A Small Fire

Corey Mesler

The man built a small fire ostensibly to keep warm. There was no breeze next to the deserted highway, but the air was filled with prickly wintriness. He found dry brush, discarded wrappers, civilization’s detritus. It burned humbly, a hermit’s chauffer.

He squinted toward the horizon. The view was bleak, a long stretch of emptiness, relieved by withered trees and scrubgrass. Above there was a gibbous moon and a scattering of stars.

He opened the wallet, pulled out the sheaf of bills, folded them and secreted them in his shirt. In amongst the bills were small bits of paper he had to pick out, oddments upon which were jotted notes. “Swan Lake Barbie for Kitten.” And, “Find duffel bag.” Arcane messages from someone else’s life, alive in their strangeness.

And another, older scrap, almost worn away by its time within the bill pouch. It felt soft, tatty, decomposing paper turned to fur. Upon it a single, blurry word: “Rachel.” In one small wad he consigned these esoteric, ultimately meaningless comments to his fire.

The credit cards were lined up like bright toys, multicolored and still crisp; he fingered each in its slot before removing them one by one. He was torn between reverence and aversion. These simple cards carried too much connotation, too much information: hope, loss, renewal and waste. He relished how their edges blackened, curled, bent inward as he laid them carefully on the fire. The flames now guttered so he sought more dry brush to keep them going.

Once the fire renewed itself the man sat back down on an overturned crate. He rededicated himself to the contents of the wallet. The fire now sizzled and smelled of melted plastic.

Insurance card, country club membership card, Social Security, a lawyer’s business card, a sandwich shop’s tally, voter’s registration. One life, so many tendrils, so many lifelines.

After burning these the man discovered a clever hidden part of the wallet. The blackened nail of his forefinger sought its concealed secrets. He removed a neatly folded piece of paper, within which were more folded notes and a single photograph. The newness of this find spoke of a more recent squirreling away. The outer piece of paper, apparently a fine writing stock, was blank. The folded papers within were letters, three to be exact. The script was feminine. The words made the man squirm: passionate, seductive, furtive, private. They were all signed, “R.” The man flung them onto the flame and simultaneously brought the photograph closer to his face, maneuvering it so that his hand did not block the light from his solitary crematory.

The woman’s face was lovely, dove-like. He could almost feel the down of her cheek, the moist corner of her lipsticked lips. So, it was with slight regret that he laid it also upon the pyre and watch the fire eat it, first with a quick black center burst and then, rapidly, from the edges in.

There were other pictures, a wife, and two children. The wife was pretty, self-consciously so. There were a number of pictures of each child, nesting-dolls of varying age. Flip them quickly and they were a nickelodeon, telling a story about how soon they are grown and gone. For one flashing moment the family blazed to life in his head, whole. Then this passed. The man let the photographs slip through his fingers and tumble soundlessly into the fire.

The driver’s license stubbornly stuck in its slit pocket. The man irritably pulled it loose. He brought it up close to his whiskered chin. Numbers, letters and symbols: data. As if this code bespoke a life. The weight was off by a good decade. Eyes: blue? Class: D? What did that mean? Dates: The renewal time was soon—only a few weeks away. The picture on the license was a good one, showing a strong jaw, a fierce eye. It said, Here is a man used to control. Here is a good man, a hardworking man. A family man, yet with uncertainties. Each of us has his or her own secrets, our own places of clouded mystery. He liked the man’s face, as he had before. The license ignited with a small pop as its plastic unsealed. The paper beneath was quickly consumed.

The wallet itself, a leather, burned haltingly, poorly, as if it were flesh itself, and the stench of it was nauseating. The man rose into the frosted air, stretching himself like a cat. The night would soon give way to morning. He had a long way to go.