Miracle Creek(108)
It was then—walking to her house, her anger at her own past impotence mixing with her shame, the combination of that and her headache overpowering her—that she saw it: a small white stick by the back of the barn. A cigarette. Positioned perfectly to start a fire that would burn down the barn and destroy Miracle Submarine. A fire like the one she’d dreamed of just a week ago.
* * *
THE IDEA HAD COME on her seventeenth birthday. Right after Matt ran off after their night of drinking ended with The Thing (she couldn’t bear to label it), she’d retreated to her safe place amid the weeping willows, half sitting, half lying against a rock, chain-smoking cigarettes, trying to keep from crying or throwing up.
After she finished her third or fourth cigarette, she dropped it and reached for another. She was focusing on lighting the next one as quickly as possible—she needed the smoke to neutralize the smell lingering in her nostrils, a combination of the sickly sweetness of peach schnapps and the pungent fishiness of semen—while simultaneously keeping her head and torso absolutely still to keep the world from spinning and the alcoholic sludge in her stomach from lurching. But her fingers were still shaking and it was hard to see without moving her head, and as she lit the match, she dropped it.
The fire didn’t catch—it landed close to the water and fizzed out right away—but moving her eyes down to the ground, Mary noticed flames a few feet away; apparently, a cigarette she’d dropped earlier had landed on a pile of leaves. She knew she should stomp it out right away, but something stopped her. She crouched before the fire and watched it—orange, blue, and black waves whirling and growing—and remembered Matt’s teeth shoving against her lips, and his tongue, jabbing her lips open, forcing her No down her throat. She remembered him crushing her fingers onto his penis, using her hand like an object to pump and squeeze, up and down, each pump accompanied by a grunt that stank of fermented peach and made her cough into his tongue, and the lukewarm, viscous spurt of semen that clung even after she scrubbed her hand in the creek until it turned bright red, the scratch mark from his zipper a white line across her hand. She remembered how stupid she’d been with her SAT classmates earlier. After they all said they couldn’t make her birthday dinner, she said it was no problem, and actually, she was meeting up with a guy later anyway, a doctor, and when they teased her, said he sounded like an old perv who was just after sex, she said he was a gentleman, a friend who cared and listened to her problems and was going through a hard time himself. They’d laughed, called her na?ve, and they’d been right.
She poured the rest of the schnapps onto the fire. Right when it hit, the flames whooshed, and she felt wild happiness that the flames would reach her, consume her, and destroy everything. Matt, her friends, her parents, her life. Gone.
The fire died out almost immediately, its pre-death expansion lasting a second, and she made sure it was completely out before leaving. But later that night, sleeping in the chamber, she’d dreamed of the fire, the flames from the willow grove spreading and engulfing the barn to destroy the business that kept them tied to this town she hated, to the man she wished would disappear. She didn’t think about it again after she woke up—she’d tried to wipe her mind clear of that night, had tried to keep busy with SAT studies and research into college and housing options in Seoul—but now, almost a week later, here it was, right next to the barn: a cigarette sticking out of a pyre of twigs and dried leaves, positioned precisely in the middle of an open book of matches. It felt like a gift to her, an offering. As if fate were calling to her, inviting her to light the cigarette, telling her to come on, go ahead, this was exactly what she needed right now, mere minutes after the humiliation of Matt’s wife screaming that she was a stalker and a whore, as shame and anger were searing her insides. Just burn it down and destroy it.
She walked toward it. Slowly, cautiously, as if toward a mirage that might disappear. She crouched in front of the mound and reached her shaking hand to pick up the cigarette. Somewhere in the back of her mind, it occurred to her that it was charred, as if someone had lit it but it had gone out before the pyre caught on fire, but the question of who and why wouldn’t come until later. After waking up in the hospital and for the next year of her life, she’d be consumed with it. But for now, she didn’t care. It didn’t matter. It only mattered that this cigarette was meant to be lit and the pyre meant to be in flames. She thought of the swoosh of the flames by the creek when the schnapps hit it, the warm comfort of the fire, and she wanted it again. Needed it.
She picked up the matchbook, tore a matchstick, and struck it. It lit, and she quickly placed the matchbook and cigarette in the middle of the mound. The matchbook caught fire in its entirety, and the cigarette burned, its tip a bright red. She felt a warmth deep in her chest, that same comfort, and she blew on the fire, gently, feeding the flames, encouraging the mound to catch, sending bits of ash from dried leaves floating lazily up the smoke. Her face grew hot, and she stayed until the entire mound was on fire, then she stood and backed away, step by step, watching the flames, willing them to get bigger, higher, hotter, to destroy this decrepit building and everything inside.
When she turned away to walk to her house, the magic of the moment, the surreal feeling of this not quite being real, zapped away. It was past 8:15, so the patients were all gone—and yes, the patient parking lot was empty, she checked, and besides, Janine had said the dive ended earlier—but what if her father was still in the barn, cleaning up? No, the barn was obviously empty as well; he always turned off the AC after cleaning, and the AC was off now, its loud fan silent, and the lights were off. Still, her heart thumped as she thought of what she’d done—arson, a crime, the police, jail, her parents—and she stopped, thought about going back and stomping out the fire before it got out of control.