“They should go back into the store,” Toad said. “Somebody lost them.”
“Somebody bought them, then,” Pete said. “They’re paid for fair and square.”
The two brothers, one 8 and the other not quite 7, sat on the sidewalk in front of the small neighborhood store. A box of wooden matches rested on the ground between them, where it had fallen, scraping one corner, and sliding open an inch or so. Knocking the red-headed matches into view.
Toad, the younger boy, sat Indian-style, his legs folded under him, his arms crossed and resting on his battered green lunch box. Pete had tucked up doglike close beside Toad, resting on his hands and knees, keeping an eye on the front door of the store. As they sat, an ancient elm tree dusted them with shade, its high branches making loose, lopsided circles in a listless midday breeze.
The boys had often taken matches—one or two—from the holder high above their mother’s kitchen stove. To roast an ant or grasshopper. Or to hide them away, savoring the dark excitement. The power to set the fire in them free.
They always lit the candles on their birthday cakes. This spring they helped their dad burn the ditches clear of last winter’s tangled weeds, which flowed into rivers of ash, leaving the ditch banks ghostly white. To the boys each match had its own purpose. Each was special. Individual.
But this was a whole box. An army of them, tiny wooden soldiers in formation, resting ramrod straight, row after row, waiting for orders. Uniformed, each red helmet topped with its own miniature white crown.
Toad, marching home from school, had almost trampled them.
“We should see who bought them, then,” Toad said. “And give them back.”
“It could be anybody, Toad,” Pete argued. “Some old truck driver, passing through. Maybe he bought more than he could use. And just threw them away. You know, to travel light.”
Pete’s argument did not seem right to Toad, who wrinkled up his nose to think.
One match had broken rank, popping half out of the box. Pete held it up to his eye, inspecting it, turning it slowly, stripping a splinter from one side of the square white shaft. He almost put it back. But then he laid the match lengthwise along his ring finger. Rocking back on his heels, he whipped his arm with a fluid motion. A gentle roll at first, like those he used to put his yoyo to sleep, but ending with a hard snap of his wrist. The match shot to the pavement, cracking into flame, then sizzling out, its black head sighing a whisper of smoke.
The boys’ eyes darted to the store. The front window was empty still, the old clerk nowhere to be seen.
Without another word, Toad opened his lunch box, pushing a half-finished peanut-butter sandwich to one end. He put the box of matches in, carefully rolling the banana peel inside the rumpled napkin so the gray, sandpaper striking strip along the side of the matchbox would not get wet. Making a safe place for his newfound friends. Toad closed the pail, setting it back in his lap, and refolding his arms.
“Finders keepers,” Pete cried, grabbing Toad’s lunch box and running up the street.
Toad scrambled to get his legs free, giving Pete a good head start. As he started after his older, faster brother, a brief flash of anger melted into cool determination. He hadn’t lost anything yet.
“Finders keepers, finders keepers,” Toad said to himself. “I found them.”
Pete danced ahead, whirling, running backwards, keeping the distance between the two of them just great enough to enjoy his victory. Close enough for taunting, but not close enough for getting caught.
Toad pursued Pete at a steady pace. Pete, with all his dancing and despite his greater speed, began to tire. When they were about a hundred yards from home, their mother came out on the porch, as she usually did when they returned from school, and waved to them. At the sight of her, Toad gave out a wounded wail.
“Give it back, Pete. Oh, please, please, Pete, give it back.”
This cry for mother’s help—a dirty baby-trick, long since banished from their combat rules—startled Pete. Toad was cheating.
Pete stumbled. Toad charged, Pete regained his footing just in time to run into his mother’s waiting arms. It was useless to pull away. Sullenly, he waited for his brother to come the last twenty yards.
“Here, Toad,” Pete said, smiling at their mother. “Only teasing.”
Toad, red-faced, reclaimed his prize.
“Losers weepers,” he whispered in Pete’s sweaty ear.
“Baby!” Pete hissed back.
Putting on an injured look, Toad shuffled slowly toward the house, his breath all ragged jerks. As he reached the porch, he turned to see where his mother was. Then with a loud sniffle, he raised his arm as if to wipe his nose. The green lunch pail hid his face from her. Grinning widely, he stuck his tongue out at Pete.
