Every time I make the trip to visit my father I keep an eye out for a memory. Two trailers on the right hand side, one was blue, and a large house on a hill. There were steps from the road to the house and a road right past the yard. It was white, but it was so dark that night.

        My mother was driving us to have a weekend with my father, I was young, fifteen, maybe? She asked me to be ready late that evening for our road trip and was running very late home from work. She had forgotten something at work that just couldn’t wait until Monday! We were an hour behind schedule for our already very late evening road trip.
She handed me a cigarette, and taught me how to properly dispose of one out of the window. Yeah. My mom taught me how to litter the “right way”. We sang a long to the radio and she was so surprised I knew the tunes of her teenage years! We were bonding. In our very strange way.
It was about three in the morning at this point and her me and the dog were taken aback as we see flames rising from this building.
“FIRE!” I hollered and the car came to a screeching halt!
We left the puppy in the car and split up. She went to check to see if anyone was in the house and I went for help. I knocked on the doors to both trailers and hollered for somebody, anybody, to come and help. It was no use, nobody was awake. I ran across the street, as my mother was looking for something to start putting the fire out.
The lady of the house was crying and phoning for help. I look down and see a gasoline can; somebody set this fire. It was arson! I grab the hose from my mother and point it at the fire that was steadily engulfing the two stories as she ran to the nozzle to turn it on. We took turns hosing the fire and making sure this woman was okay from this traumatic incident.
The woman told us her newly ex-husband and herself were spatting, he was not the best man and she firmly believed he set the fire not knowing she was in the house. She had just gotten home from drinking with her friends and her car was not at home. When my mom found her, she was stark naked and passed out from overindulgence of alcohol.

          When the fire department finally showed up, the fire had already been put out. They assessed the scene and determined what we had already known, it wasn’t an accident. I remember the woman saying that she would call us, she kept calling us angels! She never called, we never found the paper to prove we were there and if everything went according to plan… we wouldn’t even have been!
I do hope that she is doing better than she was on that night. I cannot even find that place.