Fire Eating by Christopher Ananias

A homeless man is lying across the railroad tracks. A green bicycle is parked sideways on the rocks. “What the hell is this,” I say to Jonny. We’re grinding along the parallel lines in an old beater I just bought last night.

“Helluva deal,” says Jonny, smiling, then he gives him a little toast, and takes a big gurgling gulp of Budweiser, and belches from deep in his stomach. A beery cheeseburger and onions drift towards me. “Look’s like he’s homeless…” then he says, “Homes.”

Around town you might see this homeless man or his twin, sometimes they’re female (they all look alike in their dirty Carhartt’s), pumping their bike or shopping cart from trash can to trash can sorting out spaghetti-sauced aluminum GOLD.

A nomadic madness spills over his clanking pursuit of his aluminum grail. Something free and beautiful enshrouds his veering ten-speed bike. He is the original recycler and leaves a light footprint on our crippled world. I flip a peace sign that changes to the finger, but I admire his freedom. 

He is homeless, and no one cares to ask why? His green “Ross” ten-speed has a bright orange “Do It Best” bucket knotted to the handlebars with parachute rope. Fresh oil gleams on the chain. It seems to say I am a valuable commodity. I am everything to my homeless man master. No one has ever been so good to me. Keep your grubs OFF.

The Oldsmobile skids, plows up rocks. It has a bench front seat with a fat blue armrest that folds down in the middle and stinks like a bar rag.

I bought it from a desperate guy named Albert Goings. He is short and rotund with curly black hair coming out of the neckline of his white T-shirt. He claims to be a FIRE EATER in the carnival that has just rolled into town.  

At the bar, I try to get him to light a newspaper and eat fire, but he refuses. His mouth looks deformed, shaped like a monkey’s—all puffed out—pink and hairless with no philtrum. I try not to stare, but it doesn’t look right. Did FIRE EATING melt his lip? I want to ask, but what if that’s just how he looks? Some people just look that way. We’re all half monkeys anyway, right?

Then he gets hard up, comes charging into the bar like someone was after him. Shaking, saying, “Man-man-man. Youzz, gots to help me, Bill.” All wild ape-like theatrics with his hairy hands flying around, red tinted eyes darting everywhere. I wait for him to drop his knuckles to the ground and go, “Ooga-Ooga.” I’m not that nice.

“What’s wrong, Al?”

“It’s my wife, Mabel. They’ve got her down at the jailhouse.”

“Why?” A smile crosses my face, but the real smile is trying to burst across my face.

“Oh, you know she makes extra money. You know?” His face gets red.

I’ve heard about Mabel and her little silver trailer down at the 4-H Grounds. All those carnies and townies lining up. The bartender and some others—go quiet—and sort of draw their heads our way like poisonous flowers trying to get some sun.

“Let’s go outside and talk.” This is my opportunity. I’m going to see some damn FIRE EATING yet! So I grab the newspaper that’s always lying on the sticky bar-top. It’s bad to swoop down on people when they’re so low.  

The filthy dented door swings shut. We step into the alley and the night finds us with the rancid smell of a fry-grease container. I roll up the newspaper. It has Trump’s mug on it again. I light it and the flames crawl all over Trump’s face curling it and turning him into a black man then white smoking ashes. I wave it at Goings, ashes floating around, a greasy fiery streak of smoke lights up his oval face, red tinted unblinking eyes, and that deformed cup-like lip.

My hand is getting hot, but he refuses to eat the daily headline. He says something like; It was his art and he won’t betray his art, but he’d sell me his car for $750. I jewed him down to $500.

We are young, and it is old. We don’t even know what model it is. This super wide—super glide rusty white boat. It might be an Oldsmobile Delta 88, rolling on mismatched radial tires. Killing everything like a cement yard roller. You need a tetanus shot to open the door. There are empty pill bottles crowding the glove box, and we’re kicking around “Big Mac” boxes—like that’s all they ever ate.

Inside the trunk, Jonny finds some kind of Aqua Net hairspray flamethrower with a big red horn on it, and these puffy steel rods like enormous Q-Tips, stinking of kerosene. Al Goings’s FIREBALLS to dunk into his throat.  

If the Olds’ 88 breaks down, we’ll leave it like an exploded Russian tank. We might even get pissed and throw railroad rocks, those big white bastards, through the windshield. We don’t value it like ol’ “Scrounger” does his bike.

I say, “Oh shit! Is he dead?”

“Train, Billy Bob!” Jonny gets out. He’s not Jonny come lately, he’s lean and fast, even half drunk, and scurries up to the tracks. Jonny looks down at the man. He’s a man now, not just a bum in a dirty Carhartt on a ten-speed. Odd how death dignifies.

The train blares its horn-like, “YOU’RE GONNA DIE!” at the crossing. The body drapes the tracks. Jonny pulls his feet, but the bum’s hands come alive with a death grip on the rail. He kicks at Jonny. His breath is an agonal rasp. Jonny pulls the bum’s grass-stained “Walmart Specials” and lifts his ass up in the air in a game of tug-of-war. Like a homeless man kite scissoring and flapping blue jeans in the wind of the on-rushing train.

“Get out of there!” I scream. Jonny drops him and leaps over the hood sliding for second base! Jonny’s a helluva shortstop he can catch a Budweiser like nobody’s business.

What could drive this person to such a stunt? He has all this wide open beautiful freedom, so much more than me. All I can do is booze and cruise the tracks after work. Maybe he got his pants leg caught in the chain and it was too much? Guys like that are always overreacting.

The train hammers its horn-like God’s trumpet, blaring, “REPENT!” Bring me John the Baptist’s head! The tremor shakes the car, or so I imagine.

I can’t look. Jonny puts his hands over his eyes like he is five years old walking in on his naked parents making his little sister.

The train’s shadow dwarfs us, and the Olds’ 88 holds its smoky, idling breath. I stay put. The earth shakes, as the stream of steel rushes by like the Empire State Building—a half-mile long.

“Where the hell did he go?” says, Jonny.

“I don’t know?”

We watch the train’s red pressure light sensor that serves as a lousy excuse for a caboose, disappearing like a cigarette’s cherry winking around a long curve. 

 Jonny says, “His bike’s gone!” 

Behind us, in the bloated red sun like on Japan’s flag, a figure trails away humping it to the shelter or a tent in the woods. Does he have a mom or dad? God, I hope so… I kill a Budweiser and toss the can out the window. It clanks on the railroad rocks, another all-be-damned tin can for the Earth’s wrung out bonnet. 

The bike turns around and the rims flash silver like a knight’s sword. The beer can disappears into his DO IT BEST, Bucket, like it’s the Holy Grail.

Christopher Ananias

Image: White Oldmobile Delta 88 in white from Wikicommons.