The Test of Fire

It's a cool day in November 1993, and Emmett Jackson is dressed to the nines in a tailored corduroy jacket and a soft English wool cap. He's in a good mood, joking about getting a diamond stud in what is left of his nose.

Today, he's on a rare trip out of Temple - to visit Rehabilitation Institute of San Antonio, RIOSA, where he spent several painful months after being released from Brooke Army Medical Center.

When Emmett arrived at RIOSA, his scarred and grafted skin was so constricted he couldn't move his arms, legs or trunk. Now he strolls down the hall, back straight and gait even, like some jaunty British gentleman.

Staff members rush up to greet him.

"Look at you, all jazzy," says one.

"Just something from the closet," he says.

Emmett was a favorite patient, a jokester who called his physical therapist "Hands o' Pain" and his nurses "The Bighead Sisters" (just to get a rise out of them; their heads, he admits, weren't especially big).

Today, he uses his prostheses to open his fanny pack and display something new: a freshly laminated driver's license.

"I'm driving," he says. "I think the DPS officers were scared. I was the only one that wasn't nervous."

"Let me know when you're on the highway - I won't drive around Temple anymore," someone jokes.

"There's not much to hit in Temple," another says.

Emmett doesn't go into detail, but it wasn't easy getting his license.

No one would lend him a car. Probably afraid I'll tear it up, he thought.

He expressed his frustrations again and again to his psychologist at the Veterans Affairs Center.

Then, one sunny day, he showed up at the Department of Public Safety office in a fancy gray Cadillac - his psychologist's.

Emmett flashes his license as if it were a medal.

"I knew you could do it, old Emmett," says Shirley Claridy, a RIOSA health units coordinator. She reaches in his fanny pack to pull out something she is less impressed with: a pack of Doral cigarettes.

"What's this?" she asks.

"Just an old habit," he says.

Emmett has picked up some other old habits as well. He's been hanging out at a Temple nightclub with friends, listening to music and dancing.

Sometimes he just sits at the bar, drinking Budweisers through a straw and pinching Dorals between metal claws.

Emmett always savored life's pleasures, even if some weren't completely healthy. And as he struggles to feel "human" again, he's succumbed to old vices. Still, his willingness to go out in public at all - to dance and socialize - has required tremendous emotional strength.

When Emmett Jackson arrived at RIOSA, nine months after the fire, he still hadn't seen himself. The mirrors in his room were covered.

"Do I look like a monster?" he asked.

"You might not like what you see," a therapist warned.

When he felt the time was right, Emmett asked to see a mirror. He knew how badly burned his body was. But he was shocked to see his face. Blotches of discolored skin. An uneven ridge of cartilege jutting over two nasal cavities. Reconstructed lips.

He walked back to his bed and lay there for half an hour. A depression began to come over him, as if someone were pulling up a dark sheet.

Then he talked to himself:

It wasn't my fault.

I was supposed to die, but I didn't.

And there must be a reason.

One of the first times RIOSA staffers took Emmett out in public, a bystander referred to him - loudly - as a horror film character: "Oh, look," the man said to his son, "there goes Freddy Krueger."

But Emmett discovered most people treated him better than he'd expected. And he kept talking to himself:

I got a blessing.

I got a blessing.

I got a blessing.

Now, the RIOSA staff has a surprise for Emmett. They lead him outside the complex to a grassy hill. It's their turn to show off something new: a big green sign that reads "Jackson Hill."

Emmett stares at the sign.

The hill was symbolic. When Emmett was barely able to walk, he'd stare at it, telling doubtful therapists: "Someday I'm going to climb that."

Then, one day, eager to be released, he crept up, slow and sideways.

Today he claps his prostheses and shouts: "Wait. Watch this."

And he gallops, huffing and puffing, straight up the side.

"I see I got myself a nice hill," he says later. "Shoot, I shot right up there. I had to test it. See if it could handle me."

