Story: The Longest Hour

My neighbors burned my house down.

It was their house too, we shared a duplex.  And, I mean, I can't prove it was them, but it was them. I don't know if they did it on purpose or not.  The fact that I never saw them again after it happened seems to support either theory.

It wasn't the best place to live in the world, no view of the mountains or the sea, no indoor/outdoor pool, no discernible living room (although this was partially the mess).  It did have its own laundry, well, shared with the neighbors that is, but I'll take lugging my soggy linen around in front of a few semi-strangers over doing it around ten people far from home.  I hate it when chores take you away from the house, it's like three times the chore.

I noticed the smell before anything else.  It was about sunset or a little thereafter, when I pulled onto my road.  There are a lot of trees where I live, above them the sky was a big blue spot getting dimmer and dimmer, and everything was dark shadow beneath.  When I first caught it, harsh and warm and somehow oily, I thought my car might be overheating, though the cage was fine.  I rolled down my window and wished I hadn't, it smelled like someone was rending old wire down in a flaming trash can, to sell the melted slag copper for its scrap value.  I rolled the window back up but the stink was washing everywhere now.

I was thinking about getting a kitten a few weeks before it happened; I was at the pet store for some reason, I think a friend was visiting (but why would they need the pet store on vacation? I can't remember) and I saw a kitten in a cage that clearly wanted to be not in the cage anymore.  She wiggled and squealed happily, flopped on the floor of the cage and pounced up.  Her fur was like tiny feathers, and kitten-colored all over.  A tag on the cage door said her name was Pamela, and when I saw how she clearly wanted to be not in the cage, I realized it was fully in my power, as an employed adult, to free her.  I went to find someone to ask.

When I asked the lady at the pet store if I could adopt Pamela, she said someone else had already asked for her, and I said it was fine and would look around some more.  She said that if i were interested in taking her today, she could give me the application forms to get started on, and would see what she could do.  My friend waved me on and went to look at the wall of fish, and I said sure.  So I took the clipboard and thanked her, and found a plastic chair, suddenly feeling like I was at the doctor's office.

The form was four pages, two-sided on two sheets.  I've filled out job applications that were half as intensive.  It asked for a copy of my current lease agreement as proof of residence.  I didn't have a copy on me, as I usually do not, and filled out the rest of the form to the best of my recollection.  I handed it back to the lady and asked if the copy of the lease were really necessary; she apologized and said it was.  I considered, and felt a little silly going this far and stopping.  I looked at little Pamela in her cage.  I said could I drive home and get it.  Home was about twenty minutes away, and they were open for another hour, so the lady said sure.  My friend and I left.

On the drive back to get the lease, I thought over the forms, and the questions.  Did I have a job?  Yes of course.  Did the place I live accept pets?  I thought so, though I hadn't given it much thought when I'd signed the lease.  Had I ever had pets before?  Were there any other pets at my residence?  What were my previous places of employment?  What were my previous places of residence?  

I didn't mind the form, or the questions. I know that the shelter was doing their best to make sure I was trustworthy, and would give the kitten a good home.  The points of continuity, of past employment and housing, amused me, like trying to tie together a version of a story about me defined by an intersection of official points across the map.  Every time I had to fill out an application or a form like this, I get a mental image of a paperwork version of me, shuffling along somewhere in the paper world, recycled and filled in only by the forms that I've filled out, recycled every seven years or so like the cells of my body are recycled.  Only not the nerve cells, I've read; hopefully the paper me doesn't have any of these anyway.

As I thought it over, I had a growing feeling that the adoption of this kitten meant more to the shelter people than it meant to me, or at least that they took it way more seriously than I did.  Didn't I take it seriously?  Shouldn't I be?  I thought I had made a sober decision, but the fact that none of these questions had occurred to me made me wonder.

I grew up in the country, where cats can be acquired as casually as picking wild flowers.  "Who's this?" "Oh, she found me on my walk, I think her name is Willy." "Oh, I guess we have a cat now then." "Oh look she's had kittens."  And so forth.

This was becoming a weight, and I was starting to shy from it.  Did I really want a kitten?  If I did, kittens aren't forever, did I want a grown-up cat?  Would I always be able to feed it?  When I was a kid, I'd had a pet turtle, and that hadn't worked out so well with the remembering to feed it.  What if I got bored with the kitten, or distracted with work, or came home late, and there was poor little Pamela, lonely and cold and forgotten?  A slightly bigger cage.

