by Jay Varner
I walk up to a man standing on the street. He glances at my notebook and squints.
“Sir, I’m a reporter with the Sentinel,” I say. “Did you see anything that happened?”
“Yep.” He still holds his stare. “But I ain’t talking to you. Don’t want my name in the paper.”
I shake my head. “I don’t even have to use your name. I just wondered what the fire looked like?”
“I ain’t saying nothing to you.” He looks back at the house.
I nod and move a few paces down the street, where a couple stands. They turn, see me, and walk away. Great. I can’t even interview witnesses — how am I going to interview the firemen?
As the firemen roll up hoses and remove their jackets, I search for someone to question. I look back for the chief, who spoke with the family before, but he is gone. I scribble in my notebook in an attempt to look busy, too timid to ask any of the firemen to point me in the right direction. While I write, Lorrie taps me on the shoulder and smiles.
“Down there’s the family,” Lorrie says. “You could ask them what happened.”
The family still clusters in the front yard. They wear black and for the first time I realize that they are Mennonite.
“Would you want some reporter asking you how you felt in a situation like this?” I ask.
“Well, no.” Lorrie frowns — we both know this is a necessary part of the job. After a few moments, she slowly nods. “Come on, let’s get the chief for you.”
My shoes squish as I walk, soaked from the runoff of the hoses. We pass some firemen who light cigarettes and talk about their families. The sting of smoke lingers in the air and tears my eyes. Finally, we come to a fifty-ish man with a gentle handshake. He has the wrinkled skin of someone who has worked outside his entire life.
I ask him to give me the details of the fire. I learn it started when a candle in the upstairs bathroom brushed against a curtain.
“What about the report of entrapment?”
“The neighbor said that there were children living here,” he says. “He didn’t know if they’d made it out or not, so the dispatcher said possible entrapment. Better to be safe than sorry.”
He grins and nods. I write all of it down.
Satisfied that I have enough information for a story, I feel my trembling begin to stop, my breath and heart slow. I hold on to my notebook with one hand, shake loose a cigarette from a pack of Camel Lights with another, and light up. I listen as Lorrie chats with the fire chief for a minute more. As she walks away, I nod to the chief.
“Thanks again,” I say. “Oh, I don’t think I introduced myself. Jay Varner. I’m covering the fire beat for the paper now.”
He smiles, extends his hand, and says, “Bob Barger.”
As I reach to shake, I realize that I’m still holding the burning cigarette. “Sorry,” I said, and switch the cigarette to my left hand. “You probably don’t need a burn from me.”
“Yeah, I’ve got enough scars.” He smiles. “Varner? Where you from?”
“McVeytown.”
“You related to Denton?”
“He was my dad.”
“He was a good man,” he says. “I remember seeing him at a lot of things like this. It’s a shame, what cancer did to him and all.” He glances at the cigarette and then at me, a silent admonition that I should know better.
“Well Jay, I’m glad to know you’re the one who’ll be writing this up,” he says. “I think your dad would have liked that.”
The Saturday after Jimmy Cooper killed himself, Trevor and I talked late into the night. My cousin still lived with his parents in Mattawana, a sleepy little cluster of houses across the river from McVeytown. We smoked cigarettes on the front porch and recounted Jimmy’s last days, pouring through what information we had, trying to piece together the mystery of his death, just as many of us had done at his funeral. Our conversation soon expanded to include the death of Lewistown. We talked about all the jobs that had been lost, all the stores and factories that had closed.
Nearly 5 percent of the town’s population had lost work in the past few months. First, Lear Corp. shut down its factory, firing 308 employees who once manufactured automotive carpeting. The same month, Standard Steel, a company founded in 1795, closed its ring mill which produced locomotive wheels. The company continued to operate its Lewistown plant but without the 109 workers who lost their jobs. When the Ax Factory in downtown Lewistown closed, forty-nine people — the only remnants of a thriving past when seven times that number had been employed there — all lost their jobs.
