Don't Kill The Messenger (15 page)

The words never come out that way, of course. I always present them with compassion and sympathy, well aware that circumstances drastic enough to warrant my arrival require tact and a soft tone. I often wonder how I would react if the situation was reversed, if I was on the receiving end of such news.

“There, exit 26.” Rebecca’s words snap me out of my thoughts and bring me back into the moment. “This is our exit.”

The sign points to a state highway and two towns, one east of us and the other west. I notice that Wyandotte is not on the sign; abandoned towns don’t warrant signage, I suppose.

“That means we’re six miles from Wyandotte,” I say.

“And it’s 5:10. What time is the house coming down?”

“Not until 7:46. We made very good time. Do you need to stop for anything?”

“No,” she replies. “Let’s just get there. The more time we have with these people, the better we’ll be.”

I take the exit and head west, based on the directions in my head. The state highway is lightly traveled and mostly nondescript. There are a few businesses here and there, the occasional shack or mobile home, and a lot of trees. Five miles later, we come to the intersection of another state highway. It is the road into Wyandotte, and still no sign is there to inform us of this. I’ve been to ghost towns in Colorado, places abandoned for 100 years or more, and each one has been marked with signs directing the curious to come and explore. No such welcome exists for Wyandotte; it’s almost as if someone—or everyone—wanted the place forgotten. The thought disturbs me as I make the right turn, the final mile toward Wyandotte, Pennsylvania and the task of telling William and Virginia Harbison that their lives are about to change forever.

Chapter 10
 

“You doing all right?” Rebecca asks as we make our way toward the town.

“A little edgy; the usual. How about you?”

“A little bit, yeah,” she admits. “But mostly okay.”

Any signs of life that were apparent on the feeder highway are gone now on the road to Wyandotte. We see a few boarded-up stores as we approach. Grass grows wild and unkempt. Weeds own the landscape. At last, we reach the edge of town, where we see an old wooden signpost bearing the carefully carved and painted words “Welcome to Wyandotte. Our pride, our home.” The sign is decades old and has fallen into such disrepair that it looks as if it is about to fall over at any moment. The state’s green sign with the town name and population is gone, the final confirmation of the place’s demise.

On long-deserted buildings, graffiti tells the tale of those who have passed through: Wes & Kelli ’93. Steelers rule. TC + RL 4-eva. Class of 2005. Then, on the road ahead, we see large words spray painted on cracked and pitted asphalt, words that send a chill through me: Welcome to hell.

Rebecca sees it too and her expression falls. “Tristan …”

“I know. I see it.”

“I don’t want to be in hell. Why is it hell?”

“I guess somebody didn’t enjoy their stay.”

“This is starting to creep me out. Where’s their house?”

“On the 200 block of Spring Street,” I reply.

Without even pausing to think about it, she says, “Turn right at the park up here.” I am astonished by her words, and looking over at her, I realize that she is as well.

“Now how would you know that?” I ask her, making the right turn.

“I don’t know,” she replies honestly. “I just know that this is where Spring Street would be. Do you think some of your abilities are rubbing off on me?”

“Anything’s possible. But it would be a first.”

The streets of Wyandotte do indeed paint a hellish picture. Every house is abandoned, many of them dilapidated, ransacked, crumbling. Some have been lost to fire. Children’s toys litter the sidewalks, broken, rusted, worn away by years of disuse. The streets themselves are in need of repair that will never come. Cracks and potholes and discarded items make an obstacle course that keeps me on my guard as we approach the Harbisons’ house. Then, up ahead, I see it—the only occupied home in the entire town. It is by no means elegant, but compared to everything around it, the one-story home is an oasis. It looks cared for. Signs at the perimeter politely warn trespassers away. As we park at the curb, I only hope that the homeowners will view us as visitors and not trespassers.

I put the top up and we get out of the car, looking for signs of the inhabitants. There is a car in their driveway, an older-model Ford, which I hope is a good sign. As we are making our way up the driveway (calmly and with no sudden moves), the front door to the house opens and a man in his early sixties steps out. “You folks lost?” he calls to us.

