She was watching TV when the light switched on just before midnight. She stood up and walked his way. He sat in the other room with his head phones halfway on, eyes closed, head slightly swinging side to side as his fingers flew over the keys. He was immersed in a passage and therefore had no idea she was standing right behind him.
“Hey, I’ve got an idea,” she spoke louder than normal.
“Christ!” He exclaimed, lightly shook. “You’re still up?”
“Let’s go for a walk. It’s a beautiful night out.”
“Sure, why not,” he said. “Let me get my ducks in a row right quick.” He put his head phones fully on and continued practicing the passage.
“I have to change anyways. Eleven minutes it is.” she said shaking her head.
She slipped into her yoga pants then a pair of fleece lined leggings followed. She pulled a sweater over her pretty face and stuffed a couple of letters, a book of matches, and some keys into the pockets of her pants. She went back into the room he was in and nudged him with her foot. He tore off his headphones. It was time to go.
“Are you ready?” She asked.
“I think so,” he said wondering if he was. “It’s freezing outside though. Twelve o’clock midnight. You really want to go for a walk right now?”
“It’s okay, you don’t have to come. I can go by myself.” She said with a hint of melancholy.
He graciously sighed, “I can’t very well let a lovely young woman roam through the darkness all alone by herself. Gimme a minute to get a little warmer.”
He switched on the light, and over his gym shorts he put on grey sweatpants and a hoodie. His most trusted one, the one with a logo of an ink stained thumb. She wrapped a scarf around her neck and he put on her knitted hat and gave her a kiss on the forehead. They moseyed their way out the door.
“This is crazy,” he said as they took a path through a broken gate towards the beach. “But you were right, though chilly, it really is an exhilarating night.”
The night was frigid. The moonlight even more so. There was no wind at all. There was a kind stillness to the evening when every breath they breathed hung frozen in midair.
“We should build a fire,” she lightly demanded.
“It’s a little late for that don’t you think?” He asked her.
"It's never too late for a fire," she smiled.
"Yes ma'am, I suppose you're right as always. After all, everybody does love to build a good fire.”
“Yes, fire has had fans all over the world since we first created it all those eons ago,” she said matter-of-factly.
“You know what’s so great about Drivin N Cryin?” he asked her out of nowhere.
“No I don't?”
“Drivin N Cryin, one of my favorite bands of all time, has tens of thousands of fans worldwide too.” I grinned.
“Where are you going with this silly?” She asked inquisitively.
“Nowhere really, it’s just that people will be building fires long after Drivin N Cryin, and ourselves are gone, too.” he said with a sigh, as he pulled his hands out of his pocket and wrapped his arms around her shoulders.
He continued. “The thing is, I don’t know have really anything to do with Drivin N Cryin, except that I was practicing one of their songs on the keyboard earlier. Nor do I have anything much to do with anything from thousands of years ago—or a hundred years from now either. Nothing. Zip. Nada. What’s important right now is this moment. Who knows when it will end? Why worry about the future? The only thing that matters is the fact that we are talking about nothing really that important together, we are enjoying this walk, and we are about to build a fire.”
They lumbered down the stairs to the beach. They found an unusual spot, where driftwood of all shapes and sizes had collected, all the while making a spiral little pile. One oversized piece of wood must have made a generous effort over thousands of lifetimes to work its way there.
The soft light of the snow moon transformed the shoreline of the lake into a sharp blade. Winter’s dying waves crashed with a hush as they washed their footprints away behind them. There was not another soul around.
“Pretty sweet spot, huh?” He said with a cloud of frozen breath.
“Incredible!” She smiled. “Now let’s see how good you are. Let’s get warm,” she said with her head motioning towards the the spiral pile of driftwood.
“Patience now,” he said. “There’s a right way to do this. First, you’ve got to visualize it. And you’ve got to get everything arranged so it’ll burn without a hitch. You light it slow-like. You can’t rush these things. The patient beggar earns his keep.”