The town’s slide reached beyond just the economy. After I graduated from high school, Lewistown became known for its drug epidemic, the worst in Pennsylvania outside of Philadelphia and Pittsburgh. In 2001, MSNBC devoted much of a two-hour exposé called “America’s New Heroin Epidemic: Along Comes the Horse” to the situation in Lewistown. Anchorman Forrest Sawyer stood in front of the town square decorated with cannons and an American flag, a pastiche on the picturesque small town in twilight, and noted how drug use had inexplicably soared.
At Lewistown’s municipal building, where the borough council meets twice a month, a faded, off-white banner hung on the inside wall: LEWISTOWN – ALL-AMERICAN CITY, 1973. At the meetings I covered, the borough council talked about the drug problem as they had been doing for years. A handful of citizens complained to the council and the town’s police chief about drug deals that were going down in their neighborhoods, on their streets.
“Did you know that in nineteen sevnty-three, Lewistown was named an All-American City?” I asked Trevor. “Makes you wonder just what in the hell happened? Feels like everything is dying.”
“Yeah,” Trevor said. “But I love this town.”
“It’s my hometown, but it’s not my home anymore,” I said. “The town — McVeytown, Lewistown, whatever — it’s lost too much.”
We sat in silence for a moment, and listened to a freight train beat over the railroad tracks along the river. The sound was both lonely and cold, as if the rest of the world couldn’t pass through Mifflin County fast enough.
“Now, it seems like there’s nothing here,” I said. “It’s like Bruce says, ‘Main Street’s whitewashed windows and vacant stores.’”
Trevor stared off into the night sky and nodded. “Then you know what you have to do,” he said. “You have to get out. And I don’t blame you.”
In the midmorning hours, I finally left for home. As I drove down the hill from Trevor’s house, I looked across the Juniata River at the fiery blue, yellow, and white lights of McVeytown. Each light appeared as solitary and lost as the next, yet all of them together seemed to weave a circuit board of grief. I wondered what had happened to this town, to Mifflin County. I had watched stores close, seen neighbors come and go, and both hated and loved these streets through the years. But that was then. The area seemed to hold more of my past than future.
I pulled up to the flashing red light in McVeytown, the town’s only stoplight, and looked across the street. Jimmy’s Pizza sat in the dark. In the past week, every time I drove through McVeytown, I thought of Jimmy standing behind the counter, his flour-covered hands tossing pizza dough.
And, each time I passed the McVeytown Volunteer Fire Company on my way home from the newspaper, I still thought of my father. Though it didn’t make any sense, I felt like in losing Jimmy, I had lost another part of my father.
Lorrie and I say little on the drive back to the newsroom. The adrenaline that had flared through my blood is now drained from my body and I feel exhausted. Still, I can’t get over the thrill of it, the bolt of excitement and fear I had felt on the way there. The house could have been fully engulfed, flames licking at the black night sky, and there I would have been in the center of it all.
“I never realized what they did,” I tell Lorrie. We are five minutes away from the office. Deadline is only a half hour away, but I know Elizabeth is waiting for the story and will hold up the press run.
“What who did?” Lorrie asks.
“Firemen,” I say. “My dad was a fireman. I hated him for a lot of years because he was always leaving when he got a call. But I never thought of all the other people he was with. People like that family back there. If there had been a kid trapped in that house, he’d have gone in.”
Lorrie nods. “Any one of those men would have gone in.”
“I know. I just feel a little guilty all of a sudden. Maybe I shouldn’t have held it against him.”
I wonder if my dad ever saved someone’s life as a fireman. Or if he lived with the guilt of not being able to charge into a burning house, and instead watched someone die.
“Why did your dad become a fireman?” Lorrie asks.
I think a moment. “When he was a kid, his house burned down.”
