laotians.  For example, we were advised to never touch them on their heads or shoulders as it was considered a sign of disrespect.  Furthermore we learned that we might be receiving Hmong refugees who live in the mountainous area of Laos.  They are an ethnic group who speak a different language, live in communal homes and have no written language. They are unaccustomed to indoor plumbing, heating, and refrigeration. In short, we had no idea about the background of the family we were to welcome.

After extended greetings at the airport, we climbed into several cars to take the Chanthachakvong family to their three bedroom fully furnished apartment on Hickory Street in Rochester's southwest wedge.  As we walked from our car to the apartment, the snow was glistening and crunchy under our feet.  I scooped up a handful throwing it in the air.  They were excited with their first glimpse of the pure white snow and enjoyed placing it against their cheeks and tasting it.

We entered the apartment and judging by their facial expressions, they were pleased with their new home.  I noticed that no one in the family removed their winter jackets.  The temperature registered at about 70 degrees, cold for people accustomed to a tropical climate.

Unable to communicate with words, I decided to introduce the kitchen and bathroom through sign language and exclamations.  I jumped to the conclusion that the family came from the ethnic Hmong that we had read about and thereby assumed they had no knowledge of refrigeration, stove burners, flush toilets and showers.  I ushered them into the small kitchen and I opened the refrigerator showing them assorted foods that would last them until a volunteer took them grocery shopping.  I pretended to shiver while rubbing my arms and produced a sound that resembled "brrr  brrr." As I reached my arm into the refrigerator I called out, "Cold, cold!"  So far, so good.  Then I demonstrated the gas stove.  I turned on the burner waving my hand close to it, pulling it back sharply and showing distress.  "Hot, hot, I exclaimed!" Next stop, the bathroom.  I stopped short of actually sitting on the toilet seat with my jeans rolled down around my ankles.  I did, however, flush the toilet and showed how to turn on the shower and faucet.  My eyes probably sparkled with the knowledge that I was being helpful.

Year's later we were talking to one of the children about their first night in Rochester.  I learned for the first time that the family lived an upper class life enjoying shopping for furniture in Paris, having a nanny, a car, travel and all the trappings of a comfortable life style.  Soubahn had been employed by the United States Army in a high paying position.  My face flushed when I recalled my assumptions from so long ago about their lives in Laos.

In 2006 we drove to Atlanta to visit our friends of almost thirty years who moved there in 1993 to escape the cold.  We talked at length about my early assumptions and enjoyed a good laugh together.  I wish I had asked them if they had found my behavior amusing or puzzling or even more likely strange.

Today the Chanthachakvong family is the epitome of the American success story.  Through hard work, a strong family and a Laotian community that provided much support, they have achieved college educations for the four younger children, beautiful homes in Atlanta and Rochester and a comfortable life style.  We have been enriched by their friendship.


copyright 2015 by Sandy Gurev

CONTINUED: Smoulder

On a sizzling Sunday afternoon in August of 1953, the entire
family crammed into the old Ford and began our way
home from the beach after swimming and a picnic.
When my father suggested we stop at the zoo to see the
newly acquired buffalo, Grandma’s jaw set itself into a
hard line. She was tired after a full day of family frolic,
but said nothing.

Soon the hot, sticky smell of animal waste blew through the windows to greet us as the car bumped its way into
the parking lot in a swirl of road dust and humidity.
The family toppled out of the Ford and walked to the
buffalo’s pen, tripping over tufts of grass on the way.

Unannounced visitors should always be prepared for anything, and the buffalo had evidently been too busy to finish his toilet before we arrived.  However, he was enthusiastically unburdening himself as we began to assemble along the rail.  My parents reacted by observing the blue jays in the trees, while my brothers attempted to partially imitate the beast.  Grandma swooned, steadied herself on the fence rail for a few seconds and then grabbed my hand and marched the two of us away.

Grandma habitually rescued me from one déclassé
situation or another. She regarded me as a sensitive and
intelligent 9 year old. “You’re the only other inquisitive
mind in the neighborhood,” she said, “and that’s not
saying much.” We frequently discussed cultural
matters like Margaret Truman’s voice or conundrums
like Arthur Godfrey’s refusal to wear a parachute, and
mysteries such as whether Desi Arnaz could really play
an instrument or if he was faking it while Lucy sang and
danced. Grandma said we walked a narrow civilized
path together through the jungle of our working class
neighborhood. For a woman interested in the social
ladder, she was not very sociable.

Although quite different in age, my grandmother and I
shared a variety of interests. On family outings, we
might wander off together to spy on the birds or inspect
an unusual plant or flower, while the others threw a ball
back and forth endlessly or nearly drowned themselves
in the lake. We often carried on a spirited dialogue, my
Timaeus playing to her Socrates. But it was decidedly
limited in scope, since neither of us had finished the
fourth grade.

We left the group as they ogled a steaming pile of dung
and hunkered up the hill to the zoo’s Animal House to
see the monkeys and whatever the hell you call those
things that look like giant rats. Dimly lit, the menagerie
baked like an oven inside, and smelled much worse than
the buffalo pen. Strolling down the aisle past the caged
jackals and vermin, Grandma began to chatter through
her complete zoological body of knowledge, which
would have taken no more than eleven seconds.

