Ashes to ashes

when the house exploded at three a.m., the neighbors of course had no idea what was going on. that apa, my father, had built his own funeral pyre, acting out his last scene with as much flair as possible.

fire departments showed, the police came, the federal bureau of alcohol, tobacco and firearms. the local daily courier and tribune reported on the explosion, on the body found, charred so badly they could not identify “even the gender.”[1]

it was a crime scene. detectives picked through the rubble, trying to understand how it happened—arson? homicide?

the police report outlines their discovery of my mom, of us living in flagstaff, of understanding how my dad spent his last minutes.

he had forced his car into the garage. he never did that. the durango could never fit amongst all the bullshit he bought—tools on top of tools on top of electronics until there was nothing left for us. he’d worked on cranes, on semis, on every kind of car. each piece of equipment saved. wrenches so big, I could fit my head through them as a small child.

apa never stopped spending money on things we didn’t need. it was a compulsion. and it was all in the garage. so we knew he only got his car in because the thought of us having it was unacceptable. how dare we think we had a right to his things. candy apple red, with yellow bumpers (he’d been in an accident and chosen the garish color to be more noticeable). the leather seats were always greasy when we

    (my brother and I)

sat on them as children. we were not often in his car. the interior so black. he was very sharp with us about keeping it clean.

he bought a brand-new computer monitor that night and took it into the house. my mom said it was lucky he didn’t pull all the money out of their account and burn that, too. he had opened the gas burners on the stove, turned the oven on, and removed its door. he waited for the house to fill with gas. I wonder if he moved through the rooms one last time.

did he go through the photo albums before they burned away? did he go into my and márton’s room to see all the toys, our clothes? I wonder if he thought of all the scarves my mom had brought over, her books, letters from the students she had practically raised as a high school headmaster before becoming pregnant. if he knew he’d be erasing some of the only things she had left of her life before.

maybe it was like the burning of alexandria. wanting history re-written, wanting what he’d done to us in that house to be smote from our memories, from the very record of the earth. he did not count on the fine layer of ash his act would put down. forever a part of the geologic sedimentation. the fire still burning in excavation.

maybe he watched some tv first. at home, that’s often where he’d be, after work, and especially once he was sick. watch tv, blaringly loud, yelling at anyone who came through the living room.

apa had set up gas tanks around the house, too. initially, the police believed he shot them, or maybe that the heat caused bullets to fire at them. but the detectives eventually realized that once apa knew there was enough gas in the air, he simply stepped into the bath-tub, and fired the gun at himself, letting physics do the work.

the bullet pulled double-duty; killing him, and igniting the fuel in the air.

“‘it was about 3 in the morning and I was awoken by a big explosion sound. it shook the fence and windows and everything. I thought it was a car that ran into our building,’ said dash hooper, whose apartment is only one house away from the one that burned.

‘the house just went up fast. the people right next to it came out. they were going to try to render aid, but the house was just engulfed,’ she said. ‘pieces of things were exploding and flying through the air.’”[2]

my father was as physically and mentally ill as a person can be

and he was smart

there was control right up to the end

the police (sort of) wanted to know why he did it. there seemed to be some kind of conclusion about the suicide being after a fight once they had questioned my mom. but I had grown up in fighting, in them screaming at one another. in my mother refusing to back down until he beat his victory out of her.

maybe there was one moment decades before where he chose one thing over another, damning him to a future of destruction. what would that mean for us? to live around a point which transmuted everything it took in into hatred, into darkness, into an outpouring of emptiness. irrevocable. that vacuum filled our house, sucked the life and the air out of me out of my brother out of my mother.

or perhaps he simply chose, in every moment, to be self-absorbed, self-serving, dominating, and veritably insane. maybe he knew, when he got my mom pregnant and tricked her into moving to another country, that he was going to burn down their home and kill himself.

[1] daily courier, feb 8th, 2007.

[2] prescott valley tribune, feb 9th, 2007.