Would thirty cups of coffee be enough to get us through this night? I made sure the lid was secure on the coffeepot and plugged it into the kitchen outlet. If it wasn’t enough I could always make more. There were slightly stale pastries laid out on the folding tables towards the rear of the community room and I had a few more Red Cross sandwiches in the kitchen for the truly hard-core hungry.
The kitchen was harshly lit with florescent ceiling lights some of which flickered in a way that made me sure I might at any moment have some sort of fit induced by rapid eye movement. In contrast most of the lights in the community room of this small city parks building had burnt out long ago and the remaining ones glowed with a dim but steady bluish light.
Looking out from the kitchen doorway, I could only see the people gathered on the other side in shadows. One shadow, smaller than most but larger than a few, sat straighter, had more life energy somehow, and I knew this must be my son. He was leaning in across yet another old folding table with his body slightly twisted. I couldn’t see it but I knew his mouth was set in a strict line and his neck would be just lightly scrunched down into his shoulders. This was his posture of intent listening. It had crossed my mind more than once that he was not just listening to a speaker at these times, he was trying to move his body into the experience of the speaker, occupy the space of another’s reality.
I finished restocking the sugars and powdered creamers in Styrofoam cups and weighted the cup holding little red stirrers so it wouldn’t tip over all the time. I had just wiped my hands on the cleanest towel when I heard a knock on the backdoor of the kitchen. Since there were signs everywhere saying that it wasn’t an entrance and large arrows leading the way to the community room entrance I knew it must be a uniform. Only a cop would ignore all that yellow tape and signage to knock on a locked door.
It was Officer Sidec. He and I had met four days before when the fires had first begun burning. He and his partner drove a police van that they used in a police operated kid’s program but was now a meals’ delivery for the firefighters and police. They would come to my kitchen at the shelter and now to this feeding center to load up with meals. They would then drive the few blocks to the Incident Command Center and receive directions for the most current drop sites. These were their official duties during the firestorm. Their role as humans and fellow uniforms was somewhat different, and they had found a like-thinker when they found me. And so for the better part of a week these two Oakland police officers, and a cadre of fire and police personnel, had helped me break at least three laws a day.
“Do you have a cot?”
Yesterday I had arranged to keep three cots and a stack of Red Cross issue blankets, and move them quietly to this feeding site when they closed the shelter I had managed. I was lucky in that my team at the shelter counted on me to know the rules. No one but myself might be sought should items turn up missing in a final inventory. Nothing would turn up later as missing because by the time the smoke settled everything would have found its way back to the Red Cross warehouse or been accounted for in some manner. I would see to that.
“Get him and bring him in.” I instructed Sidec, “ I have one set up just behind the water heater to the left as you come in. Keep him low and quiet, I don’t want my clients to think there are beds or uniforms here.”
Sidec disappeared from the small ring of light that escaped the kitchen and I couldn’t even see movement the night was so black beyond that ring.
“Mom?”
Jackson had come into the kitchen. He must have heard something, maybe the knock at the door. Without turning I eased the door to almost closed and requested he help me by prepareing a feast. Some napkins, a pile of orange wedges on a paper plate, and a cup of half coffee and half water, all to be placed on the ancient Formica table which occupied the center of the kitchen. He followed my instructions without comment.
Everything Jackson had seen throughout the day and into this night had been beyond his experience as a twelve-year-old. He didn’t even understand that the last four days had been beyond the experience of everyone caught in this firestorm that had engulfed the Oakland and Berkeley hills.
The first day I had left the house with my friend Richard to go to a movie. We live on the beach some forty-five minutes south of San Francisco, which is nice in many ways, but it means that the nearest movie house is over the hills about 30 minutes away. As we drove up to the crest of the hills, the bright morning began to unnaturally turn dark toward the east. Storms in our part of the world come from the west, sometimes the northwest, but always the west. Then large black chunks of cinder and ash hit our windshield and hood. We crested the hill and I could see it and I knew, somehow knew, what it was. Or I thought I knew.
San Francisco stood gleaming in the sunlight of a bright autumn day. To the south, the Peninsula though darker still testified to the excellent weather that the Bay Area is known for in October. The Bay itself was dark and had the look of storm and dusk, but the East Bay was covered in a cloud so black, so dense that it swallowed Oakland whole.
We talk about San Francisco breaking off and falling into the Pacific here in Northern California. On that first day, from the top of the hill a good hour drive away from Oakland, it looked like the United States had broken off and fallen into the Atlantic Ocean leaving only the city of San Francisco and the area west of the Oakland Bay Bridge.
I had Richard turn around and head home. Oakland was burning and I knew that as a volunteer for the Red Cross I would be working. The call was waiting for me when we walked through the door. I thought I knew what it was, this fire, but no one really knew until they were in it.
For three days, an eternity, I ran a shelter and fed uniforms. Then we were told to close the shelter. My shelter team went on to other assignments but I was asked to open this feeding site to take care of some “problem” clients. I went home for one night and returned that morning with Jackson, my son, to open the feeding site and give him a feel for what his mom did when she was away from home.
The “problem” clients were a surprise to all the authorities. These were people who lived in the Oakland Hills alongside the middle class to affluent residents, but hidden, invisible. There were actually several groups or villages of people who had set up housekeeping in the trees ala Robin Hood and his Merry Men. These groups included some men of the type we had grown accustomed to seeing on our city streets, drunks or drug users who had no means of doing more in their lives than drink or use. These were men close to dying, who had hit bottom and kept on sinking. They weren’t the majority of the “tree people”, as my clients became known. The majority were couples no longer young, not yet old, somehow made ageless by their poverty, poor diets, and bad hygiene. Then there were the families, no men in these but often small boys. The children were never older than ten. Where did the children go when they passed ten years of age? Usually the families had two women, often related, and three to five kids between them. All of these people had lost their property and homes, the same as the students and retirees, the teachers and other professionals who lived in the Oakland Hills when the fire started.
The tree people were my primary clients at the feeding site. They didn’t fit into anyone’s box on any form. No one knew what to do with them. No one really wanted them seen; there were enough problems already. So the community room at this small parks department building had an ebb and flow of tree people trying to figure it all out, to make connections, to snag a meal or just get warm. If they had had cell phones we would have called it networking.
The tree people weren’t my only clients. There were also the uniforms with special needs. Another set of lost souls who entered through the back door under the cover of night.
Sidec reappeared with a firefighter in full gear draped against him. He led him over to the less exposed area by the cot. Without a word to Jackson or myself he helped the firefighter remove first his helmet and then the remainder of his protective gear.
A very young sandy haired young man was revealed as the layers came off. His face was blackened with soot so thick that features were all but hidden and his eyes had disappeared into deep sunken sockets.
Without instruction, Jackson took the plate and drink he had prepared and placed it all down on a wobbly chair just within reach of the cot.
At that moment Sidec’s partner Roy came in through the back door carrying the firefighter’s tanks. Tossing the tanks under the cot he poured himself a cup of coffee and sat down at the table. Sidec followed with his own coffee moments later silently indicating that I should sit with them. I sent Jackson out to the community room to keep an eye on things.
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disappointed
numb
contemplative
jubilant
indifferent
impressed
artistic
curious