The Bearded Fireman
The sun had just set over the small neighborhood when the earth began to tremble. The cracks that opened up in the ground swallowed up cars and trees, and the roads twisted into a mangled mess. The only street leading out of the neighborhood was destroyed, and no one could escape.
People ran frantically from home to home, screaming for help as they watched their homes crack and split. A family of three, a father, a mother, and a small girl were trapped inside their damaged house. A tree on the power post ignited. Flames engulfed one side of the building, the heat so intense that the air around it shimmered like a mirage. They screamed, and their neighbors cried out in fear for the trapped family, but there was no help to be had.
A figure emerged from the woods across from the burning home. He was a towering man, broad-shouldered and thick with muscle. His long beard flowed like a river, and his red hair was pulled back into a tight braid. Some thought his hair looked as if it were living fire itself. Nobody had seen him before, but everyone could feel the power he emanated.
The bearded man moved quickly to the nearest hydrant, his massive hands spinning the rusty cap open with ease. The water surged out, and the man lifted his immense axe, directing the flow of water towards the burning house using the blade. The fire was intense, hotter than the neighbors had ever felt, but the bearded man was unphased. He pushed the water harder, seeming to control it as if it were three men on a hose; it began to make a dent in the flames.
The fire department was nowhere to be found. The neighborhood residents watched in amazement as the bearded man, unaided, battled the blaze. The heat was unbearable, and the smoke was thick, but he pressed on, focused on his mission.
As the flames began dying, the bearded man heard a faint cry from inside the house. A little girl’s voice, sobbing for help. The power line, still saturated with energy, seemed to seek out the girl’s location, slithering side to side, getting ever closer. Without hesitation, he left his post at the hydrant and headed towards the reason for the burning building.
The heat was so intense that the man could feel his skin wanting to blister, but he pushed forward, driven by the sound of the girl’s cries. With a bear’s embrace, the power pole gave way under his grip. He pulled the pine pole and venomous line away from the home. He made his way inside the house, his lungs filled with but unaffected by thick smoke, his eyes slightly stinging from the heat.
He found the girl in a back room, curled up in a ball, crying. He scooped her up, holding her tight against his chest, wrapping her with his hydrant-soaked beard, and made his way back outside. It felt like the air around him was melting, but the bearded man kept going. He set the girl in the arms of a waiting neighbor, and she looked up at him with wide eyes.
“Thank you,” she whispered, her voice hoarse from the smoke.
The bearded man simply nodded and headed back toward the hydrant. The fire had begun to flare up again, and he knew he needed to act fast to save the family inside. He spun the cap on the hydrant open once more, and the water began to flow. He lifted his axe, directing the water towards the flames again.
The fire department finally arrived, but they were too late. The bearded man had already saved the family and put out the fire. The neighborhood residents stared at him in awe as he walked away, his beard and hair flowing around him like it was alive with energy. His axe at his side gave the men watching the sense that the two were friends leaving for home after a great adventure.
They would never forget the miracle they had just witnessed, the bearded man seemingly coming out of nowhere. Appearing from, then returning to, the woods and saving their neighborhood. They would never know his name, but they would always remember the hero who had once walked among them.
Brass Hook
Brass Hook
A Michael Lee short story
July 28, 18
J.P. Grant, the great great great grandson of Ulysses Grant (okay 7 generations since U.S. Grant), is 36 years old and not truly doing much with his life other than working a nine to five dead-end job, growing old, and putting the minimum into his retirement fund against his mother’s weekly encouragements. He has a five-acre homestead and a few livestock animals that cost more than they are worth. His father stops by most days to tend to the animals while J.P. is at work, has been known to name the chickens here and there, and only charges a few eggs a day for his services.
J.P. Grant woke late Saturday morning, like most other Saturdays this year; still drunk from the night before and head spinning. He rolled out of bed, tangled in worn cotton sheets onto the floor; his head hitting the nightstand on the way down before his arms could free themselves from the sleep-made straight jacket, created after a night of drunkenly tossing and turning. Pushing the nightstand over with his head, his phone and lamp crashed to the carpet with him; he groaned with regret, had no desire to untangle himself, or to get up off the cool floor. Grant lay there on the soft matted carpet saying to himself for the first time “never again.”
His phone lay on the ground, the speaker as close to his ear canal as possible without actually being in his ear, began to ring at full volume. Grant rolled over with a start; struggled to untangle his arms and lifting himself up on his elbows threw up in his mouth a little bit, swallowed then grabbed his phone and said hoarsely. “Hello, mom.”
