Amber by Dan-Dwayne Spencer (e book reader .TXT) 📕

The next thing I knew, Jimmy Dugan was there. He ripped the sledgehammer away from the biggest of them and began swinging it wildly. They barely stayed out of his reach. Then he threw it like an athlete in the highland games, casting it off into the darkness. On his return swing, he connected with his enormous fist, smashing it into the big vandal’s jaw with an uppercut. Maybe it was my imagination, but I swear I heard the crunch of bone above the crackling roar of the fire. The big man lifted off the ground, flew through the air, and landed on the guy behind him.

To my surprise, the big vandal got up. He staggered, holding his face. The entire group turned tail and ran into the woods with Jimmy hot on their trail. I had seen Jimmy fight many times before, but I’d never seen him hit anyone as hard as he did that guy. It was like watching a superhero come to the rescue.

In a few minutes, Jimmy returned alone with three more sledgehammers and a ripped piece of flannel shirt in his right fist. For a moment smoke irritated my eyes and my vision blurred. Looking through my stinging tears, I could swear Jimmy was wearing glowing-blue medieval armor and carrying swords instead of sledgehammers. I blinked, the tears cleared, and he was back to normal.

One of the commune residents shoved a wet piece of what looked like a cotton tarp in my hands and told me to slap the flames with it. To my surprise, wherever I struck into the fire with it, the flames seemed to diminish. Several hippies with sixteen-gallon drums full of water carried on wheelbarrows placed their cargo along the edge of the flaming field. The same guy then showed me how to dip it into the water, and for lack of a better word, reload my tarp—ready to slap out more of the fire. Beating the fire back, I swung and swung. I looked to my right. There Rose and Flower were throwing bags of sand in the air and letting it filter down on the flames.

The silent voice of Mr. Dark filled my head, “Get away from the fire. There’s danger here. Move away. Run. Flee.”

“Shut up,” I yelled as I flung the tarp piece over my shoulder and into the flame again. “Shut up…shut up.” The guy beside me gave me an odd glance, but there was no time to stop. He too continued to pound at the flames with the wet cloth.

“If not for your safety, then get Rose away from here. She is too near the flames and her dress might catch fire.”

“Why are you so all-fired worried about my friend’s safety?”

“What’s important to you is important to me too.”

“I don’t believe you, so shut up.”

“Let the hippies take care of this fire. It’s none of your business.”

“I said, shut up. Understand? Shut it.”

The wind changed direction, and the fire licked at my face. All the hippies stepped back, and the field where that portion of photovoltaic collectors stood went up in white fiery blazes.

Flower yelled, “Beat the fire back. Don’t let all our work go up in flames.”

The wheelbarrow crew brought more water, and I pounded the flames with my tarp harder than before.

From the river, Stoney came running toward us with a large roll of flat tubing similar to what’s folded into one of those break-glass-in-case-of-emergency boxes I’d seen in hotels. The roll was getting smaller as it trailed on the ground behind him. Finally, the length of flat tubing unrolled to its end, right by the fire. He lifted a walkie-talkie and said something I couldn’t understand. Suddenly, unfurled ribbon trailing behind Stoney filled with water and the pressure expanded the tube into a six-inch diameter fire hose, spraying water over the field.

Back and forth, the hippies sprayed, pounded, and threw sand at the fire for hours. Flower, Rose, and Roger threw bucket after bucket of sand and water onto the flaming cornfield. Finally, the blaze subsided and clouds of gray smoke streamed from the smoldering embers and blackened remains of what only hours ago were corn stalks. The gray streamers floated up like ghosts into the inky remnants of the night. On the horizon, twilight threatened the darkness. The glow, little by little, chased the weighty darkness away. Before us, in dawn’s light, a worthless and charred, half-burned field of corn lay in smoldering ruins.

Roger leaned over sideways and rested his forearm on my shoulder. With the other, he wiped his brow and eyes with his shirttail. Seeing his hazel eyes through the cleaned streak was like watching him peer through a smoke-colored mask.

As for myself, I wore smutty soot from head to toe. It seemed, my destiny decreed, I would only be clean for minutes at a time before another crisis required me to wear some kind of yucky coating. I didn’t even try to scrape at it; I figured it would be hopeless. Out of nowhere, a blast of water hit me and almost knocked me off my feet. Not fifteen feet away, Stoney held the cone-shaped brass nozzle and sprayed us all with the fire hose. He had adjusted it to minimum pressure, so the jet of water was nothing to compare with the torrential spray he used on the field. The soot ran off my arms like mascara in a rainstorm.

Roger called, “Jimmy, come join us.”

Hearing his name, he turned, a severe expression still commanding his demeanor. Then he saw us splashing in the spray. He came running. He peeled his shirt off over his head, without unbuttoning it, and positioned himself in front of me and Roger. We egged Stoney on, and he was more than happy to oblige us with another dousing.

Roger