Pyromaniacs, Bored and Young

By Ben Leib

I waited to put my shoes on until after I jumped out of the window, by which time my socks were soaked.  My bedroom window frame was concave where I rested my knees as I lowered myself to the ground outside.  I sprinted down the unlit driveway to the bottom of the hill.  Randy honked the horn a couple of times as I ran up to the car.  He knew it pissed me off.  He and Hector were laughing when I opened the car door.

“Assholes,” I said.

It was mid-January, a Tuesday night.  A Petaluma night, so moist and dewy you could smell the cow shit for miles around.  “What are the plans, gentlemen?”

“Oh, dude, we’ve got something in mind,” Randy said.

“What the fuck, you gonna make me guess?”

We drove over to Hector’s, where I had a bottle of whiskey and a forty waiting for me.  I dove on that pint like prohibition was impending.  The first few tastes of whiskey were always nectar.  The liquid burned.  I’d get the sweats after a shot or two.  Beer didn’t do the same thing.  It was good going down, but it didn’t create that fire in my belly that could only be extinguished by more booze.  Whiskey created the fever and whiskey quelled the fever.

It was business as usual that Tuesday.

I drove Andy’s car down Payran, east on Washington.  I drove those well worn streets like I’d commissioned their construction.

“Randy,” I said as I flicked ashes out an open window, “you’re a crazy fucker, you know that?”

When we pulled up to Kenelworth, the three of us jumped out of the car.  We smoked, staring at the Christmas tree dump from across the junior high school football field.  There was almost no traffic on Washington.  The parking lot, the library, the swim center, and the streets leading to them were all deserted.  It was a cold night, and everything was motionless, felt frozen in place.  But for the buzz of power lines, the drone of Highway 101, the razor breeze, time could have been standing still, holding all lives but ours in a stasis.

“You’re gonna do it, right, Randy?”  Hector asked.

“Fuck yeah.”

It was nearly a mile around the junior high campus, some undeveloped lots, and back onto Payran.  We pulled into the drive alongside the bus stop.  I stopped the car.  It was the closest we’d gotten to the pile of trees – about fifteen yards.  The mound was at least twenty feet high.  It was thirty feet across.

“You ready?” I asked.

“Yeah, hand me the fireworks.”  Hector passed Randy a bag.

We watched Randy sprint from the car to the mound of wood.  We saw the orange of the flame as he sparked his Zippo.  We saw the sparks from the fuse as the firework soared end over end into the middle of the pile.  By the time Randy lit the second firework, a cascade of sparks illuminated the skeletal structure from within.  Randy threw the second closer to the perimeter of the pile.  He sprinted back to the car and jumped in.

“Let’s get the fuck outta here dude,” he said.

“Where we going?” I asked.  “How’re we gonna see if this thing even catches on fire?”

“Drive over the freeway,” Hector said.  “We’ll make a u-turn on McDowell, and come back from the other direction.”

The Christmas trees became a dark shadow as they shrank from view, but the fire was visible when we backtracked on the other side of the road.  It wasn’t big yet, just getting its legs.

“Holy shit, it’s going,” Hector said.

“That bitch is gonna be huge!”  Randy beamed.

There was an all night drive thru across Washington Street from the fire.  We bought ourselves burgers and ate in the parking lot, leaning against the car.  I uncapped the whiskey.  The fire raged.  We could feel the heat from across the boulevard.  We must have been a hundred yards away, but we had to talk over the roar of the flames, that inferno reflected in our gazes.

“Holy shit, that’s intense dude,” Hector murmured.

“Good idea, Randy.”  I said.

“Thank you, but the artist doesn’t know where inspiration comes from.  Thank the muses.”

“What the fuck are you talking about, Randy?”  Hector said.

“The muse of vandalism, huh?” I asked.

“She’s not as popular as poetry, but much more satisfying.”

The flames were a spectrum of vividness and illuminated those things within their immediate vicinity.  They doubled and tripled the height of the nearest buildings.  It was beautiful in a way.  A fire itself is beautiful, and, at such magnitude, its consumption is awesome.

After several minutes of watching, another car pulled into the parking lot.  It was Matt Dog and his buddy DeWitt.  They were tweaking, just out cruising.

“This is fucking bad,” Matt Dog said, “you guys start this?”

“You fucking know it,” Randy said.

I heard sirens.  Several fire engines came tearing up the street, pulled around the median in front of the library, and stopped beside the bus stop.  Once situated, the firemen didn’t seem in any hurry to take action.  Five or six men dressed in reflective uniforms gleamed in the light of the flames.  They stood at the side of the road and watched the fire, but did nothing to stop it.  Then the police arrived.  They looked at the flames, then they looked into the parking lot across the street and they knew who to ask about the fire.

“Hello gentlemen.”  An officer stepped from the passenger side of the car that had just pulled in a few spaces in front of us.  “What’re you guys doing out here tonight?”

Hector spoke up.  “We were just getting some dinner when we saw this fire across the street.”

The other officer had stepped from the car and was leaning over the hood.  “Hey, I know you, don’t I?”  He pointed to Matt Dog.

“What’s up Officer Reeve,” Matt said.

“Hello Mr. Rice,” The officer said.  “Well, I know you’ve been arrested on possession, but you never struck me as an arsonist.”

“It’s a huge fire,” Matt Dog said.  “I wish I could take credit for it.”

“And you boys don’t know anything about this either?”

“Not a thing,” Hector said.

“It was already going when we got here,” I reminded him.

“Well, I think you boys have seen enough of the show.  It’s time to move along.”

Nobody argued.

“Let’s head up Sonoma Mountain.” Hector suggested once we’d piled back into Randy’s Civic, “I bet we’ll be able to see the fire from up there.”

We took a left onto Washington.  The police car followed us out of the lot and continued to follow us as we drove through the east side of the city.

“Those fuckers know it was us,” Randy said, glancing in his rearview.

“So?  What are they gonna do?  They don’t have proof,” I said.  “Besides, burning those trees didn’t do shit.  Who gives a damn if we did burn them?”

From Sonoma Mountain, three miles out and a thousand feet above the city, we watched the fire burn itself out.

“Well, good work gentlemen.”