The Next(37)

But I also knew exactly where the cats would hide.

Between the Morrow's house and our kitchen was their large aqua-blue  concrete and plaster swimming pool, propped on thick wooden stilts  resting on deep cement pylons. Because our father wanted nothing to do  with pets, Paul and I would always rendezvous with Morrow's cats  underneath their swimming pool. We'd bring leftover food to them. The  shade under the pool was cool, and the earth was soft. The calicos would  be there. Paul and I would save them if the Morrows would not.         

     



 

"Fire! There's a fire!" our father belched loudly.

We heard the front door open as he stumbled out to the driveway. From  the bedroom window, I heard him screaming at the Morrows in big,  blustery garbled words, "What the fuck are you doing? Fuck those fucking  gizmos! Save the fucking houses, you fucking nitwits!"

I watched our father try to run up the slope to the backyard of the  burning house. His feet were uncooperative due to three-quarters of a  bottle of bourbon, and what ought to have been a mere fumble to one knee  turned into a full on face plant. Nose bleeding, he rallied to his feet  and teetered to the gate adjacent to the burning house. By now the  entire top floor was an inferno, which was burning its way down the  siding toward the yard.

I felt a wet hand on my shoulder. Mother and Paul were standing next to  me, watching Father approach the side of the house where the hose was.  He turned it on and sprayed his own groin.

"Damn fucking son of a fucking fuck," he blurted.

He tried to unspool the hose, but he only managed to wind the hose  around his legs. Trying to disentangle himself, he further knotted the  pile of hose.

Mother muttered, "What in Lord's name is he doing?"

"Should we help him?" Paul asked.

She did not answer. We did not move.

I glanced at the fire trucks on Wildcat Canyon Road further down the  hill. Their ten-inch thick white hoses stretched across the road like  veins. Water jetted toward the trees in large sweeping arcs, but they  were not jetting toward our house.

Father was now sloppily rolling away from the house, his legs still  entangled in the hose. The hose sprayed every direction except toward  the house. The fire had now jumped onto the Morrow's roof, but they had  driven off. Their station wagon thumped over the fire hoses when they  reached Wildcat Canyon Road. Their axles scraped the tops of the hoses,  compressing them and cutting off the water. The firemen yelled angrily  at them to get the hell off the hoses, and the Morrows bounced on.

We heard a loud crack.

Suddenly Mother screamed.

One of the tall flaming eucalyptus trees was falling toward the house my  father was trying to save. It crashed down a few feet away from him.  Red-charcoaled shingles flew into the air. The wall nearest my father  shot outward in a burst of white-hot flames, and a ball of heat and  burning debris cannonballed toward my father. When the smoke lifted, we  saw him running away from the house, his clothes on fire.

To our horror, we saw the left half of his face was blackened and … melted.

Half his cheeks, lips, and chin sagged like a soggy watercolor portrait.  He was screaming, moving as fast as his wobbly legs could carry him  toward the Morrow's swimming pool. He jumped in with a splash. Although  his clothes were now extinguished, he faced a new challenge. Father  could never swim sober, let alone sloshed.

"The fire!" Paul yelled. "It's crossing!"

The grass between the Morrow's house and ours was bright with flames.  The row of dry hydrangea bushes quickly turned into hot, smoky red and  yellow fireballs. As my father was splashing around, sputtering up water  from his lungs, I realized we only had one chance.

"Get the axes!"

Paul and I darted down the stairs to the garage, grabbed two large,  heavy axes and opened the front door. The air was thick and hot. The  surrounding fire had begun to generate its own suctioning that felt like  a tornado of charging wind. We hauled the axes between the stilts to a  point underneath the swimming pool. If we had a chance of saving our  house, this was it.

I spied a bag hanging from Paul's belt buckle as we entered the darkness  under the pool. Instinctively, he needed to preserve the only things  that had given us any comfort in times of chaos and violence. Paul had  grabbed our eight Enid Blyton Adventure books in the garage along with  the axes. He'd also grabbed our Swiss Army knives from behind the  downstairs toilet.

