The Wildfire Season (9 page)

He looks out the window and sees Wade standing among the trampoline kids. Addressing them with a face that shows nothing. And speaking not to all of them.

Miles watches Wade say something to Rachel and set his hand on her shoulder. It makes her wince. Not the firmness of his grip but its intent. Even Miles can see it. The girl’s face squeezed tight with revulsion, the anticipation of an adult violence she has never been close to before.

Miles counts in his head and keeps his eyes on Wade’s hand. It stays on the girl a full seven seconds longer than it should.

Just when he is about to run out the door, Wade releases his grip. Then he does something that
holds Miles to where he is. Wade turns to look directly up at him, meeting his eyes through the window. An unseemly grin stretches over his face. Though he can’t hear it, Miles imagines the chuckle Rachel must be able to hear.

As Wade leaves the circle of kids, he waves at the girl. She watches him go but doesn’t wave back.

‘You shouldn’t have come,’ Miles says.

‘I had to.’

‘I’ve got a life here. Half a life, anyway.’

‘There are some things people have to do.’

‘I know that.’

‘Then you understand why I’m here.’

‘And you’ll understand why I’m telling you to go.’

There’s a silence so complete it sounds to both of them like a statement made by a third party, a confirmation of the impossibility that lies between them. Finally, Alex startles him by laughing.

‘I’m just wondering if you were always such a pathetic coward,’ she says once she can find the breath. ‘I mean, we’ve both been working from the theory that the fire was the thing that got in the way, haven’t we? But maybe it only brought out your full potential for being a useless piece of shit.’

‘Guess I always had it in me.’

‘And so smug about it too.’

‘I’m not proud of anything.’

‘Yes, you are. You even think that running from a pregnant woman makes you special. And doing it five years
before
your old man got around to
it. Pity poor Miles McEwan! The Worst Man in the World!’

He sees that she’s right at the same time he thinks of hitting her. What stops him is Wade. His hand on the girl. A promise of harm that Miles recognizes as a gesture he might have delivered himself—though, he used to believe, never to a woman or a child. If he hits Alex now, the last of the fading differences between him and Wade would be dissolved. And if he could do that to her, it might prove he could do it to a five-year-old, too.

‘You should have kept her away.’

‘Oh no! I wanted her to see the fine, upstanding stock she came from.’

‘And now she can have nightmares about me.’

‘There’s worse things.’ She splutters laughter again. ‘You’ll see.’

‘Who are you doing this for, anyway? Her or you?’

‘I don’t think you get it yet,’ she says, now pulling on her cigarette so hard he can hear the crinkle of retreating paper. ‘I’m doing it for
you
. To leave you with something you’ll always remember.’

‘Give it to me, then.’

‘You don’t get to
keep
it. You just get to
look
.’

Miles watches Alex exhale and sees her triumph through the blue smoke. The spillover of loathing finally permitted to show itself.

‘You mean the girl,’ he says.

‘She’s seen you. You’ve seen her. But after
tomorrow, never again. I’m pretty sure Rachel has the better chance of forgetting. But you? You’ll always know that she’s real.’

Alex puts her cigarette out on the table next to the little TV.

‘Right now you think you’re a ghost,’ she says. ‘But ghosts have it easy. Floating around, feeling sorry for themselves. After today, I promise,
you
are going to be the haunted one.’

She slaps her palm against the front of the TV and the sitcom noises instantly disappear, leaving the room even more uncomfortably muffled than before. Miles’s hand involuntarily rises to his scar. Covers the worst of its fault lines with a joined pair of fingers.

‘Still so scared,’ she says.

‘I’m not scared of you.’

‘Not me. But you’re so terrified of who you are you can’t even look.’

‘You think—’

‘No?’ She takes two steps back from him and opens the closet door. On the inside, there’s a mirror she angles so that Miles is reflected in full. ‘Feast your eyes.’

He tries. But after the first unexpected glimpse of corrugated cheek, he can’t keep his eyes on Alex, let alone himself.

She comes close again but doesn’t lower her voice, so that he feels what she says as much as hears it.

‘Not as many mirrors up here, I suppose. Well,
let me show you a picture.’ Her breath hot on his skin as she looks it over. ‘Trembly chin, crybaby eyes that can’t look at a woman straight. I don’t know which half is uglier. Your burned-up face or the one that looks like it’s already dead.’

‘I don’t have time for this.’

‘What
do
you have time for, Miles? I’m curious. How you’ve spent the last six years is a real puzzle to me.’

It just goes by
, Miles nearly says.
Most of the time, you don’t even feel it
.

