Burn Down the Ground Read online

  Finally, the Chevy rounded a hairpin turn and I saw a hand-painted chunk of wood nailed to a tree that read “Boars Head.” Flanked by solid walls of pine trees, we proceeded down the bumpy, single-lane dirt road turned bright pumpkin orange from a coating of iron ore gravel that had been laid by some of the locals for traction. We drove over a bridge made of railroad ties that was so rickety it rippled from the weight of the Chevy. Although it was only ten feet above a half-dry creek bed, I began praying to God that I would live to see my eighth birthday.

  The truck came to a quick stop, skidding on the pebbles, and creating a cloud of orange dust. We couldn’t drive any farther. A wall of trees blocked our way and we had to walk the remaining six hundred feet into the dense forest to our campsite. As I hopped out, my mother shouted a warning: “Watch where you step! There’re snakes hiding everywhere.”

  I kept my eyes focused on the ground as I followed Dad, trekking over the forest floor layered with pinecones and needles as we passed wild palms and aloe plants. Soon we were so deep in the forest that despite the early afternoon hour, it was as dark as a moonlit night save for an occasional glimmer of sunlight when a stiff breeze blew the treetops. Before each step, I looked for a snake. I wasn’t even sure what one looked like, but I knew they were our enemy. Pamie seemed oblivious to the danger as she bounded along, craning her neck to see over the brush, leaping over sticks and bushes.

  At last, we reached it: the cabin.

  I marveled at the sheer size of it. The logs of the cabin were at least two feet in diameter and stripped of all bark. Oddly, there was an old diesel truck parked smack dab inside it.

  “Home, sweet home!” Mom gushed. She looked positively dazzled.

  “This is where we’re going to live?” I asked. “How can we stay in a house with a broken-down truck in it?”

  With or without the scrapped semi, the cabin wasn’t habitable or even salvageable. There was no roof, windows, or doors, and the logs, many of which looked half-rotten, weren’t chinked.

  The plan wasn’t to live in it. We were going to start from scratch. We would sleep in tents until my father could convert an outbuilding on the property into something sufferable while we cleared and readied the land for a mobile home.

  Mom’s father was a fisherman and a hunter, so she was accustomed to living with an outdoorsman. Though this was a far cry from a weekend camping trip or a visit to a favorite fishing hole, my mother seemed willing to accept being homeless in order to start fresh with Dad.

  My father loved working with his hands. He seemed inspired by the challenge that lay before him, completing this enormous undertaking all on his own while restoring his wife’s faith. I dreaded what appeared to be a monumental job, but David was euphoric. I hadn’t seen him this excited since he got his knockoff Evel Knievel bicycle for his ninth birthday.

  By nightfall we had set up our campsite. But the night was so hot and muggy that the only way to sleep was outside of our tents in sleeping bags under the stars. Who needed a cabin anyway? The woods were so dense that once the sun set I couldn’t see my own hand in front of my face.

  That first night, I had to visit the outhouse. Nestled in a cluster of trees, the latrine was constructed from leftover tin and rotted wood. It stood fifty feet from where we slept, just far enough away that the stench of stagnant waste wouldn’t waft through our campsite. To avoid any embarrassing moments with deaf visitors, Mom had painted a block of wood for the door that read “Occupied” on one side and “Vacant” on the other, since there was no lock and they wouldn’t hear a knock at the door.

  Wearing a T-shirt and underpants, I shuffled along the dirt path, following the beam of my flashlight. The cacophony of owls, crickets, and croaks of bullfrogs didn’t frighten me much. As a child reared around deaf people who had no idea how loud they could be, I was used to turning a ruckus into a white noise symphony.

  But as I reached the stall, I remembered Mom warning me, “Be sure to check the hole before you sit. You don’t want a snake to bite you in the ass.”

  I pointed the flashlight into the reeking hole, sending a dozen daddy longlegs scurrying for cover. I shuddered.

  Finding it free of snakes, I started my business. But when a tree grazed against the rusted tin roof, I stopped midstream. I imagined the branches to be the metal hooks of the deaf man from the bowling tournament, scraping against the side of the outhouse and coming after me.

