Rags and Ruin

No one really knows how it started. It most certainly involved the chemical-soaked cleaning rags, but what ignited them will always be a mystery. Maybe it was a spark from the small coal fire Charley had started in the furnace right before bedtime. It was just a little one, to take off the early autumn chill. Whatever it was, corncob husk, errant coal ember, who knows?

Harley heard his name. His father was screaming at him.

“Harley! Harley! Run, run outside! Get up and run outside!”Charley was yelling up the stairway to the attic and pounding on the plaster wall. Harley smelled the smoke; then he saw the smoke. He looked out the window and black smoke was billowing out the back door. Then he heard the roar. Fire! He sprang up, grabbed his work jacket from the headboard of his bed and leaped down the stairs.

He saw his mother run in front of him, racing through the kitchen to the back door. She immediately turned around and slammed into him from the other direction.

“We can’t get out that way!” she cried. “The fire is in the cellar. It’s coming up the stairs and blasting right out the back door. Run to the front!”

Harley grabbed her hand and dragged her out of the kitchen, across the hall and through the living room. It seemed like it only took one second, and they were standing in the front yard. He could see through the windows that the fire had raced up the stairs and was already in the kitchen. It was a small house. In just a moment the living room curtains would surely be in flames…whoosh…there they went!

“Where is your father?” Lena shrieked over the blazing roar. “Where is your father?” She tried to pull away from Harley, but he held her fast.

“He went out the back door before the fire came up the cellar steps! I saw him run out the back door right after he woke me up and I came into the kitchen. He must have been right in front of you, mother. You didn’t see him?” Harley asked.

“Are you sure he’s out? Are you sure he’s not in there? Where is he? Where is he?” She was panicking and it frightened Harley. He had never seen his mother like this.

“Let’s go look on the back side. Maybe he doesn’t know we are over here.”

As they ran towards the back, Charley was running towards the front. They met at the cement blocks over the top of where the well was. Lena ran into Charley’s arms, sobbing. “Our house, our house! Our house will be gone!” He just held her, and then he reached with one strong, long arm for his son.

“Come over here, Harley. Comfort your mother. I have something to finish.” Harley wrapped his jacket over his mother’s shoulders and put his arms around her.

Charley charged around the back of the house again; Lena and Harley followed him at a distance. Then they saw what he was doing. He had turned over the old chest of drawers and was pushing it across the bricks, onto the grass. He was pushing it as far away from the house as he could. He was saving Lena’s chest of drawers, her family treasure.

Suddenly, Lena’s tears just gushed out. It seemed so strange; his mother crying tears of joy as their house burned to the ground. He understood and once again wrapped his arms around her. Charley joined them in their family embrace, as the Monahan family came running across the road. Lena saw Jim and Betty’s truck coming from a ways down, also. The wood frame farmhouse where Charley had been born would be a total loss. There was no fire department that could get there fast enough to save even a piece of it, especially at this time of night; whatever time it was, she did not know. To Lena, it didn’t matter what time it was. She just knew that when her rooster crowed, as the sun came up tomorrow, there would only be a pile of ashes and a crumbling brick chimney left. The coal furnace would be sitting by itself in the middle of the block basement. The sole survivor. Well, there was also the walnut chest.

The flames were shooting out of the attic windows now and the roar of the fire was quite loud. Glass was breaking in the bedroom windows and the smoke started to blow towards the west, towards the hen house. She hoped the hens wouldn’t suffocate. She had seen other houses burn and knew exactly what they would have left…nothing.

They would have to begin again. Charley, Harley, Lena, and the chest of drawers. She sobbed into the sleeve of Harley’s work jacket.

Charley and his family spent the rest of the night across the road in the Monahan’s parlor. Their neighbors, who were even poorer that they were, had offered them their beds. Lena would not hear of it, but gladly accepted the davenport and the loveseat for herself and Harley. Charley laid his long limbs across Jim Monahan’s overstuffed leather chair, sort of reclining and sort of sitting back. It wasn’t comfortable, but it was a warm, safe place to keep his family for the night.

As the sun rose, and that old rooster started his crowing, it seemed like they all awoke at the same time. From their various reclining places, they could view the wisps of smoke smoldering up from what remained of their home. Their first instinct was to go do the chores for the animals and make sure they were not too smoked or too spooked by the fire. The out buildings were far enough away from the house that they were never in danger of igniting from the fire, but they were down the hill from the house, and plenty of smoke could have settled in them.

The men got up and went to their animals. Lena went to the Monahan kitchen and started a pot of coffee. Seemed like the neighborly thing to do. Maybe she would have a few minutes to herself for thinking, and for praying. One of Lena’s younger brothers was in seminary, and she felt like she should always be praying and going to church more. Somehow, she had the feeling she would be saying a lot of prayers in the near future. She and Charley had a lot of planning to do, and she knew they would need the Lord’s help for sure.