Jeff sticks around to check out my new skateboard. “Everything okay around here, little cuz?” he asks when I walk him to the door.
“Sure.”
“Your folks seemed a little…well, strange with each other.”
“Nah, everything’s fine.”
“Listen,” Jeff says, punching my arm. “If you ever need to talk, you can always call.”
“Thanks for the offer.”
I’m sprawled out on the couch, chilling. If it wasn’t July and hot and dry out, I’d build a fire in our old brick fireplace.
I shouldn’t have told Jeff he was a bad influence. He wasn’t the one who got me hooked on fire. I was hooked way before the corn-chip and spray-can tricks.
Dad got me hooked. Mr. Mayor himself.
My first memory of fire has to do with this fireplace. I used to love watching Dad start a fire. Dad is the kind of person who’s always on the go. Even when I was little, he’d head off to one meeting or another. Or he’d be on the phone doing city business. But when Dad made a fire, he was one-hundred-percent present. It was the only time he wasn’t distracted.
I’d sit right here on the couch (in those days the couch was maroon-now it’s got this kooky cupcake fabric Mom picked out). Dad would be on his knees in front of the fireplace. He’d tell me exactly what he was doing. “First you gotta scrunch up newspaper—like this. You payin’ attention, son?” Dad would show me the balls of newspaper. “If they come undone,” he’d say, “they’re no good.”
“Can I try?” I used to ask him.
“Fire’s a powerful thing, Franklin. It creates, but it destroys too. You’re not big enough yet to light fires,” Dad would tell me. “But how ’bout you scrunch up some of that newspaper? Nice and tight, okay?”
I’d try so hard to get the balls of newspaper right.
“This one’s a little loose, Franklin. Really scrunch it up.”
Mom would be on the couch, reading a romance novel. Every once in a while, she’d look up from her book and smile. I think she liked to see us bonding. Dad wasn’t the mayor yet. He was just a city councilor, but already he was away a lot.
“Next you need to make a teepee with the kindling.” Dad would pile kindling into a small teepee. After that, he’d add some small logs, laying them against the teepee, but not so hard that the teepee would fall over.
And then…my favorite part. Dad would light a long match, toss it in and slam the glass door of the fireplace shut. I’d press my face against the glass and watch as all that newspaper would burst into a giant blue-and-orange flame. I’d never seen anything more beautiful.
It wasn’t just the appearance of the fire I loved. It was also the sound. I loved the crackling as the fire spread, especially if the wood was damp. And the smell, the delicious aroma of wood smoke.
“It’s getting smoky in here,” Mom would complain from the couch. “The smoke detector’s going to go off. And I’m not putting down my book to deal with it.”
“You and your romances,” Dad would tease her. “You’d let this house go up in flames if you were reading one of those books. Aren’t I romantic enough for you?”
I remember other fires too. There were the bonfires Dad and Uncle Ron made when our families rented a cottage together in the Laurentians. Sometimes, usually after they’d put away a couple of beers, Dad and Uncle Ron would let us use bulrushes to light the bonfire. Man, that was fun! Nothing beats a flaming bulrush!
Mom and Aunt Lena would pack potatoes and corn in tinfoil, and we’d roast them over the fire pit. Jeff and I would spend the whole day hunting for just the right twigs for roasting marshmallows. They had to be long but not so thin our marshmallows might fall off and disappear into the flames. To this day, nothing tastes better to me than roasted potatoes and corn, or a marshmallow charred black on the outside, hot and gooey inside.
Mom says when I was little, I spent hours watching the fire in our fireplace or in those fire pits. She says it used to relax me.
The funny thing is, it still does.
I’m surprised when Dad’s truck pulls into the driveway. What’s he doing back so soon?
“Hey, Franklin,” he says when he sees me on the couch. “The meeting broke up early. Where’s your mom?”
“Still out walking, I guess.”
Dad sighs. “She’s been taking an awful lot of walks lately, hasn’t she?”
For the first time, I wonder if maybe—just maybe—Dad isn’t as out of it as he seems.