The Smoke Room

by Earl Emerson

“Ten thousand gallons a minute, and every drop is headed for the same place,” said Sears. “We should have looked into this a long time ago. What do you think, Gum? You want credit for averting a disaster?”

  “Will it get me a lighter sentence?”

  Again, Sears pretended he hadn’t heard me.

  Tronstad and Johnson were right. Sending the three of us to jail meant nothing more to Sears than another line in his résumé; three more rungs to scrape his boots on as he climbed up through the department infrastructure.

  “You know, Gum, there was a period when I believed I could make you into a good firefighter.”

  “Being a good firefighter isn’t all there is to life.”

  My statement stopped him cold. He actually stopped walking. I knew why. Being a good firefighter was all there was to his life. “Gum,” he said angrily, “if you’re a good firefighter, you’re also a good human being. The two go hand in hand.”

  “So if you’re not a good firefighter, you’re not a good human being? I know a lot of people who aren’t capable of doing this job who are marvelous human beings.”

  “You’re distorting my meaning.”

  “I know exactly what you mean. You really do think being a good firefighter is the point of life. It makes you nervous, doesn’t it? That I know about you.”

  “I’m just committed to my job. Listen, Gum. I know you’re angry, but you have to believe me when I say I feel bad about this.”

  “I don’t have to believe shit.”

  Sears looked at me hard. “What did Ted tell you anyway?”

  “He said you asked them who might want to come up to Twenty-nine’s to replace me.”

  “I admit I might have thought about some manpower switches. It didn’t have anything to do with you personally.”

  “Sorry to be such a disappointment.”

  He turned and once again began walking downslope toward Lake Union. By now, even in the shallows, the rushing water was well past our ankles. Had we stepped into the gutter, the stream would have eddied up over the tops of our tall boots.

  “Where the hell are they?” Sears asked. “I told them not to scout too far ahead . . . Jesus, you don’t think they took a flyer, do you?”

  I looked him in the eye for the first time during our walk. “I have no idea how bad they want to stay out of jail, sir.”

  “I can’t believe I sent them down here alone. Oh, shit. That was a—” When he grabbed my arm to make certain I didn’t escape, too, I jerked it out of his grasp. He tried to grab me again, and I pulled away a second time, as we approached a side street that was wall-to-wall water. The water on this street was flat and black and lumbering instead of shallow and racing. Half a block away on the side street, I spotted Tronstad crouched in the center of the roadway, next to a couple of flatbed trucks and a backhoe. From where we stood, it looked as if Tronstad was ankle deep in a long, black mirror. Johnson was several hundred feet beyond Tronstad.

  This area was darker and quieter than the other streets in the neighborhood, bordered by windowless two-story parking garages and what appeared to be a manufacturing building, also windowless.

  Still in a crouch, Tronstad skimmed the water’s surface with his fingertips. “What do you have?” Sears shouted. “You got something?”

  “You gotta see this.”

  “What is it?”

  “You gotta see it.”

  Holding to the shallowest part of the stream, we headed down the center of the street, and as we drew closer I noticed Robert Johnson running toward us in what he would have termed a full-tilt boogie, splashing in the water, yelling something I couldn’t make out. I’d never seen him run like that, certainly not in full gear.

  “What is it?” Sears shouted.

  “You gotta see it! It’s unbelievable,” Tronstad replied.

  Once again Johnson shouted something unintelligible. Sears began jogging toward Tronstad, his equipment jangling, his boots splashing.

  It took a few seconds to realize what was happening.

  I began sprinting, hollering for Sears to stop, but by the time I closed the gap and put my hand on his shoulder, it was too late for both of us.

  “It’s a trap,” I said, as the two of us plunged into the sinkhole at the same time.

  At first all I knew was that water had rushed up my nose and was bogging down my turnout clothing. My helmet hit the water like a mini-parachute, and the chin strap wrenched my neck. Then I was under the surface, maybe three or four feet under. My boots filled quickly. I tried to swim, and kicked and splashed and attained the surface, caught a momentary glimpse of Johnson and Tronstad thirty feet away before I was dragged under. I gulped some air. Just enough.

