October 17, 2009
She forbids me to concern myself about what will happen to us when we burn down the woods. We are at the firecracker store and she arms me with an empty cardboard box and a twenty dollar bill. She hovers over the lunatic packaging like a wasp. Elated. She haggles. The air itself is danger. My fingers sawdust dry. Her thoughts cast sparks. Beside the 81, our hearts are filled with smoke and flame. In her hand, a fan. Worry is a prayer for something you don’t want.
Her instructions are quite clear: when I hear the sirens, I must run up the driveway, back behind the shed, and up the hill. Go through the mulberry bush, then climb up the hemlock tree. Pull myself up on the roof of the shed. That way, I’ll be above the police. The positioning of her grandchild is tactically key: from that vantage point, I will be able to watch the woods burn and also mock the pitiable inadequacies of law enforcement to police the human appetite for spectacle.
She’s fairly old and quite large and her ankles are swollen and the varicose veins and the housedress all mean she can’t climb, but she plans to stand her ground. I adore her for it. Apprehension is the pursuit of fools. She has vast supplies of cruelty and charm, of a certain sweet meanness and she lavishes them on representatives of authority. The police bring the fire trucks, and they bring difficult conversations and they require an entire snide circus of charm and contrition. She girds for it.
She has already set fire to the woods dozens of times, but has not yet successfully burned them down. She has spent two lonely decades analyzing strategy and logistics – this house, these woods, these neighbors all her battlefield. She has fought her war alone. Her tools are the chemical diversions of an ancient Empress: gunpowder and explosions. She wants pageantry, and drama, and attention, and adventure, and love, and that requires the salt of tragedy. She wants to construct this sacrificial performance, wants to bring tragedy forth from joy.
In preparation, we have singed my lungs. As a child of nine, I was not adept with matches and for expediency’s sake she taught me how to smoke cigarettes made of blackened corn silk, hastily shucked and wrapped with newsprint. And thus, like a true lieutenant, I have learned to keep a flame alight. She is gorgeous and glorious and I would take a blow to the heart with happiness for her. One day – perhaps tonight – mine will be the light that ignites her dream and burns down the woods.
We are in the joy stage of her play. She is showing me the case of roman candles. We are choosing the loose fuses. We are practicing how to run.
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