Lorrie sits in silence the rest of the way back to the newsroom. After I finish writing the story, I step outside for a cigarette. I stand alone in the cool night air and feel confident that I have written a good article. But boredom dulls the satisfaction. The newsroom seems so still and deadening. Tonight has offered the only rush of happiness I have felt since Jimmy died. I yearn for another fire, wonder when the scanner will blast out those alarm codes again. How fast can I drive to the next one, how soon can I get there? A spark has been lit inside me, the same one that had driven my father away from me while he was alive, and kept him there after he was dead. But I wonder if perhaps I am finally starting to understand him.
Nine
Our yard looked like a dump and my mother hated it.
A bulldozer pushed down the old cement walls where Lucky had stored his pigeons — he had shown up one day at the end of August and moved the birds. A backhoe then excavated the hole, scooping dirt, cement, and metal onto a dump truck, which then transplanted the junk across our yard and piled it onto the ruins of the house. What resulted looked like a mountain of rubbish: dirt, rusted metal piping, busted cinder blocks, and chunks of cement.
One evening, not long after the dig was finished, my parents and I walked around the pile of debris as if we were surveyors. Dusk had turned damp and wet with the approach of fall. Fog smoked over the fields. In our backyard, tree branches sagged from the weight of ripening red apples.
The smell of honeysuckle wafted in the breeze, mixing with the wet scent of dirt and clay. I scanned the pile for a glint or flash, hoping that Helen’s diamond ring might have been unearthed.
My father appraised the pile as he walked. He held out his hand toward the dirt and cement as if it were an award on a game show. “Looking pretty good, don’t you think? Give the dirt a few weeks to settle and I think it’ll be fine.”
My mother stopped, leaned against one of the English walnut trees, and crossed her arms. “It’s an eyesore. It looks like we live in a construction site.”
“Beats paying to have it hauled off somewhere else though, doesn’t it?” my father said. “Besides, don’t worry about it. Next spring, I’ll plant some grass and it’ll look like a hill.”
“Can grass grow on concrete?” I asked.
My father grinned and tongued at his mustache. His eyes focused on the pile again. “Well, then we’ll just get some more dirt to put on it,” he said. “And then we’ll plant some grass.” He looked down at me and smiled, as if for added effect. “And then before you know it, we’ll have this yard looking just like a baseball field.”
“That’d be a weird-looking baseball field,” my mother said. She shook her head and glanced at my father.
He smiled and walked toward her. “What’d I tell you?” He gently put his hands on her shoulders and leaned forward until their foreheads touched. “Don’t worry. I’ll take care of all this. Trust me.”
She rolled her eyes. “How many times have I heard that one before?”
It seemed that my dad came up with a new plan or hobby every couple of months. I was told that before I was born, he nearly became a professional forest firefighter in Wyoming. He ran several miles a day and timed himself with a stop watch in preparation for the difficult physical test fire jumpers must pass. In the end, he settled for the Pennsylvania State Forest Firefighter Certification instead, deciding that he didn’t want to leave McVeytown. A few years later, he decided to try breeding rabbits. He bought a dozen rabbits, cages for them, and food. Within a few months, he sold all of them for a loss. After that, he turned his attention to goats, thinking the animals would graze on the weeds and brush that grew around Lucky’s ruins. The first goat bayed and cried at all hours of the day, quieting only during her daily feeding time. The second, a massive and angry animal, broke free of its chain in our yard and escaped onto the road one night, nearly causing a car accident. And then, for a while, my father loved model rockets and spent several months painstakingly building one. On its inaugural launch, the rocket flew high into the sky, but the tiny parachute failed to deploy. It crashed into the ground and shattered.
He struggled with more than just sustaining interest in projects. He promised to do things but then came up with excuses to never even start them. He still pledged to build me a tree house — he even had easy access to wood scraps at Overhead Door. When I asked him about a tree house, he always said “some day soon” or “just wait until next summer.” I begged him to teach me how to ride a bicycle — “just wait until you’re a little older.” If I wanted to have a water-gun battle or play catch, there was always a reason he couldn’t: he had to mow the lawn, work on his truck, type an accident report, or go to the firehouse. Usually, though, it was the last excuse — the firehouse still came first.
