The Smoke Room by Earl Emerson

Author:Earl Emerson [Emerson, Earl]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi, pdf
Tags: Fiction
ISBN: 9780345484550
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2005-05-31T07:00:00+00:00

23. HEATHER, ME, HIM, AND HIM

WHEN THEY RELEASED me from Harborview at four in the morning, the safety chief drove me to Station 29, where I picked up my car and drove home. I slept until almost eleven, then lay in bed for a long time staring at the same ceiling I’d stared at all those times making love with Iola, who preferred to be on top, running the show.

I was in a state of shock that was hard to explain. I’d thought long and hard at the hospital about turning Tronstad in, but each time I tried to make the decision, I thought about that videotape of me shoving Sears underwater. It was clear on the tape he hadn’t come back up after I shoved him. It looked like murder even to me. Me murdering Sears. Or manslaughter. Or whatever you call it. It scared me enough to keep my mouth shut.

At four in the afternoon, I put a Modest Mouse CD in and drove past Iola Pederson’s home. Bernard’s truck was in the drive, so I didn’t stop. The next two days passed in a fog. Trying to cajole me into retrieving the bonds, Tronstad phoned me every two hours. Johnson called, too, more concerned with whether or not I was planning to blab about Sears’s death than about laying his hands on the bonds, though he did mention the money in his third and fourth calls. And then again somewhere around his ninth call.

I scanned the local newspapers. One headline said, Fire Officer Dies in Freak Mishap. Another said, Firefighter Hero Narrowly Escapes Drowning.

Late Thursday afternoon the three of us attended Sears’s funeral at the same Catholic church on Capitol Hill where Abbott got his send-off. Before, during, and after the service I spoke to no one, a large bandage concealing the scratches on my face. Every time I caught someone staring, I was reminded of how much the white bandage stood out in a sea of black hats and black uniforms.

Parts of the two-hour funeral passed in a blur, while others dragged. It was a gut-wrenching affair. There were bagpipers and hundreds of uniformed personnel, the mourners from other departments, Heather’s rugby teammates, and assorted citizens who’d gone to school with the dead man, had been on committees with him, or had skied with him.

People were beginning to call Station 29 the department’s bad luck station. Ted Tronstad encouraged that line of chatter, possibly because it kept speculation centered around luck instead of the actions or inactions of our crew.

When you don’t like a guy and he dies, in some ways it’s a worst-case scenario. Perhaps because of this, Robert Johnson blathered on at length to anybody who would listen about how hard we’d tried to save Sears. I wanted to tell him to shut up, that he might as well have blurted a confession, but once he got rolling he was impossible to derail. According to Johnson, he’d almost gone into the drink himself trying to fish Sears out, and he didn’t swim any better than Sears.

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