Wildfire

by Carrie Mac

  “No.” I pull the bag out, and it’s empty; the whole bottom of my backpack is soaked. “I’ll have some of yours and replace it. Please tell me you didn’t pee in it.”

  Right this minute, though, I just want to lie down and rest. Just for a second, and then we’ll figure it out. “I have a plan,” I say. I don’t, but I need to say it. I am hoping that I will have a plan very, very soon.

  “A plan is good, Annie.”

  I kick off my shoes, already getting chilled because of being soaked with sweat. I slide into my sleeping bag and spoon him.

  “I passed out,” I tell him. “After I fell and hit my head on a log. You would’ve laughed.”

  Not a sound.

  I scramble out of my bag and pull him over to the middle of the tent.

  His mouth is open, his head tipped back just a bit. His earlobes are turning black, and the tip of his nose. His chest is rising with short, shallow breaths. One eye is open. The other one is half shut. He smells sour.

  “Oh, Pete.” This was too fast. I don’t understand! It was just a cut! How did it go from just the stick on the cliff to this? It makes no sense.

  He didn’t tell me to drink some water. He didn’t say anything. That was in my head. I reach for his hand. It’s even colder than mine. No radial pulse. I fall over him to check his other wrist. Nothing.

  I put my fingers to his throat. There’s his pulse. Strong, rapid. Too fast.

  “Pete.” I unzip my sleeping bag. “You have to stay alive. You have to. I’ll follow the creek, you know? There’s always something by the water eventually, right? I’ll look at the maps again. Maybe we missed something.” I unzip his bag. He’s peed himself. Long enough ago that it’s dried up now. His leg is mottled purple below the knee.

  I quickly zip the bag back up.

  It’s the strangest sensation. I’m crying, but there are no tears, because I can’t even remember the last time I drank any water. My muscles burn with pain, but I just want to run. I am terrified, but there is no panic. I am devastatingly sad, but I know I can fix this. I am tired, but I cannot sleep.

  So I talk.

  I get everything ready for him. Water in the bags. His headlamp within reach. I tell him that the only reason we are friends is because Ms. Hayward paired him up with me for reading time.

  I hear a tiny chuckle.

  “Remember that?” I bend down and touch his hot shoulder. “She called you a reluctant reader. And I was already reading Voyage of the Dawn Treader. She thought I could fix you.”

  “Fix me.” Pete smiles.

  “I will,” I say. “I’m just about ready to go.”

  When I run out of things to say, I start singing “Down in the Valley,” which Gigi taught us. “You should have a nice song to sing to me when I’m in the old folks’ home,” she’d say. “No Tom Jones.” She never made it to the old folks’ home, but Pete and I know all the words anyway. We sang it when we heard bears huffing just off the trail. Or when we had a campfire and we ran out of the cheesy “Quartermaster’s Store” verses. We never sang “Kumbaya.” Not even when we were at summer camp and all the other kids were singing it and the camp counselors scowled at us over their guitar.

  Down in the valley, the valley so low,

  Hang your head over, hear the wind blow.

  Hear the wind blow, dear, hear the wind blow.

  Hang your head over, hear the wind blow.

  Roses love sunshine, violets love dew.

  Angels in heaven know—

  We sang that to Gigi. A lot. In the two weeks it took her to go from not-talking to dead. She died of dehydration, really. If we’d had her in a hospital, on a feeding tube, she might’ve lived for weeks longer.

  But when you’re dying, why take the long way around?

  I know what’s happening.

  In the minutes before Gigi’s heart actually stopped, something shifted in the air. It was as if the air had sweetened, and thinned, making a gossamer veil between this world of the living and the place of the not-living, whatever that is. The air in the tent is thin now too. And while it doesn’t smell sweet, like it did when Gigi died, I can’t smell the decay and filth I know is all around me.

  “It’s okay to go.”

  And then she did. Her mouth open, gawping to catch three more breaths, so spread out that I wondered with each one if it was her last. I lay alongside her, just like this. Holding on to her, just like this. Taking her through the veil, just like this.

  There was no one to hold my mother’s hand when she died.

  But maybe her death was quicker. No lingering, like with Gigi.

  And Pete.

  Because Pete is dying.

  “I’m ready to go. I won’t be gone long,” I say. “I love you, Pete.”

  He says it back. I know it. I can’t hear it, but his lips move, and I can feel the slightest puff of air on my cheek as I lean in close. Those are his last words. I love you, Annie. There is nothing anyone can say about the process of dying and physiological impossibilities that will make me believe otherwise, because I am kneeling beside my most important person in all the world, and he isn’t breathing anymore.

  Pete’s cheeks look hollow, and all along the bottom of him, his blood is pooling, which happened with Gigi. Lividity.

  We laughed about Gigi. She would have been livid about looking so gross after she died. I touch his pale cheeks. All the shocking red has drained. He is beyond cold.

  This happened with Gigi too. At some point, the body becomes just that. A body. Any part of who that person was is gone. But he still looks like himself. Sort of. He looks like he’s ready to do the zombie walk at Halloween.

  I can’t think of his body as Pete anymore.

