HUMAN WRECKAGE
Burn, Baby, Burn
Ann’s brother Jim is staying with us this
week. Dawn comes early to Edmonton
at this time of year, the birds begin their morning territorial chirping around
4:30, a half an hour or so before sunrise. Jim rises with the jays and magpies,
and after he does his Zen-voodoo-yoga exercises he looks around for something
else to do. Yesterday he swept every single inch of pavement on our property to
magazine photo shoot pristine. Jim is a good guest.
Alberta may or may not be on the verge of drought. Wildfires burn
throughout the province but civic reservoirs are topped up. Nobody really knows
anything for certain except that we’re better off than California for the time being. Due to
intermittent though frequent provincial fire bans I have over two years
gathered pruned or wind blown tree branches and bundled them with twine into
faggots resembling the weighty wooden load of the back of the hermit on the
cover of Led Zeppelin IV.
Jim and Ann this morning decided we had a
perfect day to burn our stash of twigs, the air was still and the government
had lifted the open fire ban late last week. Anyway, Jim needed something to
do. Using yesterday’s papers Jim soon had a hot and healthy blaze going. He sat
tending it, methodically snapping sticks and piling them on. We tossed in a
couple of broken wooden coat hangers which burned beautifully. I caught the
fire fever and caught myself peering around the yard searching for more stuff
to burn.
Fire is primordial and hypnotic; innately
we are all pyromaniacs. I remembered the mob madness of another Jim’s summer
solstice party held about 20 years ago. My old friend from Montreal
lived about 20 minutes outside of Calgary
on a piece of land big enough to accommodate a pick up baseball diamond. As I
recall Jim was on the ball enough to construct some type of containment for his
pagan bonfire, saturate the turf around it and have a garden hose at ready.
This forethought was definitely out of character but theoretically an out of
control fire could have scorched its way across the prairie to the base of the Rockies.
The main event was to be the sacrificing of
his family’s Christmas tree, saved since the previous January. The dead, rusty
fir went up with a spectacular WHOOSH!
FOOM! The scene and the sound were
awesome. And doesn’t alcohol make everything and every idea wonderful? The
frenzy of needing more and more fuel took us; we raided his garage for hockey sticks and maybe a
Louisville Slugger. The tomato plant stakes were pulled up next. The lattice
shrubbery demarcating Jim’s wife’s herb garden was ripped from the earth. Then
we went inside hunting for brooms and empty picture frames.
The fire eventually petered out. Piled
among the ashes of some of his former possessions was evidence of some discord
within Jim’s marriage. The fallout reminded me of the time my big brother Bob,
his best friend Jack, our friend Stats Guy and I gerry-built a sauna on John’s
vacation property utilizing the carefully chosen stones decorating his wife’s
elaborate and well-tended rock garden. John had a neighbour with whom he did
not get along. Worse, the offender had a tree that cast a shadow on John’s
front porch. We hatched a plan beneath the steaming tarp. We would take magic
mushrooms, get chainsaws, fell the tree but make it look like beavers had done
the deed. This was sheer Wile E. Coyote genius. Meanwhile the hot rocks harried
by dousing scoops of cold lake water split into halves with resounding CRACKS! Even though we later attempted
to recreate the rock garden as it had been the day before with our fractured
shards of stone, there was soon evidence of discord within John’s marriage.
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