All About the Fire, Dead Signals and Jack Lawton.
By George Mills
1: There’s a big pile of junk out on Jack Lawton’s backyard. He says he’ll use it to contact his dead wife. Behind him, his daughter smiles and nods. I want to describe her nod as apologetic, but it’s not. She just nods looking straight ahead at nothing in particular while her father rambles on.
She doesn’t seem to listen to him anymore.
The place is about half-an-hour away from my house, so I take a cab. I have enough money to make it back, and get something to eat too. I pack my notebook and a tape-recorder. Jack Lawton first popped up in the newspapers about two months ago, when the big metal pillar started to poke out of his house. People wondered what it was. So he just told them. I read one of the first pieces about two weeks ago: “Pittborough Resident Contacts Dead.” I showed it to my father.
-Just some nut, he told me before taking another sip of his coffee. The article informed us that this guy, this Jack Lawton, was a firefighter. Well, he used to be. He wasn’t dismissed because he was crazy, he retired because he was severely injured in the fire that killed his wife. So, he’s on call and the alarm starts buzzing. Bam. They get their suits on, they slide down that pole and they get on that red truck. Wind hitting his face, his stomach almost piercing its way out of his body, a smile on his face. The first thing you can be absolutely certain of when you meet Jack is that he loved the job. That’s all he ever talks about, nowadays. You know, other than the fact he’s contacting the Dead Zone (that’s what he calls it). That night, though… That night he didn’t love his job at all.
Amanda Lawton is seventeen years old but seems about a thousand years older. She runs around the house, doing everything at once –tidying up the kitchen, fetching drinks, cleaning the table- with an obviously phony smile on her face, and one can’t help but pity her. I stand up, and try to help but she tells me it’s OK. His father sits on the table, his legs crossed. He doesn’t speak. I guess that if you untied her pony-tail, took those glasses off, dressed her up with something pretty and put some make-up on her she wouldn’t look so bad, but then again, there’s not enough make-up in the world to take that sad look off her eyes. I jot down on my notebook, the first thought that comes to mind: “A life lost.”
She leaves the drinks in front of us. Me and Jack, that is. Ten minutes later the glasses are empty, and I’ve got the tape-recorder going. Jackie Lawton is talking about that night— 20th of October, 2002. He tells me he remembers the whispers, as soon as he came out of the truck. You shouldn’t have brought him, they were saying. Jack didn’t know what they were talking about. You should sit this one out, and let us do the job, Jack. Lawton didn’t understand.
Then they said it, he tells me. Your wife is in the building, Jackie.
Just like that.
I did my homework. When I proposed the article to the magazine and they told me I could write whatever I wanted as long as it was good, I did some research. I mean, you just don’t call a potentially demented guy and tell him you want to interview him. First you see who this guy is. So, I went on the web and googled the shit out of him. I found the names of some of the firefighters in his area, some of his old buddies, and called them. I told them: my name is George Mills and I’m doing a story on a friend of yours. At first, all of them seemed happy. Yeah, they said. We always like it when someone writes articles about our station. I told them, no. This is about Jack Lawton. Some of them hung up. The others told me to leave the poor man alone. A few of them gave me something.
His name is Jason Lowe and he didn’t know Jackie very much. He remembers that night though. He tells me that as the building burned up, there were more guys trying to keep Jack from diving head-first inside, than there were trying to put it out. –He went berserk, he tells me. –He was screaming, trying to get us out of the way. I mean, he didn’t even have his mask on or anything, right? He just wanted to go inside. I mean, that’s the one place we don’t want to be. When we know there’s nothing we can do, but we can’t help but try.
His name is Andy Harrelson, and he didn’t talk to Jackie very much either. He remembers him as this quiet guy. Good at the job, nice to hang out with, but just… Kinda quiet. You know the kind. He’ll be at the parties and the drink-ups, and laugh at all the jokes, and sing the same songs, but just won’t say much. Then he recalls this time… This was ages ago; Lawton came to the job and was happy as hell. He was screaming about how he was a father now that his wife had just given birth to his first baby daughter. He bought everybody pizza. Showed a picture of the child. Then, at about six, the alarm sounded and they were on their way. Harrelson’s voice over the phone is rough, like someone who has smoked way too many cigarettes.
To me, at least, it seems appropriate.
-We were… I don’t know, half a dozen? Maybe ten? It wasn’t a big deal. I mean, it wasn’t a big fire, or anything. But when we’re about to go in, this Lawton guy won’t do it. He keeps telling us: “I have a daughter now, I have a daughter now.” I mean, he’s really shitting his pants, he’s really fucking out of it. So, we just… You know. We just go inside and everything’s cool. We put out the fire, and everything. Then, when we drive back to the station, Lawton just doesn’t even talk. We’re all pretty angry at him, we’re expecting an apology or some shit, but we get nothing. He leaves without saying a word. Next day, it’s like it never happened. Next time we’re on call though, he went in without thinking it twice. It was weird. Hell, I mean, I don’t know… He was a quiet cat. Weird cat, too.