Instead, he runs.

To get past her, he pushes Alex aside with more force than he intended, and she stumbles against the edge of the bed, nearly losing her balance. He thinks of apologizing but it’s years too late for words of that kind. There is no choice for him but to leave, to get out into the air. With both his arms swinging in front of him, he lurches into the light of the open doorway.

She rushes to the door to watch him go. A stranger shuffling away with shoulders raised to cover his ears. Nothing he could do would prevent the next word she throws at him from getting through.

Yet what she ends up doing occurs outside herself. As Miles stumbles into the full sun of the courtyard, Alex raises her fist, aims an index finger at the back of his head, and fires.

That evening, Miles walks into the Welcome Inn Lounge through the same door Alex and Rachel had only a day before, and immediately feels that he should have stayed at home.

The entire fire team are there. Taking them in at once, Miles is reminded of how different the four of them look. Their ages (from King’s twentysomething to Mungo’s who-knows?-something), their headwear (Crookedhead James favouring an undersized Philadelphia Flyers ballcap, Jerry a skulland—crossbones bandana), their teeth (King’s full set on the one hand, Jerry’s half-dozen can openers on the other). The shades of their skin, from sunburned pink to nutty brown. Aside from Miles, King is the only white guy on the crew, with Mungo a locally born Kaska, Jerry the mixed product of a long-gone prospector and his long-dead Tlingit wife, and Crookedhead a self-described ‘Indian combo platter,’ a descendant of Yukon Tutchone, Alaskan Haida, and ‘a shot of Irish, way back.’ While they
couldn’t look less alike in all of these respects, it doesn’t prevent them from raising their heads in perfect unison when Miles opens the door. Each of them with the same wide-eyed look, one that makes it clear they had been talking about him up until the second he walked in.

Behind the crew’s table, Bonnie waits for him to assume his position on the stool directly in front of her. Jackson Bader is here too, sitting alone. Although Miles finds it impossible that, even in Ross River, news of Alex and Rachel’s arrival would have reached the Baders, the old man nevertheless glances at Miles with an indifference so perfect as to be taken for hostility. And worst of all, Wade is half in the bag. Playing pool by himself, bent to take a shot but weaving on his feet so badly he can’t focus, let alone aim. At the sight of Miles in the doorway, the big man’s arms launch forward and the cue cuts under the nine ball, sending it flying off the table to roll onto the dance floor.

‘Hey there, Miles,’ Mungo says, leaning back to pull an empty chair up to the fire team’s table. ‘How about joining us for one?’

The invitation stops Miles. He has become so used to proceeding directly to his stool that the mere idea of doing anything else embarrasses him.

‘Who’s turn is it to buy?’ he manages to ask.

‘Jerry’s. But seeing as getting twenty bucks out of him is like asking a stone to donate blood, I’ll get it.’

All of them know that Mungo is speaking of Jerry McCormack’s truck. The two-year-old Ford he saw advertised in the
Yukon News
and has been aching for ever since. It’s this month’s justification for the lame excuses he comes up with to get out of paying for rounds. It’s also why he’s been asking every day about a fire.

‘I left my wallet back at the trailer,’ Jerry says.

‘The sooner you buy your Dodge, the sooner you find your wallet. Is that it?’ Mungo says.

‘It’s a Ford,’ Jerry says.

Miles lets the door swing closed and falls into the chair next to Mungo. It’s a whole new view of the room from down here. He scans the men sitting around him and returns their slight, almost imperceptible nods.

Bonnie unloads a tray of longnecks at their table, along with a Shirley Temple for Crookedhead James. People make fun of Crookedhead for a lot of things, but his refusal to drink since the day his girlfriend took off with their son is too proud a statement to be mocked by anyone. The arrival of cranberry juice or unspiked margarita mix is the one moment in a day he achieves something like nobility.

Miles knows that he’s waiting for them both to come back. Crookedhead does little else but dream of the moment his runaway family walks in and finds him shaved, sipping orange juice instead of Jack Daniel’s, a composed smile on his face. In the meantime, he sends them cheques. Half of what
Crookedhead makes goes straight down to Chilliwack where his ex, his son and ‘some new fuckwad’ have set up house. Everyone but Crookedhead knows they’re never stepping through the Welcome Inn’s door again. But instead of getting used to being alone, he keeps upping the amounts he sends south, an enticement for a second chance to come his way. It’s Crookedhead’s unspoken reason for needing a fire worse than any of them.

‘Terry been in tonight?’ Miles asks.