In short time, he had done a spectacular job of weaving the bigger logs with the smaller woodscraps until the pile resembled something of an avant-garde sculpture. Stepping back from time to time, he would examine in detail the pile he had built, adjust a few pieces, then spiral back around the pile for another look, repeating the process several times over.
As always, all he had to do was look at how the pieces of wood were stacked in unison with each other to begin seeing mental images of the subtlest movement of newborn flames rising. Kind of like the way a poet can imagine the shape of a curvy figure hidden in the shadows of written creation.
He took his time, but once he had his affairs in order, and everything arranged to his satisfaction, he nodded as if saying to himself, that’s it: Perfecto! Next he made his way to an outdated newspaper dispenser stranded nearby. He balled up a few pieces of worthless news with a twist before slipping them into the open gaps at the bottom of the pile.
“Do you have a match?” He asked her.
She took the book of matches from her pocket and gave them to him. He struck one against the flimsy flint and flung it at the bottom of the pile. Narrowing her focus, she stared at him and his glowing indigo eyes. This was it: the one heart-stopping moment of the whole procedure. Would the fire catch? Would it erupt in flames?
The two of them stared in silence at the small perfectly piled mountain of driftwood. The sheets of newspaper flared up, and rose was one little flame, swaying for a moment’s notice before hanging frozen in midair. After that, there was nothing. It didn’t work, she thought. Maybe the wood was way too wet.
She was on the verge of giving up hope when a plume of white smoke shot up from the pile. With no wind to dispose of it, the smoke became an unbroken silver thread rising up through the universe against a backdrop of thousands upon thousands of stars. The pile must have caught fire somewhere, but still there was no sign of flames.
They didn’t say a word. He kept his mouth shut tight, hands tucked away in his pockets. She folded her arms across her chest, and slowly tapped her foot to the rhythm of her thoughts.
As usual, she thought about Jack London’s “To Build A Fire.” It was the story of a man traveling alone through a barren wilderness and his attempt to light a fire. He would freeze to death unless he could get the fire to catch. She hadn’t read much fiction. But that one short story she read again and again, ever since it had been assigned to her as an essay topic during her last summer vacation of high school.
“Umm, Ryan, I’m about to freeze to death,” she said venturing away from her thoughts, “do you think the fire is going to catch soon?”
“Don’t worry gorgeous, it’s caught. It’s just getting ready to flare up, see how it’s smoking still? You know what they say: ‘Where there’s smoke, there’s fire.’”
“How can you be so sure it’s caught?”
“I just believe in the certainty of some things. It's going to flare up any minute now your grace."
“How did you come to master such an art, handsome?”
“I wouldn’t call it ‘art’. I learned it when I was a boy scout. When you’re a scout, like it or not, you learn everything you need to know about surviving in the wilderness, and all that you need to know about building a fire, too.”
“I see,” she said. “A boy scout, too. It’s true, when they say we learn something new everyday.”
“That’s not the whole story, of course, I have this weird talent, too. When it comes to starting fires I have a knack that some don’t have.”
“It must give you lots of pleasure, but I don’t suppose this talent of yours makes you lots of money.”
“True. Not a damn dime. At least not yet.”
As he had said, a few flames began to flicker at the center of the pile accompanied by faint crackling sounds. She let out a frozen breath of a sigh. Now there was nothing to worry about. They would find their warmth.
Facing the newborn flames, they began to stretch out their hands through the shimmering heat for each other’s heart. For the next few minutes, maybe hours, maybe days, maybe years, maybe eternities. There was nothing to be done but to touch each other’s heart in silence, as little by little, the flames rose with unprecedented strength.
As her beauty was set ablaze in the darkness behind the flames, she pulled the crumpled up letters from her pocket and held them over the fire until they disintegrated into nothing more than embers in the wind.
“What was that?” He asked.
“The directions to your heart and soul silly," she said glowing.
Til the next time…
Yours Truly,
Ryan Love
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