Something's burning

The job was both a blessing and a curse. At once, I was fortunate that I was able to work in an environment where I could help animals; yet unfortunate enough to be faced with the day to day consequences of humanity’s inhumanity towards our best friends, dogs and cats. I was getting paid to go into schools and teach children about animals. It was important work and certainly work I would be more than happy to do whether I was getting paid or not. Then again, I had to report each day to a shelter where animals were put to sleep on a daily basis for having done nothing wrong except be born. It was very sad work indeed.

It was a few weeks before I noticed the fine dust that had been accumulating on my vehicle day after day. I was driving a grey Camry at the time, and the grey on grey dust was not all that noticeable, nor noteworthy, it was just there. Anyone seeing the car would assume, perhaps, that I lived out in one of the areas where people lived at the end of a long dirt road. But they would be wrong. No, I live in a snooty gated community, with nary a dirt road to be seen for miles around situated as it is quite within city limits. I’m sorry, and I apologize, for all of the gopher tortoises that were displaced, no, dispatched… when my neighborhood was built. I know that it can take up to three months for a gopher tortoise to expire and for that I am truly sorry. Another day, certainly, I will write about the plight of these unassuming animals. Today, my assignment is to write about something that is burning.

Another student of writing may write, perchance, of a barbeque picnic or a forest fire. Or maybe she would wax poetic about the nights she strummed her guitar around the bonfire on the beach when she was just a bikini-wearing hippie back in the day, passing the occasional joint and chugging a warm beer or two. She may juggle words about her heartthrob Stevie Roberts or Billy, the long-haired hunk who rode the Harley. She may even try her hand at a song about how the stars at night on a tropical beach in Florida…….Oh, but that writer is not this writer. Not today, not anymore. Today, I see a writing prompt entitled “something's burning” and immediately my mind goes to the fine dust on my car that I couldn’t for the life of me figure out of which was the cause. And one day, I had the severe misfortune of asking someone, John or Phil or who the fuck knows, or cares.

So innocently. The conversation began so very innocently in the lunch room. “Do any of you guys notice that your cars are, like, I don’t know, kind of dirtier since you started working here?” I asked. They looked at one another in that knowing way, that way that people look at one another when they know something and you don’t. “What?” So very innocent. “Well, is it kind of like a whitish dust?” Someone asked. ‘Yeah,” I said, “Is there like construction going on around here or is it the shell rock in the parking lot?”

Again with the goddamned looks.

“It’s the crematorium". Someone murmured. Nobody was looking anywhere now. Suddenly everyone was very concerned with what their fingernails looked like or how their sandwich was constructed. I won’t pretend I didn’t know what a crematorium was. I knew bloody well what it was. “So the dust all over my car is, it’s dust from the chimney from the crematorium?” I asked.

Yes.

Yes.

Yes. It was….

Something burning.