It was late when we got home from The Post after yet another party on the patio one Saturday night, later still when we finally all went to bed. It seemed like I had been sleeping only for a few minutes when I felt someone shaking my shoulder.
I opened my eyes just long enough to realize it was barely dawn.
“Kenny, turn off the light and go back to bed,” I said without looking at who was shaking me. “We’ve hardly had any sleep.” Every now and then when Kenny woke up early he wanted me to wake up too, just to keep him company.
“George, it’s Dad.”
I sat up immediately. “What is it? Is it Mom?”
Where that question came from I had no idea, but in my groggy state it’s no wonder I was confused.
Dad looked puzzled. “No. It’s The Post.”
I rubbed my eyes. “What about it?”
His expression was grim. “It’s on fire.”
It took a few seconds for that to sink in. I said nothing.
“Come on, get dressed,” Dad said. “I’ll wake up Kenny. We’re going to see what’s happening.”
I scrambled into my clothes and we all piled into the car to investigate. In the distance was the sound of multiple fire truck sirens, which didn’t bode well. The morning sky was an inky blue, lighter to the east where the sun had yet to appear. Most of the streetlights were still on, but as we drove whole rows of them went off as the sky brightened.
“How did you find out?” I asked as Dad pushed beyond the speed limit to get us there ASAP.
“The colonel called. The fire department had called him and said that all the smoke detectors were going off.”
I realized he didn’t say that “a” smoke detector was going off, but all of them. That didn’t bode well either.
Kenny laughed like we were going on some new adventure as we sped down the block. Dad and I ignored him.
As we turned down the street where The Post was, I didn’t see any flames up ahead, but we drove through an acrid gray cloud that had little bits of black soot, like tiny corkscrews that collided and stuck to the windshield. I rolled up my window to keep the stench out.
Bits of The Post were coming to us, and we were still more than two blocks away.
“Kenny, get your head in here and close your window,” I said. “You shouldn’t be breathing that.”
I looked at Dad and saw his fierce gaze on the road up ahead. He drove like he was heading into battle and nothing was going to stop him. He didn’t make a move to close his own window, and soon I noticed that peculiar soot on him and the dashboard.
A fire truck arrived on the other side of the street just as we pulled up. There were half a dozen trucks already there, some from neighboring towns. All their red and white flashing lights illuminated the scene in a kind of stop-action motion. The last fire hose turned off because it looked like there was practically nothing left to hose down. Except for a few waist-high sections of brick walls still standing, The Post was gone.
Dad got out without a word, and Kenny and I followed. It was then I finally noticed that Dad was wearing his dress uniform jacket, the same one he had worn to the dance the night before.
He marched up to a fireman who was giving orders to the others as they rolled up the hoses and carried gear back to their trucks. They all stopped in their tracks to look at Dad.
The fireman who seemed to be in charge saluted as Dad approached.
“What’s happening here, Sergeant?” Dad asked.
“It’s a total loss, sir. I’m sorry. The whole building was in flames when we arrived.”
Dad nodded. “Is it safe to enter?”
The fire sergeant didn’t answer right away. “I shouldn’t let you go in, but the roof’s gone and most of the walls have already collapsed. Just be careful you don’t trip on something. A few things might still be hot, so don’t pick anything up, either. It’s a real mess in there.”
Dad nodded again and waved at me to stay put. I stood there behind Kenny with my hands on his shoulders to keep him right where he was.
“Fire trucks,” Kenny said. “Danger.”
“That’s right, Kenny,” I answered softly. The smoke cloud had nearly dissipated, but the smell of burnt rubber and plastic still hung in the air.
Dad walked through the opening where the front door used to be and disappeared into the ruins. He emerged from the rubble a few minutes later and shook hands with a few of the firefighters, thanking them even though The Post was no more.
Dad walked up to me slowly, his shoulders drooping. “It’s all gone,” he said quietly. “Everything.”
I pulled out my phone. “Can I walk around the outside to take a few pictures?”
“Sure. Kenny and I will wait here. I want to see if they know where the fire started and what might have caused it. Not that that’s going to change anything. Might help with our insurance, though.”
Despite the enormity of the situation, I thought Dad was taking it extremely well.
I took a couple of pictures of the collapsed entrance and then walked around to the back.
The brick patio behind the building was practically unscathed. The Tiki candles on their poles still lined the perimeter, having never been put away. A few folding chairs left out here and there seemed forlorn, as if aware they were the only survivors. Used paper cups, plates, and napkins were strewn about, waiting to be picked up and properly disposed of, as if that even mattered now.
