The Wildfire Season (19 page)

‘It’s Margot,’ she had said over the phone when she called. The first of the twotimes she ever has. ‘We met at the lounge last night.’

Miles remembered. He had played darts with her boyfriend, Wade, a friendly giant who insisted on paying for all their beers and who had a startling memory for jokes involving a talking frog in a Mexican whorehouse. Margot had come along later. Miles felt her staring at him, at his scar.
What was unusual was how her staring seemed an expression of approval.

‘I think I owe your boyfriend a few rounds.’

‘Wade’s just happy to see another white guy in town who isn’t a cop.’

‘I’ll get him next time, then.’

‘Actually, I’m calling to ask if you’d like to come over.’

‘Oh yeah? What are you guys up to?’ Miles asked, knowing what was coming next. Wade would be out of town. There would be no dinner, no party. It would be drinks, just the two of them.

‘Wade’s gone down to Whitehorse for the weekend,’ Margot said, reading her line almost precisely as Miles had written it for her. ‘One of his getaways with the criminals he calls his friends. Thought I could handle a cocktail myself.’

‘Just you and me?’

‘You want to bring a friend?’

‘I don’t really have any.’

‘Boo hoo. Why don’t you stroll down here and see if you can make a new one?’

Affairs were neither Miles’s history nor his interest. The word itself had the whiff of mothballs about it, the festive promise—
a fair!
—failing to hide its musty compromises. What’s more, they had never made much sense to him. While he could see why neglected husbands or wives might look elsewhere, those who came from outside to service those within always struck him as slightly pathetic, unpaid servants. And then there were the
moral rationalizations he found wearying even before having to choose one and stick to it:

It was a dead marriage, so what difference did it make?

Wade was abusive and therefore didn’t deserve loyalty.

They didn’t mean to, but Miles and Margot had fallen in love.

He was certain the third option didn’t apply. As for the first two, he didn’t know near enough about Wade and Margot to invoke them. Not yet, anyway. And even if Wade had some cuckolding coming to him, Miles would never bring himself to see that he had to be the man to deliver it.

Then why did he (after shaving, the extra swipe of deodorant, the twenty push-ups grunted out on his bedroom floor) walk over to Margot and Wade’s trailer, his scar aglow? At the time, he guessed it was for the simplest of the adulterer’s excuses: Wade would never find out. But even as he knocked on Margot’s door, he saw that the real reason lay elsewhere. According to some instinctual alarm clock within him, Miles had determined that it was time to take up the sort of barely sustaining sexual life he figured was his due. Rare and sad dalliances in other men’s homes, holiday one-offs with lonely waitresses, none of them convincing enough to alter even the most uncertain perspectives. He thought that if this was to be the extent of his contact with women hereafter, he might as well start getting used to it.

‘You looked like someone with a past,’ Margot had answered when he asked why she’d chosen him, and Miles knew that she was speaking of his burn.

He lay beside her, hollowed out, aware of little but the rolled-up socks on the carpet, the photos taped to the bureau mirror, the faint smell of sweat and unwashed hair on the sheets—everything that could be identified as Wade’s.

‘Everyone has a past,’ he said. ‘And you haven’t even asked about mine.’

‘I don’t need to. All I need for now is to know you can handle this.’

‘I’m not sure that I can.’

The comfort he had taken in her was already gone. He had expected it would be easier than this. A year was a long time.

‘I’ve never done this before, you know,’ she said. Although her voice was steady, a pair of tears raced each other down opposite cheeks. Miles waited to see which hit the pillow first. As he watched, he wondered exactly what she meant. Never slept with a man behind Wade’s back before? Or just never here, in his bed?

On the walk back to his cabin, Miles wondered if Margot had tried to tell him that she had never fallen in love with someone she didn’t even know before. It took only a moment to dismiss this possibility. What he found much harder to shake was the fact he had found love that way once himself.

In the north, everything that does not occur above the 60th parallel takes place Outside. It’s as though the people who live on the other side of the Territory’s boundaries exist only in virtual terms, as the product of some computer program responsible for generating characters to play international politics, mall shoppers, screen gazers. The ‘millions of people’ one hears about but, up here, can’t quite be taken seriously.

