—
I DON’T KNOW WHY Dad was alone on the mountain that day.
The car crusher was coming. I suppose he wanted to remove that last
fuel tank, but I can’t imagine what possessed him to light his torch
without first draining the fuel. I don’t know how far he got, how many
of the iron belts he managed to sever, before a spark from the torch
made it into the tank. But I know Dad was standing next to the car, his
body pressed against the frame, when the tank exploded.
He was wearing a long-sleeved shirt, leather gloves and a welding
shield. His face and fingers took the brunt of the blast. The heat from
the explosion melted through the shield as if it were a plastic spoon.
The lower half of his face liquefied: the fire consumed plastic, then
skin, then muscle. The same process was repeated with his fingers—the
leather gloves were no match for the inferno that passed over and
through them—then tongues of flame licked across his shoulders and
chest. When he crawled away from the flaming wreckage, I imagine he
looked more like a corpse than a living man.
It is unfathomable to me that he was able to move, let alone drag
himself a quarter mile through fields and over ditches. If ever a man
needed angels, it was that man. But against all reason he did it, and—
as his father had years before—huddled outside his wife’s door, unable
to knock.
My cousin Kylie was working for my mother that day, filling vials of
essential oil. A few other women worked nearby, weighing dried leaves
or straining tinctures. Kylie heard a soft tap on the back door, as if
someone was bumping it with their elbow. She opened it but has no
memory of what was on the other side. “I’ve blocked it out,” she would
later tell me. “I can’t remember what I saw. I only remember what I
thought, which was, He has no skin.”
My father was carried to the couch. Rescue Remedy—the
homeopathic for shock—was poured into the lipless cavity that had
been his mouth. They gave him lobelia and skullcap for the pain, the
same mixture Mother had given Luke years before. Dad choked on the
medicine. He couldn’t swallow. He’d inhaled the fiery blast, and his
insides were charred.
Mother tried to take him to the hospital, but between rasping
breaths he whispered that he’d rather die than see a doctor. The