The Fire Burned
The fire burned like a violent, angry monster with an aggressive force that Jestina envied. The flames leapt up the stone chimney of her cabin with an enthusiasm that Jestina wished she could acquire. Pale yellow centers, orange-red tips, and a white base as pure and clear and blinding as the famed bright white light that people see when they succumb to death – these were the flames that reached their wild arms out of the hollow of the fire place and threatened (or was it a promise?) to take Jestina into their grip.
They relaxed for a moment, as though at the end of an exhale, and Jestina squeezed the bottle of lighter fluid over the logs causing a deep roar and a new explosion of the fierce heat and wild flames. She felt powerful. She had created that explosion, that heat, that frightful energy. Though she could not create that same kind of ignition inside her own heart, she felt a glimmer of self recognition in the power of the fire at the ends of her fingertips.
Old, tiny, and weakened by years of disappointment, Jestina had withdrawn from society and gone into a self-imposed hibernation eighteen months earlier when her only daughter was taken from her in a deadly car crash. There were no grandchildren, no attachments left in the world to aid Jestina in the process of grieving or to guide her to go on living. After the funeral, Jestina had simply walked to the old abandoned cabin at the edge of her property with the hopes that there, she too, would die. Death eluded her, and eventually, she began to eat. Over the months, she made the cabin her home and only occasionally did she gaze over the hill to the big white farmhouse where she had raised her daughter.
Jestina took a long tree branch and stirred the sticks and smoldering logs the next time the flames burned through the fluid and settled into tiny snaps and pops where their heat had penetrated the wood and claimed a hold. She spread the coals to make a wider base, then layered thin twigs over the top. Next she layered more twigs, then pieces of branches the thickness of her forearms. Smoke billowed out from the sparse gaps for air strategically placed in her pile. She pinched her mouth closed and squinted her eyes, but still the smoke engulfed her. She stepped back and turned away from the assault, taking a gasp of clear cool air. Holding her breath, she returned to the mouth of the fireplace and shot a long squirt of lighter fluid into the gray mess. It sizzled loudly and spewed new billows of smoke in a mad protest. She stepped to the side, lit a match, and threw it into the thick clouds. Whoosh! Roar! It sounded as if a subway train was speeding by underground. Instantly the bright flames returned and burned off the smoke.
Jestina let out her breath and laid a new log on top. Soon the fire was burning with six to twelve inch flames. The powder-white cover over tiny red flecks on the blackened logs told her the fire was settling and sure to burn for hours to come. She set up her rot iron tripod and hung a Dutch oven filled with water for coffee and two eggs to boil. She pulled her old, over-stuffed chair close to the fire, wrapped herself in a blanket, and sat back to watch the steady dancing of the flames.
Watching her fires always caused a numb contemplation to move through Jestina’s mind. Sometimes she saw scenes from her old life – the children in her classroom, her daughter climbing the big oak tree in front of the farmhouse, herself in the mirror of her vanity table, pretty and proud, characteristics that overrode the loneliness in her heart. She believed she could still be pretty and proud, and possibly she could even do better at living, but the loneliness had taken over her heart and she simply didn’t want to.
Tiny bubbles began to appear at the surface of her pot. Just then, Jestina heard a tiny squeak. She sat upright and listened carefully, tilting her head like an animal of the wild. She heard it again. It was coming from the pile of wood at the side of the chimney. The cabin was getting warm by now, so Jestina let the blanket around her fall open and in very slow motion, she moved toward the pile of wood.
“Mew, mew, mew:” The cries were clear and strong, and they were coming more rapidly. Jestina sang a soft call to the kitten as she moved the logs and dug down to the bottom. There in the concrete corner between the wall and the fireplace was a frightened little calico kitten, a tiny ball of fluff and fear.
“Hi, Colorful,” Jestina said softly as she scooped the baby up in her hands and placed her inside her sweater.
The fire sputtered and the kitten jumped, then wriggled in closer to Jestina’s chest. She settled the kitten with coos and soft strokes and soon the baby’s little motor was purring steadily.
Jestina took another sweater from the collection of clothes she kept in neat piles along the wall and tied the arms over one shoulder, fastening the bottom at her side. In this way, she made a pouch at her waist for the kitten to ride, freeing her hands to prepare some food.
Jestina took the hard cooked eggs out of the pot and prepared her coffee. Then she put some water in a saucer and added a pinch of powdered milk. She set the table, and when the milk was cool enough, she pulled the kitten from inside the wrap and set her on the table in front of the saucer. The kitten drank ravenously, purring louder than ever.
Jestina smiled. She was grateful that she had the supplies and the ability to care for the lost creature. Caring – it felt good.
“I’m going to call you Colorful,” she said. “And you can call me Provider.” She laughed at the irony, for Jestina could barely provide for herself, let alone take on the dependence of a helpless little creature. But for the moment, she really did feel resourceful; she felt valuable. “Maybe I should call you Lucky,” she said. “You’re lucky to have me, and I’m lucky to have found you. Nah, Lucky will be our bond; Colorful will be your name.”
