by Cai Emmons
The road snakes up Topanga Canyon, past houses camouflaged among thirsty sycamores and live oaks. Everything wears a patina of dust and exhaustion. There are too many stands of eucalyptus trees, their leaves like castanets in the wind, cracking audibly with dehydration. She has read that fire explodes these trees, sending their seeds in all directions. She looks for wildlife but spots only an occasional looping hawk.
Around every bend she expects to be stopped by fire crews, but no one stops her. The firefighting so far is mostly aerial—helicopters dropping blankets of flame retardant—so she continues winding slowly up, up, up, the ghost of Diane poking at the edges of her consciousness, calling up needles of guilt for the hasty way she left, breaking things off, refusing to engage in more conversation. But along with the guilt there is still anger—Diane was so damn dismissive, almost mocking. The upside is that Bronwyn now is beholden to no one, shackled by nothing, belongs only to herself. Her colloquy with the fire is all that matters. She thinks of Earl and his idea that tornadoes coalesce evil forces. Surely fire must be the same.
She pulls over at a turnout and drinks some water. Her bare arms are slimy with sweat. The phone rings. It’s Matt, who has been calling incessantly, and who she has been studiously avoiding. She gulps more water and watches a squirrel scrabbling in the underbrush as the phone rings and rings.
30
The first thing Matt’s eyes take in is the absence of her decrepit orange Volvo; then he sees the charred lawn, not just singed brown by the long heat wave, but truly black. Aggrieved, burned black. The cabin, however, bears no visible signs of damage. He steps cautiously from his car, a black Chevy he got cheap from a friend. (“The psoriasis machine” Josh used to call it for its numerous amoeboid spots lacking paint.) The driveway’s hot gravel presses against his tender bare soles. His feet have been bare for the entire drive up from Florida—too hot for shoes.
He knocks on the front door for protocol’s sake, just to make sure, though the absence of the car makes him pretty sure she isn’t there. When she doesn’t respond to his third knock he rounds the side of the cabin on a swath of unburned grass. What has allowed fire to come so close without devouring the entire cabin? The rest of the trapezoid lawn, from river to driveway across to the trees that border the edge of the property, is totally black. The trees have also escaped burning. It’s as if a fire retardant has been sprayed in certain places. If there were a neighbor nearby he would ask what has happened, but there isn’t a single house in view on her side of the river, and he isn’t sure how to get to the two houses on the other side. Does she know about this fire? Now there is all the more reason to get in touch.
The river drifts by, oblivious and undisclosing, and the drone of insects crescendos around him. Underfoot the fried grass has shrunk and separated to reveal the bald earth beneath. Now what? He wonders about himself, where this sudden fissure in his life will take him. In the past he never would have traveled all this distance merely to apologize and clear his name. He dials her number for the umpteenth time and for the umpteenth time he gets no answer. The simple truth: he has to see her.
He returns to the house and presses his face against the screen of the porch. The door is locked with a weak latch and it would be easy to push inside, collapse on the couch and wait for her there. But, much as he wants to snoop, he can’t quite bring himself to go in—finding him inside would only provide more fodder for her view of him as dishonorable. Still, he can’t leave either. It has taken him three long days of driving from Florida to get here, sleeping in his car at rest stops along the way, cleaning only his armpits and face and teeth, changing his shirt a couple of times. He rehearsed his speech to her as he drove, and he decided that, no matter how she reacts—whether or not she accepts the fact that he didn’t write the article—he won’t outstay his welcome. Finding her gone is such an anticlimax. He could seek her out at work though he knows that is no place for talking. He tells himself to go away, find a motel room, clean up and get some solid sleep, then come back the next day, looking and feeling better.
He can’t peel himself away. Any minute she might come home and it feels like his last chance to connect with her. When he leaves New Hampshire he will return to Rhode Island again, Providence this time, where he plans to set out on a month-long trip with his old friend Buzz. Buzz went to college in Montana and is going back there to visit some old buds. Buzz’s head is screwed on right and driving west with him will be a good way for Matt to reclaim his sanity and make some decisions. He hopes a road trip will cure him of this sudden and hopeless infatuation.