As staff members crowd around him, asking about his life in Temple, several show off pictures of new babies. Emmett clucks over photos of toothless smiles; if he thinks about his own daughter, he doesn't let on.

But he still does a lot of thinking about Pookie, who was 16 months old when she died.

Pookie was a pretty little girl with her momma's hair and her daddy's streak of mischief. Emmett was forever retrieving chicken bones and uneaten scraps of dinner from a food depository Pookie started behind the living room couch.

When Emmett awakened at 4 a.m. to get ready for his job as a supermarket baker, Pookie would sometimes wake up, too, holding herself up by the rail of her crib so she could watch her daddy dress.

"I'd walk to the bathroom, and her little eyes would follow me," he remembers.

It always bothered Emmett that he never formally said goodbye. He was unconscious in a hospital room when she and his wife, Diathia, were buried in her hometown of Columbus, Ohio.

Although he doesn't tell this to the RIOSA staff, Emmett recently decided to symbolically mark their deaths.

In early October - the third anniversary of the fire - he walked to the bus station in Temple and bought a ticket to Austin. When the bus deposited him near Highland Mall, he walked toward the 7500 block of North Lamar Boulevard.

The lot where La Villita No. 2 apartments once stood is now grassy and bare; nothing has been built in its place. Emmett bought a soda at a nearby store and went to the bus bench near where Diathia and Pookie would wait for him to return from work.

And there he sat. He watched the traffic go by, said hello to a couple of bus drivers as they pulled up, and thought about his family. Someday he'd like to visit their graves in Ohio. But the vacant lot, he figures, is Pookie's real gravesite.

He stayed in the old neighborhood until long after nightfall. Then he walked back to the Greyhound station, bought a ticket on the midnight bus to Temple, and took the bumpy ride home.

Emmett spends much of the winter propped in front of the television, watching sports. He sucks beer through a straw and punches his arm in the air when his favorite team, the Dallas Cowboys, wins the Super Bowl.

He hasn't given up his interest in school, but this winter his mind is on something else: He's involved with a lawsuit against the owners of the burned apartment complex alleging improper construction and poor security.

The arsonist, according to law officials, torched a vacant unit with a flare gun - angry at a resident who sold him a bag of marijuana without giving the $8 discount he expected. The fire spread rapidly, destroying the entire 24-unit complex.

A trial is set for late winter (the apartment owners denied liability).

But attorneys start hammering out a settlement, and the trial is canceled.

In February, Emmett gets a call from the Austin Fire Department. A videotape is being produced for troubled teens who have set fires. Safety officials figure young firebugs might be strongly affected by seeing someone like Emmett.

Would he be willing to tell his story?

Emmett finds the prospect daunting. There will be lights and cameras and lots of videotape to be filled. But at the same time, he's excited. This is just the kind of thing he figures he was saved for.

I survived a truly tragic fire.

There must be a reason.

As he prepares for the taping, he gets a little notebook and - with a pencil gripped in his prosthesis - writes down topics to discuss: the consequences of crime, loss of freedom. He knows firsthand about losing freedom. In the mid-1980s, he spent almost three years in prison for his stint as a burglar and forger. And he hated it. He hated being told when to wake up. What to do during the day.

Do kids realize what it means to be locked away, Emmett wonders.

More importantly, do they realize the price their victims pay?

Particularly for something like arson?

"I was incarcerated for two years and 10 months, and not one day of it felt like a week of this," Emmett says. "And not the whole time I was there, it didn't match this at all, what I'm going through right now."

The day of the taping is chilly. Emmett puts on his Cowboys cap, a striped shirt and blue jeans. As always, he wears the gold chain his mother bought after an operation gave Emmett back his neck; his chin was scarred down onto his chest.

Emmett meets the video crew in the hall, casually extending his prostheses to shake hands. He senses that they might be apprehensive about seeing him. Most people are who meet him for the first time.

