DURING THE LAST week of April nobody with any sense at all would have gone out and deliberately set fire to a hayfield. There had been no rainfall since the March thaw and the country was as dry as road dust in midsummer. The farmers who had fields that needed burning over were waiting for a heavy shower of rain to come and soak the ground thoroughly before they dared begin the spring firing.
Carl Abbott had been in the habit of burning over his fields the last week of April for the past thirty years and he said that he was not going to start that late in his life letting his new crop hay be ruined by raspberry bushes and gray-birch seedlings if he knew anything about it. The people in the town thought he was merely talking to himself again to make himself heard, and that he really had the good sense to keep fire away from dry grass until a hard rain had come. Carl was always talking about the way he stuck to his lifelong habits, and people never paid much attention to him any more, anyway.
It was late in the afternoon when Carl got ready to fire the field on the north side of his farm. He carried two buckets of water with him, and a broom, and went up the side road to the north field.
When he reached the gate, he saw Jake Thompson come driving down the backroad. Carl tried to get through the gate and behind the stone wall before Jake saw him, but he could not hide himself quickly enough because of the two buckets of water he was carrying, and his wooden leg.
“Hey there!” Jake called, whipping up his horse. “What you doing in that hayfield?”
Carl waited until Jake drove up to the gap in the wall. He put the buckets down and leaned against the broom handle.
“I’m standing here looking at you,” Carl told him. “But I’m already tired of doing that, and so now I’m going in here and fire my hayfield.”
“Why! you damned old fool,” Jake said, “don’t you know that you’ll burn up your whole farm if you do that now? Feel that wind — it’ll carry flame down across that meadow and into that wood lot before you know which way to look. Nobody with any sense would fire a hayfield until after a good heavy rain comes and soaks the ground.”
“I didn’t ask for the loan of any of your advice,” Carl said.
“And I don’t generally pass it around to every damn fool I meet, either,” Jake said, “but I hate to have to sit here and see a man burn up all he’s got and ever will have. The town’s not going to raise money to waste on supporting you. There’s too many just like you living on the town already.”
“Guess I can live on the town if I’ve a mind to. Been paying taxes for thirty years and more.”
“If it was left up to me,” Jake said, “I’d dig a big hole in the ground and cover you up in it. And I’m man enough left to do it, too.”
Carl stooped over and picked up the water buckets.
“Didn’t you hear about that grass fire over in the east part of town day before yesterday?” Jake asked. “A man over there set fire to his hayfield and it got loose from him and burned up his wife.”
“That’s nothing to concern me,” Carl said. “Haven’t got a wife, and never felt the need for one. It’s people with wives who do all the fool things in the world, anyway.”
“Guess you’re right about that,” Jake said. “I was about to let it slip my mind that your daddy had a wife.”
Carl turned around with the water buckets and walked a dozen yards out into the field. The dead grass was almost waist high, and it cracked and waved in the wind like chaff in a hay barn. Each time Carl took a step in the dead grass a puff of dust rose up behind him and blew away in the wind. Carl was beginning to believe that Jake was right after all. He had not realized how dry the country really was.
Jake drove his horse and buggy to the side of the road and crossed his legs. He sat back to wait and see how big a fool Carl Abbott really was.
“If you go and fire that hayfield, you’d better go take out some insurance on your stock and buildings. They won’t be worth a dime otherwise; though I guess if I was hard put to it, I could give you a dollar for the ashes, including yours. They’d make the finest kind of top dressing for my potato field this year.”
“If you’ve got any business of your own, why don’t you go and attend to it?” Carl said. “Didn’t invite you to stay here.”
“By God, I pay just as many taxes for the upkeep of the town’s roads as you do, Carl Abbott. Shall stand here until I get good and ready to go somewhere else.”
Carl always said something or did something to make Jake angry whenever they got within sight or hearing distance of each other.
Jake crossed his legs again and snapped the leaves off a birch seedling with his horsewhip.
The wind was coming down from the northeast, but it shifted so frequently that nobody could have determined its true direction. In the month of April there was no way of finding out which way the wind was blowing. Jake had said that in April the wind came in all directions, except straight up, and that if man were to dig a hole in the ground it would come that way, too.
Carl stooped over in the grass and struck a match on the seat of his pants. He held the flame close to a tuft of grass and weathered it with his hands.
The flame flared up so quickly and so suddenly that it jumped up through his arms and singed his whiskers before he could get out of the way. The wind was true in the east just then, and it was blowing at about thirty miles an hour. The flame died down almost as suddenly as it had flared up, and a column of white smoke coiled straight upward for a few feet before it was caught in the wind and carried down over the meadow. The fire was smoldering in the dead grass, and the white smoke showed that it was feeding on the crisp dry tufts that grew around the stems like powder puffs. A hayfield could never be burned over completely if it were not for the small coils of grass that curled in tufts close to the ground. When the tufts blazed, the long waist-high stems caught and burned through. Then the tall grass fell over as if it were being mown with a scythe, and the fire would be under way, feeding itself far faster than any number of men could have done.
