The Bonfire I Lit on My Own Ground

I had two cords of hedge down along the creek. Dry and heavy, the kind of Osage orange that burns hotter than coal and throws a spark a long way.

That is why you only burn it in an open bottom with nothing to catch. I had cut it that summer, not for Dwight, though I had told him he could have some.

I had cut it for this.

I stacked it on the exact spot where Grandpa and I had cleared the brush when I was fourteen. I could still find the place.

There was a flat limestone rock half buried there, the one we had used for a seat. I set the base of my pile just uphill of it so the rock would stay clear for sitting.

I built it the way the old man taught me. Pallets on the bottom for air, then the brush, then the split hedge stacked like a little cabin so the fire could breathe up through the middle.

The hedge is heavy stuff. By the end my shoulders burned and I had a splinter under one thumbnail I did not bother to dig out.

I kept thinking Grandpa would have had it stacked in half the time and told me I was dawdling. I could hear him saying it. It made me smile, down there alone in the cold with the light going.

It took me most of two hours. By the time I had it the way I wanted it, the light was going purple over the timber and my back was telling me I was not fourteen anymore.

I stood there and looked at the two fires waiting in the dark. Dwight’s up the hill, mine down on the bench.

I will not pretend my heart was not going. I was about to do a thing I could not take back.