Burn Down the Ground (4 page)

With only the bare necessities piled in the back of our baby blue 1966 Chevrolet pickup, we reinvented ourselves as modern-day pioneers.

David and I rode in the bed of the Chevy, sitting on our own wheel wells as we sped north on Interstate 45 toward Montgomery. Pamie, our one-year-old Chihuahua mix, wasn’t as lucky; she had to ride in the cab on Mom’s lap.

Situated sixty-five miles northwest of Houston on the edge of the Sam Houston National Forest, Montgomery began as an Indian trading post in 1826, making it the third-oldest settlement
in Texas. It is considered the official birthplace of the Lone Star flag because the man credited with its design, Charles B. Stewart, was a resident. The fact is debatable, but the city of Montgomery still holds it as its claim to fame.

The city officially measured one square mile, with a population just shy of 250 people, though outlying communities boosted that tally. The center of town consisted of a single intersection: a four-way stop that led to a post office depot, convenience store, gas station, or cemetery depending on which way you turned.

The longer we drove, the less inhabited things got. Shopping centers dwindled down to roadside markets that soon disappeared altogether. The roads got narrower and bumpier as we rumbled by pastures of grazing cattle and fields of bluebonnets until we were so deep in the middle of nowhere there were no traffic signs, fire hydrants, streetlights … 
nothing
.

While we’d moved a number of times during my seven years, my life to date had been spent in cities where houses were in subdivisions and convenience stores occupied every corner. I was a typical latchkey kid. Why would parents bother paying for a babysitter when they could tie a key around their kids’ necks with a piece of yarn and let them watch cartoons for an hour or two until they got home from work?

As I sat in the back of the Chevy watching civilization vanish, I began to worry. I thought of the 7-Eleven where my friend stole wax candy while I served as a decoy.
Where will I get candy now?
I had a slew of friends in Houston, so many they couldn’t all fit into our dining room during my last birthday party. Montgomery was so deserted I couldn’t imagine humans lived there, much less kids.

I was jerked out of my troublesome thoughts when a tree limb scraped the roof of the Chevy. David and I held on tight to the
truck’s metal edges, made hot by the Texas sun, ducking and dodging to avoid getting knocked over the side. Frightened, I waved in the rearview mirror to get my father’s attention and signed, “Daddy! Slow down!” I threw myself around to show him how I was being tossed like a rag doll. He broke into a big smile, then pumped the brake and jerked the wheel, causing us to slide like we were riding the Scrambler at a carnival.

Finally, the Chevy rounded a hairpin turn and I saw a hand-painted chunk of wood nailed to a tree that read “Boars Head.” Flanked by solid walls of pine trees, we proceeded down the bumpy, single-lane dirt road turned bright pumpkin orange from a coating of iron ore gravel that had been laid by some of the locals for traction. We drove over a bridge made of railroad ties that was so rickety it rippled from the weight of the Chevy. Although it was only ten feet above a half-dry creek bed, I began praying to God that I would live to see my eighth birthday.

The truck came to a quick stop, skidding on the pebbles, and creating a cloud of orange dust. We couldn’t drive any farther. A wall of trees blocked our way and we had to walk the remaining six hundred feet into the dense forest to our campsite. As I hopped out, my mother shouted a warning: “Watch where you step! There’re snakes hiding everywhere.”

I kept my eyes focused on the ground as I followed Dad, trekking over the forest floor layered with pinecones and needles as we passed wild palms and aloe plants. Soon we were so deep in the forest that despite the early afternoon hour, it was as dark as a moonlit night save for an occasional glimmer of sunlight when a stiff breeze blew the treetops. Before each step, I looked for a snake. I wasn’t even sure what one looked like, but I knew they were our enemy. Pamie seemed oblivious to the danger as she
bounded along, craning her neck to see over the brush, leaping over sticks and bushes.

At last, we reached it: the cabin.

I marveled at the sheer size of it. The logs of the cabin were at least two feet in diameter and stripped of all bark. Oddly, there was an old diesel truck parked smack dab inside it.

“Home, sweet home!” Mom gushed. She looked positively dazzled.

“This is where we’re going to live?” I asked. “How can we stay in a house with a broken-down truck in it?”

