The red fire burned low and hot and I could see its redness far down in the valley, far down near the railroad tracks and the creek, far down, red in the evening dark, flames framed by old hickory trees. Something was burning down in town and for the life of me I can't remember what it was, an old shed or barn or abandoned house, perhaps. We gathered there in my grandma's well-lit kitchen, peering over the sink, past the spider plants in the window, past the little ceramic elf planter, past the barometric weather predictor with the evil yellow witch who appeared through a tiny door if impending weather was severe.
Grandpa and Grandma's house was high on a hill, old Lucas Hill, and the hickory grove was thick. Only the lateness of the season and the falling of leaves meant we could even see that something was on fire. Someone turned off the lights in the house and we stood there in the dark, trying to see better. I remember my grandpa's rough voice, his thoughts trailing onto a story of some sort, of another fire, another time, a time when Lucas was a bustling coal mining town and not the dusty shadow I came to know it as a child.
The kitchen was dark, the evening uncharacteristically warm and blustery for so late in the season. Not a good night for a fire, even if it was just an old farm shed in the night. I shivered. The kitchen suddenly felt all wrong, the people in it, my people, suddenly felt very solitary, very fragile. The walls of my grandpa's house seemed thin indeed, little separation from the night, little separation from the great dark that seemed to reach out to consume everything and everyone. I was wearing a little white shirt and I felt my mom's hand on my back. She did that often, feeling for any possible congestion since my bout with pneumonia. I still coughed on occasion and she worried.
Someone flipped the kitchen lights back on and life — my life — returned to the safe and familiar. Threats of the unknown, of "ghouls and ghosties and long-legged beasties," threats of mortality and solitary fragility, fled back to the fantasy world in which we keep them. The fire far down in the valley burned itself out by morning, leaving a dull and mortal heap of ash and old twisted wire in its stead. Life returned to normalcy, that false sense of fantasy in which we lie to ourselves that everything will remain the same forever, for our minds just can't comprehend soul-crushing loss until it happens.
Something like 40 years have come and gone since that night. Most folks who were in that kitchen with me are dead and gone. I could not, in my childlike wonder, imagine a world in which they were not always going to be there for me. The very idea felt, not only tragic, but also unimaginably terrifying. No one to turn to for advice, for security, for help. I could not imagine such a world even as I would yearn for independence and a life of my own. The guilt comes temptingly — that I didn't appreciate them as much as I should have — and that strange sense of free fall of the soul that no one tells you about when you are young. I didn't cherish them enough, listen to them enough, soak up each moment as I should have, and now they are gone, lost in the ether and I am left, taking each new and plodding step, often still overlooking the magic of life.
Another Halloween season has come. The October air was warm Friday night, the breeze again uncharacteristically blustery. I stood downtown, looking up a dark hill, through branches of sweet gum trees, hearing the friendly and loving voices of friends, neighbors and those whom I have come to know as family. Up through the leaves and the dark and silhouetted trees, up past the dark and shining railroad rails, up past a thousand memories not my own streaming like ghosts in the night, was a lighted window. For a moment I stared back, back at myself as a child, a child surrounded by love in the dark. For a moment, the night stopped and I shivered again, uncharacteristically cold against the warmth of the night.
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