FIRE
It was hot as hell over the farm. It’s already the middle of summer, and not a single drop of rain. Only the dew in the morning slightly touched the withered leaves of zucchini, but is this really the case? The temperature during the day under the scorching sun rose in the forties. Any movement was given with effort. All living things fled to the shade of acacia trees, and people sat in their huts. Only the fields were being worked on. They were harvesting wheat there. Oddly enough, it was early July, and the giant harvester was rattling along, cutting down the low ears of corn that were already beginning to crumble in the steppe wind. When he had gone all the way across the field and returned, he would drive up to a truck parked on the outskirts of the city, and the grain would quickly pour into the back of the truck. Then, empty, he walked again across the field, along a new row, and so it was repeated several times.
Yegor stood on the hill and watched the grain growers work. He had seen all this both last year and the year before, but usually in August. Yes, this year it was a very hot summer, even by the standards of the south, the heat confused plans, ruined hopes. As if in punishment, everything fell on Yegor. You could see the wide cheekbones on his unshaven, tanned face. The sun also burned his young vineyard mercilessly. He remembered, frowning, how he had dug deep holes, how he had filled them with humus and rubble, how he had cut down pillars of prickly acacia, tearing his hands to blood. Yes, and the seedlings themselves cost him dearly, what was the cost of their delivery here from the sea, from the nursery, well, what is there to count! The most annoying thing was how much effort he put in, how much time he spent to have a garden here. And it all went down the drain. The drought was choking a bush every day, and there was nothing he could do about it. In June, the roots still held, and it was water in the tap, and he watered the grapes from a bucket, wandering up and down the long rows several times a day. Then the water pressure began to weaken, and it was necessary to water the weakest and most in need of watering plants. But then the water completely dried up in the tap, it went only at night in a thin trickle, and it was barely enough to support the life of the people themselves, watering was banned. Everyone was hoping for a big rainstorm, it was almost expected, but it did not come, and every evening, looking carefully at the cloudless sky, Yegor wondered in vain «it will go — it will not go.»
Yegor even dreamed of rain. In his dream, he could hear the wind swaying the branches of the trees, the long-drawn thunder rumbling somewhere in the distance, and the first drops hitting the leaves… And Yegor was sure in the morning that it was still raining, that even when he looked out the window and saw the usual picture of drought, he still had a faint hope for the future. that the sun just dried up the rain tracks. And he was very sorry that he had not been able to get out of bed that night, that his strength had failed him, and that he was lying on his stomach, his face buried in the pillow, in a desolate and hopeless position, like a shipwrecked sailor who has miraculously escaped in a storm and is washed up on the shore, unable to lift his head don’t move your limbs. So he lay there, listening to the seeming sound of rain, and smiled naively, thanking God for mercy to him and all living things.
Then, when he was already out in the yard, he realized with great disappointment that he had imagined all this, that there had been no rain, and the sun continued to burn the earth, and the grapes were dying, dropping their leaves and withering at the root. For a long time he walked mournfully along its lifeless rows, unable to help the roots, and he wanted to cry. Sunflower and corn grew in a nearby field, but these plants did not suffer much from the drought, and for the first time Yegor envied their tenacity and resilience.
«Why are they drawn to the sun, and my grapes are dying? he thought in annoyance. «What did I do wrong?»
And at that moment, the smell of burning was added to his suffering, and flakes of ash were already swirling in the sky, a fiery crackling was heard, and all this was coming very quickly from the forest, sneaking along the lowlands towards the reeds, bypassing the wheat crops just a few meters away. And then there would be such a blaze that even a tall walnut tree could be lost in the fiery glow. This nut grew on the slope of a hill, almost at its foot, next to a thicket of reeds. He was the first to meet the approaching deadly flames, already surrounded by smoke, and like a mad suicide, he stretched out his spreading branches, heavy with green fruit, and waited for the first pain. Yegor went down to intercept them and began to trample the dry grass into the ground, furiously beating the fire with a hoe, exposing the stones and clay. From such a frenzied work, aching calluses quickly formed on the palms, the unbearable heat burned, burned the beard, threw it back, but the man did not spare himself and believed that he would save such a beautiful tree from death. But the front of the fire was too wide, and the flames bypassed the obstacle and quickly crawled up into the vegetable gardens, devouring the dead wood in the plantings and un-mown areas before our eyes. Yegor saw through the enemy’s insidious plan and rushed quickly after, trying to cut off the flame attack from the vineyard on the move. But the forces were not equal, and the man suddenly realized that he would lose this battle alone, and the terrible bitterness of the impending defeat squeezed his soul, and everything was mixed up in a suffocating and already unenlightened smoke. Fortunately, a sharp gust of wind blew at my back, and somewhere with an echo of hope in my clouded consciousness, I heard voices, people were running to help.
