Nicholas Day - At the End of the Day I Burst into Flames

Then, Standard Oil showed up and that all started to change.

The Wood River Refinery was built in 1907 and, shortly after, a fellow named A.E. Benbow founded his city pretty much right across the street. It wasn’t nothing much more than a place to get drunk, gamble, and fuck, but man alive was that town making some money. Once upon a time, Benbow was, per capita , the richest city in the whole United States.

Some people called it the wettest town in all of Illinois, one saloon for every thirteen residents. Of course, you can’t be making claims like that and not see a significant increase in the population. A stable job, good pay, plenty of places to get a drink and a chance to get laid… Benbow was a blue collar’s wet dream.

A Wet American Dream.

But, my daddy used to say that if something sounds too good to be true, then it is just that.

By 1917, the party was over in Benbow. In January of that year, the courts found a lady guilty for making prostitutes out of little girls. Couple of months later, the law rounded up a whole bunch of folks for running what they referred to as vice resorts. Then, a couple of days after that, a real popular place called the Red Onion got shut down.

The fun police really cleaned up the joint. By the end of that year, Mayor Benbow gave up. Wood River annexed the place and, like me, Benbow wasn’t known by its old name. It was Wood River from there on out. I’d wager to say that more people remember my real name than even know Benbow existed.

Folks around here got a short-term memory when it comes to history. Matter of fact, I find that it’s the strangers that seem to know most about the city.

I guess, when you’re born in a place, well, you just get to living in it and not thinking about how it all began. Hell, if you weren’t standing there and watching it happen, chances are you don’t even know about my daddy. Maybe you don’t know about the floods either. That was all over the television when it happened. And if you don’t know about that stuff, well, then you sure as hell don’t know about the fire that swept through downtown in 1912. Shoot, you can’t even find old newspaper clippings about that fire. The only reason I know about it is because my great-great-grandma used to go on and on.

“Hell of a fire,” she’d say. “Just me and the bucket brigade running around like a bunch of screaming meemies. Terrible thing. Lost my papa to that one.”

It seems like, especially in a little old town like this, the stories coming out of old folk’s mouths is as close to a history book as a place is apt to get. Sometimes, I look over the obituaries just to lament all the stories I ain’t never gonna hear, because if you never heard some these old fart’s stories, then those stories were going to the grave, like every obit is a little piece of history getting buried up at Woodlawn Cemetery.

And that’s that, I guess. I grew up there. I went to Wood River High, married the homecoming queen, had a future.

Now I smoke, my homecoming queen is getting older, and my future? Well, I have a semi-lucrative job drawing raunchy cartoons for top-of-the-line porno magazines. You’d know the cartoons if you saw them: Jokes about old men’s balls and lady’s sagging breasts; Santa getting it on with Mrs. Claus with mood lighting provided by Rudolph; Cute, furry animals using foul language.

And I meant what I said about semi-lucrative. The money is surprisingly good. I have an art studio in the basement of our house, so I get to work at home. Send out this comic to that magazine and this comic out to that magazine.

I’m terribly popular at porn conventions. Young kids, mostly boys, seem to really get a kick out of my work. “Funny shit,” they’ll say.

“Thanks,” I’ll say. And I’ll usually wave my hand in appreciation. I make sure I never shake hands with anyone. It is a porn convention, after all.

But I am getting ahead of myself.

The first thing I ought to tell you about is how my daddy burst into flames when I was six years old.

Dad caught the fire just before my seventh birthday.

The doctors called it nothing. They didn’t have a name for what happened, except accident, which, goddamn , I guess so. But my momma had a name for it and she called it spontaneous combustion.

Mom said the fire was an Act of God, and if you know anything about God then you know damn well that God doesn’t go making accidents on people, so those doctors were just plain wrong, or maybe not right with the Lord. Maybe, she reckoned, all that control they thought they had over life and death made them a little punch drunk, a little jealous, like if they kept doctoring long enough and came up with enough names for medicines and maladies that maybe, just maybe, well, maybe they could beat God.

Then be God.

But before I even get into Daddy and all that, I think maybe you ought to know that my daddy’s daddy burned up the very same way.

Just poof and flame then gone.

Now I didn’t see grandpa light up—just my daddy—but my daddy and mom saw gramps go. Daddy hated talking about it, but he would, occasionally, and usually when he was plenty liquored up. Mom, though, she would talk about it every Sunday, sometimes taking her time with the story and other times telling it in a rush of a couple sentences.

The ending was always the same.

Mom would look up to the sky, in sun or snow or rain or whatever God was throwing down.

“He was like a firecracker,” she’d whisper. “Just like a firecracker.”

She must have liked the word, the way the consonants clicked and clacked in the back of her mouth, because it eventually became her pet name for me.

Firecracker.

Damn if that name didn’t stick with anyone in an earshot. And earshot is a pretty easy thing to be in a little town like Wood River. By the time Daddy died, well, I ceased being whoever I was and, instead, I became Firecracker.

Downtown Wood River is a sad affair. Empty storefront windows are the ghosts of past prosperity. Even worse is when those windows are broken or boarded over, as if faded glories were too exhausting to take care of.

I finish my cigarette and head down the road to The Night Cap, a tavern that used to be little more than a dive bar but ended up being bought out by some entrepreneurial spirit who changed it into… a dive bar with a patio.

My allergies act up, and when I go to rub my nose I notice the way my hand smells like stale nicotine. I shove my hand in my pocket, punishing it for my own bad habit, forcing it to play endlessly with change. Should’ve quit years ago.

Not that it will matter in a couple of hours.

I walk through Night Cap’s front door. It smells like forty years of spilled drinks, with just a hint of disinfectant and diluted bleach. Thankfully, a single window and dim lighting help mask the rest.

Night Cap has a respectable menu for a greasy spoon. The Italian stuff is pretty tasty, but I’m too wound up for a plate of solid food. What I want is a cheap, cold beer.

I coast past the pool tables and the pock-marked dart board and make my way to the back of the place. A lack of clientele surprises me. I remind myself that it is Tuesday afternoon.

People have things to do besides drink a dozen or so beers while they await the inevitable.

All the tables in the back of Night Cap are the same. Round tables, wood laminate tops, each surrounded by four chairs. Ketchup, salt, pepper, and sugar sit in their centers. I glance over each table, as though it is some kind of hard decision as to where I’ll put my ass. Even worse, I already know which seat I’ll take. But I still act out the decision-making process. It is a habit. I do this every time I come here.