On Wednesday, on the return trip from the mailbox, I heard, “Meow,” then a pause, then another, “Meow.”
It sounded like it came from the brush pile. I looked, but couldn’t see who was meowing. It didn’t stop me though, “Hey kitty-kitty,” I answered back and kept walking.
“MEOWMEOWMEOW!”
I stopped in my tracks. Distress. That sounded like someone’s in distress, I thought. Itsy (in my arms), Ginger, and I walked over for a look-see. Rascal was there. He was sniffing around, poking his nose down in the brush pile. Was it Rascal I heard? I wondered. I stood and called for a little while but didn’t hear any more meows. I snapped a photo and walked away.
I get a little ways away and wonder, Did the meows draw Rascal to the brush pile too? Was he there to investigate? I stopped in my tracks and almost went back. But what can I do? If there was a cat stuck, it would mean pulling the brush pile apart by hand. I didn’t know if I could do that or not — but I’d try — and one thing is certain. I couldn’t do anything while holding two dog leashes. I thought about tying the girls up on a branch someplace and going back, but in the end I decided to take them home.
The walk back to the house from there is probably only two or three minutes, but plenty of time for lots of thoughts to pass through this weirdly wired brain of mine. Who could it be, I wondered. To my mind’s eye came a picture of me serving breakfast in the cat room that morning. Sugar and Anon darted out of the room as soon as I walked in. Callie was there, watching from her perch. Spitfire, Feisty and Cleo were at breakfast. Rascal hadn’t shown up for breakfast for a few days now, Was he keeping someone company in the brush pile? I wondered. It’s either a stray or maybe it’s Jerry, I thought of the neighbor’s cat that sleeps at our house sometimes, but hadn’t seen in a while.
I walk in the house and un-harness the girls, dropping the leashes in the out-of-the-way spot on the floor where they live. Mike was sitting on the couch watching TV. “Mike, I heard a cat in the brush pile and it sounded like he was in distress. I’m going to check it out,” I told him and left, closing the door, without giving Mike a chance to respond.
I went back out to the brush pile, wondering the whole way what could I really do in the event someone was stuck…
“If the cat got in there, the cat can get out,” I hear my ever-practical mother in my head.
And I know that. Still, if someone — anyone needs help and I can give it, I will. Even if it is only a critter.
Out at the brush pile, I call, “Here kitty-kitty.” Immediately I was rewarded with an answering, “Meow.”
“Where are you kitty?” I called.
Rascal’s head pops up out of the brush pile on the far side. “Meow.”
I called a few more times and kept listening but I didn’t hear anyone but Rascal. He ducked back down in and after a minute or so he popped up on my side. “Meow,” he said again.
There must be tunnels inside the pile, I thought.
I stood quiet for a moment or two. Maybe if he thinks I’ve left, he’ll call me back, and in my head echoes the distress call I heard earlier.
A few pellets of sleety-rain hit my jacket. I look at the threatening clouds and think of you. This is a view of our Mountain Home that you haven’t seen very often — if ever. This is the back courtyard just off the kitchen. The window is over my sink and there will be a door to the right of it, eventually. Heck, eventually there will be a sink under the window too!
Mike came around the corner. “Find anything?”
“No.” But secretly I was pleased. I try not to drag Mike into my shenanigans, but the fact that he supports me regardless is very heart-warming.
We walked back to the house and I texted Jon Robinson, “I haven’t seen Jerry in a while. You?”
“Yeah, he’s around,” Jon texted me back.
Saturday found us with an outside temperature of 60 degrees! Can you believe that! 60! In mid-to-late February! In Pennsylvania!
I knew when we built the brush piles that it was Mike’s intention to burn them.
Fire scares me.
Fire is unpredictable.
Fire can get away from you.
Fire can devastate.
Fire can take lives.
Fire scares me.
I didn’t say that to Mike though. Instead I asked, “Mike, why don’t we get a chipper? We can use the chips for mulch.”
Mike is a good husband and without even knowing the real reason for my request, he shopped around for a wood chipper.
They’re expensive.
Years pass.
The brush pile grows from one to two.
And then yesterday, with warm temps, low wind, and snow on the ground, that buttinsky neighbor of ours texted Mike. “It’d be a good day to burn,” Jon Robinson said.
