The knock on the door was sudden, loud, urgent. I jumped out of bed and in the dark started pulling on my jeans. I glanced at the clock—1:30. I put on my shirt. The knock came again, louder and longer. I went to the bathroom and put on the light. Whoever was on the porch would see that the bathroom light went on. My wife was behind me. She was concerned. “Can you see who it is?” she whispered.
I hurried to put on my socks. “No! And I can’t figure out why Kaiser isn’t barking. Must be too cold. Probably sleeping in the barn. Didn’t hear the car.” I put on the light in the kitchen. It was one of the coldest nights of the winter so far, minus 30 degrees in the middle of December.
I switched on the outside porch lights. They revealed a big, dark shape through the frosted door window. I opened the door. A large Moses-bearded figure was standing there — frost around his mouth and in his full, dark beard, dark moustache and black bushy eyebrows. A plaid winter cap with the earflaps down was visible under his dark parka. The parka was attached to a heavy, insulated jacket. His pants were black. The apparition spoke, loudly. There was no hello. “Phone the Fire Department, my damn truck’s on fire!”
“Step inside,” I said and closed the door. It was John M., a 50-some-year-old bachelor who lived about six miles south of our farm. “Where’s the truck?” I asked.
“A mile west, close to the old, empty Steffan farm. Phone the Fire Department!”
My mind raced. The truck would be about a mile and a half from our yard. John would have had to walk. “Was it burning when you left?”
“Big time! Damn engine on fire, then the floor mats. The whole &#@^ cab when I started walking to your place. Then the &#@^ gas tank lit up when I got to the corner! Like a damn fireball!”
“Is it any use phoning the Fire Department?”
“Phone them anyhow. Get the bastards out of bed!”
I went into the kitchen, opened the phone drawer and looked for the number. I apologized for not having the phone number ready close to the phone and made a mental note to do it. The phone rang and rang, but there was no answer. “No answer,” I said.
“The bastards. Try ’em again!”
Again there was no answer.
“The lazy rotten bastards!”
“I’ve got a pretty big fire extinguisher in the shop,” I said. “It’s probably too late, but we can take it along.”
I went back into the porch and put on my heavy sweater and overalls. The frost had disappeared from John’s full beard and eyebrows. One or two pellets remained in his moustache below his nostrils. John took off his right mitt, pulled his hand down over his face and beard and flicked the contents on the floor of the porch. He wiped his hand on the black pants. I put on my winter cap, sat down on the porch bench and pulled on my winter boots. John took off his left mitt, started at his eyebrows and wiped his face, moustache and beard again. He flicked his hand at the floor and wiped it on the left side of his pants. I picked up my mitts and the flashlight and we started for the shop. Wow, it was really cold.
Kaiser came out of the barn and let out a weak, tardy, half-hearted bark. He looked apologetic as he came, then his neck and shoulder hairs stood up as he got closer to John. “It’s OK,” I said.
We had a heated shop on the farm for the chore tractor, the pick-up, and the grain truck. There wasn’t a question as to whether the pick-up truck would start. I walked past the welder and took the large fire extinguisher off its wall bracket and put it in the centre of the truck seat.
“Nice shop,” said John as he got into the truck. “I always said I’m going to build a heated garage one of these damn years.”
We drove quickly down the recently snow-plowed rural road. We didn’t say much. When we got closer to the one-mile corner, we could see the flickering flames.
“Lookit that,” said John. “The bitch is still burning.”
I stopped the truck in the middle of the road about 20 feet behind John’s truck. The lights shone on the blue Ford tailgate, the rest of the truck was mostly smoking or steaming. John jumped out, taking the fire extinguisher with him. He ran towards the cab of the smoking wreck. The hood was open. Smoke and steam drifted out of the engine compartment. There wasn’t much still burning, just the front tire on the driver’s side and the spare tire lying on the box close to the cab. John pulled the pin on the fire extinguisher and aimed the nozzle at the half-burned front tire. “You son-of-a-bitch, son-of-a-bitch, son-of-a-bitch,” he repeated as he moved his arm and sprayed. “You dirty rotten son-of-a-bitch!” The flames were gone almost immediately, but he kept on spraying and swearing.