He idles under the shade of the low eaves, waiting for something to happen: for Bronwyn to drive up, for a local to arrive and explain about the fire, for fate to collar him and take him by the hand, but the only thing that happens is some kind of hawk—or is it an eagle—swoops low and hungrily over the water. He calls again, futile as it is.
She does answer. Her voice is distant, distracted, electric as ever. He fears she’s about to hang up. Feeling the ball briefly in his court, he blurts forth.
“It’s Matt. Something odd has happened at your place. The grass here is all burned up.”
Clutching the elusive thread of her, he waits for her response, and when it comes it isn’t what he expects. “You’re where?“
31
The canyon’s summit is deserted, but for a coiled rattle snake basking in wan sunlight. Smoke—livid, dun-colored—foams up from the woods to the east. Every once in a while a spire of flame leaps into view. In one place flames form a thin line like a row of sharp eye teeth. Looking south, the ocean is pale blue and flat.
A Cal Fire helicopter sputters by, disgorging red retardant from its belly, a dust that doesn’t fall but hangs in indecision amidst dueling currents of air. Over two weeks this fire has been burning. Twice it was contained, twice it has reasserted itself. Surrounding homeowners are furious, demanding a more aggressive approach. Conservation groups are advocating a let-it-burn strategy. Cal Fire is attempting to achieve a compromise: a certain amount of judicious burning while assuring the public that human lives will not be put at risk and property damage will be kept to a minimum. No one is happy.
She stands at the canyon’s summit, speculating, planning. What if she were to bring on rain—would that douse the fire? It would have to be heavy rain to kill the fire entirely, and heavy rain could cause a slew of other problems. The landscape whines around her, teaching her about itself, the scent of burn passes through her like a veil of coarse sandpaper. There are paths here, but no path will deliver her straight to the flames. She’ll have to bushwhack to get there, through sedge and poison oak, over boulders and through dry creek beds. She could encounter more rattlesnakes, coyotes. She will have to remain alert. Long pants, lots of water.
Each time a new spike of flame comes into view she pictures an arsonist, a young man damaged by his past and embittered by his limited life options, invested in nothing and ready for the world to end.
The wind comes in gusts, an arid desert wind, filled with dust and organic debris, threaded together with heat. She floats like a chrysalis waiting to open.
The reconnaissance is over. It’s time. She rises from bed at first light, steps out to the motel parking lot and sniffs. She senses the fires on both sides of town becoming restive after a night of relative calm. In the smoky dawn light everything looks ethereal. The bougainvillea and jacaranda blooms are tinged with deceptive pallor. By noon their electric color will be strong enough to sear retinas.
She fills a small backpack with water and protein bars, and sets out into the somnolent morning. The day is slow to rouse itself. She drives down Sunset to the Pacific Coast Highway. The ocean whispers, but she hears it only through one ear. The other ear is tuned to the fires. She takes the turn for Topanga Canyon. This time the road is closed a mile or so shy of the summit. Two guards in helmets and Cal Fire vests are stationed at the roadblock, letting only residents through. She turns around and drives back
down a stretch of road until it curves and takes her beyond the guards’ sight. There she pulls off to the shoulder and parks.
Into the brush she dives, concealed under her hoodie. Long pants. Running shoes. A modicum of protection against thorns, poison oak, snake bite. The fire’s hiss in her blood. A beckon. A dare.
She has been walking for five minutes or so when a house appears, tiered and nestled into the landscape, treehouse-like. A wilderness hideaway made entirely of wood. A fire’s dream. She wonders if its inhabitants have evacuated. Just as she is wondering this, a door opens and a woman in a salmon bathrobe steps onto the deck. Bronwyn tries to conceal herself behind the slender trunk of a willow-like tree. The woman turns on a faucet at the side of the house, uncoils a hose, and sets about spraying the deck, the roof, and the surrounding vegetation within the water’s reach. Bronwyn darts forward, trying to move quietly, but the woman spots her.
“Hey!”
