59: Fire

Like a lot of kids like to play with fire. We'd snap off match heads from matches, pop them up and like them. You'd make little paper boats, float them in the toilet and set fire to them. I was fascinated by watching fire.

You know, it was silent, it was powerful, and I just liked the idea of things being consumed. You know, I liked watching paper turn brown and curl, and I like to hear the crackle. I could watch it for hours, you know, nothing else in the world would matter. Later on, at a job when I was bored, you know, we'd like, you know, play with lighters and, you know, banana and fill up cans with lighter gas and, like, you know, cause a flame jet to shoot out one of the holes and stuff.

In a short story, Some Save the World, Susan Paribeau has a character explain what's thrilling to her about setting fires. It's a moment when it or may not go out of control. Susan Parabel writes, the thing about fire is this. It's yours for one glorious moment.

You bear it. You raise it. The first time in a record store downtown, I stood over the bathroom trash can thinking I would not let it grow, that I would love it only to a point and then kill it. That's a trick of fire.

To that 30 seconds, you have a choice. Spit on its, step on it, douse with a can of Coke, but wait one moment too long, get caught up in its beauty. You must grow beyond your control. And it is that moment that I live for.

The power passes from you to it. The world opens up and you with it. I cried in the record store when flame rose above my head. Not in fear of mexicity.

Welcome WBC Chicago. This is American Life. I'm out of glass. Today on our program, stories of people who are not appropriately scared of fire.

Act one, Fire starter. Why one Teenagers set fires and then stop setting them. Act two Centralia. An inextinguishable subterranean fire on the edge of a small Pennsylvania town and why the few remaining residents are not afraid of it.

Act 3 Fire Walk. That act is about a guy who is not afraid of walking on burning coals and how he might have been safer if he had simply taken the simple precaution of being afraid. Act four, the big picture on fire. The really, really, really big picture.

Act 5 the fire with him. Stay with us. Act 1 Firestarter. Our firestarter is 29, lives in New York City, and he moved from a casual interest in fire to arson to actual criminality.

And what's striking about his Story is that he wasn't motivated by anger or revenge or any mean feelings toward anybody. He just wanted to stare at the fire the way a child does, and he didn't want to restrain himself the way an adult does. The serious stuff came when I went to college. There was a.

There was a house on campus that. That got hit by a truck by a drunk driver. And the rumor was that the house was gonna be scheduled for demolition. So my friends and I decided that since it was.

Since it was scheduled for demolition, they were gonna tear it down anyway, that there wouldn't be much harm in setting the house on fire. And we decided to start fire on the house. One night. We went there, we pried the boards off.

The house had been boarded up. We pried the boards off, climbed in the window and lit it on fire, and then climbed out the window and took off. I was. I was like.

I was giddy with excitement. I was. You know, my. My whole body was just, like, it was tingling.

And we stayed away for a good hour or so to make sure we weren't caught at the scene of the crime. But I do remember coming back and seeing the fire trucks there. There was the sense of disappointment because the fire had been put out before the whole house had burned down. I think the fire never really got out of the bedroom.

So there was definitely a disappointment because the whole house hadn't burned down. And that was our goal. And if I could have done things the way I would have chosen to, we would have set the house on fire and would have sat up on a little hill at a safe distance, watching it, you know, drinking beers and watching it. Watching it consume itself.

Watch it slowly, you know, start to build and then peak. And then watch the house fall down and the fire eventually go out and everything just turn to ashes. That would have been. That would have been.

That was. That would have been the way I wanted things to happen. In trying to find a pyromaniac to interview for today's program, one thing we discovered is that, first, it's actually very rare. A real mania.

Somebody with a real mania. Psychological compulsion to set fires. Second, when it does occur, psychologists classify it as a sexual disorder, often as a sign of sexual abuse. That wasn't the case for this guy.

He was mild compared to a real pyreneac. My interest in fire did stop fairly suddenly a couple years ago. I think someone mentioned that I used to be a fire bug. And I realized that I wasn't fascinated by fire anymore.

And I started wondering why that was. And I started thinking back and realizing that my fascination with fire ended right around the first time I got laid. And I was fascinated to find that this was true. I was completely unaware of it at the time.

It wasn't until five or six years after it stopped that I looked back and realized that I had stopped playing with fire right around the time I started having sex. I think now I have a normal relationship with fire. I don't use fire to express myself anym. Act 2 Centurion this is the story of a town decimated by fire.

Oh, this was all built up along here. Our post office was right here at this corner homes across the street. This is built up pretty solid home. I'm Ryan goes outside the window of the municipal building, the locust in center Street.

