Firetrap

by Earl Emerson

  I kept wondering how my parents could have thought me capable of such a crime.

  What I needed, I decided, was to approach family members one at a time and convince each of my innocence.

  Having borrowed the rusting Pontiac that was my coach’s second car, I drove to the ferry and took it to the island, thinking I would talk to Kendra first. Or India. Convince one of them. Then the other. With allies in tow, I would use the leverage to gain another believer, and then another. It was a harebrained domino theory of resurrection, thwarted by Renfrow’s better plan.

  It was still August, breezy on the island and now cool enough for a light jacket after dark. I waited until nightfall, parked the borrowed car down the road, then walked toward the estate. At night on the island, things grew quiet quickly.

  As I approached the house through a copse of evergreens I didn’t see anybody. On the far side of a grassy field, most of the lights were on in the house, and after a while standing in the field by myself, I saw movement in one of the downstairs rooms. It was India, walking past the window, her long blond hair brilliant in the light from a nearby lamp. She appeared to be talking to somebody in the room.

  For most of my life I’d been the only black person in any group, and for years it had worked to my benefit. Once I got into athletics and began to excel in a way that drew the attention of sportswriters and college scouts, I became even more of a trick pony, but that evening trying to defend myself against Echo’s accusation, I realized race had worked to my detriment. There had been assumptions made about me because of my color that never would have been made about a white boy. Standing in the breeze, I wondered if I hadn’t turned a corner; my skin color had worked for me in the first seventeen years of my life, but it might work against me the rest of it.

  “You thought we were kidding when we told you to stay away?”

  I turned around and saw Barry Renfrow coming out of the evergreens behind me, Renfrow, greasy, rotund, and smug. Beside him were two rough-hewn men in workmen’s clothes and work boots. From the way they were standing, I got the feeling these men had been boxers, perhaps retired professionals, and guessed they probably worked for the Overbys in some menial capacity or other.

  “Mr. Renfrow?”

  “They don’t want you here, son. You must know that. Just go away and everything will be all right.”

  “I came to talk.”

  “Sure you did, but the talking’s all done, son. Just trot your ass out of here.”

  “Has Echo said anything?”

  “I told you to turn around and walk out of here.”

  “I need to explain.”

  “You can explain to me, son.” The two workmen, one black and one white, had circled me so that they were blocking my path to the house.

  “I need to talk to my family,” I said and turned around. Before I took two steps, the black worker stepped into my path and hit me on the shoulder. I’d been hit on the football field and occasionally had taken a slam playing basketball, but I’d never really felt anything like this man’s fist, which came like a piston exploding out of an engine. “I don’t want to fight,” I said, holding my shoulder while trying to contain the pain.

  “There’s a difference between a fight and a beating,” the white worker said, stepping forward and swinging on me. I saw it coming and ducked backward, though he caught me across the brow anyway. Unbelievably, the partial blow knocked me off my feet and into the long grass.

  When I looked up, Renfrow was standing over me. “You can leave it at this, or you can take some more. Your choice, son.”

  “I need to go up to the house.”

  I started to get up, but before I was fully to my feet, the black man hit me hard with a downward motion, driving me to my hands and knees. It was pretty clear now that these men had fists like rocks and that their blows would come at me quicker than I could react.

  Renfrow was behind me, the two fighters in front. I rushed the white fighter like a lineman rushing off the line, hoping to grab him around the knees and knock him down, but before I got to him, he hit me on the back of my head and I somersaulted onto the ground, dizzy and seeing stars.

  When I looked up, the black guy was standing over me. “Don’t do it, kid.”

  Out the side of my eye, I saw Renfrow walking across the field toward the house as if I didn’t exist, tossing a last comment over his shoulder. “Just keep him away from the family.” The audacity and assurance in his assumption that I would not make it to the house pissed me off.

