Into the Inferno

by Earl Emerson

  “Oh, we love you, Grampa,” Britney said. “Don’t we, Allyson?”

  “You sure that’s Grandpa?”

  Neither of them had gotten close, standing like tin soldiers with their feet together and their arms at their sides. A thoughtful nurse’s aide who’d been eyeing us showed up with a box of crayons and some scratch paper. We all went into the room, the nurse’s aide wheeling my father in behind us.

  “He doing okay?” I asked.

  She was a diminutive Asian woman, no more than ninety pounds, with long, lustrous black hair wrapped behind her head. “He do jus’ fine. I go every day a’ four, but he do jus’ fine. Every day. You from out of state?”

  “No.”

  “Have nice visit.” Smiling and nodding, she left the room.

  “He ever talk?” Britney asked.

  “No.”

  “If I throw him a ball will he catch it?”

  “Why don’t you throw him a rock?” Allyson said. “Don’t be stupid. Of course he won’t catch it. Look at him. Let’s draw something. Like that stuff we mailed Mommy.”

  “I can’t do that many pictures,” Britney complained.

  “Even one picture would be nice,” I said.

  Twenty minutes later, a bored Morgan wandered in and waited as the girls colored. A moment later, when I saw Dr. Brashears walking past the door, I called out. He came back, smiling quietly, eyes filled with my fate.

  “What are you doing here?” Brashears asked.

  I gestured toward the room. “My father.”

  “I just went over Jackie’s records. She conformed to your list of symptoms even more closely than I thought. By the way, I called Tacoma General. Got some doctor named Philbert. Holly Riggs and Jackie? Their symptoms match perfectly.”

  “And neither one is coming out of it?”

  “Doctors aren’t God, but I don’t think so.”

  When the girls finished their drawings, we tacked them up on the bulletin board on the end wall in my father’s room next to the newspaper clipping about me. I gave Morgan some cash and sent the three of them over to North Bend Way to Scott’s Dairy Freeze. The pictures were directly under a note that said: There is banking and cigarettes at the floor dayroom every Mon & Wed & Fri at 10:00 a.m.

  As if my father was going to be doing any banking. Or smoking.

  Alone in the room with him, I pulled up a chair and held his hand. He’d been a poor father some of the time, but then I’d been a poor son some of the time. Hell, he was human. Just like me. Like most of us, he’d done the best he knew. The princely manner with which he’d treated my daughters was a hint of how badly his own demons had tortured him in the years when he’d been raising me.

  After a while, I called the fire station to see whether anybody had left any messages. No one had. I took a calling card out of my wallet and called JCP, Inc., in San Jose, asked for Mr. Gray in their administrative offices. It took a while to reach him.

  Once I had him on the line, I went through the whole thing again, the accident, our health problems since the accident. I mentioned Mr. Stuart’s denial that their company had been shipping anything in February. “I’ve got the shipping company’s manifest right here in my hand,” I said. “You guys shipped three packages, and they were involved in a serious accident.”

  “I’m sorry you and Mr. Stuart got off on the wrong foot,” Gray said.

  “There was no wrong foot about it. He said you guys don’t ship in February. I have a copy of the manifest right here in front of me that says you did.”

  “Stuart is very well thought of around here. If he said we weren’t shipping in February, then that’s what he honestly believed. Now, I’m not even sure that we were shipping last winter. I’d have to check the records myself.”

  “What we have is, we have a couple of dead firefighters up here.”

  “Dead?”

  “A couple more who are brain-dead.”

  “What do you mean by that?”

  “I mean their central nervous systems are shot. They can’t walk, talk, or feed themselves. They’re incontinent.”

  “I can assure you, Lieutenant . . .”

  “Swope.”

  “Lieutenant Swope . . . that Jane’s does not manufacture or ship anything that would cause symptoms like the ones you’re describing.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Absolutely. Just out of curiosity, what symptoms were your people showing? I mean early on.”

