Fire in the Sky

by Candice Ransom

  Now the spectators broke their stunned silence. People screamed as the Hindenburg plummeted toward the ground. They pushed out of the shed. Stenny’s heart leaped into his throat. “Look!” he exclaimed to the reporter standing next to him.

  An object smashed through one of the windows lining the passenger deck. Two men climbed out. A third followed. All three hung precariously from the airship. “They’re going to jump!” Stenny cried.

  “They’ll never make it,” the man said. “The ship must be more than a hundred feet in the air.” One of the men, who was clinging to the jacket of another man, lost his grip. He dropped, arms flailing, onto the wet sand below. He landed spread-eagled and seemed to bounce as he hit the ground. The second man fell heavily onto the sand. The third man waited until the ship had sunk lower. Then he let go, curling his legs under him. As he hit the ground, he rolled. Stenny was astonished to see the man stand up and brush himself off. He limped away.

  The landing field was pandemonium. The ground crew scurried from beneath the sinking fireball. Passengers and airship crewmen hurled themselves from the flaming zeppelin. Spectators shrieked in terror. Suddenly a voice on a bullhorn bellowed, “NAVY MEN! STAND FAST!” Stenny recognized that voice from his brother’s description of Chief Boatswain Fred Tobin. The navy men and civilian line handlers reversed and began running back toward the burning airship. Reporters and spectators ran forward, too. Stenny was swept along with them. He didn’t have time to be afraid.

  The Hindenburg was listing sharply, like a deflating balloon. Wind fanned the fire toward the starboard side. Along the hull, the body of the ship, the letters that spelled out Hindenburg were gobbled one by one by hungry flames. The stern hit the ground beneath the mooring mast. The ship cracked in two with a second rocking explosion.

  The explosion deafened Stenny. He could hear nothing for a second. Then he heard a high-pitched scream. He looked up. The windows on the port side were nearly level with the ground. Two little boys stood framed in a flaming window. A hand reached out and shoved them. A man below caught the first boy, throwing him out of the fiery path. The second boy fell at the man’s feet. His hair was on fire. The man dragged the child away, beating at the flames. From the burning wreckage, a girl leaped. Her hair and back were on fire. Two men rushed forward and pulled her away from the ship.

  Stenny could not breathe. The smoke and horrible sights paralyzed his chest. His eyes stung from the intense heat. He did not belong here. He wanted to go home. Unable to see for all the smoke, Stenny tripped over a line half-buried in the wet sand. As he staggered to one knee, he looked up to see a man and a woman walking arm in arm down the main gangway. They looked dazed. The man began to cry. Several men from the landing crew rushed up the ramp to assist them.

  Many of the people who had survived the crash now risked their own lives to help others. A man in a charred business suit sobbed brokenly, “I couldn’t save him! I couldn’t save him!” Stenny didn’t know who he referred to, but the man’s anguish pierced his heart.

  Cars screeched onto the landing field. Passengers and crew were being loaded into the vehicles, eyes glazed with shock, clothes burned to tatters. Many held their scorched hands in front of them. The victims reminded Stenny of broken dolls. The man in the business suit climbed into a car, still sobbing.

  Stenny hesitated. Ahead he could see the cavelike hangar, a safe haven. If he went inside, he could get away from all the horror. Then he turned back toward the Hindenburg. Amazingly, people still crawled from the burning wreckage. Stenny wondered how anyone could survive such a fire. He could feel terror in the air. Everyone was afraid—they were no different from Stenny. Yet they went back into the flames again and again. Or they walked through fire to reach safety. He could not leave. He had to help those people.

  Swallowing his own fears, Stenny ran back into the smoke.

  Thirty-four

  Seconds

  Stenny bumped into a crumpled form. It was a man on his hands and knees. He was alive, frantically trying to burrow into the wet sand.

  “You’re okay!” Stenny told him. He steered the man toward the hangar.

  The Hindenburg was reduced to girders and struts, outlined by flames. Steel cables and other trailing debris sizzled like white-hot snakes. Stenny tried to stay well away from the danger.