I turned around. The glass patio doors had either blown out or were shattered by the firemen as they fought the fire. I glanced on either side of me, and not seeing anyone else, went quietly inside to the kitchen.
It was disconcerting to be able to see the sky above the now blackened countertop and cabinets. All the party supplies on the countertop were mostly wet cinders now, forming odd, melted shapes that took a few seconds to recognize. I snapped a few pictures then sloshed through about an inch of water to the old cast iron stove, still recognizable except for the knobs, which had partially melted and run down the front of the stove like giant red tears.
I was reminded of the scene in The Movie where the time traveler witnesses the nuclear destruction of London before escaping in the nick of time in his time machine. The Post now looked like it could have been in that scene.
Something about the oven caught my eye. I wondered what caused the odd streaks of black soot right above the oven door, and then with a gasp remembered the cookies we had been making.
I tapped the stove handle and felt it was merely warm now. When I opened the door, a puff of smoke emerged. When the smoke cleared, I could see there were two warped aluminum cookie trays, one above the other on the oven racks, both with burned black cookies in neat rows.
When I looked at what was left of the oven dial, I saw it was still set at three hundred and fifty degrees. My mind raced as I logically connected the sequence of events.
I had suggested we make cookies for the party since we had the ingredients and all our other snacks were going fast. Dad agreed, so Kenny and I made them and put them in the oven at three hundred and fifty degrees.
The cookies were left cooking in the oven overnight because no one had turned the oven off.
I was the one who was supposed to turn the oven off when the cookies were done, only I forgot about them.
Ovens left on too long cause fires.
Therefore, the person responsible for starting the fire and burning down The Post was . . .
Me.
I dropped my phone in a puddle and buried my face in my hands. My forgetfulness had destroyed my dad’s most sacred of places, one I cherished, too.
When I heard someone near, I retrieved my waterlogged phone and, still hunched down, crept back out to the patio.
As soon as I stood up, Dad appeared around the corner.
“There you are. What have you been doing?”
Feeling numb, all I could think to do was hold up my phone. Water dripped out of it. “I . . . dropped it in a puddle. It’s ruined.”
I looked back through the missing patio doors to where the stove sat, too afraid to tell him the whole truth.
Dad’s face hardened. “Sorry. Everything’s going wrong this morning, isn’t it? Come on, we have to leave. I have to make some calls and let people know what’s happened.”
I followed him, my legs suddenly wooden and my head spinning. There was only one fire truck left, and I paused when the fire chief’s SUV pulled up on the other side of the street.
“Morning, Chief,” my dad said, surprisingly chipper for a guy who just lost his home away from home.
“Morning, Mr. Wells.”
The chief was a big guy, taller and wider than even Dave. He was huffing and puffing as if he had fought the fire himself instead of just walking across the street to join us.
“Sorry I missed all the excitement,” he said. “My men said it went up fast. They weren’t kidding, were they?” He shook his head and gave a low whistle, hands on his hips as he surveyed the rubble. “Too bad. Anything salvageable?”
“No,” was all Dad said.
“I’m not surprised. That was a big fire.”
“Did anyone say how it might have started?” Dad asked.
I stiffened but said nothing.
“No, sometimes it’s obvious right away and sometimes you’ve got to dig to find the answer. I’ll let you know the cause as soon as we finish our investigation.”
“Thanks, Chief.”
My wooden legs carried me back to our car.
As we drove away, Kenny seemed to finally respond to what we saw.
“Big fire,” he said. “A disaster.”
I slumped in my seat and closed my eyes, fearful what the results of the fire investigation would reveal, that the fire was due to human error, and that the human who had erred was me.
Despite how tired I was, I couldn’t go back to sleep when we got home. Instead, I lay there wondering how I could have been so stupid as to forget that the oven was on and what the repercussions of my forgetfulness would be. I figured it would be something like a manslaughter charge, although not quite as serious since nobody died. All I killed was an empty building, a town landmark. Still, like manslaughter, somebody has to pay a price for what happened; you can’t just say it was an accident and expect to walk free.
I also wondered how my dad would react when he found out I burned the place down. Worst-case scenario, he kicks me out of the house and never forgives me. Best-case scenario, I get to stay but he never forgives me.
I wasn’t sure which fate was worse.
After a couple of exhausting hours tormenting myself, I finally got up to get something to eat, even though I wasn’t all that hungry. This was turning out to be one of those times when I wished time travel was possible and I could go back and pull the cookies out of the oven on time, or at least turn the oven off.