So it used to be the middle town. Right here on this side of the home was a big store, grocery store, general store. Sold just about everything here. The railroad used to run across here.

So describe this now. Well, it's just mostly highways here now. Home during there. Only one store now stands on center Street.

Vacant lots around it. Perhaps two dozen homes are left out of hundreds. Used to be here Santoria one's had 3,000 people in it. Now there are 40.

And the fire that decimated this town, that scattered its inhabitants far and wide, never touched a single home, never cinched a building. This is a town destroyed by the idea of fire and fire itself never came. The fire that led to the evacuation of Centurion began out on the edge of town in an abandoned strip mine pit in 1962. There are 30 underground mine fires.

Like the spring rap in Spain right now. They can run slowly. Years must not danger anybody. But Centuria built over old coal mines.

And the fear was that the fire would jump from mine to mine and end up at the center of town. The coal is burning one small section at the end of our borough. And it has never gone anywhere else. Never.

I met with five of the remaining residents of Centuria, one eighth of the town in the town council's meeting room. Jocko Marinski, a science teacher nearby high school was quick to pull out various government charts and reports that prove, he says, that the subterranean fire is not a danger to the town. This is off the. This is off the government's website.

Apparently that's what they told us back when. This is from the Department of Community and Economic Development. That's the boys who are basically empowering this whole thing, running the whole program. And you can see that basically you have the burrosan trailer here and.

And you have fire being spread in this direction, that direction, in all these other directions. Southwest. Yeah. And Centralia is the only place any direction isn't coaling.

And in fact, this federal study says that that's what should happen. And because there's a mine coal underneath Centralia, the coal underneath. Right now we're at the coal underneath. This is underwater.

And there's no way that even government will try and try and tell you that coal underwater burns because it just doesn't. I was involved in this from 1969 on. Helen Wilmar says the reason the government is trying to convince the people of Centralia that their town is in danger and evacuated the town is because Central as much as 3.2 billion. That's billion dollars worth of coal.

This is what this whole entire situation is about, is about our coal. And I don't care who you talk to, I don't care what they say. They are not telling the truth. They could talk to liberal in the face about how, you know, we should get out of here because we are in danger from gases, from subsidences, from all these horrible elements.

And that isn't true at all. If we didn't have any coal beneath us, Centralia would be right where it is. The entire community. There aren't a lot of hard evidence to prove this government conspiracy.

No paper trial, no witnesses, no names they're willing to name on the record. What they do seem to be entirely correct about is this. 35 years the fire has not moved from the edge of town toward the center and has not injured anyone. What seems to have happened in Centralia is this.

The fire burned for 19 years. And in 1981 came one of those turning point made for TV events that can take your average ongoing unextinguished subterranean fire and turn it into statewide media circus. On February 14, 1981, Todd Domboski was walking across his backyard when the ground beneath him suddenly gave way and he was knee deep in steaming mud. This is a video made by the state to be on policymakers on history of fire.

Fortunately, a friend heard his cries for help and managed to reach into the hole and drag him out by the collar of his coat. Government officials who were visiting Centralia that day were summoned to the scene. Someone in their party dropped a large block into the hole and no one heard his kid. Bottom.

Before this story hit the TV news, the big political fight in central. Townspeople trying to get the government block fire to put it out. After the spread hit the genius, the government declared there was no Way to tell where to find my guns. They decided to evacuate.

Bill Clinton created relocation effort. Says it was the only reasonable decision. Twice the state tried to erect barriers to block the fire, he says, and twice to chunk the barriers. They transhash supposed to be an uncombustible material.

And this was to keep the fire from crossing the road that is now closed off up the top of the hill by the Catholic church. Well, the fire did it. It went through there. And it was on the other side of the road.

And then they put a clay barrier on top of that and tried to keep it because there were fumes. And I honestly believe that when a fire gets to the magnitude that it is now. That it's like a hurricane or anything else. You don't tell the fire what it's going to do.

It does what it damn well please. The government calculated that it cost $42 million to buy everyone's home. The request was put to the federal government. Once people heard about the potential money.

So I sell them a more town split. Lots of people living in these old houses. But by the coal companies. Decades before.

Very, very few people moved out of this town because of the fire. I want to make that perfectly clear. The government came in with big bucks. A lot of the homes their children had all left.

They were raised. They were left with these white elephants, big houses, a lot of it need fixing. So they knew that where to make the most money was to sell your home to the government. Two community organizations faced off.

One to keep people in Centralia and the fire out. The other to sell out and get out. People in the other camp knew where Helen Woolmer stood. They were both smoking her face in public for the passport.

Saturday when she worked a bank tower job. Somebody with an Amity firecracker on her lawn. Somebody else threw a cat at her. I know one thing.