  Just then a teenaged boy staggered blindly into Stenny’s path. His hair and clothing were drenched. He was blank faced with confusion.

  “This way,” Stenny said, clutching the boy’s sleeve.

  The boy looked as if he had been dunked in the Atlantic. His clothing hissed with steam. Stenny thought of soggy mittens left to dry on radiator vents.

  As Stenny turned toward the hangar, someone collided with him. The man gripped him by the shoulders to peer into his face. His uniform was soaked in patches and streaked with soot. His face was tense. “Stenny!” Michael exclaimed in astonishment. “What on earth are you doing here?”

  “I—” Nothing but a croak emerged from Stenny’s heat-seared throat.

  His brother yanked him away from the fire. “Get out of here, Stenny, before you get hurt.”

  “Lots of people are already hurt,” Stenny managed to say. “I’m helping with the rescue.”

  Just then, Michael noticed the teenaged boy swaying on unsteady legs. Stenny tightened his grasp on the boy’s sleeve.

  “It’s okay,” Stenny told his brother. “We’re going to get help.”

  Michael’s face relaxed a little. “You’ll find medics in the hangar. Wait for me there, Sten.” With a final clap on his brother’s arm, Michael disappeared into the swirling smoke.

  Stenny led the boy across the sand to the hangar. The boy said something. Stenny didn’t understand German, but figured the boy might have thanked him. “You’re welcome,” he replied.

  At the doorway of the hangar, Stenny turned to gawk at the flaming, twisted carcass that was once the mightiest airship to rule the skies. The great silvery form looked like a dying dragon. He had no idea how much time had passed since the first fireball. It seemed like hours. The landing field was a nightmare. The world outside the perimeter fence no longer existed. Then he heard the wail of sirens. Ambulances and fire equipment were rushing to the scene. The outside world was coming to them after all.

  Inside the hangar Stenny met another nightmare. Passengers and crew members from the crashed airship were everywhere, coughing, sobbing, murmuring in German and English. Burn victims sprawled on tables and on the floor, moaning and screaming in their pain. Sailors bustled around with stretchers, carrying victims to the base infirmary.

  Piled on tables and on the floor were heaps of fruit baskets, flowers, and cheerfully wrapped packages—gifts for the returning passengers. Stenny had forgotten that this was the Hindenburg’s first flight of the season. Passengers had been eagerly expecting to end their long journey. All their hopes had exploded over the mooring circle.

  Gently floating over the confusion was the American airship Los Angeles. Stenny looked up at the dirigible, which was much smaller than the Hindenburg, and thought its helium-filled skin seemed to sag sadly.

  A reporter shouted into a telephone. “We got it all on film!” he proclaimed. “Thirty-four seconds. That’s the time from the second explosion till the ship crashed. I timed it.”

  The boy Stenny had escorted ran over to an officer in a scorched uniform. The man next to the officer wore only the brim of his hat. Tufts of charred hair stuck up from where the rest of his hat had been. The three began speaking rapidly in German.

  The man in uniform came over to Stenny. In accented English, he explained that the boy he had helped was Werner Franz, a cabin boy. A water tank had burst and emptied on him as he leaped through a flaming hatchway. The water saved his life. He was fourteen years old. Werner managed a lopsided grin. Stenny knew the grin said “Thanks.”

  Stenny went with Werner to the emergency dispensary being hastily set up on the field. As a doctor examined the Germa
n boy, Stenny saw the young man who had hung from the airship, fallen, and walked away. It turned out the man was an acrobat. He had broken his heel during his fall.

  Werner Franz was pronounced fine. But many of the other surviving passengers and crew members were not so lucky. Ambulances and private cars carted the wounded off to hospitals in nearby Lakewood and Asbury Park.

  After Werner left with other crew members, Stenny went back to the hangar to look for Michael. He couldn’t find him anywhere. Worrying that his brother might be injured, Stenny walked over to the base infirmary. Vehicles transporting the injured jounced past him. Thick, acrid-smelling smoke blanketed the area. Many newsreel cameras still rolled. The airship still burned furiously in the center of the field. The place looked worse than anything he had seen in a superhero movie serial.

