Tending the Fire by Sharon Erby
Every year, he started getting ready for winter in August and he wasn’t done until the following June. People could talk, but this wood business wasn’t easy. After all, he couldn’t wait until the temperatures plummeted to cut wood. He’d decided on the outdoor wood burner because their home sat on wooded property. His wife said they had wonderful trees. Each, after he’d felled, chopped, and hauled it, was consumed by the four cubic foot firebox that burned at 900 degrees. The Hardy had worked like a charm for fifteen years.
He controlled the operation. A man needed no help. He’d started working at 9 when he fed his sister’s horses – horses he hated. Horses whose deaths he’d celebrated. He was used to work. No wonder he maintained while locals folded right after they’d taken up the wood-burning craze. Candy asses. Too much work? What else did they have to do?
His wife told him to slow down. “Sit with me, Robert. Have a glass of white Lambrusco.” Her and her fancy wines. Anyway, it was pink. Besides, Glenna kept her company, or had kept her company.
He didn’t slow down. It was because he was slowing down that he couldn’t slow down. What used to take him weeks to do now took months. And he had to mow, trim, plow, plant. He told people he retired to a new job.
Martha didn’t understand. She thought life was Lambrusco, sitting on the porch swing, planting flowers to put in pretty vases on tables with lace tablecloths…and Glenna.
Why did Glenna ever go to college? When she left, Martha latched onto Robert like a trout on a nightcrawler. She even wanted to go fishing with him. “Show me how to cast,” she said. “The only other thing you’ll have to do is take the fish off if I hook one.”
Robert hadn’t many pleasures in life, but trout fishing – with friends – was one of them. “You’d be bored,” he told her. “And those boys drink — not Lambrusco.” So she stayed home, and when he returned, he found her asleep on Glenna’s bed, with an empty Lambrusco bottle beside her.
Next day, she started. “Robert, let’s go see Glenna. Don’t tell me you’ve got too much to do. The only thing you were going to do was go fishing. You can fish when we come home. Those boys won’t catch them all in one day.”
He should’ve said no, but when he remembered yesterday’s Lambrusco he agreed. Then morning came, with something unexpected.
“Look at that white,” he’d said. “Three inches! And it’s only 25 degrees!” The house was stone cold. “We can’t go to Glenna’s. Somebody’s got to tend the fire.”
Robert couldn’t talk her out of the trip. She left before he even got outside. He filled the furnace with oak, and when he watched the gray smoke belch from the Hardy he heard the sirens.
There, he thought. That’s done. He turned and went inside.
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About the Author
Sharon Erby
Born: Tarentum, PA
Now Resides: Chambersburg, PA
Bio: Writers spend a lot of time alone. When I wrote “While You Were, I…” I was in a writing program, while I was also working and taking care of my family. I got stretched pretty thin. I remembered when I was a kid and my mom became ill—and how things changed between me and my busy dad. I melded my feelings during that time with what I imagined my own kids might be thinking about their ‘absent’ Mom. And I captured it in a ‘flash.’ You can read some of my other creative work in Feminist Studies and Mobius.
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image by ravennick.
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