Smoke

by Catherine McKenzie

  “But if that doesn’t happen, are we totally screwed?” asked a twenty-something man who had the broad shoulders and skinny hips of a rock climber. “Like, shouldn’t we be evacuating the whole town?”

  There were murmurs of assent around the auditorium.

  “No,” Andy said. “That’s not necessary. We’ve placed fire breaks all down the south and west sides of the mountain.” Images flashed onto the screen next to him. Elizabeth’s street. Elizabeth’s neighbor’s house. Elizabeth’s home. “We’ve done all we could to fortify these areas. Even if the fire gets over the ridge—and that’s still a big if—we’re continuing to make sure that there’s nothing for it to consume. It’s a simple equation: fire needs fuel to survive.”

  “But what about those houses? That looks like fuel to me.”

  Andy spoke patiently. “The houses have been heavily watered, and we’ve installed a complete set of hoses around them if anything blazes up. We’ve also been cutting down trees between the houses so the fire doesn’t have anything to catch on and spread. No structure is completely safe in this kind of situation, but we’re doing our best.”

  “When can we go home?” asked another man, whom Mindy recognized as a father of two who lived one block over from Elizabeth. “We’ve been sleeping on our friends’ floor for four nights. My children are scared. We couldn’t find our cat before we left and . . .”

  Ben walked over to him and put a hand on his shoulder. He leaned in and whispered something while the man buried his face in his hands. Ben led him away from the microphone and back to his family.

  “This is one of the hardest things to deal with in these situations,” Andy said. “Not just the possibility of losing our things, but the displacement. Anyone who needs a bed will have one provided. We’re also serving meals twice a day. And, most importantly, there are counselors on hand. Please, don’t be prideful. This is one of the most stressful things someone can go through. We want you all to come through safe and sound, both mentally and physically.”

  A woman in her late fifties approached the stage looking determined and angry. She stooped slightly with the beginning of osteoporosis but seemed formidable, nevertheless.

  “What about how this fire started? Look at what we’re all going through and that man,” she lifted her finger and pointed it toward John Phillips, who was standing near the left stage door in a shadow he must’ve thought protected him from view. “That man is the reason all of this is happening and he’s getting fed and a roof over his head and . . .”

  Elizabeth stepped forward. “We’re working diligently to establish what caused the fire. Please have some patience with the process. We do not yet know exactly what happened. Let me repeat that. We do not know what happened. And until we do, I’d ask you all to please remain calm and rational. Rumors aren’t proof of anything.”

  “You mean the rumor that a bunch of kids started it?” someone yelled.

  “I heard you guys know exactly who did it,” said another voice, younger.

  “That’s not true,” Elizabeth said. “That’s exactly what I’m talking about. I’m not sure what you’ve heard, but there is an ongoing and confidential police investigation. Just because something is printed in the newspaper or you hear it from a friend does not make it fact—”

  “What about this, then?” asked that same young voice, holding his phone aloft. “Seems like this video makes it all pretty clear.”

  In the chaos that followed, Mindy leaned her head over Peter’s phone as she tried to keep her body from being overtaken by the shakes.

  After the kid shouted out about the video, people began pulling their phones from their pockets. When she checked, Mindy hadn’t received the video link in her e-mail, but Peter had. It came from an anonymous address. Kara called for order, but no one was listening.

  Mindy turned to Angus, but he was just sitting there, staring straight ahead with his jaw rigid. Carrie was on the other side of Peter, craning in for a view.

  When she turned back to the phone, Mindy saw that the footage was from the town-square cam. It had been installed years ago and streamed live on the Nelson Daily’s website, along with a few other strategically placed cameras around town. If you wanted to, you could spend the whole day watching the world go by on those cameras. Tourists posing for pictures. Locals scurrying from one place to another. And for the last couple of days, smoke swirling through the abandoned square.

  The footage was time-stamped from late Monday night. As it neared midnight, a group of kids—four boys and one girl—walked through the square. They were all wearing puffy vests and hooded sweatshirts with the hoods up, and Mindy remembered how cold it was that night. It was impossible to tell who they were. Their heads were down, and they were moving quickly.

  The video sped up. Whoever edited it had put it on fast-forward. One minute, two, ten. Then another teenager walked through the square. He was wearing the same uniform as the others, and the same posture too. Hands shoved into his pockets to keep out the cold. A knit hat pulled down tightly over his ears. Another anonymous kid.

  He left the frame and the assembly room held its collective breath as the frames sped up again, and minutes, then an hour, flashed by. When it slowed down, the original four boys weren’t strolling through the square; they were running as fast as their feet could take them. The girl was missing, and the fifth boy was also nowhere to be seen.

  The time stamp on the footage was 1:22 a.m.—approximately ten minutes before the fire started.

  The tape sped up again. Now it was 1:42 a.m. The fifth boy and the girl appeared, walking slowly, hand in hand. It would’ve been a touching scene except for what had come before, what the whole room knew was happening elsewhere. In his free hand, the boy was holding something that kept emitting a weird flash. On/off. On/off. The couple stopped next to a bench, kissed, then gave each other a quick hug. The boy watched the girl walk away, absentmindedly bringing his left hand closer to his face. Flash, flash. He was flicking a lighter on and off, and when it got close enough, it illuminated his face clearly.

