by Brian Jeffiers

Created on: May 28, 2008   Last Updated: June 09, 2008

It seemed like a fantastic break. Our little hillside garden, cultivated on a sandy hillside shelf behind my in-laws' house, stood to double in size after the phone company cleared the brush from a large area adjoining our original plot.

Once all the stuff was dead, I set it on fire, thinking the green vegetation up the hillside would never burn. As a volunteer firefighter, I just know this stuff, right?

Maybe not. Under all that green vegetation was a few years' worth of leaves, and they very happily accepted the flames that invited themselves up from the garden. Leigh Ann, my good sport of a wife, kept calling to me. "Are you OK?"

"Yes," I gasped, crawling up the hillside with a shovel, pounding embers.

"Do you want me to call the fire department?" she asked.

Hey, I am the fire department. I had it covered. I found some oxygen to answer forcefully, "NO!"

Moments later, my pager went off. She had called the fire department. Big day for me, huh?

I was proud of the guys for their response time, anyway. I essentially had it out when they got there, but they helped me cool the last of it down and, mercifully, ribbed me not. I thanked them, mumbled something about owing them a steak dinner, and then sneezed a big black snot.

A week or so later, all that had faded into the past and I was ready to garden. I had burned most of the brush away, so we needed only to drag a few remaining branches aside, toss some rocks out of the way, and start tilling. After all, the bad luck had been spent up.

So my brother-in-law, Tim, joined me for a good old-fashioned garden cleaning, thinking we'd make a summer of memories for his daughter and my two girls to share with their grandparents. Stars filled our eyes as we pictured a pumpkin patch for the kids, a mountain of sweet corn, and nonstop tomatoes until the first frost.

"This will be great," Tim said. "These kids will learn so much from watching everything grow."

The work moved quickly. The phone company had cut the stuff into manageable handfuls, which we happily chucked into the woods. Under the brush the ground looked dark and rich. Jack would need no magic beans here.

I knew the poison oak when I saw it. I hadn't touched it when that realization hit, but I had already reached for it and my dusty brainpossibly still clouded with smoke-couldn't send a message down my gangly arm in time to stop my hand, which was only doing what it was told. I grabbed the chunk of wood, complete with a hairy strand of poison oak, and tossed it aside.

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