“The fires are all over, Randy,” Celia rinsed the glass, ran a dingy rag over the rim. “This whole town is going up.”
“We’re safe.” Randall reached above her and pressed their smoke detector. The alarm didn’t sound.
“This town just needs some damn rain. The town gets crazy when it’s just hot and dry all the time.”
“I can’t make it rain.” Randall opened the junk drawer to search for a battery.
“I didn’t ask you to.” She raised a cigarette to her lips. “No jobs, no rain, nothing anyone can do about it.”
But Randall had a job, a promotion even, and it would last until the refinery tower’s flame snuffed out. Randall rummaged through the drawer but couldn’t find a battery. Instead, he pulled out a book of matches and tore one off for his wife.
Celia ignored him and cupped her hands over her lighter. “What’d Jackie think of the fire?”
Randall wished his wife would use their boy’s legal name, Jackson, a solid name. Jackie was paper-thin, crumpled under the tongue. “What the fuck is with his nails? Is that your paint?”
“I found a quart of paint in his room. It’s your paint. The stuff you used on the shutters. You ever see my nails black?”
He remembered her nails being orange last week when he took her out to Pizza Sam’s to celebrate rumors of his promotion, rumors he’d joked about with the men on the stacks. Safety supervisor wasn’t work, but a desk and a clipboard and probably a skirt, the men had said.
“What’s wrong with him?”
“Phases, baby.” She passed her cigarette to Randall. A pink smudge of lipstick ringed the filter. He waved it away. “You gotta be able to laugh about this stuff.”
“I just wish he’d bring home a girl or something. Just so I wouldn’t have to worry.”
“Jesus, he’s twelve. I’ll take black nails over some knocked-up teenager.”
Randall finally discovered some batteries at the back of the drawer. He opened the detector and found the batteries missing. He popped in the new ones.
“I found a job in the paper I might apply to,” Celia said.
“We have lots of time still. You don’t need a job.”
“Can’t pass up an opportunity. We might need the only job in town after the refinery closes.” She dropped her cigarette butt into the disposal.
“We got another year at least, probably more. And then there’s the demo. I’ll have plenty to do. I’ll be the very last one to go.”
She flipped the switch for the disposal. The blades whirred against the cotton filter, kicked smoke out of the sink. He smelled burnt tobacco and cotton. It smelled like when Vance had caught fire smoking, when Randall had known exactly what to do. The smoke detector’s alarm blared. Celia opened the window over the sink. The alarm silenced, but Randall’s ears kept ringing.
Randall had too much time on the weekends now. The refinery had cut Saturdays indefinitely. He thumbed his old baseball glove in the garage, wondered if it would still fit. He unzipped his hunting rifle, ran his fingers down the stock, zipped the bag back up. He kicked at a pile of two-by-fours, pulled his tool belt from a rusty nail. It smelled like sweat and leather and grease. Like work, real work. But behind that smell, Randall’s hands smelled like oranges. The commercial soap in his new office now overpowered the petroleum. Celia used to push him away, when he first started working the stacks. She’d push him into the shower and laugh, threaten jamming soap in his mouth to kill the fire on his breath. But she got used to the smell.
Everyone in Alma got used to the smell of the refinery, of petroleum. But not Randall. He was ever vigilant. Someone had to be. That was Vance’s problem. The petroleum had become a part of him, a smell as familiar as his own sweat. Vance had been leaning over the catwalk, an unlit cigarette dangling from his lips. Randall had only started down the catwalk when Vance spun the flint on his lighter. His hands flashed, fingertips stretching in orange. Frozen, Vance had stared at his flaming fingers, as if trying to decipher refinery-stack schematics. Randall clanged across the catwalk. No dirt to smother Vance’s body with, Randall tackled him, hugged him against his coveralls. He held him there, two men clutching at each other. A group below hollered, “Get a room.” Vance had fought against Randall’s grip until he finally slammed Vance’s head against the metal grates. The refinery was happy to have any excuse to fire him, and Vance was gone the next day, Randall promoted. Since that day, Randall carried no tool belt, never lingered on the stacks among the men for longer than it took to check their safety equipment.
