Fire In His Eyes

                          “There’s fire on the wall as young Willie does stare;
                           The flames they are dancing; stand back and beware;
                           Don’t look at him askance, don’t ever cross the lad;
                           Just smile and walk away; never, ever make him mad.”

There are some who walk amongst us who are born with special talents;
talents which lay hidden beneath the veneer of courtesy and
civilization which we all wear upon our faces like an old suit of
clothing and which, for good or for bad, conceals what may be the most
important and magical parts of who we really are. Some people have a
knack for music, while others might be good at math. One might easily
learn a language, while another might turn what was an ordinary hunk
of wood into a beautiful piece of furniture. All of these are talents
we respect, even admire. But they are not talents that one would ever
fear, even if we could see them written onto the features of those we
pass in the street. Yet there are other special and perhaps darker
talents; attributes which might be more difficult to conceal,
especially when the individual who carries such a talent was only
eleven years old and, from his brief life on a farm, had no practice
whatsoever in masking his face with that benign veneer of civilization
we all use so easily and take for granted as always being securely in
place. So when this young boy got angry there was no hiding it; there
was fire in his eyes which could not remain concealed.

In the year of 1885 Young Willie Brough was just a lad of eleven
years, and he was just beginning to display what would develop into a
very special talent indeed. All he had to do was to look at an object
and wish it to burn, and it would burst into flame. Sometimes he
apparently didn’t even have to wish for it to happen – it just
happened anyway.

The fires began in 1885 around the old farmhouse near the town of
Turlock in the San Joaquin Valley in which Willie and his family
lived, and they continued for almost the next two years. One night the
family awoke to the flickering of flames and found that an edge of the
home’s roof was ablaze. Amidst much shouting and confusion Willie’s
father managed to extinguish the flames. The fire had not started near
the chimney, and a cause for the fire couldn’t be found. At least, not
at that time. Other fires soon followed with a regularity; an
increasingly frightening regularity which gradually pivoted the focus
of their cause onto young Willie. One night fire broke out within the
covers of a bed, and although no one was seriously hurt the entire
family was too frightened to go back to sleep. One day thick smoke
suddenly began to issue from the barn. As Willie’s father rushed in to
save the animals he found that the cause of the smoke was from three
sacks of grain stacked all by themselves in the middle of the floor,
with nothing else around them to either catch or spread fire.
Suspicion finally came to rest upon Willie when one day his parents
saw him stare intently at a large container of straw, and it burst
into flames while they watched. This was disturbing, to say the least,
and suspicion soon extended to not only include Willie but also the
devil which they thought might be possessing him. Willie’s parents
consulted with their preacher, but without his having had the
opportunity to see the phenomenon for himself - indeed, for anyone
other than the family to have witnessed it - he was reticent to pass
judgment on the boy.

But others were soon to have the chance to become witnesses. While the
fires continued to be a regular part of home life as Willie entered
his twelfth year, they now also began to happen at school. In one
event Willie inadvertently demonstrated his ability to the teacher and
other pupils when they saw him staring intently at a stack of hay in
an empty lot adjacent to the school, and it obligingly burst into
flames in front of a score of astonished witnesses. When confronted
for an explanation by an angry and frightened group of community
leaders, Willie’s father stood staunchly in defense of his boy and, in
spite of his own frequent experiences with unexplained fires at home,
denied that such a feat could even be possible. A local newspaper
story suggested that perhaps Willie had too much static electricity
about his body, and the parents leaped upon that as a possible and
innocent explanation. But the fires continued, and townspeople began
to mention other things about Willie, such as his abnormally large
head, and wonder if its cavernous inner recesses somehow held the
coals of an ever-burning fire which could shine out through his eyes.
Like the uneducated and superstitious peasants of a remote
Transylvanian community the peasants around the town of Turlock showed
all the signs of getting out the pitchforks and torches and making a
midnight march to the Brough farm. Willie’s family soon had to pack up
and leave town as suspicion of the involvement of supernatural forces
continued to spread.

But the family couldn’t afford to move very far, and they were soon
tracked down by reporters eager to keep the story alive. In one rare
interview young Willie admitted that he often saw the glow of dancing
sparks around his body in the darkness of night, but said that was
common and had nothing to do with the fires. Then, frightened, he
swore that he had no idea what caused the fires. Having reached the
end of hope, Willie’s parents apparently urged him to run away from
home and thus make life easier for them all, which he did. Willie
wandered through the outskirts of Turlock for several days, then made
his way out into the fields surrounding the town. A farmer who had
heard about Willie’s exploits and who wasn’t impressed with local
superstition took him in and gave him some fresh clothing. After
several days of getting the boy back into shape with regular meals and
emotional encouragement, the farmer knew that, for his own good,
Willie should be back in school and so sent him there. So Willie’s
formal education resumed and, in the space of just one day, ended.

Just a few hours into Willie’s first day back at school a fire
suddenly broke out on the classroom wall. As the flames licked up the
wall the teacher quickly ushered the children outside and grabbed a
bucket of water, with which the flames were quickly doused. A few more
bucketsful made sure the fire was out, and class resumed. Shortly
thereafter flames suddenly sprouted from the papers laying upon the
teacher’s desk. Again it was quickly put out, but all eyes were now
focusing on Willie. Scarcely an hour passed before flames broke out
upon the ceiling of the classroom. Again the children were evacuated.
This one was a bit harder to reach and put out, but that was soon
accomplished while the children stood safely outside in a group. All
except for Willie, who stood apart from the group and was the subject
of their mutterings. The afternoon progressed until another fire broke
out on another wall. Already on edge the teacher had buckets handy,
and the flames were soon smothered underwater. By this time the
classroom must have been rather wet, and the tenacity of the teacher
in pursuing the administration of regular lessons must be admired. Yet
even the teacher could reach a breaking point, and that point was
finally reached when flames began issuing from the closet in which the
teacher kept her coat and other belongings. Once again it was put out,
but now class was dismissed. There had been five separate fires in
school that day; five fires in Willie’s school; five fires on his very
first day back at school.