He turned his attention to the tire on the back of the truck, which was still burning. He walked back a few steps and smothered it with more powder. “This will fix you, you old whore, you son-of-a-bitch, son-of-a-bitch!” There were no flames left to extinguish, just a smoking, steaming hulk. Besides, the fire extinguisher was now empty. The back tires and the passenger side hadn’t burned.
He opened the driver side door and I shone the flashlight inside — only the skeleton of gray or brown seat springs and steel remained. The cloth headliner, sun visors and door panels were all gone. More than half of the vinyl steering wheel cover had melted.
Suddenly he shouted, “Gimme the flashlight!” He grabbed it even before I could hand it to him. “My keys! My damn keys! I left my damn &#@^ keys in the ignition!” He shone the flashlight at the dash beside the steering wheel. “My damn &#@^ keys are gone and my house key is on the damn key ring!”
Sure enough there were no keys in the ignition. “They melted!” he cried. “The damn ignition key was pot metal. My damn Ford keys melted and they’re gone too, somewhere under all the ashes and shit on the floor.” He was shining the light on the floor, there were no keys to be seen — and the ashes were still very hot.
“Hey!” I said, “there’s some barbed wire on the back of my truck. We could cut a piece, make a hook at one end and fish around for them.”
“Helluva good idea!” he said. He held the light. I cut off a piece of barbed wire about three feet long and made a small hook at one end with the fencing tool that was in the back of the truck by the wire. He handed me the flashlight and he took the wire. I shone the light while he fished around the floor. In about ten seconds he found them, hooked them, and held them up. “I’ve got the bastards!” he declared triumphantly.
He looked at the truck. “You old bitch,” he said. I noticed that the truck was more feminine than masculine. He kicked the driver’s door twice, hard. “Might as well go home,” he said resignedly.
I put the empty fire extinguisher on the back of my truck, the flashlight on the seat, and we drove towards John’s farm. “Was on my way home from visiting my girlfriend in Tofield,” he said.
“Oh,” I said casually. I didn’t know John had a girlfriend.
“Looks like I might have found myself a woman.” He was smiling as he looked at me. It was the first time since his appearance at our door that he had smiled.
“Good for you,” I said enthusiastically.
We drove in silence.
Then John recounted how the fire had started. “First the bitch started sputtering back about a quarter of a mile. I could smell smoke too. I put the pedal to the floor and pumped it to give her hell, but it didn’t help any. Sputtered and farted and stopped, the old bitch. I got out and opened the hood. As soon as I did the &#@^ flames were all over! The old bitch was on fire.”
A thought struck him. “If I’d a had a damn fire extinguisher in the truck, a big bastard like you've got, maybe I could’ve got it out.”
“You probably could have,” I agreed. “It wouldn’t have solved the problem that caused the fire, but you probably would have saved the truck.
“I’m buying a damn fire extinguisher and I’ll keep it my next truck! A big &#@^er just like yours, it could have saved me a lot of &#@^ trouble!” He paused, “Wonder how much shit I’ll have to go through with the insurance company, the bastards!” He was thinking ahead, contemplating.
“Shouldn’t be too hard,” I said encouragingly. “You’ll have to phone the police, report it. Maybe you could take a picture of the truck.”
“Good idea, good &#@^ idea! But who can I get to take a picture? I don’t have a &#@^ camera.”
We were almost at John’s farm, which he had inherited or purchased from his parents. I turned in the driveway towards the old house.
A new thought struck him. “I hope the damn house key still works or else I’m up shit creek!” He paused momentarily. “No I’m not. Piss on the key; I’ll just break the damn window in the door.” His voice sounded triumphant again.
John got out of the truck and slammed the door. He walked to the door of his house and put in the key. The door opened and John stepped in. A light went on; the door closed.
I waited a few seconds, I’m not sure why. I guess I was waiting for John to wave a good-bye, or say good night, but he didn’t come back out. I backed up the truck, turned around, and drove home.
Epilogue
1. I discovered the phone number I had called was incorrect or obsolete. I made a business card out of white cardboard, wrote FIRE DEPARTMENT on it with the correct number, and put it in the phone drawer.
2. It cost $30 to re-charge the fire extinguisher.
3. John got another used Ford pickup. It was black.
4. I don’t know if John bought a fire extinguisher.
5. The woman from Tofield didn’t pan out.