Smoke (22 page)

I want to laugh. Chris Bourne has a juvenile record that’s going to have to get expunged when he turns eighteen if he ever wants to get a decent job. Like father, like son.

“Elizabeth Martin was the one that questioned him,” Kate says. “Honestly, after the way she treated Mindy, I could just spit I’m that mad.”

Grace coughs in the stall next to me. “You all set, dear?”

“I’m having trouble with the zipper.”

“Come on out,” Caroline says. “I’ll help you.”

I step out, a bit self-conscious about the way the dress is gaping open at the back like a hospital gown. Caroline leads me over to the pedestal in front of the mirrors. Grace walks out to see. Her dress fits her perfectly.

Caroline stands behind me, tugging gently at the fabric to dislodge it from the zipper. It comes free, and she starts to pull it up.

“You look just the same as on your wedding day, dear,” Grace says.

I look at myself. I feel like I can see each of the last ten years etched into my face, layered over the girl I still was then.

“That’s sweet of you to say.”

“It’s true.”

Kate and Bit walk out of their dressing rooms. I make eye contact with Kate in the mirror. We’re wearing the same dress—or ones so similar it’s hard to tell the difference. She looks momentarily confused, but then her face falls back into its usual repose of hard certainty.

Caroline tugs on the zipper as the fabric tightens around my rib cage.

“I’m having a bit of trouble here, Elizabeth,” Caroline says. “I’m not sure what happened. It fit so beautifully before.”

I hear the slight censure in her voice. Have I gained weight recently? I couldn’t tell you. Eating has felt mechanical for weeks. But the dress is certainly tighter than it was the last time. It’s hurting my breasts as she works the zipper up.

“Are you . . .” Caroline lowers her voice. “Having your period right now?”

Her words fly around my brain as ten puzzle pieces snap together. How tired I’ve been. Throwing up yesterday. That I can’t remember the last time I had my period. How emotional I’ve been feeling . . . Oh my God.

Oh my God.

My hand goes to my stomach as I catch the delight on Grace’s face in the mirror.

“Don’t tell Ben,” I say without thinking.

DAY FOUR

From: Nelson County Emergency Services

Date: Friday, Sept. 5, at 7:33 A.M.

To: Undisclosed recipients

Re: Cooper Basin Fire Advisory

There has been no improvement in the weather outlook for the Cooper Basin fire, which continues to spread. It is currently only 10 percent contained, and has now consumed more than 4,000 acres of brush and timber. It is only 1,000 yards away from the north ridge of Nelson Peak, where fire personnel have been working for the past two days to build a substantial firebreak to keep the flames from spreading down the south side of the Peak and into town.

Total fire personnel on-site now exceeds 750. Air bombardments continue on an hourly basis. The Witches’ Pool of the Nelson River is being used as the main fill site for water tanks, and a road detour has been set up to keep traffic from interfering with operations. A second water-fill site is being established at Nelson Lake. The Nelson Lake road will be closed until further notice.

The evacuation advisory has been converted to an evacuation order. All residents of the Cooper Basin and West Nelson have been ordered to evacuate their homes. Fire personnel are continuing to install hoses and other protective measures around housing structures. It is important that this process not be interfered with. State troopers will be in place to keep people out of the area.

There will be a town meeting tonight at Nelson Elementary at 8:00 p.m., where the fire incident commander will give an update on the forecast for the next 48 hours. All residents, especially those living in the evacuation area, are encouraged to attend.

A map of the evacuation area is attached to this message.

More information is available at www.nelsoncountyemergencyservices.com.

Because of the current unstable nature of the fire, advisories will be issued hourly until the situation has improved.

CHAPTER 24

Flash in the Pan

Elizabeth

There’s this video on YouTube
that I watch all the time. It’s from a camera that was left in the woods to catch the path of a fire. Superimposed over the image is a bar graph that shows the rising temperature. A time-lapse clock keeps pace in the corner.

The first seconds of the video are peaceful. The woods are quiet, the trees straight poles that reach up through the undergrowth toward the high-above sun. If you look toward the rear of the frame, there’s a clearing filled with sunlight. Something should be hopping through at any minute. A rabbit, maybe, or a deer.