I’m only (half) kidding. I love the Robinson’s and don’t really consider them or him a buttinsky, it’s just that I was hoping to put off Burn Day for a few more years, or better yet — forever! I’d managed to stall Mike this long. Every time he brought it up, I’d talked him out of it. “It’s too cold out there,” I’d say or, “It’s too wet,” or, “It’s too windy.” I’d always find some excuse.
“He’s right,” Mike said after he read the text to me. “It would be a good day to burn.”
“Oh, I can’t help today,” I told Mike hoping he wouldn’t do it without my help. “I have to do litter boxes and make un-stuffed cabbage for dinner and I wanted to sort my pictures for my blog tomorrow.” All good excuses, don’t you think?
“Just help me get it going,” Mike asked, but wasn’t really asking.
What else could I do?
“I’ll get the gas, you get something to light it with. I’ll meet you out there,” he said as he went out the door.
Fire scares me.
Mix fire with gas and I get really apprehensive. All the pictures I’ve seen of burn victims, all the horror stories I’ve heard of gas and fire gone wrong came flooding through my mind. I wasn’t able to stop him, I guess I’d better help, I thought.
Mike poured the gas on one end of the brush pile, took a piece of the newspaper I’d brought, twisted it, lit it, “Now get back,” he warned me, and tossed it on the pile.
Whoosh!
We had fire.
I was scared. “Mike, what if it gets away from you? You don’t have anything to fight it with.”
“It’s not going to get away from me, Peg.” Mike was dismissive.
“It could,” I persisted. “You don’t have a shovel or a hose or anything.”
We stood and watched the fire burn. I saw a mouse or a mole or some other varmint run from the weeds and into the far side of the now blazing pile. He’s in for a surprise, I thought.
“Maybe I should go get the tractor,” Mike said after a while. “You watch the fire.”
“Okay,” I said doubtfully. After all, besides yelling and screaming at the top of my lungs, what was I going to do if the fire decided to escape?
Mike came back with the tractor and used it to clean up the edges of the brush pile, to pick stuff up and put on top, to bring more stuff from the other pile once this one was burning good.
Some of the stuff he raked up from the bottom was too wet and damped our fire down. Mike parked the tractor a good distance away, poured a paper cup of gas and threw it on the pile to get it burning again.
Yeah. Don’t say anything. I was scared each and every time he did it.
The Kipp’s stopped on their morning walk. Mike walked out front to greet them.
“PEG!” Mike yells. “COME HERE!”
“NO!” I yelled back.
Mike and the Kipp’s walked back to where I was watching the fire.
“You should never leave a fire unattended,” I said by way of apology to the Kipp’s, then I turned to Mike, “How would you like it if I left a pot on the stove and walked away?”
“I don’t like it when Rosie leaves a wooden spoon in a pot on the stove, even when the stove’s not on!” Lamar told me.
Feeling like I had an ally, I added, “And he’s throwing gasoline on it!”
“Use oil!” Lamar exclaimed. “It doesn’t explode like gas does.”
“I’ve burned many a pile,” Mike says. “I know what I’m doing. It’ll be fine.”
We chatted with the Kipp’s for a while and when they left, I went back in the house…
And on the way I worried.
If the house burns, I’ll lose all my pictures and stories! I’ve been prideful about my 20 years of letter stories. I have a notebook for each year and ran out of space for them on the shelf. Some of them sit on the table in the unfinished library and I’ve got last years notebook in the house with me.
I’ve often thought of the history I’ll leave behind when I’m gone. I fantasize about the headlines when all my notebooks full of pictures and stories are found in 100 years or so. “Life Of A Middle-aged American Woman.” Or maybe they’ll be valuable to my grandchildren or great-great grandchildren even.
See what I mean? I’ve been prideful — too prideful even.
“I can take your stories today,” I hear in my head and I know it’s true. The parable of the rich fool in Luke 12:13-21 came to my mind, only instead of, “Tonight your life will be demanded of you,” I heard, “Tonight your stories will be demanded of you.” And I decided right then and there to give it to God. I won’t worry about what becomes of my letter stories anymore — but I’m still scared of fire.
Once back in the house, I cleaned the litter boxes…
Washed my hands…
Made a cup of coffee…
Sat in front of my computer…
Sorted pictures for today’s blog…
And yet I still worried…
What if something happens?
