Out of the Ashes pt 1

Breakaway / Art Garfunkel









The fire is raging. It is consuming the dry wooden structure at such a rate that complete annihilation is a foregone conclusion. However, the volunteers are still rushing about, dragging hoses, yelling orders, feeling important, and probably believing they are in control.



Leah and I stand apart from the crowd. I’m sure people have recognized us, but no one has come to say hello. While we don’t look that different from the past, our combination together would be almost undeniable. Our flower print cotton dresses blow in the breeze below matching denim jackets. Our cross-armed stance mimic each other accept when one of us brushes a strand of hair out our face. Our differences in height and hair color separate us and intrinsically identify us to everyone else.


The Halloween twins. Leah 5’9 since junior high, and me wearing heels to reach 5’2. Her red orange hair matched by complexion and her propensity to wear peach was always in distinction to my contrasting black and white manifestations. Even as we stand here now, her dress is shades of orange and mine black and gray.


“Such a shame … the loss of Woodward’s ski lodge. It won’t be the same.” She sighs.


I glance at her puzzled. I know neither of us has spent a moment of our life on a ski slope, let alone this hill the town dubbed a mountain for some contractor’s greed. The fire crackles and spits, spending a spray of sparks into the air as another beam of the lodge shifts.


“I never came up here. You?” She asks, glancing my way.


“Came up a lot in the summers with Zach.” I nod. It’s why I’m standing watching the grassy knoll catch fire. Whenever I’m in town alone, I come here to visit. Of course, I come hoping that luck will place Zach here too, but it has never happened.


*******
“But I don’t want to.” The annoyed whine of a 9 year old girl attracts my attention. She’s standing cross-armed glaring at her sister who groans. Near her, I see myself, Zach and his younger sister, Alison, standing in the parking lot.


“I don’t know why you brought us out here Zachy.” Alison’s tone and pose with her brother match the girl’s. A quick calculation places Alison now around the same age as the groaning sister.


“I told you.” Zach answers patronizingly. “I’ve brought you two out here to teach you two how to fight.”


“But I don’t want to…” Alison interrupts.


“I don’t care if you want to.” Zach’s tone is sharp. “Girls in this world should know how. Ok Q, swing at him me.” Zach orders me.


I smile as I watch my self shake my head and toe the sandy ground. Zach is the only person ever to call me Q, a playful mix of reference to the James Bond character and Suzy-Q, which he mistakenly assumed annoyed me.


“Common Q, you know you want to.” Zach pushes my shoulder, hard. “You always want to.” He laughs. “ I know I can piss you off … wanna see me?”


I watch myself swing at him from a far. I see he was right. It was all wrong. He taught us both well that day. As I turn back to the fire, I wonder if Alison ever reaped the benefit from those lessons and I hope not.






“Zach was always so…Rambo. He became a Marine or something didn’t he?” Leah glances at me.


“Army – Airborne Ranger.”


“I knew it was some solider of fortune thing.” Leah shakes her head. “He was such a boy.”


I smile. In many ways she is correct, yet I wonder what she’d think to know it was Zach I called when I was in trouble because he always came. I trusted Zach with my darkest secrets because he never told. Zach protected me, even from my self.