live laugh liability; how we almost burned down the farm.

July 12, summer, summer, summer. 

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 we were at luka’s farm. not his technically, his uncle’s, but the uncle only shows up twice a year and otherwise the place just exists for teenagers to wander around. the reason nobody really stops us from hanging out there is because luka’s uncle lives far away and the nearest neighbor is this old guy who mostly just yells at tractors and occasionally at us. technically we’re probably not supposed to be there half the time but the farm is big enough that nobody notices unless we start a fire.

luka’s been bringing people there since we were too young for it to be legal. it started because his cousin used to throw parties there until he got banned from the property for crashing a dirt bike into the shed. after that the place basically became public domain for anyone who knew the gravel road to get there.

we sat in the same field where we usually sit around doing nothing. 

i remember it was a really nice night, we had bikes thrown in the grass, two coolers that were mostly empty, and lots of people sitting on an overturned trough. luka bought the speaker from a pawn shop in town after his old one got confiscated at school because someone decided to play death metal through it during a fire drill. apparently that was “disruptive to emergency procedure.” so now we have this replacement speaker that works like a violent tamagotchi.

 elias kept kicking it too hard and killing it again... 

it was hot and dry and dusty, the middle of summer, everyone was bored enough to start inventing activities. throwing apples at fence posts. riding bikes down the gravel hill and seeing who wipes out first. one time mateo tried to lasso a fence post with jumper cables because he said cowboys used ropes and this was “basically the same thing.” it was not the same thing.

someone had already started a normal bonfire off to the left side of the field. just a pile of logs and broken branches someone dragged from the tree line. people were tossing more wood on it, standing around with drinks, pretending we were very outdoorsy people.

i like to think i’m pretty outdoorsy.

but mateo, who i will now refer to as mr pyro, believed he was the most outdoorsy person present. mateo has this energy where he thinks everything becomes cooler if fire is involved. he once tried to toast a marshmallow using a lighter and a deodorant can. 



he said it reminded him of camping with his dad. i wish i was joking. it tasted DISGUSTING!! mateo had a lighter, which he always does, even though he says he doesn’t smoke. he also panics when other people light things wrong. his explanation is that it’s useful for things. nobody has ever seen these mysterious useful things except for moments exactly like this one.

before the fire even happened the evening was already slightly cursed. luka tried to start the speaker with a car battery he found in the shed because he said it would give it “more power.” nobody really understood what he meant by that but it resulted in a loud popping noise and the speaker smelling faintly like burnt plastic for the rest of the night.

 at some point we all ended up down by the creek. the water was low and warm and everyone was throwing rocks at the opposite bank trying to hit this empty metal bucket someone had left there months ago. nobody hit it. anja did on her second try. which was impressive considering she had just asked what the word “ditch” meant five minutes earlier. 

 after that people drifted back up toward the field. someone added more logs to the bonfire. someone else opened the last drinks in the cooler. mateo disappeared behind the barn for a bit. when he came back he had the lighter. which, looking back, was probably the moment the evening started going downhill.

upon someone seeing this lovely lighter, they had the brilliant idea to burn a tiny patch of grass just to see it go up. like a science experiment! Mr pyro said 'it will be fun!!' it wasn’t.

the plan was apparently a circle the size of a dinner plate. “tiny fire” he said. “just a tinyyyy one.”

it was not a dinner plate.

i remember him crouching down and touching the lighter to the grass. little flames arose. everyone leaned in like this was the most interesting thing to happen all week. “relax,” elias said. “it’s small.” someone poked the flame with a stick like that was part of the process. in hindsight that was a terrible idea.

then the wind moved.

the flame shot sideways through the grass, and the whole patch lit up in a second. not dramatic at first, just fast enough that everyone stopped talking at the same time.

I turned to this poor girl, Anja, camera in hand. She looked at me like “what the fuck.” That’s when I realized I was laughing. in my defense I had smoked about twenty minutes earlier behind the barn with Mateo and Elias, my brain was a runner and a track star in that moment, trying to catch up with reality.

