In Fire
THE END
You’ve never sat there.
You’ve never sat so close to anything in your life, and you never will.
You’ve never felt a cloud of hot ash dance upon your skin. You’ve never stood so close that the tears streaming down your face sear into you before they could ever reach the earth. The heat eventually becomes so unbearable that you stop crying, and start sweating uncontrollably. Your body begins begging for you to run, and it uses every defense it has against its enemy. But once the timer runs out on your bodies last grand effort to live, you stop sweating.
Your lungs are now scorched with smoke. Your body convulses in pain, begging for an ounce of fuel for itself. But the fire is unforgiving, and hoards every sacred drop of air for itself. And then, it begins to play with you. Seductively licking your ankles, with the promise of a breeze kissing your neck. The fear dancing in your chest pulsates through your body.
Until you suddenly feel nothing, become something, and discover what’s beyond.
The fire grows bigger and moves on. Unphased.
You’ve never sat so close to anything so that it consumes you.
So close that is consumes your being, your soul, and leaves a deceit of death.
But from this death springs life.
A simple life.
THE MIDDLE
And this is real life, so this isn’t going to have a happy ending.
And you’ve never sat there because it hasn’t happened yet. The year is 2021, and it’s towards the end of summer. Before last week, the air was as clean as I’ve ever tasted it. The stars sung at night, and the toads boasted a lovely song in the city streets. I roamed city streets for fourth time in my life, completely alone. I didn’t know much about the city, but what I understood it never used to have a frog quartet on every corner.
Your world is different, yes. But it still exists. You dwell on media, breathe envy and jealousy, and chat with your folks every now again. Different yes, but it exists.
I spent my entire life fighting. Fighting for my land, for my family, and for what I believed in. Romantic, yes I know. And a fool I truly was.
Growing up, I watched my father effortlessly fight for what he believed in. There was always food on the table, and love in his heart. During some years our pockets were even boasting with cash.
He only wanted the same thing I did. To be left alone to live. Not in a selfish way, but in the way where you simply want to provide for yourself, your family, and help whoever you can through your work. And that’s how I always saw farming. I saw it in the way that I knew every crop that I grew was good, and that someone, somewhere would be better off after eating it. They probably wouldn’t think about the person who grew it, or how it even got to them. I hoped that just maybe a moment after eating it, they felt happy, content, or some other simple form or pleasure.
Like my father I simply wanted to live simply. But if you’re anything like me now, you know that complex and filthy comes freely, while simple does not.
People over the years have romanticized what it is to be a farmer. That it’s simple work. But farming has never been simple, just like life. Yes, you probably know that every farmer goes through tough times be it drought, a bad crop, or not enough money to make things work. What you don’t know is that even when things are going well, we’re fighting off people like you. Because you, just like the old me, want to make people’s lives ‘better’. We’re fighting off people offering to buy out our business. People who want our land to turn it into some corporate production. We’re fighting off people who don’t care about the land. We’re fighting to keep our soils alive and working to meet your selfish demands. We’re fighting off solar panels, wind farms, and biofuel crops that are constantly being shoved in our faces with the promise of money. They think of us as simple in the sense of ignorance, and become baffled when I speak truth over their falsities simply because I can read a book.
And maybe you’re one of the special few reading this asking yourself ‘why are these things bad? How come I’ve never heard about this?’ For me the answers to your question are simple.
- Because they fuel a false complex sense of security.
- Because I treated the world simply.
I never tried to push my way of life, thoughts, and morals onto you. I never went on the news complaining about these things, because I wanted to be left alone. Not alone alone, but alone. Which is the same thing you should want if you had any sense about you. Similar to many people who share my way of life, we enjoy technology and relish in all the happiness and wonder it brings us. We get DVD’s delivered to our doors not because the internets to slow, but because we like things simply. We like tangible things we can hold in our hands and say are ours. We use social media, but only to chat with loved ones and friends. Sometimes we post a picture when the sun was out on the farm and the lemonade was cold. We watch TV, but rarely the news for the same reason we don’t really use social media, and why we get DVD’s delivered.
Because we like to fool ourselves into thinking the world is simple. That you can hold something in your hand and say it’s yours or not. Take a test to see if your sick or not. Or take a poll and say you’re a democrat or a republican, just like it’s asking you your race. But it’s not that simple, is it? Yes, you can be black or white, or both, but your race is something you can simply declare. You’re human, and that you can simply declare. But happiness, being sick, political affiliation, and even the DVD, you can never truly declare what you are or if it’s yours because their definitions are always changing. You can say you can’t buy something because you don’t have the money, and that’s simple. But in reality, you could barter illegal substances and acts, and never spend a fiat dime. Life isn’t simple no matter how badly you want it to be.
