The Wildfire Season

Chapter 3

As she steps toward him, Miles notices how the child’s knees poke out below the hem of her dress, one and then the other, like turtle’s heads. It’s been so long since he’s seen a girl of her age in a dress that it looks like a costume to him. Among the details he’s lost hold of in the last few years are holidays—what dates they fall on and whether the Raven Nest Grocery will be closed on account of it. Because of this, and because of the dress, Miles has an idea that the girl is about to pull a pillowcase from behind her back and demand ‘Trick or treat!’

The Welcome Inn drinkers lift their heads to take a measure of the newcomers, studying the woman and girl without the reluctance to stare that one finds elsewhere. All of them notice how the woman’s eyes don’t move about the room. Instead, she raises her chin half an inch and peers straight ahead. It may be a way of seeing into the dark, or a gesture of confirmation, or fearlessness. Whether reflex or signal, she steps forward with her face lifted to them, which allows everyone to note the length of her neck as well as the colour of her eyes, green as quarry water.

The woman and girl breach the invisible circle usually afforded the fire supervisor and stand within handshaking range, though no hand is offered. Miles inhales and takes them in. A flavouring of citronella insect repellent and sweat.

‘Rachel,’ the woman says, pulling the child forward to stand in front of her. ‘This is Miles.’

The man with the scarred face and the girl in the strawberry dress nod at each other, once, at the same time.

If forest firefighters are asked why, among all the kinds of physical labour a person might do for money, they chose this particularly wilting, occasionally life-threatening work, the answer offered more than any other is that they love it. More odd is that if they are then asked to substantiate this love, they will have little, if anything, to offer. Most end up shrugging. Always the same shrug, one that makes it clear that there is no single reason they could state and at the same time believe to be true.

Miles thought he might have been slightly different on this count. He loved the job no less than the other men and women he has worked with, but he believed that in his case he could take a stab at explaining why.

‘Fire isn’t like us,’ he would tell Alex when she asked what he saw when he came closest to the flames. ‘It never forgives.’

Sometimes, when he watched how a low, desultory smoker would tiptoe far enough along to touch off a dry thicket, Miles could see himself in the orange spirals, his own hunger devouring the arthritic limbs. He had heard fires described as cruel but he never saw them that way. What he recognized instead was how they were destructive only because they could be, the flames liberated by perfect indifference. Even before he was burned, he had this same talent himself.

This is why he’d come to this place out of all the end-of-the-world places he could have run to. There was nobody here that he knew, to remind him of who he was. Nobody he’d made a promise to or ever would. And there was fire.

For a while, though, he considered other options. For the better part of his first year on the road, driving from prairie town to prairie town across Saskatchewan, the Dakotas, Montana, Alberta and back again in a flat, pointless circle, he thought about bartending. He was spending most of every night in bars at the time anyway, and could see himself on the other side of the divide, pulling the taps and free pouring the rye, keeping an eye on the loudmouths and, when need be, directing the worst of them out the door with the end of his boot. There wouldn’t be much trouble on his shifts, at any rate. He found that the scars did a lot to maintain order all on their own. There was a warning in the marks on his cheek that common, hayseed pugilists had to take into consideration. But even with all of these qualifications, Miles knew he wouldn’t last a week. It wouldn’t be the job, but the temptation to talk. He might be invited to barbecues or bowling tournaments or waitresses’ rented rooms, and be asked questions that, over time, he would allow himself to answer.

For these reasons, Miles knew that if he wanted to run away he’d have to come back to fires. To his surprise, this was fine with him. Even after what had happened he still loved them, his dreams recalling the purposeful digging at the feet of a blaze he’d arrived at early enough to contain at least as often as the Mazko River blowup, the one fire he had ever been caught in. Alex knew all of this about him. It was the only clue that, once he was gone, she believed might lead her to him. And now it has.

‘Have you been here the whole time? In this town, I mean?’

They are the first words either of them has spoken since they walked out of the Welcome Inn. The sun had not yet surrendered to the reach of the hills, and there was enough light left in the evening sky to blind them. For the first few minutes the three of them could only shuffle, stunned, through the gravel streets.

‘Ross River,’ Miles says.

That’s it. I saw the name on the sign.’

‘Five years.’

‘You must like it.’

‘Five years isn’t that long.’

‘It isn’t?’

‘Not so long that you have to like where you spent them.’

