My Sister Sat at My Groom's Feet, So I Took His Whole Pack novel · Chapter 18 of 24
Chapter 18: Burn Day
Reuben's POV
I have lit a hundred fires on purpose, and I had never been afraid of one until I handed her the torch.
The sand break ran two miles through the pitch pine, a strip of bare white road with the dead brush heaped on its east side.
By eight in the morning the air was cold, still and dry, and the smoke column from the test fire stood straight up.
My crew of six stood along the break in yellow shirts with their rakes and their water backpacks.
None of them said her name.
They looked at her as they would look at any new hand, and she let them.
"It's a drip torch," I said. "Diesel and gasoline, a wick on the end."
"I know what it is."
"You tip it, the fuel drips, and the wick lights it," I said. "You hold it low."
"Reuben."
"You walk backward along the line. You never let it touch you. Say it back."
"Low. Backward. Never touch me." She took the can in both hands and smiled at me.
"I've burned brush on my father's dikes since I was twelve. I'm not going to hurt myself."
I did not tell her what I was seeing.
I was eight years old on a dike in a drought wind, and the whole Wading River valley was going orange under a black sky.
I put the thought down and stood back.
She walked the line.
She went backward along the brush pile, with the torch tipped, and the fire dripped from the wick in a thin bright thread.
Where it touched the dead needles it caught.
A low orange flame ran along the base of the pile, and then another, and a thin white smoke rolled up into the pines.
She kept walking.
Her braid had come loose from her cap, and the auburn of it was the exact color of the flame.
The rest of this chapter is part of the paid portion of the series. Chapters 1–6 of My Sister Sat at My Groom's Feet, So I Took His Whole Pack are free to read — start from the beginning, then unlock the rest with coins in the app.
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