  I managed to get to my feet before either of them hit me again, dancing, holding my fists in the air as if I knew what I was doing. I’d never had boxing lessons, but I had a feel for it from horsing around in the gym at school. Or thought I did.

  The white fighter stood back while I advanced on the black man, who appeared to be in his early forties, his face battered and lumpy, one scarred ear noticeably smaller than the other. I was taller and probably stronger, but his shoulders were wide and he hung his fists at his sides in a way I’d never seen.

  I threw a quick punch, which inexplicably missed and then another, which missed, too. Then I threw a couple of combinations. Everything missed. Then, out of nowhere, his fist hit me above the eye and I staggered backward. It felt cold where the blood was running down my brow and into my eye socket. Then the white guy stepped in close and threw a flurry of blows at my head and stomach, six, eight of them, and I fell onto my back, the wind knocked out of me, my lip swelling. The teeth on one side of my face were numb, one eye beginning to swell shut.

  “Go away, kid,” said the black man.

  “That’s my family in there.” I stood up and was put back down with a blow to my left cheek. I started to get up again and was hit in my back before I could get off the ground. And again.

  Toward the end it was the black guy mostly. I didn’t realize it at the time, but he was trying to end it with a knockout punch, nailing me with everything he had. I wasn’t able to duck; in fact, couldn’t see it coming from the left side and only a little from the right, my eyes puffing up badly now. One of them would hit me, and I would go down. Then I would get back up, take a paltry swipe, and somebody would hit me again.

  The white fighter said, “Your family doesn’t want you. Maybe you should take a hint.”

  “Who was it?” I said, my words garbled. “Stone?”

  “The mother of the girl,” said the black guy. “Mrs. Overby. She knew you’d be back. But you better stop getting up, because we don’t want to kill you.”

  There was a smacking noise and the earth came rushing into my face. “Don’t get up, kid. We’ll drive you back to the mainland. Just don’t get up.”

  Somewhere along the line I lost consciousness for good, because I remembered dreaming and I remembered being driven in a car. The police found me near the rail yards in Seattle and drove me to coach’s house. We never did find the Pontiac I’d borrowed. Or the belongings that I had naively stashed in the backseat, thinking I would be going home. I stayed with coach my last year of high school and used the twelve hundred dollars of my savings to pay for the missing car. I couldn’t play ball until October, and even then my ribs hurt on every play. It was the year I switched from quarterback to middle linebacker and began taking my aggression out on other teams.

  I worked all the next summer in construction for a University of Washington alum who gave players summer work, and in the fall I took a scholarship and moved into a fraternity. Money was tight, but I made out okay. I studied and had girlfriends, though never white ones. I looked up my real mother and found a brother I never knew I had. I established a new life and began looking at white people differently.

  36. THE DEAD DESERVE BETTER THAN ME

  TREY>

  After dropping Estevez off at Station 28 and waiting like a gentleman until she was safely in her car, perhaps the only gentlemanly thing I’d done all day, I headed home. I had a lot of thoughts running through my mind, mostly personal, mostly not involving
our investigation or the deaths of fourteen innocent people. It exasperated me that my problems were taking precedence over this investigation, that I was bewitched by my personal history and a woman I’d known as a teenager. Jamie Estevez was a hardworking woman who meant well and had taken our assignment to heart in a way that my distracted mental apparatus hadn’t been able to. The city deserved better than me. The dead deserved a whole lot better.

  It bothered me that Estevez had figured out I was with a woman today, and it bothered me even more that she’d guessed who the woman was. Still, neither of those guesses was as aggravating as her assumption that I was planning to have or was already having an affair with India Carmichael. Had the notion come out of thin air, or had she seen something going on between India and me Saturday night? If so, how had I missed it? And how had she found out about my meeting with India? Was I that easy to read?

