Fire Brigade

I was ten years old.
It was summer.
Four wily conspirators,
Hans, Philip, Charlie and I,
skulked over our illicit contraband,
a book of matches.

Like spontaneous combustion the idea burst forth.
We would start a fire, set off the alarm
and help firemen extinguish the flames.

Below our neighborhood,
as vast as the imagination,
covered with windswept straw-grass,
lay an abandoned field of rolling hills.

To reach it
necessitated first,
a crawl down a steep, vista'd rocky cliff,
then a slalom over sullen logs
intermittently half-sunk in a shallow, murky swamp,
towered over by rustling cat-o-nine-tails.

The fire stealthily set,
we scrambled back up to the overlook.
One hand anchored on a black, creosote-soaked telephone pole,
feet precariously balanced atop Han's shoulders,
I pulled the red alarm-box handle.

A minute, an hour, an eternity passed -
at last,
in the distance,
we heard the siren's electrifying, mournful lament.

Down below the fire truck lumbered clumsily over a road-less hill.
Faster than breath we clambered back down and
with a hesitant eagerness,
approached.
The fire never healthy, smoldered apologetically.

A young fireman,
full of sweat and hat askew,
waved us over with a friendly, bemused smile.
Gathering in the hose, he let us help.
Malleable and impressionable as youth,
drinking deeply his adult ease,
the four chameleons grew intoxicated with an impassioned, civic righteousness.

Walking home,
the former reckless, delinquent pyromaniacs,
now exacting, conscientious firemen,
fell into a miraculous amnesia.
We wondered
who had had the cowardice to start the fire.

The culprit's identity soon became clear.
The innocent Tony Thompson was guilty.
Asthmatic,
a momma's boy,
the unfortunate air of superiority
permanently affixed to his face,
was,
without a shred of doubt, the despicable arsonist.

We ran to his house and rang the bell.
His mother,
delighted to see her unpopular son so ardently sought after,
unsuspecting,
with a swelling, hope-filled exhilaration,
informed us he was next door visiting a mutual friend, Jeremy.

Just as the rambunctious, self-righteous cabal arrived,
Tony and Jeremy were walking out.
The two, startled by our fierce barrage of castigating accusations,
wilted like wincing, skittish cats.
To bury the lie,
we barked that the matches in our hands
were found outside the Thompson house, next to one of Tony's toys.
Jeremy, sensing the inevitable, pleaded for us not to hurt him.
One by one we beat Tony.
He slumped to the ground.
Silent, bloody, indignant, dignified and superior, he looked up at us.

Without so much as a twinge of remorse,
the four vigilantes snarled,
spat,
and swaggered off
into the descending dusk.