For that matter, if I had my own time machine I would put a big, fat “rewind” button on it and fix all the mistakes I’ve ever made. I would be really busy for quite a while, but after a few days or weeks I would have prevented all the stupid things I’ve ever done. Like burning down an irreplaceable building.
Kenny was at the kitchen table playing his video game. He slept at the oddest times, so I wasn’t too surprised to see him still awake.
“George is worried,” he said with barely a glance up at me. “Why?”
Once again, Kenny summed up the entire situation in as few words as possible.
“I’m worried about the cause of the fire at The Post, Kenny.” I didn’t elaborate.
“Yes. Post gone,” he said. “Nothing left. Too bad.”
On Monday, Dave was taking me home after we dropped off Onion at her house. Usually we had a lot to say, but I didn’t feel much like talking, so all the conversations Dave tried to start went nowhere. Fortunately, he was in one of his buoyant moods, so for a while he did all the talking for us until he finally realized I wasn’t adding much to the conversation.
He regarded me with suspicion. “You all right? You’ve been awful quiet today.”
“I’m fine,” I lied, although I was tempted to talk to someone—anyone—about my fear of having burned down the Post.
“No, you’re not,” Dave said. “Something happen at home, or at the Box? You can tell me.”
Dave might not have been Filby, but he could be sympathetic when he wanted to.
“You just want to know what’s wrong so you can blab it to Onion.”
“Ah ha!” Dave’s eyes widened and he sat up straighter behind the steering wheel. “I knew something was wrong. Now you’ve got to tell me. I promise I won’t tell anyone.”
“Like I would ever believe that.”
He looked genuinely hurt. “Fine,” he said. “Maybe I’m not as perfect and loyal as your precious Filby character—who’s still make-believe, by the way—but I’ve still been a pretty good friend. Besides, confession is good for the soul, you know.”
I decided he was right; keeping the secret to myself was slowly killing me inside.
“Okay. But you can’t breathe a word of this to anyone, you got it?” I gave him the sternest glare I could muster.
“Scout’s honor. My lips are sealed. So what’s the big secret?”
I sighed. It took a few seconds for me to begin. “It’s about the fire at The Post.”
“Let me guess. You started it.” He laughed.
I didn’t answer. I didn’t look at him, either.
“Hoo boy,” Dave said, and slowed down. “This is serious, isn’t it?”
I nodded. “The party the night before. Kenny and I were baking cookies in the oven because we were running low on snacks. I forgot all about them. The oven was on all night. In the morning when the fire was out, I snuck into the kitchen and saw that the oven knobs had melted from the heat and there was all this black soot around the oven door. That had to be the cause.”
Dave sat back, looking greatly relieved. “So it was an accident. Big deal. It’s not like you tossed a Molotov cocktail through the front window or something. You weren’t trying to burn the place down.”
“No, I’m just waiting for the fire department to determine the cause, which shouldn’t be too hard to figure out. I’m surprised my dad hasn’t remembered I was using the oven. If he does, it’s game over.”
“Yeah, but people accidentally burn down buildings all the time, even their own houses. They don’t go to jail for that.”
“You don’t burn down a building—especially a town landmark—without major repercussions.”
“Take it easy. The building was insured, wasn’t it? They’ll build a new one.”
“Yeah, but it just won’t be the same. I loved that old building.”
“Oh, no. This isn’t more of that going back in time junk, is it? You know, that’s getting really old. Let it go.”
“It’s not just that. I screwed up big time. Don’t you get it?”
“You’re always screwing up big time. So what’s new?”
I laughed once in spite of myself. “Thanks a lot. This was a lot bigger than usual.”
Dave shrugged. “Well, I still don’t think you’ve got anything to worry about.”
We drove along in silence for a while, and then I saw a mischievous grin appear on his face.
“What’s so funny?”
“Hmm? Oh, nothing.”
His grin remained. I wondered what he was up to.
He began to hum softly to himself, just a few notes that seemed vaguely familiar. That was fine until he finally sang the song title, revealing what he had been humming.
“Light my fire.”
“Stop. That’s not funny.”
I turned away to suppress a laugh, amused yet appalled at the same time.
His grin grew wider. “Yes, yes it is. What’s the matter? Don’t like The Doors? Well then, how about some words of wisdom from Billy Joel?”
“What? Billy Joel? What words of wisdom?”
Dave drummed on the steering wheel, looking positively delighted I had asked.
“We didn’t start the fire!”
“Shut up,” I said, struggling not to laugh too loud.
“Okay then, at least remember what the Killer himself, Mr. Jerry Lee Lewis, had to say.”
Now I was almost afraid to ask. “I give up. What did the Killer say?”