                                      “Five fires broke out in school that day;
                                       Flames reaching high in many a blaze;
                                       The teacher trembled with
fear, the children cried in fright;
                                       The parents met in secret, and
expelled him that night.”

Willie never went back to school again. If he went back home to the
farmer who had so kindly taken him in, it was only to grab some food
and clothes and leave the environs of Turlock, where he was never seen
again. It was now the Autumn of 1886, and the town of Turlock slowly
lapsed back into a comfortable state of self-satisfaction, knowing
that the devil had been successfully expurgated from the community.
And if the evil boy was now officially missing and presumed dead, then
they felt that was for the best. The stories that had been printed in
the Turlock papers were all that remained for anyone who might be
interested in recalling Willie’s life.

But young Willie Brough wasn’t dead, though what few details are
attributed to the reminder of his life do not bear the official stamp
of history. Yet the remainder of his story below does indeed rest
within the realm of local oral history. One day in the early 1960’s an
elderly man named Roy in the Masonic Lodge of Wilsonia was sitting on
his deck turning the pages of an old photograph album as I looked
eagerly over his shoulder. The album contained dozens of old black &
white photos of bearded young men with axes and saws, pictures of
little railroad engines that he called ‘donkey engines’, and photos of
old wooden buildings filling valleys and stretching up hillsides.

"These were the logging camps," he explained to me, "that were in this
area of the Sierra more than fifty and sixty years ago." Then he
pointed to one picture.

“See that guy there on the corner of the porch of that building?”

I squinted, focusing on the faded image of what looked like a man with
one leg in a bandage and a crutch propping him up under one arm.

“That’s the camp hospital,” he said, smiling, “and that man is me! I
had a little run-in with log that rolled unexpectedly and broke my
foot.”

Roy went on to tell me how accidents like his were common in the
logging camps and how men were always getting hurt in accidents. Then
he grew silent for several moments and the distant look in his eyes
told me that he was remembering something.

“But,” he suddenly added softly, “sometimes it wasn’t always an accident.”

“What do you mean?”

He looked at me for a long moment.

“I’ll tell you something,” he said, finally, “something that maybe I’m
the last person around who remembers.” He paused again. “I’ll tell you
about the boy who could start fires with his eyes.”

Then Roy told me what Willie had told him, before Willie finally did
disappear forever.
Several years passed after Willie left school that day, during which
time Willie managed to maintain a low profile as he wandered south
through the valley, doing odd jobs on farms to keep himself fed and
gradually learning to at least partially keep his wild talent under
control. In the early 1890’s he had heard of the booming logging
industry in the Southern Sierra Nevada and how a good paying job was
to be had for any young man willing and able to do a hard days’ work.
So at the age of nineteen Willie made his way up to the town of
Millwood and got a job as a logger. Although occasionally small fires
did ignite in his presence suspicion never fell upon him as he was
always in the presence of dozens, if not hundreds, of others. And no
one in the logging camps seemed aware of the brief fame he had
garnered as a young adolescent in a valley farming community far to
the north. Willie also noticed that hard physical labor seemed to
dampen the random occurrences of spontaneous flame.  Or perhaps the
wild talent was just going away as such things sometimes did when one
grew out of adolescence and into maturity.

Willie spent several years in Millwood, a hard worker who became close
friends with no one. As the lumber operations moved away from Millwood
through Converse Basin, Willie moved with them. Fires occasionally
would burst forth near to him, yet they were always blamed on sparks
from the equipment or the donkey engines or men careless with their
pipes. And maybe they were indeed caused by those things. Except
Willie knew better, and eventually Roy knew as well. Roy came to
suspect some connection between Willie and the fires just because he
had seen so many fires suddenly break out in the presence of the young
man and it seemed to him to defy the odds of mere chance. So one night
as he saw Willie leave camp and walk out into the woods, Roy grabbed
his bootleg bottle of illicit whiskey – the possession of which could
get him fired from the camp – and followed Willie. He caught up with
him sitting with his back to a rock on top of a ridge and looking out
at the stars. Roy quietly sat down beside him, uncorked the bottle and
took a sip, then passed it to Willie. Willie looked at him for a long
moment, apparently wondering if this was some sort of trick, then
shrugged his shoulders and took the bottle. The men spent the next
half hour slowly relaxing without talking.

Then Roy quietly asked, “Is there something you maybe want to get off
your chest?”

It took a few more minutes of quiet thought, but then Willie told Roy
his story. Then he also told Roy that he never meant anyone harm; that
sometimes the thing just happened. And he asked Roy not to rat him out
to the others. Roy told Willie that he was no rat; that his secret was
safe, and Willie promised him that if he ever lost control again as he
had in school that day, he would pack up and move on.

Willie continued to work in the logging camps until 1905 – June the
second of 1905, to be exact. On that day an explosion suddenly ripped
through one of the buildings of Camp Four of the Sanger Lumber
Company, blowing out half of the building and sending pieces of broken
timers flying through camp. No one was killed; few were injured. The
explosion occurred in the building in which the lumber company stored
their black powder. The powder had been stored safely there for
months, and no cause of the explosion was ever determined.

But the next day Roy took note of Willie’s absence, and Willie was
never seen again.