Jake Thompson watched the white smoke boil and curl in the air. He saw Carl walk over to one of the buckets and souse the broom in the water, taking all the time he wished. Then he went back to the fire and stood looking at it smolder in the tufts.
A fairly new, well-sewn house broom and a pail or two of water was the finest kind of fire-fighting equipment in a hayfield. But farmers who burned over hayfields rarely undertook such a task without having three or four men to help keep the fire under control. Six men who knew how to souse a broom in a bucket of water at the proper time, keeping it sufficiently wet so the broom-straw would not catch on fire, could burn over the largest hayfield in the state. Water alone would not even begin to put out a grass fire; it was the smothering of the flame with the broad side of the broom that kept it from spreading. But nobody with any sense at all would have thought of firing a field that year until a rain had come and made the ground moist and dampened the grass tufts. Under those conditions a field would have burned so slowly that one man could have kept it under control.
Jake knew that Carl did not have a chance in the world of being able to check that fire once it had got under way.
The white smoke was boiling upward in a column the size of a barrelhead by that time. The wind had shifted again, circling around Carl’s back and blowing down across the meadow from a new angle. The grass tops bowed under the force of the wind, and the wind was changing so frequently that it kept the field waving first in one and then in some other direction. Carl looked around and overhead as if by that he were doing something that would cause the wind to die down into a breeze.
Jake crossed his legs again and waited to see what was going to happen next. Carl Abbott was without doubt the biggest fool he had ever known.
Suddenly the flames shot into the air higher than Carl’s head and began leaping across the field towards the meadow like a pack of red foxes let loose. Carl jumped backward, stumbling, and overturning one of the buckets of water. The flames bent over under the force of the wind until they looked as if they were lying flat on top of the grass. That made the field burn even faster still, the leaping flame setting fire to the grass quicker than the eye could follow. It had been burning no longer than two or three minutes, but in that short time it had spread out into the shape of a quarter cut of pie, and it was growing larger and larger each second. Carl ran around in circles, his wooden leg sticking into the ground and tripping him with nearly every step. He would have to stop every step or two and take both hands to pull the wooden peg out of the ground.
“Hey there, Carl Abbott!” Jake shouted at him above the roar of the burning grass. “What in hell are you doing out there! Get away from that fire!”
Carl heard Jake but he paid no attention to what he said. He was trying to beat out the fire with his wet broom, but his work was not checking the flames in any direction. He was so excited that, instead of beating at the flames, most of the time he was holding the broom in the fire, and hitting the water buckets with his wooden leg. The broom caught on fire, and then he did not know which way to turn. When he did succeed in hitting at the fire with the broom, as fast as he smothered one tuft of grass it caught fire again almost immediately. In the meantime two or three fresh ones blazed up beside it.
“Come out of there, you damn fool!” Jake shouted at him. “You’ll be cooked and ready to eat if you don’t get out of that fire!”
Carl’s hat had fallen off and had already burned into a handful of gray ashes. His whiskers were singed close to his face, making him appear at a distance as if he had had a shave, and his peg leg was charred. If he had stood still all the time he would not have been hurt, because the fire would have burned away from him; but Carl ran right into the hottest part of it, almost out of sight in the smoke and flame. His woolen pants were smoking, his coat was dropping off in smoking pieces, and a big black circle was spreading on his shirt where a spark had ignited the blue cotton cloth.
Jake jumped out of his buggy and ran into the hayfield calling Carl. He could not sit there and see a man burn himself alive, even if the man was Carl Abbott.
He grabbed Carl and dragged him away from the flame and threw him down on the ground where the grass had already burned over. Carl’s wooden leg was burned completely through, and as he fell to the ground it broke off in half. All that was left of it was a charred pointed stub about six or eight inches long. Carl had made the peg himself, and, instead of using oak as Jake had advised him to do, he had made it out of white pine because, he said, it would be lighter to carry around. Jake dragged him by the collar to the gap in the stone wall and dumped him in the road. Carl tried to stand up, forgetting the burned-off peg, and he tumbled over into the drain ditch and lay there helplessly.
“You would go ahead and act like a damn fool, after all, wouldn’t you?” Jake said. “It’s a pity I didn’t let you stay out there and make ashes. They would have been worth more than you are alive. Meat ashes make the finest kind of dressing for any kind of crop.”
Carl sat up and looked through the gap in the stone wall at the smoking hayfield. The fire line had already reached the wood lot, and flame was beginning to shoot from the top of the pines and hemlocks. Two hundred yards farther away were Carl’s buildings. He had a team of horses in the barn, and a cow. There would be no way in the world to save them once the fire had reached the barn and caught the dry hay.