But time moves slowly for a child. I wanted to get home
and change into dry clothing. All my squirming around
in the back seat on the drive here had done nothing to
shake the sand loose in my britches. For reasons still
inexplicable to me, the Irish did not allow themselves to
disrobe in public bath houses and so we always arrived at
the beach with swim suits under our clothing, and went
home the same way. We were sometimes dry when we
put our pants back on for the ride home, but more often
our bathing suits were wet and sandy and terrifically
uncomfortable … in places on the body we were told to
seldom touch in private and never scratch in public.

As we came to a cage smelling so bad the breath caught
in my throat, an eerie huffing sound issued forth and
echoed around the concrete interior of the building. A
huge form lay at the back of the darkened cage.

Attached to the railing in front of the heavy bars, a small
sign identified the inmate as a male North American
Timber Wolf, one of the largest of the species. I
couldn't see well into his shadowy den, and the smelly
behemoth gave us no sign of recognition. Easily bored,
my attention turned to the monkeys across the aisle. I
soon became enthralled with the frisky little fellows, but
a little puzzled by the intensity of their play. I glanced
over at my grandmother only when I noticed her attempts
to entice the Goliath out into the light by leaning over the
rail and swinging her purse wide to swipe at the bars.

My grandmother was a wonderful woman, but
somewhere in her past the fairy of self-importance had
touched her a little too hard with the uppity stick.
Grandma could stand insult and injury, but never
disinterest. You could not purposely fail to notice the
old woman and live to tell about it. Unbalanced by the
beast’s inattention, Grandma opened her purse, pulled
out a pack of Tums, peeled one off and flung it through
the bars at the animal. She certainly hit him, because I
heard a loud grunt, but he remained at rest. She shouted
at him, but got no reaction.

Something now snapped in my grandmother’s soul and she became infuriated. If her mind had been able to make a sound, I would have heard the click-clack of a bullet being chambered. Spittle formed in the corners of her mouth and her breathing grew short. She hauled off and fired the entire pack of antacids at the huge shaggy beast. A sharp crack sounded inside the cage and the Tums could be heard bouncing around in the dark. The entire zoo suddenly went silent, and even the monkeys came to a dead stop.

     A feeling of fright ran down my spine. In my mind’s
eye, I saw Mr. Wolf thwacked hard on a large canine
tooth jutting out from his jaw. This is the main dental
hardware a wolf uses to tear apart his victims, like poor
innocent kids and annoying old women. My grandmother succeeded in her quest. The beast reacted, but Grandma got about 400 pounds more than she had bargained for.

Maybe he was having a bad day. Maybe he was fed up
or maybe his tooth had a cavity. Maybe the big cat
didn’t like being moved into the cage of a long departed
wolf so his own cage could be re-painted. One thing for
sure, the King of the Jungle did not gladly suffer an old
lady hitting him in the head with a pack of Tums. When I heard the roar, it was unmistakable. This was not the howl of a wolf.  It was the awful sound of something an awful lot bigger ... big enough to shake my vision like a train was crashing through the zoo. Mr. Leo Lion lunged off the floor of the wolf cage with a great tearing scrape of his cigar-length claws and flew forward into the light, slamming against the bars in a huge orgasmic rage of roaring, spit and very bad breath. Grandma wet her pants.

Lions have an uncanny sense of smell, perhaps 20 times
more sensitive than humans. Grandma didn’t know it,
but her aggression and urine produced the best imitation
of a mating overture this 600 pound male lion had seen
in a long time.

Big guys like Leo make certain movements when they
are ready to mate. These are obvious to any species,
even humans, unless you’re a youngster whose attention
is elsewhere. Despite Leo’s heavy breathing, the
monkeys still grabbed my attention and I lost interest in
the Big Bad Boy-Toy. Grandma didn’t. When the
family joined us in the Animal House, they found my
grandmother had taken out her glasses and was standing
at the cage in rapt attention, chewing nervously on her
fingernails in time to the lion’s grunting. Across the
aisle, I stood transfixed by the monkeys. The little guys
and girls were sure having a lot of fun, but their games
were getting more and more peculiar as they paired off and began climbing all over each other. If we kids had done that in school at recess Sister Mary Pharsalia would have had heart failure.

My father joined me at the monkey cage.
“What’re they doing, Dad?” I asked.
He looked at the monkeys, then at me.  He looked a second time at the monkeys and again back to me.
“A War Dance,” he said. “We’d better leave before they
attack.”

My mother led Grandma away from the lion. I was sure I saw a look of disappointment in his eyes.

The following Christmas I found a copy of “Animals Of The Jungle” on the discount rack at Woolworth’s for twenty five cents.  I wrapped it up in used Christmas paper and gave it to Grandma.  She quoted it often to friends, her eleven seconds of zoological knowledge now exponentially expanded.

I don’t believe my parents ever fully understood
Grandma's feelings of loss and desperation in her first
years with us. But they had the good sense to give her
more attention after our day at the zoo.

Eventually my grandmother came to accept her new life with us. She even began to speak to the neighbors.  Life went on.  My  brothers and I inadvertently discovered Mom and Dad liked stripping naked in the bath house. But for whatever reason, they never took us back to the zoo.

David Griffin         copyright 2010