There are people that moved out of this town that can't wait till we're all out. Because then and only then will they have peace of mind. Because as long as there are someone left in Centralia. As adamant and committed as we are here in this town.

They will never have peace of mind on what they did. Because they know. They many, many of them know, knew that they were instrumental in having Centralia in the condition that they are that we are now. They would stop talking to you.

They would stop being friendly. And that moment, the very moment that occurred, you know that they were going to be next. That was the main thing. They would just stop being friendly.

They would stop being neighborly. And that would, that would. That was your first indication that they had turned the other way around. That people that stayed there were mad at them.

Oh yeah, there were a lot of people mad at me. Yeah. If you talked to former Central area residents, Jerry Wisershansky. No, no.

Says he had a heart attack. Wanted to move to a house where we wouldn't have to shove a coal down the basement into the furnace. He and several other former residents did confirm with Helen Wilmer, tormentor that he was never scared of the underground fire reaching his house. Never scared of underground gases seeping up and killing him.

Mostly, he says, the great deal of government cage. $55,000 from a $3,000 investment. A 2,000% profit. Now this was the Sun Rob, about a 10 minute drive from Centralia and now Carno.

Lots of forms and trillion slaves. Perhaps as they held it a long time before they moved. But Centralia changed. We were being bombarded with 110 buildings at one time.

It was just getting to be too much. You know, the town wasn't like it was. And if it was stated we would follow the state of fear. But you know, when more and more people were going, it was just time to go.

As with most government operations on the scale of this evacuation, there are really two ways that people look what happened in Central as a conspiracy. The way remaining townspeople see it, very simple human incompetence. The way Jerry Sunrob sees it, what would the government do now? They spend all that money, they're not gonna take it, say they were wrong.

They're not gonna admit a mistake. But all the guys who would have made the mistake are already probably gone now anyway. It's 20 years ago. Yeah.

The federal government's. Federal government. They've admitted 20 years ago or 20 years down the line, they want to admit that they made a mistake. They can't just say, ah, fire.

Move. That wasn't this way, went this way. When there's $42 million involved. I guess, you know, I mean, they'd spend a lot more money on different crazy things.

But you just don't. You ain't gonna see them offer them land back even to sell it and make money or start the town over it. Actually, there's a third way to view what happens in tribe. The way the bill claimed had the relocation effort ceases, which is a government program that actually worked.

A rare example of government competence or generosity. Don't get me wrong. I agree with people over there that for a long time the government did not respond to this thing. The way they should have.

And that's why it's got to the point that it is. But when the government finally came through for them and said, look, we're gonna give you a chance to get out of here. And not only that, we're gonna give you a chance to build a new house and make yourself whole. We're not just gonna give you the.

Maybe the. If you're lucky, the $10,000 your property's worth so that you can actually go out and afford to build a new home on the market. And that's pretty hard to pass up for most people. 1992, after a decade of voluntary relocation of the people from Centrality, the state condemned their remaining homes there.

Told everyone they had to get out to Cardamom Domain. The mayor and town council back then took this to court and put it all the way up to the U.S. supreme Court. They did not win one case.

Then the town council back then resigned, left town saying it was over. They'd lost. Legally, no one has the right to stay in Centralia anymore. The 40 diehards who still live there are fell in Walmart.

These final departures were the virus. Betrayal. I had a neighbour who we fought shoulder to shoulder for years and years. And then she got involved with.

I mean, she turned. Yeah, but not only that. It's not only she didn't. She turned, she.

She stopped talking. She, you know, she turned into a different person. Absolutely different person. Where did she live?

Nearby Stone. She lives in about four miles, I guess. Very close. Very, very close.

But you're not social or anything. Well, I mean, that's her. That was her decision. No, not social.

I mean, we were neighbors and we were. Got along wonderfully, wonderfully together. That was sad. Now, in the long stretch of grass that used to be in the middle of town, someone put in some benches and a sign that says, we love Centralia.

Trey Weisselzhansky and the other old man who left town because of the idea of a fire, travel from their homes elsewhere, come back to Centralia not for the town that it is, but for the idea of the town it was. And now I go up there and we. About seven, eight guys go up there at nighttime and whatever nice. And we have a little hot dog or hot bottle of beer or something similar.

And then we talk about the old town and another pain away. Children died already and their homes are being tore down. One lot is paralyzed now and the other one, he can't drive anymore. So it's paid in the way up there too.

I remember When I was a girl, our house caught on fire. And I'll never forget the look on my father's face as he gathered me in his arms and raced to the Roman building I had on the cave. And I stood there shivering and watched the whole world go up in flames. My observer, I said to myself, is that all there is to a farm?