What Miles wonders is if not being Outside automatically makes him Inside. Cranked back in the driver’s seat of the truck a half mile from the Comeback as he is now, or set atop his stool in the Welcome Inn Lounge as he is every other night—do any of these situations qualify him as being part of anything larger than himself? He doubts it. You need to belong to something in order to stand within it, and Miles is a man who has been meticulous in maintaining his freedom from affiliation. No softball league shirt with a nickname
ironed over the shoulders, no hunting buddies. The necessary give-and-take that comes with community is a privilege that he has squandered, and now it’s only fair that he pull himself from the game, from fellowship, from all but the recollection of love.

Miles knocks the side of his head against the closed driver’s window. He wants to think of something else.
Anything
. How he has been transported to the surface of Mars, for example. Outside, the air is aswirl in alien oranges, purples and blacks, as though from paintbrushes being stirred in water. The whole sky drained of blue by the combination of twilight and smoke.

After Terry Gray came to collect the rest of the crew and take them back to Ross River to sleep half a night in their own beds, Miles spent the first hour on the radio, alternating between requests (all denied) for air drops and attempts (all failed) to make contact with Margot or Ruby Ritter. After that, he gave up and acted like someone trying to get some rest. Even faked sleep eludes him.

Outside. No matter where he goes now he will stand with his fingers poked through the fence, looking in. The life he has made for himself in Ross River may be paper-thin, anaesthetized, a method actor’s sustained performance of indifference. But it did boast the single virtue of control. And what had it taken to throw him off? Not much, when you added it up. A mother and child
he can lay only the most technical claims to. Less than seventy-two hours. A walk up Eagle’s Nest Bluff with the kid, a for-old-time’s-sake roll with his ex. Hello and goodbye.

He wishes for sleep. And it will come. It must. But for the time being, he feels too stoned to sleep. This is Alex and Rachel’s fault as well. They’re the ones who had pressed a needle to his neck and jacked him on a drug he hasn’t felt in his blood for enough years to count as forever. A hallucinogen, for the most part.

Fear.

Just past midnight in Miles’s spare room, lying on a fold-out cot with Stump snoring on the pillow next to her, Rachel dreams of falling through ice. Even as her bare feet slide through the cracks and a sensation closer to burning than freezing shoots up her legs, she is aware that it is really nighttime in Ross River, that her mother is in the next room with both of their backpacks zipped tight at the end of her bed. She is the little girl about to drown, and she is not. She dies and watches herself die at once.

Although she is afraid to open her eyes underwater in motel pools and campground lakes, she opens them in her dream and sees only darkness. She cannot read any sign of the hands she knows are thrashing in front of her, cannot make a guess at how deep it is. This is death. Only five years old but she can read a symbol as plain as this
one. It is nothing but black. A simpler thing than emptiness.

Rachel knows she is not supposed to be aware of such grim realities, and this is why she keeps this dream a secret from her mother. It will upset her to know that her daughter is fated to die the same as everyone. Far worse than disappearing is the idea of leaving her mother even more alone than she was. It makes her fight against the water one last time.

The only light comes from the grey circle in the ice, an impossible body-length away now. All her efforts have managed to do is hold her in place against the current. When she finally surrenders, she watches her mother’s arm come down through the hole. Her skin so green it appears hairy with fungus.

When the girl opens her eyes again she takes a gulp of Stump’s exhaled breath. A mouthful of liver kibble and old socks.

‘Momma,’ she says, and hears the word followed by a cascade of sobs. She runs from the room with the dog following her and jumps into bed next to Alex.

‘Did you have a bad dream, baby?’ she asks, folding the girl’s body into hers.

‘You were
alone
, Momma.’

‘I’ve got you with me now, though, don’t I?’

‘Yes.’

‘And I’m not ever going to let you go. Right?’

The girl thinks of revealing to her mother the
terrible news of her dream, but can’t bring herself to do it. The dark water is something she must keep to herself. Sharing it would be an obscenity.

