2

The nearest fire station was on Fruitvale, only a few blocks away, and the sirens started up fast and then seemed to linger in the near distance, the sound hanging in the air. It was like all those other times when a siren has passed on the edge of my attention, nothing to do with my life or the life of anyone I love.

It was only as the siren grew closer that the thrill of it, and the fear, began to take hold of me again. The siren reached a crescendo and the sound of the engine was right outside.

Their footsteps shook the floor. The firefighters filled up the entire front entrance, marching through the front door into the office. Barbara was making one of her “don’t look at me” expressions, one hand held out. Giants in black waterproofs and helmets clumped up to the counter where the UPS packages, Jiffy bags of touch-up paint, were piled.

One of them carried an ax. A bright steel ax with a red stripe up the side of the blade, and a sharp hook at the other end of the ax head. All I could think was—they’re going to tear holes in my dad’s factory. And I had better be right—there better be a fire.

“It’s in the sawdust hopper,” I said. “On the roof.”

Then I shut myself up. Here I was, talking like I knew what I was saying, and the firemen looked at me, their visors tilted. Their faces had open, tense expressions. They were ready for a fire, but it was all right if the fight was easy. I half expected the head firefighter, an especially tall man, my size, to tell me I was too young to know very much—they wanted to talk to someone in charge.

But the tall fireman asked where the quickest access was, from the side street, or from somewhere inside the property. I told him I thought the side street was probably a good idea. And they left. They didn’t bump into each other, scrambling. They were there, and then they were gone.

Barbara gave me a round-eyed expression. Her finger was pointed at the phone, ready to start punching numbers on the intercom, the telephone, but she didn’t know what to do.

I tore outside, and ran faster than I had ever run before, faster than the time I ran for eighty yards and a concussion in the game against Skyline.

My dad was already on his way, and he can run. He pointed up to the roof with one hand, and he was running so hard his arm waved up and down a little.

By now smoke was rolling out of the top of the hopper, a funnel-shaped structure on top of the roof. Firefighters were taking their time getting up the ladder, making sure the ladder was steady, making sure their feet were in the rungs.

“Clear the finishing room,” my dad said.

He said this without looking at me, but it was me he was talking to.

The finishing room was always a dream world, blue and pink chairs hanging from hooks in the ceiling. The floor was uneven with paint of all colors, as though a volcano of party colors had erupted once years ago.

The workers were spraying banana yellow just then, the stuff coming out thick. A bentwood chair hung there in the air and a worker aimed a nozzle at it and the blond, bare wood was suddenly clotted with paint, the stuff not cut thin enough to go through the gun, the metal nozzle a space weapon that didn’t kill, it just made things change color.

If the factory roof began to burn, this place would explode. Barrels of black paint labeled FLAMMABLE lined a wall. I called out that everyone should go outside, there was a fire. Maybe I expected panic. People finished what they were doing. An air compressor stuttered into silence. Someone untied a smock and let it fall, but you would have thought I had just announced an extra coffee break, or closing time forty-five minutes early.

I wanted to jump up and down and tell them the paint they were spattered with was loaded with ketones and other chemicals that would burn white hot, but they all wandered past me, cheerful, saying, “How’s it going, Cray?” and things like that.

At times like this, I felt my inexperience. This was the real world. Workers were used to this. A disaster could erupt, and they all accepted it. I was too new to stay calm, to saunter out through the sliding wooden door, peeling off a glove, looking around at the fire hoses kicking as the water pressure stiffened them, like all of this was an everyday affair.

For a few minutes the hopper was the center of activity, fire helmets bending down over it, my dad on the roof in his short-sleeved blue shirt. The smoke turned into steam, a hose sprang a leak, fine spray fuming out from the socket where it joined the hydrant.

The ax flashed. A gentle splintering sound reached the street.

Water pattered down into the mill, and workers put down buckets and plastic tubs to catch the water and then gave up, putting tarps over the saws. The drops of water blistered the sawdust that covered everything like a coating of eraser crumbs. The workers were on overtime now, the few who were left, and I was going to be late for my meeting with Coach Jack unless I hurried.

There was no smoke, only the scent of charcoal and the perfume of wet sawdust.

My dad trotted out through the mill, gave a quick order to one of the workers, and then he was gone. He was the only one in a rush now. I ran to catch up with him and reached him just outside the huge, metal-ribbed boxcar. It’s easy to forget how big a railroad car is. In movies people jump up onto boxcars or roll out of them. I could not approach this warehouse on steel wheels without thinking how dangerous it would be to jump into one if it was traveling hard.

“I have to go,” I said.

My dad scrambled up into the car, and looked down at me. The interior of the car was stacked with lumber, and there was a forklift inside the boxcar. It was one of my favorite visions, the way one forklift would lift another into the interior of the rail car, one yellow machine cradling the other like a tractor that had given birth.

“Tell Mom the shipment got here from Alabama and I have to unload.” He usually called her Fran here at the factory, even when he was talking to me, keeping our home life separate.

I really had to talk to him. I had to say something, it didn’t matter what, and hear his answer.

When people were cut at the factory, they didn’t howl or get angry. They made their way out into the office and asked Barbara for the first-aid kit. If the cut didn’t stop bleeding, Jesse drove them to the clinic. And even though the sign announced the number of days since the last accident, the accidents referred to were major accidents—a broken bone, the loss of something that wouldn’t grow back, like what had happened to Leo despite all precautions, or like what had happened when my dad had just bought the place from Mr. Ziff, when Ziff Furniture was famous for its children’s furniture and nothing else.

I thought about it sometimes: I hoped I would never have to do what my dad did that time, running back into the factory for something that had just been cut off. I couldn’t help it: the fire had scared me. I needed a little reassurance.

“Everything’s going to be all right?” I asked.

“Sure.” It was one of my dad’s characteristic sures.

Then he turned back and gave me a smile, looking down, and I could see the sudden shadows under his eyes. And I could see how guilty he suddenly felt, giving me a such curt response. “You did fine, Cray. Really good. Another couple of minutes and we would’ve had a five-alarm disaster on our hands.”

That was what I had needed to hear. And I also needed to see him turn to the stack, the pale lumber stenciled GEORGIA PACIFIC in fuzzy blue lettering. He climbed into the seat and gunned the forklift, everything back to normal, the boxcar filling with bad air.