| Chapter 4 - Diane |
| We hurried down the road. Jon no longer held on to my blue jeans, but he stayed right by my side, smothering Squawk in a bear hug to his chest with both arms. �What�s happening?� I asked Josh. �Big fires in San Francisco. In the Marina. Some apartments collapsed.� �Anything about Candlestick Park?� �No.� There was a catch in his voice. �I�ll try a different station.� For just a moment, I met Josh�s eyes. Without a word I knew that he was just as worried about his mother as I was about my father. And in that moment I noticed how good it felt that Josh and I could still communicate eye to eye, without speaking. �Anything about what�s happening around here?� �No. Nothing.� I wondered whether the shaking on out mountain had been too insignificant to be reported on the radio. Or whether they simply didn�t know about us. Or didn�t care. �We�ve got to find Greta,� Jon said. �Maybe a car fell on her.� �First,� I said, �we�ve got to find help for Mr. Wright.� Normally when you have an emergency on the mountain, you call the volunteer fire department. Normally, you have a working phone. In a working house. We moved on up the road � not quite running, but faster than walking � to a big house, a new one. It didn�t look particularly damaged except for a brick chimney that had broken off at the roofline and spilled its bricks down the shingles to the gutter. Some windows had cracked. A Winnebago was parked in the driveway. It didn�t seem to be damaged, either. I wondered how one house could fly completely apart while another one nearby seemed scarcely touched. Mr. Wright�s chicken coop still stood. The old shed down below my house seemed unharmed. How were they different? The front door was open � probably from the quake. I went to it and knocked. No one answered. Books and magazines and knickknacks were scattered all over the floor. I saw a telephone. �Hey!� I called. �Anybody home?� I went inside. It was eerie, going into somebody�s house. I felt guilty somehow. Like a burglar. I tried the phone. Dead. Probably every line on the mountain was down. We�d have to go to the firehouse, about a mile. Coming out, I saw that the propane tank downhill from the house was upright but lopsided. Did I really want to mess with another propane tank? It seemed. Before I�d even finished thinking up the question, that I was on my way down. �Where are you going?� Jon shouted. "To shut off their propane.� �Justin, be careful,� Josh called. It felt nice to hear Josh say that. That I knew he still cared about me. But it was how he said it that got my attention. There was a catch in his voice again. I looked up and met Josh�s eyes. He was looking straight at me. I swore I could see something in his eyes. I only wished it was love. Nodding my head in his direction I replied, �I will.� The pipe was still connected to the tank, but I smelled gas. Which didn�t tell me anything because by now the whole mountain seemed to smell of gas. I reached for the handle, and then a thought struck me: What if an aftershock happened right now? What if this tank rolled off and carried you with it? What if it blew? What are you doing this? Nobody�s life is in danger � except yours. I couldn�t answer the questions, but I turned the handle until it was tightly shut. Then I ran. I couldn�t bear the thought of another tank blowing up, another fire, another possibility of setting the setting the whole hillside aflame. Maybe that�s why I did it. Maybe not. We hurried on. Houses are not side-by-side on Loma Prieta. Sometimes they�re a good distance apart. I saw three horses in a pasture, skittish, wild-eyed. At the next two houses we passed, propane tanks were standing at various odd angles. Each time, I ran to them and shut them off. �Justin, you�re brave,� Josh said. �Or stupid,� I replied. �Right,� Jon said. The next house that we passed had slid in one piece off its foundation and was now leaning against a redwood tree. Flames were roaring out of two windows. A woman was standing near the flames, cursing the garden hose in her hand. Two small children sat at a picnic table in the yard, looking terrified. A few drops of water dribbled from the hose. I called to the woman: �Is anybody inside the house?� �No,� she shouted back. �Could you run to the fire station?� �We�re on our way.