Yards (Part Four) (write-a-thon edition)

My third yard was a tiny square, called a garden locally, but a patch of grass bordered by a hawthorn hedge. The small house we lived in opened right onto the garden from the dining room through double-glazed french doors. The yard was just big enough for the trampoline and a few kids. It always smelled of rain and ivy. When you jumped on the trampoline the neighbors came into view. Again and again you could see the granite grave stones of the the church yard next door. Hundreds of tombstones, the color of a cloudy winter sky, covered in gray-green moss and lichen, crowded the cemetery. Bashful angels and earthly sentiments long forgotten waited for fresh flowers.

This was the year I outgrew my back yard, now too tiny for much fun. I was old enough to roam around the neighborhood. My real back yard was an abandoned estate next door the the semi-detached development where I lived. The estate was accessed formally by the long drive from the main street which led to a loop in front of the house. My friends and I usually found our way to the house through a broken down fence, carefully tip-toeing over barbed wire.

The surrounding woods and the overgrown, long-untended gardens were scraggly and difficult to distinguish from one another, though the gardens had been perfectly regimented at one time. Now they are drooping and forlorn.

The house was unlocked. There was no furniture in the rooms or art on the walls, but the peeling wallpaper and old-fashioned light fixtures spoke to us of better days with boisterous children, cocktail parties, and formal dinners. The kitchen was bright and airy. Its huge Aga brand cooker, with 6 smaller ovens and 6 burners on the stove, bragged of its capacity to prepare huge meals. Behind the house was a mostly full tank of kerosene.

At some point, probably at my instigation, my friends and I decided to play at camping in the woods around the house. There was plenty of twigs and dry plants for small fires, and matches were easily pilfered from my home where my mother's More's never burned down to the filter. We would clear a little area just to be safe, and make a pile of dead bracken, weeds, and small limbs. Those fires lit something in me. My heart raced, my face flushed, my legs twitched. I could never just sit and enjoy the heat and crackle. I knew what we were doing was wrong.

Our first fires were in the front of the house, where the trees were relatively sparse, and daytime was always bright. Soon, though, we decided to move our clandestine activities into the woods behind the house that were thicker, darker, harder to get into. About that time we also discovered the kerosene. A crisp bag served as a bottle for some of the pink liquid. One of us would carefully carry the bulging bag to the fire circle.

I was not too surprised when I got home from playing in the old estate to find both my parents with grim faces. My father told me my friend's parents had said we were making fires in the woods. Swallowing hard, I said we were, hoping to be rewarded for my honesty. I wasn't disappointed. There was a stern admonishment, a shaking finger, and a few tut tuts. Contrition flushed my face, and I wondered if I would be able to resist the seduction of the flames.

I suppose I held out as long as I possibly could, but the draw was too powerful. After about 3 weeks of abstention, we were back at it in the dark woods. Crisp bag full of kerosene carefully carried from the back of the house into the woods, a circle cleared in the underbrush to keep our fire tame. But none of our safeguards were appreciated in the long run. After only three or four of these cherished adventures I looked up from a freshly smoking campfire to see my father, stomping through the underbrush with about as much purpose as a soldier entering a battle. I froze, though I wanted to run. I knew this time there would be no wagging finger, no stern words. My father grabbed me by the arm and took me home at a pace just a little faster than I could walk.

That was the last spanking I ever remember getting from my father. And I never lit another fire in the woods around the abandoned estate.