Bronwyn continues, faster now, but the woman’s voice lassos and stops her. They face each other through a hundred feet of branches and scrub. Bronwyn feels feral and whiskered. She understands how she appears, a little frightening to be honest, a little off kilter. A moment of silence passes, but for the hiss of water splashing onto the deck.
“What are you doing here?” the woman calls. “This is private property.”
The tug of the fire. The tug of human decency. Caught between, Bronwyn stalls. The woman moves closer to the deck’s banister, squinting. “Come here for a sec?” Her tone is imploring. “I won’t do anything.”
Bronwyn has not forgotten the give-and-take of human interaction at its best. She has not fallen entirely to the side of the unsocialized. She approaches the house, twigs and branches cracking as she brazens through, the fire’s sibilance alive in her blood. She stands below the deck and pushes off her hood to give the woman a moment to inspect her fully, see her harmlessness.
“What’re you doing here?” the woman demands. She is lean and tall and blonde, and close to Bronwyn’s age. “You’re trespassing, you know.”
“I’m on a walk,” Bronwyn says. “I’m sorry. I didn’t realize this was private property.”
“Are you crazy? The fire is right out there and it’s moving fast. Can’t you smell it? Don’t you follow the news? They want us all to get ready to evacuate and they’re dropping a bunch of dangerous chemicals and it’s bad—it’s like Armageddon.”
Bronwyn nods.
“Why would you even—? Hey, you’re not the person who started this fire, are you?”
Bronwyn feels like a creature at gunpoint. Fight or flight? She didn’t plan for this. She expected creatures to be in her path, not humans. She holds the woman’s gaze, concentrates her breath, and pictures herself leaping high as a deer and disappearing into the brush, but then she thinks of the woman calling for help and sending authorities in pursuit. The woman’s eyes, the same greenish color as her own, leak terror.
“I didn’t start the fire. I wouldn’t do that. You’ll have to believe me.” Bronwyn hesitates, trying to signal good will through the rain of the woman’s distaste.
Sighing, the woman drops her hose and goes to the side of the house to turn off the water. The fire summons Bronwyn more urgently and she thinks of leaving, but the woman is already coming back. Her reedy legs, her floating gait, the drift of her long hair—recognition hits. Bronwyn can’t bring up a name, but the woman acts in movies.
“You don’t look like an arsonist.” Her voice is deep and patrician, with a hint of an English accent. “As if I know what an arsonist looks like.”
“I just realized who you are,” Bronwyn says. “But you’ll have to excuse me, I don’t remember your name.”
The woman smiles with a touch of condescension. Perhaps everyone knows her name. “Lyndon Roos.”
“Yes. Now, I remember.” A series of vampire movies Bronwyn hasn’t seen, but they’ve been publicized everywhere.
“And you are—?”
“Nancy Fenwick.”
“So, tell me, Nancy—should I call the police? I could have them here in an instant you know, especially if I mention my suspicion of arson.”
“Have a look.” Bronwyn sloughs her backpack and empties its contents onto the ground. Two bottles of water, the protein bars, some nuts, a bandana. She peels back the pockets of her jeans and hoodie. “There’s nothing here.”
Lyndon flutters her hand, embarrassed, not the least bit interested in pawing through Bronwyn’s things. She cinches her salmon robe tighter. Bronwyn kneels and repacks her backpack. Clouds of suspicion and smaller pockets of trust hang in the smoky air between them. A chime at the end of the deck is plucked by a gust of wind. The fire’s whine surges. The instinct to flee is nearly impossible to resist. Concentrating hard, Bronwyn turns to the woman and holds the woman’s probing eyes gently in her own green-eyed gaze. She excavates for the woman’s heart, the open heart of an actress, accustomed to inhabiting different personas and feeling strong emotions. She takes the plunge.
“I’m going to tell you something a little strange.”
Lyndon listens, her face placid, betraying nothing. When Bronwyn is done speaking, Lyndon’s expression has not changed. “I’m a Buddhist, I’ve heard some odd things in my life, but—are you for real?”
Bronwyn blinks, her thoughts coagulating before they can morph into words.
