I was eleven years old, and Danny, who lived next door, was twelve. We weren’t best friends, but we’d sometimes hang out in my backyard, or his backyard, or even on the roof of our carport – our driveway was right next to theirs. Better than those places, though, was the hill behind our houses, called Red Hill. Almost every house on our street backed up to it, and you could walk, or run, or hike, or even dirt-bike, all over it. There were even a few abandoned and ancient (as we viewed them) “buck-board wagons” scattered near the trails.
I was a fortunate boy — we had enough to eat, my parents were both college-educated, my father worked in the city and my mom took care of the kids. Things were generally calm and loving within our walls. Next door was different. Danny and his brother had both been adopted, soon after the Second World War, from a refugee camp somewhere in Eastern Europe. Their adoptive parents meant well, I do believe, but the boys had issues and were constantly in trouble at school. I think the parents had issues, too. I know their garbage can was always filled with empty bottles.
Neither Danny nor his older brother ever gave me or my sisters any problems, but if there was a fight at school, chances were good that one or both was right in the middle of it. It was a pretty small town – not quite 5,000 people – so there weren’t many secrets. Two guys I went to school with had dads who were local cops, so everyone knew them, and they knew us. The cops knew Danny and Jared (his brother) even better, though nothing terribly serious had ever happened. I don’t think either had ever been sent to juvie, not up to this point, anyway.
It was September, the hottest time of the year, and I was in the backyard setting fire to green plastic army men, to watch them melt. This was not a new thing and I don’t know why it held such an attraction for me, but it did. I had a whole box of matches I’d slipped out of a cupboard in the kitchen. No one else was home – I think my mom might have gone to the Safeway. It was good to be “old enough” to be left alone. It was that kind of town, too.
Danny came over from his side – there was no fence – and watched for a while. He surprised me by pulling a cigarette from his shirt pocket. It looked cool, I got to say, but he didn’t offer me one. He reached over, grabbed a match, and lit it. He said: “I got a book of matches in my other pocket, but I like the wooden ones you have.”
And then he took one of my army men and held it up to the light, to the hot sun, before dropping its dripping little mass on to the brick patio.
“Let’s go up the hill,” he said, and we did.
We started small, and careful, up near the first wagon, lighting and then immediately blowing out long pieces of grass and cottontails. Then we saw a pile of branches on the ground. He lit another cigarette, still not giving me one. I figured I had to earn it, so I lit two wooden matches and set fire to the branches, in two places.
There was a whoosh, and flames shot up like crazy. We screamed and ran down as fast as we could. Somebody must have seen it because almost as soon as we got home, we heard, and then saw, the fire trucks. They put it out fast, which was a good thing, because it could have taken out a bunch of houses. Instead, there was just a big black patch on the hill, in the shape of a football field.
The cops came, both of them, as it happened, the ones whose kids went to school with us, and started talking to us. After about fifteen minutes, and by this time, both our moms were there, they put Danny in a police car and took him away. I didn’t see him again for a month. Me, I was just warned, and reminded to be careful who I played with, that I was a good boy and that they knew I wouldn’t do anything bad or dangerous like playing with matches on a hillside.
About a year later, they moved about twenty miles away, in the next county. About five years later, I heard that Danny was busted for attempted murder. I don’t know if it was true but that’s what people were saying in my high school.
“He always was a bad kid,” somebody said, “remember that fire he started behind your house, on Red Hill?”
“Yeah,” I said. “I remember.”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Tony Press writes fiction when he has questions and poetry when he thinks he has answers; thus, mostly fiction. Look for his short story collection, Crossing the Lines (Big Table), and e-book of poems, Equinox and Solstice (Right Hand Pointing). Though a Bay Area native and living in beautiful Brisbane, he has no website.