The Fire
I remember my younger brother lighting the match and dropping it into the gigantic cardboard box of wood scraps. My father is a wood smith and he is always doing projects and saving scraps of wood: even the chopped up remains of our Christmas tree from that year. The wood scraps were bone dry from sitting outside during the long, blistering summer heat. We were young boys who had an affinity for fire, getting ourselves into trouble more than once for lighting fires in dangerous places: in the alley next to a neighbor’s wooden fence, in an enormous plastic garbage can, and in a metal garbage can under a wooden picnic table.
I remember the flame spreading almost instantly. It seemed like it was only seconds later that the entire box of wood scraps was on fire. I had a sudden sense of panic like I had never felt before as the flames licked the roof of the porch and as the intense heat radiated from the fire.
I remember running back and forth to the kitchen sink with a Dixie cup, trying desperately to extinguish the fire. All I knew was that we had to put the flames out. We did not have any big cups or buckets--that I could think of at that moment. I was running as fast as I could to the kitchen sink to fill up this ridiculously tiny cup with four ounces of water, throwing it on the fire, only to see it sizzle away without reducing the flames at all.
I remember finally understanding that my brother and I were not going to be able to put out this fire by ourselves. I ran to the living room to tell my grandmother, who was the only adult at home. She clamored out of her chair as quickly as she could, having to slide her walker along the floor to get outside.
But most of all, I remember how stupid I felt when my grandmother told me to get the hose. I ran ten feet, unwrapped the hose, gave it her and turned it on. She was able to put the fire out in just a few minutes and the whole time I just kept saying to myself, ‘Why didn’t I think of that?’