Back at their place, Amanda’s thin legs keeps slapping the ground as she rushes through the house. Nowadays, it seems like Jack barely even talks to her. He doesn’t even look at her in the eyes. He just speaks and barks his orders with his eyes fixed forward. I think I get a reason for it when Amanda finally sits her butt next to us, and let’s out this (kind of exasperating) nervous chuckle. She says that she’s sorry for the mess, that everything’s been so crazy the last few days with all the reporters, and everything. God, she whines, they’re such a pain in the butt!
Then there’s that nervous chuckle again:
-Not you. I mean… The others.
And Jack intervenes, looking at me without blinking. I notice that his hand moves to the left, towards his daughter’s. They leave them inches apart, but don’t seem to be able to touch each other. -Isn’t she a treasure? She reminds me so much of her mother. Sometimes I think they’re too alike.
Jack is tall and, I must say, he’s also pretty handsome. I mean, I was expecting this crazy looking motherfucker with a thick white beard and smelly clothes, and instead I get this clean-shaved, well-built, white-teethed and well-dressed man. He limps. His right leg suffered severe burns that night, and he now drags it like dead weight. He doesn’t only walk slowly, though. He speaks slowly, I mean, really slowly, taking his time. Harrelson called him a quiet guy. I guess he’s just not used to talking that much. My first question is always: have you ever been interviewed before? He tells me that he’s never been interviewed, but those guys at the supermarket once asked him if he liked their butter. That’s a survey, I tell him. He says: “I know. That’s why I said I’ve never been interviewed before.” The way he mumbles the words, it seems like he could fall asleep any minute. Two hours later, the interview is over and he’s walking me out the back door. And there it is. It’s about four meters tall.
There’s a big pile of junk out on Jack Lawton’s backyard. He says he’ll use it to contact his dead wife.
The… radio tower is made out of every piece of scrap metal you can imagine. Smashed up car hoods. Twisted pipes, and rusty bed skeletons. Heavy trapdoors are what the walls are made of, and barb-wire is stapled on everything, like some sort of barrier, some sort of cover. When Jackie tells me to go inside, I’m afraid I’ll get tetanus just for standing so close to it. There’s about a dozen lightning rods right on the highest part of the tower. Most of them are tied up together, and one of them sticks out and there’s a flag swinging on it.
Jack notices I’m looking. –That’s my wife, he says.
He is talking about the photograph that’s on the flag. I smile. She looks pretty, I think. When I first read about Lawton I wondered how long it took him to get all this shit. When I met with him, I asked.
-It took about two years. I just visited junkyards a lot. It didn’t cost that much, because to most people all of this is just useless garbage. To me, it’s everything. It’s my microphone. Isn’t it, Amanda?
And she calls out, from afar: -Yeah, dad!
Have you ever listened to a mum tell her kids to brush their teeth after dinner, and they all scream: “Yeah, mum!” and go on to do everything except brushing their teeth? Have you ever listened to a father preaching his son about not having sex with his girlfriend, and he says: “Yeah, dad!” but has a condom in his pocket? Well… That’s exactly what this sounded like. Sometimes I wonder if she’s as crazy as he is, that she actually believes he is doing something that makes sense. But then I see how she talks to him, and how she acts around him, and I’m reminded of my aunt. She has Alzheimer’s, my aunt. Still lives in her house, but has like a bazillion nurses helping her out. One of them is called Patty. She’s a young girl, barely twenty-one. She looks exactly like Amanda. Treats my aunt the same way Amanda treats…
-It’s almost done, he informs me. –All I need is some more metal I’m picking up on Friday… And then, we’ll have to wait for a thunderstorm which will probably happen in a month, or two. You see, the energy provided by lightning is so immense, it’s only logical that it opens some sort of window to the Dead Zone. It’s only logical. I need more lightning rods, though. Gonna pick them up on Friday.
I nod, finally gathering up the courage to touch the tower. The metal is hot as hell. I notice Jackie is smiling at me.
I go: -I’m sorry, what’s the matter?
He asks: -Wanna come with?
I didn’t know it would take so long to write this. I figured it’d be one small article. You know, here’s this crazy guy. He’s building a tower. But after the first interview, I had nothing. Lawton didn’t talk about anything. I mean, he would answer all my questions without a hint of embarrassment, always completely sure that what he was saying made sense, but he never talked more than he needed. He never talked like a crazy person. He didn’t meander, or lose track of his thoughts. He speaks of the tower like he’s building a birdhouse, like it’s a hobby. So, I jumped at the opportunity of spending more time with him. I told Jack I would see him Friday. And I had a burger on my way home. It was good.