Alex and Miles walk with their heads down, the girl running ahead and back again like a herd dog, circling behind and nudging their calves. They take the road down to the river, past the tiny, unpainted church, with its steeple of shining aluminum. Beyond it, they find the path through the empty lot where Lloyd’s Gas & Tackle once was. Miles glances up at the one remaining pump standing crooked, its glass face cracked, and sees it as a bespectacled man struggling to his feet after a beating.

When they reach the banks of the Pelly they watch the lengthening curls and peek-a-boo whirlpools of the current. The water heavy as oil, a glinting purple that conceals its depths. There are no sounds except for the buzz of the first mosquitoes awakening from the reeds, along with the river’s gulps and spits.

In the absence of words, Miles feels the first tickles of the moment’s strangeness. It seems to him that the woman and girl stand unnecessarily close, and a flurry of options occur to him. He might fall to his knees and explode into tears. Beg forgiveness. He might swing out his arms and knock them back.

All he can think of to hold off some show of madness is to keep talking. He tells them of how, last summer, he had been standing where they are now watching Margot play fetch with her dog, Missie. Over and over Margot would throw a stick out, and each time Missie would leap in, snatching it and cutting back to shore. Once, Margot threw the stick ten feet farther than before. Missie splashed into the swirls. This time, when she turned around with the stick in her mouth, the current grabbed her from below. The dog’s front legs punched forward in panic but she couldn’t break free of the water’s hold. Miles and Margot started out after her only to see that she was already too far, speeding out of sight around the bend behind the churchyard, down to join the Yukon and, eventually, the delta that empties into the Beaufort Sea.

‘Poor Missie,’ Alex says. ‘Poor Margot.’

‘It’s terrible. Now she’s only got Wade to follow her around.’

Miles tries at a laugh, but it comes out in a messy sneeze. And now that he’s told the story of the drowned dog, he realizes it was more grim than he remembered, and wonders if the girl might do something awkward. But instead, Rachel cups her chin in her palm, studying the site of the tragedy. When she turns to him her forehead is scrunched into serious ripples.

‘We can’t go swimming in that river,’ she says.

‘I’d advise against it.’

She shakes her head in regret. Then, in the next second, she snaps out of her grown-up considerations and sprints back up the road toward town.

Alex and Miles follow her past what Bonnie likes to call the Welcome Inn’s courtyard, no more than a patch of grass with what, from a distance, looks to be a garden gnome stepping out of his lederhosen. They turn right, past a row of squat mobile homes, most with something left out in their front yards. A standing stepladder. A pickup truck raised on its rims, its hood agape. A Mr Turtle wading pool.

They round the property of a cabin that appears to be made of nailed-together outhouses, all with grass growing high atop their roofs. Across the road, two boys sit side by side on a bench in front of a cinderblock building. Off to the side there’s a swing set, along with climbing bars that could be a cage from which something has already escaped, and between them, a slide designed to look like a dinosaur’s tongue.

‘Can I go play?’ the girl asks.

‘Play away, kiddo.’

‘How old is she?’ Miles asks once she has run off into the weed-riddled sand of the playground.

‘Five and a half.’

‘Really?’

‘How old do you think she could be?’

‘I don’t know. I guess I don’t have much experience on what five and a half is. What they’re capable of at that age.’

‘Rachel is capable of pretty much anything.’

They crunch over the stones at the side of the road, watch the girl scramble up the ladder of the dinosaur’s back and slide down its tongue. When she reaches the bottom she remains sitting on the aluminum lip. He tries to meet the girl’s eyes but she’s watching the two Kaska kids on the bench—Mungo’s son, Tom, and one of his more-silentthan-most friends, Miles can see now. After a time of wondering what to do next in a second-rate playground while being observed by two teenaged Indian boys, Rachel abruptly runs around and up the dinosaur’s back again. She pauses at the top and surveys the monkshood poking through the sand below. Then, with a regal salute, she plops on her bum and slides earthward a second time.

‘There must be kids around here,’ Alex says, as though answering a question she had asked herself. ‘That looks like it could be a school, anyway.’

‘It is. And the library, town hall and RCMP detachment, all rolled into one. You’re looking at civilization over there.’

‘Doesn’t look like much.’

‘We’re the shit end of the stick out here, I guess.’

‘Worse than anywhere else?’

‘Worse than the towns whose native bands have signed the government land claim offers. Places that get to at least think about building a new school. Or a sewage system that can cut down on the number of times your bathtub fills up with what your neighbour flushed down his toilet five minutes ago.’ Miles looks down at his boots. ‘There’s drugs here, and a lot of drinking,’ he says. ‘And I’m talking about the kids.’

