13. Making Fire
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1,475 words. Approximate reading time: 7 minutes, 22 seconds. Audio version here.
I hear the click of my mother’s lighter and my attention is drawn away from the book I am reading and over to it. I watch the small flame dance and flicker as she burns the end of a thin cigarette. She lifts her thumb, and as soon as it appears, the flame is gone. I can’t help but be a little disappointed, but I know that I’ll get to see it again.
I’m always mystified when I see fire. Here in my childhood home, we have a gas stove, and one of my favorite pastimes is to put my small hands on the dials and turn them, hearing the click-click-click that comes before a whoosh of blue flames emerging from the burner. I knew about the blue flames; I must have learned from someone, but the knowledge of the origin of the knowledge is lost to me. I just know that the flames that burn blue are hotter than the flames that burn orange and yellow, like the flames from my mother’s cigarette lighter, or the flames from the fireplace, when my father lights the starter log and creates a fire that burns all night.
I like to sit in front of those fires, too. Watching the flames move around in the wind, so delicate, but so destructive, reducing the wood to ashes with a cacophony of crackling sounds. These two things seem so at odds. I can extinguish the flames of my birthday candles with just a small gust of air from my lungs, but the flames in the fireplace must be guarded by a metal screen, lest they escape and destroy our home.
A weekend comes when my parents are out of town, and my sister is at a sleepaway camp. Rather than go with them, I tell them that I want to stay with my neighborhood friend Chris for the weekend. I’m only eight years old, but I suppose that I’m mature for my age. And I’ve spent the night with this friend before. My parents trust his parents and my parents trust me. They give me a key to the house in case there is any emergency reason that I need to use it, and send me on my way, to the other end of the neighborhood, where I should stay put for a few days.
Chris is not a good influence on me. He’s a decent friend, but he’s one grade higher than me, which of course makes me think that he’s so cool and smart and mature, which of course makes him think that he knows better than me and makes him know that he can get me to go along with any of his plans.
The afternoon is sunny and Chris’s mother has tired of us playing video games in their bedroom all day. She kicks us out of the house unceremoniously and tells us to find something to do. Chris suggests we go back to my house, since we’ll be all alone there and can find some fun stuff to do.
My plan is to make smoke bombs-you can spray some oven cleaner onto a sheet of aluminum foil, then ball up the foil and put it out in the sun. As soon as the sun heats it up, the foil ball will give off a lot of smoke. I like pretending I’m a ninja, escaping from a terrible situation, using my smoke bombs for cover.
Chris has other plans, though. I turn the key in the front door lock and we both enter. My mother’s cigarette lighter is sitting on the table by the couch, and there is a stack of old newspapers in the dining room. Chris suggests that we build a fire, just for fun, in the fireplace. We can use the old newspapers and my mother’s lighter.
I’m nervous but excited about the idea. I love seeing the fire, and I’ve never had the opportunity to try and control it before. This is a big step for me, and at eight years old, I feel like I should be able to build my own fire. We crumple up several sheets of the old newspaper and throw it into the fireplace, then set it aflame with the lighter.
It burns quickly and disappointingly. After an initial burst of flame, the paper quickly turns to ash and the fire disappears. We throw more newspaper in, lighting it again, trying to see how big of a fire we can get. It all burns just as quickly and just as disappointingly. I find myself wondering what I can burn that will stay lit, so I can watch the flames dance and flicker, and I hold the lighter against the living room carpet.
Click, click, click. It’s hard to get the fire to come out when the lighter’s upside-down. Click, click, whoosh! I manage to get the flame working. I hold it to the carpet, expecting a giant tower of beautiful flames to leap from the lighter, with no plan of how to extinguish them if it becomes a problem. The carpet, however, is made of nylon, and just melts and chars slightly in the spot where I hold the lighter.
Finally over the disappointment and boredom, we leave my house again and find new adventures.
My parents come back home after the weekend, and just as I’m returning from Chris’s house, the ice cream truck comes by. I pull a dollar from my pocket and purchase a Mickey Mouse Ice Cream Bar. No sooner than the ice cream trucks leaves do I see my father exit the front door and walk toward me. His face is red with a combination of fear and anger. When he reaches me, he grabs the ice cream bar from my hand and throws it away from me as far as he can and orders me into the house.
The fear comes over me as I enter the house and he takes me to the fireplace, where bits of charred newspaper cover everything. We both look from the fireplace to the carpet, where the charred spot announces itself. My father asks me what happened, and I tell him honestly, despite my fear of the consequences I didn’t foresee when I was playing firestarter a day before.
From my bedroom, I have a window that faces the front of the house. I’m grounded, of course, so I sit here at this window and stare out into the cul-de-sac, watching the other neighborhood kids play. I see my father exit the house, get into his car, and drive away somewhere. A short time later, I watch him return. After he enters the house, I wait for a moment and then hear a knock at my door.
My father comes in and tells me that he wants to show me something. We go together, into his car, and he drives and drives and drives. He drives past any place I’ve ever seen before, to a neighborhood that I don’t recognize. I have no idea what we’re doing here.
He comes to a stop in front of a small split-level house, and tells me to look at it. The house is still standing, but there’s no garage door. The frame where the garage door should be is decorated with black, shadows from the flames that removed the door. Inside the garage are four bikes. Two are large bikes for adults, and two are smaller bikes, suitable for a person my size. All are charred and twisted and barely recognizable.
Everything else inside the garage is completely black. I ask my father, “What happened?”
“The same thing that might have happened at our house when you were playing with fire.”
My cheeks burn a little bit. “I didn’t know.”
“It’s okay. That’s why I wanted you to see this. You were lucky; we were lucky. It could have been worse, like this.”
“I’m sorry, Dad. I didn’t know.”
“It’s okay. You’re okay, and that’s what matters. But I want you to be careful. Bad things can happen if you’re not careful with fire, if you try to start fires without an adult around.”
“Okay, Dad. I’m really sorry.” I sit in my shame for a minute, staring at the burned-out remains of this family’s garage, as my father quietly watches on. “Hey, Dad?”
“Yeah?”
“Was everyone okay?” I turn away from the carnage to face my father for the first time.
He looks at me for a moment, and I watch his face twist up a little bit, as though he’s thinking of the right words to say. I feel the nervousness creep up inside of me, and I feel like I already know the answer to my question, when I look at him and see him thinking.
He thinks for that moment, then says, “Let’s not worry about that right now. You’re okay, and that’s what’s most important to me.”
He puts the car back into gear and slowly drives us back home.