EXODUS

When the sidewalk finally dropped off into grass, I realized I was on school grounds. Then I accidentally kicked somebody. I swear I didn’t see anything. I looked down to see there was more than one. They were lying on the ground side by side, like sardines.  How old were they? They couldn’t have been more than twelve years old. Gray sheets with a giant Red Cross were just barely covering them, being half-taken by the wind and exposing too much.

There were small divisions of the building that were still on fire, and I believe four firemen were not enough to work on something like this. At least I only saw four. There were Red Cross volunteers sprinkled about on the school grounds as far as the eye could see through all this smoke; trying to clean wounds, trying to bandage squirming kids, and trying, trying, trying so carefully to remain calm talking to so many burned victims--asking them who they came out with, who they think is still in there, who their parents are, and at what number they could reach them at.

There were sporadically-pitched tents all bearing a giant Red Cross, which no one could make me to enter. If there were dead bodies they let scattered out here on the school grounds for all wondering eyes to see, what tragedies would be found in such concealed tents?

I began circling the building. I kept my eyes desperately peeled.  I tried imagining coming home, to an apartment free of debris, no “lived in” look to complement my decorative orderliness--There would be no instruments to marvel at and to itch to learn to play. His music wouldn’t dominate the air, nor for that matter, be plastered about the walls. Just bare walls for me to stair at, hopelessly. Two years ago, I would have given anything just to have such an apartment, completely absent of Fivel Meirjorno--He had a middle name--it started with a “J,” but I couldn’t remember it for the life of me that day. How badly I wanted the chance to ask him, again. I wanted to know how he felt about me--My presence and the fact that he had to live with me and whether or not it was really as painful as he made it sound. Naturally, this whole line of questioning evoked something I had to finally allow myself to explore. One final question: Do I want him to approve of me, after all? No! Most certainly not--I wanted him to look at, make amore to me and make me happy the way I know he could have, they way I should have allowed him to.

Then he came out of one of the bigger tents, and I finally found him. He ran out, like a player running off to the side of a court, with is hands on his knees, his elbows locked, allowing his upper-body to lean against it. He was obviously disturbed at what was in there. Blood was smeared about those jeans I hated and his gray t-shirt I almost threw out months ago when he used it to wrap the water pipe under the kitchen sink. The blood must have been someone else’s. It looked as though it had been wiped off on him. I dared not to approach him. I would have no more control than I had pouring the coffee on that man at the diner.  I would put him in such unimaginable danger.  He didn’t see me at all. He only went to stand outside briefly, and lord knows he couldn’t stand the side of blood Certainly not from children--ones he sees almost every day in the chaos of his classroom for the past year. He stood leaning far over, looking as if he were fixing to vomit. Instead, he tore his hands away, that were clasped on his knees, and wrapped his arms around his stomach. Someone must have called him from inside the tent, because he suddenly tuned back, quite reluctantly. Then he rushed back out of the big red tent after another short while and grabbed a blanket, along with two water bottles from another nearby tent that was fixing to fall over. He went back in the first one and stayed there a long time, until he and someone else--a man or a woman, were each on either side of a board, holding up some limp body. He followed as the man/woman with short hair lead them to one of the ambulance trucks, placing it down amongst the others that “might” make it. I was sill standing still, watching though the punishing smoke as that other person had Fivel follow them to that same tent, knowing neither one wanted to go back in at all. Finally, as I leaned foreword, wanting to put one foot in front of the other, I realized I was able to move. There were patients in there. I wanted to help him help them.

That’s when I finally went over, surprising him. He asked me why I was there and I asked him what I could do.

“How do you feel about blood?”

“Well, I don’t much care for it, but I can stand it if I have to.”

“Alright--Hey, Eve?” He jerked his head back and spoke inaudibly to someone from inside. He lifted the tent flap just as a semi-aged women with short, blonde, graying hair emerged from inside. She was wearing a bloodied gray and black striped tank top (She must have taken the shirt over it off, because I would have remembered such a crazy top.) and jeans with the knees worn out.

“Sweet-heart?” She seemed nice enough, but her over-all appearance made her look like she was too busy to deal with me. “There is something you can do--How would you feel about donating blood? That’s really all we need right now.” Fivel had already taken off elsewhere, and it made me quite uneasy not having him in my sight at this time. Just before I could say yes, two of the other volunteers finally dragged one of those roller-cots out of there. This child was unconscious, and hopefully, alive. He was covered in the heavy gray blanket Fivel had gotten Showing only his tennis shoes and his plain, sleeping face.

“Yes! What do I have to do?”

“Great! Come right on in.”

Inside, It would have been pitch black if it hadn’t have been for that lantern plugged into an extension chord leading outside the back.