May 30, 2003

• 1954-’55

  
  

  FIRE BUG

  
  

  I have already mentioned that I took on the guilt for my father’s death when I was seven years old because I was angry over a spanking and wished, as the ambulance pulled away taking him to the hospital after a heart attack, that he would die.  I’ve also described how at that time of his death my mother switched her dependence for many tasks such as bookkeeping and auto maintenance from my father to me.  I have described some of my play habits that I have since learned are indications of OCD:  obsessive-compulsive disorder; and I have described the orgasm addiction that started the day of my father’s funeral.  Always a hyper-sensitive, “high-strung” child, now I was beginning to bend, twist and warp under the stresses of life.  In plain language, I was a sick puppy.

  
  

  I kept the shameful secret of having killed my father.  Nobody knew that but me.  I don’t think Mama had any conception that it could be harmful for me to become her caretaker at a time when I was surely in need of extra care myself.  She has expressed the opinion that I needed extra tasks to ”keep my mind off things.”  Since it has only been within the past few years that I have learned to recognize OCD in the patterns of childhood play, I don’t suppose Mama recognized anything unusual there, either.  She has told me that she didn’t really start worrying about my sanity until I started playing with fire.

  
  

  At the beginning, I’m sure it wasn’t my sanity she was worried about, either.  She was worried that I would burn the place down.  We were no longer living on the balcony at the back of the sundries store.  Our store was next door to a movie theater.  The theater had been closed when we moved there.  Before long, there was a new owner, the Walker family, and they became our friends.  We learned that there was a vacant 3 room apartment upstairs above the theater, and Mama decided to rent it.  That was where my fascination with fire started.

  
  

  All I recall about the start of that obsession was that the smell of sulphur matches reminded me of Daddy.  He had smoked 2 to 3 packs of cigarettes a day, usually lighting them with “strike anywhere” kitchen matches.  Sometimes he would scratch the match on the seat of his denim overalls, and sometimes he would flick the match with his thumbnail to strike it.  In Halstead, I started striking matches just to smell that reminiscent scent.  At first, I made no effort to hide it.  When Mama saw me do it, she yelled at me to stop.  I was eight or nine years old, but she still used the term, “no-no”, as if I was a toddler.  It became clear to me that, just like masturbation, I had to keep the match-striking hidden from Mama.

  
  

  I had difficulty striking a match, even on the abrasive surface on the side of the box.  Often, not drawing the match quickly enough across the surface would just rub off the sulphur at the tip, and the match would be spoiled.  I wasted a lot of matches that way.  Mama found burnt and unburned matches in the trash and scolded me.  Then I discovered that holding the match, even one with the tip worn off, in a flame, would cause it to flare and give me the scent-payoff I was seeking. 

  
  

  At first, I would just strike one match and then use it, as it burned down, to light fresh matches or the ones I had already spoiled with my ineffective striking technique.  Then I discovered that I could open a little door at the bottom of the water heater that stood in the bathroom at the end of the big old claw-footed enamel tub, and stick my matches into the pilot light, by-passing the striking step altogether.

  
  

  Mama discovered some charred match ends on the floor by the water heater, and some blisters on my fingertips.  She screamed at me, slapped me, called me, “fire bug”.  In tears, screaming  hysterically, she tried to frighten me with the prospect of burning the house down.  The “house” was a solid row of brick buildings along Main Street, that I was pretty sure wouldn’t “burn down”, and I had always been careful to extinguish any matches that fell to the floor.  I “knew” she was “wrong” about the dangers involved.  But I knew I had to find some better, more private ways to indulge my obsession.

  
  

  At first, I took a few matches from the box she had “hidden” on an upper shelf in the kitchen, where I had to climb up onto the countertop to reach.  I lit them in the area adjacent to the alley behind the store and theater, where I often played.  She eventually missed the matches and found the charred evidence of my play. 

  
  

  Then I bought my own box of matches.  It only cost 5 cents, and I found the nickel on the sidewalk.  By smashing the box’s corners, I could fit it into the compartment on my bike that was meant to hold the batteries for the headlight and horn.  Mama had said it was too expensive to keep replacing those batteries and I would just have to do without a light and horn.  I had resented that at the time, but then it turned to my advantage.

  
  

  I found quite a few isolated places to strike matches.  There was one spot on the bank of Black Kettle Creek near its confluence with the Little Arkansas River either within or close to Halstead’s Riverside Park.  I sat there often, just watching the water, which flowed very sluggishly and was green with algae.  I remember once there, seeing a snake sunning itself half in and half out of the water.  As I approached, it reared back its head and opened its mouth to show me the white inside:  cottonmouth water moccasin.  Sometimes, when I was sure no one was near to see me and tell on me, I would strike a few matches.

  
  

  I was training my black cocker spaniel Spooky, and Mama suggested that we teach him to find me, wake me in the morning, track me when I was out on my bike.  It didn’t take long before all Mama had to do was open the door, let him into the apartment and tell him to, “Get Kathy,” and he would lick my face until I woke and wouldn’t stop tugging at my clothes until I stood before my mother.

  
  

  I would leave him with her and ride away on my bike.  She would wait for increasingly longer periods of time before releasing him and telling him to “get” me.  One time, I rode straight to the Scout Park and, while I waited for Spooky to catch up with me, struck a match and lit a small collection of twigs on a bare patch of ground at the base of a big tree.  Someone in a house near the park saw me and called my mother to tell her I was playing with fire in the park.

  
  

  To her, that apparently was much worse than anything she had caught me at.  That someone else would find out her kid was a fire bug seemed much more serious than the mere fact of my being one.   She whipped me with a paddle, screamed at me and shamed me, told me how ashamed of me she was. 

  
  

  The closest thing the town had to a cop was the “night cop”, a watchman and door shaker who walked Main Street after closing time, making sure that all the stores were locked up.  She got him in on the act and he told me there was a law against arson, and that I could go to reform school just for setting a fire in the park, even a little “campfire” as I had.  I think it was a lie, because campfires were set in that park all the time, and I had used a spot where there had been plenty of previous fires.

  
  

  Whether it was true or not, it scared me out of playing with fire.  The scent of sulphur matches was no longer associated in my mind with my father.  Now it was associated with fear, shame and danger.  I still hate that smell.

  
  

  

  • 4:55 pm
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