The All-Consuming Fire

Here is what I want to tell you: on a cold winter’s morning in Ford Lakes, I saw something so strange, that I could never tell another living soul. And I never have. Until now. But I think you need to know—the whole thing—I think it’s important. If this story is to be a book that contains the net of all my deeds, you’ll want to know the history of my condition. I know, I know. Only fools search out danger and go in for lost causes. My mother always said that. And she said it to you too, not just me. But I suppose there are only two kinds of people in the end—those who leave home, and those who don’t. As you know, I left. 

We are going back now about twenty years, when we were still in high school. It was just a few days before Christmas, and they had holly and garlands and candle lanterns and mistletoe at City Hall and all over the town the lamp posts were adorned with garish large red velvet bows, silver bells, and their posts were concealed with those blue and green spruce twigs. You know the way they shine the place up for the holidays. 

I had been at Alina McCarthy’s house over on the lake. You know Alina. The short, cute one, with that feisty red hair. Bubbly, busty, with those smiling cheeks and cute dimples. The one who smoked Newports and hung out at lunch with the skater kids and spent her nights at rock shows. With the father we all teased was in the Irish mob because he scared the shit out of all of us, even though he was actually like a truck driver or something like that. Well, after Alina’s I was out walking, you know, taking one of those strolls you take when you are carrying a torch for a girl, and she just lit your flame. It was just about the time my mom got her diagnosis, and when Alina’s folks were splitting up. I was lost and searching for any fix I could get my hands on—and Alina was too. And we were having a time of it. I guess it was my first Christmas without my mother, and her first Christmas without her father home. But you know how that whole thing turned out—with Alina and me. Anyway, this was the night everything changed for me.

It had to be after three in the morning, and I was standing on the corner of Stokes Road and Tabernacle Road looking up at the full moon overhead, grinning ear-to-ear. It was a cold night, like pull your P-Coat over your ears cold. I was chilled to the bone, but I didn’t care. The way I was feeling, I was immune to mere earthly discomforts. I imagined my spirit engulfing the entirety of this small lake community and larger still, growing to stand above the full span of the local highway—Rt. 70—which stretches its two arms across the country and touches both coasts—and growing larger and larger still—a continental vanguard. I felt that the bright winter stars were a seated audience in a theater and that I stood front and center on the stage, performing for their amusement. The air was crisp and moist, to the point you could taste the frost on your tongue and see your own breath. A flurry of snow was starting to fall—those soft fluffy flakes that melt before they hit the ground.

Out of nowhere, I saw a man who was buck naked—down to his feet—walk into the gas station in the parking lot of the old Settlers Inn and sit down on the bench out in front. Now, at this point in the night, the gas station was closed, mind you. He looked forlorn sitting there, looking out over the lake, like he had a heavy burden weighing him down. His gaze fixed in on a single oil-heated Tiki Torch in the garden by the dock of the house directly across the lake—its small flame struggling against the buffeting winds. And his eyes seemed to me to be two endless gateways which—looking into this one faint spark, at once, saw and comprehended and contained all the flames and embers that ever had been, were now, or ever would be.

At first, I thought he was probably some old homeless man with a drug-addled brain. His ragged white hair was midway down his back, his beard was ashen and chalky and overgrown. He had some kind of dirt or soot on his shoulders, and the soot ran all the way down his arms. The guy looked like he had just been sweeping chimneys. He was a tall man. Stately. And he sat upright, looking out, just like this was another day at the office—not in the least bit uncomfortable—no sign he was freezing. In fact, his skin had a slightly red hue to it which was emanating heat—and the air around his body was condensing in a misty cloud that created a kind of halo around his torso.

He turned his head to where I stood, shot me a long leveling glance, and extended a skeletal arm signaling me to come.

Out of sheer curiosity, or perhaps madness, I felt compelled to find out what was going on. As I walked over, he held out both hands in front of him and looked down at his palms—and so I did too. In his hands was a key, which to my mind, looked like some kind of skeleton key. It was at this point that my stomach sank, and my gut seemed to sink in on itself. A jolt of fire coursed in my veins and every nerve flickered. It took my mind a moment to catch up and process the weirdness of what I was witnessing.