Randall hung the tool belt back on the wall. Outside the dusty panes on the garage side door, Jackson was plucking crab apples. The boy squished the berries and pulled the pulp through his hair.
Randall lifted his gas can from behind the mower. Jackson had mowed earlier, even though there was nothing to cut, the lawn yellow and dead. Randall cracked the side door.
“What the hell are you doing, Jackson?”
The boy dropped a handful of crab apples. “Nothing.” They skittered across the patio concrete. “I don’t know.”
Jackson’s easy answer. A boy’s answer. Randall’s job required complete knowledge of where each thin white ladder connected to every catwalk at the refinery, how every catwalk led to stairs, to ground, to the front gate, where each man would eventually exit forever. He stepped onto the patio and felt a berry burst under his sandal.
“Why are you putting that shit in your hair?”
“An experiment, I guess.” Jackson dragged his foot over a pile of crab apples. “It’s stupid.”
“Don’t eat those.”
“I’m not dumb,” Jackson said, scraping his sneaker against the concrete, curling the berry flesh into tiny twisted fingers.
“I want to show you something.” Randall held the side door for Jackson, who passed under his arm. He could smell the bitter fruit in his boy’s hair.
Randall set the gas can in front of them, squatted, unscrewed the top. A stream of invisible waves floated out the spout, and he looked up at his boy through water, through molten glass, there waiting to learn something with crab apple experiments crushed into his long hair.
“If you’re mowing, you should know how to put out a gas fire.”
He tipped the can, let a stream puddle on the floor. He hovered over the puddle, but it didn’t burn his eyes or sting his nose. He was still immune to petroleum. His boy sniffled, wiped his nose, smearing a burgundy stain across his upper lip.
Randall dropped a match onto the puddle, and a rush of blue waved over it. Deep-orange tails spiked and split. Randall watched his boy, watched the fire. He had an urge to dump more gas, maybe toss in his old glove or his tool belt. He wanted Jackson to move close enough to feel the heat on his ankles. But his boy stayed at a safe distance.
The fire died, and only a black smudge remained on the garage floor.
“So you just let it burn out?” Jackson asked.
Randall kicked at the smudged floor until he’d made a hole of lighter gray around the black. A missing spot. Even what remained after the fire could be erased.
“No,” Randall said. “You use dirt.”
The next one happened that Sunday, and it smelled like a bonfire. Randall had felt it tingling in his fingers as soon as he woke up, knew it would happen soon. And then he smelled it from inside the house, where Celia smoked below an empty smoke detector. Her nostrils flared as she examined her cigarette. He ran to the bedroom, pulled on a pair of jeans, and buttoned up his supervisor shirt. He pinned his metal name tag to the breast pocket.
He strode down the hallway but stopped at Jackson’s closed door. He knocked, and when the boy didn’t answer, he cracked the door and watched his son through a slice. Inside, Jackson sat cross-legged on his bed with a red pincushion beside his thigh. He wore a shirt with pearl buttons and gray flowers. He was bothering one of his fingers with a pin and hid his hand once he saw Randall.
“We got another fire, Jackson. You coming?”
>
“I don’t know.” Jackson trained his eyes on his bare toes, his hand still behind his back.
“What’s to know? You’re coming, or you’re not.”
The fire trucks still hadn’t started their whine. If he hurried, he could beat them.
“I’m kind of busy with this.” The boy removed the hand from his back. Two needles stuck through the skin on each fingertip. They formed ten crosses on his left hand.
A grunt slipped from Randall’s chest. Jackson lowered his head. Maybe it was time the boy heard a grunt like this. He’d hear it from others. Needles and berries and painted fingernails. It was a combination that added up to nothing useful.
“I’d come,” Jackson said, “but I have to pull out my crosses.” He lifted his left hand to Randall. “It might hurt.”
“Let me see.” Randall gripped the boy’s wrist, squinted at the needles. They’d raised pale humps of crisscrossing skin, something like a star. Not a drop of blood though. “They’re just through your calluses. You can’t feel anything there.”
