The Man on the Park Bench

I tramped along the dusty road just outside of Fort Branch, Indiana, a step behind my ten -year-old cousin David. He looked real good in his tan Boy Scout hat, off center just enough to show his devil-may-care attitude. But hey, he was entitled. He’d already become a second-class scout, and I was still only a tenderfoot. And he’d agreed to visit from Evansville, twenty miles away, to help me earn my very first merit badge.

  He stopped, and I almost ran into him. He gave me his patented disgusted look and pointed toward a patch of trees at the top of the hill.

  “We’ll camp there,” he said. “You going to make it?”

  “Sure, David.”

  I ignored my pinching new shoes. Mom said to wear my old ones, but who knew she’d be right? I hitched up my backpack, heavy with a frying pan, eggs, and bacon, and looked up into David’s eyes.

  “Walk up here with me,” he said. “The book says you have to walk a whole mile, and I bet you’re not supposed to lollygag. Say, you got more gum?”

  I gave him my last piece of juicy fruit, and he started chomping it. He walked faster, and I soon lagged behind again. I figured it was my right, though, since my legs were shorter. Besides, he probably had a lot of hiking practice. Why, he’d even gone to scout camp the year before.

  We reached the trees. It was windier up here, and the treetops whipped around. I liked the breeze, because it was a hot day, but David looked worried. He turned in a complete circle, staring up at those waving trees, like he was doing a survey or something. Finally he stepped off the road, and I followed him across the ditch. He turned.

  “We’ll build the fire—here!” He jabbed a finger toward a spot that looked like every other spot I could see. “You brought the matches, right?”

  “I sure did, David. Two, just like the manual said.”

  “Two…” He frowned and glanced again at the weaving trees. I looked down at their roots. At least the wind had blown down twigs and things. We started picking some up and soon had enough to start a huge bonfire.

  We laid down dried leaves and grass and piled the twigs on top. Finally we leaned bigger sticks against each other over that pile so they’d look just like an Indian teepee. I’d seen Roy Rogers make one just like that the Saturday afternoon before at the matinee. We knelt with the stack between us.

  David nodded. “Pretty good,” he said. “Now, light it.”

  I looked up at him. He looked back, and it was quiet for a second.

  “Well—well, light it,” he said.

  I looked at him. “I can’t.”

  “What? What do you mean, you can’t?”

  “I don’t know how. I’ve never made a campfire in my whole life.”

  He sat there, staring at the teepee, then the trees, then back at me. He inched around on his knees until he was directly between the wind and that teepee of kindling.

  “Well, just light it, that’s all,” he said. “Just strike the match and light it.”

  But a step was missing. A real important one. I couldn’t remember what it was, though. I held a match up and considered its red and white head, then looked for something to strike it on. Dad always flicked his thumbnail across a match when he wanted to light his pipe, and it worked like a charm. The one time I tried that the head got stuck under my thumbnail and burned like everything. I finally decided to strike it on my shoe sole.

  Then I remembered what that important step was.

  “You’re supposed to blow,” I said. “You know, strike the match and hold it in the grass and then blow so it will catch fire.”

  David’s eyebrows went up. He looked at the kindling, then back at me.

  “Well, everybody knows that,” he said.

  “Well, yeah, but—”

  “So blow on it.” He was getting impatient again.

  “But David, I don’t know when to blow. Will you tell me when?”

  Now he frowned. He glanced at me, then at the match, then at the pile of kindling and grass.

  “They blow on it in all the cowboy movies,” I said. “They light the match, and then they blow.”

  “Well, sure they do,” he said. “You gotta blow at just the right time, though.”

  “Right! But I don’t know when that is!” I could hear my voice getting louder. “What if I blow at the wrong time? You know, too early, or too late? Will you tell me when to blow?”

  He didn’t say anything for a minute. I sat there, holding that match up like I was the Statue of Liberty, waiting for him to answer. I sure didn’t want to do it wrong and not get that merit badge.

  “I’ll tell you when,” he said, finally. His voice was funny, like he was trying to sound real official. He did that sometimes.

  “Okay,” I said. “Here goes.”

  I struck the match one, two, three times, until it finally flared up.

  “Cover it up!” David said.

  “What?”

  “Put your hand over it! So the wind doesn’t blow it out!”

  I wrapped my hand around it, and it flickered a lot, but it stayed lit. I jabbed it into the bunched-up grass.

  “Now?” I said. “Now?”

  “Now!” he yelled.

  I leaned down and blew. The match went out, and a little line of smoke spiraled from it. Not from the grass, though. It was stone cold.

  I looked up at David. He had fear on his face, like maybe something had scared him. He stared at the match, then at me.

  “You got the other match?” he said, real soft like.

  “Sure, David. I got it right here.”

  I got it from my pants pocket, and he stared at it like it was like a treasure or something.

  “Now be more careful,” he said. “You gotta blow exactly when I tell you.”

  I was determined to do it right. I took my backpack off and laid down on my stomach, my head inches from that teepee, and grabbed a piece of kindling to strike the second match on. David got down on his stomach, too, and adjusted one of the sticks. Apparently satisfied, he propped himself up on his elbows. I held the match to my piece of kindling. He paused, then nodded.

  I struck the match. It flared, and the sulfur stung my nostrils. I jabbed it into the grass under the sticks, as much to get it out of my face as to start the fire. David sprung up onto his hands and stretched out so that his head was right over the match.

  “Tell me, David! Tell me!”

  He stared at me, dumbly.

  When do I blow! When—”

  “Blow!” he yelled. “Blow!”

  Well, I blew. I blew so hard that the grass flew away, leaving the bare matchstick wavering at the end of my squeezed-tight fingers. That sulfur smoke spiraled into David’s face, and he jerked back. Tears glistened in his eyes. He jumped up and ran a few feet toward the road and stood there, looking away from me. He cleared his throat, or maybe it was a sniff. I flipped the cold matchstick to the ground.

  “David?” I said. “David?”

  He didn’t answer. I walked around him to talk to him but he kept turning away.

  “David? Does this mean I don’t get my merit badge?”

  He mumbled something, and I said I couldn’t understand him.

  “It’s your fault,” he said, louder. “You just can’t follow instructions, can you?”

  “But David—”

  He rubbed his eyes and whirled around to face me. It was real red around his eyes.

  “Serves you right! I told you when to blow, but you just didn’t listen. You got to learn to listen, Donnie.”

  He walked toward the fence, and I picked up my backpack. He walked real fast, and I followed him, almost running, all the way home. I tried to talk to him a couple of times, but he didn’t answer. He didn’t ask me to walk beside him, either.

  I didn’t see him much after that. He got an usher job at a movie house in Evansville, and the next thing I knew he’d gone to college and joined the Air Force ROTC. He graduated with an accounting degree and was sent off to Alaska for three years. He came home on leave, and we visited his fami
ly, and he showed us the slides he took. All I remember is a lot of snow and rows of buildings. He started working at IBM, and he’s still there, in the accounting department.

  I never did get that merit badge. I dropped out of the scouts not long after that, and just went to school and hung around and things. I finally got interested in girls and bought an old car and went to college myself. That was a long time ago, way back before we sent those men to the moon.

  Once in a great while I think about that hiking trip and trying to make that fire. If only I knew when to blow, why, my whole life might have turned out completely different.

  The Old Furniture Polish Warehouse

  When Stacey Jenkins’ mother ran away

  with the chemical salesman thirty years ago,

  she didn’t get far.