  It was Angus.

  DAY FIVE

  COOPER BASIN FIRE

  New Evidence Links Local Teen to Fire

  POSTED: Saturday, September 6, 7:08 AM

  By: Joshua Wicks, Nelson Daily

  There was a dramatic ending to the town meeting last night when video footage from the town square camera came to light that appears to link a local teen to the setting of the Cooper Basin fire, which has been raging on Nelson Peak and threatening the town since early Tuesday morning.

  The fire began at approximately 1:30 a.m. on Tuesday. Local authorities have been investigating its origin since then. As this paper previously reported, a local teen was suspected to have been involved in starting it. Last night, as a town meeting with fire officials was taking place, footage from one of the town’s surveillance cameras was posted online anonymously and appears to implicate at least one teenager with the origin of the fire.

  It is not yet known who released the surveillance video. While the identity of the teens in the video cannot be revealed since they are underage, the Daily has confirmed that a sixteen-year-old male was taken into custody last night and is now the prime suspect. If he is found guilty of either negligently or deliberately setting the fire, he could face jail time, substantial fines, and civil suits against both the minor and his parents. The current estimated cost of fighting the fire is at three million dollars and climbing daily.

  To date, over 500 homes have been evacuated. Approximately 7,000 acres of brush and timber have been consumed, and the fire is nearing the break that firefighters have been working on all week just below the north ridge of Nelson Peak. If it continues at its current pace of advancement, the fire is expected to reach the top of the Peak this evening.

  The local weather outlook remains an issue, with the current unseasonable temperatures and high winds expected to continue.

  Neither the sheriff’s office nor the investi
gator in charge returned the Daily’s calls. The paper received an official response by e-mail from the sheriff’s office just before going to press advising that “this is an ongoing investigation and details will be made public when appropriate.”

  Maps of the evacuation area are available on this website, at all county offices, and through the Nelson County Emergency Services website. All residents should collect their important papers and any portable valuables, and be ready to evacuate. Residents are encouraged to sign up for emergency service alerts via text or e-mail if they have not done so already. More information can be found at www.nelsoncountyemergencyservices.com.

  CHAPTER 30

  Survival

  Elizabeth

  This is one of the things I love most about Ben.

  About ten miles from town stands the Majestic. At over fourteen thousand feet, it’s the highest peak in the state, and the third highest on the continent. The climb takes two days for most people, and involves gaining seven thousand vertical feet.

  It is not a walk in the park; it is a climb.

  I’d wanted to scale the mountain since I first saw it. It pulled at me as I imagine Everest did to George Mallory. Because it was something that would push me to my very limits. Because it’s only when I’m at those limits that I know I’m truly alive. Because I had some stupid notion that a missing piece of me could be found if I pushed myself to that place.

  And, of course, because it was there. In fact, in Nelson, it is everywhere. It’s the view on every postcard, a place others recognize even if they’ve never been here. It’s the view from our kitchen window, the one I look at every morning, sipping my coffee till the mist burns away.

  It claims lives every year. Usually more in winter, but every summer too. Unprepared tourists, usually, but more than once a local who was caught by a fast-moving thunderstorm, or lost their footing in the snow field, or twisted their ankle in the rocky debris at the bottom of the glacier. You get used to these kinds of deaths in Nelson. You just do.

  The year I turned thirty-five, Ben agreed to climb it with me. He’d summited when he was eighteen with a group of friends. The way he always described the trip made it seem perfectly doable, and there are many for whom it is just that.

  I was not one of those people.

  Even though I’ve hiked my whole life, I’m afraid of certain kinds of heights. Everything else I’d climbed had involved a trail, no risk, no dangling off cliff faces. But the Majestic involved all of those things and more, and so while it drew me in, it terrified me too.

  We spent what time we could that summer training. It was a light fire season, so I was often at home, and even when I was away, I could put in half days hiking or acquiring rope skills at a local gym. We decided to go at the end of August, if I could get away, since the snowpack would likely be gone by then. As I climbed up interior walls to try to get over my fears, I convinced myself I could do it.

  We started out on a dry August day under an endless, empty sky. We had an arduous but breathtaking first day’s hike up to the lower saddle, where we’d spend the night in a hut. Our packs were heavy but manageable. Eight hours after we’d set off, we were watching the sunset turning first one way, then another, snapping pictures, marveling at the two-state view. Somehow we managed to sleep in the hut, which was full of snoring men. Then we rose in the dark, dressed, and snapped our headlamps into place to take ourselves to the foot of the first wall we’d have to climb.

  Our guide led the pitch and set up our ropes. I was to climb next, the rope trailing from him to me to keep me from falling. I was fine at first, but then the route veered off sharply to the side, right at the top of the fifty-foot pitch. The exposure made me nervous, and my foot started shaking. Then my leg. Then my entire body. My hands were so slick with sweat I started to lose my purchase. Everyone on the ground yelled encouragement, but nothing could calm me down.

