Moving closer, I came to the edge of a bonfire fueled by an assortment of chairs, table tops, cartons, paneling, papers, and other paraphernalia taken from inside the bank and now mostly charred beyond recognition. Continuing left, I knelt down and worked the light meter. Tri X Pan was fast film but with no flash the shutter would be too slow for good definition. The light from the fire would help. I set the shutter at 1/15th and pressed off a shot. <insert image E126 here> I reset the speed to 1/30th and aimed the camera a little more to the left across the flames and pressed off another. <insert image E125 here> Moving slightly closer, I took two more shots while steadying the camera on my knee. As I stood up to get a better look, someone spoke from the left.

            ––What’s with the camera, man? Taking pictures ain’t cool.
            ––There’s not enough light to get faces.
            ––All the same, point that somewhere else.

            Having attracted unwanted attention, I headed toward the back of the building. On the way, I passed several small vertical windows. Through one rectangle flames could be seen leaping toward the ceiling. I stopped, pressed off a shot, and continued around back. <insert image E130 here> As I turned the corner, two people standing at the entrance slipped inside the bank. At the opening, pieces of glass from the broken doors lay strewn across the lobby floor. I peered inside for a few seconds. There was barely enough light to see to the far side of the room. Then, on impulse, I stepped through the hole in the door and plunged into the smoke-filled interior.

        The two who came in before me scanned the damage from the middle of the lobby. When I appeared, they moved toward the door, glanced around, and left—perhaps because they noticed my camera. Now alone in the room, my eyes adjusted to the light and smoke, which wasn’t yet thick enough where I stood to make breathing difficult. But I was too transfixed to breathe—gripped by an upheaval on the inside that matched what I saw in the room.

        Directly in front of me, two large overturned lobby tables sprawled across the floor—one on its side, the other with legs straight up. Toward the far side of the room an L-shaped desk with a broken leg listed like a sinking ship in a sea of white papers strewn from ransacked files. Steel cabinets and drawers protruded like buoys through the surface of paper. A single ceiling lamp in the far corner dimly lit the lobby wreckage. <insert image E131 here>

        The main source of light came from the corner beyond the teller windows where something burned too brightly to see what it was. Flames reached halfway to the ceiling and silhouetted teller windows extending along the lobby to the far corner where it became difficult to see through the haze. <insert image E132 here>

            

Alone in the burning room, the strangeness of the scene choked me as much as the pungent odor of smoke. I raised the camera, thinking it would record the unreality of it all. After quickly pressing off three shots at different angles into the room, I was about to take a fourth when two guys emerged through the broken door. They walked past me as if I weren’t there. Surveying the destruction for a few seconds, one then picked up several booklets from among the papers beside a large desk and flung them across the room into the flames. The other did the same with a light-weight chair. <insert image E133 here>

            As they continued throwing debris into the fire, I stared at the flames through the camera lens. The current I felt earlier that night came over me again. Moving slowly, I bent down and picked up a bound booklet. It read: Bank of America Audit Report 1969. The current got stronger. I sailed it toward the fire, then picked up another and flung it. I grabbed another. But while raising my arm to throw it, an image flashed in my mind. I saw myself standing a few feet away, framing me in the viewfinder as I was about to throw the book. My arm stopped. As I lowered it, I noticed the other two in the room staring at me. Tossing the book aside, I turned and, almost running, crossed over the strewn glass and out the doors.

            Several people now gathered at the back entrance. As I passed them I heard a voice. It was the last voice I wanted to hear at the moment.         

––I’ll be damned, Marleau! Is that gasoline I smell?

            Canova grinned, obviously pleased to see me. For a second or two I stared at him with a face that conveyed God knows what. Groping for words, I mumbled a response.

            ––You should get out of here.

            Pushing past him, I crossed the park in the direction of the beach. Surf pounded in the distance. I walked toward it until I felt the sand beneath my feet and salt air on my face. It cleared my head of the fumes, smoke, and bedlam that hung in the air over Isla Vista. Thoughts whirled: What madness! What was I thinking?

            Walking and listening to the surf, I lost track of time. But when I started back, it must have been well past midnight. Returning along El Embarcadero, an unusual light radiated from the park area. When I reached the top of the loop, I stopped and stared in disbelief. Flames engulfed the bank and smoke rolled above the walls into the night. The roof and part of one wall had caved in.

When I’d left earlier I hadn’t imagined that fires inside would consume the whole building. The firemen and cops I had earlier expected to appear at any minute hadn’t responded. Instead, the bank now succumbed entirely to flames and Isla Vistans controlled the streets. The scene was hard to fathom.  

People gathered around the park area and along the street in front of the bank to watch. I walked around the loop toward the Magic Lantern Theater. Some stood quietly gazing into the fire. Others grouped together talking, laughing, and drinking from bottles of wine or beer. A few others leapt around the burning wreckage, occasionally letting out a yell and throwing something into the fire. I sat down on the sidewalk by a brick wall fencing a flower bed next to the theater and watched the fire. The pillars in front of the bank still held, but the front wall had caved inward when the roof collapsed. The brick walls on each side and in back framed the fire. It took the good part of an hour before the fire gutted most of the interior.

            They had done it. They had really done it—whoever “they” were. Now all of us—whether residents of Isla Vista or students of the University—were sailing together, like it or not, into smoke-slickened, uncharted waters.

            I stood up, tired and unable to stay any longer. As I started to walk away, I noticed three guys doing something near the front of the building where part of the fire smoldered. I approached to within a few yards to one side of them. They held refashioned coat hangers over what was left of the fire along the remains of the front wall. On the end of the hangers were several marshmallows. The one closest to me raised his hanger from the coals and with thumb and forefinger gingerly pulled at the end marshmallow. It had gotten a little too blackened and oozed off the hanger, slipping from his hand. He caught it before it hit the ground and raised it over his head. Then it disappeared into his mouth.