  Water rushed into my face again, and I swam with my arms, kicked, tried my best to resurface, yet the more I strained to reach the surface, the deeper I was pushed. Sears was holding me. Grasping my helmet from above, using me as a stepping stone, using my buoyancy to supplement his own.

  It was only then that I remembered Sears couldn’t swim.

  I tried to breaststroke in the direction of Tronstad and Johnson, but Sears was keeping himself above the surface by holding me under. I’d become his personal flotation device. His panic was needless, because our equipment trapped enough air that it would have kept him afloat for a good little while. Had he relaxed for a few seconds, he would have seen that.

  Without control of my head, I couldn’t swim, and not being able to swim, I couldn’t resurface. Nor could I dive under to escape, the way I’d been taught in Red Cross lifesaving. Through the water I could hear Sears shouting for help.

  For a few seconds I relaxed and took stock of my situation, straining to reach out with my feet, hoping to find the bottom and push off, but the water was simply too deep.

  When I turned on my flashlight, I was able to see a surprising distance underwater. It was maybe eight or ten feet deep here, deeper at the end of the pool where Tronstad and Johnson were standing.

  Somewhere in the depths, right about where my light lost its effectiveness, I spotted a whirlpool—near the bottom of the pit—spiraling like a gigantic bathtub drain, an underwater tornado. It was what had dragged us down at first, and it frightened me more than the man riding me. It frightened me more than anything I’d seen in a long while.

  22. THRILL ME, KILL ME

  WE’D BEEN POOR when I was growing up. Eat-the-crusts poor. One of the few things my mother could afford to do for me in the summers was to take me to a public swimming pool for inexpensive lessons. We used to hitch rides with the neighbors to Colman Pool below Lincoln Park. When I got older I walked three miles each way, or we’d ride the bus up to the YMCA pool across from Station 32. My mother, who had never learned to swim, was terrified about living in a city where there was a body of cold water in every direction, afraid I would drown the way a neighbor’s child had. Consequently, I had lessons from the time I could walk, swam like a dolphin by the time I was eight, then went through lifesaving courses and worked as a lifeguard during my last two summers of high school.

  Had the two of us been in swimming trunks, slipping away from Sears and hauling him to safety would have been easy. A drowning man won’t ride his flotation device under the surface, so I would have dived out of his grasp and swum around behind him, grasping him across the chest from behind and towing him to safety.

  All of this was made difficult if not impossible by the fact that we were both wearing our complete complement of firefighting gear: fifty pounds of crap—nineteen pounds of compressed air cylinder and backpack, in addition to helmet, turnout trousers and turnout coat, knives and tools in our pockets, and portable radios. Plus rubber boots that came almost to our knees and were rapidly filling with water, which would soon turn into anchors.

  Before I could consciously think of what to do, I slipped my thumbs under my chin strap and let Sears have the helmet, then ducked low and began swimming forward. It wasn’t easy making headway with all that gear on. A lot of the probl
em was that I bobbed to the surface almost immediately, giving Sears another opportunity to grab me, which he did, his dogged tenacity outstripping even his first effort.

  Sputtering, choking, gasping for air, he rode me. He climbed onto my backpack, pushing me under. I let him push and then went as deep as I could, and this time he released me.

  Underwater, I fumbled with my MSA backpack, unfastening the waist belt, taking longer to loosen the chest strap, and dropping the cylinder, which bobbed to the surface. When I surfaced beside it, Sears began moving toward me like an eggbeater, intent on riding me one more time. I kicked once and moved away, keeping just out of reach. He was dangerous now, having lost, as does any drowning man, all sense of honor and purpose beyond keeping his head above water.

  Without warning, something jerked me under.

  Before I knew it, I was so far down I couldn’t see any light. Spinning in circles. It took me a while to realize the whirlpool I’d seen earlier was sucking me deeper and deeper, until I didn’t know east from west, up from down.

