Junior leaned over and kissed her hard, then said, “We’ll have to be quiet this time.”
“I can do quiet,” Amanda said. “Might be fun.”
As a young child my parents insisted that I attend Sunday School. Every Sunday our teacher would rattle on for an hour about heaven, hell, the bible, and all things good and scary that, in their entirety, encompass Catholicism as a whole. I pretty much hated it. But one thing has stuck with me all these years, a small little lesson that remains trapped in my brain. My teacher once helped our class better understand the concept of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit and how they are all one and the same. She did this by using the analogy of an egg. It did not matter what part of the egg you looked at, the shell, the white, or the yoke, an egg is an egg is an egg, she would say. Later in life I grew to believe that the mind, body, spirit, and soul are connected together in much the same way. But just as gravity holds the mind and the body firmly to earth, I believe that the spirit and soul are tethered to something greater than just our physical selves. I also believe they are forever connected to where we once were, and one day where we will be again. Could it be then, that the same force holds sway in our lives in ways we sometimes can not envision, often until much later in life, if ever at all?
You decide. But before you do, consider this…
Sandy and I had moved from the bedroom to the sofa. I pressed a button on a remote and the gas logs in the fireplace lit up automatically, the glow of the flames dancing across the room. Very suave, I know. I watched Sandy stare at the fire, then she looked at over toward my office, squeezed my hand and said, “Tell me about the turn-out helmet.”
I blinked in surprise, then let go of her hand and walked into my office. On the credenza behind my desk is a fireman’s helmet, still stained with soot, the eye shield cracked diagonally across its entire length. I picked up the helmet and carried it to the sofa and handed it to her. “Hell of a story from a long time ago,” I said.
“Would you tell me about it?”
I nodded, my vision suddenly blurry. “I will, but I’d like to ask you something first.”
Sandy held the helmet in her lap, tracing the outline of the crest above the visor, her fingers trembling as if charged with an electrical current. “Okay.”
“You called it a turn-out helmet. That’s a term firemen use.”
“My father was a fireman,” Sandy said, staring at the flames. Her movements were almost imperceptible, but she was rocking back and forth on the sofa, the helmet in her arms. “Tell me your story, Jonesy.”
I must have held that helmet a thousand times over the years. I would probably hold it a thousand more before I die. It was part of who I am, part of why I am alive today. “One of the worst days of my life,” I said.
Sandy nodded, still looking at the fire, but she didn’t speak, so I told her the story. I told her about the time when I was just a boy, only five years old, and what happened that fateful day on my birthday.
My mother had wanted carpet in the kitchen. It seemed like such an extravagant thing at the time, but my parents could afford it and everyone agreed just how neat it would be to have wall to wall carpeting in the kitchen of all places. At first, my father tried to talk my mom into maybe just an area rug or two, but her mind was set. The day the carpet was to be installed, the trucks pulled into the driveway and the men all got out wearing identical green cover-alls, as if their matching uniforms could somehow make up for their inadequacies of procedural forethought.
“I went inside to play, to smell my cake baking in the oven, and to look at my presents that were wrapped and sitting on the table in the family room. I was walking through the kitchen-god, it was hot in there, I remember that-it was the middle of August, no air conditioning, and the oven was on. I stood and watched as two of the workmen began to pour the glue on the floor to hold the carpet in place. No one ever thought about the pilot light on the stove.
“The glue was flammable. As it turns out, the stuff was so volatile it wasn’t even legal in all fifty states. What I remember most about the explosion is the way everything went white. So white that things almost looked transparent, like some of the films you can watch of atomic bomb blasts. That white. And quiet. No loud bang or anything like that. Just the white.
“And then I couldn’t move. I’m not sure how long I was out, though it couldn’t have been that long. I was in the garage. The explosion had blown me through the screen door and a pile of rubble had landed on top of me. I wasn’t hurt too bad, except for the cut on my face, but I couldn’t move because I was trapped under the debris. I tried to call out to someone, but the blast had knocked the wind out of me and I couldn’t catch my breath. I’ll tell you something, I was five years old, I could smell the smoke and feel the heat and I thought I was dying, Sandy. That’s not the kind of thing that’s easy to forget.
“I heard my mom screaming my name, but I couldn’t call back to her. I remember I kept thinking the sirens are coming, the sirens are coming. Not the firemen, just the sirens, and I remember thinking I wanted my mom to just please shut up so I could hear the sirens, and then I did hear them, that long, painful wail as they wound their way toward me, the smoke so thick I had to keep my eyes pinched shut.”
I paused for a moment to collect my thoughts. Sandy still held the helmet, but she’d turned it over where it now lay crown down in her lap, her hands caressing the age old sweat stains of the liner inside the hard shell. Tears were running down her cheeks and they dripped into the inside of the helmet with little plops that sounded like rain falling on top of snowpack at winter’s end. “And they pulled you out.” She said it softly, no louder than a whisper, her words thick and lonesome.
I was going to go on with my story, but Sandy spoke before I did, and what she said made me wonder about the workings of fate and the mystery of things we can never know, but only accept with astonishment and wonder. “It took two of them to get you out,” she said. “They always go in as a team. The debris was deep and heavy and they had to be careful when they were pulling it off so it didn’t collapse down and crush you. The other firemen were pouring water in to keep the flames back and when they finally got to you it was just before the rest of the garage collapsed, wasn’t it?”
I looked at her, my voice a shadow of itself. “Yes, but how-”
She laid her hand on my forearm to quiet me, then continued. “One of the firemen had to pick up a rafter that was directly over you. It landed just inches from your head. He picked it up, straining against its weight, the heat of the flames no longer being held back by the water. They were losing the fight, but you were almost free. And then, when he had the rafter up high enough, the other fireman picked you up and carried you out. It was only a dozen steps or so to safety. The one holding the rafter let it drop, but when he did it shifted and came down on top of him, crushing his legs. He couldn’t move and just seconds later there was a secondary explosion when the gas main went. But you and the other fireman made it out, isn’t that right?”
I couldn’t speak. When I tried to swallow I discovered my throat was as dry as scattered ash. When I opened my mouth to say something-I do not know what-my teeth clicked together like marbles being rattled around in a glass jar. I finally just nodded, letting her know she was right.
She took her hand from my arm and unsnapped the liner inside the helmet. Written in permanent marker on the inside of the hard shell was a name: S.C.A. Small. “S.C. stands for Station Chief,” she said. “The A. stands for Andrew. Station Chief Andy Small was my father, Jonesy. He died in that explosion while saving your life.”