wrote this: Each of us had been “baptized by immersion” the summer before, as we had embarked on an innocent voyage over the water. The filthy tepid pond was one of several places we returned to on a regular basis. It was on the other side of the railroad tracks where the men in our small town earned a hard living at the stockyards, the slaughterhouse, or one of the oil refineries. Like a dog that pukes and then eats it, we didn’t seem to have any better sense than to keep going back to the same old place. Our sailing ship, a leaky old cattle trough, intended to carry the young stark-naked crew to the other side, had capsized midway, leaving us to swim for our lives on the distant shore. The pond was relatively shallow, which made it as warm as a bath in wintertime, but the temperature also made the heavy green moss grow so thick as to make it almost impossible to swim. Half wading, half swimming, flapping and paddling like moths in molasses, we trudged and paddled the best we could. Dark stinking clouds swirled up from the black muddy bottom with every step, reminding us that this was a low spot surrounded by a pasture full of cattle, and that manure runs downhill. Although we had all been told that “I will beat you within an inch of your life if you ever go near those damn ponds again,” and that our parents had done what they said they would do, we somehow forgot or figured some things are just worth taking a beating. But that was last summer, and six months had passed. The winter had been long and cold, the snow was beginning to melt a bit on the south facing slopes, and we had gone on a short hike up in the foothills above town. Someone had thrown an old green couch off to the side of the narrow dirt road by the small tunnel under the road. It was missing the cushions, but we figured they were someplace. There was frost on the back side of the couch and we could see our breath, but the sky was clear and the winter sun was shining brightly. It was too early for birds to be singing, but it was one of those kind of days. The dirt road went over the top of a gully. Once in awhile there would be a little bit of water that trickled through the tunnel and ran under the road, but most of the time it was dry and empty. The floor, walls, and ceiling of the tunnel were all made out of concrete. There were steel beams that looked like railroad rails that helped hold up the ceiling, and it was too high for a boy to touch. It was as cold as a meat locker inside the tunnel, and there was a small patch of ice along one of the walls that looked like it had seeped in and then frozen. We hauled the couch into the tunnel and tossed it over against one of the walls. There was a cheap little chest of drawers in the same pile of junk, so we brought it inside too. A couple of the guys scrounged around under some old wooden crates and got all of the couch cushions and put them where they belonged. There were three pallets in the downstream side of the gully. They were made out of hardwood, so they were heavy enough that it took two guys to carry each one. The guys put them inside as well. After we got the crates and cushions and pallets, we hauled anything else we could find that might burn and drug it inside the tunnel with all the rest. We were going to set fire to the refuse of someone’s life, and nobody would care. One of the guys with matches, started yelling that he needed some dry grass, so everybody headed over to the sunny side of one of the hills that made up the gully, and started gathering as much as we thought we would need to get the fire started. We all went inside and huddled around the guy with the matches as he tried to light the grass. It smoked and flared up a little, but kept going out. Another guy told him to give him the matches and someone else went to look for some newspaper that he had seen out in the old junk pile. Pretty soon there was a little fire burning in the grass and paper. Smoke rolled up toward the ceiling and started to fill the tunnel like an old guy smoking a pipe, except it didn’t smell anything like a pipe. You need heat, fuel, and oxygen to make fire, and there wasn’t much heat. Even the dry grass was damp, and although there was plenty of oxygen in the tunnel, the fire wouldn’t take off like it should have. We kept trying to find more dry paper and grass, but fuel wasn’t the problem. Maybe we needed more air. One of the guys smashed one of the drawers from the chest of drawers against the wall, took the bottom of it, and made a fan or a bellow. He waved it back and forth until the fire started burning a little better. By now you could barely see inside the tunnel and everybody was choking and coughing, but we knew if we kept at it, eventually the fire would catch and then the smoke would disappear. As the flames increased, the smoke gradually moved upward to the ceiling and began to billow out of both ends of the tunnel. The fire grew, the smoke lessened, and the air inside began to clear. As the flames got higher, began racing across the ceiling, and licking out of both sides of the tunnel, colder air started rushing toward the fire along the bottom of the tunnel as if we were in a horizontal chimney. On either side of the fire there was a flaming spiral; one going clockwise and the other counterclockwise as the fire increased and began to fill the tunnel in a quivering orange dance of flames. We ran for fuel. The couch, cushions, crates, pallets, dry wood, grass, rubbish and fuel of every kind that we had hauled into the tunnel were engulfed in the roaring inferno. We ran back out of the tunnel for more fuel and then back inside to stoke the rising flames. Suddenly one of the guys pulled the hood of his coat over his head, tucked his hands up inside his sleeves, and ran all the way from one side of the tunnel to the other, passing through the fire. He shouted for others to follow. No one moved. He ran back through the flames, turned and ran back again, beckoning us with his actions to “Come, follow me.” First one of us, and then the next, pulled our hoods, tucked our hands, and ran into the fire all the way to the other side and then back again until everyone had passed the initiation. In a wildly spontaneous act of evolving ritual and a refining rite of passage, every boy became part of “us” leaving any who hadn’t done what we had done among “them.” There were joyful and boisterous self-congratulatory expressions of glee at belonging to this unique brotherhood. We were self anointed, self appointed, fellow citizens. Jubilant, red-faced and singed, smelling of smoke, and not yet wondering what would happen to us since our coats had been ruined in the flames, we stood on the uphill side of the tunnel of fire. Panting, laughing, smiling inside, and filled with adrenaline we relished the moment. We were probably going to “get beaten within an inch of our lives,” but none of us were the least bit worried or concerned. We were now born again; “baptized with fire.”
Posted on: Wed, 04 Jun 2014 04:30:18 +0000
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