The men burned tumbleweed in the upper field. Jerry and I saw tumbleweed in the barn corral. We wanted to help the men. We ran down to the ranch house basement where supplies were kept for sheep camps. We searched through boxes of canned vegetables, fruit, slabs of bacon and ration-bought sugar and flour. It was 1941. Jerry was seven and I was five. We didn’t understand what “the war” meant, but we knew what rationing meant. Matches were not rationed.
We ran back to the barn. We tossed burning matches into the tumbleweed. As the flames grew, the tumbleweed melted. It burned bright red, turned black and dropped grey spirals to the ground. We felt good! After a few minutes, the men began to run toward the barn, waving their arms and yelling. “What’s wrong?’” we asked. Then we saw that our “good deed” had turned into gigantic tongues of red and yellow flames licking the side of the barn. We started to run, and then Jerry stopped and said, “Help me bury these matches.” We hid behind the bunkhouse and played in the dirt with rocks and sticks.
Our mother smelled the smoke first. She checked the flue on the woodstove, and then stepped outside. With a sharp intake of breath and a narrowing of her eyes against the bright sun, she saw the smoke billowing from the barn, a quarter mile up the road. Her first thought was, “Where are those little kids?” She half ran, half stumbled up the path toward the barn, holding her hand over her mouth to stifle her scream and quiet her fear. The smoke reminded her of Peggy’s fire.
My sister, Peggy, died two months before I was born. A fire started from a kerosene lamp while she was making a bed. Peggy died of a blood clot just after her fifth birthday.
As she ran toward the barn, choking from the smoke, Mom saw it was covered in flames. She knew that whatever, whoever was in there could not be saved. With a trembling hand, she reached into her apron pocket for a handkerchief, and as she looked down, she saw two sets of footprints in the dust, coming, and going. Relief. Then, she set her jaw and followed the footprints left by two barefoot children. She came to a small mound, scraped it with the toe of her shoe and dozens of matches spilled out.
I distinctly remember seeing my mother’s brown lace-up shoes first. Then I saw her ankles in brown stockings. My eyes crept up her flower-printed cotton dress and her cotton apron with blue piping around the edges. Her black hair was pulled into a bun.
Arms akimbo, she said, “Do you kids know the barn is on fire?”
“Oh”, we said, “Is it?”
Showing us a handful of matches, she said, “Look what I found.” We tried to run, but Mom was too quick for us and gave us both a good licking.
Read Full Post »
Idaho Writers Guild 