Home Fires

1

Fire cleanses but the Blood of the Lamb

Washes whiter than snow

—Jones Chapel

Flames are already jetting through one side of the roof. Daddy brakes sharply and pulls his old Chevy pickup right in behind Rudy Peacock. Before he can switch off the truck, I have the door open and am running towards the fire.

The West Colleton volunteer fire truck swings in next to that blazing corner and half a dozen men swarm to unreel the hose connected to its water tank. No water mains or fire hydrants this far out in the country. I doubt if there’s even a garden hose. Most buildings this old and this poor, the best you can expect in the way of on-site water is probably a rusty old hand pump out back.

No electric pump and nothing much else electric, judging by the outdated transformer on the light pole and the single thin line that runs down to the small one-room structure where flames leap up against the darkening sky. Where it started, no doubt. Frayed wires. A power surge or maybe a short. The wiring here probably hasn’t been inspected since it was installed fifty or sixty years ago.

Typical rural complicity. Long as you pay your bills and no one complains, Carolina Power and Light won’t bother you. But get cut off for letting your payments lapse, and they’ll make you bring your wiring up to code before turning the power back on.

All this and more rushes subliminally through my mind as I race for the open front door.

Daddy hollers for me to stop, to come back, and I hear one of the firemen call, “Reckon they’s still any gas in them old tanks?” Then I’m through the door and into the smoke-filled room.

Someone in protective gear pushes past me with a roughhewn cross. “Get out!” he yells, but a young, barrel-shaped man gestures urgently from across the smoky room. “The Bible! Grab the Bible!”

I snatch up the big open book and the white lace runner beneath it just as he hoists the wooden pulpit, slings it over his shoulder and heads for the door. Two more men try to move a monstrous upright piano but they can’t get the casters to roll and the thing’s too heavy for them to pick it up.

Flames lick the exposed rafters only nine or ten feet above our heads and sparks shower down on us, stinging my bare arms. One of the pews in the middle of the room is burning like a solitary bonfire, although the most intense heat radiates from the corner. Smoke chokes me, the skin on my face feels tight and hot, and my eyes are streaming as I look around for something else to save. Adrenaline pumping, I scoop up a stack of paperback hymn books. Some old-fashioned hand fans are heaped together at the end of one pew and I pile as many as I can on top of the hymnals and the pulpit Bible, then stumble towards the door and out into the humid night air as a burning rafter crashes somewhere behind me.

Daddy breaks free of restraining hands and grabs for some of the fans that are sliding out of my control.

“Don’t you never do nothing like that again as long as you live,” he says angrily as I cough and cough and try to clear my lungs. His hand is rough as he brushes at my hair where sparks have singed it. “You hear me, girl? I’m talking to you!”

“I’m okay,” I gasp between coughs. “Honest.”

But then I look back at the burning structure, and like Lot’s wife, I am struck dumb and motionless.

More people have arrived and their headlights light up the front of this makeshift church. For the first time I see the swastika and some large dark letters: KKK and NIggERS.

Small g’s and the capital I is dotted.

The tin roof gives way with sharp cracks as metal sheets twist in the heat. Flames shoot heavenwards and my silent, involuntary prayer follows them. “Oh God! Not A.K.?”

It’s the second time in four days that my nephew’s had me begging God’s mercy.