Jake tossed Carl a stick and watched him hobble the best he could down the road towards his house and buildings.
“What are we going to do?” he begged Jake. “We can’t let my stock and buildings burn up, too,”
“What we?” Jake said. “You and who else? You’re not talking to me, because I’m having nothing to do with all this mess. I told you what not to do when you came up here a little while ago, but you were so damn smart I couldn’t get anything through your head. That’s why I’m having nothing at all to do with all this mess.”
Carl protested feebly. He tried to get up and run down the road, but he fell each time he attempted to stand up.
“Why! do you think I’d have people saying that they passed your place and saw me helping you put out a grass fire when nobody with any sense at all would ever have started one in this kind of weather? People in this town know I don’t associate with crazy men. They know me better than that. That’s why I don’t want them to think I’ve lost my mind and gone plumb crazy with you.”
Carl opened his mouth, but Jake had not finished.
“I wouldn’t even spit on a blade of witch grass now if I thought it would help check that fire you started. Why! the townspeople would think I had a hand in starting it, if I went and helped you check it. Nobody would believe me if I tried to tell them I begged you not to fire your field in the beginning, and then went right out and helped you fight it. The townspeople have got better sense than to believe a tale like that. They know I wouldn’t do a fool thing like you went and did. They know that I have better sense than to go out and start a fire in a hayfield when it hasn’t rained yet this spring. I’m no fool, Carl Abbott, even if it does appear that I’m associating with one now.”
“But you can’t let my stock and buildings burn up,” Carl said. “You wouldn’t do that, would you, Jake? I’ve been a fair and honest friend of yours all my life, haven’t I, Jake? And didn’t I cast my vote for you when you wanted to be road commissioner?”
“So I can’t, can’t I? Well, you just stand there and watch me try to save your stock and buildings! And this is no time to be talking politics, either. Wouldn’t help you, anyway, not after the way you did there in that hayfield. I told you not to go and fire that field, and you went right ahead like a damn fool and struck a match to it, just as if I had been talking to myself away over in another part of town. No! I’m not going to do anything about it — except talk. When the townspeople ask me how your farm and buildings came to catch on fire and burn up your stock and wood lot, I’ll tell them you fired it.”
Carl found a heavier stick and hobbled down the road towards his house and buildings. The fire had already run through the wood lot by that time, and, as they came around the bend in the road, flame was licking at the house and barn.
Jake walked behind Carl, coming down the road, and led his horse instead of riding in the buggy. He watched Carl try to run, and he thought once of putting him into the buggy, but he did not like the idea of doing that. Townspeople would say he was riding Carl around in his horse and buggy while the stock and buildings burned up.
When they got closer to the house, the roof was ablaze, and the barn was smoking. The hay in there was dry, and it looked as if it would burst into flame any second. Carl hobbled faster when he saw his buildings burning.
“Help me get my stock out, Jake,” he begged. “You won’t let my stock burn up, will you, Jake?”
Jake tied his horse to a tree beside the road and ran across the yard to the barn. He could not stand there and see a team of horses and a cow burn alive, even if they did belong to Carl Abbott. He ran to the barn and jerked open the stall doors.
An explosion of smoke, dust, and flame burst into his face, but the two horses and the cow bounded out the moment the stall doors were thrown open. The horses and cow ran across the yard and leaped over the brush by the roadside and disappeared into the field on the other side.
Jake knew it was a stroke of chance that enabled him to save the stock, because if the horses and cow had been farther in the barn, nothing could have induced them to leave it. The only way they could have been saved would have been to blindfold them and lead them out, and there would have been no time for that. The flame had already begun to reach the stalls.
Carl realized by that time that there was no chance of saving anything else. He saw the smoke and flame leap through the roof of the barn the moment that Jake had opened the stall doors. He felt terribly sick all over.
Jake went over to the tree and untied his horse. He climbed into the buggy and sat down. Carl stood looking at his burning buildings, and he was trying to lean on the big stick he had found up the backroad.
Jake whipped up his horse and started home. Carl turned around and saw him leave, but he had nothing to say.
“Whoa!” Jake said to his horse, pulling on the reins. He turned around in the buggy seat and called to Carl. “Well, I guess you’ll have better sense than to do a thing like that again, won’t you? Next time maybe you will be anxious to take some advice.”
Carl glared at Jake, and turned with nothing to say to stand and watch the fire. Then suddenly he shouted at Jake.
“By God, the hayfield is burned over, ain’t it?” he said, hobbling away. “Well, that’s what I set out to do at the start.”
Jake whipped up his horse and started for home. When he looked back for the last time, he saw Carl whittling on a pole. Carl had cut down a young pine and he was trimming it to replace the peg that had burned off in the hayfield. He wished to make the new one out of oak, but oak was the kind of wood that Jake had told him to use in the first place.
(First published in We Are the Living)