  No one stopped him at the door of the infirmary. The doctors and nurses were too busy treating the injured. The infirmary reeked of alcohol, disinfectant, and something else like burned meat. Stenny’s stomach roiled. More than anything, he wanted to go home. But he couldn’t leave until he had made sure his brother was not among the wounded.

  A nurse tended to a man in blue coveralls that were burned to rags. “What are you doing here, son?” she demanded.

  “I’m looking for my brother.”

  “Was he a passenger?” she asked. “He might be in the other room.”

  In the next room Stenny found a man and a woman, each sitting on opposite tables. The woman’s coat was full of holes, and she wore only one shoe. She dabbed at her burned hands with a piece of gauze she kept dipping into a bottle of medicine. Across from her, the man stared with glazed blue eyes. His clothes were merely charred wisps. He had no hair left on his head. The woman passed the bottle over to him. The man didn’t flinch as he quietly daubed his own burns. He didn’t appear to be as bad off as some of the others. Something about the set of the man’s shoulders and his calm, farsighted gaze made Stenny stare at him. Neither of the patients noticed him.

  A hand clamped on Stenny’s shoulder. He jumped, startled. Then he nearly cried when he saw it was his brother.

  “You shouldn’t be here,” Michael told him, pulling him from the room.

  As they left, Stenny saw the man from the back. Then he quickly turned away. The man’s injuries were far worse than Stenny had realized. The sight of shredded flesh would stay with him forever.

  “Will that man die?” he asked Michael.

  Michael hesitated.

  “Do you know who he is?” Stenny demanded. “He’s somebody important, isn’t he?”

  Michael’s voice brimmed with respect and sadness. “I think it’s Captain Lehmann.”

  Stenny gasped. Not Ernst Lehmann, the great zeppelin pilot? Stenny couldn’t believe he’d actually been in the same room with him. The commander had never complained of his wounds, which must have been agonizing. A true hero.

  “I hope he’ll be all right,” Stenny said. His brother did not reply.

  Outside, Michael marched Stenny to the main gate. “I called Mom and Dad and let them know where you were. They wanted to drive over, but I told them you’d ride your bike home. It’d be faster.”

  Stenny saw why. Clamoring around the fence were hundreds of people. The police had cordoned off the area surrounding the field, but photographers, reporters, and curiosity seekers jostled each other at the fence, trying to glimpse the Hindenburg.

  Michael elbowed his way through the throng, pushing Stenny in front of him. “Where’s your bike?” he asked.

  Stenny had left it at the gate. The road was jammed with cars, but he found his bike, still propped against a tree. “Go straight home,” Michael ordered. “Mom and Dad are already frantic.”

  Stenny nodded. He had forgotten about his parents.

  They would have heard about the crash and realized Stenny was missing. He cast one final glance over his shoulder. Beyond the teeming mob lay the smoldering hulk of the Hindenburg. If the reporter was right, the great airship had been completely destroyed in just thirty-four seconds.

  Ordinary

  Hero

  As Stenny pedaled down the road, he felt like a fish swimming upstream. Everyone in the world, it seemed, was heading toward the air station. He turned wearily down Cedar Street. By now it was dark. Stenny was tired, but the long evening wasn’t over. He still had to face his parents.

  His mother met him at the door. Her face was anxious as she folded Stenny in a smothering hug. “Are you okay?”

  “I’m fine, Ma.”

  “We’ve been so worried.” She gave him a loving shake. “Don’t ever do that again! Your father is out looking for you.”

  Just then the family car pulled into the driveway. His father climbed out. “It’s madness over there,” he declared. “You okay, Sten?”

  “Yes, Pa. Didn’t Michael tell you I’d ride my bike home?”

  “Yes, he did. But I thought I’d see you on the road.” His father sounded tired. “Missed you anyway.”

  Stenny felt bad he had put his parents through so much. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to worry you.”

  His father sighed. “You had no idea there would be a disaster. No one did. Just so you’re okay.”

  “I am. I’m just a little worn out.”