  Not if I’m going to leave him. If I think of him as Pete, then I’ll just stay with him until I die too, because no one is going to find us. We are absolutely unfindable.

  * * *

  —

  I slide my hand into one of his pockets and pull out his knife and the truck keys, and in the other I find a bunch of pieces of folded paper.

  I pull them out, several at a time, and recognize what they are at once. Origami unicorn heads. At least two dozen of them.

  Each one has a name printed on it in tiny block letters that are almost impossible to read. But I can. Preet, Preet, his dad. His dead mom, my dead mom, dead Gigi, his dad. My dad, Preet, Preet. None with my name on it, and instead of feeling left out, I feel relief. I don’t want a last-thing-I-have-to-tell-you-before-I-die message from him. If there were one with my name, I would burn it. With that thought, I consider doing the same with the ones in my hands. Maybe no one should see these? Won’t it make everyone’s heart hurt more? Except for the dead mothers, that is.

  I let them fall to the tent floor. Which is when I see a small book open facedown near his pack, and his favorite pen. I pick up the pen first and let the tiny unicorn slide through the glitter one way and then the other, before I reach to pick up the book just to see what he was reading without me.

  As my fingers light upon it, I realize with a shotgun jolt to my heart exactly what it is.

  The diary that my mother tried to give me that night. The one with the unicorn on the front. The one I shoved under the seat and never thought about again.

  I pulled my mother’s letter out of the diary in his pack that night by the hemlocks. That’s what the book was.

  I let my fingers rest on it while my mind tries to sort out what’s happening. I am in a tiny, hot tent with wildfires all around, and my best friend is dead, and now here is the thing that I would least expect to come across. I would be less surprised if I saw a real live unicorn down at the creek having a drink, with a rainbow arching overhead. I don’t understand, but at the same time, I know exactly what’s happened, because there is only one answer. He took it from the
car that night, or maybe after, but that’s what he did. And the letter was in it.

  Pete has had it this whole time.

  “Pete.” I look at him, which is the most natural thing for me to do. “Why did you take this?” I drop my eyes back to the book. I’ve looked at Pete ten million times since we were little kids, but now I know why you can’t look at dead people the same way you look at them when they’re alive, even if you still love them as much. It’s still Pete, but it’s not Pete too. There is a subtraction of something, and an addition of something, and now it just does not compute. “This wasn’t yours to take, Pete.”

  But then, what did I think happened to it? Truthfully, I completely forgot about it, considering what happened a few days later, but I might’ve guessed that my dad found it and threw it out because it would’ve hurt me too much to have it—probably true—or that Gigi put it up in a closet somewhere for me to have when I got older, like how she gave me my mom’s jewelry along with hers just before she died, none of which I’ve looked at or worn because it does hurt too much. But I never would’ve guessed that twelve-year-old Pete took it from the car and kept it from me for all these years, along with the letter.

  It’s open about halfway through to a spread full of his small, slanty writing, the pages warped with dampness.

  Dear Annie,

  If you are reading this—

  My stomach churns, and for a moment I think I might throw up. Instead, I slam the diary shut and stuff it into my pack, along with his knife, all the paper unicorns, and the last protein bar.

  * * *

  —

  I drag Pete and the tent out from under the tree so it will be easy to spot from overhead, because I’m coming back for him, as soon as I can, and it will probably be in a plane.

  “You won’t even miss me,” I say as I take out the poles. The airy material relaxes slowly down, covering him in a shroud of bright orange. I thought it was a good idea, but as soon as I see it flattened over him, I see his shape too. His brow, his nose, chin, chest, his giant feet.

  I collapse down onto my knees and cry some more, but again, no tears. I need water. I’m almost out of food.

  Pete would be yelling at me by now.

  Go! Go, Annie!

  * * *

  —

  I know that being in the direct sun will make him decompose faster, but whenever I let that thought in, I stop in my tracks and am immobile for an achingly long time. I can’t think about the word “decompose.” But I do, and then I think about how it doesn’t matter, really, because he wants to be cremated.

  “Burn or bury?” he asked me once when we were sleeping out at Otis Creek. It was a hot midsummer night last year, before Preet. We were just lying on top of our sleeping bags, staring at the stars, wide awake almost all night, talking about everything. If you’d tracked our subjects and marked each one with a pin of light, it would’ve made a tangle of a constellation.

  “Bury,” I said. “But just under a tree somewhere. Not in a box. Not embalmed or anything. Just me, in some dirt. There are graveyards that will let you do that.”

  “You just want to rot?”

  “Kinda. Yeah. Genuine worm food. You?”

  “Burn. Definitely.”

  “What about your ashes?”

  “Haven’t thought that far.”

  Yet here we are now, the flames on the ridge likely moving closer, even if they look like they are standing still, just a wavering line of fierce heat warping the sky.

  Stay there, wildfire.

  Just stay.

  * * *

  —

  There is no way this is going to be easy, so I just do up the clasps on my pack, turn on my heel, and start running.