  I burst through the outhouse door and bounded barefoot down the path, yanking up my underwear along the way, a flash of towheaded lightning. I’d learned long before that there was no use in crying; my parents couldn’t hear me.

  Nevertheless, sheer terror forced a guttural wail out of my skinny frame. As I ran, my flashlight turned every tree into a looming bogeyman. My body involuntarily convulsed, desperate to shake off whatever I imagined was touching me before I reached the safety of my sleeping bag.

  I made sure to never again go to bed without first emptying my bladder while everyone was still awake.

  Dad had big plans for our five and a half acres. Our land on Boars Head was raw, wild terrain and the top priority was to clear a driveway so the Chevy could haul tools, food, and water to our campsite. We also needed the driveway to allow the delivery of the three-bedroom mobile home my parents had picked out from a sales lot.

  My father wasn’t wasting the opportunity to show Mom that he was committed. Five days a week he drove to downtown Houston to work on a construction site. Before leaving each morning, he handed us a list of tasks that Mom, David, and I could accomplish in his absence. Arriving home in the late afternoon, he picked up more tools and toiled on the property as long as the setting sun would allow. Every waking moment on week-nights and all through the weekend, he worked tirelessly to convert our land into something livable.

  A neighbor in Houston once said of my father, “I don’t like that man who always has a beer can in his hand.” But now that we were in the woods, I hadn’t seen him drink anything other than jugs of water or Kool-Aid from a Tupperware container. Mom’s strategy was paying off. My father was isolated in the woods and sober. Still, they didn’t seem as affectionate as they usually had been. I was used to seeing them steal smooches or give each other playful smacks or pinches on the rear, but I chalked up their current lack of intimacy to the fact that lately Dad smelled like a dirty jockstrap.

  Our first weeks were spent clearing the layers of pine needles, cones, and plants that housed centipedes, scorpions, and every kind of snake imaginable. It was exhausting, especially in the oppressive heat. At night I was so tired I collapsed into my sleeping bag. Some days I was dragging ass but if I got caught slacking Dad knew exactly how to motivate me.

  “Kipree!” he’d call out to get my attention, then sign, “Come on, no sitting. The more you help, the faster we can get the trailer.” I desperately wanted our mobile home delivered. The novelty of sleeping on the ground had lost its appeal on night three when I found a centipede crawling in my hair. I would have shoveled shit out of the outhouse if it meant I’d get a real bed and some protection from the elements.

  After a few weeks, we could make sense of the site and it was time to cut down trees. Using fluorescent pink construction ribbon my father had lifted from a job site, he and my mother worked together marking which trees would stay and which were destined for a bonfire. Dad and David did most of the chopping, while Mom and I were in charge of hauling the felled trunks, limbs, and branches into piles for torching.

  After breakfast one morning, Dad gathered us in a circle to review the next step. He signed, “Now we clear the leaves about a foot around every tree.”

  Every tree? I bleakly scanned the property. There were hundreds still standing! My parents were lucky we didn’t have a phone to call a child protection agency.

  “Smooth out the piles to thin layers,” Dad continued. “Then we start a fire and let it burn real slow. If you see a fire growing too big, spread it out even more and keep it away from the
trees.”

  We were going to burn our land? “Why’re we gonna do that? The fire will kill everything.”

  “It’s already dead, dummy,” David said, rolling his eyes. My brother had the ability to make me feel stupid with one quick criticism.

  David was in cutoff jeans with tube socks pulled up to his knees and his favorite red, white, and blue mesh shirt, which exposed his midriff. He loved that shirt so much that when he outgrew it, he merely cut off the bottom to make it into a half shirt. So, between the ages of nine and fifteen, he was wearing it in nearly every photo taken of him.

  “We have to burn it so the grass can grow from scratch,” Mom said. “It can’t be pretty without being burnt first.”

  My father saw the skepticism on my face. “Wait and see. In about two or three weeks it will look beautiful. T-R-U-S-T me,” he signed with a smile, then handed Mom a double-edged weed cutter and me a heavy metal rake.

