She spies a young blond man with small ferret-like hands raking as she approaches the last trailer in the lot. The great fire is closing in, its smoke rising high just beyond the hill, and she is almost done with her shift.

       “What are you doing?” she inquires, clipboard pressed to her orange vest as if for protection.

        “I want my own fire,” says the young man with tiny eyes set close, just as a toothless woman in galoshes, a shift and red bandana emerges from the trailer. “Bader, gimme that thing. You ain’t doin’ what I think you’re doin’. Take your play matches. Go on while I get ready. I ain’t gonna holler after you, boy.” Bader drops the rake, grabs the large box from his mother like a prize. “Oh, mine, mine!”

       “He likes playing with fire,” she explains. “So we got him rubber matches to mess with. Never liked no other toys.”

        “Go on, git, while I fetch your pa,” she tells him.

       “Ma’am, you have to go–now. No time left.”

       “I ain’t no fool. I can smell death coming. I’m goin’ fast as I can. My husband is an invalid. And my son, well, you can see.”

       “You’ve only got minutes. I’m heading south in that truck if you want to follow.”

       “Son!” she calls. “We got to go—now!”

       Underneath the trailer, on its opposite side, a little fire crackles releasing smoke, sending its starter into giggles.

       “Ma’am, ma’am, you need to get some water. Your son has started a fire.”

       “Got hold of those damn kitchen matches again. He already burned us out of one trailer park. I’m outta here.”

        “Hey, hey,” the disaster worker calls as the young man makes a merry chase around several flaming piles, which she tries to stamp out. “Come on. Your ma’s leaving. You have to go now.”

        The mother steps out again, a heavy purse slung around one shoulder, looped around the other, the arm of a gray-haired man in baggy trousers and a saggy tee with a faded “‘merica” on it. She deposits him in the passenger’s seat then comes around to the driver’s side. “Come on,” she taps the wheel, turning the key to the ignition two, three times. When finally the engine turns over, she calls out the window.

          “Fires will chase us all the way to the border, where you can put up a wall high as the sky if you want, but it won’t stop him, mark my words.” Her tires splay dirt leaving.

          The fire starter is nowhere, and what good will it do to crush his final act with that red sky looming closer. She hitches herself up into her truck, waves and honks in a last bid for the boy’s attention. So many people ushered out today, she wonders momentarily if she imagined him, that sullen, slow man/child reluctant to do sensible bidding, punished by his own recalcitrance. She cannot help him now, no more than anyone, yet as she departs she swears she can hear his voice, “my fire, my fire,” cackling through the trees.         

– Arya F. Jenkins

Author’s Note: “The Fire-Starter” is a modern-day political allegory.