“No, sir,” I reply. “Are you Mr. Harbison, by chance?”

“I don’t know if chance has anything to do with it,” he says, “but I’m William Harbison. Do I know you?”

“I can’t imagine you do. My name is Tristan, and this is Rebecca.” There’s no need for pretense or masquerade this time. “We’ve driven here from Atlanta because we were asked to deliver a message to you.”

“That’s an awful long way to deliver a message. We do have a telephone, you know.”

Rebecca shoots me a quick
told-ya-so
glance, and it elicits a smile from me. “I was asked to deliver the message to you and Mrs. Harbison in person. Would you mind if we came inside for a couple of minutes?”

He assesses us visually, deciding whether our story checks out and whether we look dangerous. Apparently he believes that it does, and we don’t, because he opens the door for us and says, “Come on in.”

The interior of the house has the same no-nonsense, no-frills quality as its exterior. It is home to this couple, who do not have to worry about neighbors, relatives, or even casual visitors—except today. The Harbisons are tidy without being fastidious, and they have a love of books, Hummel figurines, and religious décor. As I look around the living room, I try very hard not to picture everything in ruin in two hours’ time.

Mrs. Harbison meets us in the living room. “Hello,” she says, apparently quite surprised to have people calling. Part of living in a ghost town, I guess. “I’m Virginia.”

“I’m Tristan, ma’am,” I reply, “and this is Rebecca.”

“Ginny, these young people have come here from Atlanta. They have a message to give us.”

“Won’t you have a seat?” she says. “I’ve made iced tea. Would you like some?”

“That’d be great,” Rebecca says, and I nod in agreement. Inside, though, I am tied in knots over what I have to tell these people. On the journey, it’s a concept, words to be spoken, but once I meet the recipient, put a face to the name, it complicates things beyond measure.

Ginny Harbison brings us each a glass of tea and then joins her husband on the couch. Rebecca sits on a wing chair, facing them. I choose to stand; it’s easier to fidget that way.
God, I hate this part.
“Mr. and Mrs. Harbison, what I’m about to tell you might be hard to believe but it’s very important that you understand two things: First, what I have to tell you is entirely true. And second, I swear to you that we mean you no harm. We’re here to help you.”

The couple look at each other warily. “Son,” Mr. Harbison says, “if that’s the warm-up, I don’t think I’m looking forward to hearing the pitch. You’d best say what you came here to say.”

I pause long enough to take a breath. “At 7:46 tonight, there’s going to be an accident. Important structural components of your house will fail, and the house is going to collapse. I’m very sorry.”

Mrs. Harbison stands in disbelief, her face riddled with shock and fear. Her husband, interestingly enough, receives the news with resolute calm. “That can’t be!” she cries out. “That’s not possible! Why would you say such a thing?”

Mr. Harbison puts a calming hand on her shoulder. “Ginny, be calm. It’s going to be all right. We’ll get through this.”

I look directly at him. “Then you do believe me?”

He nods. “I’ve seen the bowing of the joists for about a year now. I’ve suspected that the support beams were rotting, but I couldn’t get behind the drywall to see them.”

“You knew?” Ginny asks, astonished. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I didn’t want to worry you, Mother,” he says to his wife. “Not until I could be sure. Besides, we don’t have the money to fix it, even if contractors would come out here.”

She is near tears. “William, what are we going to do?”

“We can help you,” Rebecca chimes in, standing. “We have two hours. That’ll give us time to get things out of the house—heirlooms, anything that’s irreplaceable. As many of your possessions as we can carry to safety.”

“That’s very kind of you,” William says. “I accept your offer. We should probably get to it then, since time is short. You’re sure about that time, 7:46?”

“Very sure,” I answer.

“All right then. Wouldn’t want to find myself buried under rubble at 7:15.”

And so the race to clear the house begins. With no storage shed and no trailer truck available, our goal is to get as many possessions as possible into the front yard until the Harbisons can figure out what to do and where to go. I silently wish that they would consider their large collection of books to be replaceable, but no such luck. I quickly find myself boxing up books and carting the ferociously heavy boxes out to the lawn, one after the other. Ginny Harbison concentrates on the Hummels and religious figurines first, while William brings out album after album of photographs, some containing old newspaper articles. Rebecca carries out electronics—their TV, radio, small appliances.

