Note: I originally posted this on my Facebook account on March 26th, 2017. However, Facebook is getting rid of their “notes” blog-like ability, so I’ve moved this content to my blog, with some edits for clarity.
This is the conclusion to “Two Guys Watch a Burning Building.” I like this title better. The burning house, and attendant ne’er-do-wells, are incidental. That’s Karen, on the left, above.
The windows of Kris’s bedroom were the smallish size of the windows in my room. Their bottoms began a couple of inches above my belly button, making passing through it difficult, even for this expert climber-into-and-out-of-er. Is this really the only way out? I go back into the room and look down the stairwell. The flames are much brighter now. I can feel the heat rising from the steps. The flame’s luminosity pierces the veil of smoke, the fire now visible. The smoke hurts my lungs, my eyes — I must get to fresh air. My young mind assessed that leaving Kris’s door open would be better for the house and my options. Of course, this only made my situation worse.
Karen and I decide there’s no choice but to get on the roof. I wiggle through the window. From my earliest memories, I’ve had a dreadful and stultifying fear of heights. I don’t this evening. There was a thin ledge of the roof in front of Kris’s window, which I follow to the larger roof over the living room. My new waiting area seems safe for now while Karen and I consider our options. Looking right, I see a light rise of smoke from Kris’s window — not too heavy. The roof wasn’t hot, and Karen didn’t see flames in the living room below me. This seemed to buy us time.
Our house on Walnut street had a unique aspect. Our first floor’s foundation was 6 feet higher than the other houses on the street. When last year’s flood had hit us, this was a blessing. Whereas our neighbors had the water level fill their first floor, we only had 2 feet of water on the first floor. As different as fire is to water, our blessing was now my curse. My one-story perch was roughly a story-and-a-half drop. Karen and I didn’t want me to jump. In our desperate hope, we continued to look for alternatives.
Wisps of smoke crawl from the eaves of the roof in front of me. Looking to my right, the smoke had become dense. Karen tells me that my brothers and the neighbors are frantically looking for a ladder tall enough to reach me. In the floor beneath Kris’s bedroom was our laundry room. Our dog, Louisa, and our cat, Handsome, were trapped there, barking and mewing.
Louisa was a beautiful silky-grey Weimaraner. We bought her as a gift for my Mom’s dad, “Pop-pop” as a consolation companion after he lost his wife, my Grandma, his everything, to cancer a couple of years after my father died. “Louisa,” the Skrinak-forced feminine form for “Louis,” my Pop-pop’s name, seemed fitting. Dogs make lousy gifts, however, and Louisa was soon an adopted Skrinak. Handsome was a stray Siamese tomcat badass that was always roaming the neighborhood, calling for in-heat partners, and getting in fights. Yea, you should get your male cats fixed. You don’t want to hear that every night. Handsome got his name when Karen, seeing him for the first time, said, “Hey, handsome!” Handsome and I had a unique relationship as well. Kimmer is a fantastic storyteller and loved to play up the voodoo-superstition of our youth. “The Devil can control cats, Kyle.” Kimmer somberly informed my wide-eyed self. Afterward, I was terrified of that cat. Handsome would chase me around the house. One night I worked up a rouse to have Handsome chase me, wherein I lead him to the basement, and closing it tightly. Score one for me. Looking back, I don’t understand what I was afraid of. Still, Handsome was our pet, and I thought he was the best cat ever.
Fires are loud, and the cacophony of all the discernible sounds only becomes horrific in retrospect. I’m sad to say we lost our pets in the fire, trapped in the laundry room. It still hurts as I type this.
My squatting calves, trembling and tiptoe, are eager to get me out of there. Karen and I agreed — my only option is for me to jump and for Karen to “catch” me. The two adult men, across the street, continue to savor their evening’s spectacle. “Kyle! I’ll break your fall!” as Karen positions beneath me. “How? What does that mean?” “I don’t know; we have no other choice. Just jump.” We sure seemed like we didn’t have any other options, as the fire was spreading and there were no firefighters in sight and my jostling brothers and neighbors could not find a ladder.
I jump.
Karen, God bless her, broke my fall. I didn’t aim, nor think of how to fall. I trusted Karen to resolve the details. It is amazing what we can do in love. Tears well up as I think of my beautiful sister, but this wasn’t her time, yet. We collapse together on the ground. Miraculously, neither she nor I were hurt. The whole drama resolving in a single fall. My neighbors take us in as Karen as we decompress. Karen was hoarse. My knees and ankles sorely burned but I broke nothing. Yes, I was as big for an 11-year-old as I am for a 54-year-old now.
I suspect those two adult men would have come in handy at that precise moment. We, nor they, will ever know. I was later told they were volunteer firemen, waiting for the firetruck to arrive. Sometimes we embellish our memories in vindication or vituperation. Whatever. They will remain shiftless and useless cowards in this story. I pray they found redemption elsewhere.
The fire didn’t consume the house, leaving the frame in-tact. Though I don’t recall their arrival, the fire crew did show up in time to put out the fire and slap us with a costly water charge. Thanks, guys. My perch would have been fine for the keystone cops of firefighters to arrive at their leisure. Though the flames never spread to the living room, the heat was so intense that it melted our television and stereo. Who knows?
Our house was a charred blemish on E. Walnut Street for several months afterward. Our dear friends gave us a place to stay while Mom figured out the details, with us finally moving to Wyoming, PA. I remember my first bedtime after the fire. The eerie orange-glow illumination of the old-style flip-clock before my closing eyes told more than time. I dreamt of fire raging behind a wall, struggling to break through and get me. In my waking moments, however, I never doubted I was safe.
My Mom has been through quite a struggle. I’m unclear on how Mom figured all this out while single-handedly raising her family. She has told me, many times, “I never signed up for this.” The only way I can make sense of all this is this; “It is amazing what we can do in love.”
Postscript, January 23rd, 2021. My Mom passed away on October 29th, 2019, two-some years after I wrote this. I wrote a eulogy honoring her extraordinary life that you can read here.