Legal Tinder by Deirdre Fryer Baird

There is dust on my black jacket that I swat at. It could be skin flaking off my face or ash from the fire in the hills above my house. My hair’s too long for my age but it’s always been this way, I still dye it brown. It’s hard to be an old lady - no young person knows what they’re in for - knees ache, arms ache, backaches, and sometimes words don’t compute. I want to change things, but the conditions aren’t right. I’ve set the fire and wait.  I’ve lived in this California stone bungalow up in the Verdugo Hills for countless years and have seen those hills burn countless times. I gave birth to two children. Joel, my oldest was murdered at random while sitting outside a café eating a ham sandwich, his brains splattered on his food when shot in the head. My beautiful daughter, Juliet, lives far away, and she rarely comes to visit me because she says we are too alike. My husband died three years ago, and I still haven’t cleaned out his closet because I miss him and when I smell his clothes it’s like he’s here.

I used to know everyone in this neighborhood, but people come and go, some of the houses burned down in the last fire, and children grow up, move away, and start new lives because that’s what people do. Older folks move to be close to their children and grandchildren. It used to be just families around here, but people don’t get married and have kids the way they used to.

And let me tell you, kids these days can be mean. They call me all sorts of names and throw rocks. Some of them said that I set the fires in the hills. What crap. They call me a witch because I’m old and have a black cat. They call me Olds.

My sorrow and loneliness I keep deep inside. It’s like a tumor.

My two next-door neighbors are single guys who don’t want to be a bother or be bothered. Neil, my neighbor to the east, has lived here for about fifteen years. We were friendly enough, and he doesn’t even know that I hate him. He made a killing in Bitcoin and is rich enough to live on an island now, far from my hate. My other neighbor, to the west – I don’t know his name - is a soldier or a discharged soldier.

I need him. 

I stub out my second cigarette. I use my great-great grandfather’s old tinder box to light another one because I like to watch the metal pieces spark together, like magic.

My soldier neighbor is coming up my walk past my azalea bushes, and I tamper my elation. He is young and handsome enough and his muscles ripple through the cotton of his shirt, but his shoulders are bent with the weight of the memories he carries. Alice, my cat, places herself between me and the soldier. He doesn’t go around Alice but he just stops behind her.

“Hello, Ma’am.” He bows slightly, and this makes me smile. “I’m your new neighbor, Glen.”

I bow my head in greeting and wave my hand at Alice to let him through. She raises the hair on her back and tail in anger, her fur bristles, and she hisses at Glen.

“Alice.” I admonish her rudeness with a clap of my hands.

“Bum a smoke?” Glen asks Alice.

He leans down to pet Alice, but she is having none of it. She runs under the bush. I shrug.

I shake my package of cigarettes at him and spark the tinder box for his light.

“That’s a strange thing.” He indicates my Tinder box. “I haven’t seen a lighter like that before.”

“It was my great-grandfather’s.”

Glen nods his head and rests his lean body against my porch post.

“Where did you fight?”

“Afghanistan.” He looks away, not wanting to discuss it.

I indicate that he can sit with me on my porch steps.

“Where are you from? You have a little accent.”

“I grew up in New Orleans.”

“Really? I have relatives there.”

“It’s the most boring place in the world. I couldn’t wait to leave.”

This made me laugh, and then he started to laugh. Before we knew it the sun was going down with an orange glow. The fire was still burning in the hills. “I guess they haven’t put it out.”

“They never do. People live in the forest and grow careless. But there is a lesson in what is left.”

He gives a look that I’ve seen before. Crazy lady.

 He says, “Goodnight,” and I’m sorry to see him go.

It becomes a thing after that; I sit on my porch in the afternoon and smoke, and then he comes over and we smoke together and smell the burn in the hills. When the sun set this evening, I invited him in for dinner.

He walks around the living room, uncertain of what to do with himself, and looks at the gallery of pictures on my piano. He picks up the recent one of my daughter.

“She’s a knockout.”

“That’s my daughter, Juliet.”

He looks at me and smiles. “I can see where she gets it.”

“Right. Dinner’s ready.” I pour him a glass of red wine.

He eats and compliments my house and the dinner.

We have more wine and he nods to the window over my shoulder.

“Who lives there?”

“Neil Fitzgerald. He does and doesn’t live there. We used to be friendly with him, but he got my husband involved in Bitcoin, that legal tender, and we lost his retirement fund.” I never forgave my husband or Neil. “Neil ran off to hide where the Feds can’t find him, and the whole thing killed my husband because he was so depressed at being stupid.”

My mind flashes on my dead husband hanging in the closet. His face purple and his tongue hanging out.

“But the lights are on, and something’s moving around.”

