It started when Ron found a lighter between the sofa cushions in his living room, either his older sister's - she smoked cigarettes (and looked pretty hot doing so) - or one of her many friends, always milling around when I came over. They were awkward, brace face teenage girls of the Clearasil set, but they were women in my young eyes, older women no less, women of the world, painting their nails, smelling like cigarettes and gum, simultaneously watching MTV and looking like they could be on it, tweaking both my desire and self-consciousness.
The big deal was not so much that Ron had the lighter, but that it was not missed by someone. It became our lighter, a possession as thrillingly illegal as it was permanent, and before long we were wielding it with the same sense of discovery and newly hatched empowerment early Man must have felt the first time he kept a torch going long enough to cook his food and illuminate his night.
"My best friend and I were on that precipice between childhood and adulthood, dangling perilously between our fears and our impulses, our common sense and our restlessness..."
We burned paper - notebook, construction, toilet...paper plates, paper towels, paper napkins...any kind or brand we could get our hands on. We burned leaves. We burned the ends of sticks, the caps of pens until they melted, any cardboard box unlucky enough to be caught sitting around with nothing to do. We burned a baseball cap we found in the alley, a tee shirt that didn't fit Ron anymore. We even torched one of his sister's Barbie dolls with as ceremonious a flair as we could muster. I suggested leaving its charred remains on her pillow as a joke (yeah, I guess I was that kid, a little...), but Ron wasn't comfortable going there, and looking back, that was probably a good thing. He was already pretty nervous about the lighter, certain we'd be discovered at any moment, and quickly regretted what we'd done to the doll, not so much for how torching any kind of human representation might read to others, but for monkeying around in Kate's room. He wound up guiltily stuffing Immolation Style Barbie in a box of books we found in the old barn behind his house, hoping Kate wouldn't notice one of her collection missing. As far as I know, she never did, and the doll and box might still be there.
That lighter became not just a source of unlimited power in our minds, but brainless amusement, wholly befitting two brainless thirteen-year-old boys. In the dark of his bedroom during sleepovers, we would spark it up and hold the flame under our chins in an effort to look as 'freaky' as possible. On a dare, we'd run the flame across the new hairs on our arms, or swipe the tip of our finger straight through it, to see - and prove - what we could take. Inspired by the fantastically hilarious stories that had made the rounds of our classrooms, locker rooms and campfires as far back as we could remember, we tried to light our own farts.
We failed (I guess that too was a good thing...), but Ron had something that was almost as cool. He'd learned from someone how to fill his cupped hand with fumes from the lighter, then ignite it in a fiery display without doing any damage to his hand or fingers. He spent fifteen minutes showing me this parlor trick, another fifteen passed before I summoned up the nerve to try it myself, but once I'd mastered it, it became as reliable a method for whiling away a boring summer afternoon as whittling or bouncing a ball against a wall. I did it so much, I used up all the fluid in that lighter. When Ron informed me that disposable lighters are not refillable, and with no reliable way of refilling it anyway, and having dug my way into their sofa cushions up to my elbows to no avail, I demanded he sneak into his sister's room one more time. There was surely a lighter to be found, probably in plain sight. Quick in, quick out. Come on, Ron, don't be a pussy.
Bold words from someone who would not have dared set foot in his older brother's bedroom, but Ron obliged reluctantly. Not to appease me, but to appease the gods of fire. That summer, we were subservient minions to the gods of fire. It was our first real - as in structured and ongoing - rebellion, our first taste of doing something we knew we weren't supposed to be doing, right on the doorstep of adulthood. He wanted it just as badly as I did.
"That lighter became not just a source of unlimited power in our minds, but brainless amusement..."
In June, we almost burned his fricking barn down, stupidly setting fire to a bin filled with hay and firewood, just to see what would happen, and only barely - barely - managing to put the flames out after they started to lick their way up the wall as if consciously trying to get away from us. No joke, we were seconds from disaster that time. That whole two-story barn, which had probably stood for a hundred years (built when his residential neighborhood was still farm land, his residential street a county road), might have gone up had the garden hose not reached.
On the occasion he and I discuss that incident, some thirty years later, we still cringe at what might have transpired.
It was sobering, but unfortunately not enough to get us to stop playing with fire. By July, in keeping with the quantum universe theory that everything that can possibly happen does (or maybe the Murphy's law version...), we had started seeking out new applications for our pyromania. And that was when the red gas can in that barn, used by Ron's older brother to fill the lawn mower, became of keen interest.
We were duly cautious with the fire water at first, indulging only in small sprinkles on the sidewalk that produced small flames undulating hypnotically off the concrete. But that soon felt inadequate. We evolved, just like early Man, started to write out words.
At first, 'SOS' or 'HELP', for astronauts in orbit we told ourselves (I think I was inspired by an old episode of Gilligan's Island).
Then we got sassy: 'EAT ME', 'BITE ME', or other typically witless 13-year-old expressions were flashed into the twilight heavens.