‘Isn’t there a counsellor or someone?’

‘There’s nobody.’

‘What about you?’

‘I’m not paid to be a difference maker. It’s not my job, it’s yours.’

‘That sounded a little like contempt.’

‘You just heard it wrong.’

Tom and his friend have slouched their way over to the playground’s edge, where they stand with their hands in their pockets, asking Rachel questions that Miles and Alex cannot hear. The girl says something in return that brings goofy smiles to their faces.

‘You still teaching?’ Miles asks her.

‘It’s that or waitressing.’

‘You used to love it.’

‘I’m just tired. It’s a lot to—’ Alex lets her thought turn into a shrug.

‘You’re on your own?’

‘As far as Rachel goes, yes.’

‘That can’t be easy. And the kids you work with are even worse—mentally challenged, or whatever—it must be that much tougher to—’

‘You’re right. They’ll kill you. You’re helping and helping all day, and at the end of it, if you’ve done your job, they just need you more. You know?’

‘Not really.’

‘No, you wouldn’t.’

From across the parking lot, Mungo Capoose strolls into view, his arm held over his head in a wave, as though Alex and Miles are a half mile distant instead of a hundred feet away.

‘Where you off to?’ Miles calls to him.

‘Just following orders.’

‘What orders?’

‘You wanted me to check on King, didn’t you?’

Mungo grins at them. At Alex, anyway. Miles has forgotten that, in Ross River, Alex will appear not only as an obvious stranger but as uncommonly beautiful. For the first time, Miles acknowledges this as well. Green eyes, freckles, dark hair shining down the back of her neck.

‘The fire office is the other way,’ Miles tells him.

‘That I know. Just want to share a word with my son here.’

Mungo keeps his eyes on Alex a moment longer, and when Miles glances to see if she is meeting the older man’s gaze, he finds her smiling back at him.

‘He seems nice.’

‘Nice? I suppose Mungo’s nice. The sad truth is he’s the best man on my crew.’

‘You’ve got friends up here, at least.’

‘I wouldn’t go that far.’

Mungo grabs Tom by the shoulders and gives him a shake. Tom’s friend repeats whatever story he’s already told Rachel and all of them laugh, with Mungo adding something at the end that brings another round of guffaws.

‘She’s good at that,’ Alex says.

‘Good at what?’

‘Figuring out strangers in a hurry.’

‘It’s a hell of a skill to have.’

‘When you’re on the road with just your mom around to keep an eye on you, it’s a good thing to know who might be bad news.’

‘What do you mean, on the road?’

Alex takes a step forward so that she can look directly up into Miles’s face. Her lips white, bloodless. He’s certain she is about to throw her fist into his face and he spreads his feet apart to keep his balance when it comes.

‘Four summers in a row,’ she says instead. ‘Looking for you.’

Miles turns away. Over Alex’s shoulder, he watches Mungo give Rachel a courtly bow, before taking Tom and his friend by the collars and pulling them off with him, squeezing the boys against his sides as they make a show of trying to escape his grip.

‘I can walk you by where I live. I have a dog. His name is Stump,’ Miles offers in a rush.

‘Rachel?’ The girl runs up behind Alex, grinning. But when she looks at Miles, her face is instantly emptied of expression. ‘Would you like to meet a dog named Stump?’

‘Stump?’ She swallows, as though tasting the name. ‘Grumpy lump! Let’s see Stump!’

Miles leads them past the prefab utility shed that once housed the radio station but now stands locked, the hastily painted CHRV-FM 88.9 sign over the door peeling away in rolls, the transmitting antenna bent to the side from kids using the shed as an observation tower.

‘Can we hear it? On the radio in the truck?’ Rachel asks him. No longer rushing ahead, the girl now lingers twenty feet behind Miles and Alex, kicking at stones that nip the backs of their ankles.

‘They’ve closed it down.’

‘But when it did work, who talked on it?’

‘Anybody that wanted to.’

‘So if it worked now, could I go on and talk?’

‘There wouldn’t be anybody to stop you.’

Now that he thinks of it, Miles misses tuning in during his first year here, finding only static most of the time, but also unexpected treats. Bonnie reading from her grandmother’s recipe box. Mungo playing the same side of Johnny Cash’s Ring of Fire LP three times in a row. A bunch of preschoolers giggling for a half-hour straight. All of it reaching no farther than a two-mile radius of wilderness and perhaps a half-dozen others who may have been listening. There was a comfort in it, though. Sitting alone and having voices come to him. Confirming for whoever might be doing the talking or listening that they were here, together, even if what was being said and heard made no trace of difference in the world.