Then the leaves start to shake, and the sky darkens. Is a rainstorm coming? White flakes flutter through the flame. Is that snow? No. Everything is green, and there’s that temperature gauge, rising slightly. The explanation hits you as the first hint of orange glow tinges the left-hand side of the frame.

It’s ash.

Things happen quickly after that. The trees let off what looks like exhaust as their sap and moisture heat to the boiling point and escape. The screen is filled with smoke and bright orange light. Flames wick through the grass and brush like they’re a conduit. The trees—so alive a minute before—go up like candles as the temperature hits four hundred degrees. Now all you can see are flames, only they’re flames like you’ve never seen them. Not campfire flames, or wood-stove flames, or even burning a brush pile.

The air is flame.

The screen is one burst of flickering orange. There is nothing else to see.

When the temperature hits nine hundred degrees, the trees reappear. Only now, they’re black, glowing sticks, like the sparklers we used to have on birthday cakes or wave around on national holidays. The fire is already retreating, whipping around the base of the trees it destroyed, creating its own atmosphere, making sure it eats everything there is before it moves on.

The temperature gauge starts the downward slope of the bell curve. As it descends, all that’s left are black poles and dirt. The flames are starving, dying. They were too greedy. If there’s nothing for them to move on to, they will die.

At five hundred degrees, a patch of sunlight flits through the frame. The smoke has dissipated enough to let the world back in.

The fire goes as quickly as it came, leaving nothing behind but ash and wisps of smoke.

And when you look at the time, you realize the whole thing happened in a minute.

I wake up sick. Sick to my stomach. Sick in my soul. I feel trapped and scared and unsure of what to do about it.

The obvious thing is to tell Ben. Shake his sleeping shoulder and confess. But somehow—is that really such a surprise to me?—I can’t bring myself to do it. I don’t know what it means yet, the fact that I’m
pregnant
, so how can I talk about it with him, this man who, four days ago,
four days ago
, I asked for a divorce?

How am I supposed to think here? Here, in this house that isn’t mine. In this room that has nothing to do with my life. I’ve never been good at thinking; I just know how to
do
.

So I do: I get up and get dressed, and I go fight the fire.

It’s so early I need to turn my headlights on, but even if the sun was higher in the sky, there’s so much smoke everywhere I need to use my fog lamps. Smoke ghosts trail across the road and close in on my car. It’s almost claustrophobic, and I’m happy when the wind picks up and swirls them out of my path. Then I think about what the wind means for the fire, and all happiness drains away.

My phone beeps to remind me I have voice mail. The message was left last night when Ben and I were at dinner, when I’d shoved my phone in my car’s glove compartment, determined not to check on the fire every minute, to be present in my life for once.

It’s a message from Ben’s mother. I listen to it when I’m stopped at a red light.

“Hi, dear. I’m calling to see if everything is all right. You left the store so fast you forgot your dress. Christine says she can let it out so it will be fine for Saturday. I . . . I hope we’ll all have something to celebrate together, soon.”

I’m flooded with guilt. After my blurted response to figuring out I was probably pregnant, I convinced Grace not to say anything because I hadn’t taken a pregnancy test yet, and I didn’t want to create any false hope. She agreed, reluctantly, but I knew there was a clock on my telling Ben and that I’d raised all kinds of red flags by looking more petrified than joyous. And who knows how much of the conversation Kate Bourne and her acolyte heard? Maybe it was all going to turn up in the
Daily
this morning.

And yet, here I am, driving away from my problems.

Again.

Only this time, I’m bringing a small part of them with me. The baby.
The baby
. What am I doing thinking of that prospect as a problem? Better question: What am I doing bringing her, him, the future of us, into the fire? I should turn back. I should . . . No. It’s fine. I need this. I’ll be safe.

We’ll be safe.