‘Not so far,’ Crookedhead says. ‘He must be out at the lock-up, polishing his handcuffs.’

‘What do you want him for?’ Mungo says, glancing over his shoulder at Wade, who continues to smash the balls around, muttering. ‘There’s not going to be any trouble tonight.’

Miles knocks down half his beer in a go.

None of the fire crew can summon a harmless, natural-sounding inquiry to their minds, so they remain silent, working to discern the words that Wade is, moment by moment, making more clear. Miles thinks of leaving, but knows there’s nowhere to go. Whatever is about to happen will face him tomorrow if he refuses to face it today. He’s found that malice cannot be escaped in a place like this. Better to sit where you are, finish your beer, and let it come at you. But as you wait, it’s also wise to locate a little malice of your own.

‘Hey, Miles!’ Wade shouts.

‘I have some real good advice for you,’ Mungo offers. ‘Go home.’

‘Why? I don’t have any kids there to look after. Not like you. Or some other people in here.’

Wade throws his pool cue onto the table and sidles over to where the fire team sit, his fists resting on his hips.

‘Guess who I talked to today?’

Miles ignores him and takes another long drink that leaves his bottle empty.

‘That little white girl playing with her little Indian friends. Sweet thing. I swear to God, she grows up half as pretty as her momma and she’ll be a real treat in a few years.’

‘Sit down,’ Miles says, but it comes out as an inaudible squeak. Inside of him, he can hear a door opening. From behind it, a black oil spills and floods into an empty room.

‘That’s another funny thing about today,’ Wade goes on. ‘I walked up to have a word with that little girl and when she looked at me, damn if she didn’t have her daddy’s eyes.’

‘He’s not worth the shit he’s talking,’ Mungo says, but when he grips Miles’s elbow, his hand jumps back, as though the skin he had touched was an open flame.

‘Come to think of it,’ Wade announces, stepping closer, ‘I haven’t yet met a dog who’d walk away from his bitch and pup. So what does that make you?’

Miles brings the empty bottle to his lips again and lets the last suds roll over his tongue. He notices Jackson Bader watching him, sucking a
cigarette down to its filter. The old man wasn’t smoking the other night. A secret habit, enjoyed only when the wife is tucked away. Miles can see that he’s someone used to pursuing whatever pleasures strike his fancy, but that he has to hide them from at least one person in the world, otherwise they wouldn’t be as pleasurable. Still, Miles thinks, it’s taken a toll. The man has see-through skin, grey as a flake of ash.

‘Where’s Margot?’ Miles asks, turning at last to Wade.

‘What’s she got to do with anything?’

‘It’s just that she’s usually able to keep your head out of your ass.’

Wade spits on the floor. He looks down to watch it evaporate, leaving only a faint white stain.

‘The truth has a way of coming out, don’t it, Miles?’

‘You don’t know a thing about me.’

‘I’ve seen liars before. And yellow bastards who put on airs. Goddamn if I don’t know you inside out.’

Miles can feel the electricity of his rage about to blossom, but before it can, he pushes his chair back and strides toward the door. On any other day, such provocations wouldn’t have gone half as far as he’s let Wade’s go. Miles realizes that it’s his summoning of the girl’s face to his mind that calms him enough to walk away.

But Wade won’t let him. With a feline howl,
the giant throws himself on Miles’s back as he crosses the door’s threshold. Miles chokes against the fingers locked around his throat. He needs room. The railings on either side of the steps lock him in, and he bounces between them, the handles at the top tearing gashes through his jeans.

Since he can’t haul himself forward, Miles decides to throw both of them over the railing and into the parking lot below. It’s easy. With a lunge to the right they roll over, the grip released from Miles’s neck.

They fall for what seems a longer time than possible. Both of them blink, once, at the sky. With black spots swooping into his vision, somewhere in Miles a voice notes how bright it is for this late in the day.

Then he hears something crunch and thinks it may be him. A rib, maybe. He hopes it’s not his spine. The spine would be bad. The interruption of Wade’s fists pummelling his face moves Miles’s speculations to how he might flip over and engage his boots in the matter.

Wade is big, and his punches are not without force. But he’s also drunk. This puts his aim off enough that he can’t connect directly with Miles’s nose, the magical knockout target. It also grants Miles the time between blows to roll out from under his attacker and keep going until he makes it into the middle of the road.

When he gets to his feet and sees Wade lumbering toward him, his arms already starting
to swing at the air a full ten feet short of their destination, Miles has another of his visions of what is to happen next. And what he foresees is his beating Wade Fuerst into a weeping bag of pulp. It will be cruel, no matter that Miles took no part in starting it. It will, later on, make even Miles sick.

