Days of Fire and Clowns

A sweltering day in old L.A. The radio says it’s 120 in Burbank and it feels almost that hot along the ocean. The beaches are jammed and so is Pacific Coast Highway.

It’s Saturday and I’m on my way to the Malibu Wildfire Preparedness Fair. The timing is perfect. It was in just this kind of weather that the murderous flames of autumn burned through the mountains last year.

Evidence of their devastation lingers. The greening of the slopes and the thickening of the underbrush haven’t yet obscured the bare and blackened branches of the laurel sumacs, reaching like claws to the cloudless heavens. God needs more time.

These are nervous days for canyon-dwellers. Not all the chaparral burned in ‘93, and the brush that remains is as dry as a witch’s bones. Firetrucks patrol and arson-watchers are on the alert. Everyone listens for the wind.

“All this heat, all this danger and no baseball,” a fireman says to me as I walk toward the fairgrounds at the Malibu Civic Center. “But at least there are no Santa Anas either. Those damned winds. . . .”

The sounds of the wind linger in memory like the cry of a child in distress. I remember them as I look to the dry slopes and recall a vision of flames burning toward our house. I can still smell the smoke.

Snatches of conversation come to me at the fair. “I saw the firestorm and ran. . . .” “The brush behind the house suddenly caught fire. . . .” “The house was burning and we. . . .” I approach the woman whose house had burned. “It was surreal,” she says, “like a night in hell,” and wanders off.

*

The Malibu fair mixes disaster with conviviality. A clown in a red fright wig entertains a cluster of children while he teaches them safety. “What do you never do in a fire?” he asks. The lesson he’s taught comes back in a lyrical chorus of voices: “Never hide in the closet,” they say. The clown nods in satisfaction.

There’s something for everyone at the fair: a cheese pizza for $2, a disaster relief trailer for $110,000. You can buy a gasoline pump or an air mask or fire-retardant tarps or a rooftop sprinkler system activated from afar with a phone call. Or you can just sit, sip a Diet Coke and watch a remote-controlled plastic fire hydrant roll through the dust.

The heat grows more oppressive in the lengthening afternoon, like a shroud drawn over the dead. On a lawn in front of the city library, the demonstration of a water tank and pump system turns into a cooling shower for the kids who run through it. But even their cries of delight are muted beneath the sweltering shroud.

“Touch me and it might cool down.” The offer comes from a paunchy, bearded man wearing a top hat and dressed in black. He stands at a booth that advertises him as “the flue doctor.” His name is Daniel Drake and he’s a chimney sweep.

Legend born in the Middle Ages has it that good luck comes with the touch of a chimney sweep. I don’t believe in luck, but I shake his hand just in case. “You never can tell,” he says, laughing, “it might rain.”

Drake has been a sweep for a dozen years. His father was one before him. When he cleans chimneys, he wears the traditional top hat and tails, like Dick Van Dyke in “Mary Poppins.”

“Sometimes people mistake me for a burglar,” he says, amused. “But what burglar would be up on a roof in top hat and tails in this kind of heat?”

*

The high, thin wail of a siren creases the distance. I look around. Movement has ceased at the booths and at the concession stands. Everyone listens in a still-life of uneasy anticipation. The siren grows louder then dies. Movement resumes.

I spot Allen Emerson sitting at a table, taking it all in. A former actor and restaurateur, he’s been patrolling the Santa Monicas for 11 years as team leader of the Topanga Arson Watch. His own Disaster Preparedness Fair is coming Sept. 24.

Emerson is looking toward the mountains in the distance, which still bear dusky traces of last year’s wildfires. He is thinking about the flames of autumn and about the incendiary energy stored in the dead foliage.

“It could happen again,” he says, mopping his brow. “There’s a time bomb out there. . . .”

As I leave, someone in a Smokey Bear costume passes by, dying in the heat. The clown rides a golf cart around and waves at some children. The lady whose house burned sits alone, thinking.

The air is no cooler now than when I arrived. The interior of my car is a steam bath. I remember what the fireman said. All this heat and danger and no baseball. I drive off thinking about rain and a cold beer.