The crop of blond hair, nearly white and curling vaguely, streaked across the half fence as five more mops of hair, varying in color chased after. The radio played loudly from the house as obscure men and women chatted to one another.
Everyone huddled around tables in the back yard as the afternoon sun beat down through the trees and onto the 4-seat card tables. They had been set so lovingly for the event with table cloths checked in alternating colors of black, red, blue and white. Each had their own stack of matching napkins, cups and plates. Some tables were playing cards and others were just talking and eating the chips on the plates. Men were dressed in their shorts or cut-offs - socks pulled half way to their knees with yellow and blue and black stripes, none of which really matched - ball caps on some, all in tee shirts. Four of the men stood toward the very back of the yard each in pairs, playing horse-shoes. The women all wore glasses, big and plastic and most as thick as jars, making their eyes five times bigger than they really were.
The boy’s father, Walter, hoisted a large bag of charcoal out from the garage and lugged back around the house onto the small rectangular concrete slab bordering the rear of the flat, white ranch house. His tightly cut, red-brown, feathered, page-boy hair lay wet against his scalp with sweat, a pre-mullet. The broad kitchen window, stood open to the air of the back yard so that the people inside could hear and see what the goings on were in the back had several older women, busily finishing up dishes of food, cleaning in waves as they went. Separated by a thin black screen, each took turns ushering the children out of the house to back outside and play. Walter placed the briquettes into the jumbo, tub-bottom black grille that sat to the side of the window and next to the lawn. He picked up the lighter fluid that lay beside it. “Oh no you don’t, Walter!” screeched one of the kitchen maids, her finger up, mouth and lips tightly pursed so that you could barley see them and eyes exaggerated thin slits through the mirage of the large glasses that covered her face. “Take that smokin tar furnace over there so we can breathe while we cook! No one wants to sit here and worsh dishes an take a lung full of that. You know that it always blows in the house when you put it there. So pick it up and move it, Genius.” The yard silently stared at Walter… all but the children who were now roaming the yard like a flock of birds, chasing each other, screaming and howling and giggling. From the kitchen a woman’s voice added, “Thank you, Mother.” Walter placed the tin of fluid atop the coals and picked up the grille, shaking his head, gently and quietly disagreeing but obediently moving nonetheless. As instructed, he lobbed the laden tub just beside the white picket fence that separated the two side yards. Though the fence was incomplete, neither Walter nor his neighbor Rick thought much of it since their kids played together and he and Rick were friends.
After several minutes of stacking coals into a grid-like pattern, Walter placed the rack atop the mound now heaping inside the shining black metal tub. Walter twisted the top off of the can, dropping it to the ground beside him and began to whistle. It was a slow and off key version of the them song from The Love Boat that drew out clumsily every time he moved his arm or squeezed the can, saturating the coals. From his pocket he grabbed the matches as he dropped the now empty can beside its lid. In one hand he flipped back the cover on the book of matches and pealed one out placing it between the strike and cover in one quick move of his fingers – they were practiced from years of smoking. The crisp woosh of the igniting match scored the air as it made its way to the sopping coal now 3 feet from him. Distracted by the nearly instantaneous, lightening like spread of blue and white flame engulfing the surface into a mushroom cloud of smoke and fire, Walter stared proudly at the fire he had created.
Time stretched out thinly.
The children had been chasing each other in a mass game of ‘tag’. There were about fifteen boys ranging from 4 to 12 and about half as many girls the same ages. They raced around the old men in their plaid, nylon pants sitting in the symmetrically placed tables. They spun around the trees and weaved in and out of the cars parked out back in the alley. Screams of excitement and laughing split the air as the boys and girls yelled at each other. Some were trickling in and out of the house as constant voices from the inside would say things like, “Jacob Allen, did I not tell you to get out of the house not five minutes ago? Do you not see that there a stove full of boiling hot pots and pans here?! Do you want to get burned or do you want to see your father and I run you to the hospital today?” The shadow foretold. The words were cast. At the very same instant, of what had been the start of a seasoning grille, burnishing in the half shade of the side yard like a torch turned into a life altering event.
The herd of children had split at both sides of the fence at the other side of its length as one boy raced up one side to out flank his prey and the raced the opposite side unknowingly toward the boy - parallel to each other. All just moments after the match had launched from Walter’s hands. The throng rounded the corner only a blink after the fire burst forth, hitting the grille flat on its side and vomiting hot, fuel laden coal out the other side. They all fell into and on one another like stampeding cattle. Their foe, the flanking, platinum haired birthday boy raced to greet it, too slow to avoid the firestorm headed toward him. The boy barely knew it had hit him before he could feel the wet burning against his shirt and skin. The nylon pealed and melted, fusing to him and instantly catching as well.
