One of the most enduring stories that I carry comes from my mother's Midwestern family. It reappears in my writing again and again; my mind has rubbed it worn and mythic, full of import and allegory.
My grandfather was born in St. Louis, but raised as the eldest of seven siblings in central Illinois: corn country. He carried many Depression-era vignettes, like running one bath for all seven kids who were shuffled through from cleanest to dirtiest. The following events transpired when he was about twenty years old and living in a separate house on his family's rural property, which was surrounded by cornfields.
One night, he awoke to a fire leaping up his parents' home: not a small fire slowly filling the house with smoke, but an inferno that had already buried its teeth into several rooms. His mother helped get the younger children out, then ran to call the fire department, probably from my grandfather's house. One of his sisters feared for her kittens, but he assured her that they were safe and shut up in the smokehouse up the road.
The family might have brought furniture with them, or maybe I'm remembering the story of my great-grandfather patiently carrying his chair outside after the match he'd struck on its leg sparked not just his cigarette, but a burning that consumed the whole chair.
As they pumped water from the well to slow the fire, my great-grandmother returned bearing the fire department's response: The house was too far out in the country. The truck would never get there in time. The family would just have to manage as best they could.
Once the well was dry, they had little choice but to watch the place burn. Their mother's face betrayed neither thought nor emotion. Somebody asked her, wasn't she sad? She didn't answer the question, saying only, "Life is full of disappointments."
When I tell myself this story, I hear many narrators, but the most insistent one is that of my great-aunt who worried for her kittens. She was eight years old at the time. I could transcribe her reflections on this fire from a recording I made five years ago, but instead, I've set down my own memory of the story. Now it too is archived, though the memory itself will continue to change.
Early Friday morning, my great-aunt passed away. She died at home, in the house built on the site of the one that burned: The same house in which her mother died, fast asleep with her Bible open across her chest, now only three miles from the nearest fire department.