Before I got back to my house, I turned the car around.  I talked it over with my friend; I would say that I wasn't sure I was making the best decision, but would give the matter further thought and, if it seemed right, would apply again in a few weeks.

The lady at the pet store hadn't seemed disappointed, she had seemed only pressed for time.  I gave her back her clipboard and we went on our way.  I looked in the cage before we left, Pamela wiggled and squealed, flopped and pounced.  I didn't want to take her if I wasn't doing the right thing.  I never got around to going back and re-applying.

It was a humid evening the night of the fire, and still, and the smoke seemed to be everywhere.  There were people standing in the road, and a big yellow-green truck standing by.  Not mine, please not mine, I said to myself, but there was no doubt.  I pulled over to the side of the road and walked the last hundred yards or so.  The smell made me cough, and there were four firemen and two deputies warning people back.

The dusk was bright with the light from the flames.  It seemed to pour up, like a huge stove jet had opened up beneath it and it was just sitting in the stream, like tap water overflowing a glass but upside down.  I felt the heat on my cheek and outstretched palm as I walked up.  Since then I've learned about wooden frame houses and how quickly they can go up.  The roof hadn't yet collapsed, but there was no doubt that the house was a loss.  The fire itself was a rapid and a greedy thing to look at, fluttering and seeming to shake in all its tiny glowing feathers.  It was big and impossible and insanely warm, and it was happening right where I slept.

I walked up to the deputies, told them I was a resident and asked them what I could do.  They said to wait, they'd want a statement.  I asked if they knew when it had started, they said just a few minutes before, the neighbors down the road had called it in.  I asked if anyone was inside, they said no.  All the way around I could see the bottom of the siding, below the windows, was unharmed.  I said I would be back, and walked towards my car on the pretense of making a call.  My phone was in my pocket, but I didn't remember that at first.  As I walked I could feel the glow on my back.

I lost all my stuff in the fire, that bothered me more than I'd like.

When I think about all the time I spent in school, and how little I learned about life, it troubles me.  Sixteen years, twelve grades and four college.  Seventeen if you count kindergarten.  And only towards the very end did I get the inkling that it was my responsibility to find stuff out for myself.  For sixteen years the game was "I am the teacher, you are the student, I have the information, and will give it to you, your job is to understand it and remember."  They didn't seem to know everything though, there was still a ton to learn, and I was the one responsible for figuring out what I needed to know and how to figure it out.  It wasn't something I was told, I had to intuit it.

Then I get out in the real world, and all I get is knocks on the head because I don't already know stuff.  Insure your apartment in case of fire.  If no one tells you, you just don't know.  Why didn't you ask?  Because they taught me not to, just to listen.  If they had told me I had to think for myself, would I have listened to that?  Probably, but I might not have understood.

I guess some things you have to learn through suffering, it's the only way to make it stick.  I'm beginning to see life as a long series of this sort of lessons.  It's sort of depressing; I am perpetually doomed to understand things only just after I no longer need the lesson.

It's easy to complain, and it doesn't do much to change things.  I just wish I'd known better before it had happened.  It's nobody's fault but mine.

Anyway all my stuff was just gone.  My laptop was in my work bag, and my phone, wallet and keys were all on me.  I keep a spare shirt at the office in case I spill something on myself; that and the clothes I was wearing were all I had.  Most of my photos were on my computer, but my camera was in the house.  All my movies were in the house.  My favorite red sweatshirt was in the house.  My old prints were in the house.  My sketchbooks were in the house.  I'd just gone grocery shopping.

Afterwards I was broke a lot, trying to rebuilt a little life.  Thrift store sofa, watching for sales at department stores.  It was all stuff, and eventually I didn't miss much of any of it, but the things that I had etched my moments onto in passing hurt when they flew away.  I haven't bought a new television yet.  It turns out I'd loaned my copy of Gamera to a friend, when he gave it back I offered to watch it with him, that was fun.

At my car I phoned a friend, left a message.  I turned and watched for a little, but it felt like I was watching a bonfire, something for fun, so I walked back and talked to the deputies, then left the place.  I'm not sorry I didn't stay to watch the rest of it go.  They told me later that the roof fell in a little after I left.  When I get to be the neighbor I'm sure I'll stare, at the time I had no stomach.

