When Firedevil Prescott fought the fires of the boomtown oilwells and air was filled with mud and rocks and air was sour-sweet with tarry smell of oil, was special days, not like now, not dreary days of sameness like now. Hull and Saratoga and Daisetta and Raccoon Bend was nothing but mud and oil, slicky and up to your ankles and shiny with oil rainbows—ever see rainbows oil makes on mud? Beautiful. Roar of gushers and people rushing in and out of the Commissary, bags full of groceries, them was boom times, strangers and newcomers, pipeline trucks stuck in Main Street bogged down in the mud, roughnecks and riggers and oilmen. Living out at Humbletown, all little gray and white company houses, that summer in Raccoon Bend the big wildcat broke through—musta been a small ocean a awl underneath us, how could we know we was all living and walking over ocean of awl under us with that much power in it to blow us to the moon?—big wildcat Hadley #3 broke through and showered us all day and night and into next day with mud and rock, rocks fallin on the tin roof, windows splattered ’ith gray pastey mud and was the summer I saw my first one, ’twas astounding, ’twas shaped like a peach poutin out with a pink crease, whole little thing ’bout as big as a peach could pluck and grasp whole thing with five fingertips whole astoundmg thing. I was afraid but wanted it, and Jeanette was only ’bout eight but she started it, pulling up her dress to me. I stood her up on a trunk and it was right before me then, all I had to do was push, but I couldn’t get it in her, tried and tried and she even bent back and puffed it out to me, ’twas then like a whelp on her, like something had stung her, boy I wanted to sting ’er in that swollen whelp and I had a big stinger on me to do it with, to sting ’er again, but I couldn’t get it in her (I was twelve). And the rushing sound of the gusher and the rocks falling on the tin roof was an evil time. And I remember then that the wildcat fire broke out in Sanger #4 and come to us then like Satan had sent him a strange scary man named Firedevil Prescott to put out the terrible fire. He come in his glistening white garment with the red devil on the back, his trademark, fireproof, like a big cottony angel, head like ’twas all bandaged, fireproof isinglass mask for him to see through, I was afraid to look upon him, to look him in the face, to see his terrible face. I turned away because I was sinful, because of what I’d done with Jeanette. I was afraid he would take me like the Devil and throw me into the heat, and burn me in the hellfire of Sanger #4; I could not look him in the face; but those who saw his face said ’twas scary and like the Devil’s face with big yellow eyes and a horned nose; and ’s feet was all like bandaged up, big white cottony clomping feet, like a terrible ghost’s. And his glistening suit had like tiny pieces of silver and glass and shnning lights in it; and oh my God how the flame shone and glinted blue and red and purple and silver in that suit. He went straight into the singeing fire as if it was just a lighted room where he was going to sit down and have him some supper or visit with somebody, not holding back, carrying a big red bottle, sausage-shaped, and out of which came foaming white stuff upon the flames, to quell them. For a time Firedevil Prescott was lost to us in the fire, he had been licked up, swallowed. Once in a while we could see the red Devil leaping and darting in the flame as if it had got loose from Firedevil’s back and had leapt into the fire, to its very heart, and was fighting it alone. The flame turned blue then white and then a vile yellow-green that burnt our throats and then black smoke boiled and rolled out of this blackness and darkness folded over the glistening white figure of Firedevil Prescott. We waited, miserable and afraid. Firedevil Prescott had turned the bursting blinding light into sulphurous darkness; we stood choking and scared and blind in the stinking blackness, all our light and sparkling magic had vanished. And oh had the conflagration burnt him up, was he fallen down charred in that holocaust, burnt to soot? We waited in horror round the crackling flames and oh my God Lord Jesus he arose, stumbling white shape, grimy ghost out of the tarry blackness. Firedevil Prescott had survived the infernal fire and he bowed and waved, and the crowd cheered and whistled. And oh I was cryin and whistlin and wavin my arms and tears of remorse and forgiveness and thanksgiving drenched out of my eyes; and jumpin and yellin and cryin all my tears of shame and mercy, touched by grace, I vowed to myself and to God that I would never sin again like I did with Jeanette, that I would never give myself again to feelings like that, that I would be pure and without stain on myself; and the fire was quenched, the black smoke rolled away, and Firedevil Prescott was victorious.