It's up to me to put them at ease, he thinks.

("I was expecting some monster," one crew member later admitted, "but that's just the imagination working overtime.")

Lights are set up, the camera is focused on Emmett's face, and the interview begins.

"You want to tell us a little bit about what happened?"

For the most part, Emmett is tired of telling the story. He's repeated it umpteen times: How Diathia heard crashing noises about 2 a.m.; how they quickly realized the complex was on fire; how he had no choice but to send his family through a wall of flames.

But maybe this time, Emmett thinks, it will be a lesson.

He tells the story in a deep, melodic voice - a voice better suited for reading a bedtime story:

"The fire was spreading so fast...

"The windows upstairs...

"We could hear them crashing and popping...

"The railings from the stairwell...

"They was twisting and cracking...

"The fire and the heat was so intense...

"I couldn't judge my distance...

"It was burning my eyelids..."

Emmett wonders if fire-happy kids have any idea how fast a blaze can spread and how much damage it can do. As the camera hums, he looks into space and describes emerging from the flames to see his wife:

"Her hair was singed to her. Her gown was seared to her, and she was different colors. And then she told me that she dropped the baby."

Emmett pauses and purses his lips. There was a time when he couldn't talk about his family without crying. But time has dulled the hurt. Now all he needs is a pause.

"And so," he continues, "we was telling each other not to hold each other 'cause we didn't want our skins to touch and lose what little skin we had left."

Did Diathia ever regain consciousness in the hospital?

"She opened her eyes only one time, I think, to have a chance to see her mother. But she never really gained consciousness, so she never really suffered.

"Which is good because getting well was not easy."

Sometimes, Emmett still thinks about his months in the hospital and rehab institute - the frightening hallucinations, the strange skin sensations, the excruciating pain.

"It was very painful just to take a bath," Emmett tells the camera.

"That took an hour and a half. To wash an arm, I had to get another shot of morphine. To do the right arm, that was another shot. To do both legs, each would be another shot."

For a long time, Emmett had flashbacks of the fire. He also had strange nightmares. Once, he was surrounded by snails that grew as big as cats and multiplied when he tried to whack them to death.

The snails, a psychologist surmised, symbolized the fire.

The weird dreams are long gone. So are the flashbacks. And the pain.

Still, every day remains a series of challenges - from opening doors to carrying groceries to dressing.

Once that fire strikes you it goes deep, and it does it quickly, Emmett thinks.

I wish an arsonist would think about that.

As much as Emmett hates to be dependent on other people, he still needs help with simple tasks, like buttoning clothes. If he wants to look nice for an early morning appointment, before his helper arrives, he must sleep all night dressed up in a shirt and tie.

Meantime, as hard as he's worked to accept his new looks, reactions from other people can still pain him - particularly when children grab onto parents' shirttails, nervous and scared.

Can you grow hair? the woman from the fire department asks.

This time Emmett smiles.

"I had about six strings growing up there, and then it fell off," he says. "I just had a friend the other day telling me balding is in. Which was real good for me 'cause I can't help but have a complex about the way I look.

One sweltering Sunday, Emmett sits in his newest hangout - a tiny Temple church.

Emmett hasn't given up all worldly pleasures: his Dorals or his tall-boys or his nightclubs. But he's grown hungry for a connection to something larger than himself. Besides, he jokes, church people are easier to talk to than drunks.

"Drunks don't give you time to talk."

The assistant pastor - a fervent woman in a red dress - is pacing in front of the congregation.

"This is a church of love," she shouts. "And you serve God the way you serve him! If your shoes are too tight, we don't mind you kickin' them off."

Emmett won't kick off his shoes. But someday he'd like to take off his cap. It just doesn't feel right wearing a cap in church. Up to now, he's been embarrassed about his scalp, which is scarred and discolored.

But he recently modeled capless for a friend.

"Heck," she said, "if you can stand it, they can too."