Dave turned to look straight at me, delighted again, while I would have much preferred he keep his eyes on the road.
“Great balls of fire!”
As much as I didn’t want to, I threw my head back and laughed even louder.
“Will you knock it off?”
“Cookies,” he said, eyes back on the road where they belonged. “The whole place burned down because you wanted . . . cookies. Imagine that.”
“Stop,” I said, but just kept laughing.
Dave gave me a sidelong glance, a smug little smile on his face.
“That’s better,” he said. “My job here is done.”
We pulled into my driveway.
“Here we are. Don’t thank me for making you feel better. That’s what good friends are for, even if my name isn’t Filby.”
I got out of the car.
He backed out immediately, looking almost gleeful now. “I could always change my name, you know! Whee!” he said as he drove away.
I had to admit I did feel somewhat better thanks to Dave, even if I still thought I was in enormous trouble.
Two weeks later, when I could finally go a couple of hours at a time without worrying about the fire investigation underway, Dad got a phone call. I was watching TV with Kenny when he came into the living room and stood there grim-faced, staring at me.
It took me a few seconds to realize he wanted to say something, and from his stern expression I had a hunch what it was. I turned down the TV, not surprised to feel my heart start thumping hard in my chest.
“I just heard from the fire chief,” he said, his eyes locked on me. “They know the cause of the fire.”
I waited for him to say, “It was you,” or more precisely, “You forgot to take out the cookies out of the oven, you idiot,” or maybe, “The police are coming for you any minute now,” or words to that effect. Instead, he said nothing, and it finally dawned on me that he was waiting for me to say, “What was it, Dad?”
I cleared my suddenly dry throat. “What was it, Dad?”
He hesitated, almost as if he couldn’t quite bring himself to say it. “It was . . . the electrical panel, just as I was afraid.”
I shot up to my feet in stunned silence not just because it wasn’t the oven that start the fire, but because my dad then buried his face in his hands and sobbed. I had never seen him cry like that before, not even when Mom died. The TV remote control fell out of my hand and hit the floor, and the batteries flew out in different directions. I paid no attention to where they went, focused instead on his astonishing breakdown.
Dad had always been our solid rock, our unwavering strength, and to see and hear him wail as if suddenly vulnerable was frightening, to say the least.
If he was that vulnerable, what did that make us?
He lowered his hands and explained himself, still weepy. “I had done some rewiring about a year ago. I thought there might be something wrong with it, but I never had it checked out even though we kept tripping circuits. If I had only hired an electrician to do about an hour’s worth of work instead of pinching pennies and trying to do it myself, this never would have happened.” He wiped his eyes. “It’s all my fault.”
I didn’t know what to say. Finally, all I could manage was the too-familiar, “Accidents will happen, Dad,” which sounded lame even as I said it.
But my response did seem to help. He nodded and his voice grew calmer. “The insurance will pay to rebuild it, but The Post will never be the same.”
I opened my mouth to immediately say, “No, it won’t,” in agreement, then thought better of it and said nothing instead.
Despite the official report, I was still troubled by the oven business. And even though it felt like a confession, I had to know for sure that it had been ruled out.
“Dad, what about the oven? Did they consider it?”
He looked puzzled. “Consider it for what?”
It was my turn to hesitate. “As the cause of the fire. Kenny and I were making cookies, remember? I might have . . . left the oven on. All night.” I looked away, knowing that wasn’t quite true. “I did leave the oven on all night. The melted dial was still set at three hundred and fifty degrees in the morning. I saw it myself.”
My dad laughed once. I wasn’t sure if it was a good laugh or a bad laugh.
“George, we’ve left that oven on overnight by accident dozens of times. It was cast iron, built like a tank. The Post would have burned down years ago if leaving the oven on could have started a fire. Usually we find some soot around the oven door, but that just wipes right off.”
“I saw that soot,” I said in amazement.
“Well, there you go.” He shrugged, and then looked puzzled again. “You mean you’ve been worried all this time that you might have burned the place down because you left the oven on and you didn’t tell me? I could have told you right away that wasn’t possible.”
“I guess I thought I’d be in big trouble.”
He nodded. “Well, you’re not.”
I kept waiting to feel a big sense of relief, but it never came. Instead, I felt numb. Hollow.
There was really nothing to celebrate.
I had an idea. “Hey! Maybe they can rebuild it the way it used to be,” I suggested. “It might not be exactly the same, but it could be close.”