When I get to the site, I use my old badge to get through security and then go find Andy. He’s assembling his crew to go on shift, and I tell him only that I’d like to help. I know he wants to ask me what this is all about, but I will him not to with a look, one he knows me well enough to understand. He leads me to the equipment closet, and gets me kitted out. A pair of green Nomex pants and a yellow Nomex shirt. Leather gloves. Steel-toed boots. A helmet with a roll-up face shield. Protective glasses. A backpack, weather kit, and water bottle. An ax.

I heft its familiar weight in my gloved hand and go through my mental checks. I’m ready for this; I have to be.

When I emerge from the curtained-off changing area, Andy pulls a handkerchief out of his pocket and ties it around my neck. He chuffs me on the chin and gives me a wink. I feel small and weak and strong and ready. I don’t think I’ve ever felt so many things at once, all pulling in different directions. I need something to draw my focus in, make it steady on something other than me.

When Andy is satisfied that I’m ready, I tell him he’s making me feel like a kid, and he says he does it to all his crew. Then we leave the trailer and join the line of men waiting for him. Andy consults a map, and we follow the path they’ve made over the past few days, slow and winding at first, then straight up.

Together, determined, our boots keeping time against the earth, we walk into the fire.

Two hours after I’ve climbed into the hot zone, I’m exhausted, my lungs are smoke-filled, and I’m full of a feeling that’s become so alien to me it takes me a minute to figure it out.

I’m happy.

Not happy about my life, or this mess I seem to have gotten myself into. But happy in this moment, with a hoe in my hand and the whir of chain saws in my ears. I feel . . . safe. I know that sounds impossible, but, yes, safe—in my bubble of smoke and effort and sweat.

We’re building a firebreak along the top of the ridge, a strip of land from which we’ll remove all the fuel. The trees are cut down, and the earth is turned up—our Maginot Line against the destruction we passed on the way up. No farther, no farther.

On the other side of the ridge, maybe a mile away, is my house. They’re cutting down trees there too. Laying hose and spraying roofs with water to replace the rain that will not come. I’ve been in many neighborhoods, too many, that have had this treatment, so I can picture my house, roped off and surrounded by equipment like it’s a crime scene, as if I’ve seen it with my own eyes, which Ben and I decided last night we wouldn’t.

“Let’s not go there,” he had said at dinner. “It would be . . . too much.”

We were at our favorite Thai place, Thai Thai, sitting at a table next to the window. The name of the place always cracks us up, and its owner has become a friend. When I worked up the courage to ask, years ago, why
that
name, Sammy shrugged and said, “I’m Thai, it’s Thai.”

This made us laugh all the harder.

Despite my seesaw of nerves, we had a good time. I pushed past the voice in my head saying,
Tell him, tell him, tell him
, and focused on our five-star hot pad thai and the lettuce-wrapped
larb
I’d ordered on a whim.

When Sammy slapped our food on the table, he’d winked at us and said, “Date night, yeah? You know you my favorite couple.”

I gave Ben a nervous smile. I could tell Sammy had outdone himself on the spice front by the sweat that was already breaking out on Ben’s forehead, three bites in. A positive side effect: the spices were so strong that the restaurant was the only place I’d been in two days that didn’t smell like it was on fire.

“Am I going to regret eating this?” I asked, my fork hovering above my food.

“Probably,” Ben said.

“Good.”

He was wearing a sweater I’d given him years ago in the exact shade of slate green as his eyes. It felt good to see his whole face smile.

“Same old Elizabeth.”

“Is that a bad thing?”

“No. It’s one of the things I like about you.”

“Just one, huh?”

“There are others.”

“That’s good.”

He flashed me a grin and set back to his food. I ate a few tentative bites. It was extremely hot, and something about it tasted off. Was this a pregnancy effect? I’d read somewhere that the hormones did that, made food taste different than usual.

Tell him, tell him, tell him
.

I shoved the thought away. I hadn’t even taken a test yet. I had a box of them at the house, bought in bulk in another town back when we were trying so the news wouldn’t spread through Nelson like . . . wildfire.

It always came back to that, didn’t it?

“I’m guessing Tucker didn’t confess?” Ben said, taking a swig from his beer, then a long drink of water for good measure.

“Uh, no.”

“You think he did it?”