Burning Desire

Children throughout the generations have been admonished by their parents not to play with matches. I was certainly no exception; only in my case, the warnings were totally ignored, and, if not for a particular event, God knows what havoc I would have wreaked.

Judging from the volumes of photographs my mother collected, and if modesty can be suspended for the sake of verisimilitude, I was a cute looking little kid, with big brown, innocent eyes. My mother dressed me in cute little duds—neat sailor suits with a whistle in the pocket, a houndstooth coat with brown cap, and knickers (yes knickers—we're talking mid 40s). I was also very quiet, and being an only child, was adept at creating my own amusements. My mother, grandmother, aunt, and cousin, Jimmy, all knew of my predilection for things aflame, but they pretty much treated it as a petty annoyance. All the other assorted distant family members, adults and neighbors thought "Bobby" was just a good little boy who "kept to himself." (Does that sound scarily familiar, Mr. Hinckley?)

I was fascinated by fire, and I must have tried to burn every form of matter available to a six-year-old in Charleston in 1946, from paper to grass to leaves to cloth to metal. I was disappointed by metal, which seemed to remain unaltered—except for copper, which gave off blue-green flames, at least. Wherever there was a fire, you would find me there staring hypnotically at it: a stove, a fireplace, the coals at a cookout, trash burning. In fact, my observation of a nine-year-old friend burning a pile of trash in his backyard precluded my ever experimenting with glass because of the unfortunate effect of his attempt to burn a bottle: it exploded with a loud pop, spraying glass everywhere, one piece hitting him just above the left eye.

I remember that he bled differently than I did. There was something like a small blog of grape jam on his eyebrow. It was not pouring down his face like the time I plunged headfirst into the sofa. This was very puzzling to me. Why did Al's blood have the same Cross and Blackwell consistency when I reached his age, or did it have something to do with eating too many sweets? It sounded like one of my mother's warnings come to fruition: "If you don't eating all those sweet things, your blood will turn to jam, you'll only be able to move with great difficulty, and if you cut yourself the ants will crawl inside you and eat you to death."

My favorite conflagratory pastimes were melting plastic soldiers and playing "streetcar." Streetcar was an adult-supervised activity (burning plastic soldiers wasn't) in which you took an old shoebox, but windows in the sides and an opening in the top, and then placed a candle (in its own melted wax) in the middle under the opening. You then tied a string to the front of the box and pulled it around the yard at night. Of course, I always managed to pull mine over rough terrain and fast enough so that the candle would tip over and the whole thing would go up in flames. "Bobby, don't pull it so roughly! See, I told you it would turn over. Hurry and re-light the candle. Boy, are you slow! Never mind, you're too late again. Stay away—it's burning up. What are you smiling at?"

Sometimes I would cut up the tissue paper from the shoebox and paste it on the windows like panes. This would cause it to flame up in no time. I finally went too far, loading up the streetcar with soldiers, which resulted in a molten mound of roaring plastic, and this activity, which I have retrospectively named "A Streetcar Named DeFire," was eventually terminated because "he seems to be enjoying it for the wrong reasons."

Undeterred, I simply found more civilized outlets for my obsession. Inspired by a storybook picture of a young pajama-clad boy carrying a candlestick to help him find his way around the house in the dark, I re-enacted the scene that night, shuffling in my slippers and Roy Rogers pajamas from my bedroom to the bathroom. This was really neat, I thought. I pretended I was Sherlock Holmes searching for clues in a haunted house. (This required a precocious imagination, given my Roy Rogers pajamas. I mean, even Roy wouldn't wear pajamas with little pictures of himself and Trigger all over them.) In the bathroom, I placed the candlestick on the windowsill.

Now comes the extremely stupid part of the story: Upon leaving the bathroom, I notice the shade starting to burn. I tried throwing some water on it but it didn't work. So I took the candlestick back to my bedroom, blew it out, and hid it and the matches under my bed. I then got under the covers and decided the best thing to do was to simply go to sleep. No, it doesn't sounds like a particularly sensible thing to me either, whenever I recount this story. I guess I preferred being burned alive rather than admitting that I'd been playing with matches again. That might be a fitting denouement for a fledgling pyromaniac.

I was saved by my cousin, Jimmy, who smelled the smoke and doused the flames with buckets of water. Of course, a great part of the bathroom was ruined. My mother really got mad about this one. She told me that this was the last straw, that she had called the police, and that I was to go back in my room and wait for them. For the first time, I was really scared as hell. I actually thought the police were coming. I envisioned a motorcycle coming; figured they wouldn't waste a whole squad car on a small entity like myself. I could hear the newsboy screaming the headlines: "Extra! Extra! Read all about it. Cops Nab Child Fire Fiend After Mother Squeals!"

After several bullet-sweating hours of imagining what terrible fate would befall me in Alcatraz Junior State Prison for the Criminally Spoiled, my mother admitted that she had not called the police, but that I would have to stay in my room (after it was thoroughly searched for matches) all of the next day. And this I did, while my mother trudged up and down the stairs for 24 hours bringing me food, ice cream, comic books, toys and other mixed messages. I would live to strike again.

My fire dabbling exploits resumed in about a week and continued uneventfully until one day, while playing by myself under a friend's house, I serendipitously came upon a book of matches. The ground beneath the house and most of the yard was covered with dead, dry grass. Discovering that I could not extinguish the initial flames, and recalling the unfortunate ramifications of my bathroom fire decision, I suddenly realized that besides admitting my guilt or just ignoring the dilemma, there was a third option: There was a family next door with three children. I could blame it on them. Even better, they looked like the kind of kids would get into mischief; they all had reddish hair and reckless and just had that sort of "I dare you to knock that chip off my shoulder" demeanor. My reputation among my mother's friends was, of course, pristine—she had never told them of my pyromaniacal leanings. I briefly cursed myself for not blaming the first fire on Al, or my cousin, Jimmy. Now I had the perfect plan.

And it was. I ran up the steps and, with an expression of feigned horror, informed the adults that the Gerbilhead kids had set the yard on fire. The fire department was summoned immediately, the fire was put out, the Gerbilhead children were accused, found guilty by their father, who was a strict disciplinarian, and I feel sure a terrible punishment was meted out. My mother asked me if I had done it and I, of course, denied it emphatically, underscoring that I had definitely learned my lesson in the charred bathroom escapade and that I was cured—hadn't touched a match since then. I always wondered if she really believed me.

The Gerbilhead kids never knew who I was or what I looked like. They only knew some weasely little low-life had framed them. Even so, I made an effort to avoid them. Actually this incident did finally cure me of my fascination with flames, because I didn't want to ever draw attention to myself again. In fact, since that time I have eschewed fire-related activities at all costs: 1) I turn down all invitations to cookouts; 2) I avoid smokers and did long before it was "in" to do so; 3) I do not enter rooms with fireplaces in use; 4) I have had unlit candles on my cake since my seventh birthday.

I also live in constant fear that the Gerbilheads will one day find me and release 43 years of pent-up rage upon my belatedly repentant soul. I will be in the check-out line in the Piggly Wiggly one day when one of the brothers will recognize me: "It's him, by God, it's him." I imagine he'll throw me up against the cash register (these Gerbilheads are huge people). "Sis, you call Billy and tell him he's caught; tell him to bring the rope. We've waited 43 years for this."

I mean, I have experienced a catharsis since then. But, no matter what they do, it would be no more than I deserve.