North of Boston
THEY AINT MUCH HAPPENED sence the last riting. I am setting to ray desk massaging a riting machine when a Trooper comes in and asts have I got a fiddle. I look out the window.
Wun quarter of the horizon is billowing white smoke with ugly black puffs snapping up through same.
The next week is awl mixed up. Two villages was wiped out. Thousands of acres burned over. Sum fooks was runned over and sum was burned.
A feller comes out of a deal like that with a bunch of pitchers in his head—driving through what had been woods at dusk that was like being in a burned out cathedral. Towering gray-black columns on each side, the road a carpet of ash, dead smoke spiral ling into the air and the last live rabbit in them parts limping ahead of the car—stopping at a crossroads church for coffee and doughnuts. Beat out men was sleeping in the pews. Up front wimmen was putting out food and cigarettes. The fire lit up the windows like Christmas Eve. But they want no Christmas organ music—instead they was the howl of pumpers running wide open and the deep coughs of the Diesel bulldozers ripping out fire lanes—driving along a road lined with lovely red swamp maples. Then the wind driven flames come shooting through them red maples, making them redder still. It want a nice place to be—old couple sleeping in each other's arms in their car, parked in front of what had been their big farmhouse. What they had left was lashed to the top—fellers with deer rifles setting up road blocks to keep fire bugs out uv the back areas. Nobody driv through them blocks.
I wisht sum of you fellers could of ben along on that deal. You wouldn't of liked it, but you wouldn't want to uv missed it.
