Into the Inferno - Earl Emerson [45]
Steve Haston had been timid in his day-to-day decision making, his leadership at the monthly council meetings alternately limp-wristed and carping.
His sole contributions to handling the fire department’s problems were a single phone call to the station one day to ask if I was “okay” and then letting Stan out of his sight. Essentially, I was running the fire department by myself.
“We should have a meeting,” I said. “Start with Brashears. He treated Jackie and Stan both. Bring in McCain’s doctors. Get Eastside Fire and Rescue involved. It could just as easily be them next time. If it’s a chemical hazard passing through our district, it’s moving by truck, which means it’s going through their district, too. The State Department of Transportation should be involved. The State Patrol.”
“You believe this was something you folks got on the job?”
“I do.”
“The city is self-insured. This is going to destroy our cash flow. Look, Jim, I’ll clear the docket and we’ll work on this full-time. I’ll call the King County Executive. One of us will have to speak with the governor. Maybe we can get disaster relief from the feds.”
“Who’s there? Anybody home?” Karrie Haston walked into the room and stood awkwardly beside her father when she saw me.
It was easy to see the family resemblance. They were both tall, Steve around six-seven, Karrie five-ten. They both had long arms and lantern jaws. Although most people would have said Karrie was attractive, her father’s face was just this side of ungainly, and the only thing you could say about his normal expression was that it resembled that of a man about to fall off a donkey.
Even though Karrie and I had been on a businesslike basis since the Christmas party, she flushed when she saw me in her father’s living room.
At this late date, it was easy to see how improvident it had been to fool around with the daughter of the mayor. To trifle with the feelings of a probationary firefighter. For all I knew, she’d been on the couch because she thought it would further her career. Get her past McCain’s critical reports. But more than that, attempting to seduce the daughter of the woman who’d seduced my wife had enough Freudian implications to keep a psych class writing papers for years. I didn’t even want to think about it.
“Jim was just leaving,” Steve said, flashing his bird-shit gray eyes at me as a signal that he didn’t want Karrie to know what we’d been discussing.
I knew what he was thinking. If Stan had been sick, if Joel and Jackie were sick, Karrie might have contracted it, too.
As far as accepting this on a personal level, Steve was on the same page I was.
When I got home that night, the girls and I lit candles, set out the Monopoly board, and fell into a freewheeling discussion about life and our lives in particular, talking about why their mother wasn’t with us anymore, a frequent conversation in our household and one I generally avoided. I answered Allyson’s and Britney’s questions more candidly than ever. None of us had laid eyes on Lorie since she left town three years earlier.
I felt I owed it to the girls to be as honest as I could. It wasn’t as if they’d be able to ask later.
There wasn’t going to be any later.
22. DON’T YOU HANG UP ON ME, YOU BASTARD
And now, this morning, I was on the floor.
A spectacularly ignoble way to begin one of my last days as a human being.
“Oh, Daddy. Quit horsing around. You have to get ready for work. Morgan’s already here.” Britney was standing behind me, her arms twined around my neck. I remained seated on the hardwood floor. I had no idea how long I’d been ruminating about last night, about Lorie. Or how long Britney had been in my bedroom.
“Not going to work today, sweetie.”
“You’re staying with us?”
“I’m going to spend as much time with you as possible.” She hugged me closer, her tiny rib cage pressed against my back. Though I had a couple of days to work it out, I had no idea who was going to take care of her after I was gone. Their grandfather couldn’t take