(Worry, worry.)
What if the fire gets away from him?
(Worry, worry.)
A picture flashed in my mind’s eye of Mike laying on the ground, burned.
(Worry, worry.)
Needing me…
(Worry, worry.)
And me not being there.
(Worry, worry.)
I left my computer, a picture I was contemplating on the screen, poured my coffee into my travel cup…
“You girls want to go for a walk?” I asked, snapping the lid on the cup.
Ginger jumped from the couch where she’d been sleeping, and stretched. I picked up my cup and set it by the door. “Com’on Itsy.” The dog leashes jingling as I picked them up. I harnessed Ginger, picked Itsy up from the couch, she’s fat as a porker and slow as molasses in February, set her on the floor in front of me and harnessed her up too. I picked up the handles, got my coffee, and out the door we went.
The sun shining felt warm and good.
I could hear the fire crackling and see the smoke rising before I could see it or the brush pile. I came around the corner and there was Mike, on the ground in front of the other brush pile.
“What are you doing!” I exclaimed.
Mike struggled to get up and once on his feet, he brushed himself off. “I fell.”
“Are you all right?”
“No! I landed hard on the concrete and my back hurts.” He held his wrist as he approached me, “and my wrist hurts too,” he said working the hand of his injured wrist. He sighed. “Am I wet?” and he turned around.
“Yep,” and I brushed at the wet snow and mud that clung to the back of his shirt. He’d gotten warm and shed his jacket. “What were you doing?”
“I was pulling branches out to put on the fire and my feet went out from under me,” he explained.
I parked Itsy and Ginger on Mike’s jacket and sat with Mike for a while as he tended his fire.
We chatted.
“I saw a mole run from the brush pile,” Mike told me. “He ran into the weeds and went that way,” he pointed and added, “over to the other brush pile.”
I wondered if it was the same one I saw run into the brush pile. I knew he wouldn’t stay in there long, I just didn’t know Mike was going to see him leave. I watched Mike as he got up and cleaned up the area, throwing stray branches on top of the fire, going to the other brush pile and pulling things out to burn.
“It’s getting to be about supper time and I haven’t cooked anything yet,” I observed.
“That’s okay by me. I’ll just have a ham sandwich.”
“Are you going to let the fire burn out?”
“Yeah. I’m not going to put anything else on it.”
I went back in the house and a while later, Mike came in, smelling like smoke with bits of char, that drifted from the sky, littering his hair and clothes. “I’m jumping in the shower,” Mike said unbuttoning his shirt on the way through to the bathroom.
“Is the fire out?” I asked.
(Worry, worry.)
“Almost,” he answered.
Before bed, on the girls last walk of the day, I walked out to the burn pile. I hadn’t taken a flashlight with me and even though the stars were bright, the moon wasn’t up yet and I picked my way through the dark. I came around the corner and saw the red glow of the remaining fire. A breeze came through and lifted a flame into the sky.
I watched.
And worried.
Back in the house I expressed my worry. “I wish the fire was out.”
“It’s okay, Peg. It’s almost out and it’s not going anywhere. There isn’t anywhere for it to go. There’s concrete the whole way around it.”
I knew he was right, but I still worried. We went to bed, but I couldn’t sleep. I’d open my eyes and look out the window, hunting for any hint of a red glow coming from the direction of the brush pile, any indication of light coming from the back of the mill at all. Satisfied I didn’t see any, I’d close my eyes only to worry and have them pop open again and stare out the window.
This is silly, I thought to myself. I’m not sleeping anyway! I might just as well get up, get dressed, and go sit by the fire.
Yeah.
No. I was worried, but Mike said it was all right and I didn’t want to leave my bed. Eventually I fell asleep.
In the morning, I woke up and all was well. This is all that’s left of Mike’s burn pile.
One more pile left to burn.
Sigh.
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Road pictures anyone?
A couple of pictures of tractors in the fields.
A roadside spring.
And a barn.
Speaking of bracelets, I made this one this past week. Unfortunately, my sizing is off and it’s huge.
“It’ll fit someone,” my ever optimistic friend, Rosie, said.
And lastly, here is the ice I promised in the title.
The puddles, in the warming temperatures, were starting to melt and with me, you just never know what I’m going to take pictures of.
Let’s call this one done.
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