Then we got artistic (if still witless): smiley faces, a middle finger, a pair of breasts, a penis...hey, we were thirteen years old, and it was great comedy, and dare I say an invaluable experience - never to come again quite the same way - to see a burning penis about four feet in length light the gathering darkness of a July evening in northern Wisconsin at that age, and laugh, and laugh, and laugh.
But we didn't stop there. In an eventuality that proved Darwin's theory, the words 'Molotov cocktail' floated between us, and by mid-July we were feeling a strong desire for something more epic to appease the gods.
By then we were entirely cocky about our abilities marshaling fire. We'd gone almost the entire summer without being caught, causing a catastrophe or hurting ourselves (oh yes, we were fully aware of the danger of our behavior; that was a big part of the allure...), and felt we had earned a certain lack of discretion. At least, that's what I tell myself to try to explain what happened one late morning in early August, in front of Ron's house, in broad daylight, with traffic going by and someone mowing their lawn across the street.
Unwilling or unable to walk away from the Molotov cocktail idea, seriously believing that bigger fire made for bigger men, Ron and I placed a plastic fast food cup on the ground beside a tree, and filled it three-quarters full of gasoline. He knelt down and carefully lighted a paper wick sticking out of the cup like a straw. He scrambled away hastily, and we both stood there, one of us on each side of the cup, watching, waiting.
I'm not sure what we were waiting for...some kind of fireworks-style explosion to delight and amaze, maybe? It was pretty disappointing, actually. No explosion, no fireball, just flames starting to climb their way up the side of the tree with quickening determination as the cup collapsed in on itself and gas started to leak out.
When the fire started to wrap itself around the trunk of the tree, we gave each other a nervous glance, then Ron, gripped by the same second thoughts as I, stomped down on the cup with his shoe in an effort to snuff the fire out. That's when I got my fireball - a wall of bright orange coming straight at me with a roar.
Suddenly, the entire front of my shirt was on fire.
Suddenly, I was screaming.
Suddenly, I was running.
Suddenly, the gods of fire had become vengeful.
In that moment, I remembered a safety cadence I was taught in second grade, and had barely listened to at the time. Stop, Drop, and Roll. If I ever found myself (in so outrageously unlikely a scenario as to be...) on fire, I should stop, drop to the ground, and roll.
Actually, I can't say I consciously remembered it. It was more of an auto-response, which perhaps is testament to the effectiveness of that particular safety campaign. Though I took off running at first - a fight-or-flight response if ever there were one - I had the presence of mind to stop on a dime, drop, and roll like a barrel through the grass in Ron's front yard...made it a little way into the neighbor's yard, in fact, just enough to put out the flames. It's only in hindsight that I remember being on fire at all. At the time, there seemed to be no time between the moment right before Ron brought his shoe down, and hoisting myself up from the grass fifteen yards away.
I walked back to the tree and stood before Ronny in what was now a tattered Yankees tee shirt, a hand-me-down from my older brother I would never wear again (which was fine; I'm a Braves fan). I will never forget the surprised look in his eyes. Not horror, but surprise. I'm sure it was the same incongruous expression I had on my face. Neither one of us could really wrap his brain around what the hell had just happened, much less be upset by it. A car went by. The neighbor was still mowing his lawn.
It seemed the world had not heard my screaming.
"Are you okay?" Ron asked finally, and in his voice, if not on his face, there was a supreme disquiet.
"Yeah, I'm...I'm..." I wanted to say I was fine, but that would have been laughable. I reeked of gasoline, there were grass clippings and dirt in my hair, on my face, and though the flames had been extinguished, my chest felt as though it were still on fire. "I'll probably just go home."
"Suddenly the gods of fire were vengeful..."
All I remember of the bike ride home was being afraid to look at my chest and afraid to face my parents, and having a sense that the two things were going to be connected soon enough. I arrived at my house and was greatly relieved to discover nobody home. I made a hasty bee-line for the bathroom, locked the door, removed the Yankees shirt with the stiffness of an 80-year-old man, and gasped at what I saw in the mirror.
There were three burns. Two smaller ones didn't look that bad, but the third was twice the size of the others combined, an ugly charred sore shaped like an arrow head, as though the devil himself had smeared the flames across my chest with his hands. It was about two inches wide, four inches long, untouchably tender and oozing continuously. My heart sank. This was not something I'd be able to take care of myself with first aid cream and a bandage. I was going to need medical attention.
But by then shock had set in, and the fact that nobody was home prompted me to withdraw even further. I went upstairs with the Yankees shirt in my hand. I threw it in the waste basket in my room, laid down on my bed, above the covers, and found sleep blessedly easy to come by.
