Releasing Flames by Keith Robinson

Prompt: an unexpected legacy

Last night the water hit the rocks, releasing flame. My birthday, seventy-one broken and brilliant years, deserved fireworks.

The weather people had warned of heavy snow, November winds, possible blizzards. The hell with weather reports, I’d chosen a sweat on the reserve to celebrate. My first. So, I googled “preparing for a sweat.”

An article on the Internet said hydrate. No alcohol, drugs, or caffeine. Not a chance to prove my manhood or gain cultural points. This was to purify. Be open, it said. 

I can do open. Not sure about the heat though.

​The road to the sweat rolled into the foothills, with the Rockies in proud view. I needed to pee after three cups of advice-ignoring coffee. Lodgepole pine and spruce displayed the earth while the prairie sky rebutted the forecast. Clouds of dragons and footprints stretched overhead endlessly.

The GPS died. A turn onto an unmarked gravel road, then another. 6:58 PM. The sweat started at 7. Neither the sky nor the Sarcee-language road signs offered clues. 

Lowering my window, I smelled smoke, heard barking.

7:05. Trailers, horses, dogs. A man named Chad welcomed me cheerily, if roughly. Bald, covered in tatts, and, in another rejection of the weather forecast, he was naked to the waist. His limbs were sinew and wire, leafless branches. The remains of grief smoldered in his eyes.

“I’m Doug. Excited to be here,” I said.

“My brother’s name was Doug.” Was. Uh . . . coincidence or connection? I opened my mouth to ask about his brother, to tell him about Steve, but others arrived, hugging and preparing. Ask him now. 

The words caught in my open mouth: my brother Steve, dead from alcoholic hepatitis, his liver scorched. Ask. Chad greeted the new arrivals. Everyone moved outside the lodge, where a bonfire baked granite and slate. 

“Take off your glasses. You won’t see a thing anyway.” 

I crouched, my bladder now screaming, and entered the lodge’s sudden blackness, seeing only glowing stones carried on a pitchfork. In their radiance, Chad distributed stones, and a woman put herbs and a prayer on the first five.

“We’ll go easy, just twelve rocks.”

The heat cracked the twelve stones into dozens. Unseen shoulders and hips pressed me. They sang and prayed following Chad’s lead, and Chad’s voice reached out of the sweat and into the night circling our sightless black lodge. 

I bowed, my head against the ground to cool. Still, Steve’s legacy burned within me—just as fevered passions had consumed him. He’d have loved this ritual immersion, except for the no-drinking part. 

​The louder Chad sang, the more the lodge laughed, called, and wept with him. And as he sang he poured water which vaporized before hitting the rocks, flooding me with steam, yet ruptured my breath; with song, yet held my grief; with fire that purged my blood—birthing fireworks, illuminating the brothers.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
A retired sommelier, after decades writing and educating about wine, Keith Robinson has turned, first to a speculative memoir, "The Buddha in Our Bellies," and to fiction. His short fiction has been published in Fairfield Scribes, October 2025 issue and Many Voices. He believes that each person's voice will lead the way out of humanity's plight.