  I stretched out my hands and feet, trying to stop, and found myself gripping a piece of rebar that jutted from one of the walls of the pit, holding on fiercely until I stopped spinning, though the water continued to suck at me. Eventually I was able to bring my waterproof flashlight around and orient myself.

  Above were other flashlights. Below was a large black opening: a pipe. It was from this pipe that the whirlpool was originating. A drain at the bottom of this pit was sucking down great masses of water, and trying to suck me through it. If I let go of the rebar and headed for the surface, the suction would seize me again. Next time I might not be lucky enough to grasp something. Next time I might go straight into the pipe.

  For the first time since we hit the water, I thought about dying.

  The pipe below me was the diameter of a standard garbage can, and the suction took all my strength to resist. I couldn’t hold my breath forever, and I couldn’t swim to the surface, so for half a minute I thought I was going to drown. Unable to let go, I was like a bird stuck on a wire in a windstorm. Then, for no reason that I could discern, the funnel-shaped whirlpool, which had been drifting like a spinning top, slowly released me.

  Placing my feet on the concrete, I gave a mighty shove upward. I’d been under for well over a minute and barely had enough air left to reach the surface. Once I felt the cold air on my face, I took in as much oxygen as I could, gasping, then stroked toward Tronstad and Johnson. Though they were both within easy reach, neither stuck out a hand to help.

  Behind me, Sears, who’d obviously swallowed some water, was in even more trouble than before.

  “Help us, you bastards,” I said.

  Johnson made a move as if to reach out, but Tronstad put his arm across his chest and stopped him, then, as insane as it seems, picked up his camcorder and aimed it at me. I could visualize him replaying our deaths for the troops at the firehouse at some future date, the way he’d played the tape of him screwing his ex-wife.

  When I reached the wall under Tronstad’s feet, I got both elbows on the lip and began to lift myself laboriously out of the water. My waterlogged turnouts must have weighed five times what they weighed dry.

  Before I could clear the pool, two things happened.

  First, Robert Johnson stepped around Tronstad and grabbed my collar to help me. Then Sears caught me from behind and pulled me back into the pool.

  Sears was in a worse panic than before, if that was possible, grabbing my head each time I resurfaced, pushing me under again and again. At one point his bottle hit me in the mouth. His fingernails raked my face.

  I went limp, let him push me under, lower, and was finally out of his grasp. I swam deeper, hoping the whirlpool wouldn’t snatch me again, ascertained which way he was facing, and came up behind him, trying to reach around his chest, but the bottle on his back made him too bulky to handle.

  Still in a panic, he thrashed, twisted around, and reached out for me.

  I grabbed his forehead and gave a mighty shove, pushing him away. Now, without his harassment, I swam to the ledge and launched myself up beside Johnson, then turned around on my hands and knees and reached out to give Sears a helping hand.

  He was gone.

  Nothing but a froth of bubbles populated the surface of the pool.

  “Shit,” I said. “Help me. Shit. Shit.”

  Tronstad was still filming with the camcorder, while Johnson, who stared dumbly at the water, said, “You know I can’t swim.”

  I reached into the water blindly, moving my arm to and fro, then put my face in, although the last thing I wanted to do was submerge myself again. After a few seconds my eyes adjusted and I spotted a light, the battle lantern Sears still carried. He was doing a slow rotation six feet below me, caught in the whirlpool, tucked into a ball, spinning around as if his waist were curled around a bar.

  I took another breath at the surface and again plunged my face into the cold water. He was deeper now, and there wasn’t a thing I could do to help him. The whirlpool had him, and if I went in, it would grab me, too.

  I watched the pinpoint of light from his battle lantern descend deeper. I watched until I could barely see the light. Suddenly it came heading back toward the surface like a torpedo, and before I could move, it smacked me in the face.

  Tasting blood on my lips, I pulled my head out of the water and picked up the battle lantern.

  “Where is he?” Johnson asked.

  Tronstad knelt beside us, still filming.

  “There’s a pipe down there. I think he got sucked into it.”

  “That’s not possible.”

