Читать книгу See How Small - Scott Blackwood - Страница 10

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WHAT IS JACK Dewey thinking before he goes into the fire?

1. Of his nylon search rope, which is five-sixteenths of an inch in diameter and two hundred feet long and attached to a snap hook on his belt. How Neftali Rodriguez and Henry Soto will expect him to deploy it, given the ice cream shop’s mazelike conditions and intense smoke.

2. That they will not need the rope because he knows this is likely an arson fire to collect the insurance money — like so many others lately — and there will be no one in the building to search for.

3. That he’s forgotten to tie the knots in the nylon search rope at fifteen-foot intervals, which tell you how far you have to go to exit the building. How much shit he will catch for this will depend on Neftali’s and Henry’s moods. But there will be significant shit to catch.

4. He thinks — even as he and Henry Soto pull open the blackened double front doors of the ice cream shop and the smoke and heat hit them like a blow to the chest and then coils upward — of his failure as a father. Thinks of his sixteen-year-old daughter, Sam, running away three weeks ago and how he hasn’t been able to find her, despite the missing persons report, despite his several friends on the police force. He sees Sam barefoot in her capris in some strange kitchen, frying catfish in a pan, like they sometimes did on Fridays. One of the traditions he’d carried on after his wife died. He tries not to think of the prick of a boyfriend she’s likely with, who smells pungently moist like bong smoke and carries around a little metal tackle box of harmonicas in different keys and can’t play a lick.

5. Heading into the fire, the safety rope trailing behind, he thinks instead: Friday night. If Sam were back, she might even have come by here for an ice cream cone, then out with friends to a movie or the improv comedy club downtown. She’d call him from the lobby and say in a deflated voice that plans had changed, that she really needed a ride home. Please? He’d know that she was near tears. A tightness would rise up in his chest and he’d say, without exasperation or fear, I’m on my way.