It started like many other summer days: dry, hazy and airless. The temperature climbed as the day progressed and we turned on the window air conditioner in the living room. I was pregnant that summer at the age of 38 and I didn't like the heat a bit. It made my legs swell and I felt really out of sorts . . . partially because I wanted to get lots of things done and it was too darn hot.

     "Mrs. Doran?" it was Anita, a friend of my two preteens on the phone, "Can I come over today? My mom and dad are going to be gone all day and I don't want to stay here because Cory has invited some of his friends over and I don't like them and I usually lock myself if my room when they're here and it's too hot to do that and . . ." Cory was Anita's older brother and some of his friends were really rowdy. I could easily understand why Anita didn't want to stay.

     "Sure, honey," I cut off her continuing explanation, "do I need to come get you?"

     "Yes, please," she sounded truly relieved, "I'll be ready in a couple of minutes. You can get me anytime." So we piled in the car, went to get Anita and brought her home.

     Sometime during the early afternoon, the Department of Agriculture, with approval from the Department of Environmental quality and the State Fire Marshal, opened field burning, seemingly throughout the entire North Willamette Valley. The wind died down and smoke hung like a pall in the air, completely obliterating the sky and turning the sun into an eerie white disk that seemed to pulsate with the drifting haze. The smoke actually blunted some of the intense heat, but the oppressive quality of the air was even worse, heightening my own discontent. Although we needed the air conditioner, I even found its noise increasingly irritating. I felt like I would jump right out of my skin if I didn't find something to do.

     I looked around to see what needed cleaning or taking care of. In the back shed I found three giant dog-food bags of paper and junk-mail trash. We normally burned such things regularly, but summertime was a no-burn season and we simply collected it until fall when we could get a burn pile going again. I looked outside at the smoke-filled air. Who would ever know if I burned that stuff today?

     "Come on, girls, let's get rid of this stuff," I called to them. Things are always a lot more cheerful when one is involved in positive action and accomplishing something useful. "Each of you can carry a bag out to the south corner of the goat pen and I'll string a hose out there so we don't catch anything on fire."

     "But Mom," ten-year-old Karen said, aghast, "it's illegal to burn today!"

     "Oh, for heaven's sake, Karen," Sarah, her twelve-year-old sister, said in her most sarcastic tone, "as if anyone is going to see it out there today!"

     Anita offered no opinion but dutifully took a bag and headed out to the barnyard. In truth, I felt uncomfortable about doing something illegal. I justified it by convincing myself that I would be very careful and not catch anything else on fire. From the looks of things, I myself would not be creating an environmental hazard since air-quality seemed already hopelessly beyond consideration and besides, everyone else did it. The last excuse made me feel even less comfortable. I had already begun my covert activity, though, and I was determined to finish it no matter what.

     I got out the hose and wet down the barnyard area in a wide circle around our little burn pile just to make sure nothing could possibly happen. I lit the fire which whooshed up instantly, as paper does, hot and fast. With my hose, I sprayed every little cinder that escaped. The fact that it was illegal did not make me any less meticulous in the way I burned.

     "Hey," Karen's face brightened a bit, "if we could find some hot dogs and marshmallows we could just tell people we were having a weenie roast . . ."

     A loud explosion abruptly interrupted her sentence. From the middle of the fire, a shave cream can shot about fifteen feet into the air like a rocket. Anita screamed and I looked around to see if she was hit. She was simply standing there with her hands to her face screaming. She looked fine.

     "Quick, girls!" I called, "Help me get these fires out!" Sarah and Karen, however, didn't need the prompt. They were already running wildly about the field. When the can went up, it exploded the entire pile and little bits of burning paper were descending all around us, igniting the summer-dry grass wherever they landed. The girls were madly stomping out small fires before they had a chance to spread and sprinting to new one. I plied my hose where I could reach the flames with water and after many tense minutes, everything was back under control. Obviously, someone had inadvertently dumped the bathroom trash into a bag without sorting through it first and I hadn't thought to do so when we emptied them to burn. I looked back around at Anita who had finally quit wailing. She was pale and shaking and her hands were still at her face.