“We’ll need to turn off the power to the house before 7:46,” I tell the group. “We don’t want a fire on top of everything else.”

As the unloading continues, Rebecca asks, “How did all of this happen?”

“It’s an old house,” William replies. “Over time, the support beams have started to give out. I’ve called contractors to come and look at the house, but none of them want to come out here. So I prayed that God would send me a warning if something bad was going to happen. Then the two of you arrived.”

Rebecca and I look at each other upon hearing this, each pondering the implications of what it means. But there is little time for pondering, with many more objects to be transported outside.

“Actually, I was talking about the town,” Rebecca tells him. “Why did everyone leave?”

This time, the Harbisons exchange a glance, one of surprise, based on the looks on their faces. “You mean you don’t know about the smog?” Ginny Harbison asks.

Rebecca shakes her head. Those words have an ominous quality to them:
the smog.
I’ve been through smog before, but bad enough to clear out an entire town?

“I’ll tell you,” William says, “but we have to keep working.” We agree, and he begins his tale. “It was eighteen years ago April. It was a bit warmer than usual, and then a cold front came through, bringing very heavy cloud cover over Wyandotte. You may have noticed we’re in a valley here; that does strange things with the weather sometimes. It certainly did that day. Take a look over here. You see that building on the hill?”

He points to a huge factory about a mile away, towering over the town on a short hill. “Allegheny Zinc Works,” he continues. “For decades, they were the reason this town existed. They pulled zinc out of the ground and processed and shipped it all over the world. At any given time, half the adult population of this town worked for Allegheny. They were good to the community, doing charitable work, keeping Wyandotte in good condition. They even sponsored a Christmas parade each year.”

As he says this, I happen to be looking in Rebecca’s direction, and I see her with a far-off expression on her face. At the exact moment the three words escape William Harbison’s mouth, I see Rebecca mouthing them too:
a Christmas parade.
But before I can ask her about it, he is continuing with his story.

“For a long time, this was a portrait of industrial small-town America worthy of a Norman Rockwell calendar.”

“Until …” I prompt.

William nods. “Until. April 22, those clouds rolled in and stayed there over the town. So thick, the sun could barely get through. The weather people call it an inversion. What’s supposed to go up stays down, and what’s supposed to stay down goes up. At first, the people went about their business and didn’t think anything of it. We get bad weather from time to time, and it was just cloudy and cool; no rain or storms. So the kids went to school, the adults went to their jobs, and the factory kept on working around the clock, just like they always did.

“Night fell, and everything still seemed normal. But the next day, when daylight was supposed to come, it didn’t. The clouds were still there, but now there was something else with them, something dark and thick and acrid, like soot or smoke. Well, people kept going about their business that day, but things started to change. People were getting sick. Older folks and children at first, but as the day wore on, healthy adults were coughing too. By nightfall on the twenty-third, we knew there was a serious problem. People’s pets were dying. Then a couple of the oldest residents, and an infant. That brought people in from Pittsburgh, scientists with devices for testing the air quality. They found fluorine gas and sulfur dioxide in the air. These things came out of Allegheny’s smokestacks all the time, but usually they drifted up into the sky and away from us. But those clouds trapped the emissions at ground level, right where people were breathing them.”

“Didn’t somebody notify the factory?” Rebecca asks.

“Yes, they did. On the evening of the twenty-third, the scientists went with two local doctors to talk to the plant manager and report their findings. They said that the only way to protect the people was to shut the plant down until the clouds passed. The problem is, a zinc factory isn’t like a lamp or a TV set. You can’t just flip the switch and be done with it. The zinc is processed at temperatures of 900 to 1,600 degrees. Shutting down the plant would leave tons and tons of it useless and create workflow problems throughout the factory. The place had never been completely shut down in more than sixty years. The managers were sympathetic to the problem, but they refused to do the shutdown.”