one if by land

one if by land

fiction
edward w pritchard

There's an old firehouse over by the expressway that runs quickly through our hometown of Akron on the way to anywhere else for most of the world. On the firehouse is an old tower on the top for an earlier usage as surveillance station. The expressway is built high above the ground for technical reasons of engineering that no body but that profession understands and it is about level with the tower on the fire station and about 75 feet north of the tower. As the cars race past on the expressway they can see into to the tower which is now vacant.

Below, the tower, in the old fire station is now a kidney dialysis center. It was a credit union but a few years ago the local hospital chain opened a dialysis center.

One fall to publicize the plight of the kidney dialysis users with various forms of cancer the janitor of the building began to put a light up in the window for two nights when an area resident had been in remission for 180 days or more from cancer in the local hospital system. The Doctors in the hospital system who saw a lot of bad stuff on a daily basis got behind the program and put in a large chunk of money to promote the program. A publicist was hired and it was a very capable young woman from the University graduate school and she got an amazing amount of national TV exposure for the program.

One night a truck driver was driving down the road quickly through our town and saw the light in the window. It was a rare event and he was joyous to see it for he had heard about it on the radio talk program he listened to. Other than hearing things about the local basketball prodigy, akron's favorite son, it was the only thing he remembered hearing about Akron lately, and since he had family in the area, it made him feel good to see the light. Driving by sitting up high in the truck he distinctly saw two lights in the window.

Driving back through Akron, the next night from over by New York City, he distinctly saw the second light. As he drove west away from the tower in Akron Ohio he decided to call his talk radio station about it. He had lots of time, he would be driving all night and it took him a while to get through but he finally got to talk to the talk show host. He told the host about the two lights.

The talk show host knew the inside scoop. The janitor at the dialysis center always stayed up in the tower for a while after he lit the candle up there and smoked a cigar if a child was in remission.

The truck driver and the talk show host talked for a while about our little town and then the driver continued on toward Chicago.