John D. MacDonald

Wild, Wonderful Old Man

Not long ago, coming back home on a night flight, I saw the sullen ember of a distant forest fire in the hills, and felt a small twist of anguish. I knew it was the memory of the injustice of my grandfather toward my big brother Paul in a long-ago October.

There were seven of us children in all. Now we are six. When we all get together with wives and husbands and children, we end up telling grandfather stories, marveling at that strange, wild, random old man who raised us, with our mother acting more as referee than parent. Sometimes we judge him quite mad. At other times we think he was full of devious wisdoms. Perhaps it was both. He never explained. Paul and I can laugh about the fire now.

It was a strange October that year. Hot and still and dry, day after day, the sun rising and setting in an eeriness of mist. The creek ran nearly dry. We all lugged water to the growing things, and fretted about the well. I remember that the three littlest ones, Tom, Nan and Bunny volunteered to give up washing — as a conservation effort. It was denied. The woodlands which began a half dozen miles north of the farm harbored dozens of fires. When the fitful winds were right you could smell the stink of burning forest, a strange dirty stench, somehow ominous.

Paul was fifteen that year, and I was twelve. I did the thoughtless stupid thing on the way back from the creek. I’d gone down there with Paul on a strangely hot Sunday afternoon to see if any brown trout were trapped in the pools. We were sauntering back. I had some kitchen matches in my pocket. When out in the wide world I liked to carry one in the corner of my mouth. I felt it gave me an air of insouciance.

In those years all small boys knew that if you hold a match in a certain way and hurl it downward at a stone or a sidewalk it will pop and burn. I was not adept, but I had tried so many times it required no thought. As we passed a gray boulder half submerged in the tinder dry weeds along the fence line, I idiotically hurled my match at it. It struck properly for once. The head popped and bounced into the weeds, and in an instant the sun-paled flames were high and spreading. For once Paul did not take time out to tell me how incurably stupid I was. He yanked his shirt off and began stomping and flailing, and yelled at me to run for help and water.

I was a hundred yards from the dooryard and I think I made as good time and as much noise as a fire engine. In a very short and confusing time, all seven kids and my mother and my grandfather were out there with wet sacks and blankets. It was a very near thing. I think that if there had been eight of us instead of nine, it might have gotten away. As it was, it burned off an astonishingly large area.

Tom was nine, and as responsible as any of us, and grandfather left him out there with a bucket of water and orders to patrol the perimeter, looking for any spark which could have survived the battle.

When we got back to the porch, grandfather sat down to catch his wind. He had been awe-inspiring out in the pasture, like a great windmill hammering at the flames, yelling at them as he beat them out-

“Who was there?” he demanded.

That was one area where he had always been predictable. When any punishable offense occurred, grandfather solved the problem of blame by impartially walloping everyone who had been in the immediate vicinity. Thus we were forever united, policing each other, with no tattletales.

Paul and I reluctantly admitted our presence at the scene, knowing that we would sit in gingerly fashion for the next day or so. The other kids drifted away and we were left there facing the old man. I remember the carbon streaks of burned grasses on his big hands.

“All right,” he said. “Which one of you did it?”

The simple question astonished us. Without warning, he had changed the rules. Paul straightened himself slightly and said, “I did it!” He was fifteen. He used a tone of voice we younger ones did not yet dare to use. Grandfather sighed and he looked at me, blue eyes under those angry white brows. I believe I tried to speak. But the thing I had done was so shamefully stupid, I wasted too much time trying to think of a way to confess which would give it some slight flavor of plausibility.

Before I could find the beginning words grandfather got up and went into the house, mother trotting along behind him, asking nervous questions.

I tried to explain myself to Paul, but he turned away. There was a great silence that night at the supper table. I was an outcast. I wanted the normal punishment. The change of ground rules made me feel lost and sick.

Grandfather got up from the table and looked at Paul and said, “I made some arrangements. You are excused from school. You’ll get a better look at a fire, boy.”

Early Monday morning one of the county trucks stopped and picked up grandfather and Paul. There was a crew of rough weary men aboard the truck, and a crude bouquet of tools in a steel drum — axes, shovels, mattocks. I remember mother pleading with grandfather, saying, “But he’s just a boy!”

I did not hear his answer. I know now they needed every strong pair of arms they could round up. It was a fearful time in the powder-dry forests.

I went off to school with the others. I did not hear much that day in school. I had the recurrent horrible vision of Paul encircled by a roar of flames, running and screaming. It was a horrible injustice. It was all my fault. I plotted to sneak off that night and join them in the hills. Somehow I would rescue Paul and everyone would forgive me.

When the five of us got home from school, we learned the well had gone dry. And that too seemed to be my fault. We had used a lot of water fighting that stupid grass fire. Mother got me aside and said, “What do you think we should do?”

The question astonished me. It made me realize that with grandfather and Paul gone, I was the eldest male on the farm. I forgot the feeling of being an outcast. The creek water was sweet. The creek was nearly three hundred yards from the well. Mother had turned off the pump when it had sucked dry.

I organized the four eldest of us, Christine, Sheila, Tom and me, into a water brigade. We scoured out big containers and loaded them on the pickup and I drove it as dose to the creek as I could get it. Then we filled them, bucket by bucket, drove back and dumped the water into the well. It was very hard work. After several loads, I primed the old pump and started it again. After Tom and Sheila were too exhausted to continue, Christine and I managed two more trips by ourselves.

As I lay in my bed that moonlight night, a smell of burning forest came in the window. I was in a soft bed, while Paul and grandfather were in the hills. There was more penance to do. I could not manage the truck system by myself, but I could carry water. I dressed and went quietly out into the night. I could not guess how many trips I made that night. Toward the end I could not manage full buckets.

I remember sitting on the combing of the well, the dawn rose-gray at the horizon line, flexing my aching hands, summoning up the will to make yet another trip to the creek. I remember seeing my mother come across the side yard in her robe. She led me back to the house. I can remember fighting tears, and losing just as we reached the steps.

The heavy rains began at dawn on Thursday, and before we left for school, Paul and our grandfather were home, dirty, exhausted, walking in a strange dazed, dragging way, as though they were walking up hill. When we came home from school they were still sleeping. Grandfather got up for supper, but Paul did not, and mother had me take him up hot soup and milk and apple pie. He told me of digging endless trenches, chopping through thousands of tough forest roots. He showed me his hands. We were friends again, somehow, but in a different way.

When I went back downstairs to my place at the table, I found mother telling grandfather how well I had managed the water problem. When there was a pause I blurted, “I set that fire Sunday.”

“Don’t interrupt your mother,” he said.

I sat with my head bowed. I could not eat. When she had finished, grandfather said, “Mary, if I didn’t think the boy could manage, I wouldn’t have taken Paul with me.”

He gave me a rough pat on the shoulder as he left the table. I wore it like medals. And suddenly I was ravenous. Grandfather never explained, and we never knew what he would do next He was as wild and random as the winds that blew.

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John D. MacDonald
Wild, Wonderful Old Man