The Smoke Room

by Earl Emerson

  While the rooms at the south end of the house continue to smolder, two investigators from Seattle’s Fire Investigation Unit show up and, after twenty minutes of poking around inside the structure, determine that the origin of the fire is a discarded cigarette near the front door. It seems that the man in the wheelchair had a history of careless smoking, and that we had in fact been here a year earlier for a small fire. Throughout the first floor of the house, cigarette burns stain various pieces of furniture and the floor. Neighbors tell us the man’s wife routinely complained that he was going to burn their home down with his carelessness.

  One of the fire investigators, a tall, ungainly man named Holmes, comes over to me and says, “You mind showing us where you found them? We’re going to have to go over this with SPD.”

  “Sure.”

  Wordlessly, I walk them through the house under the hard glare of the string lights Ladder 11 has set up. None of us are masked up, although we should be since the ruins are smoldering. The walls are coated in soot, but the actual fire damage is limited to a couple of downstairs rooms to the right of the front doorway.

  I show them where I found the man in the wheelchair, and then we climb the narrow staircase to the second floor. The woman smelled smoke or heard the crackling of the fire or the pinging of the smoke detectors, woke up, and did the worst thing possible—leaped out of bed and stood tall. That first inhalation cauterized her lungs with superheated air that was probably close to a thousand degrees. Had she rolled out of bed and crawled along the floor, she would have had a chance, although a slim one.

  Nobody says much until we are outside and past the racket of the gasoline-powered ventilation fan in the doorway. Holmes gives me a lugubrious look. “These your first fire victims?”

  I nod.

  “Tough, huh?”

  I shrug.

  “Everybody goes through it. You’ll be okay. It’ll take some time, is all. You’ll bounce back.”

  Resuming my position on the side step of Engine 29, I watch the firefighters in the rehab area. You don’t go wrong on an alarm and lose a fire victim, with another one in critical condition, and then stand around and yuk it up. Nobody is laughing except Tronstad; but then, Tronstad is the kind of guy who would tell dirty jokes at his own mother’s funeral—and did.

  I can’t help noticing Holmes, the fire investigator, talking to Lieutenant Sears across the yard. After a while, Chief Abbott joins their enclave and all three steal looks at me. Five minutes later Lieutenant Sears approaches and kneels in front of me, touching my knees with both his hands.

  Sears worships the fire department and everything it stands for, knows the operating guidelines like the inside of his pockets, and is one of the most personable people I’ve run across. In his early forties, he has been in the department seven years, has recently taken the captain’s exam, and will soon be leaving Station 29 when he’s promoted.

  Sears is a short, stocky man, maybe an inch shorter than my five foot eight. He has sandy hair that, had it not been cropped short, would have been a mess of curls. He has to shave twice a day and has thick, muscular arms that are so hairy Tronstad once looked at them and said, “Nice sweater.” He loves counseling people and was a teacher before he got sidetracked into the department. He has an undemanding sense of humor, and despite all the grousing Johnson and Tronstad direct at his leadership abilities, I like him.

  From under the brim of his red lieutenant’s helmet his brown eyes bore into mine. His eyes are sunken, his brow heavy and even darker than normal, his heavy mustache twittering in tune to his breathing. In the dark he presents a rather simian appearance. Sears is insanely proud of the job he does, which is why my conduct must disgust him. He squeezes my knees through the thick turnout clothing.

  “Listen,” he says. “Bad things happen. You learn to roll with the punches.”

  “Not like this.”

  “This is something . . . well, it’s definitely not good, but hey, there’ll be flowers in the morning, and the sun will rise, and you’ll get past this. It might be ugly for a while, but you’ll move past it. I’ve had things like this happen . . . well, not like this, but . . .”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “Frankly, I haven’t decided. I’ll have to talk to Abbott about it. Listen, Gum. You need advice, come to me. Anytime. Day or night.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And don’t call me sir. At least not tonight. Tonight I’m just Sears.”

  “You really think I’ll get past this, Sears?”