With or without the scrapped semi, the cabin wasn’t habitable or even salvageable. There was no roof, windows, or doors, and the logs, many of which looked half-rotten, weren’t chinked.

The plan wasn’t to
live
in it. We were going to start from scratch. We would sleep in tents until my father could convert an outbuilding on the property into something sufferable while we cleared and readied the land for a mobile home.

Mom’s father was a fisherman and a hunter, so she was accustomed to living with an outdoorsman. Though this was a far cry from a weekend camping trip or a visit to a favorite fishing hole, my mother seemed willing to accept being homeless in order to start fresh with Dad.

My father loved working with his hands. He seemed inspired by the challenge that lay before him, completing this enormous undertaking all on his own while restoring his wife’s faith. I dreaded what appeared to be a monumental job, but David was euphoric. I hadn’t seen him this excited since he got his knockoff Evel Knievel bicycle for his ninth birthday.

By nightfall we had set up our campsite. But the night was so hot and muggy that the only way to sleep was outside of our tents
in sleeping bags under the stars. Who needed a cabin anyway? The woods were so dense that once the sun set I couldn’t see my own hand in front of my face.

That first night, I had to visit the outhouse. Nestled in a cluster of trees, the latrine was constructed from leftover tin and rotted wood. It stood fifty feet from where we slept, just far enough away that the stench of stagnant waste wouldn’t waft through our campsite. To avoid any embarrassing moments with deaf visitors, Mom had painted a block of wood for the door that read “Occupied” on one side and “Vacant” on the other, since there was no lock and they wouldn’t hear a knock at the door.

Wearing a T-shirt and underpants, I shuffled along the dirt path, following the beam of my flashlight. The cacophony of owls, crickets, and croaks of bullfrogs didn’t frighten me much. As a child reared around deaf people who had no idea how loud they could be, I was used to turning a ruckus into a white noise symphony.

But as I reached the stall, I remembered Mom warning me, “Be sure to check the hole before you sit. You don’t want a snake to bite you in the ass.”

I pointed the flashlight into the reeking hole, sending a dozen daddy longlegs scurrying for cover. I shuddered.

Finding it free of snakes, I started my business. But when a tree grazed against the rusted tin roof, I stopped midstream. I imagined the branches to be the metal hooks of the deaf man from the bowling tournament, scraping against the side of the outhouse and coming after me.

I burst through the outhouse door and bounded barefoot down the path, yanking up my underwear along the way, a flash of towheaded lightning. I’d learned long before that there was no use in crying; my parents couldn’t hear me.

Nevertheless, sheer terror forced a guttural wail out of my skinny frame. As I ran, my flashlight turned every tree into a looming bogeyman. My body involuntarily convulsed, desperate to shake off whatever I imagined was touching me before I reached the safety of my sleeping bag.

I made sure to never again go to bed without first emptying my bladder while everyone was still awake.

Dad had big plans for our five and a half acres. Our land on Boars Head was raw, wild terrain and the top priority was to clear a driveway so the Chevy could haul tools, food, and water to our campsite. We also needed the driveway to allow the delivery of the three-bedroom mobile home my parents had picked out from a sales lot.

My father wasn’t wasting the opportunity to show Mom that he was committed. Five days a week he drove to downtown Houston to work on a construction site. Before leaving each morning, he handed us a list of tasks that Mom, David, and I could accomplish in his absence. Arriving home in the late afternoon, he picked up more tools and toiled on the property as long as the setting sun would allow. Every waking moment on week-nights and all through the weekend, he worked tirelessly to convert our land into something livable.

A neighbor in Houston once said of my father, “I don’t like that man who always has a beer can in his hand.” But now that we were in the woods, I hadn’t seen him drink anything other than jugs of water or Kool-Aid from a Tupperware container. Mom’s strategy was paying off. My father was isolated in the woods and sober. Still, they didn’t seem as affectionate as they
usually had been. I was used to seeing them steal smooches or give each other playful smacks or pinches on the rear, but I chalked up their current lack of intimacy to the fact that lately Dad smelled like a dirty jockstrap.