Maybe in truth it’s because I never grew up. I never gave up the illusion that although life wasn’t, that life could be simple. I made my way through life like a kid playing video games; fixated on the screen and what you want, and ignoring the realities of the real world until it suited me to look away from the screen. I stayed blind to the candy wrappers on the floor, the dog that needs to go out to pee, and to the mother whose personality had been smothered into submission by those around her. I simply looked at the screen until I needed to pee, and did that as quickly as possible. I lived life like a kid playing video games.
THE BEGINNING
My name doesn’t matter.
I was born in a hospital in a big city, and then ferried out into the countryside in a Dodge pickup truck a day later. I grew up playing in the streets, riding bikes with my friends, and sneaking alcohol out to high school parties from my parent’s liquor cabinet. I went to college, got a degree in agriculture and developed a love of literature.
I had two beautiful children, and a loving, adoring, kind husband.
My husband had a strong back, good heart, and pale blue eyes. When we were younger, he was quite the looker, but he had no game. We met at a hardware store where I told him he was buying the wrong varnish for a cedar deck. After proving myself right, we’ve been attached at the hip nearly ever since.
My parents died a couple years after we got married and had our first child, a boy. My husband quit his corporate business job and we began working my parent’s farm together in the pursuit of happiness. Shortly after, we had our baby girl.
The boy grew up just how you’d want him too. Did well in school, didn’t get into any trouble, and was working as a nurse when this all started. After a few years of nursing he was planning on going back and becoming a doctor so that he could open up a family practice in his childhood town.
Our daughter on the other hand, was a bit more like me growing up. Got into some trouble, but still did well in school. She loved sports, especially soccer. I have no doubt she could’ve been a professional. But like many girls her age, she fought to obtain an image of beauty she never would, and as her mother it hurt to watch her strive to be like everyone else. But that pain ended, and a new one began 4 years ago. She was a sophomore in chemistry at college and doing well. She met a very nice, handsome man, who I got to meet a few times. From what I understand they went out to a bar on Friday night with some friends. He thought he was okay to drive her back to her apartment, but he wasn’t. They both died from the accident; her immediately and him in the ambulance. Supposedly it wasn’t even his fault, some reports claim the other car swerved into them, which made them spiral off the road. Either way, it doesn’t matter to me, the results are the same.
My husband, son, and I all grieved for a long time, but of course none of us ever really stopped. We just soon became distracted by the news of the outbreak.
When it all started to go really bad in May of 2020, I told my son he needed to come home and be on the farm where it was safe. But he insisted staying there at the hospital was the right thing to do, and that saving people is his life’s purpose. I of course cried over his decision, both in admiration and disappointment. I consoled myself that he was smart and wouldn’t catch the virus if he was careful. I also assumed that he might have already had it and was asymptomatic, or that is phased him no more than the common cold. But still I worried.
My husband was the one who always went out to get the groceries, he didn’t want me to get sick. He always said he had the immune system of a god, which as far as I can tell, he did. He could eat anything and be fine, and is one of the only men I know that never caught a ‘man cold’. He got pneumonia once back in ’04, but despite being older, still kicked its ass in under a week.
But one day in August, he simply didn’t come home from the store. I waited around for awhile and was just about to get in the truck and go looking for him when the sheriff knocked on the door. From what I understand, he pulled over to help a young couple with a flat tire. As soon as the flat was fixed, they hit him on the head probably intending to knock him out so they could steal our car, and all of our groceries. What they didn’t intend is for him to fall and hit his head on a rock and die from internal bleeding before anyone even noticed his body in the ditch alongside our small town country road.
It doesn’t affect you, so I won’t elaborate on the horror you feel in the pit of your stomach, or how your body starts convulsing as you feel a part of your soul get ripped out of your body when you get told someone you love has been killed. I felt this once intensely for my daughter, but was at least bound in the strong arms of my husband. This time, there were the arms of the sheriff which offered only more fear and cold terror of the changes that were coming.
My son returned home to me as quickly as he could after I could muster the strength to call him. He consoled me for a few weeks before returned back to the front lines in the battle against the virus. The police caught the couple who did it, and they both went to jail for a long time.
