Burning Down the House
When I was a teenager I set our house on fire. I did this by failing to extinguish a cigarette that I had secretly been smoking, which I threw behind the couch in a rarely used room. This was a big 70's era romper room couch, synthetic from armrest to armrest, filled with a white wiry fluff, which apparently burns well.
You'd expect that I would have made certain that the cigarette was out, and I remember taking pains that it was. I never smoked regularly, so twisting out the embers would have been no boring routine for me, but a matter of my total concentration and enjoyment. For whatever reason, it didn't work.
My mother and I were staying in the house alone. The next morning I was having strange dreams, and I knew I was uncomfortable, but it was nothing I cared to get out of bed to see about. My mother knocked on my door a few times and I told her to leave me alone, though I sensed something was strange. I had become acclimated to the smell, which was merely horrible, not intolerable. It was unnaturally warm. Eventually the situation dawned on me and I got out of bed.
The smoke wasn't really very thick, as I said, but it was a burning presence in the eyes and lungs. Of course I went right to the door of the room where I had been smoking, and stupidly opened it. Until this point there had been no visible flame, but inside the walls were blackened, and the door knob was red hot. Flames were crawling up the drywall and licking the ceiling; virtually every object in the room was ebon with soot. I saw all this in a fraction of an instant before the heat forced me to close the door, but it made a lasting impression.
From here I walked to the kitchen and opened a sliding door which led onto the back patio. I could stand outside and still use a little red phone that had been complementary with a Time magazine subscription. As I dialed 911 I heard the staccattic tapping of the phone echoing the numbers in imitation of a rotary dialer. When the operator answered I was seized by a sense of hilarity, at actually having to report what was happening. I told a very stern sounding person that my house was burning down. He answered immediately with the address of my house, I think expecting to rattle me, assuming I was a prank caller.
I don't remember what my mother was doing at this point, probably gathering photographs. She described later how difficult it was for her to force herself to wake up; both of us were clearly affected by some kind of oxygen deprivation. If she hadn't managed to wake herself, I certainly wouldn't have woken up myself, and we would have both suffocated, most likely.
Soon we were all outside, my mother and I, and our pet pig and rat terrier. Managing the pig was my chief occupation as the firemen poured in and out of our home, and she strove vigorously to go her own way, to explore what the neighborhood acorn trees were offering. Once loosed, she was impossible to direct, and would have to be led back inside by a densely spaced trail of cereal. If allowed to roam free she was capable of creating a fair amount of havoc, and the dog catcher would, with tremendous effort, eventually apprehend her. How an animal with such a profound sense of smell could have remained unaroused in the reek of the building we fled I don't quite understand.
At any rate I couldn't blame things at the pig. The firemen must have found the butt, because they accused me of starting the fire by smoking. This bit of deduction struck me powerfully, and I'm still amazed they were able to figure things out so quickly. Maybe this kind of thing happens all the time.
I denied it and said something lame about having been playing with matches in the afflicted room. My mom, ever staunch defender, believed me, and that was that.
You'd expect that I would have made certain that the cigarette was out, and I remember taking pains that it was. I never smoked regularly, so twisting out the embers would have been no boring routine for me, but a matter of my total concentration and enjoyment. For whatever reason, it didn't work.
My mother and I were staying in the house alone. The next morning I was having strange dreams, and I knew I was uncomfortable, but it was nothing I cared to get out of bed to see about. My mother knocked on my door a few times and I told her to leave me alone, though I sensed something was strange. I had become acclimated to the smell, which was merely horrible, not intolerable. It was unnaturally warm. Eventually the situation dawned on me and I got out of bed.
The smoke wasn't really very thick, as I said, but it was a burning presence in the eyes and lungs. Of course I went right to the door of the room where I had been smoking, and stupidly opened it. Until this point there had been no visible flame, but inside the walls were blackened, and the door knob was red hot. Flames were crawling up the drywall and licking the ceiling; virtually every object in the room was ebon with soot. I saw all this in a fraction of an instant before the heat forced me to close the door, but it made a lasting impression.
From here I walked to the kitchen and opened a sliding door which led onto the back patio. I could stand outside and still use a little red phone that had been complementary with a Time magazine subscription. As I dialed 911 I heard the staccattic tapping of the phone echoing the numbers in imitation of a rotary dialer. When the operator answered I was seized by a sense of hilarity, at actually having to report what was happening. I told a very stern sounding person that my house was burning down. He answered immediately with the address of my house, I think expecting to rattle me, assuming I was a prank caller.
I don't remember what my mother was doing at this point, probably gathering photographs. She described later how difficult it was for her to force herself to wake up; both of us were clearly affected by some kind of oxygen deprivation. If she hadn't managed to wake herself, I certainly wouldn't have woken up myself, and we would have both suffocated, most likely.
Soon we were all outside, my mother and I, and our pet pig and rat terrier. Managing the pig was my chief occupation as the firemen poured in and out of our home, and she strove vigorously to go her own way, to explore what the neighborhood acorn trees were offering. Once loosed, she was impossible to direct, and would have to be led back inside by a densely spaced trail of cereal. If allowed to roam free she was capable of creating a fair amount of havoc, and the dog catcher would, with tremendous effort, eventually apprehend her. How an animal with such a profound sense of smell could have remained unaroused in the reek of the building we fled I don't quite understand.
At any rate I couldn't blame things at the pig. The firemen must have found the butt, because they accused me of starting the fire by smoking. This bit of deduction struck me powerfully, and I'm still amazed they were able to figure things out so quickly. Maybe this kind of thing happens all the time.
I denied it and said something lame about having been playing with matches in the afflicted room. My mom, ever staunch defender, believed me, and that was that.
posted by sevenfactorial at 1:08 PM
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