[Critique Group 1] Submission for January 11 critique session

[Marilyn Smith]

Where There's Smoke
by Marilyn Brandt Smith
2009, revised 2013, revised again 2017


Boaters have a bag, or at least they're supposed to, called the "Go" 
bag. It's what you grab when you have to jump because you're going to 
capsize, explode, or sink. It's the thing you use to get help, and to 
survive until you get that help. You get the picture?

Most homeowners don't have a "Go" bag, but we've all seen the ads. "Your 
danger is here, and you are here. Plan A, Plan B, then we all meet at 
the curb, or we meet in the alley."

My husband, my son, and I were sleeping, reading, radioing, whatever, on 
a Thursday morning in June. There was a gentle thunderstorm brewing, and 
it got a little nearer and a little louder. Jay was about to get on the 
computer and proofread one of my writing projects.

Suddenly, gunshots! Rifles through our heads-- then the thunder. "What 
in the world?"

I was up stairs in the bedroom reading. I grabbed my Victor Stream and 
got the hell out of Dodge. The electrical smoke smell was devastating. 
"What did it hit?" I called to Roger as I met him at the top of the stairs.

"Us. We'd better go check this out," he said. Jay was waiting for us at 
the bottom of the stairs. He had heard louder "gunshots" than we had. We 
thought it was in the basement. He ran to the door.

"There's something going on down here. I see light. I hear something, 
fire or water."

"Can't be water," I said, "Call 9-1-1!"

Roger grabbed his cell, I was still in my robe, Jay never put on a 
shirt. "Grab the Braille Pluses," I suggested. They were close at hand. 
I grabbed my purse, Roger grabbed his wallet, we'd need those credit 
cards if we had to stay in a motel, get food. The floor wasn't getting 
hot, and there were no smoke detectors going off. Little did we know the 
circuit board in the security system was already toast. We already had 
the dog and the cat. What should we do about the snakes?

We were by the exits. I had thought about the safety deposit box, one of 
those that's supposed to be fireproof. Nevertheless, I had it in my 
hands, ready to run. We heard the sirens. The fire department was only 
four or five blocks away. Roger had his hands on the hard drive that 
contained all our music. "What else? What else?" We were trying to 
think. If we had to leave, we didn't know when we'd be able to return, 
and we didn't dare go back up stairs or down stairs.

We showed the fire department how to get to the different floors, the 
basement, the attic, the crawl spaces. They wanted to be sure before 
they left. There was no fire, but we smelled electrical smoke on all the 
floors for days.

What we thought was fire was actually water in the basement. Two pipes 
arced together when the crash came. One of them broke a coupling and we 
had a water leak. A light had been left on. That was the light Jay saw 
in the basement.

It burned up the cable for our house and two neighbors beside us--not 
the modems, actual cable. It smashed a couple of storm windows. There 
wasn't a strong wind, it was just the jar from the hit.  Did it come in 
on our ham tower? Will we ever know? The doorbell, the phone system, all 
of the Internet was gone.

There were eight people floating around in our house on Friday, making 
and estimating repairs and replacements. We had good insurance so we 
were all right financially. Two computers were in intensive care for a 
while, one amplifier was gone. What else?

It took us weeks to discover all the damage. Six talking Caller-ID units 
never said another word. Strange things happened--battery equipment, not 
tied to electricity in any way, reset itself. A battery weather 
thermometer with a probe outside, fried.

The ham tower had to come down. The top of it was severely scorched. The 
texture of the wire was completely different. A driver on our street 
actually saw the bolt of lightning strike it. He lost the GPS and fuse 
box in his car.

They said what saved us from a major fire was the fact that we'd rewired 
the house nine years ago. It was built in 1911, and had some 1929 
wiring. We also put surge protectors on the breaker box. It threw almost 
every breaker in the house. But believe this if you can, we did not lose 
power.

Are you ready mentally for something like that? We certainly weren't, 
but I'm awfully glad we're here to tell the story. It's one of the 
scariest half hours of my life. What would you grab if it were your 
turn, or would you grab anything at all? Now, where is that "Go" bag?