Chapter Nine: Tales of a Scorched Earth
I woke up at six in the morning on that Saturday. I never woke up early on Saturday, not since I was in first grade and before Dad shot out the television with a 9mm. It was a quiet morning in New York, where we lived up until I was in fourth grade. I had a bowl of “Froot Loops” and sat on the couch watching the morning cartoons until Alexis staggered in and stepped over my legs. She could have gone around or over the couch, but instead she decided to step over my legs which were stretched out from the couch to the coffee table. She missed her target and fell onto my leg, causing me to scream, drop my cereal on the carpet.
I forgot to mention that eating in the living room wasn’t allowed as we were renting the apartment.
So, I yell, and Alexis shouts out a few choice words and Wednesday, hearing her from the hall, goes onto a tirade as she runs into the living room. By then, my leg feels like it was snapped; sugary milk and soggy loops are all over the couch, coffee table and the carpet; and my older sisters are talking like they’re in the second week of Marine boot camp when Dad storms into the living room.
My father was a hippie that had no idea the sixties had ended; at least that’s what he used to tell us. That was only half the truth though, for as much as he believed in peace, love and understanding he also believed that the police were always against him; the government was always looking into how to screw the common man; and he didn’t have to do a damn thing if he didn’t want to.
He took one look at the fighting, me, the floor; the Smurfs on the television, and then reached into his robe pocket and then into a drawer that I never noticed before, pulled out a gun, loaded a magazine and then shot the TV.
Fortunately, I had already gone to the bathroom.
Mom stormed from the all and into the living room.
“What the Hell, Wayne!”
Dad had lowered the gun and removed the clip. “Well, kiddos, I guess we need to move.”
Mom didn’t say a thing, as her eyes and facial expression said it all.
Two days later, we moved out of our apartment of four years and started a five-week trek across the United States in an old-style Volkswagen van and a blue Toyota Corolla. Mom drove the minivan with the three girls while Dad and Alex drove ahead of us. We kept in contact through a CB radio and at times could switch the channels to talk to the truckers and anyone else who was “on the horn”.
We stayed at campgrounds and parking lots at night. We were living off what we had with just enough money to keep fuel in the cars. There were times we stayed at a campground for a few days and kind of absorbed ourselves with the other kids there. It was a lot like summer camp, but even better: no camp counselors screaming their heads off. We just had Alexis, who nominated herself to the position of “mom” while our parents were away and, of course, we made it our mission to ignore everything she said. We did this for a few hours, until we all felt hungry, and the three of us realized Alexis was the only one who knew how to cook anything. Alex could light a fire, he could anything on fire, but everything would burn; from hot dogs, s’mores to cereal. We had to grovel to Alexis to feed us, even if it was Oliver Twit gruel and for the last night at the campground, it felt like we were going to have to go begging or resort to more desperate measures when Mom and Dad returned with a few bags of food. We ate well that night. No one asked where the food came from.
We all had our ideas, but no one ever asked.
We stopped everywhere on our cross-country trip: from Mount Rushmore to some sleezy tourist trap in the middle of bum-frick nowhere that promised everything under the sun but wasn’t worth wasting a flashbulb on. Alexis slowly grew on everyone’s nerves and she was moved to the car with Alex and Dad—much to her chagrin—and constantly muttered about the cigarette smoke and ash dancing in the air as we drove on to our destination: my grandfather’s land in Washington state.
The first thing we noticed upon arriving was that we were out in the middle of nowhere. I never remembered my grandfather’s place, as I was just a baby the last time we were there, but I knew instantly that I missed the buses, buildings and the beaches of New York. It didn’t matter that I would one day ride a school bus; see tall buildings in Spokane or go to the many lakes that made up the Columbia River Basin…it still sucked.
It was in early July when we finally moved into the house after spending a month in the quasi-finished upstairs of my grandfather’s house. It didn’t really matter to me as there were no other kids around for miles and I had gotten tired of hearing my brother and sisters complaining about everything so I would go off by myself to the woods across the street and think about how great it was going be to be to have friends come over and camp out in these very woods, away from everything and under the stars. I thought that maybe, one day, I’d have a boyfriend who would want to spend time with me in a small clearing, surrounded by trees.
We could take short walks or long strolls down the gravel roads that criss-crossed the Hutterite farms while holding hands and laughing about things we didn’t understand. Then look at each other’s eyes and get lost in time—where nothing else would matter. We could talk about our pasts, present and our future together with no interruptions from anyone. No current family issues or school life to interfere.
Of course, it didn’t take long before a great sense of dread fell over me as I was pretty sure I wouldn’t make friends easily. We were city folk from the east who were going to be attending some school in a farming community where everyone knows whose uncle left the gate open and allowed a bull to escape or who was the oldest in kindergarten. I was sure it was going to be a good ol’ boy kind of thing. I thought this so much that my ears burned in shame. I also smelled smoke. I turned my head and saw a pillar of smoke over the tree tops.
Normally, one would run away from flames but I ran towards it to see that it was on the hill behind the house; the house we had barely even spent time in and it was on its way to being burned up. I ran to the house and thew the kitchen door open.
“There’s a fire behind the house!”
