Ambrose knew he was in trouble before it came knocking. He could feel the deep gurgle, the rumble of thunder in the tank, then the buckle, and the belch rise up, and flash, like lightning in the air and thrust him.
Signal Hill. 1967
When the tanks blew he was atop number 12. To hell and gone, Ambrose went. To the moon, they say. Never was enough left of the man to bury, and since he was cremated most efficiently and his ashes strewn throughout the heavens, they held a memorial instead. They tossed flowers, and weeped aloud, while gathered on a scorched hilltop, huddled above the remains of a mostly burnt-out oil field.
The thug-thug-thug-thug of the undamaged pumps dominated the ceremony as they’d dominated their lives. Their industrial ohm. They would all feel the weight of this tragedy for the remainder of their days, as they felt the rhythmic quiver in the ground beneath their feet. Thug…thug…thug…within bone and sinew.
What could still pump, was damn well pumpin’, though. Ol Ambrose woulda’ wanted it that way, damn it. "Suck it up!…hell…Blow up in glory, if that’s what gets it out of the ground!"
Warships in the harbor bounced on the waves, rippled from the blast, the shock rolling clear out to sea. The big quake was fairly recent history by then and people fled out to the streets in panic, only to find the hills burning black behind the city. Some fanned rumors that we’d been bombed.
“Ambrose blew clear into the bay!” some smart boys were heard to say, but the humor is pain on the loved ones. It is a cruel and awkward moment, with Ambrose’s Mama confronting the fool mouthed delinquent, making him cry in shame, right there on the steps outside of St Lorraine.
So, that’s the demise of a fine man, and we’re going to leave it that way. No one goin’ to change that story, no matter what else you might hear.
He said to me, “So what I learned was, Meredith wasn’t her name, and she didn’t live two floors down. You see how women lie to you nowadays?”
I never had the chance to tell him that it was Marybeth, and it was only one.
