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The Day the Transformer Blew
Jean
M. Bradt
Rena, a
bag of garbage in her right hand, poked her head out past her scratched,
battered, white door. Was it safe out there? Was emptying her garbage worth the
risk?
She looked left and right. No people. Good. But she did hear a loud hacking
noise. She looked up. It was probably the man who lived above her, although she
couldn’t see him.
“Hack,” he said again or, rather, he boomed again. Then he sneezed, even
louder. “Achoo!”
“Achoo!” he boomed again. Rena walked quickly away from the sounds, toward
the garbage dumpster, hoping that she wouldn’t actually see anyone.
She crept along the cobbled sidewalk and around the inside of the two-story
apartment complex. Three of the complex’s buildings, including Rena’s,
formed a U, creating a landscaped plaza. Except for the battered doors, the
buildings were pretty, made of perfectly cut gray stone cemented with black
putty and ornamented with black wrought iron.
At the end of the plaza, Rena carefully waved to the manager, who sat in his
armchair positioned to face his freshly cleaned window. If she didn’t wave, he
would be angry, but he seemed angry although she did wave. Rena shrugged.
She walked, her shoulders drooped and a frown on her face, to the garbage bin
and threw in her bag of garbage, not quickly enough. A woman named Jill
approached and threw in her own garbage. Her perfume was so strong that it
overrode the smell of the waste. It grabbed Rena’s nose and left her gagging.
She ran back toward her apartment.
She didn’t make it. “Hey, in here,” a man said. Rena looked into the
apartment to her left. There, in a metal and cushioned armchair, sat a smiling
middle-aged man, dark hair fading to gray.
“Oh, hi, Jack,” she said. She had made up her mind to learn everyone’s
name.
“Looks like you’re in a big hurry,” Jack said.
“Yes,” Rena said. She ran off before Jack could say more. Just as she walked
past Sam’s apartment, he walked out.
“Where ya goin’ so fast?” he asked.
“To my apartment,” Rena said. She couldn’t help herself. She had to answer
all questions, rhetorical, sarcastic, or not. “Where are you going?”
“Crazy. Wanna come?” Both of them smiled, Rena with some difficulty. It was
always hard for her to smile.
“No thanks,” she said, and she ran again, finally reaching her home. She
slammed the door and threw herself onto the sofa.
Whenever she talked to the obnoxious people outside, the depressed thoughts
multiplied in her head. But if she stayed inside she was lonely.
“Darnn!” she said. “I have to go to the post office.” At least this
errand wasn’t likely to involve passing other people. Rena picked up three
envelopes and walked out through a large parking lot, past the tall electric
poles that bordered the lot. She stepped into the early morning street. It was
silent except for the barking of a distant dog. As she left the complex, she
passed within four feet of one of the poles.
Bang! A deafening noise almost knocked her down. It was a bang to end all bangs.
It moved her heart two inches up in her chest and her diaphragm two inches down
in her abdomen. The letters she held fell to the ground — plunk — and the
plunk’s volume was only one millionth of the bang’s volume.
She looked to her right. Nothing that could cause such a loud noise. She looked
to her left and then into the apartment complex. Nothing. She looked up into the
sky. The complex was near an airport, but no air explosion could have been as
loud as this one had just been. She picked up her letters and walked into the
complex, past her own apartment. Obnoxious people or not, she didn’t want to
go through this nameless crisis alone.
Jack and his wife had left their apartment and were standing in the plaza.
“What was that bang?” Rena said.
“There was a big ball of fire too,” Jack said. “It came from the electric
pole you were walking close to.”
“I didn’t see it.” Rena pushed back a strand of her hair.
“You were standing too close, dummy.” Rena didn’t like being called a
dummy, especially by dummies.
“Our electricity is off now,” he said.
The manager came out of his apartment. He barely glanced at Rena, just began
talking to Jack. Rena wondered why the manager wanted her to wave to him at all.
“I called the electric company,” he said to Jack. Rena smelled perfume and
turned around. Jill was standing behind her. Rena moved a couple of feet away
from her.
The electric company crew arrived. A man climbed into an elevator basket and was
slowly lifted up the electric pole that had exploded. The basket stopped at
halfway. As Rena, Jack, Jill, and the manager watched from the rear of the
complex, two hundred feet away, a coworker gave “Harry” another, slimmer,
pole. It was an inch thick and three feet long.
Sam slammed his door open and ran out. “What’s going on here?” he called
to the manager.
“Open your eyes and you’ll see,” the manager said as Rena walked to the
sidewalk right in front of her apartment, closer to the action. And farther from
the bothersome people.
The man in the basket extended the small pole upward toward the top of the
electric pole. Rena heard the man
above her sneeze again. Why didn’t he ever cover his mouth? Why didn’t he
ever close his door? What did he look like? She turned back to the man in the
basket. He used his pole to push a small panel at the top of the electric pole
upward. It was three feet above him, but he managed to click it into place after
a couple of tries. He pushed a second panel up. This one clicked into place on
his first try. He pushed on a third panel. Carefully, he moved it upward.
Bang! Rena screamed. The tenants farther away didn’t. Instinctively, Rena put
her hands over her ears. The tenants farther away didn’t. There was, indeed, a
big ball of fire; sparks shot out of the — Rena guessed what it was —
electric transformer. Some sparks fell onto the cars below. Most flew upward
and, too briefly, formed a huge, glorious circle then, softly, descended. They
went out of existence without hitting the ground.
Rena ran into her dark apartment. She heard people clustering outside her
apartment door. But they didn’t knock on it. The crowd on the other side of
the door became a little louder. Then Rena knew that they were standing in the
same place she had stood during the last explosion. Maybe they wanted a scare
too. That meant that they thought there would soon be another explosion. Rena
went out and stood near them.
Harry climbed into the bucket again. The truck raised him up again. He grasped
the long, thin pole. Up and up he pushed it, until it touched the transformer.
Slowly and smoothly, he pushed the first panel up. When it clicked into place,
Rena thought she heard a collective sigh from the people around her.
Harry pushed the second panel upward. Had he successfully changed something so
that there wouldn’t be an explosion this time? None of the tenants knew. Harry
probably didn’t know. Rena put her hands over her ears, just in case. In one
smooth, painstaking motion, Harry pushed the second panel upward and — click
— locked it in place. Again, Rena and the others emitted a tiny sigh of
relief.
Now came the dreaded third panel. Would whatever change Harry had made be
unsuccessful, causing another explosion? Or would it be successful? Harry pushed
the panel upward. But this time he didn’t do it smoothly. He pushed the panel
much more slowly, until he had it halfway up. Then the muscular, hard-hatted,
middle-aged man hesitated just half a second.
Rena knew what he was thinking. Everybody
is watching me. I’ve got to stay cool. But when I lock this panel in place,
there could be an explosion. I’m just not sure we made the right adjustment.
OK, Harry, you’ve got to do it. It’s your job. Grit your teeth and do it.
Don’t look like an ass. Stay cool.
Harry slammed the panel up into the locked position.
Silence.
No explosion. No fireworks. No boot-shaking boom to make you wonder who you
were. Again, a sigh of relief, only this one was very easy to hear. Sam began to
clap, and then everybody clapped. Harry turned his face away from his audience,
but he smiled. He signaled for the basket to begin descending. Rena and
everybody else returned to their apartments, where the electricity was back on.
Rena checked her freezer. The food didn’t seem to be damaged. Her ego didn’t
seem to be damaged — by all that human contact, that is.
The man who lived above her continued to cough and sneeze for all to hear.
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