  While I doubted the practicality of burning the land, I never questioned my father, and I was eager to please him. Ever since I could walk, I’d been at his side helping him on projects by handing him tools, sweeping up, or fetching him a fresh Coors Light. He “paid” me with rides in a wheelbarrow, by having me sit in his lap to steer the Chevy, or by letting me take the first sip of his beer. Although I’d wished I were his indispensable right-hand man, my brother had always filled that role. Dad had just been humoring me.

  But now that we were on Boars Head, there was real work for me to do and I was ready for whatever task he assigned. Over the weeks, Dad taught me how to till and plant a garden, use a level, and build a bonfire. In time, my blisters turned to calluses and I believed my favorite T-shirt, which read, “Anything boys can do, girls can do better.” I could do anything with the right tools.

  Taking the metal rake, I headed to one of the smaller trees.

  “If you find a snake, freeze and yell for David,” Mom called after me.

  Hearing this, I wished I were back at the 7-Eleven in Houston playing decoy for my sticky-fingered friends. At least that danger had the payoff of Kit Kats, Bubble Yum, and camaraderie. I hadn’t even seen another kid and with all this work, didn’t have time to go in search of one. What would raking get me other than blisters? I was seven years old, and all I wanted was a friend.

  One miserable tree at a time, we created circles of damp dirt around the base of each trunk. I was on my third one when I scraped back a blanket of crunchy pine needles and found my first real live snake.

  “David!” I shrieked and pointed to the baby copperhead tightly curled at the base of the trunk. “Snake!”

  It didn’t matter that the reptile was small and hadn’t budged; I was petrified. I wanted to bolt, but I heeded my mother’s instructions and stood as still as a statue. David walked over, hatchet in hand, and gave a quick chop-chop. The snake didn’t even flinch until the blade severed it. Still petrified, I stared down wide-eyed at the gory chunks.

  “Don’t worry,” David assured me, wiping off the bloody hatchet on his cutoff jeans. “Once the fire gets going they’ll leave.” He slipped the axe back through a holster hooked to his belt loop and strutted away as if he had slain a dragon.

  I ran to Mom and patted her butt to get her attention, “David killed a snake!” She inspected David’s deed and said, “Oh, that was just a baby. Be careful, there’re bigger ones out here.” My mother was unfazed by my near-death experience, so I tried to mimic her by acting brave.

  We tended to the fires for two days. The moist, smoky odor clung to me like the lingering smell of burnt popcorn. Smoldering piles spotted the scorched earth. The dead growth was reduced to ash and the snakes were gone. Time for new life had begun.

  Just as my father predicted, fresh grass soon burst forth in a green so bright it looked neon against the blackened ground. He walked through the trees inspecting our work, then bent down and plucked a shiny, smooth blade to show me.

  “See, I told you.” He placed it between his calloused thumbs, clasped his hands together, and blew into his thumbs, making a loud squeak with the grass.

  Amazed, my mouth fell open. “Did it make noise?” Dad asked.

  I nodded then signed, “How?”

  He waved me to follow in search of a perfect fresh piece of grass for me. Once we located one, Dad held it in place for me as I intertwined my fingers. I blew a hard breath, making the grass quiver with sound.

  He could see by my beaming smile that it had worked for me, too. I giggled as I rubbed my lips. “T-I-C-K-L-E-S!”

  He chuckled then asked, “What does it sound like?”

  “Like a duck’s honk,” I signed. But Dad had never heard a duck before, so I tried to think of a better description. I furrowed my brow and tapped my index finger on my chin as a sign to show him I was still thinking. “Or, better! Like a noisemaker on New Year’s Eve.” He’d blown those before and knew what the vibration on his lips felt like.

  Dad wrinkled his chin and thought about it for a bit before he patted my head and signed, “Come on, let’s go. We’ve got work to do.”

  Soon, the burnt ground was sprouting grass, wild palms, bluebonnets, Indian paintbrushes, black-eyed Susans, bluebells, and buttercups on our little plot on Boars Head.

  “See, Kambri. We told you,” Mom said. “It can’t be pretty without being ugly first.”

