Into the Inferno - Earl Emerson [152]
Those of us who’d been involved in the North Bend Syndrome, as the world press came to name it, had never really brushed up against evil until that freezing night in February, not true evil, not the sort of wickedness that discards the lives of strangers over a casual meeting at corporate headquarters. By earthly standards I’d lived a fairly uneventful thirty-four years. One marriage. Two daughters. A home. A few close calls as a firefighter. On the other side of the world there were countries, entire regions, where a child was beating the odds to live past age five, where young girls died giving birth at fourteen, where children worked as slaves until they escaped or grew into shrunken adults, their minds atrophied from years of mindless drudgery and lack of proper nourishment.
Thirty-four years of healthy, productive living was nothing to gripe about.
It wasn’t as if the world were going to clunk to a halt without me.
I’d gotten over that notion long ago.
Life was a river. Remove a cupful of liquid and the river never even knew you were missing.
I sit in the sunshine and know a lot of things. Some of these I know instinctively, some through the vexations of memory, some through a sort of spiritual process that I would have denied the existence of prior to that week last June.
I know Stephanie has moved from Ohio to North Bend, that she will probably remain in the area for the rest of her natural life. I know she is with my girls and that they love her and she loves them, that she shows it to them every day. I know there will be problems because there will always be problems in any family. But they will be minor problems, and life will go on. The river will continue to flow.
My cupful, your cupful, notwithstanding.
When they are ready, the North Bend Fire Department will hire a new chief, perhaps even Steve Haston, Mr. Disaster, but it is not a debacle I trouble myself over. Things have gone well for others, or so I’ve been told. Karrie Haston’s body has accepted the antidote; she has resigned from the fire service and given herself over to social work in the South Bronx.
There is a peace in me I’ve never known before, and that peace involves knowing that no matter what happens in this room, or whatever room I end my days in, my daughters will remain forever bound together as only sisters who’d gone through great trauma can be. I see them as college students, still friends, still close, still doing things together. They will be heartbreakers. The thought warms me as much as the sunshine through the window does.
Their nights will be tinged with sadness because of what might have been, but the Swope family will move on. Life is for the living. In time, one or both will have children. If I am fortunate, the sounds and smells of babies will invade my space, talcum powder, cries for mother’s milk, for missing toys. As long as my heart beats, love will surround me.
Stephanie will continue to fetch news of the outside world to this room. She will read pertinent newspaper articles aloud, such as the one about the indictment of eight officers of Canyon View on charges ranging from manslaughter to murder and arson.
She will bring further news of civil suits and of former employees ratting out the Canyon View bigwigs. She will continue to investigate the occurrences of that week and learn that Hillburn and Dobson of Jane’s California Propulsion really did stay on in North Bend for a couple of extra days on other business.
As the years pass, Stephanie will find her own niche in the medical world. She will grow old gracefully, as her sister had not been allowed to do. She will come to understand better the demons that drove her early years. Maturity and serenity will take over her countenance. And I hope she will come to know me in a way that includes forgiveness as much as it does love.
The river will continue to flow. A single cup of water means nothing to a rain squall. It means even less to a waterfall.
Somewhere in the sky a cloud passes over the sun, and the radiant heat