Somebody asked for some fiction. This is dusted off from the college days.
I stood at the base of the fire tower on Rendezvous Mountain, head tilted into the late morning sun, watching Dad climb. Was the sway of the steps just a trick of the eye, or could the wind really beat against them with enough force to tear the tower out of the rock?
Somehow Dad made it to the top and called down, “C’mon Ed! We don’t got all day.” Just then the steps began to shudder, threatening to rip themselves from the tower’s frame and fall into the valley below. “Hurry up!” he shouted again, not sure if the wind had drowned his first call.
I took a firm grip on the rails and placed one tentative foot on the first step, then the other. My weight on the steps seemed to ease the worst of the shaking, but I still felt tremors echoing through the steel. I remembered not to look down as I climbed.
“There’s exactly a hundred steps, Ed, I counted.” Dad poked his head through one of the tower windows, surveying my progress.
“You’re on number nineteen, twenty, twenty-one—”
“Stop counting. I’ll know when I get to the top!” I glared in Dad’s direction and tried to keep my voice from wavering. Looking up was no better than down. I tried not to look at anything, counting the steps under my breath.
Dad snorted and retreated into the tower’s cabin.
The steps disappeared into the base of the cabin, and I had to push through the heavy trap door to ascend. The wooden door lifted, and Dad stood above me, holding it open. “Ninety-eight, ninety-nine—hey, I only counted ninety-nine steps. I thought you said you came up here all the time.”
“Used to,” Dad replied. “What took you so long?” Inside the cabin, dust covered every surface and hung frozen in sunlight slanting through the windows. Nobody had been to the fire tower in a long time.
His papaw, my great granddad, kept watch through the dry season for forty years. Dad was never allowed up in the fire tower when he was a boy, but his brothers taught him how to sneak up at night after everyone had gone to bed. He said he’d bring me up any time I wanted, but I wasn’t allowed to come by myself. If I tried to come alone, he’d know about it.
On the drive up, Dad told me about men who used to sit in the tower all day, looking for signs of a fire. Sometimes they even stayed overnight, sleeping on the cot in the corner. Most of the year a woodstove warmed their hands. But nobody needed to watch over the valley anymore. Airplanes looked on from the sky now.
I could see most of Union Grove in the valley below. It looked like my model railroad. Trees studded the peaks, full of leaves and needles and still green. The farther ones faded to blue, then gray. The most distant ones matched the color of the sky, and I couldn’t tell where the two met.
To the east were fields, tobacco and soybeans mostly, and chickenhouses beyond them. The creek curved idly across the valley, splitting in two but rejoining itself farther downstream.
“See Bitter Creek down yonder?” Dad rested on the cot, arms behind his head and eyes half closed, probably remembering some lost game he and his brothers once played out on the banks of that water. He was bursting with stories.
“They call it the Bitter Creek because they say it ain’t fit to drink. But I tasted it one time for myself, and damned if it weren’t the sweetest tasting water that ever passed my lips. I mean, uh, dogged if it weren’t. Your momma’s been onto me about saying words like that, so don’t you go repeating it.” He talked slow, every word drawn out and caught in his thick jaws. I didn’t mind what he said around me. I just liked to hear him talk.
“Where does the creek go? I can’t tell where it goes out to the west.”
“You ought to figure out where you are before you think about where all you can go. Can you see our house? Find where the pond is and tell me how to get from there to the house.”
Our house wasn’t too close to the creek. Mom didn’t want to worry about any flooding like there used to be when she was growing up. The sun came up in my bedroom window, so that was east. In back of the house a grove of trees stretched all the way into town. I could just make out the line of a trail running through the woods to the BP station. I told Dad where I thought the house was, pointing a triumphant finger out a side window. He stood up to come look where I pointed.
“Yep, right down there. Glad nobody moved it while we’ve been gone.” Dad picked up a pack of cigarettes from a shelf by the window. “But it’s time to be getting back. Be time for lunch before we make it down.”
Dad’s hair smelled like embers. Mine was straw and manure. A match flared against the shadow inside the tower and he swept a flame to his lips.