  “I’ll make you some Ovaltine.” Mrs. Green went into the kitchen. Left alone with his father, Stenny found himself staring at the floor.

  “It was something, wasn’t it?” his father said, as if he knew what Stenny had seen.

  “It was terrible. The fire...all those people...” He couldn’t finish. He remembered Captain Lehmann sitting on the infirmary table, calmly dabbing medicine on his burns. Stenny looked around at the familiar objects in the room—the radio and the blue carpet, his mother’s mending abandoned in her chair. He realized how glad he was to be home.

  All his life, he had craved grand adventure. Like Jack Armstrong, Stenny longed to guide safaris and pilot his own zeppelin around the world. But he had only imagined the exciting side of adventure. Tonight he had seen the other side of adventure. People seriously injured, screaming in pain, stunned with shock. Some were dead. In movie serials and on radio programs, only the bad guys wound up dead.

  Maybe heroes weren’t dashing, fearless men like Jack Armstrong. Maybe they were ordinary people who pushed aside their own fears to help others. Sometimes they succeeded; sometimes they failed.

  Stenny’s mother returned with a glass of malted chocolate milk. Stenny drank gratefully. He was powerfully thirsty after breathing in so much smoke.

  “I think you need to go to bed,” said Mr. Green. “We’ll talk more about this tomorrow.”

  After washing up, Stenny went into his room. His model of the Hindenburg sat on his desk, waiting for him to add the finishing touches. What was the point of completing it? he wondered as he pulled off his smoke-grimed clothes. The great zeppelin was gone.

  Stenny climbed into bed and drew the covers up to his chin. His mother and father came in to say good night.

  “Don’t think about what happened tonight,” his mother said, kissing his cheek. “Have sweet dreams.” She picked up Stenny’s dirty clothes on her way out.

  “Good night, Sten,” Mr. Green said.

  “Dad,” Stenny asked. “Am I going to be grounded?”

  “Your mother and I have decided not to ground you this time,” his father replied. “We don’t think you’ll go off without telling us again.”

  “Thanks, Dad. ‘Night.”

  When his father left, Stenny rolled over. He had never been so tired. Behind his closed eyelids, he saw a bright flash. It was the Hindenburg, blowing up again. Stenny put the image out of his mind and finally drifted off to sleep.

  The next morning, Stenny awoke to the loud shrieks of blue jays nesting in the pine tree next to his window. Stenny got up. Was he late for school? He put on his school clothes and went out to the kitchen. The radio blared news of last night’s crash. He was surprised to see Michael
sipping a cup of coffee. “What are you doing here?” he asked.

  “Just came by to make sure you were okay.” Dark circles ringed his brother’s eyes.

  “I’m fine,” Stenny said. “Did you sleep at all?”

  “Not much.” Michael drained his cup. “I need to head back to the base. It’s crazy over there.” He paused. “I’m proud of you, Sten, for what you did last night.” He thumped Stenny’s shoulder, the way seamen greeted each other.

  “It wasn’t anything,” Stenny mumbled. But his brother’s touch made him feel ten feet tall.

  When Michael left, Mrs. Green asked, “Do you feel like going to school today?”

  “Yes, Ma.”

  As he ate his cereal, he listened to the broadcast. No one seemed to know what had caused the explosion. There were reports of St. Elmo’s Fire, a glowing light caused by electricity in a thunderstorm. Stenny remembered the lightning-charged atmosphere. The casualty list was still growing. Some of the passengers and crewmen had died during the night. Stenny gathered his books and left the house.

  Buzzie Martinelli was waiting on the corner. “Want to ride to school together?” he asked. Stenny was surprised. Buzzie usually dashed down the street like a stallion. The marble champ had never had time for Stenny before.

  “I heard the crash,” Buzzie remarked as they rode side by side. “It went KA-BOOM! My dad said it was something.” Buzzie paused. “He said you were there.”

  Stenny nodded. He realized that many civilian line handlers, people he knew, had also witnessed the crash.

  “How’s your dad?” Stenny asked.

  “He’s okay. He’s really tired, though.” Buzzie pedaled in silence for a moment, then he said, “You didn’t get your tour.”