Is that all there is? Is that all there is? If that's all there is, my friends, then let's keep dancing. Let's break out the booms and have a bowl.

Act three Fearless. This is the story about somebody who wasn't scared of fire and who did get burned because of it. He came, studied Buddhism, meditated, avoided red meat. When a friend sent him an email inviting one to firewalk retreat, he thought, why not give it feelings for a while?

The idea of the retreat is that you go meditate and at the culmination of the weekend, walk across hot coals. To make a long story short, he ended up with near third degree burns. Admitted difficult to walk. For weeks, he spoke with this American life pursuing a pack.

He had read a lot about firewalks. He knew the Rockana ritual practice around the world. And the story was always the same. No one gets burned.

Never happens. The one person he knew who had gone on a firewalk didn't get burned. The leaders of the retreat were so confident no one would get burned, they didn't even bother to bring first aid supplies. The way the weekend started was we participated in a whole bunch of exercises that were designed to peel off these layers of Personas that we build up and show to the world to protect our deepest selves.

How did you peel those layers off? We're all dying to know. Well, one exercise had the people there pair off into groups and one person would simply stare into the other's eyes while the person who was being stared at would have to answer questions like, who are you? The whole idea was to gather together this group of strangers to share with each other their most intimate selves.

Why are you laughing? I don't know. You participated. Well, I guess I'd warn you that much of what I have to say could very well be replete with New Agey jargon, which I think is kind of funny, but I do believe in a lot of stuff.

After the sun went down on that Saturday, we all formed a human chain with one part of the chain or one person standing at the pile of wood and the other person at the point where the fire was going to be built. And so every single log that Went into building this fire, passed along this human chain and we surrounded the fire in the circle. And is it hot on your face? It was unbelievably hot.

We were standing a good four or five feet away from it and you could still feel the heat and still at the point where it's on your face and it's so hot and it's this huge bonfire and you're looking at this, this, you know, orange inferno. Thank you. You're still not scared, you're feeling. What are you feeling?

There isn't any fear, nor is any concern. There's this kind of dull sense of contentment and peace. Sure, the dull contentment and peace that precedes a third degree burn. Right.

So one explanation for why people don't get burned in fireworks is that they're so nervous they sweat and that layer of moisture protects their face. In other words, he got burned because he was too certain that he wouldn't be if he'd been more scared of fire. If he'd been nervous and sweated, he probably wouldn't have gotten hurt. You know, I had this conviction that I wouldn't get hurt.

I can't really think of an explanation for why I had this, but I just simply didn't believe that it could hurt me. I mean, the moment that I stepped on the coals, I knew I was in trouble. And I could just feel my flesh sizzling. Oh, my God.

And I don't know what it was in me that, that compelled me to keep walking, but I made it across and collapsed into one of the co leaders arms. I was in a state of panic and I was at a point where I felt like my entire belief system had just collapsed from under itself. So I'm sitting off to the side. These other people are also taking their turns going across the fire and are you saying anything?

Do they know that you've been burned? Actually, the way that I composed myself, everyone thought, oh, yeah, he just made it across, no problem. No, I didn't say or do anything to suggest to the others that I was in a great deal of pain. Wow, you're perpetuating the racist cliche about your people.

You are inscrutable. You didn't say anything. Nobody had a clue. Earlier in that day, on these three by five pieces, three by five index cards, we wrote down our three greatest fears and we each took turns, one at a time, pointed up to the fire and tossed the index card into the fire.

What were those fears? I guess the simplest way to put it was the fear of Speaking. And that was what you put on the card. Yeah.

He finally did tell everyone how badly burned he was. He forced himself to speak. And he looks back on that moment when he had to overcome exactly the fear. He had named his moment of revelation because he got burned on his firewalk.

He had to speak. I feel like I got burned because getting burned was the appropriate experience for me to have at that point. Had I made it across unscathed, you know, it would have made me think, oh, yeah, I'm fine. Everything's cool.

I'm on the path. I'm getting there. Yeah. I think that if I didn't get burned, I could easily imagine that, you know, I would have gone.

If this makes any sense, I would have become less, you know, mindful in the way that I live. Ain't nobody been saying come on, say it again I want to get cool as fire and I know the reason why I'm so much in love but you can't leave me and I ain't gonna try Every time I see your face My heart starts burning Every time I heard your hand it's that burning Every time I call your name My little heart voice to blame you to blame on the fire man, oh man o man we'll come up. We step back for the big picture on humans and fire, the really big picture. That's in a minute when our program continues.

This is American Life and Myra Glass. Each week on our program, of course, teaches a theme. A variety of writers and performers to contribute various kinds of stories on the theme. Today's show, People who are Not Afraid of Fire.