  I slipped. I lost my hold on the rock and fell sideways like a giant pendulum, crashing into the rock face with my shoulder before the rope could arrest my fall. It was all I could do to keep from sobbing. I had nothing left in reserve. I wanted to be lowered down and soothed and medevac’d off the mountain.

  Then I heard Ben’s voice.

  “You got this, Beth. You’re going to be okay.”

  He said it over and over again until my shakes went away, and my hands found the rock again, and I made it up to safety.

  Three hours later, we celebrated on the summit, Ben kissing me with sun-chapped lips, and everyone slapping me on the back though we still had a long way down.

  But it was Ben who got me up there.

  Without him, I wouldn’t have made it.

  That, and a lot of other things.

  I wake up on Saturday morning with one purpose: to tell Ben I’m pregnant. Come what may, whatever the consequence, he needs to know, and I need to tell him now. He’ll be angry that I didn’t say anything sooner. But I only really knew for sure last night before the town meeting, and with the chaos afterward, I didn’t get home until late, and an emotional conversation at that moment wouldn’t have helped either of us. So I climbed into bed and wrapped Ben’s arm around me, like we used to sleep, like we used to be, and he snuggled into my back and his lips grazed my neck, and we fell asleep without any words passing between us, either of revelation or regret.

  But even thinking about that is making excuses, so . . .

  “Ben,” I say, turning toward him.

  An empty bed greets me. There’s a Ben-shaped depression in the mattress, but no man to fill it. I glance at the clock. It’s only a little after seven. He must be eating breakfast and letting me get some sleep.

  I push myself up. I feel bone-weary tired. I can’t remember the last time I felt like this. Is it the pregnancy, the exertion of the fire, or the fact that I haven’t had a decent night’s sleep in months?

  Probably all three.

  My phone shakes on the bedside table. An incoming e-mail alert. They’re hourly now, the faint buzz of their arrival turning me over in my sleep. I know it will be bad without even reading it, but I read it anyway. Nothing’s changed. More acres consumed, almost no containment, more personnel, more costs, more water drops coming throughout the day. I know that today will be the day that makes or breaks the fire, which seems fitting. It might also take my house. But perhaps I can salvage my marriage.

  As if to confirm my gloomy thoughts, tendrils of smoke slip past the window like they’re haunting me. I’m so used to being around smoke I didn’t even notice the smell had seeped inside. I’ve caught the scent now, though. It’s marking its territory. It wants me, this town, this idyll three miles away. It will not discriminate if it is not stopped.

  Okay, Beth. Enough procrastinating.

  I turn toward the edge of the bed, and the room spins. I place my feet on the floor and take a few deep breaths. I rest my hand on my stomach. It’s warm to the touch. Is it possible I’m feeling the heat of the cocoon already forming inside me? How did I not notice it before? Given the state of my relationship with Ben, there’s only one conception date that makes sense, and it’s far enough back to make me embarrassed. Am I really so tone-deaf to my own body?

  The nausea passes, and though I may still be a shade greener than my eyes, I pull a bathrobe over my pajamas and run a brush through my hair, and I will have to do.

  I follow the smell of oven-baked croissants, suddenly ravenous, certain it will lead me to Ben. They’re his favorite way to start the day, something his mother indulges him with whenever she can.

  This feels like a good omen, that he must be in a happy mood. But as I near the kitchen, I hear raised voices. Ben’s and—surprisingly, given the hour—his mother’s. They stop talking when I enter. Ben’s face is white as a sheet above his favorite sleeping T-shirt. Grace looks miserable, and I know what Ben is going to say before he does.

  “Is it true?”

  And though this is not how I imagined this would go, I lift my chin and put every
thing I have into a smile of good news, and say, “Yes, it is.”

  CHAPTER 31

  Don’t Fence Me In

  Mindy

  If Mindy had been allowed to sleep on the floor outside the cell where they were keeping Angus, she would have.

  That’s what she used to do when Carrie was in the hospital: sleep in her room, curled up on an uncomfortable chair. Sometimes she’d end up on the floor, resting on several crummy hospital pillows scavenged from various rooms to break the hardness beneath her, wrapped in a scratchy blanket to keep out the chill. There was a bed in the adjacent room—Peter sometimes slept there when one of their mothers could stay with Angus—but that seemed too far away to Mindy. She needed to be as close as possible to her daughter. She would have crawled right up into the crib with Carrie if she fit.

  That’s how she felt knowing Angus was locked behind bars, lying on some mattress on a metal bed, his personal effects confiscated. She hadn’t been allowed to see the place where they put him yet, though she remembered from a conversation with Elizabeth that the cells were in the basement. Aboveground or belowground, just that word, cell, was awful, and she spent the night trying to prevent the images from every cop show she’d ever watched from racing through her mind. Just a few months before, she and Peter had binge-watched Orange Is the New Black, and she would’ve given anything to erase those scenes from her brain. The strip searches. The anonymous uniforms. The aching loneliness. The danger from the other prisoners. Surely Angus would be okay in the few hours she had to be separated from him?

  And in the morning, they’d have to let her in. They must let her in. If only she and Elizabeth were talking, Elizabeth would know what to do.