Writing Exercise 3 - Ryan Henderson

He watched the flames dance behind the voids that until recently had been the windows of their house. The sockets glowed as the fire wandered from room to room before crawling out the window and up the wall to the roof. He watched silently as the firestorm raged around the house, engulfing it. The thunder of the burning wood thundered in his ears as the roof creaked like it was going to cave in. Sparks leapt from the building like fluorescent rats trying to escape a sinking ship. Flaming embers rained down around them and he watched silently. He held the same posture - arms limp at his sides, neck craning - that he held when he watched snowflakes settle around him in the waning afternoon light. He watched his father step forward and put out a pile of leaves ignited by the burning precipitation. He wondered about his father's calmness. It was foreign to the boy and it frightened him more than the destruction of the house in front of them. He didn't understand this father, calm and reserved. He wanted his father who ranted and yelled and sent backhands flying in all directions when his temper was up. This father was too calm. Not like the time he found the boys building fires behind the shed with a lens. They boy remembered twisting handfuls of grass into kindling and directing the light into it, holding his breath as the tiniest suggestion of smoke began to rise before the grass finally caught, erupting into flames that were almost transparent in the sunlight. He had just ignited a handful of weeds when his father walked around the edge of the building. The wafting smoke and crackling of the leaves pulled him out of whatever contemplation he had been following and he charged the boys. His father knocked the grass out of his hand with a slap that knocked him backwards into the wall of the barn. Mudcaked works boots stamped out the smoldering plants as his father's curses burned blue all around them. Both fires, physical and verbal, burned out about the same time and he sat watching his father. Blood dripped over his lip and down his chin as he watched his father walk away without a sound. His father was still silent as the boy watched him watch the fire rage through the house. He watched the flames reflected in the glassy eyes and wondered if his father could even feel the heat from the fire. The solid, rock-like muscles of the clenched jaw seemed impervious to heat even though the man was drenched with sweat from trying to rescue as much as he could from the house before the doorway collapsed. A flicker caught his attention, his father's workscarred hand, blackened and blistering from the fire, was reaching out absently in the space between the man and the boy's mother. The seeking digits found the red hand hanging limply at her side and engulfed it, consuming it completely and hiding it from the boy's view His eyes moved from the union of hands up his mother's arm, tanned and knotted from her outside work, to her face. Tears flowed down her cheeks and dripped onto the front of her dress. He thought they were large, silent tears that were different from any he had ever seen before. They continued in a steady flow, one after another after another, until he wondered if his mother was trying to flood the yard and put out the fire with her tears. He could not remember having seen his mother cry like that before. Mostly he only heard her as she sat in the kitchen late at night, trying to muffle herself after everyone else had turned in for the night. He imagined the grain of the wood paneling in his bedroom, now engulfed in flame, which he would study as he lay in bed and listened to her sobbing. He always marveled at her the next day as he watched her move through the kitchen while she made breakfast. Maybe it hadn't been her crying in the kitchen. It must have been a dream, one of those weird dreams that crept up on him when he was only half asleep, because the person he heard the night before could not be the woman he watched roll out biscuits on the counter. She only let him see her cry once before the night he stood beside her watching the tears run down her cheeks. Large tears that he was sure would put out the fire if she only stood there long enough. These tears seemed different from the ones he had seen the other time he watched her weep. At least he understood these tears, the others he hadn't. He remembered walking out onto the porch and wondering if she had hurt herself somehow because she was using the railing to hold herself up while repeating the word No No No No to herself. He wondered if she was hurt, but it did not look like there were any injuries. That time had been different. He noticed that her cheeks were damp, but the tears had stopped, as if damned by the walls of her sobbing. He followed her gaze as she stared straight ahead and it was only then that he noticed the shiny black car rolling slowly down their driveway from the road. The glare from the windshield momentarily blinded him as the car pulled to a stop at the edge of the grass. Standing in the darkness, watching raging fire reflect in the rolling of her tears, he could not remember why he had not realized what the car meant. He wondered about it when he saw it. Nobody they knew had a car like that and the two men that got out and walked across the yard wore dark suits that reminded him of the preacher on Sundays when he first walks out of the church to stand, blinking, in the light coming down through the trees while he greeted the people arriving from all over the mountain.