Fire Two

The day the fire ban is announced, the traveller lights a fire--tricky enough to do in wind, mid-May--and places a cage over his pit.  He burns scraps of cedar lattice and a Corn Flakes box.  New leaves are about to touch from trees on either side of Knowles.

Some citizens, he reads, don't want fires.  Enforcement will be funded, tickets issued, hours restricted.

For this, says the traveller, laying on three more foot-long strands of lattice.  And this (looking around).

He adds elm bark, maple twigs--Hillsdale's finest.  A robin leaps to the garage roof, hops along and heep heep heep disappears.  This is "fire cage brass wind fence treeblow page sun behind a cloud" stuff, the traveller argues.  Why would you want to legislate against the joys of May?  Why not go straight to December?

But he's not going to push it.  He does add one log.  He'll orchestrate its demise and that'll be that.  With no more fires he'll have to remember this one, a flame about the size of a flowerpot.  In this sharp west wind, you'd have to be straight east to smell it.  Or right beside it, your skin smokey and your fingers charred.

Result one: The Traveller speaks out against over-regulation in municipal government.

Result two: He's still sitting there, red bench beside the fire.

Result three: He stirs and pokes with a stick.  His eyes-sting count is about six.

Result four:  For two ants approaching the char, this is Mount or Moment Doom.