� Now I really ran. Josh ran. Jon ran behind me, choking the red parrot, begging me to slow down. I let him catch up, and then ran at an easier pace. Too many people were depending on me. Jon needed me. Mr. Wright needed help. Greta might be trapped somewhere. And now a woman�s house was on fire with no way to call the volunteer fire department. We ran past a house that had cracked in half, like an egg. With each new wreck of a home that I encountered, I felt a sickening tug in my chest. Everywhere the air reeked of gas. One propane tank had actually bounced into the branched of a tree and hung there like a beached whale. This was Hell. This was the world I�d grown up in, the world I lived in, my home � now fallen and twisted and shaken apart. How many houses were on fire right now? How many houses had nobody home to stop the flames? How many had no fire extinguisher? How many had broken waterlines? How many had collapsed? I saw a man running ahead of us in the same direction. We passed telephone poles leaning at odd angles with wires draping down. The big black transformers had dropped off the poles and crashed to the ground. They had a smell like a burned-out motor. Then we shook again. Another aftershock. I almost lost my balance but managed to stay on my feet. Another BOOM from far away made me wince. The pavement of the street cracked open right in front of my eyes. It wasn�t a deep crack and only a couple inches wide. We just stepped over it. Jon�s fingers went back to clenching my belt loop. The red parrot he carried in his armpit. We came to the firehouse. The doors were open; one truck was gone. A man � the same man who I�d seen running ahead of me � was listening to the CB radio in another truck and jotting down something on a pad of yellow paper. He looked up at me. He was bald but had a full mustache and beard. With amazement he said, �There are at least eleven houses on fire.� I told him about the house that was leaning against a redwood tree with the woman cursing her garden hose. �Make that twelve,� he said. He grabbed an extinguisher and started running down the road. �Don�t you want to take the truck?� I called after him. �It�s broken,� he shouted as he kept on running. A big key ring attached to his belt went jangling behind him, bouncing on his butt. An extinguisher wouldn�t be enough to save that house. I hasn�t had a chance to tell him about Mr. Wright. On the ground in front of the firehouse I saw a dead ground squirrel. What had killed it? I thought of all the animals that lived underground. Their tunnels had probably collapsed? How many would die? How many were buried alive? How many were desperately digging at this very moment, digging for their lives? Where was Greta? A black Chevy camper truck came roaring down the narrow road and screeched to a stop in front of the firehouse. A woman with wet hair jumped out and looked around. �Are they all gone?� she asked. �There are twelve houses on fire,� I said. �And we�ve got what? Two trucks? Half a dozed volunteers?� �Did you come to report a fire?� I asked. �I came to see if I could help.� �You could help me.� I told her about Mr. Wright. �Get in,� she said, and she climbed into the cab of the camper truck. Jon, Josh, and I crammed in beside her. �I�m a nurse,� she said as she backed out. �My name�s Diane. Excuse the hair. I was in the shower when it happened. It threw me right out the door.� She had the radio on. I heard � as Josh had said � that the Marina District of San Francisco was on fire. A section had fallen out of the Bay Bridge. A freeway had collapsed in Oakland. People were trapped. People had died � maybe hundreds. Maybe thousands. Then I heard the announcement: The World Series game had been postponed indefinitely. They said that the power was out at Candlestick Park, a few people had been taken to the hospital, and they didn�t know if the structure was safe though, it definitely had not fallen down. They were alive. My father � and Josh�s mother � couldn�t be among those few people who had been taken to the hospital. I knew who had been taken to the hospital. I knew for a fact, just as a few minutes ago I had know that they were dead. I felt flooded with relief and yet overcome with worry at the same time. I needed them to come home. I wanted them to tell me what to do. I wanted them to hold my hand and say don�t be scared and tell me everything would be all right. But of course, everything wasn�t all right. Jon was looking up at me. �What�s gonna happen now?� he asked. �We�re going to help Mr. Wright. Diane�s a nurse.� �The we�ll find Greta?� �We�ll try.� �The what�ll we do?� �Don�t worry.� I patted his hand. �We�ll be all right.