Strange Fire

Gird up thy loins

Last fall the derelict house next door burned. 

When the fire started, light flickered inside like a jack-o’-lantern. Then a giant tongue of flame broke free and soared into the sky. I held my hand against our bedroom window, and it was hot to the touch. The siding on our house melted like cake in the sun. 

“You don’t have to leave yet,” the police officer said. 

When the firefighters gave up and decided to let it burn, they turned the hoses on our house. The force was so strong that water came through the sills. 

Soon after, a fire on the mountain behind our neighborhood burned for days. At one point it razed the incline railway. A friend was hosting a Sunday school class full of children when the cable snapped and snaked down the mountain. Her window framed a serpentine roar of flame. She called it a dragon. 

In class, I taught the Book of Job and noticed the fire imagery. “The fire of God hath fallen from heaven,” says one messenger. “I only have escaped alone to tell thee.” 

I should say too, these fires were accompanied by lots of grief: my friend’s dad died. My son’s classmate. A friend’s daughter. An inordinate number of funerals. It seemed like the world was coming undone.

I prayed, tried looking for better portents.

Before one of the funerals, my daughter slipped her miniature LOL Surprise doll in my coat pocket for comfort.

Our family spent time outside, tried training our eyes on everyday marvels. There were plenty, sure.

We watched the creatures in our yard. One, a mockingbird in a dogwood tree, just overhead—with a voice like a scythe, cutting the air. He seemed like an agent of creation, a creature who travels ether.

In the charred earth of our neighbor’s yard—scoured by flame, forbidding as any alien terrain—we found a toy truck and wondered about its owner. 

We walked the neighborhood and found scattered puzzle pieces on one of the footpaths, inviting a metaphor, a prompt to assemble all these events into meaning. 

After one of the funerals, I dreamed I was face down in a field, and above me was God himself, and I knew that if I looked up I would be undone. 

Later, our four-year-old said, “Hey Daddy, I know what God looks like. But I can’t tell you.” 

I wondered what she imagined. A consuming fire?

Robert Erle Barham is Professor of English at Covenant College in Lookout Mountain, GA. He is the deputy editor of Current.