How to Build a Bonfire by Carol D. Marsh

Pick a safe spot

The slight depression with its darkened earth, bits of blackened twigs and surrounding stones lies near but not too close to the maple tree, halfway between house and cow barn. He passes that bit of ground every day. Not as often as he used to, when milking cows morning and night for sixty-plus years, yet regularly, on his way to the barn out of habit or to check in with his son before he takes the tractor to tend something in one of the fields. His wife comes with him as she’s been doing for about a year, ever since she became frightened when she can’t see him. As they walk across the yard together on this late summer day, he thinks about a bonfire and begins to plan. The stump of that dead tree he had cut down this summer would do nicely. And there’s always brush to clear, as well as accumulated stuff in the barn and woodshed. He slows his pace a bit, realizing she’s behind him, anxious, unsure of her footing on the uneven ground and afraid she’ll look up and he’ll be gone.

Find tinder (small twigs, bark), kindling (larger sticks and branches), and fuel (logs and large wood objects no longer needed).

He uses the tractor to yank the old stump out of the ground and drag it over to where bonfires have burned for decades. It anchors the growing pile of tangled brush cleared from the hedgerow on the road by the pasture where cows used to graze. He likes to start gathering brush long before bonfire day so the branches, sere and brown, will pop and crackle, embers erupting. Newspapers are ready by the woodshed door. No sense putting them out early, if it rains the resulting sodden mess would never dry in time. With them are milk cartons, paper bags, accumulated junk from the garage, and even two of those wide strips of rubber mat on which the cows slept in their stalls. That big bag of old twine gets placed near the barn door.

Stepping just inside the garage, he hesitates before the wooden crib in which all five of his children slept until the youngest graduated to a bed in 1966. His daughters had hauled it to the garage when clearing out the first floor bedroom a month ago. That room became the master bedroom because neither he nor his wife does stairs well any more. His knee is bad and requires surgery that will mean weeks of rehab and impaired mobility. And he’s fearful of her increasing disorientation. What if she falls down the stairs in nighttime wanderings? The crib has been replaced by a dresser. But neither he nor his daughters have had the heart to haul it to the dump.

Though he’s not known for outward sentimentality, he hesitates. He’s alone right now in ability to imagine a future and understand the import of the past, yet all his life he’s made such decisions as a farmer does: everything that can be re-used or re-engineered for new service in house or barn is valuable and needed. The rest is disposed of.

He hauls the crib out to the growing pile.

Continuing to gather and place combustibles.

The stump is now invisible under a confusion of branches, brown leaves and old wood. She loves helping when he scouts the yard and its edges for farm detritus – clumps of dead weeds, old corn cobs, nuts fallen from the black walnut tree. The effort calms her with its companionship and back-and-forth of pulling dead stuff from the yard’s rough border, carrying it to the pile, tossing it on then turning to look for more. It had been the same when the old tree was cut down and chopped. In a rare attitude of peace, she’d fallen into the rhythm of his steady purpose, understanding the idea of making an orderly pile from the tumble of freshly cut logs, and pleased with that understanding. The two of them, not needing to speak, moved to and fro between diminishing chaos and growing order, coordination of this sort having become effortless in the sixty years since they were teenagers and just married. He wonders if she knows this chopped-up tree was the one that held the roped tire swing. Five kids played on that swing and ran around the yard under her watchful eye out the kitchen window.

Watch the weather

He hopes the weather will hold, but the forecast is iffy. It might rain, like it did two days ago, making him wonder if his care to collect and dry the fuel early has gone for nothing. He waits it out, hoping for better weather but knowing it’s out of his control. She’s still asking, every time the two of them go outdoors, what the pile is for. She remembers making the log structure, but the seemingly random litter for the fire makes no sense to her. He usually responds patiently, but patience can come hard to a man accustomed to working independently within a partnership of trust and mutual, unspoken values. She who had shared responsibility is now merely following him, and what used to be the combined if separate efforts of two strong and self-reliant people has morphed into his singleness of responsibility for her. It’s better when she has a small job to do, one that’s soothing in its repetition, but those tasks are done for now and there’s nothing to replace them.

On bonfire day, get an early start shaping the pile so it’s high with a broad base; it should be ready to light by mid-morning.

By 8:00 a.m., he’s outdoors with a rake, scraping the edges of the pile upward and inward into the pyramid shape that’s optimal for producing hot, long-lasting coals. The fuel is dry, the rain having lasted only half a day. He doesn’t stop to check wind direction; he knows it like he knows a coming change in weather, not something he must think about, just an awareness. He grabs the bag of twine and props it against the windward side of the pyramid. Then come the newspapers, dry and dusty, some to be spread on top of the bag, the rest over everything else. The pile sags under their weight.

