Playing With Fire

As a teenager I liked to pour gas on anthills and set them ablaze, or spray burning charcoal with lighter fluid. I always assured onlookers that I knew what I was doing.

As an adult I owned land where I burned brush. I built one-man bonfires hot enough to melt old glass jars. In the spring I’d pour the “old gas” from my gas can on the fire. I wasn’t being careless, I reasoned: I was just emptying the can.

My first job after nursing school was in a hospital burn unit. I met a lot of patients who supposedly had known what they were doing. They’d smoked cigarettes while stripping wood floors with a flammable chemical, or stuck their head inside a gas grill to see why it wasn’t lighting, or put gasoline in a kerosene heater. I spent many hours scrubbing dead tissue from their excruciating wounds before dressing them again. I administered gallons of morphine. I placed wash basins and blankets beneath their beds to catch the fluids pouring from their bodies. I listened to their screams.

Now I live in the city, where I dispose of old gas by taking it to the recycling facility and neatly pile brush at the curb to be hauled off by city workers. It’s not very convenient, but I don’t mind.

Bruce F.
Winston-Salem, North Carolina

The same year the serial killer Son of Sam was murdering young women, I ran away from home with a drifter named Kenny. He was heading to Alaska to work the pipeline. The pay was so great, he said, that the dime stores there charged ten bucks for a Hershey bar. I was sixteen.

We hit the road outside of Bayonne, New Jersey, holding our thumbs out to the passing traffic. We caught our first ride with a truck driver whose CB-radio handle was “Midnight Rider.” He winked and hinted that he’d like some time alone with me. The third time he hinted, Kenny cut our ride short.

The trucker left us by the roadside in southern New Jersey late at night. Before long, a swamp-colored sedan pulled up, its muffler threatening to fall off. The female passenger greeted us with a beery, toothless grin. “Where you headed?” she asked. The bearded driver wore a leather vest that showed off his tattooed chest. We climbed into the back seat.

Their names were Sally and Dan, and they offered us a bed for the night in Dan’s trailer. We hesitantly accepted. The trailer’s paneled walls were decorated with paintings of a sad-eyed puppy and a Jesus with a flaming heart. A child of about seven was messily constructing a peanut-butter sandwich at the kitchen table. We watched while Dan cooked up speed in a spoon held over a lighter, a rubber tube tied around his arm and a syringe waiting nearby. Dan barked at Sally to get the kid the hell out. The boy darted out the door. In the morning we left.

Our next ride was in a pickup that stank of wet dog. The cigar-chomping driver told us he needed to make a stop out in the country; then we’d get back on the highway.

We pulled into a patch of dirt, where a beat-up Airstream trailer sat surrounded by lawn chairs, tires, and overgrown grass. A dog lay leashed to a pipe driven into the ground, her tail slowly beating the dust.

“I got something I believe you two’ll be interested in,” the driver said to us. Beyond the trailer a lightly trod path led into the woods. “You’re from New York, right?” the driver asked, running his hands over his bib overalls. “Well, this’ll interest you, I’ll bet.” The dog barked as if in warning as we followed him into the woods.

In a tight clearing stood five or six large cages, raised on posts. Deep reds and flashes of gold stirred behind the wire mesh. Shrieks arose from the cages.

“Meet my fighters!” the driver hooted. “My cocks!”

The agitated roosters snapped their cracked beaks against the wires.

A week later Kenny and I were busted near Denver, Colorado. He was taken away in a cop car while I was ferried to juvenile hall and eventually flown home. Five years after that, I was driving back to college with a load of groceries when I saw Kenny standing beneath a highway overpass, taking shelter from a late-summer rain. I didn’t stop.

Holly W. Manley
New York, New York

His daughter and mine went to preschool together, and he and I talked twice a day as we dropped off and picked up our children. By spring we were planning play dates that started at the park at 10 A.M. and ended over afternoon cocktails before our spouses came home from work. I told myself that he was just a friend. After all, he and my husband went to ballgames together. So why had I suddenly lost ten pounds and started putting on makeup every morning?

One night when his wife and children were away and my husband was on a business trip, he asked if he could come over for dinner. He arrived after my kids had gone to bed. Five hours and two bottles of wine later, we were sitting side by side on the couch, talking but not touching. I went to the kitchen for something and stood gripping the sink and staring out the window. I sent two prayers heavenward: “Please, God, let something happen,” and “Please, God, don’t let anything happen.”

That night I learned I have the will but not the courage to stray.

Name Withheld

My midwestern brother-in-law was a charismatic fundamentalist and a Boy Scout troop leader. One summer he brought his troop east to camp out in the Blue Ridge Mountains. Because many of the boys had never seen the ocean, I insisted that they continue on to the coast and camp for two days on the Chesapeake Bay. My daughter Claire and I joined them.

As soon as we arrived, a scout named Jimmy began gathering sticks. A smaller-than-average twelve-year-old, Jimmy didn’t want to go swimming with the other boys. He wanted to build the fire. My brother-in-law offered to stay with Jimmy while Claire and I took the rest of the scouts to the beach.

When we returned to the campsite, the fire was roaring, and Jimmy was running around it in circles, tossing in pine cones while my brother-in-law stood watch. Later that night Jimmy sat with a stick, stirring the embers. He said he’d stay with his fire until it had gone out. Before we left the next morning, Jimmy asked if I thought he’d made a good fire. I told him I did, but I asked him to promise that he’d make fires only in safe situations, when there were adults around. He nodded. Claire and I talked on the way home about how the scouts provided an outlet for Jimmy to build fires in a controlled environment.

A decade later my brother-in-law was convicted and imprisoned for downloading child pornography from the Internet. “I’ve always had an obsession with young boys,” he admitted.

All these years we’d thought Jimmy had been the only one playing with fire that hot August day.

Name Withheld

At my high school, the last day of classes before final exams was known as “Cut Day.” According to tradition, the entire student body left school after third period that day. Anticipating this annual walkout, the school administrators posted guards at all the exits. But I was an accomplished truant. After third period I went through the doors marked FACULTY ONLY and made my way to an unguarded fire exit with a built-in alarm.

I’d pulled false alarms in the past. Afterward I’d wait for the building to be evacuated; then I’d pee in the teachers’ coffee makers, write obscenities on the blackboards, and pilfer office supplies. For ten minutes in the empty school, I was king.

This time I had a bad feeling, but I closed my eyes and pushed open the door anyway. The alarm went off, the students walked out, and I went home, confident I’d gotten away with it.

The next day, a Saturday, I was crossing the street when a minivan pulled up at the corner. The driver was a security guard from school. “You’re in big trouble, bro,” he said. “They caught you on camera. On Monday you’re going down!”

The following Monday hundreds of students stood in front of the school, waiting to be called in for exams. Several security guards and two policemen flanked the entrance, looking for me. I decided to turn myself in.

I took my exam seated between the two police officers. When I’d finished, they handcuffed me and led me out the front door. Students waiting for their next exam applauded as the officers ushered me into a waiting squad car.

My acts of rebellion seemed carefree but were motivated by pain. From grammar school on, I’d sought from authorities the attention and discipline I didn’t get at home. Some kids like me are lucky: a caring teacher or counselor takes them by the hand and steers them in the right direction. I never found anyone to take me by the hand, so I settled for the next best thing: someone to take me away in handcuffs.

Rich G.
Providence, Rhode Island

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