I tried to pass my days by roaming the internet as I couldn’t find the bodily strength to work the fields, and had read every book in the house. At first it was kind of fun finding all my friends, and posting pictures of my tulips, but soon it grew into an obsession. Instead of facing the reality of the dying fields and my empty house, I bought a dog and watched the tulips die. It was fun, the dog I mean, but I marinated in my own pity and depression as I sat on the couch for hours at a time, stopping only to watch TV and eat.
My son, as brilliant as he was, was saving lives. Eventually it was realized that everyone was going to get the virus and some would die, and some wouldn’t. But the virus got ‘meaner’ as the non-readers would say, and death rates increased. I read, and scrolled, through news and fake people for every waking moment for months until the fires started. It was like an adrenaline shot of reality for me.
When I saw the news about the fire, I opened my eyes. I saw the pit of wallowing solace I had let myself and the farm slip into.
That very same day in the summer of 2021, my son called me to tell me he had been sick. That he had caught the sickness, beaten it, and hadn’t told me before because he didn’t want to worry me. He also wanted to tell me, that there was a girl he wanted to marry. He wanted me to flee from the fire, and come to the city to meet her.
I was happy of course, but also saddened by his call. It was true, that I had lost every sense of myself. I had lost my strength as a person, and I had lost the trust of my son. I realized that I barely even knew him anymore. He had been distant after his sister died, but constantly tried to reach out to me over the past year since his father died. Yet every time he called or messaged, I turned away.
The virus got me.
People say love isn’t simple, but as far as I can tell love is the only thing in this world that is. When you have a child ‘you’ll understand’ they say. Because when you have a child, you love them, no matter what, and that’s the annoying thing about love. That’s why love is simple, because either you love them, or you don’t. Either you would do anything for them, or you won’t.
My guess is, many of you reading this haven’t been in love, or you think you love someone. But if you even have to question it, I can assure you, you aren’t.
I love my husband, I love my children, I love my parents, and I love this farm. I love the way of life I sought to lead, the simple one, but never obtained.
I racked my brain as to what to do. What made sense for me. For the first time since I was young I had the opportunity to think for myself, and only me. No fear of having to worry over my husband or my children. My son was older and in love, I didn’t have to worry about him. But even though all of this is true, I couldn’t bring myself to be selfish, I wasn’t raised that way. I couldn’t just think about me and my farm, I had to think about my son, and billions of people still alive on earth. I had to think about them.
Yes, fires come and go. We’ve fought off many over the years and came through alright. Spray the house and barn with retardant, put all the valuables in the car, and fight the fire with the wildland firefighters if we could. One year the house got scorched pretty bad, but it wasn’t nothing my husband couldn’t fix. When the kids were older, they’d help spray the house and get the chickens loaded up to get to safety. We always made it through together.
But this year, there were no firefighters coming to protect my home. Many of them gone, infected, or busy protecting some bigger, more important farm. My family is gone, and there’s simply no way that I can fire proof the house, and save everything all by myself. I was alone, and there was no way things we’re going to be alright this time.
I had my neighbor come haul off the chickens and take my dog away. I said I was going to stay behind to grab a few more things, but that’s not what happened. Instead, I sat on my porch in the rocking chair my husband built me, and my kids had painted, and thought for a while as I watched the fire roll over the distant hills.
PROLOUGE
We lost our humanity somewhere along the way. Somewhere between the likes and loves, the facts and fake news, a cultural homogeny that celebrates women drenched in makeup and men without spines, surgically removed our last sliver of love for real people. We lost our love of life, and of the earth. Instead we fell deeply in love with shallow images and videos of counterfeit people. Then, when it hit, we listened to same people who had taught us to hate ourselves. Most of you pretended like it wasn’t a big deal, and just had more time to spending doting over the sea of lovelies.
But then the animals got it.
The ranks of healthcare workers slowly depleted until hospitals seemed to be causing more deaths than they were preventing. Police began dying more frequently as domestic calls increased. Liquor and cigarette sales escalated even more so once it started impacting more peoples lives, further fueling the hell fire bound to consume us all.
I figured out how to survive the virus, only I cannot. There’s no anecdote or vaccine that will save you. You survive it the same way the 104 year old in Lebanon Oregon survived it, and the same way my son did.
I’ve lost my life.
Don’t lose yours.
FOREWORD
To whomever wants to live,