When I went back the next morning I got a good look.  It was all hot ash in the middle of the yard, and the thick black smell.  i walked all the way around the square heap of ashes.  It looked strangely small, as if the line it took up along the lawn was shorter now.

It turns out it's not difficult to stay up all night when something like this happens, at least it isn't for me.  I went to a diner I know and got a coffee.  I was supposed to cook dinner, but the smoke smell was in my clothes and I was starting to feel the shock clamping down on my nerves.  I just sat and looked at nothing and drank coffee for a while.  People went in and out, but it wasn't busy, and my waitress left me alone. I didn't realize until the next morning that my phone had died; my charger was in the house.

When the diner closed I went to my car and took a drive.  No destination, just to keep away from my road and clear my head.  I wasn't sleepy; all the coffee probably helped.  But I realized after a while that I was burning gas and would probably soon be broke, so i went to the library and parked.  I noticed the time, it was only two hours before dawn.

I started my car up, moved to another parking place, facing east, and turned it off again.

I've had great difficulty staying up all night on other occasions, especially if it's work-related and a deadline is crushing me slowly into the ground.  That night I barely remembered to feel sleepy, thinking over my house and all the stuff in it in a locked car.  When I checked the time again

That was the long hour.  I somehow got it into my weary head that my house hadn't burned down, that I should go back and sleep there and wake up from this idea that it had burned.  But it had.  But the idea kept returning.  And with it came a feeling I hadn't realized I'd been resisting since I'd first seen the smoke. There was growing in me like the sullen awareness of a splinter, a guilty ache of regret.

When I was a kid, like I said before, I had a pet turtle.  When I first got it I thought it was the best thing, though it stank a little.  Then I got bored with it and forgot about it for a while, then I forgot it altogether, even forgot to feed it, and it died, and its tank dried up.  I always felt bad about that.

But there had been one night i can remember when I'd nearly sat bolt upright in bed, and realized I hadn't fed my turtle.  It had been days, or maybe a week, I couldn't remember.  He needed food, it was my responsibility.  But the strangest thing had happened.  I had shut my eyes, and thought about other things, and hoped it would go away, and gone back to sleep.  I don't think I was willing  the world not to have hungry turtles in it, I think I was just willing myself to go back to the head space where it didn't occur to me to feed him, or at least it didn't bother me.  Later I had remembered again, and it was decidedly too late, and I remembered that night, and it haunted me.

I had meant to move out of that apartment.  I had meant to find a better place to live, maybe a better job, or at least a different version of my job where they would one day let me move forward in a way other than giving me more work to do.  It was all within my power, I knew it all the time, but here I was another year older, and all my stuff reduced to a stinking glowing pile.

I kept watching the clock, the minutes seeming to crawl by, the sky getting no lighter.  I kept wishing the house hadn't burned, that I still had time, that i could still make the change.  Or wishing that I would just go back to not thinking about it, not remembering I could make things better, or not feeling guilty that I'd done nothing about it.

What's odd is, as the hour slowly passed, the sick staring crawl of guilt and time started to pass.  I remember now that as it went away, I wasn't sad that the fire had happened, I wasn't angry or devastated or awe-struck or even existential.  I just remember feeling a little lonesome, and thinking in particular that it would have been good, so good, to have little Pamela for company while I waited out the dawn.

Of course I was grateful, profoundly grateful, to have never adopted her.  But it would have been nice to have her scrabbling up my shirt sleeve with her fierce little needle paws, and wiggling and squealing on the seat beside me.

But I was glad she had gone with someone else, and was safe.  Besides, now I didn't have a place to keep her.

The closest thing I had to an epiphany that morning, thinking over my house burning down, was a realization I had then, as dawn started to fill the sky, that I had been right to assume I'd make a lousy pet parent.

It had bothered me before, in a vague and niggling way, that I had walked away so easily, yet it had seemed like the best thing to do, not to rush into anything.  But I had been not rushing into anything for a long time, just living day to day and getting lazily on with my working life.  If I didn't know for sure what to do next, I would do nothing, or wait and see, or wish that I could go back to not worrying about it.

But I realized that morning that I wanted to be a good pet parent now.  Even if I wasn't one, I wanted to figure out how to become one, and change those things about me to make it happen.  I had an awfully blank slate to start on.  No one could really tell me how to be that kind of person, but I could figure it out for myself.  I would work on it.  There was a lot of work to do.

The sun was just rising.  I started the car.