  “Back in a bit, Pete!” I run due east, along the creek. I’m going to follow the water. That’s something they teach you about being lost in the wilderness. Staying put is the best advice. But if you can’t stay put, follow the water. Water almost always leads to people.

  “Love you!” I call over my shoulder. “Love you,” I whisper as I run. Over logs, through prickly bushes that scratch my arms and legs. “I love you.” I run as if I have all the energy in the world. As if I ate a giant plate of pasta the night before. As if there is no smoke. As if I’ve been well hydrated for days. I run so fast that, almost four hours later, I come upon the Pacific Northwest Trail.

  “Yes!” I look around. Not a soul for as far as I can see. Which makes sense, because who the hell would be hiking in the middle of wildfires?

  I keep running. East. The word pounding with my heart. East, east, east.

  The sun slants. I know the day is heading for sunset. But I have my headlamp, and so I can keep going.

  Then I see it, a glint off to the northeast.

  A truck on a road?

  I squint. No. A roof! Not even five hundred yards away, off the trail to the south; I scan the land between here and there. It’s on the other side of the creek. It looks pretty lazy from up here. Totally crossable. I make a beeline for it. If it’s abandoned and there is no clearly better trail, I’ll just come back up to the PNT. I have to try. It’s the only sign of civilization I’ve seen since we met the people who were digging for crystals.

  * * *

  —

  I sprint down the shale, slipping and sliding and falling, until I get to the bottom of the slope. I can still see the roof, but the sun is starting to set. The light is filtered now, all the blues of the day blurring together.

  When I get to the creek, I put my pack on my head and wade right in. Everything in my pack is in a big, thick plastic bag, so as long as I can keep hold of it, it doesn’t matter if it gets wet.

  I move at an angle and against the current, like the SAS book says. The water is up to my armpits, but my feet stay on the ground. In the middle of the creek, I stop and think about how nice it would be to just lean back and let go. Let my pack fill up with water and disappear to the silty bottom while I float downstream, on my back, staring up at the sky and imagining all the stars that are hiding behind the smoke.

  There is no rush.

  I won’t be able to find him again.

  If the fire keeps heading toward him, it will cremate him, and the wind will spread his ashes better than I ever could. I let my pack drop, still holding it with one hand.

  No one needs to open those unicorns.

  I don’t need to read what he wrote to me, or what else that diary is filled with.

  We could all just drift down the river, like that time Pete and I did, holding hands and getting so cold, so fast.

  I lean back, about to let go, but then I hear barking. Very, very close. I open my eyes and see two big dogs on the shore.

  “What the hell you doing, girl?” An old man scrambles down to the water’s edge. The dogs whine as he wades in and grabs me and pulls me to the shore, where I notice he’s got two—now wet—dead rabbits tied to his belt. “An idiot’s baptism or something? Thought I was going to watch you float away, for Pete’s sake. Likely no coming back from that.”

  For Pete’s sake.

  The deer.

  The other deer.

  “Come with me,” the man says. “Need to get you dried up and warmed up. No arguments. I’m no creep in the woods. I got kids and grandkids and I’d do the same for any of them.” As if to prove that he isn’t a bad man, he takes out his wallet and shows me pictures of several blond children, and two with hair and skin so brown that their brightly colored clothes nearly glow on them.

  He sees my face.

  “Oh, don’t worry.” He takes out one of the photos. “I got them laminated at that print shop in town. Waterproof. Hell of a thing.” One of the dogs—more of a puppy—bounces around me, sniffing my shoes, nudging me from one side and then the other.

  “Yellow-headed ones are my daughter’s k
ids. Twins and a little one,” he says as he leads me up the bank to a short trail. “The little one is a doll. Just precious. Those twins, though. Run for your money. They do good up here when I put them to work.”

  I have everything to say to him, but I can’t make myself say any of it, so I let him talk, which he is obviously happy to do.

  “The other two are my son’s boys,” he says. “He married a woman from Ghana. They’ve got another on the way, although I’m thinking it might be twins. Runs in my family. I’m a twin. Mine are twins. Handfuls, twins.”

  The younger dog jumps up and licks my face, while the old one looks away, like he is embarrassed. He’s barely moved from where he’s been sitting, waiting for some kind of direction.

  “The good old dog there is Mister.” The old man gives him a pat, and the dog falls in beside me as we start to walk. “The other one I don’t know yet. As for me, you can call me Shook. Most people do. Like the Elvis song. Used to do a great impression of the King. Name stuck.”

  * * *

  —

  Tell him about Pete.

  No. Not yet.

  Why not?

  The simple answer is because then it would be too real. Because I don’t even want them to find him. Maybe I want the fire to take him. He would like that. I know. And maybe all of these thoughts confuse me, and I’m not sure of anything except the next step I take, and only after I’ve taken it. I glance up the mountain behind me. There is so much less smoke down here that I can imagine the wildfire isn’t that bad. I can breathe more easily. The campfire smell is fainter, enough that I can also smell the pine trees and salal bushes warmed by the sun—which is still bright orange down here too—and the old man himself, who smells like greasy body odor and Irish Spring soap, which is a smell I know only because my dad hangs it in the garden to keep the deer out.

  * * *

  —