  “Why do you want to know, if you don’t ship anything that might cause a problem?”

  “Just thinking out loud. Let me get back to you. I’ve got a meeting I’m late for.”

  I gave him the phone number at the station.

  I was helping the nurse’s aide change my father’s diaper, a messy business at best, as well as a benchmark I was determined to get past, when a woman’s voice called, “Jim?”

  I turned around and found Stephanie Riggs staring at me from the doorway.

  29. ALL THE WOMEN IN MY LIFE

  We’d been pulling his trousers back on, were in the process of sitting him up, feats the diminutive nurse was ill-equipped to accomplish alone. Stephanie rushed in to help situate him in his wheelchair, then watched as the nurse left the room carrying a plastic sack. The odor of human shit lingered long after I found a citrus spray bottle in the bathroom and misted the room.

  “I left messages, but you never got back to me.”

  “I didn’t get them. I drove up, but I couldn’t find anybody in the station. Finally a volunteer who was hanging around said somebody saw you over here. He also said somebody died at a fire today? Not another firefighter I hope.”

  “A civilian. By the way. Phone tag is something you play with people who have more than four days to live.”

  “I was working on your problem. I didn’t think you needed the reassurance of knowing that.”

  “It looks like I did.”

  “I’m here now. I’m here for you. I’m sorry that wasn’t clear.”

  I was annoyed that Max Caputo’s bizarre death had stolen so much time from my own impending finish. I was annoyed also that Stephanie hadn’t hooked up with me sooner, as promised. Or maybe I was just annoyed. “What did my tests show?” Stephanie took a deep breath and looked down at my father. It took me a minute to realize she wasn’t going to reply, at least not right away. “Dad, this is Stephanie Riggs. Stephanie, my father, James Swope, Sr.”

  “CVA?”

  “Little over two years ago.”

  “Same condition as Holly.”

  “The thought has occurred to me.”

  “You’re a good son.”

  “That’s one thing I’m not.”

  “No, you are. I saw you working with the nurse before you knew I was here. And you’ve kept him close to home. A lot of people would just ship someone in his condition out and never think twice about it.”

  That was exactly what I’d done and I felt lower than whale shit because of it, yet I could hardly point out my crimes to Stephanie. She already hated me.

  “I’d rather be dead than have a stranger changing my diapers,” I said.

  “Don’t say that.”

  “You haven’t thought about that with Holly?”

  “I don’t even want to talk about this.”

  “Fine. Tell me about the tests.”

  She moved past me to the window, folding her arms across her breasts and gazing out at the sunshine. I’d read once that in wartime people were like rabbits, the proximity to death heightening their sexual awareness, exponentially increasing their drive to mate. I was beginning to feel that way myself. Stephanie was wearing Holly’s perfume again, and that subtle aroma never failed to make me think of sex.

  “The tests weren’t conclusive. So far everything looks normal, same as Holly. That’s what’s so baffling. It’s all so damn normal. Anything changed with you?”

  “I’ve had a headache all day. I fell twice. It’s pretty much what Stan and your sister reporte
d.”

  She thought about that while I looked out the window over her shoulder. “You frightened?” she asked.

  “Are you asking out of professional curiosity, or just for something to talk about?”

  “I really want to know.”

  “I’m thinking I’m going to be like him in four days.”

  “No, you’re not. We’ll—”

  “Find a cure?”

  “Of course we will.”

  “In four days? Get real.”

  “You can’t give up hope.”

  “I’m not giving up anything. I’m just being practical. The worst part is I don’t know what’s going to happen to my girls.”

  “Your ex-wife still in the picture?”

  “She’s wanted by the law.” Two years ago I might have outlined the details of Lorie’s misdemeanors ad nauseam; in the first years after our divorce I’d complained bitterly about Lorie to anybody who would listen and quite a few who didn’t want to but couldn’t get away from me. Ultimately, I ran out of listeners before I ran out of words. Now, more than anything else, she was a blot on my history. If she was a disgrace to parenthood, what did that make me for choosing her to be the mother of my children? She was just one more piece of evidence that I was an idiot.