The world felt as though it were under water – heavy and deep and without air. The light appeared to come from below him. Walter pivoted and lunged on his son, flinging the coals from him, barehanded. He took the boy and rolled him in the lawn to put the fire out. The boy flopped in his father’s grasp like spaghetti. Walter picked him up just as quickly as it had happened, racing him to the table where he doused the still burning nylon from his son’s chest with a glass of cool sun tea. As the cool wetness washed upon the boy, the burn froze the boy in place. The fire had burned a patch from the edge of the boy’s collar bone, around his shoulder, to his sternum and around his side, his stomach and again matching on the other side of his body, the burns – severe. The burns still fresh shone white against the blackened fabric that lay engraved in the wounds. The boy just lay there in a pool of tea, covered in charred fabric, frozen in shock and fear. His arms bent up into the air, hands grabbing at nothing legs lifted slightly off the table as he lay there on his back. His eyes glazed and his mouth gurgling at unknowing pain.
No one spoke. No one breathed. Nothing moved.
As though the world rushed in, the boy’s lungs were filled with hot torment – an explosion followed as his screams now filled the air. The inside of Walter shattered. Everything was broken now. His own mouth felt like he was chewing broken glass. Walter’s body swung around, arm outstretched, finger pointing to an old man sitting at the table. His voice clear and commanding, “Watch him!” The man said nothing but turned his gaze to the boy. In leaping motion, Walter bounced off the ground into a sprint. He pulled at the screen door leading into the kitchen from the back yard, nearly ripping it from its hinges as the door slapped the side of the house, pulling the chain that held it so tightly that it broke off the frame. Walters’s momentum did not slow as plowed through the people who might be standing in his way, picking people up and putting them aside. He’d reached the living room where his key’s rested on a hook by the front door. His left hand grabbed the ring and pulled. They complied with his grasp, hook, keys, ring and all as they pulled from the wall. Walter could hear only his son screaming and his own heart pounding in his chest. It was a hammer beating at an anvil. His drive never faltered as he pivoted at his waist like the neck of an owl, legs following the course his torso and shoulders had set. He rounded the corner into the kitchen, his voice calm but steely and imperious. He stretched his right hand out and pointed it out at a 90 degree angle to the woman who had made him to move the grille. “Lillian. I want you to take care of everyone else here.” Lillian’s mouth had stood open, not knowing exactly what was going on. Walter paused awaiting even so much as a syllable from her – he knew that she was not used having someone speak to her this way. The matron complied with a simple, slow nod, not so much a blinking or closing her lips together. His upper body moved and faced his wife and sister-in-law, “Nancy,” he said looking at his wife’s sister and wife, Carolyn. His voice was unchanged, “Pack up your sister and come to the hospital. I don’t have time to move everyone. You have Jim help you. Do you understand?” They both gave a nod much like that of their mother moment before. “Good. I’m taking Him to the hospital. Be there as soon as you can.”
He rotated and moved toward the door. It smacked open with the force of his hand. In what appeared to be only a single step from the door to his son, the man picked up the boy, cradling him in his arms and lifting him to his chest, careful not to touch the boy’s wounds. “Ok, buddy. Its going to all be ok. We are going to get you to see a doctor right away and everything’ll be just fine. Now I am going to need you to be a big boy right now and stay with me here, Son.” The boy’s dreadful screaming subsided to moaning and crying. His father’s legs never stopped moving. In a blur, they had moved around the side of the house and into the driveway were the car sat waiting. The 1975 navy-blue, 4-door Chrysler Valiant glimmered in the sun. The seats were ablaze with the heat of the day beating down in the car. There was a folded army blanket in the backseat. The man, magically holding the boy still with one hand, laid out the blanket in the passenger side of the car. He flipped around, placing the boy legs first toward the door so that his head lay in his lap. He slammed the door behind him. The stick for the gear-shift flipped with his left hand as he pealed out hard right, into the yard, stopping quickly, and slapping it into drive as he skidded out of the yard, hitting the street with a thump and a squeal of the tires as he bottomed out, cuffing the concrete. The engine roared out, only hearing the tires yelp under the heavy gas pedal.
