"Believe Me" by Andrew Archer

[ShortStoryContest]

The following story has been selected as a featured runner-up in our 2015 short story contest (Contest Theme - "The Self-Destructiveness of Vengeance and Hate")

"Believe Me" by Andrew Archer

“I guess I’ll have to take your word for it, but I don’t believe you.” My dad would always say sh*t like that. I’d come home from school talking about my day and sharing some anecdote with my mom; “Then Mrs. Allen told us that her husband talked to Ronald Reagan!” He would set the evening paper onto the kitchen table and in one motion caress his brown tobacco filled pipe. His eyes would swing casually like a heavy blanket on a clothes line. The wooden funnel was removed once and then reinserted as to allow him to relight as well as rethink what was just suggested.

With a cloud of smoke exiting from his nostrils and some last minute departure from his mouth he said, “Keith spoke with the Governor of California, did he?”

“Yeah, he went to Lous Ann-gel-iss for his work.” Although my father frightened me I was never afraid to defend my opinion. This was true at ten and more-so now as an adult.

“Mr. Allen works for Union Pacific, does he not?” Socratic dialogue was a common tool that he used. Through rigorous inquiry, he would attempt to gain a consensus. His stoic look and earnest attention were made to unravel the basic assumptions I had growing up. These indelible memories of our shared dialogues are an impetus for the pursuit of self-examination.

“Yes sir. He manages a ‘crew’ and those fellas work on layin’ and fixin’ track all day long. He’s a super-vicer or like a boss.” My confidence grew as I was able to submit the ostensible background or minutia details of the story I had been told. “The men use blew-torches to heat the metal and sometimes another gentleman would need to spray waters on the track cuz fires would start, but heee—, well, Mr. Keith Allen, hee watches the men to make sure that they are safe when they use those torch fire things. Like ah, a safey-expector?”

He grinned and with entertained affect he leaned his head down closer to my four foot eye level.

Thinking back to this memory provides a very dualistic set of emotions, because you see my father enjoyed teaching others, but he also derived great pleasure in watching others struggle. Once more, watching others fail.

“Yeah, old Keith is more of a quality assurance man. That’s probably why he accidentally parks diagonal on the lawn some 1 AM’s. He wouldn’t want a dystopian driveway where cars erroneously bump that old Buick of his.”

He was no more sarcastic than he was intelligent and he was a smart man.

“Son, what you mean is ‘safety inspector.’ Mr. Allen keeps the other men safe as well as the people around him by predicting and eliminating hazards.”

There was a competitive history between Keith and my father that predates this story in particular. The fact that Keith stopped working for the railroad and all together for that matter soon after the incident especially perturbed my father. That much I already knew.

“Mrs. Allen said that the sparks and flames got really big cuz the wind was so windy one day. It is really flat like a pancake in Cal-eh-fourn-ia. Uumm, so there was lots of fire that could move side to side with nothing, like with no space in the way. Oh, and they were by a busy road out in the desert, so more flat there too.”

Dad smoked the tobacco leaves. His presence was that of a hired sage as he pensively burned the rich incense into the air with trails of secondhand smoke. I remember thinking at this young age about the irony of the scene; the trajectory of the smoke was like steam pressured stokes from a locomotive’s boiler billowing in the opposite direction of its route. The overhead ceiling instigated this reversing process as his smoke escaped above his head.

The confident gestures turned to a pantomiming display of what I imagined the flames looked like on that day. Distances between my outstretched arms or more so, hands as measuring tools represented the environment I described.

In-between puffs, he clutched his tobacco pipe the way one holds a small, unannounced bird’s nest in their palm. With this vista I could clearly see the distention of the withdrawing ashy material in his bowl.

“These flames got out-of-hand I imagine, because of the wind and attraction fire has to oxygenated conditions. This is called a ‘chemical reaction’ son, which is very, very volatile.” The pedantic nature of his explanation was incongruent to my intellectual capacity at the time, but I tried my best to follow his pitch, attitude or more so body language that was now disconcerting.

“Yes, there was great danger for these men, because Mrs. Allen says that they could not make the fire-oxo-gen go away with the water sprayers. See they had these water things too like in case the blew-torchers made this kind of fire. Yeah, she said sometimes this would happen, buuut, umm the fire would be small, like this big or maybe like this.”