Mother followed us and continued up the hill to the top of the swimming  pool. We assumed she was going to rescue our splashing father until we  heard her scream for us to stop.

Paul gave me a look of confusion. I did not understand either.

The hydrangeas burned closer and closer to our house. If we waited any  longer, we would not be able to stop the fire from reaching our home.

"Don't move!" I heard my mother command above the splashing of the water above us.

All at once I realized what her intention was, and what she was willing  to sacrifice for it. The splashing gradually slowed. We waited. My head  throbbed with conflicting feelings. Paul was equally confused. He did  not understand what was happening only feet above his head.

He shouted at the top of his lungs. "Now, Mom? Now?"         

     



 

"Hold still!" she screamed back.

We heard mewing.

The calicos were there.

"Go get them," I told Paul, trying to get him to focus on something comforting.

But the cats were spooked. As Paul approached them, they sprinted  underneath the house. Paul started following them under the house as  well.

"Let them go!" I yelled.

I dropped the axe and grabbed Paul's leg. He tried to kick my hand off,  but I gripped his jeans even tighter and pulled him toward me. He wept  as I swung my arm around him, holding him tight.

I looked down the hill. The fire had already made its way past us and  was starting to burn a dry thorny rose bush at the corner of our house  near the front door. We could hear some final faint sputtering in the  water above our heads.

Then the splashing stopped.

For the next few seconds, my senses blocked out everything but Paul  hugging me as tight as his little arms could. He was losing everything  he loved as his little world burned down around him. I hoped to God he  had no awareness of what was happening in the swimming pool above us.

As I held him, I realized in that moment no person or place was more  precious to me than my brother. We'd find other cats. We'd find another  magical kingdom. We'd find another home. We no longer had any need of  parents like the ones above us. We needed only each other. As every  single thing combusted around us, I knew only one thing …

I loved Paul so much.

I started to cry with him.

"Chop, boys!" we heard our Mother yell.

We picked up the axes and swung. The blades chipped into the outer  concrete layer. We swung again. And again. And again. We finally gouged  into the inner plaster, water splattering our faces. We gouged more.  Then the water began to gush out of the irregular holes we'd created. It  rushed in a strong stream down the hill and doused the fire beneath it.

Too late.

Mother had made us wait too long. The flames raced up our wooden siding  toward the eaves of our roof. Our kitchen window cracked, shattered, and  dropped. The white curtains inside combusted. Feathers of flames  skidded across the glossy ceiling toward the hall.

Our home was lost.

We dropped the axes and ran up the hill to join our mother. The water  level of the pool dropped until at last it was empty. Father lay at the  bottom of the pool.

He was dead.

I looked at my Mother's expression. She had receded into that listless,  withdrawn place again. I probably knew back then that she'd remain there  until the day she died. I probably felt what the state of California  would soon deem to be true-she was no longer mentally fit to raise us.

She freed Paul and me, but sacrificed our home to do it.

She sacrificed herself to do it.

The fire took seven Berkeley homes and most of the park that day. We  never saw the calicos again. Our park was no more than a barren,  blackened valley. The secrets paths we knew and loved were no more.  King's Rock jutted at the top of the hill, exposed and grey like a ruin.  Jack and Phillip had burnt to a crisp along with our adventures, for  Paul and I never played again.

Jessie's murder was considered a casualty of the fire.

Years later I was standing in line to obtain my license downtown at the  DMV, and a young blond guy turned from the counter and stared at me.  He'd grown facial fuzz and he wore a Stanford baseball cap and  sophisticated glasses. He held several law books under his arm. His eyes  were no longer angry and vicious. He had smiled openly at the person  behind the counter with an easy and charming energy about him. When our  eyes finally met, sadness washed over him.

I had every option available to me. With Paul as my witness, I could  have destroyed his life. I could have kicked his teeth in. I could have  merely demanded an apology. But I did nothing. He did nothing. I turned  away and let him go. I let go this stranger who robbed us of so much  that day, including our ability to be kids again.