Real Life as Fiction: The Bonfire

This is an excerpt from a fiction assignment I am working on. The idea was to take a story from my childhood, keep a few essential elements, and then create an original work of fiction with those elements as the base. So this is the beginning of the story. I will post the finished work in a couple of weeks.

The Bonfire

Jared stood up, steadied his headdress of chicken feathers, sequins, and multi-colored pom-poms. He waved the twig—the one carefully chosen from the plum tree—and repeated the words from last week’s Pow-Wow. None of us knew what any of it meant, but for Jared, it meant we were to light the bonfire. Everyone knew their role; we had practiced this drill several times throughout the morning. Jose and Javier stood lookout by the old yellow shed. Pollito continued gathering dry grass and sticks from the walnut tree by the chicken coop--two old hens scurried ahead of him, running over their own green and white droppings. Chava held a large metal serving spoon of Crisco. I recognized it from the ornate utensils his mom always brought out at Christmas.

In my role as Pocahontas, I imitated the dance we had seen, with jingle bells tied to my ankles and wrists with yarn from Mama’s knitting basket. I wore felt, rather than leather, but the fringe I cut in the hem of my knee-length top furled and flew as I twirled—it didn’t make the same pelting sound as cow-skin, but Jared said that the few bits of leather we had were needed for more important items, like his loin cloth and the sheath he made for Dad’s knife. Still, he said that I looked very much like the chocolate-skinned Native girls—I even had my long, dark hair plaited down my back—and his approval was all I needed; all I really wanted. Mama had braided my hair this morning, not knowing why I wanted it, (normally I asked for pony tails) and it looked nice, especially with the bright pink ribbon she had woven through the strands. Jared said it was an authentic touch. I had to look up “authentic” in the Webster’s kid-friendly dictionary with all the bright colors and pictures. I took it as the best compliment he ever gave me.

“Alright, Braves, it is time. The sun is above.” Jared turned, looked at Chava. “The sacrifice!” He commanded and Chava walked ceremoniously to the pile of wood, newspaper, grass, and broken wine barrels.

“Now I will light the fire.” Jared lit the match, dropped it solemnly. Nothing happened.

I stopped dancing, we all stood still, staring at Jared. In our trial runs, we had never considered that the fire wouldn’t burst immediately into a satisfying blaze of lustrous glory. Jared frowned, escaping into deep thought, scratching his head with one dirt-filled fingernail. We were all concerned, but we trusted our chief to figure it out. “The ancestors are angry with you guys,” Jared suddenly thundered. He was standing on the willow stump, making him at least a head taller than all of us. The chicken feathers on his head swayed with his movements, and a few bugs fell from the headdress onto the stump.

“I think you’re doing it wrong,” Pollito hollered from the back end of the yard. He was pulling pieces from our broken-down plank fence. Pollito had gone to Cub Scouts for two whole years, so if we were going about this the wrong way, we trusted him to remedy the situation.

“Here, like this. You gotta light the newspaper.” Pollito had a flame growing a moment later and we all stared in wonder at his skill. Jared snapped his fingers at me and I took up my dance again, jingle bells ringing and jangling, just as I’d seen the Native American girls doing. Well, at least as close as I could remember. Lift one arm, then one knee, turn around. Lift, lift, turn. I had used masking tape to attach clusters of the bells—stolen from Mama’s craft box—to a thick piece of cherry branch, and shook it in the air.

Jared picked up the drum he had bought at the Pow-Wow, tanned leather stretched over wicker, and began to dance circles around me while pounding one balled fist on the drum. Boom! I was thinking it would sound better if he used the palm of his hand or a drum stick, but one didn’t tell the chief how to use a drum. Bam! So, I just danced faster, kicked my knee higher, as the flames burned brighter, pushing toward an ice-blue sky. Thwap!

Chava had stood silently, at the edge of the fire, holding out his spoon of hydrogenated vegetable oil. He was patient, but looked a little anxiously at Jared, who was yelling a song that no one understand and pummeling the leather drum. Whopp! The Crisco was starting to melt, the proximity to the growing inferno changing its chemical structure. Thwack!

The drum beat sped up, with no order or discernable rhythm, but Jared’s face was serene, hypnotized by his own musical creation. My feet lifted and dropped to match the increasingly frantic pace—lift, drop, twirl, jangle, lift, drop, twirl, jangle!

“Um, Chief?” Chava spoke quietly, but insistently. Boom! “What about the sacrifice. Jared turned, confusion written across his face for only a second. He had obviously forgotten all about the oil, but he recovered quickly, waving his arms in ritualistic upward motion, his face lifting to the sky. Thwap!

I didn’t remember the Native drummers beating their instruments as fast as Jared was pummeling the stretched leather; I wondered if he was making up for the Crisco. I supported his efforts with my feet, nearly skipping with each knee lift, growing dizzy with every twirl, the jangling of bells bouncing about the smooth inner surfaces of my skull. Faster, higher, faster, higher, faster!

“The sacrifice!” He bellowed with the authority of a might, but short, chief. Boom! The willow stump wobbled, but held, as Jared signaled wildly with hands, arms, legs, body, for Chava to give up the sacrifice. Wapp!

Clanging bells crashing into each other, metallic edges scratching and screeching. Soft felt rising and falling, folding, then filling with the gusts of air my body created. Whirl, twirl, spin!

Chava nodded, dark brown curls bobbing nervously on his pointed little head. Boom! Not all seven-year-old boys can perform a ritual with such sacred and solemn perfection, especially with only one autumn morning’s practice, but Chava was in his element. Bam! He had stayed up the night before, long after everyone had gone to sleep, to re-watch segments of Dances With Wolves on VHS. He kept the volume low, and lay a pillow on top of the video player to muffle the hum made by the old machine. During his shower the next morning, he had imitated moves he had seen on the late-night movie and others that he remembered from the Pow-Wow. Thwap!

As he stood before us, tilting the kitchen spoon slowly, gracefully, my feet suddenly refused to move, the improvised rattle still in my raised fist, one knee raised to my waist, chest heaving, head spinning. Thwok!  Melting Crisco slipped in one viscous glop, landing nearly in the middle of the blaze. I remember Chava jumping backward, but in reality, he was probably blown back. Wapp!  It was at the same moment—undoubtedly foreordained by the fates, or ancestors, or someone—the Crisco hit the flame and ignited, that the leather pouch holding Tio Jesus’ gun powder burned through, exposing the particles, irreversibly, to the heat and flame. Boom!