Emmett repeats that a lot lately: If I can stand it, they can too.

The fire taught Emmett a lot about himself. He's learned he has tremendous mental discipline, the ability to wrestle with stubborn emotions - embarrassment, depression, frustration.

"You just can't let them grab and hold on."

He's also learned to look at life in a larger context. While he was healing, he thought the fire might have been God's will - payment for his days as a street criminal. A year of reading the Bible has changed that notion. But maybe, he thinks, there is some greater plan.

"It's like God said: 'Look, I'm going to use you as an example.' "

Sometimes, he worries about his future. How will his scarred body age?

Will he be able to move freely? But he's discovered he does have control over one thing critical to that future, something he never fully exercised before the fire - his mind.

"I enjoy life," he says. "And I don't try to put my handicap or my tragedy on anybody's shoulders. I find that to be the last thing I talk about. If they don't bring it up, I never really bring it up.

"Some people do. They try to use a trauma or something that happened to them - like heart bypass surgery - as a crutch. They want their family to constantly feel pity for them.

"I don't think that's right. Not for the other people, but I don't think it's right for a person to do it to themselves. Because I have a good time. I do."

Emmett's settlement money, which came through in May, has given him a modest monthly income and funds to buy a little house and a car.

On this particular Sunday, his new car sits outside the High Praise Church, glinting in the June sun. It's a blue sedan with a special foot pedal to start the ignition. It also has good air-conditioning, which means Emmett isn't stuck at home so much in the summer heat.

Although it's a sleek-looking car, Emmett insists he didn't get that model to impress the ladies. (For that, he has some well-fitting clothes and a new pair of glasses that "don't make me look like a nerd.")

A few miles away is Emmett's new house - a tiny dwelling that came complete with a momma cat and two skinny kittens. It also has a big yard with a fig tree, a pear tree and a couple of crape myrtles.

Emmett's eager to get it remodeled and move in.

Once he gets settled, he'd like to take a course in speech. He hasn't given up the idea of college. But he's decided to start slow. Perhaps become a public speaker, talking to people about fire and crime.

"As some years go past, I might consider actually putting some charm into finding a wife," he says. "Maybe. But right now, I just kinda remain a bachelor.

"I'm just cruising around."

With his settlement money, Emmett also donated $500 to the church and hired a painting crew to spruce up the building. (One of the crew is an old friend. He and Emmett used to be fellow burglars.)

The High Praise Church is hot on this sunny Sunday. There's no air-conditioning, only a tired box fan in the corner stirring up hot air.

The congregation cools off with paper fans advertising a local mortuary.

But Emmett is content here. He shopped around.

"I went to several different little churches, trying to find one that's what I call alive," he says. "A church that's saving souls, helping the sick and the poor."

The pastor's fingers race over a keyboard, a man in a blue suit jams on an electric guitar, and a drummer sets the room to vibrating.

"What does it mean to be faithful?" the pastor is asking, loud and fervently.

The drum beats.

The pastor's voice rises:

"Revelation 2:10 says this," she shouts, " 'Be thou faithful unto death.' Not until death. But unto death.

"And God says: 'I will give you the crown of life.' "

Emmett can feel the drums vibrate but, with his hearing loss, can't make out all the preacher's words. Still, he decided long ago, a little understanding is better than none at all.

He claps and shouts "Amen" with everyone else.

This August, Emmett got in his new car and drove 1,129 miles to a tree-shaded cemetery in Columbus, Ohio. There, for the first time in almost four years, he was reunited with Diathia and Pookie.

"I've learned to accept they're in a better place," he says. "A place where ain't no one crying. Ain't no one dying."

In his wild years, Emmett learned about fast money and fast women. The fire taught him about fast loss. But what sustained him through the worst of his tragedy, he discovered, was something without flash or sass.

"I really loved that woman and my child," he says. "All my memories of them are sweet. So it makes the rest of it go OK. I just keep rolling with the punches."