Smoke. Burning. Fire. I smelled it in my dreams. The scent swirled by and over my nasal passages. I sat up in bed and yelled, “Do you smell that?”
The acrid taste of destruction coated the back of my tongue. It was 3:43 am.
“Get up. Get up. Something’s burning.” I whacked my husband, Sherwood the high-pitched snore monster, awake.
One gravelly snort later, and he fumbled to his feet. I was already cinched into my animal (unknown species) print bathrobe. “I smell burning,” I snapped.
And like a bird dog scenting prey, I flew through the house sniffing vents, smelling walls, and scratching behind my ear. Horrified, I inspected the light fixtures, recently installed by my son-in-law. Was it possible he’d done defective work, caused an electrical short, and now we were all going to have to live in the barn in our underwear? Of course, it was possible. I flew to the Christmas tree, unplugging Christmas cheer with a vengeance.
I counted grandchildren piled in heaps throughout my house, visiting for Christmas. I worked out an evacuation plan as I ran sniffing wall sockets.
“Sherwood!” I cried. “Do you smell that?”
He had already found a ladder, climbed the ladder, and was sticking his head into the attic.
“It can’t be the heater.” I screeched. “I turned it on earlier in the day. To seventy-six degrees. If it was dust on the heater coils it would have burned off by now. Surely. Surely.” On my hands and knees, I inspected baseboards with my nose.
My grown, combat veteran son appeared, followed by my daughter-in-law.
“Get on that chair and sniff that vent,” I ordered. He did. “Feel the ceiling,” I commanded. He did.
“Nothing’s hot,” he said, calmly.
“It’s in the walls,” I countered, tearing at my hair and sniffing at picture frames.
And then one horrible, terrible, nasty, awful thought occurred to me. I raced to the utility room to confer with my husband.
“You didn’t come behind me when I turned on the heater and lower the temperature? Right? And this is the first time it’s kicking on? So my assumption that this isn’t coil dust burning off but a raging inferno is based on crap information in my half crazed brain? RIGHT?” I directed my comments to my husband’s feet because he was still standing on the idiot ladder, his head still stuck up in the freezing attic. “You didn’t lower the temp,” I repeated. “Right?”
“No,” he replied.
I ran to the thermostat. The heater was on—set to seventy-two. The temperature inside the house? Seventy-one. I had set the temp at seventy-six. This was the first time the heater had kicked on. It was simple math.
“You lied,” I hissed.
Flames bubbled behind my eyeballs. I squashed my eyes to narrow slits. “I’m calling the fire department!”
“No. Don’t. It’s probably dust on the heater coils.”
“You stupid, stupid man,” I yelled. “You’re not a fireman. You! Don’t! Know!” I dragged that last bit out with flare, passion, and drama.
He climbed down the ladder.
Needless to say, the ensuing conversation was neither productive nor Christ-like. Everyone went back to bed, but I stayed awake, bug-eyed and unsettled, until dawn.
Someone has to keep watch over the flocks by night.
Linda (Sheep-Dog) Zern
