It all started last September. The smoke, the ash, the soot. The sirens, the roadblocks, the bystanders. The photographs, the stories, the headlines.

            The explosion. The deaths. The fear.

            The fires.

            The worst thing to happen to this town since that little mishap back in the seventies. Love Canal they call it. The one that caused Jimmy Carter to start the Superfund project. One of the most catastrophic environmental disasters this world has ever seen. They teach kids about it across the country. It’s our claim to fame: “Look, Johnny! Don’t let this happen to you!”

            Those chemicals, the most toxic known to man, they’re still under the dirt. Lurking. Bubbling. Convulsing.

            Back then, when the atrocity was “discovered,” they threw a clay cap on the stuff, a clay cap which needs to be replaced every 30 years or so. That was 41 years ago. Give or take. Lois Gibbs, eat your heart out.

            I’ve heard horror stories that the people living nearby, the people who were told to evacuate then told it was safe to return, I heard their babies are being born with clubfoot again. Webbed fingers and toes. Cleft-lip. Miscarriages. Thick green-black sludge seeping through their basements and backyards, oozing forth with the stench of death, like hands from hell.

            The corporation responsible for the toxic sludge, Hooker Chemical, they changed their name to Oxy Chemical Corp and relocated a few miles west. And east. And north. That was all that changed. That, and the media stopped coverage of the whole thing. Must have been some big checks. Everyone still knew what was going on, we just pretended not to. There was nothing else we could do. It was all thrown in the ditch with the hazardous poison and forgotten about. Covered up. While the pollution steadily increased, Niagara Falls’ population steadily decreased.

            That’s why, last September when Oxy Chem caught on fire, no one was upset. No one, except the factory workers who lost their jobs, the firemen doing theirs, and their worried families and friends. No one, until—BOOM—it exploded like a palm full of atom bomb. The Cataract City’s population again decreased.

            The fire burned for three days and nights. A hundred tons of processed cardboard strapped tight outside the factory. A hundred tons of fuel for the flames to swallow. And digest. And grow.

           “I heard someone was careless with a cigarette,” a large woman says, watching the main event from an unsafe distance.

            “I heard it was a machine malfunction,” says a man accompanied by his kids, his wife, the dog. Everyone’s gotta see this. Everyone has their own version of the truth.

            Personally, I thought we had an arsonist on our hands. I still do. First it was those two abandoned houses on Fourth Street, then the junkyard on the north end, then the forest fire on the reservation, then Oxy Chem. Four unexplained fires in two weeks doesn’t add up.

            After the explosion though, the fires stopped. Everything stopped. The whole city stopped, once all those people died.

*                      *                      *

            How do you catch an arsonist? Most times, you don’t. Arson is one of the hardest crimes to investigate. Partly because any evidence is burnt to ash, partly because it’s so random, partly because little is known about what goes on inside the mind of an arsonist. What makes them tick… tick… BOOM.

            From what is known, they are typically angry, young men. Of course, I’m referring to the fires that aren’t set by some genius torching their own business for insurance money. The ones set by some enraged, restrained kid, searching for emancipation. His silence engulfing him just like the flames he creates engulf everything else. Fire. His outlet. His statement.

            Some people paint, some people write, some people set fires.

*                      *                      *

           The second night the factory fire raged on I was at a bar down the street. The cool cadaver-blue night was warmed by the hellish red of the blaze. The tension as thick as the clouds of smoke slowly climbing into that crisp autumn sky. I was drawn to it like an insect to a dead body, like a shark to an open wound. It sucked me in like a black hole. Like gravity.

*                      *                      *

            Fire has always had a redeeming quality for me. A mesmerizing nature. One of Bruce Lee’s most famous quotes, he says to be water. A way of adapting to your surroundings, a state of mind, a life philosophy. He says water takes the shape of whatever it’s held in, it makes its way through cracks, it can flow or it can crash. Much the same can be said about fire. It can dance or it can eat. It can create or destroy. It can lighten your world up or darken it out. Fire never sits still; it’s spontaneous, unpredictable. It’s raw power, unharnessed. Fire conquers whatever is in its path, leaving only ash and soot and smoke. It’s what matter looks like when it’s changing forms. The way it whips and whirls, swirls and flickers, it’s like a glimpse into another dimension. Another reality. Something to be near, yet to be wary of. Fire should be your role model, really.