  Listening to the news on the drive home, I heard about the last memorial service for one of the Z Club fatalities, which like the other services had been attended by a small, uniformed contingent from the fire department. In the middle of the ceremony the brother of the deceased approached one of the firefighters and started cursing him out, then slapped a police lieutenant who tried to intervene. Unfortunately, the lieutenant was not a meek sort and struck back, which immediately incited a melee. According to eyewitness accounts, the police had been forced to use tear gas to disperse an angry crowd outside the church. Things were getting worse instead of better.

  When I passed Station 6, a few blocks from my home, two SPD cruisers were parked on the sidewalk in front of the station. A bottle of blue paint had been smashed on the wall beside the front door. Surrounding the totem pole in front of the Douglass-Truth branch library catty-corner from the fire station was a crowd of about forty young people. Though no overt criminal activity was going on, all crowds have a signature, and I didn’t like the earmarks of this one. You can tell when people are waiting for a bus by their passive immobility. And just as easily, you can tell when a crowd is spoiling for a fight by the way the players mill about. These kids were ready for combat.

  It was all so meaningless. I wasn’t sure if they wanted retribution or a sort of street justice only they could define the parameters of, but nothing was going to change the Z Club tragedy or bring any of those people back to life. And nothing the fire department could do in the future would make these people’s lives any better.

  My home was a few blocks east of Garfield High School in a quiet residential area that had been Jewish until World War II, African American in the fifties, sixties, and seventies. Now it was being gentrified by mostly white couples and gays buying up older homes and remodeling them, which was basically what I was doing, remodeling a home erected in 1913. My brother and mother—my real family—lived in my grandmother’s former house eight blocks due west, and my brother walked between the houses several times a day.

  My place was on an embankment with a small garage that faced the street, and a porch above that. As usual, Rumble’s truck was blocking the driveway in front of the garage. It was a game he played, pretending he didn’t think I would want the parking spot, offering to move the truck, all of this after I’d already carted my stuff into the house from half a block away.

  I found a parking spot, got my things, and walked through the basement. The paint was peeling on the wall beside the door, just a reminder of things I needed to do when the weather warmed up next year. I left my jacket and boots in the mudroom before going into the family room in the basement. Rumble and I had set up a big-screen television there, where we watched sports, movies, and my old Fawlty Towers tapes, and where he and my brother watched porno when I wasn’t around.

  Rumble and Johnny were standing in the center of the room arguing. “I is too going,” Johnny said.

  “The hell you are. Trey, try to talk some sense into this knucklehead.”

  “What’s going on?” I said. My brother wore his coat and earmuffs, which was common with him. I turned down the volume on the television.

  “He thinks he’s going to go out and get himself a new scooter,” Rumble said.

  “What?”

  “A scooter. You know. A Vespa. He’s planning to steal it.”

  “No, I ain’t,” Johnny said, speaking with so much animation I could barely understand him. “When you get into a riot condition, everything is fair game. I get me a scooter, it’s fair game. That’s what they said.”

  “Who said?” I asked.

  “Gerald and Randy.”

  “I told you I don’t want you hanging around those two, Johnny. They take advantage of you.”

  “No. They ain’t takin’ advantage. I had to beg practically to go with them.”

  “Where are they going?”

  “Going to riot. Leaving right now. All of us going to riot against the man. Time to show the man we ain’t takin’ this shit no more.”

  “Ain’t takin’ what shit?” I said.

  “Ain’t takin’ this shit. Ain’t takin’ it no more. No, sir. Them people in the Z Club wasn’t doin’ nothing.”

  “Johnny, you steal a scooter and I’ll turn you in myself. You don’t even have a driver’s license. You know how many times you’ve tried to pass the written.”

  “I ain’t takin’ no more bullshit from the man.”

  “You keep up this nonsense, I’ll call Mom right now.”

  “Don’t do that. I don’t want Mom mad at me.”

  “You go out and participate in a riot, you’ll have the whole city mad at you. Me, Mom—even Rumble here.”

  “Rumble and me’s buddies.”