Randall pinched a needle head and pulled. Jackson hissed through his front teeth, and he told the boy to look away for the next one. When he pulled again, Jackson didn’t react, couldn’t even tell, and Randall smiled at his work. There was still no clamor from the fire station, but the smoke was heavier now. Somewhere a fire. Perhaps another baby surrounded by smoke or a mother or a father who didn’t know what to do. At the thumb, Randall pulled too hard, and the boy’s wrist jerked. A dot of red welled from his skin. Randall wiped it with his shirtsleeve, and his boy’s blood left a black stain.
“Sorry, Jackson,” he said.
“It’s okay.” Jackson smiled. “I didn’t even really feel it.”
They followed the wind-sliced puffs of smoke on foot. Still no sound from the station. Randall could have reported the fire, but the city should’ve known the difference between the burning leaves that sputtered and spewed gray from the black clouds of treated lumber.
Jackson chewed his fingertips as they walked down Amber. Randall tried to ignore his boy’s clicking teeth. He unpinned his name tag and polished it with the inside of his sleeve. They turned south, and the smoke grew, veiling the burn-off tower on the horizon. Randall wanted to run, but Jackson only plodded along. The whole town seemed slow. A fire burned close, but no sirens, no hydrant rush, no screaming women or babies. Just tree leaves shuddering and the tick of Jackson’s teeth against his skin.
When they turned down Mill, they found the fire. A small shed spit flames into the air outside Vance’s house. Randall wondered if that was why the fire station hadn’t sprung to life, if being a substitute fireman offered the privacy of handling your own fire.
Vance leaned against the faded siding of his house, studying the fire as it crept across his yellow grass. He carried no extinguisher, wore no heavy jacket or wader boots. Vance’s bare torso gleamed with sweat all the way to his bandaged arm. His hair was matted on one side, as if he’d been napping.
Randall straightened his name tag. “Need some help?”
“I have a shovel, but it’s in the shed,” he nodded to the door, “and that’s kind of fucked now.”
“Could spread to the house.”
“It’s under control.”
Vance stepped closer to the fire between them. Randall readied himself for the flames to spring up Vance’s arms, and then he’d wrestle this man, naked to the waist, into the dirt in front of his son. They’d both be filthy, soot covered, his name tag and button-up shirt unrecognizable. And then the fire would spread to Vance’s house, down the street, dancing across rooftops, northbound.
Jackson stepped away from his father, toward the fire, and Randall wanted to reach for his boy. He didn’t know if he could wrestle two bodies to the ground, if he was strong enough to clunk Jackson’s head against the earth until he submitted.
Jackson reached Vance and dug his hands into the dirt, worked an arcing trough around the fire. Randall felt hot in his shirt. He rolled up his sleeves. Down the street, no crowd approached to gawk, so he watched his son, watched as Vance slowly circled around his house and returned carrying a two-by-four, which he plunged into the dirt. He dug alongside Jackson, thrusting the board with his good hand and steadying it with his fist full of bandages. As Vance worked, the bandages slipped up his arm, past the tattoo of Saint Florian’s fancy skirt, exposing the golden breastplate. Randall sweated under his shirt. It was just the heat of the day. It was just the weight of his uniform. It was just the distance of his son, the length of Vance’s yard, the fire that could leap across the brittle grass.
After a half hour, Vance and Jackson had circled the shed with a dirt trough. The walls of the shed collapsed and huffed a swarm of sparks at Jackson, but he didn’t run, didn’t scream, kept working the dirt, until the shed smoldered into a pile of black ash. Vance dropped his two-by-four and reached his hand out to Jackson. They shook, both their hands thick with dirt and sweat.
“Shame about your shed,” Randall said, and wished he had something better to say, something about bandages and catwalks and how no one would be walking them soon.
“Nothing we could do.” Vance scratched his chin, left fingerprints of dirt. “Thanks for lending me a helper.”
“How’d it start?”
“This whole town’s burning up,” Vance pulled his dirty bandage back down over Saint Florian’s armor. “Not much anyone can do but sign insurance checks.”