  It wasn’t long before we stopped sleeping outside and moved into a tin shed that sat a few feet away from the now-dismantled cabin. The rusted-out diesel truck remained. Our new living quarters, the size of a one-car garage, had a concrete slab floor. For fresh air, we pushed out panels Dad had cut into the metal walls and propped them open.

  Since we had left all of our furniture in storage, my parents got creative. “One man’s trash is another man’s treasure,” Mom said, beaming as she plopped down on our new couch, a discarded black vinyl restaurant bench Dad had found in a ditch. She propped her feet on the coffee table, an oversized electric cable spool Dad had salvaged from a construction site, took a big gulp from her plastic cup of iced tea, and patted the dusty seat. “Not too shabby!”

  Dad made two sets of twin-sized bunk beds out of chicken wire pulled taut over two-by-fours that we pushed together. My parents slept together on the bottom while David and I shared the top. We didn’t mind. Back in Houston, David and I had had our own rooms, but growing up we shared beds plenty of times when family came to visit. If I was scared or lonely at night, I’d even beg him to let me sleep with him.

  Many afternoons, thundershowers gave us a much-needed break. The first few drops of rain clattered like acorns dropping from a tree. Once the clouds let loose it sounded like millions had been dumped from the sky. I tried concentrating on a book but the ferocity of the noise rattled me. Dad didn’t notice and once Mom took out her hearing aids, neither did she. They puttered around the shed working on their own projects, lost in deaf thoughts. Inside, the shed was sticky and blistering hot and smelled of musty, moist dirt.

  Mom made frequent trips to the Safeway supermarket in Conroe, the biggest town within a forty-five-minute drive of our land. We had no refrigerator so we resorted to using two coolers filled with ice to preserve our groceries. We had camping gear for cooking but we usually ate easily prepared meals like bologna sandwiches on Wonder Bread. Having no electricity also meant no television or radio. At night, in the peace and quiet, it was as if we were the only humans on earth. Mom hemmed our clothes, Dad worked on our list of tasks, and David flipped through MAD magazines while I read Mom’s old Nancy Drew mysteries to the steady whoosh of the burning kerosene lanterns.

  With no running water, we resorted to petty thievery. At night my father loaded the back of the Chevy with a few bright blue ten-gallon jugs and drove to help himself to water from Webb’s, a mom-and-pop shop a couple of miles down the road where we bought bags of ice for the coolers, the newspaper, and cigarettes for Dad. I never worried about the consequences if someone caught us. We were under the cover of darkness and, besides, it was
just water. Surely Mr. Webb wouldn’t mind since it wasn’t like he paid for it; the water came from a natural spring well.

  That hijacked water was treated like liquid gold. We cooked, cleaned, and bathed with it very sparingly. Mom boiled pots of it, storing the distilled water in reused milk jugs.

  Most of our water was used trying to keep ourselves and our belongings clean. Aside from snakes, dirt was our most intrusive enemy. Layers of orange tinted dust coated everything. Dad fashioned a closet by stringing a rope between two posts and covered our clothes with sheets for protection. But his handiwork failed to protect my favorite baby blue corduroy jeans, which had dirt embedded in every groove.

  Bathing was a nightly chore. Every evening around dusk, Mom dragged a metal trough from outside to use as a bathtub. To further conserve, we all shared the same bathwater. Luckily, I was the youngest and the smallest, so I had the honor of washing first. My father lifted a blue jug and poured a thin layer of water into the trough before Mom added pots of freshly boiled water to warm it up.

  I was eight years old, having recently celebrated my birthday with a card and cake bought at Safeway, and was self-conscious about my body. Because it upset me to think anyone would see me nude, especially my brother, Mom haphazardly hid the cold, hard galvanized tub behind a dusty white sheet clipped to the ceiling with clothing pins for privacy. But she stood uncomfortably close nagging, “Don’t forget to wash your neck and ears. Hurry up, Kambri, the water’s getting cold.”

  As if being naked in a horse trough with my family inches away weren’t embarrassing enough, I had to undergo a nightly tick check. I stood in my underwear as my mother inspected every inch of my body. When one was found, she lit a match, blew it out, and pressed the smoking sulfur against the tick.