  He stares at me for a moment, then glances at the still-smoking structure. When he turns back I see the beginnings of tears in his eyes. He is as thoroughly empathetic as Tronstad is thick-skinned, and even if he won’t admit it, he knows what they are going to do to me.

  “I wish I could replay this whole night,” I say.

  “You and me both.”

  “Can you tell me what’s going to happen?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “What they’re going to do to me.”

  “They’re probably not going to give you a medal, if that’s what you’re getting at.”

  “I wasn’t expecting a medal. I was . . .”

  “What?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Sears leaves.

  Tronstad is watching me, cookies from the fire buff’s table in one hand, a paper cup of Gatorade in the other. He’s a self-confessed sugar junky who claims a bowl of ice cream after four in the afternoon revs him up so much, he can’t sleep. God knows why he is eating cookies at this time of night.

  Two men in plainclothes march over to him and lift up their sweatshirts to reveal badges on their belts. I assume they are from the Seattle Police Department. They speak to Tronstad for a few moments.

  A minute later the SPD men come over to me. “Mr. Gum,” says the black police officer.

  “Yes, sir.” He lets out just the hint of a smile at the fact that I’ve called him sir.

  “SPD,” says the white officer. “We understand your actions were integral to what happened here.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Can you lay it out for us?” asks the white officer.

  “From the time the bell hit?”

  He smiles. “Maybe from the time you went through the front door.”

  “The front door of the house over there?”

  “That’s the one.” He looks at his partner and rolls his eyes.

  As we speak I decide to peel my turnout pants down so some of the sweat can evaporate. When I shrug my shoulders out of my suspenders and pull my turnout pants partially down, I realize the white material around the zipper of my uniform trousers is coated with what e. e. cummings would have called fuck dust. I pull the turnouts back up.

  “What were you saying?” I ask.

  “Were either of them conscious when you got to them?”

  “No, sir.”

  “The man was downstairs? The woman was up?”

  “That’s right.”

  Dancing around my culpability, they ask more questions about the house, the fire, the victims. When they start to leave, I stutter, “Uh . . . what’s . . . what’s going to happen now?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, uh, you know . . .”

  “There’ll be a further investigation. We’ll get the ME’s report on the woman. Contact the relatives. It’s pretty much routine.”

  “I mean, what’s going to happen to me?”

  “You?” I am weeping in front of these two heavyset cops. I’ve screwed up beyond imagination, and I am blubbering. “Well, son. Maybe you can see the department chaplain. Or your own minister. You can get some counseling is what you can do.”

  “Because of jail?”

  “Do me a favor.”

  “Sir?”

  “Before anything else happens, get yourself some counseling.” He catches up with his partner, who’s met with the two fire department investigators. Moments later all four glance
over at me.

  When Chief Abbott approaches, I grow still. I don’t like Abbott, and I’m pretty sure he doesn’t like me. From the beginning of my tenure in the 7th, he’s treated us as though he had a vendetta against Station 29—in particular, the members on our shift: Robert Johnson, Ted Tronstad, and me. Johnson and Tronstad dislike him even more than I do, although around the station we feign a stilted camaraderie.

  Abbott is a short, rotund man who wears heavy glasses, teaches management classes at one of the local community colleges, and doesn’t fit anybody’s idea of what a firefighter should look like—not even his own, for he often makes self-deprecating jokes about it.

  Around the station Abbott is a man with a million outspoken opinions about where the department should be headed, but downtown he sits on his ideas and is known as the biggest ass-kisser around. His round head is almost entirely bald, and when he isn’t at the station, Tronstad and Johnson call him Chief Spalding, after the ball company, since all of his visible body parts are round enough to warrant it.

  “So, young man,” Abbott says, stumping through the darkened yard toward me. “I understand you’re having problems.”

  The obvious concern in his voice brings the tears back. If a man as obtuse as Abbott is concerned, my predicament is on the underside of bad.

