the fire

“EMILY – PUT PENNY ON HER LEASH. THE NEIGHBOR’S CAMPER EXPLODED AND IT’S ON FIRE.”

My mom yelled the words, but in such a matter-of-fact way, that looking back I’m still not sure how she managed it.
My body went into action before my mind could comprehend the situation. I found myself in my mom’s room, attaching the leash to Penny’s collar without even realizing how the leash found my hands in the first place.

Mom and Ray were moving in a flurry around me. Somehow I gleaned that 911 had been called. The dog and I blindly followed Mom and Ray outdoors. The sky was still dark – it was 5a.m. – but the house to our right was glowing and strangely still. I tried to head straight to the neighbor’s yard, in pursuit of the old folks’, but felt something tug me back. (Penny was being a dog…and urinating. Neither one of us seemed to realize what exactly was going on mere yards away.) I turned back towards the neighbors. Ray was out of sight, Mom was pounding on the neighbors door; “TIM! FIRE!” she let herself in as I rounded the fence and made it into their yard. Ray was silhouetted ahead of me, even with their house. I had been on a path towards him, but stopped abruptly when the fire came into view. “Horror-stricken” is more than a phrase. In an instant, my sleepy head cleared. “The neighbor’s camper exploded and it’s on fire.” Yes…. fire…inferno…hungry, orange flames lashing out at the pre-dawn sky, competing with the surrounding aged trees for height; undulating waves of sparks, moving like a swarm of hornets, sprinkling the neighborhood with threatening chunks of smoldering black plastic ash. Through the maddening sheets of fire, the smoldering structure of the RV could be seen, the cliché helpless victim to the fire. Was anyone inside? (we later learned that a dog had indeed been trapped and lost to the flames.)

My heart has never beaten so fast. My eyes were wide, in spite of the smoke swirling around me. Taking in this view for only a few seconds, I ran back into the house, dragging poor Penny along, to grab my cell phone. “When did you call 911?” I hollered at my mother. “Where are they? WHERE ARE THEY?!” I was panicking. Inside my bedroom once again, I yanked my phone from the charger and punched in the numbers. As I incoherently babbled my reason for calling to the operator, sirens and flashing lights appeared at the far end of Dean Avenue. “They’re here, sorry...” I mumbled and hung up, as I moved towards the neighbor’s front yard once again, this time joining my mom and Ray on the sidewalk as a cop leaped from his squad car and ran towards the house. As fire trucks and more police units arrived, a measure of calm set in, and for the first time the chill of the dawn air struck me. I bent down to pull up my knee-high men’s athletic socks and saw I was wearing my glittery black ballet flats. When did I put those on?

Shivering, I huddled next to my mom, eyes glued to the tragic blaze in front of me. This fire was a monster – like a bogeyman under your bed – and the emergency crew was a balm to my pounding heart, much like your parent entering your bogey-infested room and assuring you it would be okay.
As the fire was hopelessly sprayed with streams of water, the mesmerizing effect of the flames took hold of me. “My camera is right inside, I should be capturing this,” I thought. But deep in my gut, I felt a sickening certainty that death was a part of this scene. I could never exploit that.

The acrid, smoky smell of the camper’s destruction burned in my nostrils. Sprays of cold water were carried from the firemen’s hose and hit my bare legs and face as the fire was slowly tamed. Simultaneously, Mom, Ray, and I turned back toward our own home. We’d all been coughing with increasing violence. Not surprisingly, considering the harsh, black smoke. Back in the now-assured safety of our own house, Mom and Ray went to the window with the best vantage point of the blaze to continue watching. I tread back to my room, noticing it was now almost 6 a.m., and grabbed a pillow and my blanket. Finding Penny curled up on my mom’s bed, I lay down beside her, wrapped my arms around her, and shivered uncontrollably…all the while praying thanksgiving for safety as well as condolence for my neighbors as I strove for a few hours of sleep before the day “began.”