It was fortunate that there was a labor shortage. When the fire erupted at the fertilizer plant, the workplace was understaffed. Two men from Honduras were working near the processing shed that exploded. They were from a remote part of the Latin American country, jungles and mountains, and didn’t even speak conventional Spanish. Their bodies were never recovered.
I saw the blast from across the harbor. First, an orange glow slowly expanded, opening like the petals of a flower and the light cast transient long shadows down the streets and alleyways. Then, we heard the distant report of explosions, sporadic pops and booms. The fertilizer plant shot fireballs into the air, one after another, red rockets ascending into the night sky. For a long time, the plant pumped fiery balls upward. Then, the cannonade ceased and the glow fell into itself, sputtering and flickering like embers half-buried in soot.
Some of the firefighters said that there ash creatures stalking the fire, bathing in flames like mythical salamanders. At first, three of these figures, wiry and made from soot, marched around in the flames. Two of them disintegrated, evaporating into mists of ash. The third looked like a very thin woman, pacing in the fire on high heels. After a while, she vanished as well.
A couple days later, an attractive young woman, an immigrant from Columbia or Chili, registered for employment at the temp agency. I prepared her application and checked her immigration status. It was a little unclear. She told me that her Green Card had been destroyed in a fire. But some calls verified that she was authorized to work.
Many positions were open, even for a person whose English was a little uncertain. The woman worked for a month at a diner just off the State Highway. Unfortunately, there was a grease fire in the kitchen and the old place burned down. I placed her at a Vet clinic, cleaning cages and tending to hospitalized pets. But that place burned down and a half-dozen dogs were roasted. (Somehow the cats all escaped). Bad luck seemed to follow her. Next, she worked at a furniture warehouse, but the business went bankrupt and closed it doors when the owner was indicted. I put her to work as a chambermaid at a hotel on the State Highway. However, a building inspection turned up fire code violations and that place was shut down. She must have gone to another temp agency, possibly associating me with her bad luck – I thought that she was trouble; she probably thought the same thing about me. So I lost track of her.
Six months later, I retired. A senior citizen bus tour was scheduled through our community center. The theme was Springsteen’s America and the route was designed around places made famous in the Boss’ songs. I signed up for the tour. It was fine, even though we had to wear masks on the bus on account of the Covid virus.
The tour was undersubscribed and the bus was only about one-third full. Between Philadelphia and Allentown, we carried passengers who were not part of the tour – it was some kind of agreement between Greyhound and the tour operator. Among the passengers, mostly Spanish-speaking people, I noticed the bad luck woman from either Chili or Columbia. She was elegantly dressed, wearing black heels, and a gold cross on a necklace around her throat. Most of the fares riding the bus seemed to be traveling in groups of two or three, but the woman that I recognized was alone.
Mid-day we stopped for lunch at the Catron Tennis Club. This was a hilltop resort on the outskirts of Bethlehem, once a haven for the families of steel company executives. Those firms were gone now and so the elegant club house and tennis courts had been converted to a summer camp for disadvantaged inner-city kids.
We ate in the dining room, a big cafeteria with food served buffet style. In the lobby, trophies were displayed and there were pictures of several young people associated with the club who had played in the Olympics. I inspected the pictures showing handsome boys and girls dressed in white and clutching their rackets to their chests. The food was excellent and the rest rooms clean and roomy. Waiting to board the bus, I observed the woman from the temp agency gazing at me with a discreet side-long look. When I returned her gaze, she looked away.
The passengers on the bus got off at the Allentown station. Looking from the window, I saw them gathering their shabby luggage and duffel bags that had been set by the curb. The woman waved to the bus as we pulled away from the station. A little later, we learned that the kitchen at the Tennis Club caught fire an hour after we left and the place burned to the ground.
We spent the night in Trenton. The next morning, departing the city at dawn, I saw the skyscrapers downtown suffused with yellow radiance. The towers of the city looked like a clump of ripe bananas pointed up into the sky.
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