“Mom says that’s bad for you,” I warned.
He squinted down, cigarette hanging from parted lips. “They ain’t so bad. You want to try one?” He laughed and coughed a little when I nodded.
I couldn’t light a match, so Dad wrapped his book around one, took the edge between two fingers, and made a scarring sound. He stood, light extended, a silhouette rail against the sun drenched window.
My cigarette tasted like a paved road and it shivered in my mouth. Dad said his tasted like the old days. I lifted the match, trying to copy his fluid motion. The fire on my thumb melted through calluses. I spat my cigarette down into the valley. Dad fumed, blowing smoke, and offered his. I refused. I couldn’t see how he let the smoke back out. I didn’t want to get it stuck inside.
“Don’t they teach you about Smokey the Bear down at the school? It’s a good thing that one wasn’t lit!”
I spit again. “Those things are gross.”
“Yeah, they probably are.” He winked and put out his cigarette on the cabin wall. “Now you know not to try one again.” He flicked his stub through the trap door. “Let’s get going. We’ve got to work on your treehouse before tonight’s meeting. Might rain, too.”
* * * * *
Dad always smells exciting when he gets called out. Sometimes his coat is still hot when he comes back home, and the visor on his helmet still has so much smoke and soot I can’t see through it. Once a fire melted the rubber soles of his boots.
Dad’s boots make him walk slow, lifting one foot after another in a steady march back to the house. When he gets to the door he lets me pull off his gloves. My fingers won’t stretch to the fingertips of his gloves, but I can’t lift my hands inside them anyway. Everything Dad wears is heavy.
When Dad gets called out at night, Mom can’t sleep. There is always a light under their bedroom door on those nights. She thinks I’m asleep when she comes to my room, but I’m waiting up, too. She joins me under the covers and we read to each other until Dad gets home.
“You got to be a big fellow to fight with a fire,” he says, and I’m not tall enough yet. Mom measures how tall I get on my closet door, but even if I get tall enough, I might not be strong enough. My arms don’t have Dad’s muscle yet, but sometimes when we arm wrestle, he lets me win.
Dad makes houses out of wood and rock with his bare hands. He built the Baptist church down by the creek and the barn for Mr. Comer’s cattle with his friends. They helped build the house we live in now.
Dad starts with sharp angles and boxes drawn across notebook paper, then blank paper, paper with grids, and finally long sheets of paper that have to be unrolled. Different paper every week. I always use notebook paper. He shapes the buildings himself and then everybody helps put them together.
When he sketches I watch over his shoulder. Sometimes I draw my own boxes, but my lines are never straight enough. Dad wants me to be a carpenter, like him.
He points at a box. “This one here’ll be your room. Me and Mom will be right across the hall.” He puts my name in a box in the corner of the page. I spread my fingers across the box and they touch the edges. I want something bigger. Mom asks for a library and he draws more lines.
“Can I go out with you to fight a fire tonight?” I’ve been asking since Dad joined the volunteers.
“No!” my mom always insists. “You need special training and tools to put out those things.” Mom knows about bodies and sickness because she’s a nurse, but she doesn’t know about fire.
His answer is always the same: “You ain’t hardly old enough yet. But come on with me down to the firehouse and you might learn something.” They meet every Monday night.
* * * * *
I rode with Dad to the Union Grove Volunteer Fire Department instead of going with Mom to town for the fireworks show tonight. Mom was meeting her sisters there, and they always left lipstick on my cheeks. I made her promise to bring back some ice cream for me.
Since I started coming with Dad, I’d learned to monitor the CB radio dispatch, listening for a call that would send our trucks screaming down the road to douse a fire. I could respond instantly if a call ever came in while Dad was in the conference room with the other firemen.
Union Grove, First Alarm on a one-story frame residence with heavy smoke from three east windows, over.
I jumped from my chair when the squawk started, spilling my copy of Firehouse Digest on the floor. I pushed a button on the microphone and tried to remember the response code. “Uh, yeah,” I stammered. “10-4, right? I’ll get my dad.”
