Tamerness

By Brad Vogel, US

A squirrel-tail plume drifted, acrid, unseen in the dark, making the neighbors seal their windows and and ensconce themselves in stifled boxes. The little boy had gotten his campfire. Every other bloated-garage house followed suit until crotchrockets' roars remained the only barrier to the cricket-frog overture. Nobody heard the howl of a long-dead wolf.

We had ripped newspaper shreds for tinder and rummaged the workshop for kindling. Lastly, a few logs were quaintly teepeed up for the matches. Steel grating soon glowed. The Dow was down today, said CNN, blasting too loudly somewhere. I took in the cool August air like a delicacy. If I squinted just right, I could block the streetlight glare and stare at the shimmering sequins stuck on the ceiling, as they had been over the fires of cavemen. Scorpio's red eye beamed suspiciously.

The little boy, poking embers with his marshmallow stick, told me we needed more wood.

I took the ax to a log by the edge of the back light's range. Wait - is this safe? I questioned internally. I pondered, thinking back to all I had learned in school and what they said on TV... But wait - was that question normal - was it safe to be that cautious, to be overcautious? My ancestors had probably done much more dangerous things than this without "pondering." They did it because it just had to be done. What exactly, I wondered, was the world coming to? I surveyed the endless rows of dwellings, each flickering an eerie blue inside from HBO. I thought hard about that question as I leaned on the ax; I didn't like the answer. I delved back through my life - all the hours spent away from family, the time in school, the freeways, the suburbs, the endless sports schedules, and the ever-present media overload. Something clicked inside - the economy was good, sure, but things were just not right.

The little boy advised that I hurry, the fire was going out.

I set to chopping with purpose, never hesitating, but feeling a new and strange awareness that made me nervous and kept me checking behind my back. I soon breathed life into our companion, however. But, I felt vulnerable now. Yet, no endless desert enveloped my view - no vast primeval forest held me like a prisoner, no inhospitable, unforgiving mountain range rose to defy me, no ocean stretched infinite on all sides. Still - I felt alone. I clutched the little boy in my lap, sitting on the picnic table under the familiar pear tree. The neighborhood was absolutely still and silent now. An ominous tension hung venomously. My primal instincts made the hairs rise on my arms and neck. But there was no wilderness, I was in the middle of a sea of civilization...

Then it hit me. I was looking in the wrong direction. There was no longer a wilderness, but a tamerness. Not some wild, unexplored, mysterious tract, but an over-civilized, stifled world. A tame, generic tangle that was no longer life. It stretched cold and uninviting now as I realized the magnitude of the thought. I feared no grizzly bear - I feared the shadow in the vacant lot. I drew back not from the dark, but from the never-ending lights. The little boy seemed to sense my uneasiness and grasped my hand tightly as our fire burned down. And I looked out apprehensively at the vast, unending tamerness.