Our first weeks were spent clearing the layers of pine needles, cones, and plants that housed centipedes, scorpions, and every kind of snake imaginable. It was exhausting, especially in the oppressive heat. At night I was so tired I collapsed into my sleeping bag. Some days I was dragging ass but if I got caught slacking Dad knew exactly how to motivate me.

“Kipree!” he’d call out to get my attention, then sign, “Come on, no sitting. The more you help, the faster we can get the trailer.” I desperately wanted our mobile home delivered. The novelty of sleeping on the ground had lost its appeal on night three when I found a centipede crawling in my hair. I would have shoveled shit out of the outhouse if it meant I’d get a real bed and some protection from the elements.

After a few weeks, we could make sense of the site and it was time to cut down trees. Using fluorescent pink construction ribbon my father had lifted from a job site, he and my mother worked together marking which trees would stay and which were destined for a bonfire. Dad and David did most of the chopping, while Mom and I were in charge of hauling the felled trunks, limbs, and branches into piles for torching.

After breakfast one morning, Dad gathered us in a circle to review the next step. He signed, “Now we clear the leaves about a foot around every tree.”

Every tree?
I bleakly scanned the property. There were hundreds still standing! My parents were lucky we didn’t have a phone to call a child protection agency.

“Smooth out the piles to thin layers,” Dad continued. “Then we start a fire and let it burn real slow. If you see a fire growing too big, spread it out even more and keep it away from the trees.”

We were going to burn our land? “Why’re we gonna do that? The fire will kill everything.”

“It’s already dead, dummy,” David said, rolling his eyes. My brother had the ability to make me feel stupid with one quick criticism.

David was in cutoff jeans with tube socks pulled up to his knees and his favorite red, white, and blue mesh shirt, which exposed his midriff. He loved that shirt so much that when he outgrew it, he merely cut off the bottom to make it into a half shirt. So, between the ages of nine and fifteen, he was wearing it in nearly every photo taken of him.

“We have to burn it so the grass can grow from scratch,” Mom said. “It can’t be pretty without being burnt first.”

My father saw the skepticism on my face. “Wait and see. In about two or three weeks it will look beautiful. T-R-U-S-T me,” he signed with a smile, then handed Mom a double-edged weed cutter and me a heavy metal rake.

While I doubted the practicality of burning the land, I never questioned my father, and I was eager to please him. Ever since I could walk, I’d been at his side helping him on projects by handing him tools, sweeping up, or fetching him a fresh Coors Light. He “paid” me with rides in a wheelbarrow, by having me sit in his lap to steer the Chevy, or by letting me take the first sip of his beer. Although I’d wished I were his indispensable right-hand man, my brother had always filled that role. Dad had just been humoring me.

But now that we were on Boars Head, there was real work for
me to do and I was ready for whatever task he assigned. Over the weeks, Dad taught me how to till and plant a garden, use a level, and build a bonfire. In time, my blisters turned to calluses and I believed my favorite T-shirt, which read, “Anything boys can do, girls can do better.” I
could
do anything with the right tools.

Taking the metal rake, I headed to one of the smaller trees.

“If you find a snake, freeze and yell for David,” Mom called after me.

Hearing this, I wished I were back at the 7-Eleven in Houston playing decoy for my sticky-fingered friends. At least that danger had the payoff of Kit Kats, Bubble Yum, and camaraderie. I hadn’t even seen another kid and with all this work, didn’t have time to go in search of one. What would raking get me other than blisters? I was seven years old, and all I wanted was a friend.

One miserable tree at a time, we created circles of damp dirt around the base of each trunk. I was on my third one when I scraped back a blanket of crunchy pine needles and found my first real live snake.

“David!” I shrieked and pointed to the baby copperhead tightly curled at the base of the trunk. “Snake!”

It didn’t matter that the reptile was small and hadn’t budged; I was petrified. I wanted to bolt, but I heeded my mother’s instructions and stood as still as a statue. David walked over, hatchet in hand, and gave a quick chop-chop. The snake didn’t even flinch until the blade severed it. Still petrified, I stared down wide-eyed at the gory chunks.

“Don’t worry,” David assured me, wiping off the bloody hatchet on his cutoff jeans. “Once the fire gets going they’ll leave.” He slipped the axe back through a holster hooked to his belt loop and strutted away as if he had slain a dragon.