I wasn't one to panic, but my fun had turned to fear and desperation, and I realized help was needed. So while I still beat at the flames with my shovel, I gave up my pride, turned my face to the house, and began to shout for Mom.

The house was fifty yards away, and I didn't know if she'd hear me. I'd last seen her at the kitchen table sewing school clothes, and the kitchen was on the opposite side of the house.

***

At one spot, rocks and sparse grass slowed the fire's pace up the slope, and I made good progress. But I'd abandoned the other end as long as I dared. It might have been best to stay where I was, but I made a decision and ran back to the front just as flames there reached the base of the hill.

Sweat flew from my face as I pounded and dug in vain, all the while shamelessly shouting for help toward the house, like a man overboard beating off sharks while screaming at a passing ship.

Finally, I spotted Marie in the yard. She had come around the side of the house and was staring openmouthed. “Get Mom!” I yelled. “Get Mom out here!” She disappeared through the front door, blond hair flying.

Almost immediately, Mom was out the door and coming across the yard on the run. Suddenly, she stopped, turned, and ran back into the house. In a moment, she came out again with an old blanket in her arms. At the gate she stabbed a finger at Marie—probably telling her to stay in the yard—and ran across the road, her short legs pounding and her dress flying. At the irrigation ditch she stopped and threw the blanket into the water.

By now, the flames behind me had crawled through the rocky area, sprinted through thick grass, and now were halfway to the big ditch. And in spite of my present efforts, the front end of the blaze had a renewed start up the slope in heavy grass that looked like it was begging to be burned. Fire was everywhere.

I felt like sitting down and letting it go. It was too hard. My eyes stung, my throat was raw, my arm hair was singed, and my legs ached from running up and down the hill. I was soaked in sweat, and my hands—that I'd thought so tough from hoeing all summer—were already red and starting to blister from my grip on the shovel handle. What was the point? It was too late. How could we stop it now?

“Jamie! Come down! Let it go! Help me over here, Jamie!”

I looked. Mom wasn't heading for the burning hill at all. She was over by the pigpen, flailing with her soggy blanket. The pen was to the north, against the creek, and to my amazement the fire had a good start across the fifty-foot rocky swale (swale: a low marshy area) separating the garden and the pigpen fence. It had jumped our small irrigation ditch—the ready-made barrier—like a lion after a mouse.

***

“We'll have to let the hill go,” Mom said when I reached her. “Have to. We can't stop it there.” Her voice was different—lower than usual, and controlled. Mom was known as an enthusiastic person in everyday conversation. But in a crisis, she was calm. I'd seen it once when I cut my foot and we had trouble getting the bleeding stopped; another time when Marie was a baby and had a convulsion that wouldn't quit; and again when Dad developed a reaction to penicillin and his face and throat started swelling up like a movie monster. Mom was using that controlled voice right now. “Help me here, Jamie. Over here.”

She was already in action, smothering flames with each throw of her sodden blanket. But it was like trying to stop a flood with a sponge—it just wasn't fast enough.

A flood! That was it! I was a genius!

“Here, Mom. I've got it! I know what to do,” I shouted. Our garden ditch could save us. My shovel made four or five quick slices into the sod bank, and in a moment the stream was rushing across the small field.

The effect was impressive. The fire immediately lost its power as its roots were killed. Small plumes of steam rose from clumps of burning grass as the flames hissed out. Only their tops were left momentarily burning, like tiny volcanoes jutting from a miniature sea, until they toppled over and drowned.

Sloshing through the flood, I scooped and splashed with my shovel where water was needed most. Mom's blanket reached isolated spots, and soon the whole burn was extinguished in the little swale. In one place fire had come within a few feet of the fence, but to our relief, nowhere had the wood or the brush been touched.

Aim Plus Middle School Assessments

English Assessment

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