Issue 22 - 1992

Sunday Barbecue
James Nulick
Coe Review • Issue 22
At the age of 3 (19 years ago),
I watched my father catch fire
as he was priming the carb on his
‘57 Chevy pick-up truck. My Uncle Lloyd
was cranking the engine over while daddy
primed it with a 4oz. brake fluid can full
of gasoline. The carb backfired, my dad jumped,
and fuel spattered his chest, arms, neck and upper
torso. He was aflame within seconds. Pops threw the
can down and fell on the lawn, trying to extinguish
he flames with the wet milky crunch of green grass.
Didn’t work. Dick Van Dyke is
a liar. Pops ran around the yard,
screaming insanely, air smothering him out, a lit flare
burning inside his lungs.
Oxygen was his only enemy, he couldn’t breathe it in or
expel it out. His throat was seizing up fast.
Oxygen also fed off of him, eating him up like fresh Styrofoam
as his eyes happened upon the hidden greenness of
the garden hose. About this time, Ma came out of the
house, the Sunday tv now having to go unwatched,
performing for the sake of saving face. Ma screeched and whipped
me up into her arms, I remember the scent in the air,
white bread burning at mach 3, eyebrows singed by the
campfire. Dad was attempting to force
the spigot free now, but he had
tightened it just this morning to keep me from turning it on to play
in the water, summer sun beckoning brown sugar skin. Too bad!
Now it was useless, for daddy’s fingers were sizzling away
like frying bacon. I heard him shout
(nothing more than a whisper), “I want to die!” Then he
lay down on the grass to die, underneath the cool shade
of our carob tree. Uncle Lloyd slipped out of the truck (not more
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