Red Lightning (8 page)

“We can smell a wildfire in the mountains from here?”

“Yes. I think that's it.”

“But it's so far away.”

“Well, it's a pretty big fire. That's where I used to live. Those mountains. The haze is going to make the sunset so pretty, so red. All the particles in the air. What a mess. Colorado, I mean. Every year now, it burns.”

She turns to face the blue outline of mountains. “But it won't get to us.”

I look at her, touch her shoulder. “Oh, no, that's impossible. It's very far away. But the smoke travels on windy days. See how the wind is coming straight from the west?”

“I want to do my chores.” She walks across the driveway to a cement water tank, turns it on, bends over to watch the water burble through the hose and into the cement rectangle. That reminds me of Ed's fruit trees, and I turn to see him moving the water on them again and then turning to watch the mountains himself.

Once the water is going, Amber turns around and stares at me, as if I'm supposed to walk over there too. So I do. When I come up from behind her, she points to the cows that are wandering slowly toward us.
Their knees look like huge knots in a tree. “This is Franny and Zooey,” she says, nodding to the cows. “These cows both had calves this spring. But it's fall now, and we need to wean and sell them. The other ones we're keeping, though. For milk.”

I stare at the cow that comes forward to get a scratch from Amber. The other cow dips her nose into the tank, raises it, nuzzles the first with a nose still trickling water, and then head-butts the first cow out of the way for her own scratch. As I watch Amber laugh and lean forward so that she can reach the other, I start humming.

Humming because I am now out of words, of strength, worn down from meeting my daughter, and I'm just now seeing that perhaps I shouldn't have come at all—it's too hard once a heart has been met by another. I also wonder at Amber's willingness to speak to me at all, wonder if it comes from shock—it's too hard to be gruff and angry when you're not prepared. I stop humming, clear my throat. Still, I must try. I hug my arms to my chest. “Was that hard, in earlier years? Selling the calves?”

She eyes the mountains. “Wow, look at the sky. It's turning red. That's gonna be the prettiest sunset ever.” She looks at me, surprised, as if I'm the one responsible for it, and then adds, “Well, weaning calves, it's part of life.”

“True enough. Every living thing in this world gets weaned eventually. Right?”

She considers that. “Maybe not humans.”

“You don't think so?”

“Naw. Even my mom needs to know her mom is okay.” She turns to consider me and then looks back at the setting sun, a bright red globe hanging over the mountains and sending sprawling oranges and reds spiking in all directions and lighting up the few clouds that are above us in a deeporange glow. “Maybe some humans don't need their mamas. But most do.”

PART II

Water

Chapter Six

People regularly ask forgiveness for the sins they commit, but they
often don't ask forgiveness for the things they neglected to do. But those are sins too. Perhaps they are the greatest sins of all.

*

Redemption is found in the most unusual of activities, and so when
Amber says her homework is something she can handle
easily, on my own
(which means
I need a moment to myself
), I go to the kitchen to make a salad.

Redemption is found in love, and if you want to know if you're a loving person, ask the person you're with if they feel loved.

Redemption is found in remembrance. I remember Alejandra. She was far off in the distance when I first saw her, a broad brush-stoke of
humanchild
in the middle of
hugedesert
. (Like Amber, a backpack on her shoulders. Unlike Amber, she was standing alone when I first saw her, alone in a verystill verydangerous world.) When I parked the pickup and walked toward her, I could see the basic situation: a group
of humans huddled under the branches of a mesquite tree. They'd snapped off creosote branches and were huddled below them, to make a canopy, to conceal, to console, and I was thinking of how similar it was to a rattlesnake, curling around sage in order to stay cool.

All the faces turned to me, and there was a small burst of energy: to determine if I was friend or foe, although they hardly had the energy to care. This girl whistled and, when I got closer, called out to me, “
Hola, güerita bonita
.” As if she had already determined that I was good, beautiful, worth loving.

I stood there, staring at her. It took me a moment to understand that they had arrived sooner than I'd been told, that their milk jugs of water were empty, that they had been waiting and waiting for me. As I got closer, I could smell them, the blood and stink and perhaps even burnt flesh. I could see their blistered lips, ripped shoes, deadeyes. I could see the coming of hyperthermia, dehydration. Their story, which came in fragments, was similar to every other story I'd heard, but unique in the particulars of their souls. All from Chiapas, all going to Denver to meet cousins. To work on tennis courts. They'd been told that the walk was only a day or two and that two gallons of water each would suffice. A
coyote
lie. They'd been told I'd be there two days ago.

The kid, Alejandra, was squatting over the woman who I later learned was her mother, Lupe. Alejandra's black hair was caught in knots and greasy enough to hold the dirt. Blisters all over her mouth, a bloody scrape that ran alongside her face. She kept saying, “
Mamá, la levantona está aquí! Es una gringa! Una güerita bien bonita!
” She kept licking her lips so that she could smile, completely oblivious to how horrible and beautiful she looked. She kept smiling at me as if I were something special, and the others looked at her as if
she
were special. Clearly, she'd been given the most water, the last of the food.

I got water and food and slowly helped them to the truck, one by
one, even the men leaning on me, all of us stumbling around, tripping over the bush and the yucca and the prickling floor of the desert, past the empty milk jugs, abandoned clothing, past the sign proclaiming
No más cruces en la frontera
. We walked as if we were drunk. Piss and blood and dirt and grime. Gagging with the smell of animal, with heat. Finally, the men were able to settle in the back of the horsetrailer—
gracias gracias
, they kept murmuring—their throats too swollen to make it sound like anything but a blur. Their toes swollen and rotten when they pulled off their shoes.