I wondered how much time my dad would even put into the new house. I’m sure my mother worried about this as well. Though my dad talked about the project with pride, I didn’t feel as excited. I was just happy that Lucky had removed his pigeons. And with the hole gone, maybe he wouldn’t return to light any fires.
I had watched on the hot afternoon at the end of August when Lucky came to get his pigeons. He backed his pickup next to those firebombed walls where he housed the birds. He climbed out of his truck and then loaded large metal cages full of fluttering and gabbling birds onto the bed.
I peered out through the window, just as I had when he lit those Saturday morning fires. Like then, he wore his green painter’s uniform and stuck a toothpick in his mouth — he reminded me of a cartoon character, always dressing the same. When he took a break, he sat on the tailgate and wiped his bald, sweaty head with a white hankie. That night, I asked my father what happened to the pigeons.
“Your grandfather took them to Ricky Trutt’s farm,” he said. “He’s keeping them in a barn there.”
“It took long enough,” my mother said. “I wanted those stupid birds out of here for years.”
My father inhaled, puffing his chest as though preparing for a fight. “Teena, it’s his land. What do you want me to do?”
“More than you have been,” she said.
Commercials for back-to-school sales aired on television. Two months earlier at Hershey Park, the end of summer had seemed unimaginable. Now, each day chugged by, fueled by the dread of another school year. My afternoons of watching CHiPs, riding the swing, and listening to my Walkman would be replaced with spelling tests and multiplication tables.
On Labor Day weekend, a friend of my father’s spent the entire afternoon helping him rebuild the engine to our old lawn mower. They worked under the shade of the trees in our backyard. I walked toward them, eager to be part of their world.
Though Brad Boyer was the same age as my father, his hair had already whitened. His deep blue eyes focused on part of the engine. He looked toward me.
“Are you going to help us out?”
“Can I?” I asked.
“Just stay back,” my dad said. He held up his hand, ordering me to stop. “We have parts on the ground here. I know exactly where everything is. I don’t want you messing it up.”
“I won’t mess it up,” I said.
“Take a seat,” Br
ad said. He patted the ground. “We’re taking this engine apart. Watch and learn.”
For a couple of hours I sat silently while my father turned wrenches and disassembled metal parts. In the late afternoon, the sky darkened and a breeze hissed through the trees. Thunder rumbled in the distance.
“Better get inside,” my dad said. “Storm’s coming.”
“What about the mower?” I asked.
“Brad and I will cover it with a tarp,” he said. My dad looked to the sky and then back at me. “Do you know where the tarp is?”
“Yeah, in the shed, by the ladder, right?”
My dad nodded. “Do me a favor and go get it for me. Brad and I are going to get some bricks to lay down. Okay?”
I turned and ran toward the shed. Tree branches swayed in the wind. The leaves rustled. As my legs pumped, I pretended that I was just like Brad and my father. In my imagination, the shed was on fire. I burst through the door, scanned the inside, and found the blue tarp. Only it wasn’t a tarp, it was a person that I had to save. I grabbed it, hugged it tight, and then ran back outside and toward my father. When the rain droplets pelted my arms, they were ash and sparks from the building — it had blown up right after I saved the person inside.
I watched as my father covered the mower and its scattered pieces. Brad placed the bricks on the edges of the tarp, making sure the wind wouldn’t whip it up and send it sailing across the yard. The three of us ran into the shed, stepping inside just as the rain began to pour. Lightning cracked above the fields. We waited in silence for a few minutes.
“Hey Jay,” Brad said. “Thanks for helping out. I don’t think your dad and I could have done it without you.” He patted my shoulder and smiled.
“I didn’t do that much,” I said. “Just my job.” That’s what my father would have said.
“Well, you’d better get paid then,” Brad said. He reached into his back pocket and pulled out his wallet. He glanced at my father and smiled. “Does he have a savings account?”