When I awoke, the sunlight had shifted in my bedroom. My parents were home now, I could hear them rummaging about downstairs, putting away groceries, maybe cobbling together lunch, like a thousand days before and a thousand days after. (They too had not heard my screaming.) The big burn was the color of grape jelly on my white fish belly, as tender, bubbled and sticky as ever, and now it was announcing its presence with a resonant, blowtorch pain, as though someone were trying to iron me. The two smaller burns seemed worse than they had been before...darker, blotchy, painful to the touch and oozing that awful fluid that stains bandages in amber colored rings. The entire room was saturated with the smell of gasoline.
Taking a nap hadn't made anything better. I still needed medical attention. I still had to tell to my parents.
I shouldered into as light a tee shirt as I could find, hunched my shoulders forward so the fabric would stay off my chest, and went to my dad, rather than my mom. My dad could be strict, but he was the more level-headed of the two, the one I could trust to not freak out (this would prove to be the case time and time again in my teenage years...).
He was upset though, visibly so, no question about it, leaning down for a closer examination of the big burn with a look of horror and revulsion I rarely saw from him. As he drove me to the emergency room, he asked repeatedly what happened, probing for the truth, and sighed with just a little more frustration for every evasive answer I gave.
The doctor in the ER, too, had plenty of questions as he treated my second and third degree burns. I fed him the same bullshit story I did my dad, and though it seemed the doctor's questions reached the level of interrogation at one point (augmented by my dad standing behind him, looking a little like a cop who could go rogue at any moment), I stuck to that story:
Ron had been mowing the lawn, I said, and I was filling the gas tank for him, and as I carefully poured it through the can's long red nozzle, the gasoline had just spontaneously erupted into flames and engulfed me, ignited, I theorized, by the hot metal surface of the engine, or maybe the bright sunlight.
Ridiculous, but intended to safeguard what little of my dignity had not been burned off that morning. This was an accident, my story claimed, as if straight from the cover of a tabloid, it was not the result of vulgar recklessness and stupidity (and a little hubris), for which I had been violently smitten.
Neither my dad nor the doctor believed a word of it; I think the doctor even smirked once or twice (or exchanged a look with my dad...). Like a horse fallen through the ice and unable to clamber out, the more I squirmed and thrashed, the worse it got, but I stuck to my story, too proud to admit anything out loud, especially with my dad standing there. The 'rogue cop' look I saw on his face wasn't really hostility, or even disappointment, it was shame, outright embarrassment, for what a jack ass he knew his son had been that day.
My dad knew. He'd never get the truth, but he knew. And it was mortifying.
The rest of that summer played out as a slow recovery. I remained bandaged, and mostly indoors, through the dog days of August and into September...into the new school year. Each changing of the dressing came with jolts of pain and discomfort. The burns - especially the big one - took forever to heal. Once they started healing, I endured weeks of agonizing itchiness, and whenever I succumbed to the temptation to rake myself, which was frequently, the healing was forced to start all over.
Eventually, I recovered physically. Psychologically was a different matter. The incident could not have happened at a worse time. Like all newly hatched teenagers, I'd been full of all sorts of plans for removing myself from childhood once and for all. Many were embarrassingly calculated poses, but some were accurate glimpses at the adult I would become. I started to really discover girls that summer, or care enough to understand them. I discovered new music, new movies, books...that was the summer I read my second Spenser novel and officially became a fan, watched Monty Python's Flying Circus and 'got it', felt for the first time capable of chiming in on the kind of conversations that went on between my dad and brother, where before I had only listened (or lost interest). It was the summer I renounced cartoons. It was the summer I got a new bike, a ten-speed, put the old banana seater, which I'd been pedaling away on since 4th grade, out to pasture. It was the year I awakened to the notion that I'd lived long enough to have memories to look back on, that 3rd and 4th and 5th grades, and my middle school years, were part of my 'past.'
Looking back, the 'fire gods' bullshit was not actually a new rebellion on my journey toward becoming an adult, it was a last vestige of being just another dumb ass kid, and I paid for it. Everything was put on hold while I recovered, set back to zero. Not permanently, but enough so to feel like a jarring throw down nevertheless.
I know it could have been much worse. I was beyond lucky that the Napalm spray Ron created when he unthinkingly brought his foot down on that Hardee's cup hadn't gone right into my face. And I am convinced that stop, drop and roll is the reason the fire didn't spread.
I could have wound up permanently disfigured.
But those psychological effects are still there. Not in obvious ways. I'm not afraid of fire; it ranks fairly low on my list of scariest ways to die. The smell of gasoline - thick and sickening as it was in my bedroom that afternoon - does not bother me, nor does the sight of a red gas can, or a fast food cup. In other words there are no blatant triggers to remembering that wall of fire or its unpleasant aftermath.
The triggers are far more insidious. An otherwise late summer day can still haunt me, if conditions are just right, if temperature and light and wind and ambient sounds conspire, I can at a moment's notice be given pause, flung back to those last few seconds of my childhood watching as Ron lit that makeshift wick, and left, with fairly abated breath, wishing we'd burnt his barn to the ground.
