42 Dreams of Arizona Bay

Smoke billows into the sky. Is it a house fire, a debris fire?
Hear a fire truck siren, the blast of a horn as it plows through the intersection. Is it possible the fire truck is just getting to the fire? Or perhaps it’s one of those huge blazes, and this one’s just arriving.
Traffic slows to a crawl. We approach where the smoke comes from. A tall evergreen tree is on fire. One firefighter, already suited up, is standing on the other side of the road, preparing to put the fire out. Another, on the other side, is attired in his fire department shirt. He doesn’t appear to be in a hurry.

The people in front of us have stopped, even though the firetruck is not in the way, and there is no reason to stop. The guy in the passenger’s seat makes that juvenile hand signal known variously as a rocker/devil sort of thing, or to the Bush family, hook ‘em, horns. Something along those lines. In other words, the insane rednecks in the pick up truck think that fire is cool.

And it is. We can feel the heat blasting through the open window. It’s not just the tree that is on fire, but a row of shrubbery that lines the median.
And it becomes apparent that this wasn’t some accidental fire. No car ran into the tree to make it burst into flames. Fire doesn’t start in a convenient line that extends to the bushes.
I’m angry. There’s no reason to set fire to a tree!
The people who live on the other side of the road all stand out in their yards, watching. I wonder if they saw who started the fire.
The people in the pickup truck manage to move above a crawl again, and we pass the scorching heat, and get back to the drive to work.