Anja was staring at me like I’d lost it. Meanwhile I’m just standing there laughing while the field is actively catching fire. 

anja didn’t grow up around here. she moved last year from somewhere in europe, nobody is fully sure where because every time someone asks she answers with a different city and then laughs. she speaks hungarian with an accent like she learned it in textbooks so you can imagine how suspicious we were when she showed up randomly at one of these farm nights.

now she just kind of appears sometimes.

she doesn’t smoke much, doesn’t drink much either, but she somehow ends up standing next to the worst decisions every single time.

she also asks very calm questions in situations where everyone else is panicking.

like later that night when the field was actively burning and she quietly leaned toward me and said, “vera, is this… normal for you guys?”

good question.

someone finally yelled “shit.”

luka grabbed a bucket and ran toward the creek. elias started stomping on the edge of the fire and nearly lit his shoe. mateo was smiling. not even a big smile. just enough that it looked like he thought this had gone exactly right. i was standing there with my camera because of course i was. instinct apparently is to document the crime scene instead of helping.

someone yelled my name like i personally invented fire. I told them to piss off.

i took two pictures.

then the flames kept spreading and everyone stopped pretending it was funny. grass catches fast when it’s been baking all day. suddenly people were sprinting around with buckets. for a brief moment i felt like i was at the waterpark. water everywhere. mostly on each other.. we weren't exactly firefighters. 

then someone noticed something extremely important. the grass fire was moving straight toward the actual bonfire where the logs were burning. the two fires were maybe five meters apart.

four meters.

three.

someone yelled “MOVE THE LOGS.” nobody moved the logs. how could we move the logs??!

instead everyone just stared as the grass fire reached the edge of the bonfire pit and the flames touched the pile of burning wood. someone also threw a half-empty beer at the flames like that would help. it exploded in the fire and made everything briefly worse.

and that was the moment the two fires decided to become friends. one big fire...

someone tried throwing a blanket over the fire. bad idea. i think it was elias again, he has a strong record of bad ideas. anyway, the blanket caught instantly. now we had a burning blanket. great. “YOU IDIOT,” luka screamed. the neighbor from the house up the hill came out onto the porch at that exact moment and started shouting something in hungarian, it was hard to hear but i’m fairly confident they bestowed the title of absolute idiots to US! idiot shaming in unison, fair enough. 

it was getting hot now. like actually hot. the air started smelling like burnt grass and plastic from someone’s melted water bottle. someone remembered the hose behind the barn. excellent. the hose was supposed to save us. nope, everything just had to be against us, the hose was tangled in about twelve knots. three people trying to untangle it, one person screaming directions nobody followed.

Poor little anja creeped up to me, “vera,” she said, “this is actually bad.” oh good. glad someone noticed. i nodded and took another photo.

i tried kicking dirt over the fire. missed completely and kicked a rock instead. incredible contribution from me.

one guy ran past me with a bucket leaking the entire way. he looked at me, then at the rock i’d just kicked, like that was the problem. another slipped by the creek and just stayed there, like he’d opted out.

someone finally got the hose working. pressure was terrible. it dribbled water like it was also embarrassed to be involved.

the fire kept spreading anyway.

it crawled toward the edge of the field where the fence meets the dry weeds near the barn. that’s when luka started swearing properly because if the barn caught we were all dead socially and possibly legally

we kept running around anyway. throwing water. kicking dirt. at some point i realized my camera lens was covered in ash. the photos are probably just gray blobs. still took another one. that one WAS a gray blob. 

someone asked who started it. nobody answered. very democratic silence. we have short term memory loss apparently. 

then we heard something else. an engine. the neighbor had called someone. the neighbor was still yelling from the porch. "NOOO!!!!" a little red pickup came tearing down the dirt road. this older guy jumped out with an actual giant water hose and started yelling instructions like we were the world’s worst volunteers. he blasted the biggest flames first. the kind of water the grass deserved.

mateo slowly slipped the lighter into his pocket. good job mr pyro. eventually the fire was mostly out. not gone, just these black smoking patches scattered across the field. 

i walked down to the creek and sat in the water with my shoes still on. the cold felt good. my hands were black with ash.

my camera was sitting in the grass beside me.

i picked it up and pointed it back at the field.

everyone standing there in the smoke, looking like a group photo nobody planned.

i thought about taking one more picture but

actually

maybe not.

v, xx

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Shot with my Pentax K1000 35mm SLR (long exposure film) and my beloved Sony Cyber-shot, RIP, legend.