‘Rachel? Honey?’

The girl snuzzles tighter and, for her mother’s sake, pretends to sleep.

After Terry Gray drops the men in front of the fire office, they throw their gear inside and stand in a circle around Jerry McCormack’s new Ford, none of them ready to go home just yet.

‘I’ve got some beer,’ Jerry says.

Everyone turns to Mungo. Seeing as Miles isn’t around, this would leave him responsible for handling the big decisions such as these.

‘Just one,’ Mungo says. ‘But only because I want history to show that Jerry McCormack paid for at least a single round of drinks this year.’

They slouch over to Jerry’s trailer in the weeds behind what used to be the radio station. He apologizes for the mess as they pile in, though the closed curtains and forty-watt bulbs he switches on hide most of what they sense must be lurking in the carpet and on the kitchen countertops. As they find places to sit, the plywood floor bends under the unaccustomed weight of visitors.

After Jerry brings in their drinks (three beer bottles clamped between the fingers of one hand, a glass of orange juice for Crookedhead in the other), they spend a long minute thoughtfully glugging and belching and sighing. In each of their
heads, a number of opening remarks are considered and rejected.

‘I’ve been meaning to get around to this all day,’ Mungo says after a couple of minutes, rises and walks down the hall.

‘That fire,’ Jerry says when Mungo has shut the bathroom door behind him.

‘What about it?’ King says.

‘A funny one, that’s all.’

‘Seemed normal to me.’

‘They all
look
about the same. Once they’re going.’

‘C’mon, Jerry,’ Crookedhead says.

‘It’s after hours.’

‘Let’s just drink our drinks.’

‘We
are
drinking. And talking. I can do both at the same time on good days.’

They take sips from their bottles. Little kisses that have less to do with drinking than waiting to see who will speak next.

‘I shouldn’t even be saying this,’ King says finally, and goes no further.

‘Maybe not,’ Jerry says. ‘But you’re not saying
anything
right now.’

‘Remember when I was going to call you guys to take the pumper out for a drill a couple days ago?’

‘I could think of better ways to spend an afternoon.’

‘We couldn’t go because it was out.’

‘So?’

‘He said he’d been using it on his own. Taken it out for a drive. And when I asked about it, he just got really pissed. Like, no more questions.’

‘He’s a strange guy sometimes.’

‘But the timing was weird, you know? Given the way things have turned out.’

‘A bit weird,’ Jerry says, nodding.

Mungo walks back into the living room, the toilet gurgling behind him down the hall. He looks directly at Crookedhead.

‘What are we talking about?’

‘King was saying how the chief took the pumper out for a drive all on his own a couple days back.’

‘That so, King?’

‘It was a conversation.’

‘There’s things a fire crew doesn’t converse about.’

‘I didn’t know.’

‘I’ll forgive you for that. But I’ve got a feeling these two others here are setting a bad example.’

‘You’ve got to admit,’ Jerry starts, ‘it’s sort of weird that—’

‘I don’t have to admit shit. I just want to finish my beer and go to sleep.’

‘It’s not like we would ever
tell
anybody, even if we
knew
something, which we don’t.’

‘Well, so long as we’re being so open here in our little private circle, what about you, Jerry?’

‘Me?’

‘Funny how you’re blowing air up everybody’s ass except your own.’

‘Why would—?’

‘I’ll tell you why. Your goddamn Dodge.’

‘It’s a Ford.’

‘You don’t shut up about this truck that you’re never going to afford if we don’t get some major overtime, and then, just yesterday, there it is. That’s got to be up there on the weird list.’

‘I got a loan.’

‘And
who
would lend
you
money?’

‘We shouldn’t be messing with this,’ Crookedhead moans.

Jerry turns on him. ‘Why do you say that?’

‘Because we put the fires out, and that’s
all
.’

‘What’s the problem? What we’re saying is just between us, anyhow.’

‘And that’s four too fucking many,’ Mungo says.

‘Fine. But about the truck. I didn’t know about—’

Mungo takes a step toward Jerry McCormack’s chair, leans forward and grabs him by the neck, his recliner slamming against the wall behind him.

