ASHES

 

Wildfires have always been a devastating danger in Southern California. I've seen many of them in the thirty years that I lived there. Late summer and autumn are especially ripe times for fires - when the arid and ruthless Santa Ana winds rage.

This post depicts two memorable autumns in Southern California, which were set against backdrops of raging wildfires.

The first, when I was fifteen -- engulfed in the flames of my father's violence.

The second, during a torrid fire, when I was twenty-one, in the Hollywood Hills.

BTW

The second half of this post might be offensive to some people. It isn't my intention to offend. I'm simply telling a truthful part of my life.

Jon

                                      

I was fifteen that autumn and surrounded by danger. My parent's marriage was disintegrating. The tension was so acute that it had become nearly beyond the realm of human endurance. 

My father was intent on ripping the last remaining remnants of our lives to shreds, and he did it with such incredible diabolic precision that any semblance of reality was expunged. His violence - which on a good day was unbearable - had increased to alarming realms of maniacal desperation. He lurked in the shadowed agony of his own delusions, waiting with the raw anticipatory patience of a hungry animal, looking for any reason to attack: to pounce and kill.

My mother and I existed under the distorted cloud of his insanity, catering to his every whim, forever terrified of accidentally doing anything that would trigger the next explosion.

The nights were the worst. Darkness magnified the fear and perpetuated our sense of helplessness. My father guzzled beer religiously, but at the time I never fully realized the effect it had on accelerating his anger. The only positive aspect was that the alcohol would eventually make him sleep. Slouched in a kitchen chair, in an impossibly uncomfortable position, his hideous snores would be the signal that we could relax - at least for awhile.

Mom and I would try to sleep during these rare moments of respite - but we always slept lightly and fully dressed, prepared for the next inevitable battle. I slept with a butcher knife under my pillow, but it only provided a false sense of security. I knew full well that if I ever tried to use it against my father, he'd kill me with it.

When he'd suddenly awaken in the post midnight hours, he would be refreshed and ready to resume the violence. He not only derived sadistic pleasure in the beatings, but also in chasing us out of the house and locking the door. Mom and I would shiver in the chilly yard, cowering in the shadows, praying that he wouldn't come outside to look for us. Sometimes we'd sneak into the garage and sit in the car with the doors locked, waiting until dawn.

My father always kept the keys to the car so we couldn't get them. One night my Mom somehow managed to procure the keys. We hastily packed a few things and sneaked out to the garage, which was separate from the house, far back in the yard. The risk was great, but it was our only chance of escape.

I lifted the heavy wooden garage door, then got in the car as Mom started the engine. She hadn't yet backed out of the garage when my father appeared - literally out of nowhere. He opened the car door, twisted the key, and ripped it out of the ignition. Before we could even think, he grabbed a large can of gasoline and began dousing the car and the garage, while shouting that he was going to burn everything and that we'd never get out alive. I frantically made my escape, ran to the house, and called the police.

Within minutes, police cars surrounded our house and everything was illuminated with bright searchlights. I only remember fragments of that chaotic scene, but do know that it ended with my father utilizing his well-rehearsed repertoire of charm and lies. He was calmly laughing off the incident, and blaming it on his wife and son who were troublemakers - always hysterical and crazy.

Those were the days when family violence was never discussed publicly and cops couldn't care less about women's rights. They were always on the man's side - at least that was my consistent childhood observation. My father inevitably won. Always. He was emboldened by the fact that he could get away with anything. And after the cops left, things always got worse. Mom and I would be severely punished for causing all the trouble.

That was the angry autumn of endlessly raging brush fires. We lived in a small, sleepy California town nested in the hills between Orange County and the city of Riverside. The dry, fierce Santa Ana winds were raging and fires were igniting everywhere. By late September the hills near our town were ablaze. By early October, the fires multiplied and we were literally surrounded by them. There was no way out. 

There was danger within and danger without: my father and his volatile, unpredictable temper, and the uncontrollable raging fires. The desert winds shrieked, making the house tremble. The air was so dry and the smoke so thick, that my sinuses were ravaged and I had severe headaches. It was impossible to go outside. 

Then the ashes began to fall, thickly and swiftly, like a hellish storm of surrealistic snow. Everything was covered with gray ash - the streets, the yard, even the astonished palm trees. The sullen landscape was buried in it.

In early evening, at sunset, I ventured outside to timidly survey the scene. The world as I once knew it had vanished and was replaced with an incredibly vivid ethereal crimson glow. The red disk of the setting sun had melted into the enormous lake of fire on the horizon. Everything was covered with ash and drenched in a thick smokey haze of angry red. I could actually feel the heat of the approaching flames. 

I was mesmerized by the magnitude of the unholy scene, and completely unaware that I was being anointed in an unrelenting rain of unblemished ash.

Six years later: 

Another California autumn, in the Hollywood hills. I'm in the upstairs bedroom of a Spanish-style mansion built in the 1920's. Drowsy from little sleep and too much Sangria. Laying in a tangle of damp sheets and a subtle confusion of deepening shadows. It is nearly dusk, on an impossibly hot and breathless September evening.

I glance at my companion next to me. Rafael is asleep, gently exhausted, breathing calmly in the abstract sweetness of dreams. The enticing body of a classic Greek God, the deceiving face of an archangel.

Outside, far beyond the open wrought-iron windows, the hills are ablaze with autumn wildfires. They are slowly descending, moving closer at a leisurely pace. There are no Santa Ana winds tonight. The smoky glow of amber and gold has touched the window and is innocently illuminating the bedroom wall. 

I gaze abstractly at the blood red candles flickering in the alcoves, the porcelain vase of dying flowers, and the silver crucifix tarnishing with age on the unblemished wall.

And I think of a long-ago autumn fire in a small rural California town......and I remember my sense of absolute helplessness and isolation.....the unrelenting terror that my father unleashed.... the feeling of impending doom that surrounded me as I was unwittingly anointed in raining ash......

....and in the sudden pang of an emotional moment, I yearn for the innocence I once knew - - a purity of body, if not of soul..... and I realize that this present sweet sin, and the multitude of my other sins, are a desperate attempt to expunge the painful past and to cling to an eternal yet unattainable hope.

I snuggle closer to my companion and derive immense satisfaction at the very receptive response....and I kiss the sweetly tender lips of an archangel, whose words of love and reassurance whisper warmly against my own lips like the promise of a prayer.

In the presence of the softly smoldering night and the silent shower of eternal ashes, we are securely ensconced in the moment - oblivious to the raging inferno around us.

Jon V.  2022

Fragments from my unfinished memoir...