FLAMES c. 2024 by Saintorr

FLAMES c. 2024 by Steve Orr

Dust. Flames. My being. His being inscribed in my memory. In my every other action, his presence, his feelings and touch, living again. The lids over my eyes, my eyes themselves, my body—all a part of a my Father’s legacy. It takes more than seven years for a body to decompose. Seven years for the fat, muscle, skin, tendon and sinew to wear down, rot, become food for other living things, transform to gas and finally dust. Even then teeth and bone exist for years. It takes a lifetime to give in to the pain inflicted by that body, to feel that longing for the unloving Father; to forgive and get on with it.

I always hated my weird belly and that almost obscene rim of adipose tissue that protrudes, exactly where my belly button is. Now looking beyond 71, my elusive six-pack seems further away than ever (the wine and beer don’t help, nor the late night array of comfort food snacks). But I don’t have a paunch, like he did. Nor do I have huge rolls of belly fat, and pecs more like a nursing, pregnant woman, like he did. Obesity was listed as the primary cause of death on my Father’s death certificate. He was young, only 44 when he died. This happened, my Mother swore while he was inside her, that final night when The Big One came. And every time I see that small black and white photo taken just months before he died, his frozen glaze is that of a 60-something man, slight smile somewhere between sarcastic and dazed with just a pinch of pain in the eyes as if he could see his early end and was determined to ignore it with a fake chin-up smile.

This year was the 52nd since my Father died and the 40th or so since his body turned to dust. It’s also been some 66 years since I sat next to him in the front seat of a shiny, puffy 1958 Buick watching as the flames curl and dance on this flesh. On my left, Mother drove us frantically up the hill to the hospital. In the parking lot the Buick screeched to a stop, the door on the passenger side lunging open and my Father emerging, screaming and running up the front steps to the hospital doors, naked except for the dimpled white cotton bedspread he’d wrapped about his nude, flaming flesh. On some Sunday in the 50s, in the downstairs bedroom of a little, white house on a hill overlooking the winding Mississippi River where below, the small Illinois town stretched out like a patchwork quilt, my Mother and I were lying curled, under the covers of a warm bed, smelling of chocolate stars, hair and her. She, gently gurgling in her sleep while wrapping me hard in her arms like a velvet vise, the scratchy hair in between her legs pressing into me like wire,, squeezing against my puppy’s body.

A scream shook us from our nesting. A high-pitched animal sound shattering the air like a kind of bellowing devil. I began to cry. My Mother ran from the bed and disappeared into the kitchen. Then she started screaming too. I realized my Father was the screaming creature, with the sounds coming from the basement. I could make out words now.

Oh God help me Pauline. Help me, help, help! He said it over and over, yelling and bellowing in between shorter screams and wheezing breaths.. Then I heard my Mother’s voice raising in a yell-scream unison, I’ll get the car! Hector can you make it to the car? Come up the stairs and get in the car-I’ll take you to the hospital!!!

My Mother ran upstairs to check on my older brother and instructed him to call the fire department. I was crying and rubbing my eyes as I stumbled to where the animal sounds were coming from. In the kitchen, standing at the top of the basement stairs and staring down, I saw him— It was my Father. He was on fire. He was screaming. He was doing a kind of dance, on the floor now, rolling and wrapping himself in an old army mattress, then getting up, turning in a small circle and down again with the, rolling and wrappin. The gas smell and smoke waved around and off of him in angry, grey curtains. Aaaee, I’m on fire. Look out! He screamed. The mattress shouldered and smoked as he rolled on the floor in it, again and again, a burning-to-death-wrestling match. This was death. In my child’s mind I realized it for the first time. I would act out my Father many times in future childhood years, wrapping myself hard-up in a sheet or a blanket then attempting to get up from the floor and stand erect. I called this game Worm in which I wrapped myself up again and again so tightly. Worm=death.

I don’t recall how all three of us got into the car. I do recall that it was a very long slanted cement sidewalk up to that big, shiny, black Buick rounded and puffed like a marshmallow, waiting, engine on, parked in the street. My Mother must have somehow got me in the front seat. Hector get in the car. GET IN THE CAR! She yelled and yelled. He slid in right next to me. I cried louder now that this flaming thing was next to me—he himself whimpering and crying. His body was wet, probably with a combo plate of gas, sweat and his own burned boils and body fluid. Out of the corner of my teary eyes I notice something moving. I looked down and to my right and watched in terror as a single flame still smouldered and singed, knowingly burning, feeding and peeling a lengthy patch of his skin away as it danced, moving almost salaciously up his left forearm from his wrist. The thing was forming his skin into a flaming curl, eating itself. Orange on pink. The edge of the flesh was red-black and bubbling and cracking where the heat continued to roast skin; where the single, blue flame continued to dance and whisper like a tiny, blue devil, rubbing, giggling and laughing at us, a family of three, out for a pleasant Sunday morning drive. Sailing up the Hospital Hill. Mommy driving, Stevie next to her and Daddy on fire.