When they were finished eating, Jestina pulled her sleeping bag out in front of the fire and crawled inside. Colorful nestled into the curve between her neck and her shoulder.
The fire burned down to a pile of hot coals, taking Jestina and the kitten into a deep sleep. Jestina awoke the next morning to the sensations of the kitten pouncing around on top of her, exploring her surroundings. The kitten jumped up on the stone ledge of the fireplace and began digging in the ashes.
“No, no, no. That’s not your liter box,” Jestina said, taking the kitten to her chest. She stepped outside and put Colorful in an old flower garden where she quickly found a place to relieve herself. Back inside, the kitten played while Jestina made another saucer of milk. Again, the kitten hopped into the fireplace and began digging in the ashes.
“You sure are persistent,” Jestina said, taking her stir stick and moving the coals out to the far edges of the concrete slab. The kitten jumped on the stir stick, chasing its sweeping movement. Jestina laughed, a feeling of joy she had forgotten she could have.
The kitten sprang into the air and pounced on the tip of Jestina’s stick. She rolled in the ashes sneezing the soot away from her nose. Jestina laughed out loud with unabashed abandon. The kitten looked up into the chimney and leapt high, making a cloud of the powdery ash when she came crashing down. She leapt again and swatted with her paws. Jestina heard a clinking sound. Again, the kitten sprang up, batted her paws; again, Jestina heard something clink against the stone chimney.
“What did you find?” Jestina leaned into the fireplace and twisted her neck so she could look up into the blackened column.
“Oh my God, rings!” Two rings, fastened to the end of a metal chain that was hooked onto a nail that had been hammered into the stone hung just above the opening of the fireplace. Jestina stretched her arm into the chamber and took the chain between her frail fingers. The rings were made of a heavy gold. One was a man’s wedding ring, the other, a woman’s engagement ring with a large marquee diamond soldered to the wedding band.
Jestina spit-polished the rings with the tail of her shirt. “Colorful! What have you found?” Jestina exclaimed, studying the engraving inside the rings. She made out the letters A and B inside the man’s ring, and a C and an S inside the woman’s ring. “Abigail Burns, and Craig Simpson,” she said, disbelieving.
Her mind raced back to three summers ago when young Dr. Simpson and his new bride were reported missing. The news had been full of speculations – murder, suicide, kidnapping. Experts and family members were interviewed daily, but there were no leads, no evidence had ever been found to give credit to any of the theories.
Jestina placed the kitten on the table behind her, took a rag, and dipped it into her pot of water. Then she sat on the surface of the fireplace and contorted her body so she could wipe away the black soot inside. Where the rings had been hanging, a rough etching began to appear through the soot. As Jestina rubbed it clear, she ran her fingertips across the surface. “Letters,” she spoke out loud.
She went to a wooden box where she kept miscellaneous supplies and rummaged through its contents until she found her flashlight. She quickly returned to her chimney. Her heart, beating furiously in her throat, suddenly felt too big for her body.
“Die.” She rinsed her rag and returned to scrubbing. “God”. Her arm picked up speed. Her body rocked forcefully against the power of her mad pawing at the chimney’s belly. “We”. Jestina had claimed the power of her fires as she clawed at the dripping rag with both hands now. She was squatting over the ashes to get a more steady balance and more force from her tiny physique. She grabbed the flashlight and shone it over the cleaned area. “For God We Die”, it read. And there was an arrow pointing downward.
Jestina fell backward against the side wall of the fireplace. There, collapsed into a ball of over-whelming fatigue in the cave of her fireplace, the kitten jumped into her lap, climbed up her chest, and began licking her rough tongue against Jestina’s salty moist chin.
Realization sank into Jestina’s mind making her brain feel like a wet sandbag. “So they didn’t run away to the Bahamas,” Jestina spoke into the kitten’s face. “Their bodies are buried somewhere under my cabin…”
In the weeks that followed, Jestina’s hermit life was dramatically transformed into one of unwelcomed celebrity. Her cabin was destroyed by bulldozers and police took over her hiding place – her refuge from life. The media descended on her and claimed her a hero. “Two Mysteries Solved at One Time”, headlines screamed. “Missing Teacher Found in Abandoned Cabin”, “Kitten Finds Home in Hermit’s Heart”, “Bodies of Missing Doctor and Wife Recovered”.
Jestina’s numb, speechless response was explained by psychiatric specialists as normal for victims of post traumatic stress. Animal therapy would be good for her, they said. So the city officials decided to give Jestina a home in the county animal shelter, giving her the honorary title of “full-time care-giver”. Colorful was allowed to run freely throughout the facility; Jestina was taught how to care for sick dogs and lost puppies.
She never spoke again. But she thought that if she would ever decide to utter a word, it would be to ask for her fires again.
