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Fireless
When they extinguished the foundry it was as if they had capped my soul. When the foreman told me that they would be phasing production to India and letting the steel workers go I didn't care about the redundancies. This fire had been burning for decades, it had burned through wars and it had burned through natural catastrophies, it had remained a constant in my life. I had never felt the cold until the day the foreman said they would eventually have to put the fire out.
With the slow relentless pace of molten steel seeping along funnels and oozing through channels the crew were driven out of their alcoves, out of their corners and asked to leave one by one until only myself and the foreman remained. There was a party arranged at Brewster's but I didn't intend going.
"Time to go" he said, but I moved closer to him "I know you're worried, I know."
He put an arm around me and we moved closer to the lip of the recovery boiler. The refuse slag would finish here in a huge tank that I had always believed would remain unopened.
"You're worried about the bodies, aren't you."
I nodded. He gave a laugh that rang through the empty plant, bouncing off steel mesh walkways, ringing around empty smelting furnaces and filling the air with noise again, but then his face took on a hard expression.
"They'll never be found because nobody knows they need to be looked for. Only me and you know. And pretty soon, it'll just be me."
He gave me a firm push and the barrier behind me gave way. Below me the last of the molten metal bubbled and spat. I knew that I would never feel cold again.
Aug.15.2007