  I sat on the bed and picked up my father’s limp hands.

  I thought about how over the years I’d blamed so many of my problems on him, how I’d measured, infantile as it seemed now, each woman I’d dated by the impression I thought she would make on him. About how badly I’d needed to impress him with my companions. He must have chosen my mother for a lot of the reasons I was choosing women now.

  I was the young male expelled from the troupe, wanting to come back and conquer, if only psychologically, the alpha male. As religious as he was, my father had frequently betrayed himself with a lingering look at a slim ankle or a prolonged gaze into a pair of pretty eyes. At fifty-seven, and still turning heads, my mother was a testament to his need to be surrounded by beauty. She’d been twenty-four when they married. He’d been forty-four.

  Within the limitations of his life, my father had been good to me. Later, when he needed me the most, I had abandoned him, just as the rest of the world would abandon me at the end of the week.

  “You’re a good son,” Stephanie repeated.

  “I’m hungry. How about you?”

  “Driving over here I saw a little Italian place on the corner. Any good?”

  “Sure. Trouble is, my daughters—” Just as I said the word daughters, Allyson and Britney burst into the room. Morgan remained in the doorway, eyeing Stephanie with a malevolent intensity I could never have predicted. The girls were each towing a gas-filled balloon on the end of a long yellow ribbon, raving about a clown they’d seen down the hall. Britney had a pink mustache. “Strawberry shake, little girl?”

  She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand.

  “Allyson? Britney? This is my friend Stephanie. Stephanie’s a doctor. And, Morgan? This is Stephanie.”

  Morgan remained sullen. The girls immediately let me in on their plot: they wanted to go to E. J. Roberts Park, a small public park a few blocks from the fire station. If they’d been scarred by our brush with death that morning, they weren’t showing it.

  “They’re adorable,” Stephanie said after they’d paraded out with Morgan. “You’ve done a wonderful job with them.”

  “They’re great, but it’s not all my doing. Lorie was a good mother before she left. At least part of the time. You interested in seeing somebody else with the syndrome?”

  “Where?”

  “Right down the hall.”

  In Jackie’s room the television was playing to an audience of one. I turned the volume down and let Stephanie make a quick examination of the patient while I read some of the notes and cards on the bulletin board, some for her, some for her roommate, who was out. There’d been two unsigned Christmas cards on my father’s bulletin board, both from the same insurance company. Somebody who felt sorry for him must have tacked them up. “She in an accident?”

  “Crashed her car.”

  “She a firefighter?”

  “A volunteer. Aid calls only.”

  “She’s got the hands.”

  “Yup.”

  We ended up walking to a restaurant a block away.

  As we started to cross the railroad tracks, I looked up and suddenly realized I was sitting on the ground. I had been walking alongside Stephanie one moment—on my keister the next. It was embarrassing.

  30. HERE COMES ONE NOW

  The Italian restaurant was across from the mountaineering shop and just up the street from the bike store.

  After we ordered, Stephanie leaned toward me, pressing her torso forward so that the table put a horizontal dent across her as if she were a foldout paper doll. She was pretty enough to be a paper doll, her hair pulled back into a loose ponytail, her pale-blue eyes full of life, a slight swatch of freckles across her nose and cheeks. She was exactly the sort of woman who never would have had anything to do with me unless forced to. “I believe I may be on the verge of finding out what happened,” she said. “At least a good portion of it.”

  “And?”

  “I thought it would be something we found in the hospital, you know, the results of one of the tests we did on Holly, or on you, but your tests are all coming out normal. Just like hers. So last night I got on the Internet and began trying all sorts of things with various search engines. And there it was.”

  I must have done something with my face, because she said, “I’m sorry. I guess you want the Reader’s Digest version and here I am giving you the unabridged version. I’ve found three cases in Tennessee that are almost identical to what we’re seeing here. All firefighters.”

