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Mountain Solo
The Big Burn
The Window
Pictures, 1918
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PICTURES, 1918
The evening of the fire we've been playing cards on the
screened side porch--Homer and Grandmama and me. When we finish, Grandmama
says, "I believe I'll walk out to the privy," and my brother runs off,
calling, "You put stuff away, Asia."
So I gather the cards and carry our iced tea glasses to
the kitchen before heading out back myself.
The dry Texas air is just at that line it reaches some
early March evenings, hot day on one side and night chill on the other.
Above, a faint band of stars looks to stretch clear across heaven. And
from inside the house come the sounds of my sister, May, trying to learn
guitar. She finally finds a few notes that go together, and the plucked
chords twang into the night.
A dark shape moves beyond the chicken house, framed by the
thick limbs of our pecan tree.
"That you, Grandmama?" I call. She
shouldn't be off the path, not in the dark, not with her brittle bones.
No, that can't be her . . . .
A light flickers in one high-up, barred window of the coop
and then disappears. Who would be gathering eggs at this hour?
I go over to see.
"Mama?" I say, opening the door.
Inside, the smell of kerosene engulfs me, stronger than
the sweet, hot smell of the dozen frightened chickens huddled in one corner,
huddled and flapping and squawking. They are as far as they can get from a
low fire that licks over straw on the packed-earth floor and climbs twine that
hangs from a high-up hook.
I rush in, trying to get to the chickens, beating at the
flames. "Papa! Mama!" I yell. "Fire!
Fire! FIRE!"
Even as I'm yelling the flames shoot higher, flaring and
jumping until every nest box blazes.
I fight the flames as long as I can stand to, beating them
with a feed sack and my shoes. Then suddenly they join into a rushing
orange wall that pushes me out the door.
People are running my way now, and I can hear neighbors'
voices shouting on the street, doors banging, and men calling out orders.
Someone yells to ring the fire department, and someone else class that the fire
truck is on its way.
Then the running figures form into rough lines and begin
passing along buckets from the cistern, passing them along to Papa, because it's
his chicken house. Nick Grissom tears past me with another boy; the two of
them run with buckets as though they are racing each other to put out the fire.
For long moments I watch people fling whorls of water on
flames that grow and grow, even as the fir truck's clanging bell draws closer.
"It's going," someone says, and the words
release me . . .
(Text from PICTURES, 1918, copyright © 1998 by Jeanette Ingold, used by
permission of Harcourt, Inc.)
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