  “Tell me what’s bothering you. One of my boys gets into trouble, my first instinct is to help. I mean that, son. Start from the beginning. By the way, the man’s dead, too.” He sniggers and the slovenly snort brings me back to my senses. Abbott’s instinct is never to help.

  “It’s the alarm,” I tell him.

  “It sure got him into a lather, Chief. A real lather,” says Ted Tronstad, interrupting with the saucy rudeness he is known for. As usual, he speaks quickly and spits his words like a machine gun spits lead. His mind works quickly. It is a rare moment when Tronstad gets an idea and waits to fit it into a conversation with the deference to other speakers most people take as a matter of course. Childlike, Tronstad blurts out whatever is on his mind, no matter who he is cutting off. He gets away with it because he is funny and, underneath the brash exterior, charming, and because everybody knows he is Ted Tronstad, comic extraordinaire. He can be crude, but for a variety of reasons—primarily having to do with how prickly he gets when criticized—you don’t correct him. At least I don’t.

  “Glad you came over, Chief,” Tronstad says. “I was about to have a heart-to-heart with Gum myself. You know, tell him about the birds and bees and dead people and suchlike.” He makes small talk for another minute until Abbott leaves, and I realize this is the first chance I’ve had to speak to Tronstad alone. “I hope she was a good piece of ass, Gum.”

  “I’m in so much trouble.”

  He gives me a look that is equal parts amusement and condescension. “Not unless you opened your trap.”

  “They’re talking about me over there, the cops are.”

  “Jesus, you didn’t tell anybody what happened?”

  “I—”

  “Because nobody knows you weren’t on the rig when it left the station. Nobody but you and me and Robert.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, when you fuck up, you keep your lips zipped. That’s the first rule of fucking up. What did you tell them?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  Tronstad looks across the yard at Lieutenant Sears. “I know you didn’t tell him. He’d be dancing a jig.”

  “He’s not that way.”

  “Oh, yes, he is.”

  “How could he not know I wasn’t on the rig?”

  “Sears had his head up his ass the moment he heard ‘trapped victims.’ He doesn’t know about you. Trust me. Did he say he was going to write disciplinary charges?”

  “No.”

  “Trust me. He was scared shitless.”

  “So was I.”

  “You? Jesus, kid, you were ferocious. You ran over me like I was roadkill.”

  The more I think about it, the more Tronstad’s words make sense. When I bumped into him on the porch, Lieutenant Sears said, “Don’t come up here without a line. And where’s your partner?” It hadn’t made sense to me at the time, because our line had been underfoot, but he’d been talking about a second line. A second line would only come in with a second unit. Despite the big E-29 designator on the front of my helmet, he thought that the firefighter who bumped into him on the porch was from another unit and that I was inside.

  Tronstad says, “I know and Robert knows, and we ain’t talkin’. You know, and you ain’t talkin’. Nobody else has a clue, least of all our firefighter-of-the-year lieutenant. Keep your yap zipped, and it’ll stay that way.”

  “What are you going to do if they ask?”

  Tronstad makes an exaggerated gesture that implies he’d rather die than blab. I look across the yard to where Robert Johnson is talking to one of the other drivers, and Johnson gives me a twinkly smile and a thumbs-up signal.

  “I should confess.”

  “Don’t be an asshole. You going to miss another alarm?”

  “No.”

  “There you go. What would be the point of getting punished for something that’s never going to happen again?”

  “I owe you, Tronstad.”

  “Let’s go pick up some hose. And by the way?”

  “What?”

  “You got enough guts to hang on a fence, kid. I never thought you had particularly big balls, but between rattling that woman in the basement and what you did inside the house here . . . you’re my hero.”

  “Shut up.”

  6. THE PERFECT SETUP

  THE NEXT MORNING the front page of the Seattle PI sported an article about our victims, Fred and Susan Rankler.

