The Alphabet of Splendor

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One Sunday in the fall of 1950, soon after my fifth birthday, my father set fire to a ditch bank where the dry stalks of weeds rustled in a mild breeze. He made me keep well back, but I could see the tongue of fire licking forward, leaving a trail of black. He carried a shovel for tamping out any sparks that might fly onto the nearby hayfield. I traipsed along behind, enthralled by the flames.

The smoke idled up, twisting in the wind, like smoke from the Pall Mall cigarettes Dad pulled, one after another, from a packet in the bib of his overalls. Coffin nails, Mama called them, when she and Dad fought at night after they thought my big sister, Sandra, and I were asleep, and she hissed that his drinking and smoking would land us all in the poorhouse if they didn't kill him first. This was on our farm outside Memphis, close enough to the Mississippi River for us to hear the bellow of barges and to smell the rank mud.

Dad never let up on smoking, not even now beside the burning ditch. When he needed both hands for the shovel, he crimped the cigarette in one corner of his mouth and widened the opposite corner to draw in breath. As the breeze picked up, he used the shovel more and more often, running here and there to beat down flames that kept escaping from the ditch. Gasping for air, he finally threw down his cigarette and stomped on it. Then a gust of wind flung a burning stalk into the hayfield, where grass began to smolder. Dad looked from the smoke at his feet to the smoke in the field and yelled at me, "Go ask Mama to call the fire station! Quick, now. Go!"

I set off running toward our house, repeating aloud, "Fire station! Fire station!"

Mama made the call, told Sandra and me to stay in the house, then she grabbed two burlap sacks from the barn, dipped them in the cow's water trough and rushed out to join Dad. After waiting inside for a few heartbeats, Sandra and I hurried to the field, where we found our parents shouting at one another and slapping flames with the gunnysacks. The fire was outracing them, heading for our house, when a red truck pulled up with siren blaring, and men in rubber suits began pumping water from a fat hose.

Our parents stood side by side, watching and panting, the muddy sacks tangled at their feet. After every spark had been drowned and the hose had been folded away, the firemen chided my father for burning ditches on a windy day. I expected him to get mad, as he did whenever Mama scolded him. I expected him to say the day hadn't been all that windy when he lit the fire, and so they could just climb down off their high horses. But instead he looked out over the charred field and said he was sorry to have caused them so much bother, especially on a Sunday.

When the truck pulled away, Mama fussed at Sandra and me for leaving the house. Then she leaned into Dad and he wrapped his arms around her, and she cried into his shoulder, and both of them trembled. I was used to seeing Mama shake. But if even Dad could be afraid, then maybe Mama was right, and the world was a thicket of dangers.

Realizing that my parents did not run the world set me up to welcome news of parents who did. Later on, when I began to absorb the teachings of Bible and church, I would cling to God as the father who could save me from all danger. Had I been reared Catholic or Eastern Orthodox instead of country Protestant, I might have clung to Mary as the all-forgiving, all-healing...