It’s hard to be the one always waiting. I mean, there’s something to be said for the hero who charges off tobattle, but when you get right down to it there’s a whole story in who’s left behind.
I’m in what has to be the ugliest courtroom on the East Coast, sitting in chairs until it’s my turn, whensuddenly my beeper goes off. I look at the number, groan3, and try to figure out what to do. I’m a witnesslater, but the department needs me right now.
It takes a few talking heads but I get permission from the judge to remove myself from the premises4. I leavethrough the front door, and immediately I’m assailed5 with questions and cameras and lights. It is everything Ican do not to punch these vultures, who want to rip apart the bleached6 bones of my family.
When I couldn’t find Anna the morning of the hearing, I headed home. I looked in all her usual haunts—thekitchen, the bedroom, the hammock out back—but she wasn’t there. As a last resort I climbed the garagestairs to the apartment Jesse uses.
He wasn’t home either, although by now this is hardly a surprise. There was a time when Jesse disappointedme regularly; eventually, I told myself not to expect anything from him, and as a result, it has gotten easierfor me to take what comes. I knocked on the door and yelled for Anna, for Jesse, but no one answered.
Although there was a key to this apartment on my own set, I stopped short of letting myself inside. Turningon the stairs, I knocked over the red recycling bin7 I personally empty every Tuesday, since God forbid Jessecan remember to drag it out to the curb8 himself. A tenpin of beer bottles, lucent green, tumbled out. An emptyjug of laundry detergent9, an olive jar, a gallon container from orange juice.
I put everything back in, except for the orange juice container, which I’ve told Jesse isn’t recyclable andwhich he puts in the bin nonetheless every damn week.
The difference between these fires and the other ones was that now the stakes have been ratcheted up a notch10.
Instead of an abandoned warehouse11 or a shack12 at the side of the water, it is an elementary school. This beingsummer, no one was on the premises when the fire was started. But there’s no question in my mind it was dueto unnatural13 causes.
When I get there, the engines are just loading up after salvage14 and overhaul15. Paulie comes over to me rightaway. “How’s Kate?”
“She’s okay,” I tell him, and I nod toward the mess. “What’d you find?”
“He pretty much managed to gut16 the whole north side of the facility,” Paulie says. “You doing a walkthrough?”
“Yeah.”
The fire began in the teacher’s lounge; the char2 patterns point like an arrow to the origin. A collection ofsynthetic stuffing that hasn’t burned clean through is still visible, whoever set this was smart enough to lighthis fire in the middle of a pile of couch cushions and stacks of paper. I can still smell the accelerant; this timeit was as simple as gasoline. Bits of glass from the exploded Molotov cocktail17 litter the ashes.
I wander to the far side of the building, peer through a broken window. The guys must have vented18 the firehere. “You think we’ll catch this little fuck, Cap?” asks Caesar, coming into the room. Still in his turnoutgear, with a smudge across his left cheek, he looks down at the debris19 in the fire line. Then he bends down,and with his heavy glove, picks up a cigarette butt20. “Unbelievable. The secretary’s desk melted down to apuddle, but a goddamn tobacco stick survives.”
I take it out of his hands and turn it over in my palm. “That’s because it wasn’t here when the fire started.
Someone had a nice smoke while he watched this, and then he walked away.” I tip it onto the side, to wherethe yellow meets the filter, and read the brand.
Paulie sticks his head in the shattered window, looking for Caesar. “We’re heading back. Get on the truck.”
Then he turns to me. “Hey, just so you know, we didn’t break this one.”
“I wasn’t gonna make you pay for it, Paulie.”
“No, I mean, we vented the roof. This was already broken when we got here.” He and Caesar leave, and afew moments later I hear the heavy drag of the engine pulling away.
It could have been a stray baseball, or a Frisbee21. But even in the summertime, janitors22 monitor publicproperty. A broken window is too much of a hazard to be left alone; it would have been taped up or boarded.
Unless the same guy who started the fire knew where to bring in oxygen, so that the flames would racethrough the wind tunnel created by that vacuum.
I look down at the cigarette in my hand, and crush it.
You need 56 grams of these reserved crystals. Mix with distilled23 water. Heat to a boil and cool again, savingthe crystals, pure potassium chlorate. Grind these to the consistency24 of face powder, and heat gently to dry.
Melt five parts Vaseline with five parts wax. Dissolve in gasoline and pour this liquid onto 90 parts potassiumchlorate crystals in a plastic bowl. Knead. Allow the gasoline to evaporate.
Mold into a cube and dip in wax to make it waterproof25. This explosive requires a blasting cap of at least agrade A3.
When Jesse opens the door to his apartment, I am waiting on the couch. “What are you doing here?” he asks.
“What are you doing here?”
“I live here,” Jesse says. “Remember?”
“Do you? Or are you using this as a place to hide?”
He takes out a cigarette from a pack in his front pocket and lights up. Merits. “I don’t know what the fuckyou’re talking about. Why aren’t you in court?”
“How come there’s muriatic acid under your sink?” I ask. “Considering that we don’t have a pool?”
“Hello? Is this, like, the Inquisition?” He scowls26. “I used it when I was working with those tile layers lastsummer; you can clean up grout with it. To tell you the truth I didn’t even know I still had it.”
“Then you probably wouldn’t know, Jess, that when you put it into a bottle with a piece of aluminum27 foilwith a rag stuffed into the top, it blows up pretty damn well.”
He goes very still. “Are you accusing me of something? Because if you are, just say it, you bastard28.”
