Bronson Lemer

It wasn’t until after I returned from Iraq that I found out what all was tossed into those burn pits at The Dump. Plastics, Styrofoam, paint, chemical waste, unexploded ordnance, used needles. Even amputated limbs. It was all soaked in diesel fuel and lit on fire, and from those fires pollutants like benzene, dioxins, and other carcinogens were released into the air and carried across the base. We breathed in these pollutants walking to the chow hall. We breathed them in while driving around base. We breathed them in while standing guard, while staring at all that ashy sand, while dreaming about our families and friends, while thinking about going home.

* * *

When I was five, my father was burning trash in the center of our farm and fire escaped the burn-barrel and leaped across the yard. The fire burned the tall grasses near our house and the brambles and young trees in one of our sheep pens. Our local fire department was called, and while they put out the fire I waited inside our house and watched my mother cry. I wanted to look out the window, to see what the fire was destroying, but I couldn’t look away from my mother. She was afraid that the fire would take away everything she and my father had worked so hard to create. She had no real way of knowing what would be destroyed.

Bronson Lemer