You Will Miss Me When I Burn

I spent my morning at the Dairy Queen with the loafers and the cattlemen who get their feeding done before first light. It was a sparse crowd—we didn’t know yet what the wind was going to do. People left their tables and crowded around the television set hung in the corner. Smoldering houses and charred land all over the Red River spoke to the notion that man can’t do much to change the course of nature.

Hank Marshall had an expert in fire behavior on his show discussing “The Great Fires of ’06.” The man stood on the tips of his shoes drawing a triangle and explaining concepts a fool would be born with: A fire needs fuel, heat, and oxygen—things we had in spades. “Our goal,” the man said, “is to manage one of the three elements, but fire exclusion has led to an excess of fuel, and drought conditions have exacerbated the problem.” They went to commercial, and the old boys and blue hairs set to talking smart, trying their best to act regular.

“If the air ain’t so humid you swim in it, it’s so crackling dry it burns you up,” Elsie, the big-boned waitress, said as she passed a cup across the counter. I winked at her, and she rolled her eyes.

“At least the wind let up last night,” Liza Blue said.

I eased into the bench next to her, setting my hat crown-down on the table. She leaned over and said she forgot how to sleep without the wind banging that iron gate against her fence post. Liza Blue was always bringing talk around to her bedroom.

“Maybe they’ll get it put out,” she allowed, and the way people nodded at the floor, you’d think they was in church. People with something to burn get real nervous when they start thinking about the off chance that hellfire and brimstone will come to pass in their day.

Crazy old TomTom Tompkins sat in the corner with a Big Chief Tablet taking notes on everything with a pencil nub. TomTom fancied himself a big author because he printed up two of his books and had them in the trophy case for fifteen dollars apiece. When somebody walked in or out, he smashed his fat palms onto his tablet and hunkered over his coffee to keep the wind from blowing it all away. After the door sucked shut from the latest exit, TomTom looked up from underneath his green visor and said, “That dry bluestem is sitting on the Caddo Field just waiting for a spark like a lover listens for the sound of a truck door in the night.”

I bent over laughing and slapped my boot against the tile just as hard as I could. Liza Blue jumped clean out of her curls. She spilled her coffee in her lap and cut her eyes until I put my arm around her and whispered.

We grew up together at the country school outside of town. When my wife, Nina, died, Liza Blue showed up asking me if I wanted to get married “like we should have by God done in the first place.” She had the trouble with her voice that Audrey Hepburn had, so every conversation took too long, and that one was no exception.

“We’ll make your home place over,” she’d said. “Patch the barn, put a roof on the house, new pipes and wiring, fix the whole foundation. Dig a new well if need be. Even better,” she said, “load your mare and come saddle up with me.” She had a hundred acres and plenty of oil money coming in from her dead husband. Just like that, problems solved. I told her I was mourning and needed some time to think on it—that’s what that Indian daughter-in-law of mine kept whispering in my ear, “Don’t make any decisions for at least a year, Ferrell.” For once her yammering was useful.

The clock was...