“Where the hell are you John Paul? Have you been smoking cigarettes? You sound like you’ve been smoking! Your dad’s birthday is today and you two were supposed to go fishing! Remember?” She said as unhappily as any mom could sound when her son misses an important outing with dad.
“Mom, I don’t smoke and Dad’s birthday is tomorrow, not today.”
“No John! It’s today! You are five hours late; your dad said just come out to the lake and he will come to get you in the boat. Maybe you can salvage his day. So get your ass up and go meet your father before I come over there! Don’t forget his present either, you forgot it last year, and even though he didn’t say anything I just know it hurt him.” She exclaimed.
“Okay ma, I’ll be there in a little while. Can you call him and tell him I’ll be there?” Grant asked knowing that if he called his dad, he’d be told not to worry about coming so late in the morning.
“Yes, J. P. I’ll let him know you are on your way.”
Grant got along with his parents pretty well and didn’t actually mind going fishing with his pops a few times a year. He didn’t forget the present this year either. A brass fishing hook with “Love you Dad” engraved along the side of it. So yeah, not a real hook. It’s one of the hat clip hooks but J.P. got a quality one that his dad wouldn’t mind keeping around for a while.
Grant got up off the floor, not stepping too far from his bed, looked around his room for a clean shirt to wear. He hadn’t always been so messy, or even a drunk, seeing his room like this made him feel gross inside. His eyes still a little blurry, mouth dry and filmy he could feel the room spin just a little before falling to the bed and going back to dreamless drunken slumber.
“Hey, son. Wake up. We need to talk.” Grants father said calmly as he gently rocked his son’s shoulders as to not surprise the sleeping young man half off the bed like he had just fallen there.
Grant opened his eyes a little thinking he was dreaming, then sprang up shouting. “ah shit dad I am so frickin sorry! I didn’t mean to go back to bed for real. What time is it?”
Grant’s father looked at him brokenheartedly, chin down he said. “It’s 3pm son.”
“Hey dad, you know, let me get cleaned up, maybe we can go get an early dinner or something, please let me make it up to you.”
“That sounds good but we still need to have a little talk before we go anywhere okay.”
Grant nodded his head, grabbed the clothes he attempted to put on earlier, and rushed to the shower leaving his dad in the bedroom doorway still glum-looking.
“Hey Dad, how did you get in the house?” Grant yelled from the shower. His father didn’t yell anything back and Grant figured he was a bit too far to hear him or was watching the news by now. Grant got out of the shower just as the steam finished filling the bathroom, dried off with a towel that still smelled fresh from the laundry mat then took a blow dryer to the bathroom mirror to dry away the fog. J.P. Grant didn’t have the dad-bod of his friends and still checked himself out in the mirror after every shower, asking himself where the beach was and what the shape of the world was even on his worst days.
“Hey, dad, where you want to eat?” Grant said while trying to shave off a week’s worth of hair with a two-dollar razor. He finished getting ready skipping the hair gel and settling for the trucker hat his dad got him last Christmas, blank with just a patch sewn on the front displaying a colorful rooster, and headed to the kitchen passing his living room where his dad was patiently watching the news, turned up just loud enough to drowned out a shower, waiting for his only son to hurry along. Grant rifled through the fridge trying to find something to drink to get the strange taste out of his mouth. Two cans of cola sat in the back of the fridge. One of the cans said in cursive along its side “Share one with dad.” Grant rolled his eyes and said to himself “just rub it in why don’t you.”
“Hey dad, you never said how you got in or where you want to go eat,” Grant said curiously as he walked from the kitchen to the living room sitting on the couch across from his recliner that his dad was occupying. His dad’s head was down and his eyes were closed and a house key on his knee. Grant smiled, cracked open the can just right to make it noisy but not spray soda everywhere, took a sip of his drink, and looked around at his clean house. “Hey there sleepy head, you cleaned my whole fricken house? I’m going to miss more family gatherings if you keep that up.”
Grant sat back and smiled; he was holding the brass fishing hook so when his dad looked up he wouldn’t be able to miss it. Thinking to himself, “Shit, my dad can be so damn cool sometimes.” His dad just lay reclined back as still as could be, the news lady on TV was complaining about something, and Grants eyes grew big body lunging forward.
“Oh fuck… DAD!”
Michael Trump 