I get up from the couch. “Okay. I want to know if you scored the bottles before you made the cocktails29, sothat they’d break easier. I want to know if you realized how close that homeless guy was to dying when youset the warehouse on fire for kicks.” Reaching behind me, I lift the empty Clorox container from his recyclebin. “I want to know why the hell this is in your trash, when you don’t do your own laundry and God knowsyou don’t clean, yet there’s an elementary school six miles from here that’s been gutted30 with an explosivemade of bleach and brake fluid?” I have him by the shoulders now, and although Jesse could break away if hereally tried, he lets me shake him until his head snaps back. “Jesus Christ, Jesse!”
He stares at me, his face blank. “Are you about done?”
I let him go and he backs away, teeth bared. “Then tell me I’m wrong,” I challenge.
“I’ll tell you more than that,” he yells. “I mean, I totally understand that you’ve spent your life believing thateverything that’s wrong in the universe all traces back to me, but news flash, Dad, this time you’re totally offbase.”
Slowly, I take something out of my pocket and press it into Jesse’s hand. The Merit cigarette butt settles inthe hollow of his palm. “Then you shouldn’t have left your calling card.”
There is a point when a structure fire is raging out of control that you simply have to give it the distance toburn itself out. So you move back to safety, to a hill out of the wind, and you watch the building eat itselfalive.
Jesse’s hand comes up, trembling, and the cigarette rolls to the floor at our feet. He covers his face, presseshis thumbs to the corners of his eyes. “I couldn’t save her.” The words are ripped from his center. He huncheshis shoulders, sliding backward into the body of a boy. “Who…who did you tell?”
He is asking, I realize, whether the police will be coming after him. Whether I have spoken to Sara about this.
He is asking to be punished.
So I do what I know will destroy him: I pull Jesse into my arms as he sobs31. His back is broader than mine. Hestands a half-head taller than me. I don’t remember seeing him go from that five-year-old, who wasn’t agenetic match, to the man he is now, and I guess this is the problem. How does someone go from thinkingthat if he cannot rescue, he must destroy? And do you blame him, or do you blame the folks who should havetold him otherwise?
I will make sure that my son’s pyromania32 ends here and now, but I won’t tell the cops or the fire chief aboutthis. Maybe that’s nepotism33, maybe it’s stupidity. Maybe it’s because Jesse isn’t all that different from me,choosing fire as his medium, needing to know that he could command at least one uncontrollable thing.
Jesse’s breathing evens against me, like it used to when he was so small, when I used to carry him upstairsafter he’d fallen asleep in my lap. He used to hit me over and over with questions: What’s a two-inch hosefor, a one-inch? How come you wash the engines? Does the can man ever get to drive? I realize that I cannotremember exactly when he stopped asking. But I do remember feeling as if something had gone missing, asif the loss of a kid’s hero worship can ache like a phantom34 limb.
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1
bleach
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| vt.使漂白；vi.变白；n.漂白剂 | |
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char
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| v.烧焦；使...燃烧成焦炭 | |
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groan
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| vi./n.呻吟，抱怨；(发出)呻吟般的声音 | |
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premises
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| n.建筑物，房屋 | |
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assailed
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| v.攻击( assail的过去式和过去分词 )；困扰；质问；毅然应对 | |
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bleached
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| 漂白的，晒白的，颜色变浅的 | |
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bin
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| n.箱柜；vt.放入箱内；[计算机] DOS文件名:二进制目标文件 | |
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curb
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| n.场外证券市场，场外交易；vt.制止，抑制 | |
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detergent
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| n.洗涤剂；adj.有洗净力的 | |
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notch
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| n.(V字形)槽口，缺口，等级 | |
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warehouse
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| n.仓库；vt.存入仓库 | |
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shack
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| adj.简陋的小屋，窝棚 | |
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unnatural
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| adj.不自然的；反常的 | |
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salvage
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| v.救助，营救，援救；n.救助，营救 | |
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overhaul
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| v./n.大修，仔细检查 | |
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gut
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| n.[pl.]胆量；内脏；adj.本能的；vt.取出内脏 | |
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cocktail
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| n.鸡尾酒；餐前开胃小吃；混合物 | |
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vented
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| 表达，发泄（感情，尤指愤怒）( vent的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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debris
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| n.瓦砾堆，废墟，碎片 | |
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butt
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| n.笑柄；烟蒂；枪托；臀部；v.用头撞或顶 | |
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frisbee
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| n.飞盘(塑料玩具) | |
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janitors
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| n.看门人( janitor的名词复数 )；看管房屋的人；锅炉工 | |
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distilled
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| adj.由蒸馏得来的v.蒸馏( distil的过去式和过去分词 )；从…提取精华 | |
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consistency
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| n.一贯性，前后一致，稳定性；(液体的)浓度 | |
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waterproof
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| n.防水材料；adj.防水的；v.使...能防水 | |
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scowls
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| 不悦之色，怒容( scowl的名词复数 ) | |
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aluminum
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| n.(aluminium)铝 | |
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bastard
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| n.坏蛋，混蛋；私生子 | |
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cocktails
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| n.鸡尾酒( cocktail的名词复数 )；餐前开胃菜；混合物 | |
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gutted
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| adj.容易消化的v.毁坏（建筑物等）的内部( gut的过去式和过去分词 )；取出…的内脏 | |
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sobs
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| 啜泣（声），呜咽（声）( sob的名词复数 ) | |
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pyromania
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| n.纵火狂 | |
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nepotism
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| n.任人唯亲；裙带关系 | |
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phantom
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| n.幻影，虚位，幽灵；adj.错觉的，幻影的，幽灵的 | |
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