Pyromania

PYROMANIA / Ann Townsend The woodpile, a half-acre of felled trees that have rested since his house rose, is out of control, blazing, and the man whose match started this, all impulse and stupidity, stands appalled at the speed of the scattering flames. By the time the trucks come blundering over the hills, deep red and rocking over grass and small trees, even the brush is ablaze. The firemen hang on, their thick coats swinging as the truck sways, just as, in his eyes, the other trucks rumbled and swept by, decades ago, round hoods and unwieldy wooden ladders, one man cranking away at the siren, the tinny wail rising and falling through the city streets with the motion of his arm. Sweat rolls over my father's face, and his cemetery of burning trees begins to crumble. The truck stops in the flames' deep shadow. But that wail keeps on, reaching up in dissonance, tangling, like all his good intentions, in its long tu-.bling cry down the scale of irrational notes. The Missouri Review · 251 ...