Heroes of the Frontier

by Dave Eggers

  “Did they have our keys?” Paul asked.

  “Yes,” Josie said.

  “Why?” Ana asked.

  “No idea,” Josie said. She followed them down the hill and toward the highway. Ahead of her she saw nothing strange—just a dozen or so red taillights blinking, beginning the process of leaving the area. The archery field was apparently not far from a small town, which was being cleared out by police. The silhouettes of a few people raced past but otherwise the scene was orderly. Josie followed the column of vehicles fleeing, but in the melee she lost Kyle and Angie.

  Where the dirt road met the highway, most of the cars were going left, but she saw a man waving madly. She wanted to follow the other cars but this man—now she saw he was in a yellow uniform—was waving her the other way so passionately that she obeyed, going alone. After a few hundred yards she stopped and looked in her rearview mirror, trying to decide if she’d done the right thing. But the mass of lights was vague. One car seemed to be turning around to follow her. She decided that the other vehicles had been misdirected before, and were now all being sent her way, the right way. She would be the leader, and, she assumed, the farthest from the fire.

  She drove on. For a mile or so there were no signs, but then she saw one, in the sudden headlights a startled green and silver, telling her the highway was three miles ahead. This seemed a good omen.

  “Is there a fire, Mom?” Ana asked.

  “Not near here,” Josie said.

  “Angie said it was close,” Paul said, and then seemed to realize he’d erred. He was usually so careful about keeping news of danger from his sister.

  “No,” Josie said. “Angie said it would take an hour to get here. That’s a long way off. And we’re driving away from it, so every mile we drive we double the distance. In an hour we’ll be two hours from it. In two hours we’ll be four hours from it. You understand? We’re heading the opposite way.”

  The road was empty, and Josie took this to mean she had been the first to leave the park, and would soon be the first on the highway. She felt like a lone spacecraft escaping an exploding planet—all was dark, all was quiet, and with her two children she had all she needed. In her jumbled mind, spinning with adrenaline, she briefly conflated the fire and this place with her own town, and pictured their house in the path of the fire, being taken by the flames, and she wondered if there was anything inside she would miss. She thought of a dozen things and then reversed herself, believing she would feel cleansed and free if everything inside was burned, gone, turned to ash.

  “Where do we go?” Paul asked.

  “We’ll drive a few hours to be sure we’re far enough, and then we’ll find a different place to sleep. Or we’ll park somewhere.” Josie pictured a parking spot near water, like the one they’d used their first night, when the trooper had sent them on their way. She wanted to be near water in case they—in case what? Fire overtook them and they needed to jump in the lake? And they would swim in this lake? Or fashion a watercraft and sail away? She decided the specifics didn’t matter. “Strange,” she heard herself say aloud.

  “What’s strange?” Ana asked.

  She thought it strange that she wasn’t seeing any cars, but then corrected herself, remembering that she was the first to leave the park, and that it was midnight and this was Alaska, and there wouldn’t be dense traffic on any night here, let alone with a wildfire at their heels.

  “Nothing,” she said.

  “What’s strange?” Paul asked.

  “How much I love you,” she tried.

  “No really. Tell us. Tell me.” And now Paul was in the passenger seat. He thought it was something only he should know.

  “No. Nothing’s strange.”

  “I don’t want to be alone back here!” Ana roared.

  “Mom,” Paul whispered. “Tell me.”

  “Everything’s strange,” Josie said.

  Now he was quiet. It was a plain and truthful statement that went nowhere. It was not the forbidden secret he’d hoped for.

  Josie turned on the radio and found Dolly Parton, “Here You Come Again,” and settled in.

  “Can you go sit with your sister?” she asked.

  He retreated to the back. “Is this Dolly?” Paul asked.

  Josie affirmed it was and turned it up. Ahead of her, she found the highway and took the exit. Though she wasn’t expecting traffic, she was surprised to see no cars at all, nothing in either direction. She felt even more like they were alone in space, in an ancient spacecraft, a loud spacecraft, but alone and with no directives to obey.

  And now, sneaking around a high hill a quarter mile ahead, there was a light. It was an orange glow peeking around the curve of land, like a sunrise, and Josie found herself checking the time to make sure it couldn’t be the sun. No. It was twenty after twelve. She slowed down. She assumed it was some safety thing, warning lights of some kind. She got ready to stop.

  The road wound around the blind turn and when she emerged, a bright orange stripe filled her view. The hillside was on fire.

  “Is that a fire, Mom?” Ana asked.

  It was a fire, a mile wide and depth without end, but it couldn’t be a fire. There was no one around. No police, no fire engines, no barriers. The road she was taking would more or less take her directly into the flames. Her spaceship was heading into the sun.

  “Mom, what are we doing?” Paul asked.

  Josie stopped the Chateau. Her heart was leaping but her eyes were mesmerized by the strangely passive sight of the wall of flames. A gust of white wind overtook her view, a burst of dust.

