Brush Fire Thoughts

The sky, if I could see it, would be blue. Instead there is the color of a robin's egg picked up from the dust, the cool, cotton-candy color of five p.m. clouded by sand from a desert wind and the rising smoke of brush fires. I'm sitting next to my homologue on the sidelines of a soccer game. A little girl in a purple dress, the daughter of the French teacher, fidgets between us. I am miserable.

Say something, I think. What better time to talk about the dangers of brush fires than right now, with the flames licking across the field directly behind the soccer pitch? Well, pitch may be too strong a word. The boys are running on khaki-colored dry spots that haven't seen green in years. Where there is grass, it is tall, and scrapes the tough skin of their shins. A southern slope to the land gives the younger boys the advantage of momentum.

A triangle of flame attacks a teak tree just behind the field. The flames are violent and unhinged. But how, three days into service, do I gather all these spectators, rip them away from their fun, and lecture them about an activity they've done every dry season of their lives? I don't. Several weeks before, late at night, protected by darkness and a mosquito net, the air cool after a rain, I'd asked L what she was thinking. "Nothing at all," she said. "I'm just enjoying the moment." I think of that here, while the trunks of trees char and the older boys celebrate another goal. I have two years to work. I can enjoy a soccer game tonight.