No one was in the kitchen or the living room but I heard a crashing sound coming form my parents’ bedroom.
Mom raced out of the room with a psycho look in her eyes as she ran past me and looked out the window.
“Shit. Cherry, get the hose.”
Mom ran out the kitchen door, opened the dryer, grabbed two towels and then ran around the house as I stood in the kitchen wondering where the hose—much less a faucet—was.
Wednesday and Alexis hurriedly climbed the ladder and ran to the same window to see the dark clouds of smoke.
“Holy shit,” Wednesday yelled and then ran out the door.
Alexis walked out behind her. Leaving me to take up the rear.
We ran up and over the hill to see dad and Alex fighting a losing battle against a brush fire. They were using their shirts and feet to stomp out the flames before taking a step back. It was at that time that a deafening explosion occurred.
The noise was deafening, followed by bright flashes of sparks and more flames.
“Shit, Wayne! Really, fireworks?” Mom screamed as she threw one of the towels at him.
“It seemed like a good idea at the time!” Dad yelled as they batted at the flames.
It took over forty minutes before the fire department arrived with several large trucks and digging equipment. They were able to get close to the fire, due to the rutted paths on grandpa’s land and they dug a fire line between the flames and the house. Mom and Dad traded a few choice words back and forth over the fireworks he bought on the Reservation two weeks prior. Not exactly fireworks, but more like four large bricks of pressed gunpowder with a simple fuse. They were trying to light it when it short-fused and Alex dropped the match, causing it to light the dry grass and craggy shrubs. The fire department wasn’t happy.
Mom wasn’t happy either as Alex burned his arm form the small explosion and the fire department strongly recommended that it should be looked at. They took him to the local hospital in Davenport, leaving me alone with my sisters.
Alexis muttered about her hair smelling like smoke and ash.
Wednesday commented that is wasn’t such a big fire, not like the building fires we saw in New York.
I never saw one, so in my book, it was a pretty freaking huge fire that came within a quarter of a mile from our house.
They came home hours later with Alex’s left arm wrapped up in take and gauze. He didn’t talk about it and just went to his room after he got home. Mom went to the kitchen and started making dinner and dad stayed outside in the dying light of the day, working under his car.
The flames and the rumors reached all over Lincoln County: it was a satanic ritual; drug manufacturing, drunk kids or just some idiot playing with fire crackers on a red flag warning day. It wasn’t even the first day of school before the locals dubbed us lunatics—someone was always talking about: “hey, did you hear about that crazy family who blew up their house up there on Little Falls Road?”
This occurred for several months until people actually figured out we were the ones they were gossiping about. It was how we met the Daniels family.
We drove into Reardan in late October and nearly slammed into a car in front of us when the driver jerked the wheel from side to side and their front fire blew out. Dad looked at mom and then at me and Alexis before he shrugged and got out of the car.
“Everyone okay?” Dad asked as this huge man climbed out of the driver’s seat of the car, looked back and nodded to him.
Dad cautiously moved behind their car to the passenger side, which had the blown tire. The passenger side door of their car opened and this short woman, well, short in comparison to Andre the Giant who was looking at the tire. Mom got out as well and walked over.
Alexis then got out of the car and I followed. There was no traffic around and what traffic there was didn’t stop.
“I got a spare tire in the trunk,” Dad said as I walked behind Alexis. I admit I should have stayed in the car as I had watched TV shows. Sure, we were on the outskirts of town but that’s usually when you meet “The Children of the Corn” or at least some kind of masked killer. I froze when two tall boys stepped out of the back of the car. I had seen one of them around school, his name was Josh, but I didn’t really know him as he had just started at Reardan. I wanted to run back to the car.
“You’re Cherry, right?”
Alexis walked right on by and Josh stood in front of me.
“Yes.” I replied with a little bit of hesitation.
“Josh Daniels. This is my brother, Dave.”
Dave didn’t look at me as he walked away from the car and to the side of the road.
Dad walked past us to the back of out car.
Several cars zoomed past.
They hadn’t killed us yet, but I still didn’t like being there.
Mom and Alexis talked with the woman, who I learned was named named Leah Daniels. Her husband, who at first I guessed was named Fezzik, went by the name of John. They had moved to Washington from Alabama, so like us, they were living in a land of strangers where everyone said “ya’ll talk funny”.
We followed them to their house, which was one house down from the high school, and we stayed for what seemed like hours as Josh grudgingly introduced me to his four brothers and described the royal rumble they were involved in at their former school. Dave swore that everything Josh said was true. The other three brothers were too engaged in playing their Nintendo to really care.
Alexis sat in the corner of the living room reading a book in the dim lamp light while mom and dad played cards with new-found friends. I walked downstairs with Josh and we went out to the back yard and talked a bit more, I guess trying to catch up on the all of the hours we never spoke to each other at school.
I was in sixth grade, I didn’t really have any particular feelings about Josh. What was I supposed to feel about him? We were both awkward kids whose cars just about collided earlier in the day and there we were, standing in his backyard with the high school across the street. Josh looked to the school and then back to me. He arched his right eyebrow and asked: “Did you hear about the cult that set the ridge on fire a few months ago?”
