Borderlines (6 page)

I was lying on my back, watching the kaleidoscope ceiling, when I heard that bell. I rolled over, hands out, feeling for Rennie, and landed on the hose. It was still flat, its water gone before the flashover, and the senseless thought occurred to me that I’d make sure the pump operator’s life was made miserable if I got out of here alive.

I couldn’t tell which end of the hose led to the door, or to the nozzle.

The walls were invisible my flashlight had been torn away. I was aware of my breath coming in short, panicky bursts. I began to crawl in one direction, feeling the softness of a rug under my knees, my helmeted head bumping against a bed, then a chair. The heat was still terrific, but not as it had been. I found a wall and stuck to it, moving to my right, one gloved hand gliding along the baseboard, the other outstretched into the room, feeling for Rennie, hearing the bell getting louder and louder. My face broke out in sweat as I heard my own bell join in, an incessant, unyielding, frantic clamor-the sound of a sinking ship with its steam whistle tied open. I found him sitting with his back against the wall. I shouted at him and shook him. His head moved, his helmet bumping mine. I saw his flashlight still gripped in his hand and pried it loose from clenched fingers. I shone it in his face. His eyes were open-almost -as if he were daydreaming.

“Rennie. Goddamn it.” I punched him in the chest, hard. I saw his face convulse with pain and his mouth open to inhale. that moment, his bell stopped ringing, its mission over. His eyes rolled further as he realized there was no more air and both his hands up to the mask to tear it off.

“No, no. Wait.” I fumbled at his regulator as I batted his hands His body began to heave and twist, trying to fight me off. He away and I rolled with him, banging my head against the wall. Suddenly, I felt the release ring loosen around the end of his ‘s elephant-like air hose.

I shoved my head into his chest, up his regulator, and quickly pulled the hose loose and shoved it her the rubber rim of my own mask so that we were both breath what little air I had left. I could hear the urgent hissing rushing through the leak I’d created. I crushed my mask against my face, taking his air hose into my cheek, trying to stem the loss.

“Come on, come on,” I shouted, dragging him beside me, afraid the connection might be severed, that his hose might tear from k, that my air might expire, that no window was on the wall feverishly pawing as we stumbled and crawled along the floor. My hand hit something-Bill.

“Stand up. Stand up. We got a window.” But he stayed there on all fours, a dog beaten down, seemingly to expend the one last effort that would save his life.

I reached under and unclipped his harness at the chest and waist, I should have done earlier but had forgotten, and I dragged air bottle off his back. “Come on, goddamn it.” My bell stopped. For a split second I froze, realizing that frantic of leaking air had ceased. I closed my mouth, fighting the urge in the poisoned air from around the gap in my mask, and, as much of Rennie as I could manage, I launched both of us the floor and toward what I hoped was a window. There was a crash, a splintering of glass.

I felt cold air on my neck in an embrace, we both toppled headlong out the second window.

We rolled out the window, hit a shed roof, fell off its edge, and landed in some bushes, still locked together like two lobsters in mortal combat. Rennie didn’t even get hurt.

But we didn’t go back inside. The hot embers from the stove were reignited by the blast, returning the first floor to its hellish first appearance. For the rest of the night, our firefighting consisted of trying to save what we could from the outside, preserving the walls of the coffin for those people within.

It wasn’t until dawn, after the last water had flowed and I sank exhausted onto the tailgate of Buster’s fire truck, that I realized I hadn’t escaped unscathed. It was Laura, there as a member of the women’s auxiliary, who discovered that I’d burned my ear, and who set about putting it right.

“Ow. What the hell is that stuff?” “It’s Bag Balm. It doesn’t hurt; it’s the burn that stings.” I ducked away from her hand. “You’re not on the receiving end.” Laura gave me an exasperated look. “Good thing, too; it’s all over your hair now. Stay put.” I stayed put, but only because the pain was mitigated by her sitting so close to me. In the cool breeze of early morning, I could smell her cleanliness mixed in with the bitter odor of charred wood. Whether it was the fatigue, my brush with death, or just the fact that Laura stood in such contrast to our surroundings, I found myself swept up by the romantic notion of being tended by a pretty woman in the midst of a virtual battlefield.