We've arrived at Act 4 as promised, the big picture. Stephen Pine, a professor, believes that we Americans, as a people, as a group, are too afraid of fire. And he says this has all sorts of practical consequences. For example, Yellowstone National Park.

Pine says the Forest Service policy of suppressing fires for the last hundred years out of fear of fire has led to an incredible overgrowth of flammable material, which caused the fires in 1988 to destroy half the park. In other words, by trying to avoid fires, we called them down upon us. Time says that what humans have done throughout history is set fires in a controlled way. And the part of our problem today is the way we think about fire that we do not see as a practical tool, that we're afraid of it.

That's a very reason to and in some ways, a bizarre perception. There are good reasons to be afraid of fire. It's dangerous, it can be unpredictable. But people have always paired that perception of fire with the sense that it was necessary, essential, that it's what made the world habitable.

I mean, if you think about fire origin myths and all cultures have them almost always the story goes that humans are sort of a less capable or less well endowed species. Then through various means, usually by guile or theft, humans get it or are given it and then become powerful. Then in a sense, they become human. And now the essential features of who we are become apparent.

In many ways, we really are the keepers of the planetary flame in the sense that somehow, if we could abolish fire, it would be in our interest or the Earth's interest is a very peculiar and very modern and urban one. Let me ask you, when you talk about societies where fire is valued, what societies are you thinking of? Are we talking about most agricultural societies? Well, we're talking about almost every society other than basically an urban and industrial one.

And industrial societies have sort of sublimated fire into machines. And we're not burning living biomass so much as fossil fuels. Fossil biomass. In other words, we've gone from actually having real bonfires to these tiny little combustions inside engines.

That's right. And we have essentially people's contact with fire, particularly in cities. People's contact with fire is almost always negative. That city is not a nice habitat for fire.

It occurs in wild forms. It's dangerous. So people used to grow up, if you were in a rural setting, you grew up burning off debris in the spring, burning off your final fields, burning off the pastures to get rid of the old grass and start the new. All kinds of little sort of spring cleaning fires, if you will, and fires for other purposes.

And it seems to me all that kind of personal contact with fire is gone. And what we have largely left is a kind of imagery, a kind of virtual fire. Fires as presented for their telegenic effect, or fires used to dramatize other phenomenon. And in almost every case, the fire is negative.

Actually, as you described this, I realized all the movies and all the previous movies I've seen lately where fire is a huge element in those movies. There's a whole sequence of movies out now where volcanoes set cities on fire. I was at one of the Star wars movies and one of the things that struck me was just how much of the movie was simply about blowing things up. Blowing things up.

And at least there is a more benevolent and ancient image in the last of it where you have the funeral pyre for Darth Vader. But in general, you're right. Almost anything you can think of now Fire is used to sort of give visual and dramatic power to the story. But are you arguing in some way that we have this visual fetish for fire?

Because fire is not part of our everyday lives anymore. I think we're allowing that to remain unchallenged because in our personal sense, we don't have. Sense of. Fire is a good force.

Fire is a useful tool. Fire is something that makes the world habitable. Well, what kind of geography do you want to see? Well, I would just like to see hearth fires.

I would like to say. I would like to see some. Some agricultural fires. I would like to see the Forest Service pair Smokey Bear, you know, with a complementary figure.

Right. Smokey's twin brother, separated at birth or something, and he's there with a drip torch. And now they're together again, you know, arm in arm. A paired SAP.

That's the way it should be. And children would sometimes follow the example of, you know, Smokey, the. You know, the one who sets the fires. The other Smokey.

Right. I don't know if a lot of parents are gonna go with you on that one. Well, you know, it's not designed for urban environments, but I would like to have it in our consciousness that such things are possible. Are you arguing somebody?

We need to get back to fire. We need to embrace fire more than we are. Well, in certain. I would like to see us first intellectually embrace it and recognize that it is really part of our heritage as a species.

We have a species monopoly over it. And to sort of renounce that seems to me very strange. We have a species monopoly, meaning other animals have not mastered fire, and we have. That's right.

I'm sure we will never allow any other species. I was gonna say, if snakes get fire, what will we do? I think we're in big, big trouble. I mean, our whole premise is that we control it.

If cows get fire, well, suddenly the whole thing comes undone. Yeah. Actually, I've written a novel on this, and it was a real mess because I'm not trying to write novels, but the premise seems to me a legitimate one to think about. I mean, maybe we've done such a bad job as a species that nature finally turns the task over to somebody else who can do it.

Right. Stephen Pine is the author of the books Burning Bush, Fire in America, and World Fire. The Fire Within Fiamis. This next root isn't really bad.