Oh, Edward! Hi, it’s Sherri. Hi! Sherry’s voice was shrill and she talked fast.
Happy Fourth! How come you’re not with your mom watching the fireworks show?
I clicked the button again. “Dad needs me here to monitor the radio. You’re not supposed to use it for personal talk, you know.”
Okay, listen. There’s a fire, pretty big, up on your side of the mountain, and I need you to get your daddy so I can tell him about it. Hurry!
I ran down the hall and listened outside the conference room door. I heard a lot of laughing on the other side. Somebody muttered a short word when I knocked, then Johnny Cash stopped singing on the radio. Dad says all firemen love Johnny Cash because he sings about fire. Dad opened the door with a pool cue in his hand. A pencil stuck out of his overalls chest pocket. It didn’t look very sharp. The room behind him was dim and swirling in smoke, but Dad’s eyes were bright.
“What’s going on?” he asked.
“There’s a fire!” I said, out of breath. “Sherri needs to talk to you on the dispatch.”
Dad spat tobacco juice on the floor, just missing my shoe. “Stay here,” he said on his way down the hall. He moved fast for a man with a belly that big.
Inside the conference room a fluorescent light hung over the pool table, more haze than a beam. It swayed a little and cast one corner after the other into shadow. Dad said it was hard work fighting fires, and sometimes a guy just needs to play some pool. The sticks were still a little too big for me, but if none of the other firemen are around, Dad helps me shoot a few balls. He says I’m a real pool shark. I can already beat him at ping pong.
Dad’s friend Red sat on an old leather couch next to the Coke machine. He wore the same uniform as my dad: overalls, ragged t-shirt, and work boots. He looked up at me standing in the doorway and waved me over.
“Ed! Your daddy’ll be back in a minute.” Red made room on the couch.
“What were you laughing about before I came in?”
“Ah, I was just telling Warren about some guys we fired from the house we’re building right now. They didn’t know how to mix cement!
Say, when are you coming out to work on a house with us? Your daddy says you can swing a hammer real good. I bet you’ll be a good man when you grow up, just like him.” His breath smelled like rotten apples.
Dad stomped back up the hall. Red stood up when he came through the door. “Bad night for all the boys to be out of town,” Dad said. “Looks like it’s just us two. House fire on the mountain.”
“Can I slide down the pole with you?” I asked.
It was quiet before Red spoke. “House fire? Shit Warren, that’s crazy! The two of us can’t take on no house fire.”
“It’s my house, Red.” Dad almost whispered it. His face had lost its tan.
“What do you mean?” I asked. “Our house can’t burn down. We built it ourselves.”
“Jesus! Is Dianne home? Is anybody there?”
“She went into town to watch the fireworks with her sisters. House is empty.”
“Why can’t any other departments assist? Why on our own?”
“Too far away. Most of the close ones are helping with those damn fireworks shows. The house’ll be ashes by the time anybody else gets a truck up there. These back roads…the mountain’s steep. We’re ten minutes away—”
“We’re ten men short, too!” They both worked the tobacco in their mouths.
“Damn, Red, the more we argue the less chance we’ll stop that fire.” Red shut up and we all made for the pole.
Dad went down first but he didn’t land right. “Take the boy around to the stairs and come down with him that way.”
Red just whistled and sighed when he got down the stairs. I heard splashing from the garage. “Just stay on the steps, Ed.”
I sat down and watched the two firemen wade through knee-deep water towards the trucks. Our trucks were the shade of yellow that looked like it might glow in the dark. I couldn’t make out where all the water had come from.
“Pipe busted,” Dad guessed. “Whole goddamn tank’s gushed out on the floor.” He spit into the water and opened the garage door. “I can smell it.”
We looked out in the direction of our house, where I thought I could see the smoke rising into the night. I wondered if Mom could see it, too.
Red had already gone to check the supply and was back with spare pipes under his arms. “You know how to put one in there, Warren?”
“Not especially, but we’ll figure it out quick enough.” Dad took the pipe Red offered and a wrench from his own toolbox. He started banging around under the pumper truck. Red made me promise not to cuss like my dad.
