Friday evening I was sitting on the couch having some quality time with Killer. When he decides to get some attention for himself I am basically immobilized. He sits on my tummy and stretches up onto my chest. Once in position he ensures constant petting by nudging my chin with his head if ever I dare to stop. While so engaged I heard My Beloved calling from the back of the house. He has a tendency to sound rather urgent all the time so I made nothing of it. He called again. This time I answered "I've got a cat on me." This was enough to dislodge the cat so I decided to indulge him and go see what had him all in a fuss. Imagine my surprise when the smell of smoke met my nose in the kitchen and the crackle of fire met my ears at the back door. In the middle of the alley that runs down the side of our house there was a pile of something black on fire. Little flames danced on the top and ashes surrounded it on the asphalt. It had been a wet day which made it a particularly strange sight in the otherwise dampish landscape of garages and back yards. We looked at one another. What to do first: tell the neighbors, call the police, get the hose? My Beloved decided to alert the neighbors behind whose house the fire was situated. I started to unroll the hose. We have a very small yard but we got the hose at Costco which means we could wrap the hose around our house twice. My Beloved came out with the neighbors and I turned on the spigot. (Lefty loose-y.) While My Beloved hosed down the burning heap and the neighbors talked excitedly I called 911. I thought it was important that a record of the fire exist and I thought it would provide a nice evening's entertainment for the neighbor's nephew.
My last words to the 911 operator was "Be sure they know the fire is out."
Since the fire was indeed out a party atmosphere began to develop.
Wild speculation about who had started the fire and why ensued. A neighbor whose house faces the park remember seeing an unfamiliar woman walking in the park picking up sticks. Someone else later saw what sounds like the same woman in the back alleyway. Next we heard sirens. We listened to them a while as they wound through the net of one way streets and seemed to get no closer. Finally a spectacularly shiny truck pulled up perpendicular to the end of the alley and a number of brawny firemen trudged up the alley looking disappointed. In the blink of an eye the mouth of the alley was all but plugged with a strangely short and fat assortment of gawkers who appeared as if from thin air. "Trash fire" was quickly whispered around and they left dejectedly.
The wet pile of trash was probed and found to have come from a house on our street a couple of blocks and most notably from across a major intersection away. Animated discussion and renewed tellings of the discovery of the fire and the suspicious woman went through the little knot of neighbors like they were singing a round. As I sat on the back step observing the goings on I had occasion to overhear a fireman summarizing the events for a police officer. They story had mutated in the way only frequent repeating and selective listening can cause. The story of the trash fire now went something like this: A crazed appearing unknown women had been seen carrying trash down the street. Subsequently she collected a long fallen branch from the park. She lit it on fire and carried it torch like down the street and into the alley where she ignited the trash. She then apparently disappeared in a puff of smoke. How exciting.