“Your plan is to go out there and—put the fire out yourself? You really believe you can do that?”
Bronwyn, nearing her edge, manages a nod. The rising volume of the blaze is all she can hear. “I have—to—go. Now.” She turns and, half running, hurries into the underbrush, refusing to worry further about Lyndon Roos and the police.
She travels quickly, gauging the miles to the fire. It is just past eight. She should have started earlier, before dawn, to reach and confront the fire before it is fully enlivened again by the day’s developing heat. Her mind is a jumble. The rocks and trees cough up shapes of rabbits and deer. A dark blotch on the hillside above her appears to be a bear, but it is too distant to see for sure. She didn’t think there were bears in these woods. Mostly she keeps her gaze on her feet, placing them down with deliberation, steering them over and around the rocks, sidestepping to avoid sudden patches of poison oak.
After an hour or so she stops in a clearing and sits on a rock and drinks some lukewarm water. The sky is murky with smoke, the air electrified. She’s getting close. There is a singular line of connection between her and the fire, and though she cannot see it yet, she feels it tunneling into the dusty ravines, over the caked earth, fractious and full of reproach. The fire’s anger infects her.
She gets up and soldiers on. The day has come into its own, bringing a deafening volume to every sound, her footfalls, the branches brushing across her torso, a lone squawking crow, a trio of clacking helicopters spilling more of their toxic snow, the braying of the fire itself. Heat spools around her, a visible current. She pulls the neck of her hoodie over her nose, wishing she’d brought a mask.
There it is, just below her, across the ravine. An entirely different beast than the fires she made on her lawn in New Hampshire. This is a colossus. Terrifying. Apocalyptic. Balls of flame launch into the air like grenades. Smoke balloons are borne overhead on the prevailing wind, becoming part of an Olympian pyrocumulus cloud. Blackened trees jut up from the moil like skeletons. Such hutzpah in those flames leaping and pirouetting and backbending like seasoned performers. The sound is unlike anything she’s ever heard, animalistic, open-mouthed and mean. Everywhere branches, entire trees, splinter and crash. Earl was right—like the tornados, this fire seems to embody evil. She is paralyzed by the sheer magnitude of it all. It is far bigger than her meager talent can handle.
The dry air snaps. Derisive laughter cackles up from the heat. Gremlin-like faces resembling Bruce and Jim peer out from the flames, grinning, taunting. She feels targeted. Her head swims, her brain is in danger of melting, her will falters. Dizzy, she sits on the
ground. What overreaching has brought her here to the brink of her own demise? She needs to go, return to the actress’s house though that is now hours away on foot. She needs help from someone. But all the usual sources of rescue are well beyond reach. Rescue has always been an illusion.
She grabs one toxic lungful of breath after another, incapable of wrenching her eyes away from the blaze which lolls and loiters one moment then lashes forth again. For all its fickleness the fire is devouring the woods with the steady determination of termites. Demonic as it appears, it is transfixing, too—beautiful.
She stands, removes her hoodie, wipes sweat from her face, and confronts the blaze. Something levitates her, a crescendo within, a thought or a feeling unleashed, an intuition; it swoops through her chest and her entire body, overruling all else. Images swarm past her retina. Her long-dead mother, the river behind her house, the owl that visits, Archie and his banana, dear dead Earl, the Buddhist actress, the smoke, the flame. All the electrons of these things are integers, part of a whole.
The tone arrives on her next intake of breath and she sails into the chaos, transmuting herself, becoming part of the fire’s viscera until she pulses at its core, dispersing the oxygen, squeezing the fire’s life, willing its death. She is a swashbuckling toddler on newly-found legs, buffeted yet bold.
32
The fire’s sudden retreat dominates the news. Matt sprawls on the futon in his friend Metcalf’s bare apartment a block from Venice Beach, watching TV, flipping from station to station. They all say the same thing. Sudden. Unprecedented. Fox News uses the word miraculous. They all show the same short Cal Fire clip, taken from a helicopter, in which a monumental wall of fire shrinks, as if someone has pressed rewind. Matt is mesmerized, as is all of LA.
