The Art of the Fire

Sometimes I questioned the way that mankind had set up the world. Why were there some people, unhappy people at that, with billions of dollars, while others, people with dreams and passions, worked to the bone only to scrape by? I sat on the curb numbly as I gazed up at the orange flames that licked at my home. Just like that, all that I owned was being devoured by a merciless fire. It was a freak accident the fireman said, something about old electric wiring.

You know those people who can barely make ends meat that I was talking about? Well I was one of them, and I had been working my minimum wage job at the art store for these past two years in order to purchase ten artist grade canvases and oil paints for a series that I just knew would launch my art career. Art was my passion, and it almost hurt how much I dreamt of making it my full time career. I had completed two of those paintings over the past year, and boy I had never felt so alive as when I created those works of art. The way the paints moved on that canvas - well I tell you, it would even make the Big Bang seem like a simple firework.

I could only watch, throat tight in a silent scream as those beloved paintings along with everything that I owned, turned to ash. The whole house was gone. Even my little black sketchbooks were surely done for. Those books were my treasures and to think of the loss of those sketches caused me physical pain. At the end of the night, a fireman handed me a set of keys. That was the only thing that they found amidst the rubble.

Not too much later, the neighbor boy, Germaine, appeared by my side. It was nice to put some of my grief into words, and he was a good listener. I told Germaine about how I had spent all of my savings on the supplies for this series of paintings. He listened with a gentle compassion that was beyond his years as I told him that I dreamt of making it as an artist with those paintings. I even told him about my sketches in the little black books that I loved so much, and how it hurt to think that they were lost in the flames.

Shortly after our conversation was over, my mother came to pick me up. I would stay at her house until I figured out my next steps. It seemed that the firemen and firewomen were mostly clearing the scene. I told Germaine that he better head home also, so that his parents wouldn’t worry about him. He said that he always wanted to talk to a fireman and that he would go home right after he talked to the chief about the situation. Although his comment was innocent and sweet, I could hardly muster a smile. When my mother drove me to her home, I felt such grief in my lungs. My throat was tight. I felt defeated.

Two weeks later: Rose Olson, the aspiring artist receives a letter in the mail at her mother’s house. It was written in the penmanship of an especially kind hearted and precocious third grader named Germaine.

“Dear Miss. Olson,

After everyone left your house on the night of the fire, I happened to find one of your black sketchbooks. My Mom helped me start an online fundraiser where we auctioned off the sketchbook’s drawings for five hundred dollars a piece. Inside this envelope, you will find a check for $20,000. Who says that you won’t make it as an artist Miss. Olson?”

With tears in her eyes, Rose Olson could just hardly make out the words at the bottom of the letter. They read: “your friend, Germaine.”