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Pif Magazine
ISSN: 1094-2726
Published by:
Pif, LLC
PMB 248
4820 Yelm Hwy SE
Suite B
Lacey, WA 98503-4903
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| PAST MICRO-FICTION | MORE MICRO-FICTION |
I was a young man, living outside as I did often in those days. I was in the park, walking around and around and around, and I decided to light a fire. I chose a small, dead tree. One, it seemed the easiest to set since I had only a few matches. Two, I figured setting one poor, bald, shrunken, prematurely dead tree on fire made little difference to anybody.
It took some time to get the tree going. I struck one match and held it under the lowest of the poor tree’s branches. The match burned down and I let it go into the damp mulch spread at the base. The branch showed nothing but a little blackening, but that could have been the shadows and the night. I tried two matches together, since I was running low and didn’t have many chances left. Not too much better, except this time the branch let off a little smoke of its own.
A man came up the path behind me. He must have stood there, regarding me for a while since I never heard him come up in the first place. Maybe he’d been there from the start.
"You need a longer-lasting flame," he said. This is what got my attention. I was down to four matches and hadn’t made much progress. "Try lighting up the book itself."
I turned and looked at him. Top coat and a bowler. His face in shadow, but his hands held up in a helpful affect. I decided to give it a try.
The book was from a bar I wasn’t allowed in anymore since I went there and didn’t buy drinks. The cover was green with an Irish name in white lettering. It all gave off a feeling of camaraderie, of being inside with people you may not know but feel comfortable with. I tore off a single match and used it to light everything I had left.
When the cover caught, I held the burning matchbook under the branch I’d been working on. It caught quickly. The flame that finally started was small but it built as it moved up the branch to the pathetic excuse for a trunk. I lit a branch on the other side, since it seemed a good strategy to get the whole tree going evenly and I still had a good flame on my hands.
"That’s it," the man said. "It’s good and going now."
The man seemed to be saying things exactly as I was thinking them.
"The book can burn out in that mulch," he said. I dropped the nearly spent matchbook into the mulch, where it burned itself out.
"Now we have a fire," the man said.
I stood and backed up until I was next to the man. Both of us faced the fire. The flame had moved onto the skinny upper branches and was curling up some dead leaves. Poor tree. It was spring and this tree wouldn’t have stood a chance.
"It’s best," the man said. He reached around me and gripped me on the far shoulder. As the fire picked up, moving onto the trunk that wouldn’t have passed for a branch on any respectable tree, the man and I found ourselves in some brighter light. I didn’t bother turning to see what his face looked like because I knew already what I’d see: wrinkles, a sagging face, gray bushy eyebrows, sadness from being on this earth for so long. "Some wouldn’t have even considered a thing like that as kindling," the old man said.
I had reason to speak. "Makes for a goodly amount of fire," I said, "a poor dead thing like that. At least for a little while." The man’s hand on my shoulder felt odd and comforting both. The heat from the fire pushed through the warm spring air right onto my legs and face.
The man said, "Yep," but not in response to me I don’t think.
The poor tree couldn’t make a good show of it. It couldn’t stand up to the flame for very long. It fell apart, burnt piece by burnt piece, into the mulch. There, the pieces smoked and glowed. It was a prettier sight than the actual flame.
"There it goes," the man said.
