Some examples include:
1. Jeannette's earliest memory concerns the time she set herself
on fire cooking hotdogs.
2. Jeannette tells the reader that she doesn't fear fire. Instead,
she becomes fascinated with it. Her Dad shows her how to pass her hand
through a candle flame without getting burned. She does it over and over
and then begins running to watch while the neighbors burn their trash.
Dad tells the astonished neighbor who thinks Jeannette would want to run
from fire after what happened to her, Why the hell would she? She already
fought fire once and won.
3. Once she even takes her favorite toy, plastic Tinkerbelle
figurine, and holds its face to a flame.
4. While they are gone, Jeannette finds a box of matches. She
spends hours lighting them and then putting them out in the toilet. A
few days later, she awakes to the smell and heat of fire. She tries to
wake Lori and Brian, but can't find her voice. Just then, Dad bursts in,
calling their names, and wraps Jeannette in a blanket while leading Lori
and Brian out of the motel. He takes them to the bar across the street
and goes back to help fight the fire. The waitress gets Lori and Brian
Cokes and even brings Jeannette a Shirley Temple when she asks for one.
Jeannette stands there and watches the fire department put out the fire.
She begins to wonder if fire is out to get her. She had been burned cooking
hotdogs, had played with fire several times, and now nearly died in a
motel fire. She knows she lives in a world that could erupt in fire at
any moment. It is the sort of knowledge that will keep her on her toes.
5. One day, they mix together all different kinds of chemicals,
which Brian calls nuclear fuel, and they throw in a match.
They are knocked to their feet and the walls of the shack where they have
mixed their brew catch on fire. Jeannette yells that they have to get
out, but Brian keeps trying to put the fire out. Ironically, Dad happens
to be walking home from work at the time and gets them both out. He isn't
angry at all; just amazed at the coincidence of him being so close when
his children needed him. He points to the top of the fire where the flames
dissolve into an invisible shimmery heat that makes the desert waver like
a mirage. He calls it the zone known in physics as the boundary between
turbulence and order. Dad says, It's a place where no rules apply, or
at least they haven't figured em out yet. You-all got a little too close
to it today.
6. When they get into the house, Dad says, Let's really light
up this bastard, and shoves his lighter into the Christmas tree branches.
The tree is so dry that it goes up in flames, and the only way they're
able to put out the fire is to knock down the tree and hit it with blankets
and water.
7. Once all the wood they can gather is too hopelessly wet to
burn well, they begin adding kerosene to build up the fire.
Dad had warned them in the past that using it can cause an explosion. Once
again, they become victims of fire that seems to follow them along with
their bad luck. Lori adds kerosene to the fire one day, and it blows up
in her face. She is the only one injured, but her legs blister and seep
all that winter, making the laying of blankets on her legs painful. Unfortunately,
if she doesn't, she'll freeze from the cold.
8. A few months after Erma dies, Uncle Stanley falls asleep with
a cigarette in his hand and Erma and Ted's house burns down.
9. During the first night at Lori's rooms, Jeannette is amazed
at how the whole sky seems alight as if from a fire. Lori explains it's
the effect of pollution, and it keeps you from seeing the stars.
10. Mom and Dad move to a six-story flophouse in New York where
Dad sets the place on fire by falling asleep with a burning cigarette
in his hand.
11. The scar from the fire when she was three means that she is stronger than whatever it was that had tried to hurt her.
Clapsaddle, Diane. "TheBestNotes on A Long Way Gone".
TheBestNotes.com.
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