Written in Stone

Remembering the last time I took this curve in the road I had a metal dashboard and a magnetic plastic Jesus staring at me with His arms outstretched.  Tell you the truth, I could use a little Jesusing, a little salvation, and a little help.  But that is a story for another day, and, besides, who couldn’t? Like then, I tuned the car's radio to WBRF, the "Sound of the Rivers," to see what the latest news was in town.  Unlike years before, now there was a syndicated talker on, not a local radio guy, and he was sitting in some studio in New York and nowhere near Black River Falls.  I turned the radio off.  Silence.  Don't get much silence today.  Noise, noise, everywhere.  On my phone, on my laptop, even in the public washrooms.  I’m surrounded by noise, but lost in quiet desperation.  Desperation?  Was that the right word? Maybe that’s too dramatic. I’m just trapped in a different kind of silence, one with noise for walls.   There was just the slight whine of the tires on the blacktop. 

A few cars and pickups came down the two-lane opposite me.  One pickup gave the steering wheel hand wave.  Probably thought he knew me.  After a moment I thought that maybe he did.  He was around the right age. But no, I hadn't been seen around the country in decades, so no.  No. 

Welcome to Black River Falls.

No population count.

Probably because the population has steadily decreased over the decades.  Black River Falls had its zenith in the 1950s, so it was a town on the decline even when I was a boy.   No town wants to X off its population count on the welcome sign every ten years.  Too embarrassing. 

A town with magic.

That slogan came about because it was thought that Harry Houdini lived in town for a brief period.   It was only after the zealous mayor at the time had stationary printed that it was discovered that he did not live in this Black River Falls.  But the town fathers decided that it was a good enough slogan with some "catch" to it so they kept it.

On the edge of town, there was a McDonald's, a Dairy Queen, a boarded-up Wendy's, and an independent fast food hot dog joint called Don's.  I took a quick left and took a few side streets to get to the downtown. 

It wasn't much of a downtown.  Four blocks, give or take with an old-fashioned town square.  Black River Falls had once been the county seat, but that changed when the railroad picked Clarence, the next town over, for its main line.  Black River Falls got the spur.  There were a lot of empty storefronts, but on the corner of Main & First was the familiar sight of Donner's, a restaurant that was considered the anchor of the community.  Brick painted green, it sat like a squat frog on the corner of the town square, right next to the Princess Theater, which was now closed and covered with plywood.  The building had a turret with a point on top.  It was very old even when I was a boy.  There were apartments above Donners and a thrift store across the street.  A few people were milling about, but nothing like the days when I young.

Now the test. 

Would anybody recognize me?

I parked in front of Donners.  The first thing I noticed was the great big sign in green letters spelling out Donners was still above the restaurant windows.  The building wasn't always Donners, though.  In another century, it had been a general merchandise store.  If you looked up from the big green Donners sign to the top facade there was a relief inscription on the building that said, "Berkhoff Block." 

Black River Falls was not my hometown.  I really didn’t have a hometown.  We —my family– lived in a farmhouse about five miles out from town.  My father wasn’t a farmer.  We rented the old farmhouse and the land was leased to a nearby farmer.  I didn’t attend school (when I attended school) with any kids from Black River Falls, so even as a boy I was not really known about town. 

I entered Donners, sat, had Salisbury Steak and mashed potatoes and read the local paper.  I liked that the BRF Banner was still in print.  I could have stared at my phone, but I wanted to see what was happening locally.  I leafed through the few pages and paid the cashier then walked back to the table and left the tip.  I caught the waitress's eye, a woman in her fifties, and for a second I thought she knows.  Once back in the car I decided that she didn’t know.  She would have been too young.  Young girls don’t pay attention to things like that.   They are shielded from the horror by their parents if they are any kind of parents at all.  I left some pink flyers at the cashier.  “I’m looking for him,”  I explained.  “I used to know him.”

I had twenty-four hours to kill before the dedication.  I needed to find a room.  The Black River Fall Motel provided that.  It was once a motor lodge with separate cabins but had been remodeled and all the cabins were now connected – on the outside.  I checked in.   A Pakistanai man owned the motel and he took my money and slid a key across the counter to me.  “Enjoy your stay!”  he said.  In turn, I asked to leave a few flyers on his counter.  No, I thought, no way would he have known.  He was no doubt a teenager in Pakistan or India then.  I pointed to the flyer of the man I was looking for, and asked.  “No, sir.  I do not know the gentleman.”

