Because I once again do not have an amusing or interesting anecdote about my ESOL class, I thought I'd entertain my vast blog audience with a little fiction. Long ago, before I fell deeply in love with creative nonfiction, I tried my hand at fiction with moderate success. Every tiny centimeter of that moderate success I attribute to the guidance of Robert Pope, my first college-level writing professor, and the main reason I pursued an advanced degree in writing.
I met Bob, as he likes to be called, while working at a coffee shop in West Akron during my undergraduate years. We spent many an hour after my shift was completed sipping cappuccinos and chatting about books, storytelling, and life in general. He suggested that I might enjoy one of his writing courses, Writing Short, Short Fiction, and even though I doubted any promise he saw in me, I enrolled. His class excited and terrified me, entertained and challenged me, but most of all introduced me to the experience of sharing my work with other writers. I came to love workshops more than any other part of college or grad school, and now I miss those exhilarating and frightening and stimulating hours of giving and getting feedback in the company of fellow logophiles.
This story was a product of that first workshop with Bob and a dozen or so fellow students of writing, some of whom I am still in contact with. We started by telling short tales orally, then developed them into more crafted micro fictions. I often think of this little story when it's super-cold like it has been. I hope you enjoy it.
God's Plan for Jack
Jack lived his whole life in Akron. He watched it grow up out of orchards, farmland, and woods into a tangle of crossroads and industry. He saw the first rubber factory go up, the first phone lines, the first department store downtown. He remembers when the town’s first fire truck was pulled by horses. It came to his Aunt Ida’s house in North Hill when Jack was just five and burned her house down.
He’d been playing on the braided rug in the living room, trying to build a little boat from some kindling. It was cold, long after Christmas, a little snow falling outside the frosty windows of Aunt Ida’s wood frame house. Cold inside, too, even with the little potbelly stove simmering away. You could tell it was simmering from the teapot on top, wrapped in a tea cosy Ida had knitted herself, steam wafting from its spout. Ida continuously warned Jack not to touch that potbelly stove.
“You’ll burn yourself!” was her mantra.
Jack was so cold, though. He could understand why Aunt Ida was so concerned about him burning himself. She had become very upset when Uncle George near cut his foot off chopping wood last fall. Jack would feel really bad if she had to get that upset again. So he thought pretty hard, and he figured it out.
He stretched up as tall as he could, all the way up on his tippy-toes, reached his arm up as long as he could make it, keeping his balance, careful not to lean forward and singe his wool sweater, and snatched the cosy off the teapot. He made only a brief exhale of relief before easily twisting the handle to open the door. Glorious heat spread out on his face and chest.
He literally glowed with happiness.
Jack settled back down on the braided rug to resume his boat building. He was so proud of helping himself and not bothering his aunt. The popping of the fire reminded him of the time Aunt Ida had popped corn for him to eat. It was warm and salty and comforting. He didn’t notice the embers jumping out of the stove until one landed on his little boat and started to smolder.
That’s when Ida came running out of the kitchen and scooped him up off the rug. She ran out into the snow, and they watched the house burn together. Jack cried a little but Aunt Ida just rubbed his back and thanked God that they were both safe.
When the fire truck finally came, Jack was mesmerized by its pair of burly draft horses. Frothy with sweat despite the cold, their breath snorting clouds of steam into the air, they seemed uninterested in the commotion, safe inside their blinders.
Aunt Ida didn’t yell, didn’t hit Jack, didn’t say one unkind word. She just thanked God over and over that they both had escaped with their lives. She was strong in her faith and believed that everything had a place in God’s plan. She lived with Jack’s family the rest of her life.
Years later, when Jack got a baseball scholarship to that big university on the east coast, Ida was too frail even to get out of her chair and hug the young man.
“Don’t burn the place down,” was all she said to him.
