Burn Pile

Littered across the rocks below the dock and newly poured cement piers and beam are empty bags that used to hold the kind of cement you just add water to. Forty-five bags, two days ago 60 pounds each, now collapsed like used party balloons on the rocks with the broken plywood and 2x4’s that Jim and Gary used as forms for the weekend’s cement project. The wind is coming up and thunder crashes; white caps form on the lake behind me. I wad three bags and make a pyramid of bits of driftwood, light the fire with a wooden kitchen match out of the broken kitchen matchbox from the house. I hope, hope, hope that these cardboard matchboxes the size of a 48-pack box of crayons will not be going obsolete anytime soon, I really do love them. The cement bag catches fire and I urge it on with a couple of pine cones and a few more wee bits of driftwood before making a pyramid with three two foot two by fours. Rain, but only a spritzing as I wad more cement bags and put them on top of the two by fours, anchoring the lot with a triangle of plywood about a foot across, then scavenge the rocky beach for more driftwood bits to toss in under the larger wood, wedging wads of cement bag here and there into the cracks between the flames, using a largish driftwood stick to cram bags into the crevices as the wind whips flame towards our dock where I have been standing, then our neighbor’s dock where I fled when the flames threatened and smoke squinted my eyes. I imagine myself agile as I search for more small driftwood, faggots in the parlance of the Campfire Girl I was through sixth grade. The fire has found its footing, eats the two by fours, the plywood, throwing its yellow gold hair this way then that, so that to evade smoky eye burn I fancy footwork my way side to side like a toreador or rodeo clown. Jim brings down a glass of red wine and we take turns holding the glass and poking the fire with a crooked length of driftwood as the sky darkens, partly from storm clouds and partly because it is past 7pm on this April evening. Our dog refuses to clamber down the precipice of sharp rocks to join us in basking here in the fire’s heat just outside its aura of intensity and smoke. Indoors, a chicken roasts in the electric oven with garlic, onion, potatoes, carrots and rutabaga. We will pick our way back from this seasonal beach to the dock and up the stairs into the house to wash up and eat our civilized dinner in our snug beach house while on these rocks our embers will pulse red as primal fears into the night.