That evening I drove to the memorial site.  It’s a park now, kind of a memorial park, named, in fact, Memorial Park.   I left the car and walked the grounds.  It was twilight.  Temporary bleachers and stage had been erected and a large black tarpaulin was covering the new memorial.  It was hard to tell the shape under the black plastic, but it was tall and irregular in shape, definitely not a rectangular slab.  I walked the path through the park.  The town had decided to make this park, Memorial Park, the location of all the memorials in town. All the memorials were gathered in one area.  I walked up to them. Under my feet, engraved in the marble, were the words, “Courage, Honor, Faith.”   The old Civil War obelisk had been moved from the front of the old courthouse, along with the tablet stone of soldiers lost in World War I and the similar but newer tablet stone of World War II losses.   The Vietnam memorial was a small wall, a tiny replica of the one in DC.  There was no Korean monument.  Maybe Black River Falls didn’t lose anybody in that war.  A newer monument listed a few names of those lost in the more recent Afghanistan and Iraq wars.   There was also a monument to twenty-three coal miners who were lost to a coal dust mine explosion in 1923.  It was a sad little park full of the echoes of sad memories, and now the addition of the Carpenter’s Hall Fire is to be added on the fiftieth anniversary of its occurrence.  The park was deserted so I nailed the pink copy sheets on all of the larger trees in and around the park.   Then I placed a pile of them in front of each stairway for the bleachers, each held down by a rock.   The face that stared back at me from the copy sheets was one I hated.  That face stole the life and soul of the one I loved.  I was hoping that someone would recognize this person, the person responsible for this horror.  

Before going back to the motel I stopped for what I hoped to be one last round of my favorite whiskey at Biddy’s.  Biddy’s was Biddy’s back in the day too.  I liked that some things did not change.  I did wish that some things would change.  I wasn’t holding out hope.  The bar had a few customers and the bored young woman bartender chatted with some regulars at one end.  Eventually, she came over and served me.  

“Tell me, Miss, have you seen this man?”

She studied the pink flyer and shook her head.

“Okay.  Thanks.  I grew up with him.  Wanted to see if he was still around.”

“Wait.”

She showed the flyer to her regulars.  They studied it for a moment.  One of them called down the bar.   “Looks familiar, but I’m not sure.”

I nodded and sipped the whiskey.  After an hour or so, I left. 

The alarm sounded on my phone.  I jumped up, showered, shaved, and gathered my personal items. I needed to get my pink flyers out over town and  I didn’t want to be late for the ceremony at Memorial Park.  

I was one of the first to climb the bleachers and take a seat.  The pink flyers were still in the stacks where I had left them.  Some – but not all— the people took one.  I did too, oddly.  

A few wisps of clouds in the sky.  It was already hot and quite humid.  My shirt was sticking to my back.  A few in the gathering crowd made makeshift fans from the official program and even from my pink flyers.  I looked down and read my program.  It listed the seven heroes of the Carpenter’s Hall Fire.  On the stage behind the podium were seven chairs.  A man came onstage and did a mike check and ruffled through some papers.  Fifteen minutes later he reappeared and watched from his space at the podium as five old men struggled up the steps and seated themselves in the chairs.  Then, he began speaking.

“Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, honored guests, survivors and heroes.”  There was applause.  “Fifty years ago tonight, Black River Falls suffered a tragedy that caused the untimely deaths of eleven young unfortunate souls.  Fifty years ago tonight, seven unlikely heroes risked life and limb to try to save those eleven young children.  Fifty years ago tonight some horrible, tortured individual intentionally lit fire to the Carpenter’s Union Hall.  Fifty years on, we still wait for justice to be brought and served.  Fifty years is a long time.  But this case is not closed nor is it cold.  Chief Roberts assures me that they are still following up on leads that come in.  And they come in more often than you can imagine.  For those who witnessed the faces of the children on the upper floors trapped in the inferno, it is an image that cannot be erased or forgotten.  Tonight, we come together as neighbors, friends, and as a town to recognize both those who died –to give names to the innocents lost– and to honor those who rushed into the flames to try to save them.   Sadly, two of our heroes are gone, but the others remain strong and are here to give testament to that night.  We must never forget that the monster who was responsible for those children dying was never caught, and to this day the case is open.  It never has gone cold in my mind.  But tonight is about honoring the heroes, even while the mystery of who is unsolved. So, without further ado, I wish to introduce one of those men who did his best to save those innocent lives….”