     "Are you OK?" I asked. She nodded an affirmative but seemed rooted to the ground as if unable to move.

     "See?" Karen looked up at me accusingly. She didn't say anything else; she didn't have to. She and Sarah slumped exhausted on the ground, their hot red faces and other exposed flesh covered with dirty, sweaty streaks. The fire was over half done so it would have been an exercise in futility to try to put it out. I watered down the surrounding ground again.

     I was beginning to relax. "Well, it could have been worse," I said to the girls, turning to smile apologetically. Anita screamed again, a continuous, ear-piercing sound. She took an involuntary step backwards, her eyes big and round and her mouth an exaggerated "O." Jerking my head around, I saw an object I couldn't recognize zipping straight toward me and making a strange whizzing noise. It seemed to have come from the fire; it was a fire, shooting it's own little flames in small arcs. Anita's incessant, unnerving screeching added to my instant panic as I leaped backwards to avoid being struck full in the face. Not looking behind me proved to be disastrous, however, as I stumbled into a roll of wire fencing and my momentum catapulted me over the top of it with my feet still entangled. I landed unceremoniously on my bottom with a loud "Ooooof!" Pregnant bladders to not take kindly to such assaults and mine promptly expressed its disapproval in a most unacceptable manner.

     I could think of no graceful or inconspicuous way to remove myself from my predicament. I was sitting in the corner of a goat pen, soggy, in disgrace, my feet entangled in a roll of fencing. I was responsible for an illegal burn pile that was finally dwindling down and, adding insult to injury, the hose I dropped uncoiled itself half a turn, caught on a clump of grass and drenched me with a continuous stream of water. Anita's keening was getting on my nerves, too.

     "The baby, the baby," she kept repeating in a shrill wail and, "Oh! Oh! Oh!" It took a few minutes before I realized that all of her caterwauling was because she was concerned about my unborn child. The baby seemed to be just fine, stomping its tiny feet into my already insulted bladder, using it as a trampoline just to make sure nothing was left. I envisioned it gleefully doing backward flips and demanding, "Again, again!" It also occurred to me that the thing which had caused my fall was a "dud" 4th of July ground spinner that would not perform on the fourth and had been thrown in the trash. All things considered, it had made far more of itself on this day than it ever would have on the 4th.

     Before I could figure out how to extricate myself, I heard a foreboding humming. I recognized that sound. I peered into the sky, shading my eyes from the ominous white glow of the sun, and could vaguely see a small airplane flying at a low altitude. Sure enough, it broke through the smoky haze and flew straight toward me like a homing pigeon, its markings unmistakable: a DEQ spotter plane inspecting the field-burning activities and looking for illegal fires. It banked left to get a better view, slowly droning in a wide circle overhead. I had been wrong. It wasn't a homing pigeon after all; it was definitely a buzzard. I momentarily envisioned what I looked like from an aerial perspective as the water cascaded down and pooled in a widening sodden patch around my bottom. I knew I was a dead duck and there seemed little doubt that I looked like one, too.

     I crawled, dripping, out of the wire, had the girls turn the water off, rolled up my hose, stomped the few remaining embers and went in the house. I had decided, a little belatedly, that even if illegal fires do not burn things up or down, they may not be harmless. For those detractors who always demand signs from God, I now had proof that He wants us to obey the laws. It was humbling knowledge. I showered, changed clothes and started dinner, all the while avoiding Karen's eyes that kept flashing "Guilty, guilty, guilty" at me like a silent neon sign.

     Still, I was half-holding my breath, waiting and listening for a knock on the front door. When it finally seemed that no one was going to come arrest me after all, I opened the back door and poked my head out. "Anita, honey," I hollered, "would you please stop shrieking?"