“This big?” he said as he stretched his bronzed, muscular arms. His remark was condescending as his physical illustration was a gross distortion of mine.

“Yeah, I tink so.”

“That must have been quite a mess for these guys, but I surmise from history as I know it that ole Keith was right on top of this disaster? He has been a supervisor for many years with Union Pacific, yes?”

“But Dad, there was the road right next to the tracks and Mrs. Allen said the crew un-derr-es-simated this or something,” as I swept both arms like a crafted baseball swing and follow-through, “so it blew right on the cars stopped on the road Dad.”

“These cars must have been in for quite a show with that fire going on. Ya see, and you will learn this as you get older,” pulling hard on his pipe, “that people are voyeuristic in nature. They are spectators to the mishaps of people. Like the way you watch the television son; humans cannot help but look despite potential threat. You understand that this is why the cars stopped?”

He relit his tobacco leaves and watched the flame gently curl into the dark basin.

I am quite sure I did not know what he was saying, but my mother’s memory equaled the level of my father’s critical nature. At the time, she sat silently near the window with a 45 degree angled cigarette projecting out of her hand. Her seat position was three of four working clockwise around the table to father’s one, as I recall.

“The cars and even she said—Mrs. Allen—there was a semi that got the fires on it.”

“This is some story,” he slyly grinned. Dad had two different smiles. Neither was truly honest and both rooted in his conceited temperament.

“Yeah and then Mr. Allen ran over to the cars while the other people just watched. Maybe cuz they were scared of fire. Maybe they didn’t like it?” It is a daunting image when one reads the account of that fateful day. I can vicariously feel the heat of that moment and shock that paralyzed this once unfettered group of men.

“Wait a minute here boy; Keith ran through the flames or around them? I mean—,” now looking toward my mother for some expressive reaction. With a rotation much like a defense attorney, his face was back on me for examination, “I’ve heard of it, but only in those Superman comics you leave on the floor.”

“Dad! He really did.” With deflated confidence I continued to fight his argument. “Keith—Mr. Allen—got the people out of the cars. She said so to our class. He was a hero!” I recall the tears that accompanied my burning pupils as they welled up. My eyes prepared for an inevitable flood.

My mother’s eloquent exhale was more of a silent whistle’s physical expression and her delicate eyes gave me more reassurance than any words could.

“I guess I’ll have to take your word for it, but I don’t believe you. A man can’t run through fire no matter how strong he is.” He looked at my mother one last time as if begging her to disagree with him. I could see him kicking over the hardware, metal chair that rattled off a bulleted cacophony of sound on the linoleum floor. I clung to my mother as he got ready for his conclusion.

I’ll be 31 soon and I now know that Mrs. Allen told us part of that story as the projector film ended—for the life of me I can’t remember what we watched—because something reminded her of what Keith was like before that day. Or maybe more so, of what their relationship was like. She described the event like one would write it in their diary. Us 3rd graders could only comprehend the basic, dramatic information of the story that excited us enough to tell our parents. The nuance that caused the self-punishment was lost on us.

The innocence of my narrative did not fit the context of my father’s hate that heated the kitchen. The reality of that 22 year old incident is that 12 people burned alive. Keith Allen was only able to save a lonely truck driver and a terrified family of three. He could never let go of the belief that he was responsible for the deaths of those people. He carried it in his marrow. I doubt the images of smoldering bodies rolling along the highway were forgotten. The memorial that the Governor attended was surely lost within the burden that Keith kept.

My father never got over the responsibility he felt for the neighborly affair between my mother and Mr. Allen. He couldn’t believe the hero story, because his projections allowed him to survive his own tragedy; “It takes a real f*cking loser to lose his mind!” Believe me, Keith was never the same and would never set foot on a railroad track, but my father was forever disabled.

[Major]

Needs a total re-write and attention to proper paragraphing, grammar and spelling.
There is always a constructive way of avoiding profanity and it adds nothing to the drama.

[Jaime Lync]

I struggled to grasp the story. it has a great premise and a lot of promise. Right now it needs editing and reworking a little for my taste.