I put Lupe and Alejandra up in the cab with me, though it was not protocol and would have sent Slade into a frenzy. But I didn't care. I was too carefree to care. I wanted them to have air conditioning and comfort. If any vehicle came into sight, they were to crawl under a blanket. Risky, but I felt like a god. Better than a god, because I was trying to temper their suffering.

They were so grateful for water. They had tears for the crackers, moans at the bananas. Ointments and tortillas and pillows. And that girl, her fingers always roaming over her mother, and after the initial recovery of drowsy sleep, always chattering, asking me questions, translating for her mom in solid English interspersed with awkward sentences.

That was five years ago. Then something else happened, and that's the last moment I remember of my old self, the one that was seamless, the one who was just me, just Tess, united. That's when I began to hear a voice speaking to me. A voice that spoke to me of forgiveness and redemption. It wasn't my voice, exactly. It wasn't anyone else's voice, either. It was the broken voice of the universe, and I was finally sunk enough to tune in and listen.

*

From the kitchen window, I see that the sun has sunk to its low
-down setting position, and the sky lights up in one last fling of red-orange glow. I shake my head to let the memory go, then I slam my palm on the counter to make my brain listen. I cradle my stinging palm in my other hand and then turn the radio dial again until I get the crackly NPR station, which has finally decided to air the news. Wildfire, as per usual:
Type I fire. White Wolf Fire. Trailers, communication units, hotshot crews, heli-tankers. Wild-urban land interface. The fire is burning a little bit of everything, but not all of anything. The burn line goes up and down canyons, through houses and around houses
. Always reported with such surprise, though Colorado has been burning for years now. I've been through the remains of enough of them to cease being surprised. The burned skeletons of old trees. The emerald green grasses of spring. The baby aspen trees poking up through charred soil. The waves and waves of blackened trees in the far distance.

Ed crosses my line of sight. He's moving from one shed to another with large white buckets in his hands. Feeding the cows or chickens or donkeys, I suppose. A bit later, he moves again, carrying white boxes into an outbuilding, and although I think they are bee boxes, he's not even wearing one of those goofy bee suits.

We can't figure out where the fire line is, because it's everywhere. Perimeter crews. One homeowner missing
.

I push jars around in the cupboard. Wheat germ and jars of homemade rosehip tea and homemade pickles. Surely, some alcohol around here somewhere! Finally, behind the bag of coffee in a cupboard, I find a bottle of Seagram's 7, full up to the neck. What a pretty color, both in the bottle and as it faucets down into a coffeecup. What a pretty smell. What a pretty taste.

All residents encouraged to evacuate. It's the most difficult conditions here. Leave your homes. Winds are changing direction
.

Ed appears again, water buckets now hanging from his arms.
Ringo follows in a roundabout way, guided into figure eights and in crisscross patterns by his sniffing nose—imagine people crossing the desert like that. They'd die before they got a half mile. He pounces on some imaginary mouse, runs in happy circles.

Immigrants not located. We now believe that an immigrant started the fire, as a signal fire
. (Huh. Stupid, stupid. I wonder whose run that was.)

Ed has stopped midway and is glancing toward me, at the window, and then toward the mountains, as if he, too, is considering the source of the smoke. He shakes his head to himself.

“Is that the fire we smell?” Amber is suddenly behind me, leaning against the wall.

“Yes, I think so.” I put my coffee cup on the counter, though I can see she's noticed it. I turn my attention back to cutting the gnarled and curved carrots.

“It sounds bad.” Amber walks into the kitchen and leans against the fridge. “Remember that about a month ago, there were four different fires going? I'm glad we don't live in the mountains after all. I used to want to live there. But not now.”

“Yes. I heard about those. It's been a bad summer. Winter is coming, though, and that might make it better.”

“The fire won't get here. You said it wouldn't.”

“No, it won't get here.” I move the carrot chunks to the side of the cutting board with my knife and then pick up a tomato. “Hey, Amber? Where's White Wolf Canyon? I never heard of that one. Could you do a search for me? Which part of Colorado is burning? I'm just curious.”

                    
Tess's heart is pounding or quitting

                    
or she doesn't know what,

                    
and she grabs on to the kitchen counter, and the room

                    
spins, and her heart spins, and the universe spins.

                    
She needs Amber out of the room.

She disappears and after a pause yells, “Near Alamosa. That's in the southern part of the state, they say. It looks pretty, on the images. The mountains, I mean. They're big. They go on forever.”

“Did they say when it started?” I keep my voice steady.

Pause. “Yesterday.”

“That many acres in one day? That's impossible.”

Amber comes into the kitchen. “The wind, they say. The wind gusts are super bad. I'm glad you're not in the mountains, that you came to visit us now.” Those almond-shaped deep brown eyes have the smallest lines of green near the pupil. Just like mine. But the green is like flecks of fishscale, flecks of mica, flecks of lifegreen. “That would be scary, wouldn't it? To be there now? You okay?” Amber whispers it, with real concern.

“Oh, maybe. It's because your eyes are so pretty,” I whisper, calm, fading out. “They're so beautiful, Amber.
You
are so beautiful.”

“Thank you.” Shrug. But she's smiling. It meant something. She feels seen. Then she adds, “Tess? Are you really all right?”

I lean against the counter to brace myself. “Amber, can I say one thing?” Still my voice is quiet, a calmness enforced by the universe, a solidness pushed into me by some outside force. I clear my throat. “When you walk behind a horse, you're supposed to walk
right
behind the horse. As you know. Because if you step back a bit, and that horse kicks, it has more power, more momentum, and he's gonna get you good. You need to get
way
behind the horse, or stay up close.”