  “Chattanooga?”

  “Yes. Did you find that, too? Happened after a fire in a shipping facility, which just happens to be where my sister’s cargo originated the night she had the accident. Same city, different shipping facility. When I called this morning, they told me to speak to their lawyers. Their lawyers said if I had a suit, to file it; if not, they couldn’t tell me anything. I’ve left a couple of calls with their fire department, but they’re having some sort of conference, and everybody from the chief on down is out of the office.”

  “I spoke to a firefighter named Drago. I think we should call him back.” Stephanie handed me her cell phone and I dialed the number from memory. It was one o’clock in North Bend, three o’clock in Chattanooga.

  Drago answered the phone himself this time. I reminded him of who I was and skipped the amenities. “Tell me why you warned me about a possible explosion.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about, man. Who are you?”

  I ran through it all again. “Somebody called me earlier, but how do I know it was you? Start from the top. Tell me exactly what you got and how you think you got it.”

  The man was off his rocker. As I spoke, he interrupted repeatedly in an effort, apparently, to make sure I wasn’t with the media or a private drug company, or an insurance company. You could tell he was nuts, not so much by what he said, although there were plenty of clues there, but by the staccato sentences and the up-and-down tone of his voice. I’d never heard anyone talk quite like that.

  I told him as plainly as I could who I was and what had been happening to the North Bend Fire Department. When I gave him a list of the symptoms, he made me go over it twice, just like Santy Claus.

  After I told him I was on day three of the syndrome, that my doctor thought I would be a zombie by the end of the week, that we’d just come back from a trailer explosion that could have wiped out the entire department, he said, “Lookit. Three years ago we had a couple of rigs respond to a fire at a place called Southeast Travelers. A freight outfit. They’re still running trucks not two miles from here. What makes it so tragic is we could have pissed and put it out. It was just a silly little room fire. What we did was, we ran a line in with two guys on the pi
pe. Within two weeks those two guys plus one of our fire investigators were in the hospital. Pretty much the same symptoms you’re describing. Brain-dead by the end of the month.

  “All three had been at Southeast, and all three had moved packages and freight around. Those little shits at Southeast tried to deny it, but there was only one place it could have happened. Doctors around here thought they might have gotten into some insecticide. But that storeroom didn’t have any insecticide in it.”

  “You say it was only two weeks between the fire and when they came down with the symptoms? That makes me think we’re not talking about the same thing. It was longer up here.”

  “Your guys are turning into zombies? Just layin’ there, nothing behind their eyes? Gotta feed ’em? White stuff on the backs of their hands?”

  Rubbing one hand, I said, “How are your guys doing?”

  “I hate to say it, but Vic is dead, and the other two are organ donors going to seed. Lost most of their weight. Their muscle tone. They got bedsores. The oldest is forty and looks like an embalming school has been using him for practice. They just started feeling sick, nothing earth-shattering, and then one day they either didn’t wake up or collapsed where they stood. Two of ’em are in nursing homes. The other one, Vic, died of a heart attack about six months ago. His wife had already divorced him so she could marry somebody else in the department. Tell me that wasn’t a scandal. I hope to Jesus cows are laying eggs and roosting in trees before anything like that happens to me.”

  “Has there been an investigation?”

  “Our mayor appointed a commission to study it, and the state’s working on it, too, but nothing’s happened. I think after our senator got into the mix, that’s when the investigation started going cow shit.”

  “What makes you say that?”

  “They decommissioned one of the groups studying it and then seeded the other one with people from the chemical industry. You know there’s politics in it when they actually put representatives from some of the companies we think caused it on the panel to investigate. After a year they put out a preliminary report which says basically diddly-squat. Then one of the guys on this eighteen-member commission has a heart attack and everything grinds to a halt while they spend four months scouring the countryside for a replacement. Four months!”