  Fred had been sixty-two, formerly an attorney with a prestigious law firm in downtown Seattle; Susan, fifty-eight, a flight attendant with Delta and the mother of three grown children. Fred Rankler had run for city council; Susan had been homecoming queen at Central Washington University. One of their daughters was living in Hollywood, studying to become a movie actress. One son worked for a Chicago law firm, the other for Microsoft.

  Fred had been retired almost a year when another driver mangled him in a car accident and put him in a wheelchair. Susan retired soon thereafter to care for him.

  I was thinking about the family as I was leaving for home the morning after the fire. I’d just bumped into Robert Johnson in back of the station, next to his black BMW 3 Series sedan, a car he washed and vacuumed each shift. “Robert?”

  “Eh?”

  “About last night.”

  “Hey, that was a nice rescue. You pulled two people out. Even if they didn’t make it, a save like that will cancel a hell of a lot of other dirt.” He gave me a meaningful look.

  “Robert—”

  “Have a nice four-off.”

  “Thanks.”

  Half expecting my car to be staked out by the police, I walked the eight blocks to where I’d parked my Subaru on Arch Place and drove home without incident.

  I lived in a single-story, side-by-side duplex on Genesee, directly across the street from the Delridge Playfield. I rented the east unit, which included a garage just large enough to accommodate my WRX. The whole place was maybe eight hundred square feet: two bedrooms, a living room, and a kitchen, with electric wall heaters you could stand in front of on a cold winter morning, toasting your backside—1960s kitsch. Out back was a covered patio, along with a patch of lawn that was mostly brown because we’d been admonished to conserve water during the drought.

  The previous night had been one freak show after another. Iola Pederson with blue eyes as big as hen’s eggs. Her unbuttoned blouse and the enormous ice floes she called breasts. Our hijinks in the basement, the feel of her silky skin under my hands, the warmth of her soft naked belly against my hard stomach. Her rigid nipples. Her sharp, ratlike teeth gnawing my lower lip.

  I almost wished I’d been caught. At least the matter would be concluded. The way th
ings stood, I would forever carry the vague unease that I would be unmasked at some future date. I read once that a secret can only truly remain a secret when it’s known by only one person. Tronstad and Johnson were friends, but neither had the same investment in this I did.

  I would never break another department rule. Ever.

  I wasn’t sure why Ted Tronstad and Robert Johnson had remained silent on my behalf, whether it was esprit de corps among mates or the desire to put something over on Sweeney Sears, but I was thankful.

  After we got back to the station that night I slept like a drunk, my narcosis fueled by the release of tension. The effect was transient, because the next few nights I was wracked with insomnia, and when I did manage to snag rack time, I found myself battling through a series of degenerate sex dreams involving Iola Pederson and the dead woman, the two females I’d seen bare-breasted that night. Nothing was more perverse than dreaming about sex with a corpse.

  What made it almost unbearable was the very real possibility that the Ranklers would have survived had I not missed the rig. During the next few days I thought about it every waking minute.

  I thought about transferring to another station. About confessing. About resigning from the fire department.

  After I’d tortured myself enough, I began to look at it from a different angle. If you were a veterinarian and fed the wrong medication to a prize horse and the horse died, it didn’t mean you were going to kill a nag a week for the rest of your career, did it? In fact, it didn’t mean you would ever kill another nag. The truth was, you’d take particular care not to kill another horse, wouldn’t you? And if the animal’s owners didn’t realize why the beast was dead, it would be pointless to tell them.

  Still, no matter how much I rationalized, I continued to feel physically ill for the first twenty-four hours, weak and listless thereafter. I knew I was going to have to wear my guilt for the rest of my life. What I didn’t know was how I would accomplish that—for I didn’t have Tronstad’s capacity to blow off setbacks and blame things on other people, or Johnson’s ability to rely on the Lord Jesus Christ.

  I was raised by a single mother who always treated me like an adult, spoke to me as an adult, and had me call her Judy as well as Mommy. I suppose I’d been trying to act the part of a self-possessed adult since I was six, and more than once I’d been told I talk and act older than my years; but now I was feeling more like an incompetent, clueless little boy than when I actually was one.