The Things That Burn
July 4th, 2018
He was a cowboy from up north, here to pick up the annual Fourth of July rodeo. Town swelled with stock trailers and cowboys– to the locals an inconvenience we entertained, even embraced, but to them just another stop in their dusty life on the road chasing checks. I watched him during the three nights of rodeo calmly sweep cowboys off bucking horses, guide loose steers and bulls back to the chutes. His steady and gentle horsemanship kept my eyes on him night after night. From across the bar, through the sea of cowboy hats, his blue eyes burned into my freckled face. He watched me carefully take a sip of my bourbon, burning from my lips to my stomach. He reached out a hand and calmly swept me across the dance floor, steering me out of the packed bar. His skin mingled across mine, sending sparks through the narrow air between us. We sat on the steps, awash in neon light watching fireworks lunge for the stars, burning out before they ever kissed.
September 7th, 2021
Planes flew close to the tops of burning trees, leaving a trail of red fire retardant behind. Helicopters picked up buckets of water from the reservoir and flew them to the uncontrolled flames. Firefighters swung axes, sprayed water and lit firebreaks in a chorus of popping sap bombs. Shouting through soot with sweat-caked faces, they fought flames to save the homes of others, praying they would return to their own. All of this because someone on a hike needed a smoke. In the valley, watching the action above as evening entertainment, a man checked the temperature of the brisket in front of him. The post oak he flew from from Texas to Montana let off clean smoke, hardly visible but for the mirage of heat it traveled in. The smoke and heat permeated the $200 hunk of meat sitting on the grates of the smoker and mixed with the orange haze of the atmosphere around him. He brushed off ash from the face of his Rolex and shouted at the college students throwing the football on TV. He lit the end of a spliff, drew deeply and knocked the ember into the grass.
September 1st, 2023.
It was a hot morning on the prairie when Jimmy Buffett died. Racing rattlesnakes took to the low shade of sagebrush. My setter lifted his nose and fat tongue to the stream of water coming from my hand. Hot breath worked through the dog’s lungs and heavy panting drowned out the chorus of Margaritaville humming between my teeth. Sweat ran down my back soaking through an open pearl snap shirt and the beads rolled from my brow to my upper lip where I tasted their brine. It was opening day and too hot to hunt. Dogs normally loaded back into the trucks, rode in the cabs as we drove around aimlessly with air conditioning blasting. Maybe the gas station in the next town had ice cream. Thirty miles of dirt road later we pulled into the station where I left the keys in the running ignition. I walked out of the shop with a bottle of cheap local wine under my elbow and a waffle cone of cookies and cream melting down my arm. I stood for a moment and checked out the line of Harleys parked next to my truck. The men in the shade of the building with matching leather vests with “BANDIDOS” across the back caught my gaze. We nodded and lifted our ice cream cones to each other.
April 3rd, 2024
Palm trees danced against the setting sun, twirling and dipping each other up and down the beach– reaching their long arms out to catch the wind. We sat in the sand at their feet watching their flirting shadows tango over our burned skin. The darkness of the night grew, cloaking the island in a cool navy blue tone. Somewhere down the path in the village, the locals played a game of soccer under the vapor lights of the island pitch. In the shadows, others threw down colorful money on alleyway cock fights. We stayed rooted on the beach among the dancing palms. For a week, the rays from the Mexican sun had bounced off the backs of the tarpon and permit we so desperately lusted for, burning pale racoon masks on our faces and roasting our bare feet. Salty air blew off the ocean and into our lungs, tossing my blonde hair across his face. I tucked a poem into his hand, torn out from the pages of a Jim Harrison book. In his eyes, the words floated off the page and carried into the mangroves. Somewhere in those mangroves, spoonbills and wood storks tucked in together for the night.
