Fire
April 19, 2008
I bought a bar of Grampa’s brand pine tar soap or something like that. I don’t remember for sure what it’s called but there’s a picture of a grandfatherly man on the box. As it turns out, pine tar has a good smell that is similar to the good smell of burning wood. My bathroom smells like a cookout. I walk down the hall, suddenly have the impression that I’ve just come from a bonfire, and wonder why I don’t remember it.
Recently I was cooking bacon. Linnea and Josie left bacon here on Sunday and I decided to eat it all myself. The smell of the bacon blended nicely with the smell of pine tar soap. The entire apartment smelled of burning wood and cooking bacon, and you could control the relative strength of each by moving around the rooms. I also had porridge on the stove. The fire alarm went off. In my apartment there are actually, I think, three different fire alarms. One makes a slow blatting sound, like a robot farting. The second makes the more familiar high-pitched smoke detector scream. The third has a pleasant but urgent female voice, not unlike the one that tells you to press five or just stay on the line, saying, “Fire. Fire. Fire. Fire. Fire. Fire. Fire. Fire.
“Fire.
“Fire.
“Fire.
“Fire.
“Fire.”
The porridge was burning. I put it in the sink. The kitchen smelled like cooking bacon and burnt porridge. In the hall it smelled more like burnt porridge and less like cooking bacon. In the other hall it smelled like cooking bacon and burning wood, and not at all like burnt porridge. I put in some earplugs and continued cooking the bacon. It was a nice day outside, sunny, not hot but probably the warmest day so far this year. I sat on the porch. All the fire alarms were just as loud out there. It smelled like burnt porridge. I opened all the windows, put the fan on a chair in front of one of them, got out the extension cord, plugged in the fan, and turned it on to the highest setting, the one where it shakes the chair and also the floor. The fire alarms were no less loud but now the fan and the rattling chair were loud too. I enjoyed the bacon even though it had cooked unevenly. There wasn’t any porridge smoke, but there was still a burnt porridge smell. I went back out on the porch and finished the bacon.
I sat there for forty minutes or so. One of the fire alarms stopped, the high tweety one, but the klaxon one and the “Fire” one kept on. The burnt porridge smell also did not diminish, nor did the burning wood smell, but the cooking bacon smell was soon gone, or at least buried under the other smells. I thought I heard a truck drive up, so I went downstairs and around to the front of the building. There was a fire truck there, but no firemen. All the doors to the building were closed. It was quiet. There was no sign of firemen except for the fire truck. I waited around for a few minutes and then went back inside. The fire alarms stopped. It smelled like burnt porridge for the rest of the day. Now that smell is gone too. It still smells like burning wood in the bathroom, because of the soap.
April 24th, 2008 at 6:58 pm
Smell is a chronically underrepresented sense in fiction. Or is it? Maybe there’s a parity between the representation and how “smelly” life usually is, which is to say, not very.
May 16th, 2008 at 4:23 pm
that read like a short story.
i don’t suppose there’s any chance you’re coming to the reunion? chris holden will be there. other than that i have nothing for you.