“He keeps three mean dogs there, on an auto-feeder that he set up. I think someone goes in and checks on them sometimes, but I haven’t seen anyone. Of course, the rumor is that Neil is hiding millions in that house, and who knows what else.”

“Why not go in and check? You could get your money back.”

“I don’t like dogs; I was attacked by one as a kid. I like cats.”

He thought for a moment, contemplating his plate.

“I can go. I’m not afraid, but I would need to subdue the dogs. I could shoot them.”

“No, that would draw attention. Something more subtle – a drug.”

I waited for him to volunteer. He must have ideas. Men in uniform know about drugs.

“There are certain plants in nature that would subdue. Azalea will kill them, and oleander.” I inform.

We are both quiet for the moment.

“Let’s just say, that the dogs are subdued, and you find the money. Do we split it fifty-fifty and pretend we never spoke of this? There might be silent alarms or cameras or some kind of security setup. Neil wasn’t a fool.”

Glen smiled and said; “Neither, am I. I did security detail in the war.”

It’s not so easy, to find a soldier. But spells have a way of going awry.

The next night, I smash the leaves of some plants together and spread them over an apron. Glen kisses me on the cheek with his hand low on my waist and takes the apron with him. I watch him through the window as he cuts the wires for lights and security. I hear the dogs bark briefly and then are silenced.

I feel for the tinder box in my pocket. The magic of fire.

An hour later, our feet rest on three bags of gold coins that he found in a downstairs bedroom. We drink wine and laugh about our bullion. I lay my head on his arm and close my eyes. There is a wisp of something covering my face, and I throw up on his lap. The apron lays before me, and I know that he has poisoned me.

Glen pushes me off the couch, and I lay there – dead. He hefts one of the bags onto his back, and gold coins trickling out of the bag. He carries the bag over to his house.

He believes in what he wants. I don’t have much time before his return, and I can only imagine what he will do with my remains.

I’m wobbly on my feet from the wine. For this to work my Olds skills would be put to work. I strike the tinder box three times and light fills the room, and the three great hounds appear from Neil's house. I lead them to a nearby bedroom speaking to them in the soft familiar tones they love and they sit quietly on the soft carpet, rescued from Neil’s spell.  He was such a witch.

A sharp blade waits for me on the table and I hold it to my throat and cut the skin so just my fingertips fit under the delicate layer of the derma, and the mask of my face. I peel the skin away from my face and hold the damp towel I have prepared to my face to subdue the seeping blood. Time is ticking away, as I become renewed. I drink another vial from my pocket, and my face pulls tight and is transformed. I look in the mirror. Damn, if I don’t look just like my lovely daughter Juliet.

My face is red like fire, but he will be confused and won’t notice.

I throw on a low-cut sweater and lay provocatively on the coins scattered on the carpet in the other room. I heard Glen whistling up the walk.

In his hand is a large machete for killing, decapitating, or dismembering.

He stops when he sees Juliet lying on the floor. I can see his brain turn from wanting to chop me into little snackable pieces to wanting something else. His sword falls to his side.

“Mom’s gone, and I want to share something with you.”

“The story is that I take you, and the gold.”

“Stories change.”

He forces me onto the ground as he undoes his pants and lays on top of me ready to mount. He hears my whistle and doesn’t understand when the first hound's fangs dig into his leg. Glen shrieks like a woman at the pain and the sound of the bone collapsing. The second hound chomps into his belly and Glen whines and writhes while trying to push the giant hounds away. The third hound consumes his face and I hear the crack of bone when the skull is consumed, a dog plaything. Blood gushes onto my face and body as I roll away. I smell of iron and smoke. Neil's house is on fire.

Alice mews at the front door. My daughter, Juliet stands behind her.

“Oh, Mom, not again. Why?”

“I got our money back. You know I needed a soldier and fire for the spell to work.”

The sound of the fire crew putting out Neil’s house would cover the evidence.

“You’re going to get caught one day.”

“I was never in his house, and poor Glen will be a victim of the hillside fire and beset by wild animals.”

She takes my hand and leads me to the kitchen sink to wash the stinking gore off me.

“Will you marry again?” She asks, lifting my sweater over my head.

“I don’t know, will you?”

We laugh.

“How did you know?” I ask.

“Alice.”

Alice rubs against my legs asking forgiveness.

“Tattletale.”

Juliet hands me a towel. “You look good, how long will it last.”

“Fifty years or so, it depends. But at least the kids won’t call me Olds anymore.”

“But they’ll still call you witch.

Deirdre Fryer Baird

Deirdre Fryer Baird’s recent work has been published in Adelaide Literary Review, Bad Pony

Literary Review, Potato Soup Literary Review, Down in the Dirt, and other journals. She has a

BA in political science from California State University, Northridge, and has an MFA in creative

writing from Antioch University, Los Angeles. She lives in Los Angeles.