When the water had receded, I decided to go for a closer look at Dad’s work. Soon as my foot touched floor, Dad looked up. “I told you to sit still, son.” I sat still. I smelled something burning.
Red had all their gear ready by the time Dad finished with the truck, and they had everything on before I could think. Dad jumped in the pumper truck. “Ed, hurry up, you’re with me! We done wasted seven minutes on this truck,” he shouted, already starting the engine.
“How much water in the tank?” I asked.
“Not a drop. It was all on the floor.”
“There aren’t any hydrants near our house! Where will we fill it up?”
Dad didn’t answer. The siren blared before we were out of the garage.
* * * * *
Even in the dark I could see smoke billowing from the house, spreading like ink across the empty sky. Sherri had said it was coming from the east windows, my bedroom. “How much farther?” I asked. I started thinking of which books I would save first.
We were still a mile away, but the roads were clear. Dad took both lanes around every curve. Two sirens squealed into the empty streets. Dad fired his horn and it ripped the air. He wanted the fire to know he was coming. I wished we could get there faster.
We passed Red in his ladder truck as we skidded into to our driveway. The air around our house rippled from the heat. “Stay in the truck,” I was told.
The fire roared at Dad when he opened the door. Waves of heat beat over him and sweat gleamed his forehead, but he stood his ground, sizing up the blaze. Dad built this burning house, had crafted every inch. Put a bookshelf for Mom in their bedroom and one in mine. Made the cabinets too tall for anybody else at first, but lowered them so we could all reach. He bowed his head through every doorway. He let me drive the first nail.
Flames sawed through floors and hammered out windows. Dad’s own frame grew rigid. He squinted through the smoke. Red put a hand on his shoulder and spoke to Dad. His words made both their shoulders sag. They gestured to the trees and back to the pumper truck where I waited.
Red opened the door to my truck and climbed up. Even his eyes were sweating. He grinned at me and said, too loudly, “We’re going to drive this truck over to Comer’s Pond and fill it up. That okay with you?” He nodded to himself.
I wanted to fight the fire and stand with my dad but Red was already turning the truck around. In the side mirror I watched Dad move deliberately toward the front door as Red drove us up the driveway.
“No, wait! I have to help him!” I tried to jump out of the truck but the door was locked. Red pulled me away from the window as Dad passed through the doorway and we lost sight of him around a curve.
“Why’s he going in? We don’t have any water yet. Turn around!” We needed to go back and rescue him.
“He’s got to fight fire with what he’s got, Ed. He’ll be okay.” Red coughed and cleared his throat, squeezing the steering wheel.
* * * * *
Comer’s Pond stood in the middle of the cow pasture. Red wasn’t dodging any of the potholes as we bounced along the cattle trail, and I hoped we didn’t spring another leak. The pond flashed fire out of the middle of the field, reflected in the water.
Sleepy calves scattered when we pulled up beside the pond. In our bouncing headlights, older cows stared back at us, uninterested, chewing their cud. Red unhitched a long, thick hose from the side of the truck and hauled it into the water. His legs were soaked to the knees before he dropped the supply line with a muddy splash. “Hit the pump switch!”
I hit it and something churned to life deep within the truck. “What now?”
Emerald stars burst into the barren sky, cascading in a white curtain over the pond. Muted applause echoed in the valley as the fireworks display began. I thought of Dad inside the house, blinded by thick smoke, groping through the dark by memory alone.
Red splashed out of the water. “Don’t worry, Edward. It takes a long time for a whole house to burn.”
“How much water does that tank hold? It don’t look big enough to put out that fire.”
“Oh, it’ll hold plenty enough. The fire isn’t too big yet.” His eyes drifted toward the smoke hanging over my house.
I watched the pond’s rim to see if the pump was draining it, but I couldn’t tell a difference. “How long?”
“About ten minutes, I guess. Plenty of time. Takes a while for houses to burn up, specially ones built to last like yours.” He checked his watch and looked down at me. His eyes darted away when I returned the glance.