But Pete did not see this salute. He stood stock still, his arms stiff at his sides, his head thrown back, his chin tucked in, bravely staring dead ahead, into his mother’s sad-strong gaze, waiting for the scolding that would give Toad enough time to hide the matchbox army.
Next morning the brothers rode their bicycles around the house, as they always did. Circling the giant apple tree that held their clubhouse. Coasting out into the street, and pumping back, standing up to pedal. Whistling and nodding, they bided their time, silently. Unable to break their deadlock. Neither wanting an open fight.
Pete knew every hiding place his brother had. But, while Pete was pinned down for his tongue-lashing, Toad had stuffed the matchbox in the bottom of the canvas bag tied to Pete’s handlebars. The one they used to carry empty bottles to the store. The matchbox was within Pete’s reach, buried beneath a dusty quart of Hire’s root beer.
“Going in the house to pee,” Pete said, propping his bike against the tree.
He checked the laundry basket, and behind their mother’s bed again. He had looked everywhere. As he stood peeing, he could see Toad through the window, smiling, watching him. Pete rushed back to the yard, zipping his pants as he ran.
“Where are they?” he demanded.
“Where’s what?” Toad asked, innocently.
“Where’s what,” Pete growled. “Guess I’ll have to go find Ma.”
Pete started toward the house.
“There was another box,” Toad called.
“Bull,” Pete called back, stopping. “Where?”
“By the tree,” Toad added, poker-faced. “But you ran away.”
By the time they searched the sidewalk and the shade under the tree, then up and down all the streets near the store, Pete had lost all hope of finding his own matches. But he did find a six-pack of empty beer bottles. And lucky Toad found a dime and four pennies in the gutter.
Enough to buy three cream sodas.
The best place to drink sodas was the knoll that rose a mile or so from their house. They followed the paved road past MacAdam’s place, then turned off on the dirt road that wound up the hillside, their favorite place for sledding in the winter, and for coasting bicycles on hot summer days. Coasting fast the brothers could make their own wind.
After a few trips up and down the bumpy gravel path, Pete and Toad put their bikes behind the big rock at the top, the one they called Scout Peak. They crawled up onto it. Not a chance of anyone sneaking up on them here. Scout Peak, although it rose only two hundred feet above the valley floor, commanded a full circle of view.
Pete pulled a rusty can opener from a crevice in the rock where they kept it hidden, prying the brassy caps from two of the sodas, which now seemed very cold against their sun-baked lips. The brothers leaned against each other, back to back, sipping the sodas, their knees drawn up, like bookends, each surveying half the world.
In every direction the boys looked, the dry grass was dense and matted, like shaggy fur. The few clumps of khaki brush scattered here and there were too small to conceal any Indians or wolves. Nowhere for anything to hide.
Toad gently set the matches on the rock beside his brother.
“Why, Pete,” Toad said in mock surprise, “lookie here.”
The matches were all still resting in their boxed formation. The brothers took turns, lifting them out one by one and lighting them. It seemed an endless feast of what had always before been a special treat.
They each struck several on the scratch pad, and several on different parts of the rock. A few times they each took one match, holding them together as if dueling, head to head, white cap to white cap, lighting them on each other.
Pete lit one on a rusty can, another on the bottle opener. Toad struck one on his pant leg, like a cowboy they had seen at the Saturday matinee. In an hour, the box was half empty. And the boys had their fill of matches. They were thinking more and more about the third soda.
The hot air was making dust-devils out over the road. A lone jackrabbit sat sentinel outside its burrow, its long ears steady, watching them. Somewhere not far off, a meadowlark was tapping out its song.
Toad gathered the dead matches, laying them out in rows.
“I’ll play you for that cream soda,” Pete said.
“Play what, Pete?”
“Whoever lights a match with his own bare hands wins,” Pete said, thinking that if cowboys could light matches with their fingernails, so could he.
The boys took turns with this new trick. First Pete, then Toad, then Pete again. One or two sparked, several broke. Finally, Pete made one sputter for a second.
“My turn,” Toad said.
“Hey,” Pete said, indignantly, “that lit.”
Toad just shook his head, lips squared.
