Brooke was there with her family, of course, and without making it obvious, I watched her and her brother as they skewered a pair of hot dogs and approached the pit; Brooke smiled as she crouched down next to me with her brother on the other side. They held their sticks out over the center of the blaze, where the flames still danced, and I wrestled with myself for almost thirty seconds before daring to talk to her.
"Try down here," I said, pointing with my tongs to one of the beds of coals. "They'll cook better."
"Thanks," said Brooke, and she eagerly pointed the spot out to Ethan. They moved their hot dogs, which immediately began to darken and cook. "Wow," she said, "that's great. You know a lot about fire."
"Four years of Cub Scouts," I said. "It's the only organization I know that actually teaches little boys how to light things on fire,"
Brooke laughed. "You must have done great on your arson merit badge."
I wanted to keep talking, but I didn't know what to say—I'd said way too much at the Halloween party. I probably terrified her, and I didn't want to do that again. On the other hand, I loved her laugh, and I wanted to hear it again. Anyway,
I figured, if she made an arson joke, I could probably make one too without looking too creepy.
"They said I was the best student they'd ever had," I said. "Most Scouts only burn down a cabin, but I burned down three cabins and an abandoned warehouse."
"Not bad," she said, smiling.
"They sent me to compete at the national level," I added. "You remember that big forest fire in California last summer?"
Brooke smiled. "Oh that was you? Nice work."
"Yeah, I won a prize for that one. It's a statue, like an Oscar, but it's shaped like Smokey the Bear and filled with gasoline.
My mom thought it was a honey bottle and tried to make a sandwich."
Brooke laughed out loud, almost dropped her hot dog skewer, and then laughed again at her own mistake.
"Are they done yet?" asked Ethan, examining his hot dog.
It was the fifth time he'd pulled it out, and it had barely had time to brown.
"Looks like it," said Brooke, looking at her own hot dog, and standing up. "Thanks John!"
I nodded, and watched as they ran back to the card table for buns and mustard. I saw her smile, and accept a ketchup bottle from Mr. Crowley, and the monster in my mind reared up and bared its fangs, growling angrily. How dare he touch her? It looked like I needed to keep an eye on Brooke, to keep her safe. I felt myself starting to snarl, and forced my mouth into a smile instead. I turned back to the fire and saw my mom smile at me mischievously from the other side. I growled inside—I didn't want to deal with whatever stupid comment she was sure to make about Brooke when we got home. I decided to stay at the party as late as possible.
Brooke and Ethan didn't come back to the fire to eat, and I didn't get another chance to talk to her that night; I saw her handing out Styrofoam cups of hot chocolate, and hoped she would bring one to me, but Mrs. Crowley beat her to it. I drank the chocolate, and threw the cup in the fire, watching the dregs blacken on the wood and the Styrofoam curl and bubble and disappear into the coals. Brooke's family left soon after.
Soon the hot dogs were all roasted, and as people began to drift away, I fed the fire several large logs, stoking it into a column of roaring flame. It was beautiful—so hot that the reds and oranges accelerated into blinding yellows and whites, so hot that the crowd drew back and I shed my coat. It was as bright and warm as a summer day next to that fire, though it was nighttime in late December everywhere else. I walked around the edges, poking it, talking to it, laughing with it as it devastated the wood, and annihilated the paper plates. Most fires crackle and pop, but that's not really the fire talking, it's the wood. To hear the fire itself you need a huge blaze like this one, a furnace so powerful it roars with its own wind. I crouched as close as I dared and listened to its voice, a whispered howl of joy and rage.
In my biology class, we'd talked about the definition of life: to be classified as a living creature, a thing needs to eat, breathe, reproduce, and grow. Dogs do, rocks don't; trees do, plastic doesn't. Fire, by that definition, is vibrantly alive. It ears everything from wood to flesh, excreting the waste as ash, and it breathes air just like a human, taking in oxygen and emitting carbon. Fire grows, and as it spreads, it creates new fires that spread out and make new fires of their own. Fire drinks gasoline and excretes cinders, it fights for territory, it loves and hates. Sometimes when I watch people trudging through their daily routines, I think that fire is more alive than we are— brighter, hotter, more sure of itself and where it wants to go.
Fire doesn't settle; fire doesn't tolerate; fire doesn't "get by."
Fire does.
Fire is.
"On what wings dare he aspire?" said a voice. I spun around and saw Mr. Crowley, sitting a few feet behind me in a camp chair, staring deeply into the fire. Everyone else had left, and I'd been too absorbed in the fire to notice.
Mr. Crowley seemed distant and preoccupied; he was not talking to me, as I assumed at first, but to himself. Or maybe to the fire. Never shifting his gaze, he spoke again. "What the hand dare seize the fire?"