How would Dad fight a fire without water, why had he walked into the fire? Dad said the only reason to enter a burning building was to save lives.
Red must have been thinking the same thing. “Warren’s keeping that fire from taking his house right now, Ed. He’s staring it down. He might beat it if we can get back quick enough. Wish this pump would hurry on up.
“You remember when you all moved into the house? Guess it’s been almost four years. I remember the day your dad showed me what he’d drawn for you and your mom. He worked up those plans from the day you were born. He wanted to give you something special. Something that would last.”
It was the same story Mom sometimes told me when we waited for Dad to come back home. She lived with Dad in a green trailer when they got married. When I was born, he started talking about building a house of his own. “What kind of carpenter don’t have his own house?” he asked her. He wouldn’t let her help pay for it, so it took another seven years to save the money. The whole town donated supplies and came out to help Dad build.
“Don’t worry Ed.” Red stood up and turned back toward my house. “He won’t let no fire take that away from him. Firemen ain’t allowed to leave a burning house. We stay and fight it even when there’s no chance of saving the place. No chance at all.”
The pump gave one last chug and then stopped. The pond still looked as deep as it had when we got there. I helped Red pull the pump out and we drove even faster back to the house. A rocket screamed into the sky and exploded like a gunshot, showering the pasture with sparks.
* * * * *
Dad was sitting in the driveway, looking singed when we got back. Things from our house surrounded him. His antique shotgun, too old to fire, that had belonged to papaw. Our battered guitar he’d been teaching me to play. A whole box full of Mom’s books. Blueprints and sketches of all the houses he had helped build over the years.
I couldn’t look at the fire anymore. Dad just sat, sweating, staring down at a sketch in his lap. It was our house. He tried to draw a deep breath but choked, gagging.
Red jumped out of the fire truck and unspooled the attack hose. I started the water and ran back to help Red brace against the pressure. Muddy water shot upward into the flames, hissing where it hit the walls. A fresh wave of heat shot back at us, enough to knock me off balance. I wasn’t as strong as Red. The hose writhed in our hands like an angry snake. We held out until the last of the water bled from the truck.
“We’ve got to stop it before it spreads to the trees,” Red said. “It’ll run through the woods and hit town before anybody even notices.” We both collapsed beside Dad, exhausted and sore. I wondered why he gave up. I wondered how the fire had started. I wondered if Mom would be worried.
Across the creek the fireworks finale began, jets of red, white, and blue spurting into the night like fountains. Echoes of thunder beat against the hills, passing from peak to peak, slowly fading.
The wooden husk of the house glowed orange, threatening to collapse. Heat still crackled the air and my ears were ringing. Sirens from a rescue squad van whined in the distance, growing louder as it drew close. Flashing lights blazed toward us.
Dad coughed and shook ashes from his hair. His voice was dry and cracked. “Nobody was inside. Had to make sure. I got as much as I could but not all of it. I went back, but…” He tried to see me through the smoke in his eyes.
“Edward, I went back in. To get your books. I tried to go back and get all of it but I couldn’t see.”
Red pulled me over to our pumper truck and handed me the CB radio. “I got your momma on the line. Click this button here to talk, and let it up to listen.” He closed the door to shield me from the heat.
“Edward? You there, baby?” Mom sounded far away.
I clicked the button like Red showed me. “I’m right here, Mom.” I didn’t know what to tell her.
“Is Dad okay?” Her voice was scratchy. “They told me he went in the house without no breathing thing.”
“It’s a breathing apparatus, Mom.” I watched Red outside, holding Dad up. Two other firemen helped him over to the truck. “They’re bringing him inside the truck now. He’ll be okay.”
Red opened the door again and I helped pull my dad into the truck. The other firemen called Red back to work on the fire. It was hot inside the truck. Dad had on an oxygen mask and couldn’t talk.
“Warren?” Mom asked. “Can you hear me?”
“We’re still here.” Dad nodded, and pulled me over to him. Black streaks ran from his eyes down his cheeks. He stared at the house in his hands.