As they walk toward his cabin, Miles and Alex ask questions of each other for the girl’s sake—Had Alex taken Rachel to see the dancing Gertie Girls in Dawson? Does Miles get a chance to go south in the winters?—but most of what passes between them comes in versions of the unsaid. No matter what caution they bring to their words, everything delivers both of them to the life they had discovered together, no greater in length than the time they have now been apart. They remember in the silence of shared understanding, two listeners tuned to the same voice. One that tells a story they already know but that surprises them anyway, leading them from what they had to what they lost, to Miles running away, to fire.

An afternoon rain has forced it underground. It hides beneath the surface, gnawing along roots far enough down to be untouched by moisture. The fire can find any number of hosts without ever showing itself to the world, living in oil shales, petroleum seeps or coal veins for weeks, even years. For now, tiny and unnamed, it allows itself to sleep.

A stethoscope placed on the ground would hear nothing, but a cheek could feel its warmth. In land like this, there may be a hundred such lazy fires for every square mile, more on the edges of swamps and bogs, where the fuels are rich but lie deeper. Most never awaken. They come to the end of whatever nourishes them and slowly suffocate, without a struggle, their hearts weak from birth. But this one is different. It was born with intent.

There. A white puff tails up from below, as though exhaled from an underworld cigarette. Another. Soon the smoke becomes a steady stream, broadening, clinging to the deadfall like morning fog.

Before it is extinguished, it will claim a land area greater than most national parks, leaving a lake of ash behind. It will turn bones to swan feathers. It will kill, and hide the bodies better than the most calculating assassin.

It will do all of this as though motivated by some idea of itself, by ambition, by hate. But as with all fires, it will have no desire but to live.

Chapter 4

Why Miles?

Alex has wondered this perhaps more than anything else. Why had she decided to shed all her shyness for that one sun-glowy, blue-eyed boy over all the others? Why him, sitting alone on the back fire escape of a Montreal walk-up at the first party of the new term, the weeks ahead of her fizzing with possibility, never mind the next year, the next five?

Sometimes she’s sure it was his mouth that made her step out onto the fire escape on her own. Her housemate, Jen, a boy-crazy psych major from Massachusetts who liked to regard Alex as ‘so Canadian’ (which meant, for her, an innocent who didn’t stand a chance in the corrupt negotiations of sex), had asked where she was going when Alex had left her chatting up a pair of sniggering frat boys in the bathroom lineup, and Alex had told her, ‘I’m sure you can handle Beavis and Butthead on your own,’ and walked out into the cool night. It was his mouth that did it, she’s almost certain. His lips fine but deeply coloured, a mark of delicate youth on a face she would have otherwise thought of as broad featured, even rough. She saw him through the kitchen window, noticed his mouth and wanted to kiss it, as she had wanted before, daydreamingly, of others’. What was remarkable about this boy’s lips was that she wanted to kiss them first and then divide them with her tongue, slitting them apart as a blade opens an envelope, so that she could see what shape they’d make around his words.

‘Have you ever tried to eat the stars?’

Alex is literally taken off balance. It’s the heels she borrowed from Jen’s endless collection jamming through the metal slats as much as his question.

‘No,’ she says. ‘Maybe I’ve never been hungry enough.’

‘When I was a kid I would pick them right out of the sky. They had a taste, too.’

‘Were they good?’

‘Oh yeah. Too good. My mom told me if I ate too many I’d start to shine.’

Only now does Miles look at her directly, and Alex thinks that it’s too late. This boy has already had more than his fill of stars.

Miles pulls a clear plastic sandwich bag out of his pocket and shakes it in the air. Inside, a cluster of withered caps and stems leap over each other as though in an effort to escape.

‘What’s that?’

‘Mushrooms,’ he says. ‘I spent the summer out on Vancouver Island. Picked these lovelies myself. Very friendly.’

‘So, instead of stars, now you eat magic mushrooms.’

‘I’m always putting something in my mouth.’ He shakes the bag again. ‘Want some?’

‘What do they do?’

‘You mean you’ve never—?’

‘No. I’ve never most things.’

‘That’s okay. They basically take whatever mood you’re in and enhance it, make you see beyond what you’d normally see.’