“What? No, the old Post is gone, George. If we have a chance to rebuild it, it should have all the modern conveniences so we can start attracting outside rentals again. That’s about the only good thing that will come out of this. We’ll get a brand-new Post.” He looked pleased at the thought.
Dad was right, of course, but then again I knew he didn’t cherish The Post quite the way I had. His view was more practical and pragmatic; mine was strictly nostalgic, like Dave said.
“Well, that’s it. I thought you should know,” he said, sounding and looking normal again. He pointed at something on the floor. “Don’t step on the remote control. It’s right behind you.”
Still feeling numb, I found the wayward batteries and got the remote control into working order. But I didn’t feel much like watching TV and gave the remote to Kenny, who shut the TV off and picked up his Game Boy.
“I’m going to bed,” I said.
“So early?” my dad asked from the kitchen, where I heard him filling the dishwasher as if the cause of the fire no longer mattered, as if The Post itself no longer mattered.
In an odd sort of way, I felt alone in my sorrow and maybe even a little betrayed.
It wasn’t easy to fall asleep. And when I finally did, I had the strangest dream.
The dream started out pleasant enough—in fact, it was great.
I dreamt I was home alone in the living room by my clock collection, eagerly waiting for all of them to sound at noon. But when noon struck, the clocks were silent, and I realized that they had all stopped ticking. Right then I sensed that I had caused time to stop somehow, and that I needed to go into my bedroom to find out how. To get in, I had to force the door open just like Filby does to the time traveler’s laboratory door at the end of The Movie when George leaves forever in his machine to be with Weena. When I entered, I saw something large covered in a sheet by the window. I went over to whatever it was and pulled the sheet off.
It was the time machine from The Movie.
The machine was switched on and humming, lights and dials lit, and I wondered if that was why the clocks had stopped. I walked once around it like the time traveler does before he takes his first trip forward in time, then climbed aboard, marveling not only at the machine but at my good fortune for having it somehow. I rubbed my hands together in anticipation and reached out and grabbed the operating lever, pushing it ever so slightly forward into the future, eager to see what was ahead.
The room dimmed but nothing else happened, as if the machine was broken. When I looked up, there was Dave standing in front of me, his expression grim, even a bit scary.
“What are you doing here?” I asked.
“There’s no going forward yet,” he said, in a voice that wasn’t quite his. “This way.”
I got off the machine and followed him out to the driveway, where my dad’s car sat. There was no sign of Dave’s car.
“Time for a ride,” he said in his strange voice, then unlocked the passenger’s side door.
For the first time since my mom died, I got into the front seat where she used to sit. For some reason, that felt perfectly natural. Dave started the car and drove us to The Big Brown Box. It seemed like we got there in just a few seconds.
When we entered, I saw that the clocks in the hall had stopped, too, only now it was midnight, not noon. We walked through the silent, mostly dark building to the empty auditorium, where Dave ushered me down the main aisle to the front.
“Watch,” he commanded, and the stage curtains parted.
The stage set was an exact recreation of our living room around Christmas, back when I was nine or so and my mom was still alive. I knew that because not only was there a Christmas tree by the picture window, there was my mom, dancing with my dad to the Beach Boys’ song “Little Saint Nick,” one of her favorite Christmas songs.
As my dad twirled her around, it seemed for one brief moment she looked straight at me.
“Mom?” I said, but she didn’t answer. “Mom?”
I raised my arms to let her know it was really me, that I was right there, when I saw that I was holding the lever to the time machine even though I didn’t remember taking it.
I held the lever close to my face to examine it. The scene before me was multiplied within its multifaceted crystal knob, with a dozen images of my mom smiling and laughing as she danced, each image different like a different moment from her life.
Then the music faded, the lights went down and the curtains began to close.
I rushed forward, trying to make it to the stage before it was too late.
“Mom?”
I sat up abruptly in bed, wide awake now, my heart pounding.
Whether I had said that last “Mom” out loud or not, I didn’t know. I sat a while in the dark, hugging my knees and wondering if there was some hidden meaning to the dream. The only explanation I could think of was that unlike the fate of The Post, which now had a tidy, logical explanation, there was none for my mom and there never would be. That, and the fact that losing The Post put her life even further into the past, yet another major event in our lives she didn’t live to see.
I eventually fell back into a dreamless sleep, but that dream haunted me the next day like some dreams do. I never told anyone about it because the last thing I needed were a bunch of amateur psychiatrists telling me what it “actually” meant, especially Onion and Dave. The more I thought about it, the more I realized there really was a straightforward explanation for why it affected me as much as it did: I still missed my mom, and no amount of wishful thinking or dreaming was ever going to bring her back.
Or The Post.