Light the fire

He crouches next to the bag of twine, holding a long-necked lighter. The breeze is strong enough to threaten the tiny flame, but he touches it to the bag where it’s sheltered by his body. Orange tongues curl around and up. He comes out of the crouch stiffly, accommodating knees that have bent and held and straightened at the sides of countless cows, every day twice a day since he was sixteen and legally old enough to leave school. The wind blows over it all. A shower of sparks follows the growing flames with a satisfying crackle and hiss. When he’s sure the blaze is strong, one that will last hours, he goes to the log pile ten feet away. Carrying a short, fat log in each hand, he strides over to the fire, pauses a moment, then thrusts them assuredly into the flames. He turns back to the log pile.

She comes out of the house with her daughter-in-law, happy to see him working at the rows of chopped wood the two of them stacked, ten logs high and two logs deep. As before, she falls into the rhythm of the work, imitating his movement and toggling between fire and log pile, chatting aimlessly and smiling.

Tend the fire

The fire must be watched as it goes its fierce, hot way. Left alone, it will burn too fast and die, falling in on itself. Every half-hour or so he walks its perimeter, kicking logs that have rolled away back toward the center. He bends to pick up corncobs scattered under the trees, dropped by squirrels after they have eaten the kernels off. He rakes bark that has peeled off the logs. It’s all fuel. When he’s in the house getting lunch, he looks out the window above the sink to monitor the height of the flames and the direction of the smoke. Next to him, she puzzles about how to slice tomatoes.

Eleven years before, he spoke into a microphone in the hall rented for their fiftieth anniversary party. They wanted him to make a speech, the people sitting at round tables covered with white cloths and the remnants of buffet dinners, they clapped and laughed. So he went to the mic but didn’t start the speech right away. He looked for her. He said she had stood by him for fifty years and he wanted her beside him now. Then he didn’t speak for long moments: it may have been the catch in his voice that silenced him, or he may have been watching her come to him. Now she’s at his side constantly in a way that’s cruel mockery of his meaning that night. It’s not what he had hoped for their last years together, not remotely what he imagined sixty-one years ago, in love with her joy and warmth and flaming red hair. But it’s what life has given the two of them, in the same way it sometimes gave too much rain and sometimes too little so that, year to year, they learned to accept the uncertainty and manage together as well as they could.

Ensure hot, long-lasting coals

The fire burns. The rake leans against the oak, ready to be grabbed if the pile collapses outside the circle of stones. He’s vigilant at the fire’s side, knowing the only way to get lasting coals – the kind that cook the meat through, glowing on into the evening well past the marshmallow roast – is to shape it and watch it and shape it again. It’s a cloudy day, but not raining.

Two hours before supper, he finally allows the cone to settle into its middle, insulating and protecting the glowing coals beneath.

Welcome the guests

He hasn’t even told her there’s to be a party, keeping preparations out of her sight. But she has begun to suspect something’s up. He tries to reassure her but she becomes restless, worried there is something she’s supposed to do but unsure what it is or how to do it. When people arrive they don’t bring presents, just cards, which they put discreetly on the dining room table. No one knows how she might react to finding out it’s his birthday, but, given the panic attack before the previous family party, no one wants to find out. She wanders in and out of the rooms, a bit calmer now that guests distract her from pressing yet unknown responsibilities, smiling and talking to people she cannot name, some of whom she’s known all her life and three of whom she bore.

Three months later

He stands at the kitchen window, staring out over the yard and thinking about her. She lives a few miles away in the home that, unbelievably, she now needs more than she needs him. He has survived failed crops and a near-deadly tractor accident, family illnesses and deaths, blizzards, bad knees and sick cows. He has watched the sky and walked the fields and known it’s not he who makes it work but the two of them together and the light of their faith in all that is good and sacred. The house feels so very empty. Outside in the yard, halfway to the cow barn and near but not too close to the maple, where bits of blackened twigs lie amidst fallen leaves, a wisp of smoke seems to rise to the sky.

Carol D. Marsh is an award-winning essayist and author of the recently released memoir, Nowhere Else I Want to Be. A 2014 graduate of the MFA-CNF program at Goucher College, she’s won awards from New Millennium Writings, under the gum tree, and Soundings Review. Visit www.caroldmarsh.com.