A Fire in the Night
by Mike S.

There was, some time ago, a place of comfort along a lonesome road. With passing time, however, the passerby’s who stopped at this place diminished. The fortunate people who used to take a wagon traveled instead on a railcar, and the use for this installment was exhausted. People who still took their temporary residence here were poor drifters, looking for and taking what little work there was.

It was a life of sweat, and war of tears for the farmers, the animal drivers, the men with the hardest life. They would live and die, the laborers, not to be remembered. And all the while the world was being eaten by the pistons and gears and shafts, the world which they sought to replenish and nurture.

A man could see the camp off the road, if there was no wind to kick up the dust.. There was a little well, and a bucket, and crude tents pitched around it, some with a smoldering pit by it. A shack, with cracked wood planks lining the side was the warden’s house. He lived here, with a priest, and survived on the donations of the impoverished vagabonds. By day the heat beat down on the settlement, at night the cold bit hard. The warden, saw the days, and the people come and go. He saw people come to his place to live their last days.

The priest was old, frail, and the only one who could read, and he was appointed so. The only book was a bible, with a hard blue cover, that he kept in a leather case under his starchy cot. Thirty strides from the camp there was a cemetery for those who could not go on. Most grave markers were a stick in the ground, the crudely attached crosspiece had fallen off, cowering in the face of the sands and winds.

There were three people staying in the tents, a mother and child, both who were deathly famished, and a soldier, who had come back from a war overseas. The first night after he arrived, the soldier built a fire, and spit-roasted a rabbit he had killed, giving a leg to the warden and the priest. He went to sleep after the sun went down, but let the embers die at their own accord. When wisps of red still showed through the gray ash in the pit, the warden awoke, and looked out of the shack. He saw a man in red cloth pull back the entrance to the soldier’s tent. The warden crept outside, to see who this man was. As the warden got closer, the man in red kneeled down and touched the soldier on his head. The last ember died down, and the night fell into darkness. Not exactly knowing what he saw, the warden fumbled back into the shack.

The next morning, when the warden awoke, he found the priest, with the help of the mother lugging the limp body of the soldier towards the cemetery. The child’s wails pierced through the cool morning. As the day progressed, the sun beat down harden than ever, so the priest put a cloth over the soldier’s body and commented that God must want him to wait to inter the body.

The next night, an old couple came down the road, and stopped at the encampment. They stopped at the entrance to the soldier’s tent, which still had his few articles in it. They slept in it because it already had a fire-pit dug, and they were tired from days of walking. This night was colder than ever, and the mother had built a fire with some wood given to her by the priest, pried off the side of the shack. The baby’s cries were now dampened; there was no food to go around. Deep into the night the warden awoke, and looked out at the tents to see a man, clothed in gray, stooping down into the mother’s tent. The warden stepped outside, past the flickering embers of the mothers fire and peered into the tent. He saw the man in gray kneel down, and touch the mother and child on there heads. The last ember burnt out, and the warden found himself in complete darkness. He woke up in his cot, not remembering anything. Walking outside, he found the priest carrying the mother and child, with the help of the old man, out to the graves. The sun beat down even harder this day, so the priest laid their bodies next to the soldier’s, to bury the next day.

The warden was troubled greatly, and the next night he stayed in the tent next to the old couple, and left the priest in the shack. Then in the darkest hour of the night, he was again awakened, and he saw a man in black entering the shack, where the priest lay asleep. He passed the embers of the couple’s fire and went into the shack, which was lit only by the flickering flame of an oil lamp. There he saw the man in black reach for the priests head. Just then a gust of wind blew out the oil lamp, and the warden lunged forward to stop the man in black, but he tripped, and after picking himself up, he could see absolutely nothing. He stumble out of the shack, pas the embers of the couple’s fire, into the tent. As he lay inside, he heard, from the couple’s tent, a whisper. He sat inside and listened to it.

The voice said, “You will die tomorrow old one, and the next day your wife will follow.” Puzzled as to who would say this, he crawled out of his tent to see a man in white walking into the darkness. Looking into the couple’s tent, he saw the two embracing one another, fighting off the cold of the night.

The next morning he woke up and saw the couple dragging the priest’s body out the where the other bodies lay.

“Wait!” The warden called to the couple. “Help me bring them here.” He gestured to the shack. That day the warden worked with the willing couple, who were smiling all the while, to tear down the shack and pile up the wood. The couple, who never once seemed concerned passed the time by singing songs they knew from their childhood and sharing stories with the warden. As the sun hung low in the sky. The each person lit one of the three pyres. The warden and the couple exchanged goodbyes. The couple started off toward the west, and the setting sun. As the embers burnt out, the warden walked off towards the east, where the sun would rise at least one more time.