Fire

“But the woods are on fire!” I said, pointing out the window in case she had somehow missed the blaze casting red shadows all around us.

“Yes,” she said, not looking up from her work, also cast in red. “The woods are on fire. Not the town.”

“But the town could catch fire. It’s right there!”

The heat from the fire was gently brushing my face, even through the window. Every single cell in my body wanted to move. My brain was barely able to follow the conversation over the clanging alarms it had set off. My feet twitched, this way and that, and my legs longed to follow. Every part of my in agreement that running was the best move. And yet I couldn’t listen.

“It won’t.” She said it with such authority for a second it didn’t sound ridiculous.

“It might!”

“A lot of things might happen.”

I took a deep breath and wished I hadn’t. Smoke from the flames. The windows were closed but still it found its way in. My clothes, my hair, the curtains and the couch. Everything smelled like a bonfire. The smell would linger for weeks. If these things were still there in weeks.

“But this probably will happen.”

“It won’t.”

“You can’t know that!”

Finally she looked up from her papers, covered in meaningless symbols that would have been just as empty to me if they were right in front of me. Every day she filled her mind with these abstract concepts, leaving no room for the flickering, melting concrete.

“You worry too much. The fire brigade is very good. They’ll stop the fire before it attaches to the town and everything will be right as rain.”

She was probably right. I couldn’t deny it. Our town’s brigade was so good other towns often sent for them when they had their own fires. Still…

“With it so close, I’m uncomfortable. I can’t concentrate. My work will be thin, and not nearly as good if I could concentrate. We should just stop. Relax. Be ready to run.”

“Not possible,” she said, her face back in her meaningless numbers and symbols. “The work must be done.”

“Why?”

“Because if it’s not the people will be unhappy.”

“What people?”

“People!”

“I’m unhappy.”

“Probably because the work’s not done.”

Outside, the sounds of the brigade doing their work. Shouting. Splashes. Digging. And beyond it, the persistence of the fire.

“I’m afraid.”

She looked up at me. “You can be afraid while you work. Look at me. I’m doing it right now.”

And then she pulled her shawl on – even in the heat – and shifted back to her work, in a way that said the conversation was finished.

I went back to my own desk, for lack of anything else to do.

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