The summer Tampa air was suffocating
and sticky, the way a sauna gets after some old man walks in and dumps a fresh
bucket of water on the hot stones. On the kind of day when your shirt sticks to
you from sweat before you hit the end of your driveway. My best friend Craig
and I decided to build a fire in the woods behind our neighborhood. I was
thirteen then, and a nerd in every possible way. I collected comic books and
Batman action figures. I wore shorts that didn’t come close to touching my
knees and sported a Star Wars tee shirt three days out of the week. I even
found a way to put a nerd twist on sports. I invented games in my yard that
only required one player, and had every single sports card (of which there were
nearly 2,000) in order of team and position, a task that ate up countless hours
of my youth. I had glasses by the time I was ten years old and had braces by
twelve which just cemented my nerd status in the eyes of others.
I
spent most of my childhood as a loner, which is why I truly enjoyed Craig’s
company. What really stuck out about our friendship to others was the fact that
we were exact opposites. Craig was a grade above me and very popular. He wore
cooler clothes, nicer sneakers, and a white sea shell necklace that I loved to
make fun of him for. Total opposites.
On this day Craig had called me up. After
fifteen minutes of pleading and calling me a pussy, convinced me to help him
and his friend Anthony build a fire in the woods. My reluctance came not from
the idea of starting a fire in the worst possible place, but rather in Craig’s
choice of accomplice. I hated Anthony as much as anyone that doesn’t yet know
real problems can hate any living being. And he despised me equally.
So there we were, about a hundred
yards from the pond, in the middle of a cluster of young trees that we deemed
the best place to exercise our inner arsonists. We began with dead twigs and
dried leaves. My early days in rural Indiana had helped me become quite the
fire starter, so I was appointed that job. Craig went off in search for bigger
pieces of wood and Anthony left to find “some cool shit to throw in this
bitch.” The one thing I had in common with Anthony was our insatiable need to
blurt out profanities.
Ten minutes later Anthony returned
with a destroyed desktop, which to our delight burned with a variance of colors
ranging from blue to green to purple. The playful dance of the flames kept us
entertained us for only a few minutes. It turns out PC’s don’t burn that well.
I was sitting on a log watching some ants
that I had picked up with a stick when I heard a consistent banging over my
right shoulder. I stood up, my Pod Racer tee shirt wrapped around my head in my
best version of a bandana. I turned to see Anthony chopping down a small tree,
so young that it was green underneath its bark. For twenty minutes, Anthony
hacked away without succeeding. Finally, Craig decided he wanted to go for a
quick bike ride down the trail in the woods into the neighboring county. He was
craving a Slurpee from the gas station.
A few minutes later, a voice in the
distance called out “Hey, Punks. I just called the fire Marshall and ya’ll got
‘bout ten minutes to get the hell off my property or I’m gonna press charges on
you little bastards.”
I had no idea who this old man was, but he
didn’t sound like he was messing around. I started sweating, not due to the
heat for the first time that day. Of course, Craig was long gone by now, and
who do I have to turn too? I let out a sigh like a dart-less Nerf gun.
Anthony, never a fan of authority, was
quick to retort, “Shut the hell up old man, this isn’t your property. This is a
public place, leave us alone and go back inside… Dumb ass.” The last part of
that sentence, for whatever reason, was more of a mumbled after thought by my
account.
I decided that I didn’t want to stick
around to see if the old man was bluffing. “Hey Tony I’m outta here man, I’ll
see ya later.”
He was not happy to hear this.
“Are you kidding me pussy? We haven’t even
made a real fire yet. Don’t let that geezer get your panties all bunched up.”
My cheeks flashed instantly in an
almost shameful cherry red and I could feel the tops of my ears getting warm.
Next came a teeter-totter of insults,
for what only seemed like a few minutes. A second voice called from the
distance. “Fire Marshall! You kids stay where you are!”
“Oh, shit.” I exclaimed as I hopped on
my bike as fast as I could and tore down the path Craig had taken earlier.
Anthony was right on my heels. I could feel my heart beating in my throat as I
lifted up my handle bars to avoid a tree stump that was obstructing my path.
The exhilaration flowed through my veins and gave me a sensation that I have
only ever felt in a time of mischief.
I jumped it. Anthony wasn’t so lucky.
I looked back as I heard the crash; it
wasn’t a major accident by any means. I saw no blood on Anthony and he hopped back
unto his bike almost immediately. However, his bike’s chain was broken. “Wait!
Come back man, my bike’s jacked up, shit.”
The Fire Marshall had almost caught up
by now. I didn’t slow down, my hands stayed off the break.
I
didn’t even blurt out some lame excuse for why I couldn’t help him; I just
smiled, faced forward and flew down the dirt path to freedom, if only
temporarily.
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