Flame by Lexanne Leonard

My mother always told me not to play with fire. I seldom listened.

It started when I was five. I loved to watch the flames in the fireplace dance around, sending their ashes and smoke up the chimney and into the air.  I imagined myself a whirling partner waltzing with the red and gold flames but staying away from the blue ones that seemed like they should be cold instead of hot. I saw myself in a ball gown adorned with sparks instead of diamonds and my long hair flickering with every move.  The fireplace blaze kindled in me an urge to fly up the flue and travel on the smoke to far away lands where ash and smoke come to rest.

So it was when I came across my father and his pack of matches that my destiny was sealed. He had a horrible habit of smoking, not in the house as demanded by my mother, but next to the garage at the edge of the weeping willow his mother planted when he was just born. It was there he would sit for exactly a half hour between work and dinner and smoke his Camels and stare into the sky. Most evenings I would sit next to him looking in what I thought was the same direction wondering what he saw. We wouldn’t say a word to one another. We just enjoyed being in each others company. It was the day I came home late from Tara’s house that I finally realized what he was actually looking at.

I stood silently just inside the kitchen screen door looking into the backyard and surprised by what I was watching and not wanting to interrupt. I was transfixed on his ritual of lighting the match. Gently and with grace, if that is at all possible, the fingers of his left hand nimbly opened the cover, removed the small phospored paper stick, closed the cover, and with a flick the match burst into a flame so large it seemed to devour his head as he moved it carefully to his mouth. As quick as the flame appeared, it dissolved and the red tip of the Camel glowed as I watched his eyes follow the smoke into the atmosphere to the far away lands where ash and smoke come to rest.

It was then I knew my calling to the flame was more than just a passing interest. It bore itself deep within me when my mother and father shared their love.  It was something I would carry with me and share with my own and, hopefully, their own for eternity.

Caroline

Of all the people in the town Caroline was the one who knew everything and everyone.   Unfortunately, no one really knew her.  It was something that didn’t usually bother her.  She understood the townspeople’s reasons for shying away from her. She was content to live away from them.

Her house was at the top of Morgan Hill just outside of Peirston.  It was a little stone house built by her great-grandfather.  He chose the spot because, at the time, it was far from civilization.  He longed to live far away from people and the frenzy of the city.

One had to travel on the train to the Scottston stop with the hope of someone being there to give you a ride to where you were going. Otherwise you would have to walk and it was miles to anywhere, especially to Caroline’s great-grandfather’s house.

This was how Caroline’s great-grandfather met her great-grandmother.  She was riding by the train station on her way home from the village where she purchased some new fabric for a dress she was designing for herself.  She was driving by in her family wagon pulled by an ancient silver dappled horse, just as her great-grandfather stepped off the train.  Knowing that he would need a ride, she offered one.

He declined.

She insisted.

He declined.

And this went on for quite sometime with Caroline’s great-grandmother following behind her great-grandfather shouting that he really should ride with her and that it was no trouble and that night was coming and you never know what kind of animal might be about and that he surely must be tired from his long ride and how long a ride was to where ever he was headed and where was he from anyway and wasn’t it a beautiful day and surely he must be hungry and it would be no problem to bring some dinner back to him and where was he going to stay?

By the time she had tired of carrying on the conversation with only small grunts or nods of the head from him, he decided that in order to enjoy the peacefulness of the land, he would oblige her.

She took him to the hill that he immediately named after his mother, Morgan, and then had to explain in detail to her why he did that.

As she rode away with the sun falling behind Morgan Hill, he knew that his destiny had been forever sealed on that grassy mound and that she would soon be joining him.

Caroline would have enjoyed sharing this story of her courting relatives and her long history with the town. But when she tried to tell her story, a fit of coughing and hacking never let her words form. It was as if her words were refusing to let their secrets out for the world to hear.

When the coughing subsided, she would try again, only to find that her mouth seemed to take on a mind of it’s own. Her body would start to shake and her top teeth pushed in front of the bottom, and stares from her companions would keep her from attempting to utter another word.

It was different, though, when Caroline told her stories to the wind on top of Morgan Hill. As she began to speak, the wind rested and animals surrounded her in the garden.  She could spin tales that would mesmerize the creatures and they would stay for hours just lying on the ground curled up near the lavender bushes or sage plants. She swore they were smiling.

So this is how Caroline spent her days, telling her stories to the animals who kept her company, caring for Bertie the cow who gave her milk, gardening the land that fed her, tending the bees who sweetened her tea, and stringing Job’s Tears into rosaries that she sold to the convent nuns who, in turn, sold them to the locals.

Only when she was desperate for supplies would she travel to Pierston. She would hitch her proud blood bay, the silver dapple being long gone but well remembered in her stories, to the very wagon in which her great-grandmother wooed her great-grandfather.  Caroline always thought this was a good luck wagon and had hoped that one day maybe she would find her beau in the same way.  But for this day, she needed more string for her rosaries.