The fuse box was a metal cabinet on the wall in the hallway. Gray. The door had a latch. Inside were rows of round glass fuses screwed into sockets like light bulbs. Each fuse was a promise. Fifteen amps. The fuse said I will carry this much and no more. The fuse was the most honest employee in the building.

You blew a fuse every week. The toaster and the iron on the same circuit and the fuse said no. The apartment went dark. You felt your way to the hallway. You opened the cabinet. You unscrewed the dead fuse and held it up to the light and the little wire inside was broken. A thread of metal that gave its life so the building would not burn. The fuse was a martyr the size of a quarter.

My father kept spare fuses in the kitchen drawer next to the candles. The candles and the fuses lived together because they served the same master. When the lights went out you needed both. He could change a fuse in the dark by feel. The screw threads were the same every time. The fuse box was the one thing in the apartment that never moved.

People put pennies behind the fuse. A penny conducted the current and the fuse never blew and the wire in the wall got hot and the wall caught fire. The penny bypass. The cheapest shortcut to a catastrophe. The fuse existed to say stop. The penny said keep going. The building code is written in the ash of every building that listened to the penny instead of the fuse.

They put in breakers now. Circuit breakers. The breaker trips and you flip a switch. The breaker does not die. The breaker resets. The fuse died for you. The breaker takes a nap. I do not know which is braver. I know which one you remember.

See also: Radiator, Gaslight