“I get another chance,” Pete said. “It half lit.”
“Okay,” Toad said. “Same match. Then me.”
Pete rolled the scorched match on his palm, blowing on it like a favorite marble, before sliding it, quick and firm, across his thumbnail. With a pistol-pop it burst into flame, but the white cap sliced off, lodging under his nail. Pete dropped the burning stick, which bounced from his shoe into the open matchbox.
Pete, ghost-white, gaped at his thumb, which burned with pain beyond imagination as the glowing phosphorus beneath his nail cooled slowly into dead white ash.
In the matchbox, the tiny soldiers were springing to life. First they ignited one by one, touched by their neighbors, and then row by row, called to arms in whole columns.
Both boys grabbed for the box at once, scattering the burning matches. Most of them smoked out. A few fell into cracks on the rock, making cheerful little fires in the dry dust and twigs. A single match escaped the rock, unnoticed.
As Pete sucked on his thumb, a soft swirl of afternoon wind tumbled the burning match into the bone-dry apron of tall grass around the outcropping. They saw the wisp of smoke at the same time. A slender thread which rapidly grew into several ropes, which then wove into a snarled net, waving before their panic-stricken eyes.
They scrambled from Scout Peak, scraping themselves on the raspy stone. Pete stamped on the fire, already bigger than a bathtub, scattering sparks further off into the grass. Toad ripped off his shirt, beating at the growing flames, sending smoke billows into a sky already rancid with its smell.
Squadrons of sparks swirled about, scattering down the hill, where the wind puffed at them just enough to kindle a few into fresh foxholes of flame, which burrowed beneath the dry grass before erupting into new red patches, advancing steadily, closing ranks, chewing up the grass along a growing front, surrounding their position.
The boys heard the fire bell in the town below. That meant someone had seen the smoke. That men were frantic, running, jumping into the old water truck. Then the siren. Coming to attack the fire. Here, where nothing could hide.
The boys retreated down the far side of the hill, choking on smoke. Dodging the brush patches, they maneuvered their bikes over the rough ground, some places pushing or carrying them. Their grit-swollen eyes wept. Toad threw his burnt shirt in the dry creek bed. They stopped to smear themselves with dirt, and to roll in a pile of moldy leaves, trying to shed their sootiness. As they fled, frantically calculating the chance of escaping undetected, the deeper rock-scrapes dried to savage streaks of muddy blood.
But the town below the hill was quiet when they reached it. Old ladies stood out on porches, gawking at the distant fire truck’s light, a gob of redness pulsing in the murk.
The few cars that passed them gave them wide berth. The drivers’ eyes roamed anxiously, scanning the spark-filled sky, as the fire found fresh fuel. Searching the huge smoke column for a tattle-tale of white to signal that the fire was in control. Not clawing over the grass, into the hills and trees beyond.
Even the dogs, exhausted from whining at the siren, ignored them.
Pete and Toad came in from the back field, their bikes jolting across the furrows. They moved past the barn, past the manure pile where they dug for fishing worms. The patch of asparagus at the corner of the barn looked different. Wasted. The dark green spears an army of dead matches.
As they crawled up in the gnarled apple tree in the front yard, the column of dark smoke continued twisting up out of the haze into the clouds. It was over an hour before any white broke through. Only then did the boys dare surrender looks at each other.
Pete showed Toad his thumb, the warped nail, the large blood blister forming at its sides.
“Does it hurt?” Toad asked.
“Not much,” Pete lied.
Toad picked several streaks of clotted mud from his deeper scrapes, where bloody sweat had caked the dust. They turned their pockets inside out, shaking cinders onto the rough bark. Each boy untangled leaves from the other’s hair.
As they crept from their hiding place, a single match tumbled from somewhere. Pete handed it to Toad, who put it solemnly into his front pocket.
Next morning the sky was clear again.
The brothers took the lone surviving match behind the barn.
They buried it, unburned, wrapped in an old teabag. They chose a spot in the asparagus, near two thin new spears. Spears barely rising from the ground and struggling toward the light.
“Will it give them red heads?” Toad asked.
Pete gave no response.
But Toad knew. They both had white crowns.
—Andy Grose, MLA '01