            There are lessons to be learned from fire. Sometimes, things ignite, and you don’t know which direction they’re heading. You can’t control them. Sometimes, all you can do is sit back and breathe the beauty of tragedy deep in your lungs. You hold it in, then you exhale a work of art. A classic. A masterpiece.

*                      *                      *

            That night, as I watched the city burn, I thought, “How many times have I wanted to see this?” Now that it was happening, I didn’t like it. Fantasy and reality are two very separate things, and you’d do well to keep them that way. You want to be careful not to mix the two. You never know if that mix might explode.

            Staring at the blaze, gripped by its ever-moving fingers, I thought how no one else at the bar seemed to care. Maybe they did, only they already told their version of the truth, they had exhausted all conversation on the subject. Maybe they had family members fighting the flames right now, and they were drinking their brains thoughtless instead of dwelling on indignation. Maybe if they really cared, they’d be down the street with the hundreds of other people who pulled off the road or walked up from nearby neighborhoods to watch the disaster. Breathe it deep and hold it in—though most of what they exhaled was only hot air and ash. They were the ones who really cared. Or maybe they cared less, as they pulled their fold-up lawn chairs and coolers out from their trunks.

            Really, no one cared. Not until they or their loved ones were affected. Not until it was their husband battling the blaze or losing his job. It’s all great fun until it’s not anymore. Everyone just wanted to see some fireworks, but no one knew they were scheduled for the next night. The grand finale they’d never forget.

*                      *                      *

            The explosion rattled my house on the other side of town. It obliterated a large portion of the city. It evaporated 376 people.

            Just… gone.

            Melted. Hot air. Ash.

            The wind carried the scent of smoldering skin through the city, wailing shrieks and sirens. It rained soot and blood and body parts. It was chaos, cacophony. It was hell.

*                      *                      *

            Walking downtown weeks later, I found a broken watch in an alley behind Ferry Avenue. The face was shattered, the hands blown off. It was wrapped around a scorched-black wrist. The watch’s hands weren’t the only ones blown off. I imagined the owner’s face was shattered too. He and his watch, they matched. There was still a lot of cleaning up to do.

            Even then, black smoke and ash covered the city. The wind was strong that September, almost like mother nature wanted to see the city burn, wanted those people to die. She wouldn’t rain or snow or anything. She only watched people die, like those who died had watched the fire. She blew on the red-hot embers. She exhaled a masterpiece.

*                      *                      *

            Wind can be an arsonist’s worst enemy, or his best friend. It can make the fire-setting tough, but once the blaze is burning it can blow the flames everywhere, into a whirlwind of torture and pain and release. That’s what instilled fear in people: not just the random nature of fire, but the random nature of the arsonist. Predicting his next move was impossible. Nowhere was safe. That’s why, when the fires stopped, people were still afraid. It wasn’t the fires themselves because they ended—it was the shaking anticipation of the next blaze. It was the nerve-racking anxiety of constantly looking over your shoulder, lingering in the air like the thick, dark smoke. It was terrorism.

*                      *                      *

            That was two years ago. Niagara Falls never recovered from that night. It was already struggling, and it only grew worse. More people left and took their kids and businesses with them. Everyone was terrified. The explosion killed this town—or maybe it took it out of its misery. Who knows?

            What I do want to know is: who is this pyromaniac, and where will he strike next? Because when I woke up this morning, I had no recollection of last night. Thick, black smoke was burning my eyes. It was raining ash, my face smeared with soot. The hair on my hands and forearms was singed off, and my skin reeked of the sweet, sweet scent of gasoline…