The house has been accepted by flame. Whole drapes of blaze blow out across one casement ledge. There is soft roar, an inflammatory statement, against our semi-rural night. And so much torrential white smoke that the long gable roof might seem under power, steaming, chugging someplace. Flame will run from window to window, nyah-nyah, surprise, like idiots on a junket. I’m taken in by such flamboyance: I’m a buff for it. The burning smells hospitable and, though giant-vicious, sweet. When a particularly subtle piece of 150year-old wood has been caught, ingenious green or blue or violet flash is improvised on. Ten million sparks fizzgig up: you might think the air was carbonated by them. I saw this fire first from a mile away and thought it something neon: so do we congratulate nature with images of artifice.
One volunteer pumper was there already when I came. A second, a third soon after. Water, crowd-control strong, blammed against the upper wall and broke glass out. These hoses are unruly, viperish: three men together have trouble training them. An assault force went on the porch roof. One man started to axe hot attic shingle open: he’d have had better luck flensing a whale with blunt-nose scissors and his teeth. Yet, momentarily, I thought that the blaze would be stubbed out. I couldn’t see burning: flame had suffocated in its own gas. Then a hose began to sag: another. Here, there, fire—quick as incendiary rumor—budded up again. They were out of water. You don’t find hydrants in a meadow, after all. The denser was fireman-carried down, overcome by smoke. We gave ground, gave lawn. This thing had inhaled: you could hear its arrogant breath. All at once the living room went on, bright and cordial and totally, eerily afire. Flame sat in furniture: it held conversation. A volunteer turned away. To grind his lit butt out underfoot.
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