Jackson returned to his father’s side, and when Randall looked down at his boy’s hands, the little white stars of raised skin were covered by a layer of dirt. They were still there, though. It would only take a little water, a little scrubbing, and his boy’s stars would return.
On their way home, the skies turned gray for the first time in weeks. They walked past yards spitting flames. The citizens of Alma were dumping gas and turpentine and lighter fluid onto piles of old brush, dragging discarded lumber through their brittle grass to the flames, racing to beat the rain. At one house, a family circled their fire, tossed broken toys onto their burn pile. Three children danced and laughed as a red tricycle shriveled and spewed black smoke.
The smells of sweat and petroleum twisted through the cool breeze. Salt and petroleum. It was a bad mix. Not much you could do with the two together. Bury it. Bury contamination and hope no one finds out. And they wouldn’t until demo, until the stacks and tanks were felled, until they tilled up the earth and found a useless, dangerous patch of dirt.
Randall wanted to run, get home, lock the doors, and phone the police to report all the illegal fires that could sprint across the dry earth at any moment, collide at his front door and shoot into the air as tall as the burn-off tower. But Jackson slowed him, stopping every few yards to pick up a stray stick or wilting dandelion and weave it into his hair. His hands twitched with the urge to slap all the twigs out of Jackson’s hair. The heat in his cheeks dripped under his work shirt, collected around the pin of his name tag. He imagined the metal around his name, his title, turning orange, the engraved letters melting away into an illegible script. How would others read that he was the one watching over their safety? Soon enough, no one would know, when the refinery was just a plot of dirt caged by cyclone fences.
Jackson dipped to slip another dandelion behind his ear. Randall felt the townspeople staring through their fires at his boy, calling him queer under the crackles of brush. He wondered if Vance would tell people how Jackson had saved his house, Randall his life, or if the only story told would be of the two men who’d violently embraced on the refinery catwalks.
Randall jogged away from his boy toward a pair of men drinking cans of Pabst in front of a burning pile of siding that was already spreading through the grass to their sandaled toes. The men looked familiar, might have worked at the refinery once. He bent down, plucked a dandelion from their yard, and slipped it underneath his name tag.
The men laughed. The heat under his shirt cooled. He felt the breeze blowing harder, f
rom the west, where the heavy gray clouds grew to drown the yellow grass of his neighborhood and sizzle the remains of Vance’s smoldering shed, of all the burning junk of Alma. With the clouds, the fires would end. His son would be safe in a town where everything could no longer burn.
Subdivision Accidents
The stonemasons’ left arms turned green in the morning, black by lunch, and then fell off like chewed cherry stems near quitting time. I watched through the window and hugged my cutting pot, nearly dropped my paintbrush, when all those blackened twists dropped from the scaffold, rolled onto the lush sod. The stonemasons cut out early, went home to their wives and sons. No one went to Jiffy Quick Care to see Doc Robby.
But I went. Doc Robby examined my arm, told me I had a fine shoulder. I had him examine my forearm, my bicep, squeeze each of the calluses on my fingers. Everything checked out A-okay. He said stethoscopes weren’t for arms, but he listened. Sounds like an arm, he told me. But I had to be sure. If something happened to me, where would my family be?
The next day, the stonemasons returned with one giant brown wing sprouting from each of their left shoulders where their arms had died. Each flapped his one gigantic wing and gripped a trowel in the other arm. They flew around the subdivisions, bouncing off the freshly shingled roofs, zigzagging from one cul-de-sac to the next. Even though they flew mostly in drunken circles, they didn’t need ladders for the facades anymore. They were faster, better, and the new wings smelled clean like turpentine.
“How do you like that,” I said to Martha, my wife, who was also the cleaning lady. But she’d already slipped upstairs to spritz blue stuff at the new windows. Betsy, her daughter, heard me. She was scrubbing the brand-new downstairs toilet. The contractors weren’t supposed to use the new toilets, but we did. Beat the Port-a-Johns, beat staring into that cave of chemicals filled with withered and castoff stonemason arms.
“I don’t like it much at all,” Betsy said, “but this is how we pay rent.”
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