As soon as I got close enough to see what he was holding, he stood up and started walking to the entrance of the Inn. He walked straight across the parking lot his footfalls leaving little vapors of steam as he went, up the front staircase, past the decorative Indian Chief sculpture on the porch—the one adorned with that regal headdress, that ornate brown tasseled canvas coat closed up with a binding of chieftain’s shell beads, and with those ornate wampum armbands. And he used the skeleton key to unlock the door.

All the lights were off inside. There was some lingering warmth which felt good, from earlier in the night when they were running the heat and the fireplace. And I just kept following the man, like I was in some kind of strange dream.

He led me down the basement steps to a little furnace room. Now, Settlers Inn, as you know, was the oldest log cabin in the United States and also the biggest—it is what the whole town was known for. And in the basement, the logs ran the length of the room from the furnace to the door.

“What are we doing down here,” I asked.

The man looked at me with eyes that seemed to swirl with black and purple, like a cosmic storm, and he said, “I am Puriel. I am here to make old things new.”

Not knowing how to possibly respond to a statement like that, I just said, “And what am I doing here?”

“You have something in your pocket,” he said. It was a note my mother had written to me explaining her condition and her wishes. I’d been carrying it with me ever since, as if letting it out of my sight even for a second would cause her to fade from memory.

“You want this?”

He nodded and I handed him the note. He walked across the room and placed it in the furnace. He briefly looked in my direction and then placed his index finger inside. As his finger touched the paper, a flame shot up from the middle of it and yellow fire ran quickly to each of the four edges, leaving a black coating of ash behind.

He looked back at me again as he walked across the room.

He placed both of his hands on one of the cedar logs along the same wall that made up the entrance of the building. Puriel’s hands began to glow red and the veins in his forearms shimmered like gold. All at once the entire wall was engulfed in red flames and a flicker of yellow raced around the room until the entire basement was transformed into a cage of fire.

“Now go!” he commanded.

* * *

Standing out on the porch, I watched in stunned silence as the flames cracked the exterior of the cedar logs and climbed up to the towering A-Frame of the Lodge and pierced the sky. Then Puriel appeared next to me, and he grabbed the canvas chieftain’s coat from the Indian Chief and walked back out into the parking lot, as he donned the coat—which fit as if it had always been his—a trail of smoke wafting off his frame and curtains of steam emanating from his soot covered arms.

I noticed there was a ’67 Chevy Impala in midnight black with chrome trim sitting in the parking lot. Puriel pointed at the car and said, “Get in.”

Sitting there in silence, Puriel pulled around by the police station to where the wooden walking bridge over the lake was, just wide enough for two men to pass, and idled the engine. As he pushed it into drive, I thought that the car was far too big to cross the bridge and I mock-braked the passenger floor and pushed my shoulders back in my seat, bracing for a crash—but the Impala began to shrink—we began to shrink!—hand to God! And as we drove across the bridge toward that lone flame from the Tiki Torch by the dock, the Impala continued to shrink even further until it was the size of a toy car, and smaller still, until we were driving through the rivets of the beams of the wood itself.

And we found ourselves on an empty dirt path under a moonless sky, a hitching post to our left side, and ahead of us two diverging paths, each bordered by separate tall black gates, the kind that one sees at the entrance to a cemetery. The two paths, one narrow, one broad, lead outward over what seemed to be a vast abyss of darkness, making it impossible to see what lay down the road on either side. Between the two paths, in a rocking chair, was a woman in a hospital gown, obscured from view, rocking in the still dark void.

“What are we doing here? Why did you burn down the Inn? What is this place?”

“Wood burns. All that decays is consumed. The old and overgrown are cast aside. The fire in the pines melts the glue of the nettles of the cones and let’s seed spread out over the ash. The energy and the minerals stored in the felled needles, twigs, and branches is digested and becomes nourishment. Rain falls and the nutrition disperses in the soil. The strongest pines have thick armor and hold strong. The felled pines no longer darken the forest floor. Their removal gives way to fresh light. New shoots rise up. The good seed goes on and multiplies a hundred-fold; the bad seed and dross are burned away. This is my function.”

“But why burn down the inn?”

“The inn was the heart of the town. When the heart grows cold it must be set ablaze again. That structure has burned to the ground many times over centuries. The town is like the forest and must be renewed after a time—as so too must you be.”