  “That’s right,” Rumble said, sitting in the leather easy chair he’d claimed for himself years ago, picking up the television remote and turning the sound back on. “But we’re not going to be buddies if you go out and start throwing bricks with Gerald and Randy. You know both of ’em already spent time in the joint.”

  “But they said—”

  “I don’t give a shit what they said. They’re going to take that scooter for themselves, and you’re going to get arrested.”

  “I won’t get arrested. I’ll run.”

  “You’re going to riot better on a full stomach,” I said. “Let’s have dinner first, huh, Johnny?”

  He thought about it and finally said, “Okay, but I still want a scooter.”

  “You in, Rumble?”

  “What? The riot or the dinner?”

  “What do you think?”

  “What are you making?”

  “You want the menu, or are you in?”

  “I’m in.”

  “You two do the salad.”

  The three of us ate upstairs. During the meal I sneaked away and phoned my mother, explained what was going on and asked her to come get Johnny after dinner. She said she’d been meaning to take him shopping at Southcenter Mall for some new clothes and this would be a good excuse. Before we finished the meal, Mother showed up and after I slipped her three hundred dollars, dragged him whining out to her car. Even though he was over thirty, Mom and I ruled Johnny—who was developmentally disabled—with an iron hand, a good cop/bad cop routine we’d been honing for years. We switched roles, sometimes two or three times a week, but since our most recent trip to Las Vegas she’d been the bad cop.

  After they left, I changed clothes and walked through the TV room on the way out the door past Rumble, who was already planted in front of a football game. I gave him a withering look.

  “You’re leaving anyway, aren’t you? It’s not like football’s going to contaminate your TV.”

  “Back in a couple of hours.”

  “Okay. I might go home and see if the dog’s still alive.”

  “Good idea.”

  If there were riots in the Central Area when I left Seattle, I didn’t see any evidence of them, though police cruisers were everywhere.

  I headed toward Tacoma, the next port city south of Seattle and the second largest city in the state. During the ho
ur of freeway driving I listened to CDs of Ray Charles and Patti LaBelle when I wasn’t listening to the news broadcasts advising Seattle-ites to stay indoors.

  India’s sister lived in a shabby area in south Tacoma, two blocks off Pacific Avenue just shy of Parkland, an indication that Echo and her husband John Armstrong were clearly not doing as well as the rest of the family. According to India, Armstrong had worked at five or six businesses and had run several into the ground, then had gone through personal bankruptcy, and was now running a crew of illegal immigrant painters for his old man’s real estate operations. A lot of Overby operations skirted the precise letter of the law one way or the other.

  It was dark by the time I got to Tacoma, and it took a while to locate their place, a ramshackle house in need of paint, planted in a yard full of tall weeds.

  37. KISS EARTHLING!!! HEE, HEE, HEE!!!

  TREY>

  There were a lot of possible reactions that Echo might have had seeing me in her doorway, but she chose the one I would not have guessed in a million years: nonchalance.

  Stepping back onto a worn carpet, she waved me in as a dog barked in the rear of the house and children squealed behind a closed door. Echo gave me one of those half smiles you’re not quite sure actually is a smile and turned her head toward the dog. “Bertrand, shut up!”

  I wasn’t sure what to say. I should have planned something.

  “Let me go quiet the kids. I’ll be right back.”

  Echo stepped down a corridor to the rear of the house, opened a bedroom door, and spoke in hushed tones to children who’d been shaking the walls with their rampaging. The house was shabby, the carpets threadbare, but it was immaculate.

  Coming back into the living room, Echo invited me to sit on the sofa and took a chair nearby, crossing her legs in a way that reminded me of two pieces of licorice wrapped together. She wore baggy paisley pants that could have been mistaken for pajamas and a midriff-revealing sweater. She was thin and full-breasted like her sister, although she had lost any trace of the elegance she had been growing into when I last knew her at fifteen. Back then, Echo and India looked and moved like tall, coltish sisters, yet these days you’d be hard-pressed to believe they came from the same town, much less the same family.