“Yes. But not well.”
“We’re positioned the same distance out from the left of the platform as the bag was from the front. Do you understand?”
“Yes.” I coughed again. The smoke waterfall was charcoal, with red flickers instead of white foam.
“If you land feetfirst, you’ll drive bone into your abdominal cavity, or compress your spine, but you’d survive that long enough to get you to hospital. If you land on your head, you won’t. Think of it as a dive into a swimming pool from a medium high board. Dive facedown and turn. Or fall backwards, or do a double-pike somersault, it doesn’t matter, but remember how the body turns in forty feet. You’re aiming to land as though it’s a break-fall, on your back, spread the impact—”
“Kick.”
“…keep…”
“Kick.”
“Listen.” It was hard to tell if the crackle was in her voice or in the flames now shooting up the front of the platform. “When you fall from forty feet, it’s different. You will turn whether you like it or not. Get a solid departure, that’s important, and spot your landing. Think about your abs, your soaz muscles, your transverse laterals. Keep them tight. The most important thing you can do is keep your chin tucked in. Your head is heavy. It will want to fall first. Keep it tucked in. Some people would say, Put your hat back on, but this is your first time, you might fall better if you have the wind going past your ears, it might help you orient yourself.”
"Kick.”
“When you go through the fire, hold your breath. Don’t breathe the flame. It’s getting fierce.”
“Kick.”
“I’m done. Time to jump. And, Aud, I build a good landing. Accept the fall.”
“Yes. I’m taking my headset off now.”
I walked to the back of the platform, placed the headset carefully on the pile of equipment, and turned. Two long or three short running steps to the edge. Short, I decided. Keep the balance over my hips.
I closed my eyes, breathed through my nose, careful of smoke. I ran it through in my head. Push from my left foot, land on right and push, land on left and push, land on right and push up into the void. Jump high. Spot—lean forward and down to spot, turning and tucking right, twisting in midair as though from kotegaeshi, like a cat that falls from a high shelf, tighten belly muscles, double-arm slap, chin tucked.
I ran—step, step, step—I pushed.
I passed through the sheet of flame—it was like running my hand under a hot tap, brief, intense—and then, as I should have been leaning and spotting, I felt my body want to begin a great clenching, a stretching, a reaching back for the platform.
When you can do nothing, what can you do?
And I let go, and fell, smiling.
I landed in silence, and hands reached down, small hands, and pulled me up and I stood. She said something, but I was still falling.
Burning chunks of wood came down. A spark caught the edge of the blanket, and it went up with a soft whump. Then I could hear again. Lights flashed. Men in turnout coats. Someone threw a blanket over my shoulders. Kick’s hand was still in mine.
After a jump cut I found myself outside, coughing, some fool shining a light in my eyes. I pushed the penlight away.
“I’m fine.”
“Uh-huh,” he said, and shone the light in my other eye.
“I’m fine.”
“She’s better than fine,” Kick said.
“Is everyone all right? Dornan?”
“He’s fine, everyone’s fine.” Her hand was in mine again.
“How come you’re not wearing a blanket?”
“I don’t have one eyebrow burnt off and a displaced rib.”
“It doesn’t hurt.”
“It will.” She was smiling, an otter playing in a smoky waterfall. My face ached. It seemed I was smiling, too.
Then there was a confusion of lights as another fire truck pulled into the lot and burly figures in coats jumped down. More lights, different. Cameras.
I pushed the blanket off. It was hot. Smoke reached a hundred yards into the bright blue sky. That wasn’t going to look good on EPA paperwork.
Kick was there again. “Can you walk?”
“Yes.”
“We have to move back, the whole place is going up. If you don’t walk, they’ll stuff you in an ambulance.”
“Right.”
I stood up. I felt remarkably steady. The ground was perfectly still and solid under my feet.
Six cameras were rolling. Three were network teams, three were ours. Rusen coughed, shouted something at me, flames leaping in miniature in his glasses, coughed again.
“Better than a bit of propane,” Kick said. “You’re insured, right?”
I laughed. She was right, it did hurt.
THE AIR-CONDITIONING UNIT APPEARED TO BE BROKEN. THE AIR IN THE BASEMENT felt too big and humid for such a small space but I doubted we’d be doing much physical work today.
Sandra’s hand was in a cast, her forehead hidden behind gauze. I was surprised she was there at all. She sat by herself at the end of the bench.
Violence very often acts as a social flocculant. When added to a community—individuals suspended in a liquid of custom and mores—it separates out the individuals. The common mix, the community, is threatened. The class had watched the splashy, television light, the microphone thrust in Sandra’s face, the way she had stared impassively at the body bag on the gurney as it was wheeled into the ambulance without the lights, and the class had separated her out to protect their world, the one where violence happened to other people.
Therese stood with the others. She smiled and touched people on the arm as she talked, working hard to be one of them. Her connection with Sandra would not survive.
I studied them. They studied me back while pretending they were not, except Sandra, who stared openly. She had killed a man: why should she worry about minor infractions of the social code? I stared back.
I would never know exactly the extent of her premeditation. It didn’t matter. It had been my decision to help her frame a guilty man. We are the sum of our decisions.
She looked away, and in profile, without blood covering the lines, I saw the difference: the plumpness, the softness, the change of skin texture around the eyes.
I turned my gaze to the others. Perhaps the sum of my decisions stared out at them. They dropped their eyes immediately. I nodded. To them I was like Sandra. They didn’t want to meet my gaze in case something leapt from my eye to theirs and invaded their brain.
“Not looking at something never, in the history of the world, made it go away,” I said. “So look at this.”
Southern women can’t stand silence. Eventually, Jennifer said, “How do you mean?”
“I mean face it. Engage. Ask questions. Think. Talk. Don’t wish it away.”
Uncomfortable silence again. “I still don’t understand,” Jennifer said.
“How do you all feel? You, Nina. You, Katherine. What do you think? Tonya, Suze, Pauletta. Anyone?”
It was like one of the early classes. I don’t think you know what you’re getting yourself into. If I had known, would I have done it?
“All right. Do you feel proud?”
“Proud?” Jennifer said.
“Proud: feeling pleasurable satisfaction over an act, possession, quality, or relationship by which one measures one’s stature or self-worth. Feeling or showing justifiable self-respect.”
“Why?” Nina said. “It wasn’t us that did anything.”
“Sandra couldn’t have done what she did without this class. You worked together for nearly three months. You hyperventilated in fear together, you threw and let yourselves be thrown, you trusted each other enough to let yourselves be choked. You all learned together.”