“And what are we doing here?”

“You see that woman?”

“Yes.”

“She is at the crossing.”

“Can she hear us?”

“No, no. She is not truly there—except in spirit—but you see her this way so that you can understand what you must do.”

Puriel pulled from the chieftain’s coat, which now was colored crimson red, a set of scales.

“What is that?”

“These are the scales by which men are judged.”

“And how are they judged?”

Puriel pointed to the sky and a portal opened which scanned the world and showed bustling cities of men—focusing in on wars, murders, rapes, slavery, and a host of less obvious atrocities—like a trailer to a movie featuring all of man’s depravity. Then it focused in on caregivers caring for the sick, visitors in prisons, people helping strangers—but, panned back out and showed these same one’s abusing loved ones, neglecting their duties, and indulging every kind of perverse pleasure.

“Oh God! If you were to judge mankind that way, you’d have to destroy all creation!”

In the shadows to our right, far off, perhaps the distance of the span of the lake from the Settlers Inn, as far off over the dark void as that garden Tiki Torch light had been, sat what appeared to be a figure of a man in a golden chair, gazing at the woman in the rocking chair.

Puriel reached back into the chieftain’s coat and pulled out a black Mead Composition Book with a black and white marble cover—and an obscured name was written on the title lines. He waved his hand and the pages scrolled, each page filled to the brim with a narrative of words and figures and lists. Puriel said, “light and dark, by the dust, in the balance, heavy deeds and light, all mercy and all malice, all must drink the bitter cup of their own wrath, all must merit the prayers of one true heart to pass.”

And in that moment, I understood that I was there for this woman, for whom I felt not only kinship, but something more personal. Like the way you watch a character in a movie, and you want them to come out alright in the end—only a thousand times that. Looking out on her lonely soul suspended between fates, I prayed, with all of the charity and mercy and love that I possessed, poor as it may be, that she would find her way to God. 

And in that moment, I found myself laying on the dock of Alina’s house, by the garden Tiki Torch I had lit for light while I read under the stars, so many hours before, even before I had taken my walk and before I met Puriel.

* * *

My brother and his friends had snuck around the back of the inn and loaded up dollies and wagons with cases of beer from the restaurant. After all, they wouldn’t be using it. Firemen scoured the ashes and the blaring lights of the fire trucks and police cruisers shone off the lakes and the windows of the nearby stores.

As a boy, Settlers Inn was an emporium of wonders. You know what I mean. It gave off those hunting cabin vibes, with all the stuffed buck heads in the great room, the dance hall in the back, and all of the little shops around the sides—a music shop, a bookstore, a souvenir shop, a magic shop, and all of the stations with roped off historical exhibits.

The body of the inn was like a king arrayed in strength and grandeur, and I looked in amazement that its bones and skin were reduced to two smoldering crossed iron beams and a heap of cedar ash just a few feet high, with some jutting metal and glass strewn about the parking lot, its spirit freed from its tomb.

I’ll never forget that night.

* * *

So, like I was telling you, I’ve never told anyone about this before. After that night, Alina and I split up. I went off to college and never returned back to Ford Lakes, even after all this time, until now.

Do you remember the inscription above the stand where the Indian Chief stood on the porch of the inn? “Move forward and never turn back.” That has been my motto ever since. I have been to Ghana, Tanzania, Korea, Ukraine, Serbia and Maldova and a dozen other places. Always on the road. Always forward.

I guess my Mom was wrong, and that night really changed my whole perspective. You know what I mean—you remember her saying it when we’d be out shooting hoops at the old ball court and we would come running in with some crazy plan we’d cooked up. You remember the way she’d shake her finger at us—Only fools search out danger and go in for lost causes. Well, that’s what I’ve been doing ever since that night. Finding lost causes in the most dangerous of places and offering a prayer for the dying—and we are all dying—some faster than others.

It might seem strange that I’ve never shared this story with anyone, but none of them were from here. They couldn’t possibly understand. But you were there with me that night. You grew up in town. You knew what it was like at Settlers Inn for all those school dances and art fairs. And you know what kind of things can happen in the pines on the winter solstice—so I knew you’d understand. I knew that you would believe me.

And that’s why I’m here, friend, offering a prayer for you.