Tuesday, January 15, 2008

By Richard A. Webster

I caught a glimpse of a school bus on fire the other day while I was on my way to work.
I slowed down and drifted to the side of the road. I snatched my Minolta D-50 from the backseat, rolled down the window and aimed.
The cops and firefighters hadn't arrived yet so it was all random and uncontrolled hysteria. There was no one there to tell them that everything was going to be ok. No one with heavy blankets and anti-fire pamphlets instructing the burning to stop, drop and roll.
The fire was burning at its heaviest in the front of the bus where the driver and social rejects were located.
Too late for them, I remember thinking.
Click. Click.
The kids in the back of the bus were trying to force their way out of the windows, that small rectangular space before the safety latched kicked in--a mass of arms like spaghetti being pushed out of a pasta grinder.
Click. Click.
Nasty, I thought. What a terrible fucking scene.
A Motorist Assistance Patrol van streaked by. It wasn't their bag. They were trained to fix flats and recharge batteries. Pulling the bubbling flash of burning teenagers out of buses wasn't part of the job description.
What a shame.
I stepped out of my truck to get a better angle and was almost hit by some yuppie shithead in a new model Mustang.
"Fucking asshole!" I screamed.
Bastard could have killed me.
You'd figure that after Katrina people would have an elevated sense of civic responsibility. You'd figure one of these scumbag monsters would risk being late to their all-important corporate conference calls to ensure that one of these enflamed kids would have a future free from more than a year in the burn ward.
But time is money and all that shit.
I waited for a break in the traffic and when I got my shot I ran across the three-lane highway.
"Oh God! Help me mister! Help me!"
Some bald old lady impaled on the broken glass of the back window was screaming at me. I dropped to a knee for a more dramatic point of view and fixed her in my viewfinder. As I focused in on her bloodshot face I noticed a sharp orange reflection shining off of a series of rings running up the curve of her ears.
I'll be damned, I said. That ain't no old lady. It's one of the kids, her hair torched from her scalp, her once pure and perfect porcelain skin deformed from the effect of the 500-degree heat.
To her right and left were more of the same, packs of young kids trapped in fire-ruined hides, their youthful outer appearances rapidly melting into the death masks of 110-year old mummies.
I got off a couple of Pulitzer-worthy shots when my phone rang.
"What?"
"Rich, it's me," my editor said in his typical pissy tone. "Where are you?"
"I'm on the highway. There's a busload of kids burning to death."
"Great. Are you getting any good shots? Have you talked to any of the emergency responders?"
"I've gotten a few good shots but the cops and firefighters haven't come yet. It's just me and the burning kids."
"Ok," he said, "just keep me posted. And remember we have that 1 p.m. meeting with the Convention and Visitors Bureau about Mardi Gras."
"Shit. I forgot about that. Tell them I may be a few minutes late. It just depends on how long it takes for this thing to die down. I'm gonna take a few more shots and then move back across the street because I bet this bus is going to blow at some point."
I moved around to the side of the bus that faced the median and popped off a few pictures but by this point there wasn't too much action inside. The screaming and wailing had died down. I figured the kids that weren't torched had passed out from the smoke. Melting sheets of flesh hung from the glass.
Click. Click.
That's a good one. A real artistic photo.
"Hey man!" someone shouted. "Help me out!"
I ran around the bus to the highway-side where a middle-aged man was holding the shriveled form of what may have been a boy or girl or man or grandmother. A few feet down the highway was the do-gooder's car, a gray Saab.
"Give me a hand!"
I skidded across the pavement, told him to stay still and hit the shutter 10 or 15 times.
"Good. Good," I said. "Just hold it like that for a few more seconds."
"What? What in the fuck is wrong with you? Put your fucking camera down and help me!"
"What's your name?" I asked him. "I can't run these pictures unless I got your name."
Something popped from inside the bus.
"Oh shit," the man said. "It's going to fucking blow!"
He picked up the charred corpse, ran towards his Saab and kept on running.
An hour later the cops appeared.
The bus never blew up. The fire eventually died down until it was nothing more than a blackened, mangled metal mass of glowing embers.
The official death toll was 24 students and one adult.
While the cops questioned the do-gooder I saw him point to me, jabbing his finger at me, swearing and foaming at the mouth.
"We're going to need to get your statement," some police officer said to me.
"No time," I said. "I have to file these pictures and write something up. You can use that as my statement."
Instead of going to the office I went to the Lamplighter Lounge on Veterans. One of the gap-toothed barflies told me I smelled like shit.
"It's not shit," I said. "It's the smell of the burning class of 2012."
The bartender told me to leave.
That night I worked my way through a 12-pack and a pack of smokes, sitting in my backyard listening to the chorus of gunshots ringing out in the Treme night.
I set up my video camera on a tripod and aimed it directly at me. If one of those bullets missed its intended target, blasted through the wall of a shotgun, weaved its way past the cement pillars lining Claiborne Avenue and made its way into my brain, I wanted it all on tape.
And in the event that such a bullet pierced the lining of my skull, I wrote the details of my death in a pad so the lazy TV news scum wouldn't have the chance to scoop my own death.
"Award-winning journalist Richard A. Webster was gunned down in the backyard of his Treme home on January 15 by a stray bullet. Authorities said they have no leads on the shooter and said it was unlikely they would find the perpetrator. Webster is survived by his rooster, Lil' Axl and a sense of artistic entitlement. His family refused comment and, according to the instructions of his will spray-painted on the ceiling of his kitchen, Webster's body will be placed on a raft, set afire and launched onto the Mississippi River."