With all the life-molding first time experiences that would come that day for me and my best buddies, Stevie and Butchy, it wasn’t Mr. Franklin, our neighbor, first to see the smoke billowing over the neighborhood doing that spectacular rendition of Paul Revere. Nor was it the distant approaching sirens that converged on the scene, not even the odd smacking sound my mother’s lips made when she heard it was me, that sticks most clearly in my mind. It was the speed at which a Zippo lighter could turn solitude into Armageddon when it touches a few blades of dried grass in a breeze under a forest of parched desert trees.
I can’t remember what happened to Stevie that day, I wasn’t able to see him for a month, but I did hear from my brother about Butchy, who clearly had the best strategy; he ran into his house and immediately bolted himself in the bathroom. After considerable time, his parents finally managed to convince him that he would not be put to death, and he dared to unlock the door.
I, on the other hand, would be put to death immediately. My mother, having struggled with this odd, stupid, and now clearly dangerous child for some years, cracked. She took me back into what we called the maid’s room, although we had not had a live-in maid for years.
Forced to explain what we had done and how we had done it, she then told me to take off my belt.
(book excerpt)
Richard Kimball
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