Essays

I once fell off a roof and landed on a concrete sidewalk. Although it was exciting, I do not recommend the experience. Fortunately, I didn’t land on my head. If I had landed on my head, I would have needed to pay for repairs to the sidewalk, and I was not yet a best-selling writer; I was an okay-selling writer who needed to live on a budget.

The Saturday morning of the fall, our neighborhood woke up to discover that a wildfire had crept up on us while we were sleeping. We were of course deeply annoyed. The sky was low and—from horizon to horizon—full of fast-moving black clouds that we soon realized were in fact masses of smoke. Such smoke can travel miles. So neighbors had gathered in the street, listening to various radio stations to determine just where the fire was in relation to us and to perhaps catch our favorite tunes on a Top 40 program. When hot embers and flaming debris began to fall on us, we did not need to organize a board meeting of the homeowners’ association to decide whether or not we were in trouble.

Our houses had shake-shingle cedar roofs, which is a good thing if you want your house to burn to the ground quickly in a wildfire. We realized that if we called a state-government agency responsible for wild-brush control, we would all be put on hold and would die horribly before anyone took our calls. I ran back to our house and gave my wife, Gerda, a detailed explanation of what was occurring—“FIRE! FIRE! ARRRGGGHHH!” Thus informed, she hurried to gather important documents and objects of sentimental value such as a photo of me, at the age of eight months, naked and butt-up on a blanket decorated with images of bunny rabbits.

Meanwhile, I coupled together two long garden hoses, put up a ladder, and climbed onto our roof, under the mistaken impression that I was a firefighter. Our house was in the Tudor style, with steeply pitched roofs hipping into one another in clever ways that the demented community architect thought was charming. Although I am likely to start screaming if a Ferris wheel breaks down when my seat is at the high point, I dashed up, down, up again, and across those lunatic slopes, watering down the shingles. I also needed to water myself to avoid having my hair and clothes set afire by the flaming debris, which would have ruined my plans for the rest of the weekend.

When our roof was properly drenched, I descended the ladder, where I was met by our immediate neighbor (whom I will call Next-door Guy to protect his privacy). Next-door Guy said he had a bad back and couldn’t go on his roof. But he had borrowed a ladder from another neighbor who had a spare (call him “Mr. Victim”; you’ll see why), and all Next-door Guy needed now was some idiot who would go up on his roof for him. Having been called an idiot on several occasions, I knew this was a job for me. I went up on his insanely steep Tudor roof. While watering the slopes, I wondered if it had been the builder of our community who had said to the architect, “Now, for the roofing material, what could we use to insure that when it catches fire the flames will be seen across the entire western half of the continent?”

Happily, I watered the entire roof without incident. Then came the incident. I dropped the hose to let it slide off the roof, which it did, whipping back and forth like a snake, spewing water. I knew that I should let the water drain off before moving, but as I was the idiot of the day, I started down the long slope toward Next-door Guy, who was holding the ladder for me. In fact, he was standing on the ladder, just a few rungs off the ground, and I could see his head. I had taken only two steps when I was reminded that I could not walk on water, especially not on fast-flowing water. My feet flew out from under me, and I landed on my back. As if that wasn’t enough bozo antics, I then slid down forty or fifty feet, directly toward Next-door Guy’s head, which had a startled expression.

I cannot recount this with the delicacy you always expect from me, so it’s okay if you blush. My feet were in the air and my legs were spread wide as I rocketed down the roof directly at my neighbor, who wisely ducked his head. I hit the aluminum ladder with the full force of my personality. (Now I would like to pause for a product endorsement. Ordinarily, one would expect the two siderails of a ladder to be each a single piece of metal in order to provide superior strength. But these siderails were made each with a shorter length riveted to a long length. When I hit the ladder at high speed, the top section broke off, and I carried it in my lap, over the head of Next-door guy, and slammed flat on my back onto a concrete sidewalk. If the ladder had been made with full-length siderails, I would have taken the entire thing down with my neighbor clinging to it and would all but surely have been sued for further injuring his bad back.)

I was quite invigorated by then and keen to get up so that I could return to the roof of my own house, which had been drying out since I left it. Several neighbors had seen my spectacular stunt work, however, and came running, certain that I had broken my back and risked paralysis. But I knew I was all right, and I insisted on getting up. I was aware that the shirt I wore had been shredded when I slid on my back down those rough cedar shingles, and a stinging sensation indicated I might need Gerda to apply a dab of iodine and a Band-Aid or two before I put on a fresh shirt and returned to my job as the Wile E. Coyote of firefighting.

My wife agreed to the need of iodine but also informed me that the rough cedar shingles had left the seat of my jeans shredded and dangling, so that my butt was as evident as it had been in that baby photo she had saved from the approaching flames. After I changed my entire ensemble, I got back on our roof and lived to become a best-selling writer, following recuperation.

Many houses were lost in surrounding neighborhoods, but because all of the folks on our street helped one another, none of our houses were destroyed. That evening, everyone brought food to our house for a potluck dinner and a surprising amount of alcohol. At the height of the festivities, Mr. Victim (who had loaned a ladder to my neighbor and who was widely regarded as a singular sourpuss) approached me to say, “Your Next-door Guy says you broke my ladder. You’ll have to pay for that.” I have not—and never will—dedicated one of my novels to him.

Speaking of my novels, on January 20, my new one, The Friend of the Family, will be available in hardcover, e-Book, and audio. It is one of my favorites of my own work, very close to my heart, packed with emotion and event. If you don’t fall in love with the lead character, Alida, I’ll have to sit down with you and have a long talk. We might need to go for a walk on a roof together. If you’d rather avoid that, preorder Alida’s story.