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"Will the following students please report to Mr. Spain's office" announces the vice-principal's secretary over the intercom at the beginning of French class, "Anthony Benincasa, Enzo Januzzi, Leo Mazurkewicz, Mary Panariello, Wiley Reed, and Wendy Wojnarski."
The three of us stir from our back row seats and shuffle out as the teacher writes a lesson plan on the blackboard with her back turned.
"She knows" hisses Mazurk once we hit the back stairs down to the second floor. "We're screwed."
"Remember the fire?" asks Newsy as we huddle in the stairwell down to the main hallway. "We all have to say the same thing."
"I can't be suspended for the Middlesex game" groans Mazurk. "Let's tell him we leaned back and knocked the records out."
"Yeah right" counters Newsy, "the three of us simultaneously tilted our chairs into that one windowsill."
"It was your idea Mazurk" I point out, "so it's only fair that you're the one who accidentally bumped into those old albums."
__________
The fire happened in autumn of our fourth grade year at LaMonte School. On the way home the previous week we had seen some sixth graders launching burning rafts down the Middlebrook.
"I hadda wait till my old man left" huffed Mazurk running up with a carton of matches labeled West Brook Inn, ripping off the paper, and holding out the cardboard box to the other five boys. "He's on night shift at Carbide."
Bound Brook was surrounded by factories that later became Superfund sites: Union Carbide's PVCs; American Cyanamid's aniline dyes; Johns Manville and Ruberoid's asbestos products. My father hauled for them all in the days when truckers unloaded their own toxic loads.
"Yeah, I'll only light em by the water" agreed Mazurk to Newsy's demand that we not light any fires in the dry leaves.
I was the only one to see that Mazurk's fingers were crossed behind his back.
We headed for the Brook gathering sticks and singing the new Doors song Light My Fire that had debuted on the Ed Sullivan Show the previous Sunday. Our line of boys marched across the Union Avenue bridge and down a little path along an old ditch, winding through a ravine, past a circular hole, and up onto an open field.
"That ditch was probably a breastworks for firing at the redcoats" observed Newsy as we crunched through the dry leaves and heading back into the woods. "The hole must have been the firepit for a sentry hut above the only road up through Chimney Rock."
"Help, it's getting away" yelled Mazurk as three big black birds flapped up from the humongous oak we were walking under.
The rest of us raced back as orange flames sizzled in the dry grasses all around Mazurk. We stomped on the clumps of fire, but it was spreading faster than our feet could move.
"A fire... will go out... if deprived... of oxygen" groaned Newsy as he hefted and heaved a big rock into the center of the flames and a wall of white smoke shot up, stinging our eyes.
"Shut the fuck up and keep stomping" screamed Mazurk as the heat of the growing fire spread from our sneakers up through our pant legs.
Stumbling out of the ring of fire, we set to work on its edges in a desperate dance, halting only when the siren blew.
The town had a strange fire signal in those days. A series of low whistles would moan from the top of three telephone poles spread out around the square mile of habitable land. The sequence signaled the street of the blaze so that firemen, firetrucks, and about half the town could race that way.
"Ah-un-ah, ah-un-ah" reverberated up into the woods and we knew it was going to be 2-4-6 for Hanken Road.
"They're coming" cried Mazurk and we scattered into the woods.
"Wait up Weeds" pleaded Newsy as I took off for the brook, tossing matches along the way.
He caught me as I waded through the cold hip-deep water, and we emerged from the woods into the West End as a fire truck blared down Tea Street.
"What're we gonna do?" he whined as we crouched behind a cedar tree beside the road.
"Let's sneak down the Park" I decided. "The others will meet us in the Kiddie Corral."
An awful silence settled over the merry-go-round along with the smoke as the other boys straggled up and climbed on.
"What if they catch us?" whined Mazurk to break the silence.
"Whadya mean us?" I countered.
"Juvenile arsonists have often experienced parental neglect or family conflict" chimed in Newsy.
"You ain't no goddamn Einstein" sulked Mazurk.
"We'll say we were smoking in the woods and Mazurk dropped one" I offered to settle the issue.
__________
"Well Mr. Reed" starts the stern vice-principal holding up a piece of an album, "how do you suppose these broken French records arrived on the tennis courts below your classroom?"
"Sorry Mr. Spain" I plead, "we were fooling around at the back of the class and Leo's chair tipped into the window."
"A likely story" he sneers, "but that will still be five demerits and no extracurricular activities for one week."
I slink out of his office staring at the floor as I pass Newsy and Mazurk sitting beside the secretary's desk, stopping only to hold open the door as Mr. Righetti strides in.
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