‘I’m serious,’ Mungo spits. ‘I’m really
very
goddamn serious about this.’

Crookedhead starts to rise. A reluctant shifting that he hopes doesn’t need to go further.

‘Hey, hey—’

‘So this is the
end
. Isn’t it, Jerry?’

Mungo releases him. It allows Jerry McCormack to rub the blazing ring around his neck and nod his assent.

‘Thanks for the beer,’ Mungo says, gulping back what’s left in his bottle. For a second, Crookedhead and King stay where they are. But when Mungo makes a move, they read his intention for them to follow in the broad readiness of his back.

When they’re out, Mungo looks back at Jerry, who has come to stand at the door. He considers saying something forgiving, a self-deprecating word to clear away the foolish minutes they had just spent, but decides against it. Their suspicions of each other had been there from the moment they stepped out of the truck at the site. Now, they have been released to the air, and nothing he might say will contain them.

Their sleep will be deep. Tomorrow promises twice the work of today. Mungo only hopes that the fire will occupy all of their thoughts until it is out. By then, what they spoke of in Jerry’s trailer will be one more secret among the thousand others men like them have always carried.

It begins as soon as he closes his eyes.

At first, Miles thinks he’s fallen into one of Stump’s bad dreams. A dog’s universal nightmare of being chased. Running uphill, his legs burning. The ridge a hundred yards ahead of him. He doesn’t turn back to see what pursues him. It doesn’t stop him from knowing. A bear. A great silver-tip gaining ground against the slope.

Don’t look back.

A voice just off to his side, not his own. He remembers it, though. Remembers saying the same thing himself once.

Don’t look!

There’s less concern in the voice than amusement, a schoolyard taunt. And Miles doesn’t want to look. Not at the bear. Even less at whoever runs next to him.

But he does.

He wakes so hard his forehead toots the horn when it slams against the wheel.

For a time, Miles sits staring ahead into the dark. When he glances down at the dashboard clock it reads 3:27 AM. It was 3:24 when he last looked. He was out for only three minutes but it was enough to take him straight to the climax of a nightmare. With it waiting there for him, there’s no way he’s going to try at sleep again.

He spills out of the truck and takes a few strides down the road. Around him, the woods are stilled by an insulating mist. He listens for whatever might have followed him out of the dream, but there is only a boneyard quiet.

Don’t look.

‘Tim,’ Miles says, and turns to look back at the truck.

He half expects to see the kid there, grinning behind the windshield. And for a second he does. Hands so white they look like butler’s gloves gripped to the wheel. The nose burned clean off his head.

‘Stop,’ Miles says aloud, and at the sound of his own voice, realizes that he’s talking to it now. Begging the kid not to step out of the truck and come any closer.

‘Stop it!’
he says again. This time a command to himself.

A blink clears the kid away and replaces him with a pale mirroring of the moon against the glass.

Miles keeps walking. Although he can smell the caramelized resin in the air, what flames the fire sends up at the moment are obscured by the drooping spruce boughs. He doesn’t need to see it. Miles can tell the fire is calm for the time being. He hopes that the three hours of genuine darkness afforded on this late-July night cools it down enough to take a nap.

Unfamiliar stars peek through the smoke. He looks up to count them and stops walking without meaning to. Whatever wind had been knocking the spindly lodgepoles together withdraws all at once, leaving everything in a lull of silence. Miles waits for the inevitable scrabbling of a hare or ground squirrel in the brush to start things up again, but nothing moves. He tries to take a breath but has forgotten how.

The screech drops him to his knees.

He covers his ears but it pierces through. Traveling down his arms, his back, until his entire body sings like a wineglass stroked around its rim. he hears it as a dying bruin caught in a snare. A
girl encircled by fire. Her mother forced to watch her burn.

Miles looks to see where it comes from but it shifts away each time he thinks he’s determined its source. A quarter-mile off, then from inside the truck, then streaking through the air directly over him. Constantly moving but unchanged in tone. One sustained scream shattering through the trees.