When we arrived in the hospital parking lot Mother screamed on the brakes. The car lunged to a stop, my Father grappled at the car door and threw it open, and flew up the hospital steps to the entrance, nude except for that dimpled cotton bedspread he’d wrapped around himself at the house. Run Hector Run my Mother screamed like a hysterical cheerleader. The image of his running, jiggling, naked body flying up those hospital stairs and through the entrance to the hospital, the bedspread trailing behind and out from him like wings, constantly plays in my mind over and over like a lost, scratchy, looping film clip. For so long I tried to forget it, and this year it appeared like some sleepless ghost, the relic of a fallen angel replaying over and over again. My Father’s ghost, a burning man running to save his own life. Winged victory.

I remember praying that day, the next and a number of days afterward. Hattie our beloved old lady next door watched over us while Mom was at the hospital. That day, alone I prayed to God. That was the first time I remember praying hard for something. I addressed the stern, old bearded man on the throne, looking up through the porched in screen doors somewhere toward heaven, my hands clasped. Please God don’t let my Daddy die. Oh, please God don’t let him die. My Daddy, my Father, please oh don’t God, please. I knew Hattie was watching me silently from her kitchen. Time passed.

Soon we heard that Father was going to be alright. What a relief! The details of the accident became more and more clear. He’d been cleaning out the water heater with gasoline and had neglected to turn off the pilot light. The cleaning rag he was using somehow caught on fire and there was a small explosion of gasoline with most of it enveloping the front part of his body. Burns covered like 70% of his torso, ranging from first to third degree. The latter necessitated skin grafts. I still recall him later showing us certain scars on the back of his thighs and calves where they’d removed the skin for the grafts. He had saved himself as a result of quick thinking survival skills. These he’d gleaned from serving as a sailor in WWII and Korea. Immediately after the explosion, by the simple action of wrapping himself up in an old army mattress, and rolling on the floor again and again to smother the flames, he’d saved himself. I never actually saw him during his stay at the hospital as the staff was probably afraid of infection. A neighbor would sometimes walk me up to the bluff where we used to fly kites as kids. Below, stretched out Savanna, the sleepy Illinois river town lie along the white-capped Mississippi like a patch work quilt. The bluff abutted the rear of the hospital. The neighbor would point to a uncurtained window on the 3rd or 4th floor and we would see a mysterious hand waving back and forth. Wave to your Dad, Steve. See your Dad?

After about a month he came home. For weeks and weeks he had to walk around without a shirt. I recall sitting at the end of the dinner table just staring at his glistening chest, solar plexus and belly. He was all shining and wet, red and bloody with dark, black creases of various colors where the burns had been third degree and where most of the skin grafts had been attached. Often the healing scabs would form pus from the blisters many of which were still weeping.. I recall my Mother using lots of thick rolls of cotton to absorb the exudate; and lots of rubbing alcohol and witch hazel for use as a splash-on to cool his body. The pain he went through must have been insane, an agony to move, or even sleep—the skin being the most touch sensitive organ of the body. He’d been through a trauma, a war between the gas, the fire and his body. Having survived his tissue needed to fester, itch, scab and re-scab, tingle, lick itself and slough off, forming new layers as it healed. For minutes or seconds I would just stare, hypnotized by the angry, quilted map of bloody scabs, blisters and wetness that sat directly across from me.. My Father, a bloody master, a living horror movie just sitting there with a slightly embarrassed, apologetic smile. I would stare until nausea overcame me and the soft, warm smells of my food became an extension of the monster-thing across from me. I would be excused from the table often and encouraged to take my plate into the living room. In front of the TV I would lay on my stomach, eating and watching Superman, so relieved to be out of sight of my monster Father.

Dust now. Flames in the memory. My being and his being, merged as one, then seared apart as the flames seared his skin. Father and son, the dead and the living. It takes more than seven years for the human body to decompose. Seven years for the fat, muscle, skin, tendon and sinew to wear down, decompose and rot, becoming food for other living things, transform to gas and finally turn to dust. Even then certain touch memories and emotional echoes live on and on down through the generations until they too become dust, burned in the flames of oblivion.