One of the old men stood and moved to the podium.  Behind him were the other four and two empty chairs.  “I was there that night.  It was a night I have relived over and over again.  I’ve had nightmares, flashbacks. I hear the cries of the children.  I-I-we did the best we could.  We did.  We—”

He couldn’t go on.  He heaved with tears and sorrow.   Chief Roberts led him back to his chair.  

Finally, the unveiling came.  A group of children pulled the ropes and the black tarp slid off the structure.  It was in the shape of a flame, a silver flame.  The orange of the setting sun reflected off the polished flame.  The names of the lost children were engraved at various levels on the metal flame. 

At this, I stood and made my way down the stairs in frustration and anger.  A good number of faces turned my way as I descended the steps, but no one said a thing, or moved.  I made my way across the bleachers right in front of the stage and looked into the faces of the five heroes.  I looked back and in the bleachers I could see in the twilight, like little pink stars, I could see my flyers.

It was all for nothing. 

I had expected more. 

I reached the street and was at the curb about to cross when I was approached by an older woman with a cane. She was holding a pink flyer.

She stood next to me.  “Did you find your friend?” she asked.

“He is not a friend.”

“I saw you putting these up last night.  I always take a  walk at that time,” she said.  “Terrible about those children.  Terrible.” 

“Yes,” I said.  It was terrible.”

“It didn’t have to be that way,” she said.  The men.  The men were drunk.  And they ran.  Ran out of the hall.  Never even tried to go up the stairs to help those children.”

I turned to look squarely at this old woman.  I sucked in my breath, and my knees felt weak.

She knew. 

As if to answer, she smiled slightly.  “We all make mistakes in life.  Some make more grievous mistakes than others.  You didn’t say your name.”

“You know my name.”

“Oh, I don’t know.  My memory isn’t what it used to be.”

She turned and walked haltingly towards the bleachers. 

I was nearing the curve when the lights from the police car flashed in my rear view mirror.  I slowed, put on my hazard lights, and pulled to the shoulder.  I was near hyperventilating.  My hands were shaking.  I watched the figure approach.  I rolled down my window.  Chief Roberts.  He bent slightly to see in the car.  “Here, take these.”  He handed me a pile of pink flyers. 

“Was I speeding?”

“Let me be clear.  I know what you did.  You saw the two empty chairs?  One of those chairs represented my father.  He was at Carpenter Hall that night fifty years ago.  He was there and you were there.  You wanted to get back at the town that wouldn’t give you or your old man a fair shake, who foreclosed on the farm your father once owned, who made you live in that ranshackly old farm house you rented.  You took the gasoline can from the back of your pickup and doused the outside of Carpenter’s Hall, but you were unaware that there were orphaned children staying upstairs for a few weeks while the St. Benedict Orphan’s Home was being remodled.”

“I did it.  I did it.”

“Yes,” said Chief Roberts.  “You did.  Murdered all those kids – kids who were behind the eight ball from the start.”

“I’ll go in and make a statement.”

“No.  No, you won’t.  You are going to leave here in minute and never come back.”

“But, it’s a murder case.  I’m confessing.  I kiled them.”

I started to cry. 

“You confessing also confesses to what those seven men did – or didn’t do, including my father– all those years ago.  You saw with your own eyes.  We can’t face that now. Go!  Oh, here, you might find this interesting.  It’s an artist's sketch, based on a description given  by a young woman who was cooking for the men at the hall that night.”

The gravel crunched under the wheels as I pulled into the night.  The pile of flyers on the seat next to me. On top was the police artist’s sketch  I glanced down at them and then up to the old Plastic Jesus velcroed to my dash.  It looked like the me on the flyer, but perhaps it wasn’t me.  

WBRF had another syndicated talker on.  Talking from New York or Atlanta or Chicago about a completely different world.