Fire. It's called fire. It mentions fire, but his name is Raynny Sparks. But basically, we just really liked this story, and we thought we'd end the show with it.

Today I was carsick from reading sometimes in the car, but I couldn't stop reading. There was an article wedged in next to a tight column of helpful household hints right above today's Chuckle. The article reported a study that proved that in emergency situations, people respond more seriously when someone screamed fire than when someone screamed help. Your average person just didn't respond to the word helping more.

The word had lost his punch. The study coordinator suggested the people should scream fire even when there was no fire. Below that article was a piece about how putting a brick in your toilet could eventually conserve enough water to fill a kiddie pool. I stopped reading them because my husband, Stephen, was yelling at me.

He was trying to yell at me and park the car at the same time. It was too much for him, that was obvious. He was yelling things like, you know, I told you, you God damn it, what did I say? He could tell he was thinking about too many things at once and nothing was getting done right.

We've been driving around and around the Cramp streets to Lincoln park over 40 minutes searching for spot reading. That junk is just wasting brain cells, he said. You might as well sit into waiting on the tv. Traffic makes me nervous.

It helps if I read, I told him. That's because you're not driving. We've been going back and forth like this ever since he picked me up after work. He was mad because I hadn't asked my boss for a raise.

My annual review had come and gone, and I hadn't, as he put it, made my move. Steve, on the other hand, had pulled a 20% raise out of his review, plus an office with a window. A major move up. He turned it a personal best.

He was disgusted with me. In the tiny cubicle in which I spent my day shuffling data without any attempted advancement, he wasted weeks before my review day, gave me pep talks to boost what he turned my corporate competitiveness. Either step up, pat, he said, or you get stepped over. It's that simple.

Let them know you're on the move. Walk faster down hallways. Make quality eye contact. Judging from the way it silently nod yes, yes, yes.

Every new criticism my boss had cited as reasons for giving me only a cost of living increase, I hadn't managed much of a killer instinct. My secret dream to breed golden retrievers out of two acres in the suburbs seems to be moving further and further away. Stephen drew the car into the alley behind her building. This was the sign that we were giving up our parking search for the day.

He backed us in next to a dumpster surrounded by new parking signs and broken glass. We already have 15 outstanding $100 tickets for parking in the Sally. 10 was the suggested limit before they towed, but Steven refused to take mass transit. He had a system.

Every time he parked the car, he turned the wheel as far right as they go. He was convinced this made it impossible for the car to be towed. Unfortunately, Steven was a man of many such theories. He insisted that light beer was 90% water and that all TV networks were working together behind the scenes.

He flipped up another 10 o' clock news shows, comparing anchor people, graphics, weather reports, until inevitably he hit two shows doing special report on the same subject or two networks airing the same commercial at the same time. See, look at this. You have the screen. This is exactly what I'm talking about.

Steven parks so close to the dumpster I had to crawl over the gear shift to his side to get out. We walked quickly up the alley to the street. Just as we turned into our block, he grabbed my arm. Pat, have I died and gone to heaven?

Am I having a stroke? A lone station mining wooden siding was pulling out a few feet ahead of us, inch by inch, exposing pavement as dark as new tar and a gleaming white curb. This space hasn't seen sunlight in decades. It was like seeing a new $100 bill.

I swallowed hard, sucking my cheeks in excitement. Is that a spot or is that a spot? Steven was grinning so hard his face began to leap and twitch, his fingers flexing in and out against my arm like a cat clawing a blanket. It's a spot, all right, I said.

A big one. You want to bet on how many seconds before it's gone? Listen, he said in a quick whisper. Go stand in while I get the car.

Don't let anyone in. Not anyone, Steven. You can't save spots by standing in them, I said. This isn't kindergarten.

This is the kind of thing people get shot over. Just stand there. You guys get somewhere. Am I right?

His voice reached a threatening pitch. Sweat was beaded up on his forehead. Pat, get in that spot. I stepped forward into the space, staring down at the indentations as burgundy loafers made a strip of grass between the sidewalk of the street.

I curled my hands into fists and pressed my fingernails into my palm so hard I snapped off a nail. I felt like sobbing. These were acrylic nails that had cost a fortunate lovely lady a nail salon. With lick, I forced my fingers out straight and dropped the broken nail.

A flash of fluttering pink. Stephen disappeared into the alley, A minute passed in silence. I detected the faint smell of something green lurking underneath the city air. I closed my eyes for a moment, imagining a perfect lawn, a cement patio and golden retrievers and wire mesh kennel.