� Diane drove fast � too fast. She bounced right over the cracks in the road. I wondered if she would try to jump the truck over the big gap separating the pavement not far from my house, but she didn�t need to. Mr. Wright�s house � that is, ex-house � was on the near side. We passed the house that had been burning out of two windows. The fire had now spread across the entire side. The woman was at a safe distance standing by the road, holding her two children, watching it burn. Diane stopped. I called out the truck window: �Did a man come here?� The woman nodded her head in the direction of an extinguisher that lay on the ground, empty and abandoned. �He�s gone already?� The woman nodded again. �He went to look for people who might be trapped or hurt. He said they had to let houses burn. He said they had to help people first.� She seemed weary and hopeless. But of course the fireman was right. Except for the redwood tree that the house was leaning against, there was a clearing around the building. Most people had learned the lesson of the previous wildfire and kept a firebreak around their houses. It had rained recently, so things weren�t tinder dry. There was no wind. This fire, at least, wouldn�t spread. I hoped the tree would survive. Redwoods usually managed to slough off flames with their tough bark. And they�re full of water. They�re like giant wooden water tanks. Maybe it was silly of me to be worrying about the life of a redwood in the middle of all this destruction. But I did. I care about redwoods. Those trees were full-grown before I was ever born, and they�ll be around long after I�m gone. These same trees will � with luck � still be alive in the year 3000. Think of that. Diane drove on. She parked next to Mr. Wright�s Volkswagen. She left the door open and the radio on. We had lifted that Volkswagen. The yellow window curtain was now pulled up over Mr. Wright�s face. Something slipped in my gut. Oh, no, I thought. He�s dead. But was we walked toward him, he flipped the curtain down to his shoulders. He was no longer holding the bandanna to his forehead. The bleeding had stopped; the blood was drying where it had trickled down toward his ear. As soon as he exposed his face, a couple of flies started pestering him. He shooed them with his hand � and I understood why he�d covered himself. �Are you comfortable?� Diane asked. �Bored,� Mr. Wright said. �Pain is very boring.� �Where does it hurt?� �Here.� Mr. Wright touched his hip. Diane touched him lightly. �Here?� �Yes.� �And here?� Wincing. �Yes.� Diane turned to Josh and me � and to Jon, who was latched to my jeans with one hand and squeezing the parrot with the other. �We can�t call an ambulance,� she said. �I�ll take him to the hospital. We�ll have to work together to move him.� She went to the camper truck and lifted a mattress from the back, then removed a bed board that was underneath it. She explained to us that the idea would be to move Mr. Wright as little as possible in transferring him to the bed board. Diane would place her hands on either side of the hip; I was to lift his shoulders; Jon, his head; Josh, his legs. We would �logroll� him, she called it, keeping him stiff as a log while rolling him to his side, sliding the bed board under, then rolling him back onto it. Jon set the parrot on the ground. �On three,� Diane said. �One. Two. Three.� After lifting a Volkswagen, rolling Mr. Wright was no problem at all. �oof,� Mr. Wright grunted. �Hurt?� Diane asked. �Not bad,� Mr. Wight replied. Diane and Jon took one end, Josh and I the other, and we carried Mr. Wright on the bed board to the back of the truck. Then Jon ran back for Squawk and gently tucked him next to Mr. Wright�s head. It was, for Jon, a major act of kindness. Mr. Wright smiled at Jon and closed his eyes. Diane closed Mr. Wright up in the rear. The radio was still on. They were talking about Highway 17. Our highway, the road to out mountain, was closed due to landslides triggered by the earthquake. If it was closed, Diane couldn�t take Mr. Wright to a hospital. And my father couldn�t come home. Now I really felt alone. My father wasn�t dead, but if he couldn�t get here, I was just as alone. I felt like an orphan. �Where will you take him?� I asked Diane. �To the school, I guess.� �If it�s still there,� I said. The school was the community center. The gymnasium was a multipurpose room with a kitchen and a stage. All kinds of meeting and events were held there. This afternoon, in fact, they had been setting up for a volleyball tournament. The school was supposed to be emergency headquarters in a disaster. Of course, I thought. This is it. This is a disaster. �Good luck,� I said to Diane Now, at last, we had time to look for Greta. |