Fire Days

In Southern California there are two seasons: Summer and Summer Lite. Sometimes those two seasons would meet somewhere in the Indian days in-between. They would rub together like wood and stone until something sparked.

Thus there were Fire Days.

Fire Days would come to town riding on a Santa Ana wind, a special holiday, unique in that periodically decided when and where to celebrate itself. It was when one part El Nino mixed with a little El Diablo and school was cancelled on account of inferno. Our collective teen angst could find solace in suburban apocalypse.

Insurance policies and brush fires would merge into single ecology.

The great black hole sun Sound Garden had promised me on MTV would come to fill up the sky and wash away the rain.

Al

Al wore a plain white t-shirt that had self-vandalized with a sharpie pen.

It read: Looter-Arsonist.

I hadn’t noticed that before we had left. He had probably hidden it from me under his jacket earlier as some kind of joke.

Al loved jokes like that.

We were half way up the hill. Our feet made crunching sounds on the white pebble road I had been forbidden to play on as a child. It’s what separated the wealthier half the neighborhood from the sorrier one. I had gotten more than one talking to for riding my bike on the white pebble road. That great big hill. Always calling to me. Now it was all in flames. Abandoned by those same rich folks when they realized the pebbles didn’t stop wildfires.

“Did you have to do that man?” I asked Al, pointing at his shirt.

“Yes,” he replied half snickering, “it’s my act of civil disobedience.” That had been his new favorite phrase since reading Thoreau in AP English: civil disobedience. “Did you hear they want to bring the National Guard into town?” he continued. “All I have to say to that is posse comitatus mother fuckers posse comitatus….” Al lifted his fists tightly under his arms as he said this, striking a greaser inspired fighting stance to match his cuffed pants and over combed hair that made him look like James Dean’s very illegitimate child.

“Posse comitatus,” I mouthed, trying not to appear ignorant. That had been his other favorite word. It had something to do with the Civil War — or was it the Patriot Act? I couldn’t remember.

Bee

I had to be quick. It was exactly 5 miles from my house to the school, and everyone was getting out early today. My Mother’s old Italian ten speed clanked beneath me as I rode through condensed ash on the sidewalk making black trails as I pushed the pedals.

My virgin lungs half-choking on the burning barnyard air.

My desperate mode of transportation came as the result of my own bike having vanished. While I had my suspicions about who had taken my prized BMX bike, I didn’t have time. The 10 speed had hung from the roof of the garage for years, unridden since my mothers summer in Europe sometime in the 70s.

She might not even be there. Her Mom might have picked her up already. Bee and I went to different schools. I had just under an hour to get to her. If she was there though — I couldn’t miss her. Bee was always grounded. Whatever time I could get with her had to be stolen. Besides, she wouldn’t expect me to come all that way during a fire. It was romantic.

Al

The rich people’s neighborhood looked like it had been hit by a meteor. There was an old Beatle Volkswagen that had rolled out into the street. It was still on fire. The melted paint looked like discolored ocean foam. The remains of the houses were still smoldering. One looked like the fire had magically cut it in half. There were a few boxes of luggage that had been left behind and lined up in front of their respective driveways. Dressers had been pulled as far away from the house as one could imagine a family with little time to evacuate.

I reveled in this — savored it with the smoke in my mouth.

Al hurled a half charred piece of wood at an unstable remnant of a wall, while letting out snicker. As the remnant collapsed it sent a cloud of hot embers shooting into the air.

Bee

The school was completely vacant as I walked my bike down to the podium. I could feel the sweat bleeding through my shirt now. I refused to take my leather jacket off in any weather, even during a fire. A line of liquidated pomade poured down from my scalp and was coagulating on my chin and I panted under the weight of my impractical fashion.

I leaned against the bike and felt disappointed. Despite my best effort, I was too late. As I tried to remember which of the schools soda machines was the closest I saw Bee emerge from a corridor on the far side of the quad.

She was holding her binder to her petite chest, her non-prescribed black framed glasses hanging on her alabaster mall goth face above the rosebud lips she held tight over her unwanted braces. She stared at me like she had been expecting me the whole time. There was a soft rain of ash all around her. I watched the black snowflakes stick to her clothes as she made her way across the grass. I thought it was romantic.

Al

Al and I had torn through every box and drawer but had found nothing but junk. I was surrounded by piles of blouses and old clothes, empty picture frames, and keys to doors that probably didn’t exist anymore. No one cared if this stuff burned.

“There could be a safe somewhere in the ash,” Al said while he pissed on a smoldering stump.

I surveyed the ruined houses while the stump made a sizzling sound under the urine, then abandoning that idea, looked back down at the lackluster spoils of our pillage. There was a rolled up army jacket in the pile. I could make it into a vest. Maybe I could write something cool with a sharpie on it — that could be a kind of civil disobedience.

Bee

I used to have dreams about Bee’s house. I didn’t even know it was her house yet. It was long before I ever even knew her. She lived at the first house on the old highway leading into town.

The house was a giant glass Frank Lloyd Wright kind of monstrosity that sat on a hillside and would light up in the sunset. I would see it every other week or so when I was little kid whenever I’d be in the car going in or out of town.

Growing up, I saw it shining in my dreams like the lighthouse of Alexandria. When Bee told me she lived there, I couldn’t believe it. Something in my brain popped like a pimple. I didn’t feel so cynical anymore. Somehow, it was romantic.

Alexandria

I hadn’t lived at home for years, but I heard all about the fires on the news. Mom told me the cats were safe and she had the house all packed and that she was ready to go at a moment’s notice. We had been lucky, aftercall, that the fires had spared our half of the neighborhood for so many years.

When Bee called me she was crying. The glass house had burned. She told me she wasn’t sad to see it go. It hadn’t been a kind place to her. It had been full of bad memories except for one thing. She told me she left a shoebox under her bed in her old room. Inside had been the letters I had wrote her, a few boyhood poems, and the purple blanket I had brought her in the hospital after her parents had institutionalized her.

I said maybe the house was less the like lighthouse and more like the library of Alexandria. She asked me if I was sad to see the house go.

I said no, I thought it was romantic.