No one mentions the noise. Survivors, they talk about the brutal heat, the desperate panic, the need for escape. All true. Two A.M. and Beth and I hardly had time to grab Emma, three years old and groggy with sleep, and stumble to the car, hoping there was still a way out. Ash choked the air, thick enough to force us to silence.
We inched forward, windshield wipers scraping across the glass, a row of red brake lights snaking ahead as far as I could see. Finally giving up, we joined the others already on the road. Walking, gasping, hands covering our mouths and noses, trying to reach town two miles downhill, or anywhere, really, just somewhere other than where we were. I took hold of Emma, now fully awake, her eyes searching mine for reassurance. I kept her head buried deep against my shoulder, her body pressed to my chest.
But, still, no one mentions the noise and it’s the roar at that precise moment that sticks to me, jolts me awake even now. A speeding train, a dozen trains, speaks of something manmade. The sound of thirty-foot cedars exploding into flame everywhere around you, just yards away, is altogether different. Primal.
We somehow kept to the road and, exhausted, eyes raw and throats coarse like gravel, eventually made it into town. The community center had been transformed into a makeshift shelter. It filled to overflowing with hollowed-out neighbors who studied the floor, did everything to avoid eye contact for fear of breaking down, making what we’d just been through even more real. And there were others, strangers to us, who somehow carried smiles and acted like they’d been through this and worse before. Never thought I’d be needing a handout, a hand up. But pride falls away quick, and if there’s a lesson in any of this, that might be it.
After that, along with the unceasing gratitude at being alive, being safe, being fed, came the waiting.
On the third day, we were allowed to return. Expecting the worst, Beth stayed back with Emma. I went alone.
The abandoned cars along the road had mutated into a haphazard row of deranged metal sculptures. I recognized ours only by the sight of Emma’s melted car seat. Up the road, beyond the curve, lay our neighborhood. Obliterated. Streetlights twisted and bent low. A random wall or two still standing, somehow defiant. The acrid smell of burnt wood and plastic filling my lungs.
I found our street, then the wreckage of what used to be our home. I crossed into the charred echoes of our living room, everything black and gray with ash. The hardwood floor beneath my feet crackled, brittle and hollow. I decided I’d seen enough and was about to turn back when a speck of sunlight glinted off something in the debris.
A fist-sized porcelain sculpture of a robin perched on a branch, its head tilted, beak open as if about to respond to some question or other, impart some timeless wisdom. It had rested for decades by my mother’s kitchen sink, pointed out the window to her garden beyond. Although it was clearly a robin, she called it her lyrebird after reading a story set in Australia which claimed it was the only species that could converse with every other creature on earth. “Her warbles forever keep me company,” she’d confide with a sparkle in her eye. That small trinket was the one thing I got after she passed some years back, the only thing I wanted. A garage sale tchotchke of zero monetary value, and priceless.
I picked it up, said right out loud, “Well hello, little fella.” I ran my fingers along its familiar edges, its colors muted and worn with age. It was whole, undamaged save for a small crack along one wing.
I pulled it tight to my chest and took in the sky high above. Stark blue, oblivious to the devastation below, and strained my ears, waiting for birdsong.
W. Glewicz is a writer and composer who lives in Washington State in the shadow of Mount Rainier.
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