But for now, Miles allows the aperture for his anger to open wide within him, a dark current running out from his chest, down his arms. Somewhere behind him, Mungo is shouting—
Take it easy, there!
—but Miles can no longer hear anything but the rollicking blood in his ears.

With the first punch to his stomach, Wade doubles over and spews a six-pack onto the road. After a few seconds, the stream is cut off as abruptly as it was released. He coughs. A delicate
ahem
, swiping the back of his hand over his lips.

Then, so gently it might be mistaken as tenderness, Miles places an arm around the back of Wade’s neck. But once he’s held in place, all those who have rushed out of the Welcome Inn Lounge to witness the event can tell that Miles is only keeping Wade up so that, when the big man’s legs go, he’ll still be there to take what Miles intends to give him.

With his free arm, Miles starts a series of pumps to the gut. A half-dozen thuds in an evenly spaced sequence, all to the same location. When he’s done, Miles takes a single step back.

Wade sinks, deboned.

Miles measures a step from where Wade has now lifted himself to his knees. His head wobbles until it sits almost straight atop his neck. Then, in a charge, Miles comes at him. Swings his boot into Wade’s face. Before any other sound, there’s the papery rip of skin where the lace clasps split his cheek.

Miles is aware of how easy it would be to kill this man. A little more time is all it would take. More of the same cracks to the sides of his head. Steel-toed kicks to rupture the tender parts inside. It wouldn’t even make Miles tired.

It is only when Wade covers his bloodied face with his hands, whimpering, that the black door inside Miles is closed again.

He turns around and sees the mixture of horror and admiration on the faces of those who watch him. Only Jackson Bader keeps his eyes on Wade. Not out of sympathy but interest, a vague curiosity. It’s the same expression he might have looking up at the sky and wondering if it will rain.

Miles bends to whisper in the fallen man’s ear. ‘I know it was you.’

‘Yeah?’

‘What they found out back of Mungo’s trailer a few weeks back.’

‘That was practice.’

‘I saw you this morning, too. And if you go near her again, I’ll make you choke on whatever teeth you got left.’

Wade spits into his palm and squints, searching for bone. When he’s satisfied that there is nothing there worth saving, he lifts his head and surveys about him at the circle of onlookers, one by one. Miles might have expected to find some evidence of shame in his eyes, but there’s nothing there, not even pain.

Wade turns his attention to the wet gravel beneath him. His nosebleed has stained the white stones with rust.

‘This’ll be your blood next time, gorgeous,’ he says, low enough that only Miles can hear.

‘I don’t think so.’

‘I do. Because I’m going to kill you.’

Wade looks around him, his neck a raised periscope, his unswollen eye its glassy lens. A quarter of Ross River stands watching him. They wait for him to get up, but come no closer to help.

‘While I’m at it, I think I’ll kill all of you,’ Wade says, then turns to face Miles alone. ‘Your woman and little girl first. So you can see what they’ll look like when I’m done.’

Miles tries to tell himself that this is only a loser’s empty threat. But something about Wade’s tone sends a shiver of real fear through him. The big man digs his fingers into the stones, steadying himself, and when he mutters his words a second time—
fucking kill all you cunts
—Miles hears the hollow fury of a man who doesn’t care anymore. About himself, about winning or losing, about
any goddamn thing at all. No matter how many times Miles might beat him, humiliate him, better him in front of Margot and whatever audience might be on hand, Wade will keep coming back because he has arrived at the point of believing he has nothing left to have taken from him. As Miles has learned of himself as well as others, it isn’t pride that makes a fighter truly dangerous, but the total lack of it.

Margot breaks through the circle. At the sight of Wade lying in the road, her shoulders drop.

‘Jesus H.’

‘I’m sorry,’ Miles says, and she blinks at him for a second before looking straight down on Wade.

‘Let’s go home,’ she tells him, slipping her hands under his arms. Wade resists her help, but her grip is too strong for him to get out of, and he ends up wriggling against her like an overtired child.

‘I’m sorry,’ Miles says again. ‘I didn’t go looking—’

‘I know it.’

‘Do you need somebody to check him over? I could run up to the nurses’ station and see if—’

‘Just leave us alone, Miles.’

All at once Wade goes limp, his chin collapsed on Margot’s shoulder. He whispers something in her ear and throws his arms around her, trying to find the right angle so that his feet might keep him up. With a grunt, Margot launches the two of them on their way. As they go, Wade strokes at her ponytailed hair.