Headlights swept across me. Then a car turning the corner. A big rumbling car, but behind the wheel a delicate man, so dwarfed by his car I imagined him propped up on telephone books. To reach the wheel, his window rolled down.

He pushed his head out, carefully maneuvering a worn Cubs cap through the open window. He said something, but I couldn't quite catch it. His voice was high then, freakishly feminine. I stepped forward, but still I couldn't hear what man was saying, even though I saw his neck training veins bulging as he raised his voice.

I just couldn't quite catch it. Or at least I hoped I hadn't, because what I thought he said was, are you gonna move or I'd like to run you over. I glanced toward the alley. No sign of Steven.

The man lifted his car into park and lifted himself up so that half his torso came up out the window. This time I heard him clearly. Are you trying to save that spot? He smiled at me.

I looked down around me at the space, and nodded. My husband was pulling up from the alley. We both turned, staring down the alley. Nothing.

You think there's room for two of them in the ass? I stared across the empty space, measuring car lengths with my eyes. This was just the kind of spatial relationship task I'd done poorly at school. I don't know, I said.

I mean, I guess before I could work on my reasoning, he smiled at me again. I sent him back a wide grin. He returned a soft, knowing stare just as the man pulled into the parking spot, and I saw with a jolt of fear that there was definitely not gonna be room for two cars after all. Our car appeared at the mass of the alley with Steven hunched over the wheel.

He looked at the spot being taken, looked at me, then squealed and reversed back down the alley. Was that your husband? Man asked. He was out of his car now.

He had on a black T shirt and shiny like a bike pants. His arms and legs were pale and bony and hung helplessly from his torso. He was here a minute ago, I said. He backed down into the alley.

I guess he thought there wasn't room. Well, what kind of car does he drive? The man asked. A Nissan, I told him.

Oh, he can fit. He can definitely fit. Go get him. I can go further, I'm sure of it.

I had my doubts, but remembering my shared smiles, I moved up onto the sidewalk and got across to the alley. Just as I stepped away from the spot, a car turned up the block. My Cadillac. I looked back.

Go on. The man waved me forward. I'll save the spot. Besides, he lowered his voice.

It's a Caddy. She'll never fit in a million years. I smiled. The man shot back a smirk.

I headed down the alley. Stephen was still parked next to the Dumpster. Again I knocked on the glass. He held his finger on the window button.

The glass hung down into the door. I'm sorry, I told him. I thought there was room. The guy says he'll try and move up if you want to pull in again.

No one, steven said, his voice arcing up towards hysteria. And this entire planet in any car from any country could fit into that spot. I'm not gonna embarrass any of us by trying. What do you want to do, then?

I asked. Okay. Okay. He let out a long, theatrical burst of air.

I'll go through the motions. Why not? Why don't we just sleep in the car tonight, hook the TV to the dashboard, and just wait for the police to show up in the morning? He stepped from the clutch, the skin around his eyes and mouth quivering violently.

Go on, Ayal. You can do it. I turned and ran back up the street. Halfway there, Stephen burst past me, motor roaring.

When I turned the corner, the man was in his car, pushing up against the bumper car in front of him. There was a squeal of metal rubbing against metal. The car in front moved up an inch or two and then slammed into the back bumper of the next car up. The man turned the car off, jumped out smiling.

He created at most another 4 or 5 inches of space. Meanwhile, Steven had pulled halfway to the spot and pulled back out again. Finally he screeched off again, down into the alley for the third time. The man and I stood in silence on the sidewalk as a Honda came around the corner and glided smoothly into the spot.

Two girls jumped out. Marlo's apartment is that way, one of them said to the other. She's got this new futon couch in faux marble. I caught the perfume in the air as they clicked away down the sidewalk.

Something between watermelon and lilies, steven said. Foes for wimps. He liked earth tones. Everything had to be earth tones so that our apartment ended up looking like a pile of dirt.

I walked down the alley. Steven was spent over the trunk of the car, pushing down hard enough to make the car bounce. Damn this trunk, he said. It's never worked right since we were broken into.

I'm sorry I gave away our spot, I said. I knew in a second he wouldn't fit. He snapped. Not a million years.

He lunged one last time onto the trunk, and I clipped painfully into the lock. I shouldn't have done it, I said. I know that now. It doesn't matter, Pat, he said, turning to face me, resting his weight against the car.

What's one more ticket? At this point we might as well start parking in bus stops and handicap zones. There were footsteps behind us. It was a man had taken our spot.

He stood a moment, staring at us, pushing his shirt down to his bike pants. Your car is big for a Nissan, he said finally. Yes, dion said. And heavy.

Burns a lot of oil. I'm sorry I took your spot, the man said. My car's bigger than I thought. Do you live here?

