'A' for Argonaut by Michael J. Stedman Page A

his own mother, Sharon, who had proudly kept her maiden name and passed it on to Maran. A redhead, she was the daughter of a Hasidic rebbe from Brooklyn who had gone to Nigeria to run a synagogue in Port Harcour, that country’s main oil port. The translation of her father’s last name, Maran, came from the Talmud, “Our Master.” Maran’s reddish hair was certainly his mother’s. Yet its tight curls came from his Nigerian father who had abandoned them. His mother later, inexplicably, fell in love with an Irish-American International Longshoreman’s Union steward from South Boston who was visiting Nigeria on an exotic vacation in West Africa. She took Maran with her when she moved back to Boston from her home in Lagos after marrying the longshoreman. Maran could actually feel himself in his son, a sense not of ownership, but of identity.
    Dennis had meant everything to him.
    After fishing, they took the freeway back to the Sunset Cliffs home where Dennis’ mother now lived in Point Loma. A fiery red Trans Am convertible forced Maran to brake. The driver, about twenty years old, leered as he cut in front of them at ninety miles an hour. A younger boy stood up on his feet in the passenger seat of the passing sports car, his face contorted by laughter. Maran jerked the steering wheel to the right. His car veered to the side of the road. Just then, traffic in the fast lane braked to an abrupt stop. The driver of the Trans Am accelerated to overtake a ten-wheel tanker full of fuel to the left of Maran in the fast lane; the truck driver hit his brakes. The rig spun into Maran’s lane. The sun bounced off the Trans Am’s trunk, blinded Maran momentarily. When he recovered, he saw the tanker jackknife into the Trans Am. The front right tire of the red car blew out. In his panic to recover, the driver of the truck whipped his vehicle to the right. It separated from the huge fuel tank. The car flew across the breakdown lane, sparks shooting out behind like a flame-thrower. The right, now-tireless front wheel gouged into the grass and dirt on a knoll alongside the freeway; the vehicle flipped. The tanker tore away from the truck cab, shooting sparks and flames. When it hit the dirt off the breakdown lane, it somersaulted onto the Trans Am in a mushroom ball explosion.
    “Oh, please‌—‌no!” Dennis cried. “Are they alive?”
    Maran pulled off the road. He jumped out of the compact. He reached into the back seat and whipped out a blanket that he had brought along for a possible picnic.
    “Dad!” his son screamed.
    The younger kid was just visible, enveloped in the thick blanket of smoke. He crawled out of the fumes, choking, his screams stultified as he rolled over and over in the grass trying to smother the flames that enveloped him.
    Maran could smell the burning flesh. His mind leaped to his past combat scenes.
    “Call an ambulance,” he yelled as he ran to the boy.
    “My brother. My brother,” the boy pleaded, his voice nearly in-audible. The words gurgled through his teeth, the lips had already been burned away. The pyre was so close the heat scorched Maran’s skin, consumed the driver.
    Maran covered the boy’s head and shoulders with the blanket. He reached down to pick him up and the hair on his arms evaporated in tiny haloes of white smoke. As he tried to pull the boy to safety, he felt the skin slip off. It stuck to his hands and brought to life his worst experiences. In haste to move the boy to safer ground, he didn’t have time to look at his face. Now, even his past exposure to the horrors of death failed him. He fought not to wretch and lay the boy on the grass. He fell to his knees, cupping his mouth over the burned-away lips and blew his life’s breath into him as hard as he could. He watched the blackened chest pulse and blew harder as a crowd grew around him.
    Against hope, Maran kept on until the paramedics arrived. They eased him away. Maran held his own son close as they lifted the lifeless