Memorabilia: Prologue II

Prologue

Use dry wood to build a long-lasting Youthfire. Dry wood, the corner store variety you rarely find in these fast-food, MP3 days, has already surrendered its secrets to the forest. Dry wood has nothing left - no secret dreams or premonitions - to hide from Bone Harbor memorabilia collectors.

Green wood is not welcome at the Youthfire. Green wood is wet and reminds the Tribe of a life once lived, of soccer field shouts and study hall giggles and imagined hallway risks. Green wood grips its precious past tighter than the sleekest spandex. As a catcher gloves the glorious third and final strike, green wood protects its secrets. Illuminating flames are drawn stubbornly from the wet fibers and fail to warm greedy Wraith flesh. Only dry wood cut from fold-out bleachers and splintered Little League bats will properly feed a golden Youthfire.

Youthfires are attended by echo lovers, dust dreamers, and memory hounds. Youthfires are for the photo holders, the pimple pickers, and the locker room prophets bathed in glory day flame. Look! The fly ball afternoons and prom dress evenings are where the flame burns brightest.

Why should you trust faceless me? Because we skinned our knees on similar gravel driveways? Because we plunged into our own green quarry waters or picked ground balls off of cloned baseball diamonds? Because we knocked on mirrored neighborhood doors in our plastic Halloween costumes? Yes? Were our different Youthsongs, nonetheless, identical? The all-seeing Wraiths believe so. Our songs were merely transposed like a second breakdown chorus to a different key, transposed to allow unique ears to hear each note. After all, the rusted swing set shadows once concealed my Keds too. The forbidden cigarette fire warmed me as in times you may have forgotten it also warmed you. Nor did you drive solo to the neon diner for a midnight basket of French fries. You were not alone as you waited near the back door of the local single screen cinema for your buddy to sneak you into Star Wars. You didn’t guard the Pacific waves or Gulf Coast sand or Mid-west wheat or Rocky Mountain peaks with only your shadow as company. I was there with you eating fries with too much ketchup and salt while casually opening the cinema exit door. I was howling in major third harmony in those heart pounding uncertain youth years. The same red radio light flickered in the owl’s watch of our bedroom sanctuaries, our headphones closed snugly around our ears. We, you and I, became fraternal twins connected to that same umbilical media. Like matching neon socks or glittering roller skate wheels, we were separated by a thumb, millions of miles apart, but joined for eternity by one delicate thread which I must now break.

The chill of unknown destiny awaits us beyond the familiar realm of our Youthfire. And though the forest no longer threatens me, is in fact now welcome, I am still hesitant because this will be the final Youthfire. The wraiths have begun to cry their last chorus.

A Youthfire must be fed with dead, dry wood even if I have to search the deep forest to find it. My fear-born progeny, the Timewraiths, desire comfort during their final journey. Tonight, the memories will light the old path as a thousand cigarette lighters once flickered during the Motley Crue concert, the one where you drank too much Mad Dog 20/20 and French-kissed that stranger behind the souvenir booth in damp underwear summertime bliss. Once I gathered enough dusty bleacher benches and torn ticket stubs to feed the fire for the length of my song, I struck a match. Flame gathered upon Flame. A chill descended through the Maple tree canopy, but not from the cold winter air; rather, the chill rode shotgun beside a driving wind from the sea, and from the mountains where our songs will no longer echo.

Bullwhip is the first Wraith to answer the flame, silently entering the light from his shadow kingdom. Dethroned, he holds his tongue and will remain silent according to custom. Cristo arrives next followed by Piper and Lacy's mirrored Wraiths. Then come Wynn and Skip, Ernesto and Flash; Vance leans nearby with Squid and the bedenimed Huggy; Clutch stands with both arms as strong as in the Whiffle Ball Summers; the smooth faces of Moonrise, Rose, Darcy, Chrissy, and Cindy glow deliciously, their plump lips like ripe treasure fruit, their feet draped in golden neon fleece. JoJo and The Wackmaster wrestle under a young birch tree. Others emerge from the forest until Kodiak arrives and steps close to the flames.

The dry wood crackles in the night sending a shower of clear sparks into the spread eagle branches. Behind the inner circle, a host of figures gather close.

“Is the Tribe present?” I ask.

Those brave enough to speak answer yes. The Youthtribe has been summoned; they have gathered as they would for homeroom or a football pep rally, as they have done many times before. I break another branch over my knee and offer it to the consuming flames.

“With great care are great works designed,” I declare, for it is the time and place to be dramatic. “When the fire dies, and the ashes have cooled, the Young will know from these details that here were lives also lived. We can be judged, but we can not be punished; thus, only Youth is the perfect crime.”

Bullwhip's defeat has never been more recognizable than in his silent as I remove my weathered Boston Red Sox hat from my head. The sweatband is dream-rich, eager to surrender the memories of my Tribe. Smoke from the dry wood spins into the air with ash and spark and unused condom dreams. Glowing memories dance over the Jones Avenue dump, over the Denniford Scrap and Salvage Yard, over Chrissy's seductive bedroom window, finally landing among the evenly spaced granite memorials of the South Street Cemetery where Mack Wynter awaits the late-inning phone call beneath impartial stars.

“And now,” I suggest, as inspired as a Top 40 chorus. “Open your eyes and see. What we have made is real.”

The legends of Bone Harbor exit through a curtain of orange embers and black ash, drawn to the steady burn of the WHEB radio transmitter tower.