  I stood and stripped my bunking coat off, then began peeling my suspenders and bunking trousers down to the boots, which were heavy with water. “Come on, you guys. Help me. We can get him out.”

  “Count me out,” said Johnson. “I can’t swim, and you know as well as I do that in a rescue situation sixty percent of the fatalities are rescuers.”

  “Tronstad?”

  “Fuck him.” Tronstad had turned the camcorder off. “That bastard was going to do us.”

  “Jesus! You knew that was a pit. You planned this.” I looked around at the street. “You moved all the signs.”

  “You guys fell in. Not my fault.”

  “You set us up,” I said. I pushed Tronstad, who pushed me back. Because my bunking trousers were around my knees, I fell hard on my backside.

  I rolled over and put my head back in the water. The whirlpool was gone. So was Sears. There was nothing but darkness. Taking the occasional breath above the surface, I watched and waited. One minute. Two. When four minutes had passed and he still hadn’t resurfaced, I knew he was gone. I knew it for certain when, a moment later, one of his gloves floated up to me.

  “Jesus,” I said, fishing the glove out of the water. “You lousy fuckin’ bastard. You killed the lieutenant.”

  “You killed him. I got it right here on tape. You pushed him under, and he never came back up.”

  “What?”

  “I got it right here on tape.”

  Grinning, Tronstad turned his recorder to playback and held it in front of me. He had captured twenty-five seconds of me and Sears thrashing in the water, the part where I grabbed his head and pushed him away. Unbeknownst to me, he’d gone straight under from my push. He’d been trying to climb up over me, was drowning both of us in his panic, but anyone who viewed the videotape would think I was the one in a panic, that I’d pushed him under, that I’d deliberately drowned my lieutenant. “So don’t be blaming other people, Doublemint. Otherwise I’ll have to show this around.”

  Warm blood coursed down my face and chin. My palms were bleeding from the rebar. My face stung where Sears had raked me with his fingernails. My upper lip was swollen. “You stupid bastards. You murdered him.”

  “I didn’t do nothing,” Johnson said.

  “You murdered him,” Tronstad said, smiling. “You drowned the fucker. I got it right here on tape.
”

  23. HEATHER, ME, HIM, AND HIM

  WHEN THEY RELEASED me from Harborview at four in the morning, the safety chief drove me to Station 29, where I picked up my car and drove home. I slept until almost eleven, then lay in bed for a long time staring at the same ceiling I’d stared at all those times making love with Iola, who preferred to be on top, running the show.

  I was in a state of shock that was hard to explain. I’d thought long and hard at the hospital about turning Tronstad in, but each time I tried to make the decision, I thought about that videotape of me shoving Sears underwater. It was clear on the tape he hadn’t come back up after I shoved him. It looked like murder even to me. Me murdering Sears. Or manslaughter. Or whatever you call it. It scared me enough to keep my mouth shut.

  At four in the afternoon, I put a Modest Mouse CD in and drove past Iola Pederson’s home. Bernard’s truck was in the drive, so I didn’t stop. The next two days passed in a fog. Trying to cajole me into retrieving the bonds, Tronstad phoned me every two hours. Johnson called, too, more concerned with whether or not I was planning to blab about Sears’s death than about laying his hands on the bonds, though he did mention the money in his third and fourth calls. And then again somewhere around his ninth call.

  I scanned the local newspapers. One headline said, Fire Officer Dies in Freak Mishap. Another said, Firefighter Hero Narrowly Escapes Drowning.

  Late Thursday afternoon the three of us attended Sears’s funeral at the same Catholic church on Capitol Hill where Abbott got his send-off. Before, during, and after the service I spoke to no one, a large bandage concealing the scratches on my face. Every time I caught someone staring, I was reminded of how much the white bandage stood out in a sea of black hats and black uniforms.

  Parts of the two-hour funeral passed in a blur, while others dragged. It was a gut-wrenching affair. There were bagpipers and hundreds of uniformed personnel, the mourners from other departments, Heather’s rugby teammates, and assorted citizens who’d gone to school with the dead man, had been on committees with him, or had skied with him.