He pointed to our building. We nodded. I just moved in, he said. Last week during the storm.

We headed up the alley and ran to the front courtyard, the man talking as we walked, following a step behind. I just moved in, like I said, Nori. I can't take the noise. I held the gate open and the three of us were standing in the courtyard.

We stopped, surrounded by our building on three sides and behind us the street high above us, the third floor. Maybe someone was practicing a clarinet, and in one of the open windows on the first floor I could hear a woman talking softly. Dad's a good kitty. Mama loves a good baby kitty.

Do you have a problem with the noise? The man asked. Sure, steven said. Everybody does.

Frankly, the man said, I don't know if I can take it. The one above me walks back and forth all night long. That's not normal in my book. You should talk to her, I offered.

We were standing in a circle, but suddenly, as if he made a decision, the man stepped forward towards Stephen, putting his back to me. He kept talking. I went up there twice already and she said she's called the police on me. Fine, I told her.

It's my piece being disturbed, not hers. Get a broom, stephen said. I've used a broom. What?

The man said, stepping closer on the ceiling. Steven explained. Oh, so you do have noisy neighbors, the man said, excited. We did.

Stephen told them they were old people banging around in wheelchairs all day. And the man died. That ended it. You mean the woman quieted down without him?

The man asked, thrusting in front of me. So I take a step back against the wall of the building. Oh no, steven said. Nothing like that.

Well, like I say, I just moved in. The man said, interrupting. His voice was growing hoarse. And I have friends on Briar, you know, right around the corner.

They have parking there. We have to pay, and the waiting list is so long you practically have to kill someone to move up. His voice sped up. The indoors more expensive, but not so much, really.

You have to realize outdoors crazy. You're getting no protection at all. Zip. He caught his breath and stepped back onto my foot.

I slid along the bricks out of his way. You know, he continued, I don't know between people around here, but making it points to tell everyone I meet. My friends on bar told me someone was robbed gunpoint in your lobby the other night. I mean, the only reason I'm telling you this is the right around the corner.

If you look at the same kind of lobby we do, you know, outer door in the mailboxes and the lock door, they wait for you to come get your mail. I want to ruin your night. But robbed, gunpoint? That's the worst, isn't it?

I looked up at the sky. A helicopter was clicking past in the darkness. It was one of those questions. Would you rather be burned to death or frozen?

That's why I always carry $10 in my wallet, steven said. What do you mean? The man asked, stepping forward now towards Steven. I haven't heard this one.

$10 is usually not they won't shoot, steven said. They just want something. He spoke slowly, his face luminescent under the street lights. I stepped forward, trying to catch Stephen's gaze over the man's shoulders.

I just read something I think you'll both find interesting, I said. My voice sounded rolling, crazy. I turned, Stephen's arms blocking his chest, the man swiveling around in the point of one toe. Actually, it's right along this vein of conversation, I said, pausing for breath, trying to think how Steven might tell it.

They say, I said, voice rising up high, that is the professionals, that when you're attacked you should never screen help because nobody listens. No one takes that word seriously anymore. Is this a joke? The man asked.

I don't think I've heard this one. My roommate has a book of a thousand space shuttle jokes. I mean, kill life, right? Steven was staring at me as if I'm completely broken with reality.

Gypsy moss beat the wings noisily against the shining lamps of the doorway. The clarinet player had stopped. I feel like the whole building was silent, waiting. They have statistics that prove this, that in an emergency I was asking for air.

Now it seems more complicit than when you scream fire. Even there is no actual fire. Steven's face was bright red, the vein pulsing the center of his forehead. Suddenly the man spoke.

Fire. He asked, do I have this right? We stepped forward in unison, Steven and I almost swallowing the man up. Fire, we said at precisely the same moment, with precisely the same inflection.

I felt my inside sleep up. Steven's eyes flashed to mine and he swags. Frank settled down out in the valley. He hung his wild years and a nail that he drove through his wife's forehead.

He sold used office furniture out there on San Fernando Road and assumed a $30,000 loan at 50 and a quarter percent. Put it down paying my little two bedroom lease. His wife was a spent piece of used jet trash, made good Bloody Marys, kept her mouth shut most of the time. A little Chihuahua and Carlos that had some kind of skin disease and was totally blind.

They had a thoroughly modern kitchen, self cleaning oven, the whole bit. Frank drove a little sedan, they were so happy. One night Frank was on his way home from work, stopped at the liquor store, picked up a couple of Mickey's Big Mouse, dragged him in the car and went to the Shell station, got a gallon of gas in a can, drove home, doused everything in the house and torched it. Parked across the street, laughing, watching it burn all Halloween orange and chimney red.