She held my chin in her other hand to steady my head. “I can’t believe you got off so lightly.” I looked across to the blackened, punctured, sagging building.

“I’m not sure I believe it, either.” Rennie, in fact, was stuffing his face with doughnuts at a long table the auxiliary had set up in the driveway. That’s what had brought Laura over to me in the first place-a sugarcoated, creme-filled monster that had done wonders for my spirit, if not for my arteries. Laura leaned back and admired her work. “That should keep it from getting infected. It’s going to sting like hell if you shower.” “I’ll work around it.” She handed me the green tin of Bag Balm. “Here, keep this.” I took the tin and smiled my thanks. Her eyes were on the green side of hazel and looked straight back into mine with refreshing directness.

“I’m almost glad I burned my ear. Her cheeks tinged very slightly, and I regretted having tipped my hand, even when she responded, “So am I.” I shifted my position to lean against the closed rear compartment door, suddenly feeling all the aches and pains of the night’s activities. My bunker coat was covered with a thin sheen of ice that crackled and flaked as I moved, but it was tight and warm on the inside, although damp with old sweat, and I didn’t want to take it off. I closed my eyes for a moment, trying to sense with my face any warmth from the rising sun.

“What was it like?” Her voice was surprisingly soft. “In there?”

“Yes.” “Oh, I don’t know…. Hot, confusing, scary… noisy. Very colorful, though.” “They told me you didn’t have any air left in that tank.” “Not a whole lot.” I opened my eyes. Good thing I’m not religiously inclined, huh?” For all the chaos I’d witnessed on the inside, the building was still remarkably intact. Its roof was pretty much history-a good chunk of it had been blown away by the explosion-and all the window tops were charred and smeared black, but the walls remained standing for the most part. Still, my guess was the whole thing was unsalvageable. I realized my trying to be lighthearted had bordered on being flippant, which was not my intent. “It’s funny. I know Rennie and I came close to dying in there, but it all seems kind of far away right now.

“You must be tired.” I smiled. “That I am.” Fire trucks from at least five surrounding towns were parked every which way. The ground was littered with a spaghetti-like maze of hard, frozen hose, glistening in ice-rimmed pools of water that were starting to reflect the sun’s washed out daily appearance. Firemen wandered about, collecting equipment, chatting, banging at hose connections with rubber mallets.

And in the midst of all this solemn, dark and brooding quiet, stood the remains of the charcoaled house and five extinguished lives, huddled as we’d found them, wards of the state now of the arson investigators, the police, and the medical examiner.

What had caused that fire? I wondered, and shuddered suddenly.

Mentally replaying what I’d just been through, I recalled the spasm of panic I’d felt when the hose had gone flat, just before the explosion.

There’d been no time for reflection at the time. Indeed, it had happened so fast, I’d almost thought it part and parcel with what had followed. But I knew otherwise now, and the realization scared me. My running out of water had had nothing to do with the explosion. Buster’s large profile stepped between me and the source of my reverie. He handed me a cup of coffee. “How’re you feeling?” “Tired.” “I bet.” He looked at me steadily, his face solemn. “I’m glad you made it, Butch.”

I lifted my cup to him. “Butch,” for him, was the ultimate endearment.

“Feeling’s mutual.” But his expression was steady, almost hard. “How did it happen?” “Damned if I know. Flashover, I guess; it got incredibly hot just before it blew. I suppose whatever ventilation there was wasn’t reaching the landing; maybe the attic had something to do with it. I just don’t know. It was pretty confusing.” I took a sip of coffee, which burned on the way down. My throat was sore from the smoke. “Dick said he told Rennie to get the hell out of there when he asked for the ladder.” My mind began to focus on what was going on here.

Buster was after something seeking to lay blame. Any questions I was about to ask concerning the the flat hose line were pushed aside. “I heard some shouting,” I said vaguely.

“Well, that’s what he said. What did Rennie tell you?” “He said we ought to check out the other bedroom. I agreed with him.” “He didn’t tell you Dick warned him the attic was about to go?” “He may have tried.

You know what communication’s like with those things on.” There was a long, drawn-out silence between us. Then Buster pushed out his lips and turned away. “I gotta go check on the equipment.” We watched him lumber off.

“Is he mad about something?” Laura asked. I leaned back again, watching the women’s auxiliary, chatting and laughing, serving their hot coffee and doughnuts to all corners. “We were just kind of bumping bellies.” “Over what?” “Oh, I don’t know. Different people have different ways of doing things. I think he feels we shouldn’t have gotten so close to getting killed.” She was quiet for a couple of seconds. “And he’s trying to blame Rennie.” “He’s just upset, trying to find answers when there’s no point to.

He’ll let it go in a while.” I didn’t quite believe that he’d let it go, but into a mental filing cabinet with the rest of Rennie’s real nd imagined transgressions. I didn’t want to tell her that. Right now didn’t want to think about it.

Besides, it was history. Buster had always leaned on Rennie, first with high hopes, and then in disappointment. In the early days, I think was because the older man wanted to mold the younger one in his own image, to shape a son he didn’t have. But Rennie had refused to lay along, staying independent and wounding Buster’s pride. Buster ad an admirable track record with most younger people. It was a sad and perhaps fitting irony that the one he’d decided to make his special project had also been the one to consistently stand up to him. Through all these years, they’d stayed locked in harness, linked as much by their differences as by their similarities.

I saw the Wingates approaching, stepping over debris like survivors from a train wreck, carefully wending their way toward us. Windgate had his arm around Ellie’s shoulders, which were bowed as if the arm was heavy enough to grind her into the ground. The last time I’d seen this man, he’d been in almost exactly the same spot, but seething with an anger so intense that he’d vented it on someone who’d been trying to help him. I couldn’t help wondering if it all tied together in some way.

He nodded stiffly to me, like we were being introduced at a party and I’d just thrown up all over my shirt front. I was reminded again that I was probably one of the few people in the world to have seen this an in some pretty unbanker-like positions, a point that was probably so important to him as it was immaterial to me.

“Hi there, Bruce.” He frowned slightly at my use of his first name.

On the surface, his was not the man of last night; now, his raw passion was a secret only he was supposed to know about. His chilly demeanor further made me wonder how he’d unloaded his excess steam. “Good morning. I wanted to thank you for your help last night.

“I’m afraid I was a little overwrought.” “No problem.” My response was purely mechanical. I was stunned by his opening concern. The last time this man apparently had seen his daughter alive, she was entering a now almost totally burned building.

Even allowing for the fact that we later hadn’t found her there, the assumption that she was safe belied common sense. He either had ice in his veins, or he knew something I didn’t. “I don’t usually act that way.” “Don’t worry about it.” I was watching Ellie Wingate, who stood stock-still, her eyes glued to the ground. I had the feeling that if she could have turned herself outside in and disappeared like some black hole, she would have done so on the spot. “You didn’t find our daughter in there, did you?” The question wasn’t casual, but it still came too late-like polite but insincere condolences.

“I don’t think so.” He suddenly sharpened, thrown off balance. His eyes locked onto mine. “What do you mean?” “There’s one body that’s pretty badly burned. I don’t know who that is, or even what it is. And one of the victims is a woman. I don’t know what your daughter looks like.” I could have told him I’d recognized the woman from last night, and the three kids, but something about this man told me not to volunteer much, to make him come to me as much as possible. He pulled a picture out from inside his coat and handed it to me. It was a face shot of a woman in her late teens, with shoulder-length light brown hair-not particularly attractive. She had the usual expression of a person who’s wishing the photographer would drink arsenic. I looked at it for a long time, wondering what lay behind the sulky face. I wondered if the hostility I saw in her eyes was actually there, or whether I was injecting some of my own feelings for her father.

I handed the picture back after Laura had glanced at it over my shoulder, a gesture which caused her hair to brush my cheek lightly.