  The loud clapping of a helicopter emerged from somewhere above her, and a spotlight appeared on the hillside, and then focused on the road before her, and finally it flooded the Chateau. White light cut through the blinds, striping the faces of her children.

  “My arm’s glowing!” Ana said brightly.

  A voice barked something from above. She couldn’t make out the words. She opened the window and immediately choked. The air was acrid, poisoned. She coughed, gagged, and closed the window.

  “Mom, you have to turn around,” Paul said. “That’s what they’re saying.”

  Now Josie heard it, too. “Turn around immediately,” a woman’s voice said from above, sounding like a god both mechanical and annoyed. “Turn around and go. Move, now.”

  Josie did a three-point turn as the helicopter hovered above her and then she was on the road, going in the opposite direction. Over the next few miles the helicopter periodically swooped into view as if to confirm Josie was not some suicidal driver bent on self-destruction.

  “Remain on this road,” the voice said. “Do not turn around. Continue north.” The helicopter soon lost interest in her and they were alone and in the quiet black again.

  “Was that a real fire, Mom?” Ana asked.

  “Of course it was,” Paul said. “A forest fire. It was a million acres.”

  “Will it burn us now?” Ana asked.

  Josie told her no, it wasn’t a million acres, wouldn’t burn them. nothing could, and anyway they were far away already, that they were safe, would outrun any fire.

  —

  She drove north for an hour, two hours, and the kids finally fell asleep. There were no signs in this part of the state, no rest stops or signs of human settlements. It was madness to keep driving, having no idea if they were heading into the dark heart of the state—wasn’t it mostly national park, ruled by bears?

  Josie looked for any kind of accommodation or RV park, but found nothing. She drove on, and finally saw a sign that said BED AND BREAKFAST, and stopped. She checked the time. It was four thirty. They pulled into the dirt driveway, the kids waking to the change in speed. The property was a spread of about three acres set against the high bluff. The main house was a two-story family home with bicycles and tricycles out front, and even a child-sized motorized car, upon which Ana’s eyes had already seized. In the darkness Josie and the kids got out and looked around the house, t
rying to figure out which was the front, then rang the bell. No one answered.

  A small amber light was visible through the thicket behind the house and Josie guessed it to be the guest cottage. She led Paul and Ana to it. “Are we staying here?” Ana asked, and Josie thought of the strangeness of what they were doing, tramping through a path in the woods, to a cottage high on a bluff, long past midnight, alone.

  The cottage came into view and looked new. The amber light came from a sconce on the porch, happy with new chairs and heavy cushions. There was a light on inside, too, and Josie, while feeling half-sure that the cottage was occupied, and that there was some outside chance someone would appear, angry or armed, also had a distinct confidence that the cottage was empty. She peered in and waited for movement. There was none. It was an A-frame, and all within was visible and built of new pine: a tidy kitchen, a pair of couches and matching chairs, a loft above where a large bed, empty, was visible, covered in a thick yellow comforter.

  “We can’t go in there,” Paul said.

  “Why not?” Josie asked.

  “We didn’t ask anyone,” he said.

  Josie had already decided they would either sleep in this cottage or sleep in the Chateau while parked in the driveway. She would not drive again tonight, and this property seemed accustomed to guests.

  She turned the doorknob to the cottage. It opened. Inside it was clearly new, all of it well built, still reeking of cut wood and lacquer. It was solid, clean, seemingly never used. She walked in.

  “Come,” she said to her children. They were standing on the porch, Paul holding Ana back with one hand.

  “We tried to ask. They’re not home,” Josie said, then had an inspiration. Paul needed order, and needed to stay on the path of the moral right, and also, happily, he liked tasks and was proud of his handwriting. Josie wrapped it all together.

  “The way bed and breakfasts work,” she said, changing her tone to one of almost blasé authority, “is that often you arrive after the proprietors”—she knew Paul would not know the meaning, but the word would heighten her authority—“go to sleep. And sometimes they live nearby but not on the premises. So the standard thing to do”—now she was really blasé, she considered yawning—“is that you write a note and tape it to the front door.”

  “This front door?”

  “No, the main house. Can you be the one to do it, Paul?”

  Of course he would do it. He would write it, and fold it, and tape it to the front door, and would take on the work with seriousness and joy. The only trick would be to get him to do it soon. Given his exactitude and caution, tasks like this usually took him an hour. This had been mentioned at school—good and tidy work, but time management an issue.

  So they went to the Chateau, and while Paul sat at the banquette to work on the note—he needed no instruction; he knew the gist and intended to breathe new life into the form—Josie gathered their toiletries and packed a quick bag of clothes and toys. By the time she was ready Paul had finished the note.

  “Greetings! We saw your Sign. We are sleeping in your wunderfull Cabin. Thank you!”

  It seemed enough, actually, and Josie said so. Paul’s face fell.

  “Or you could keep going,” she said, “but we have to get moving.” She suggested that she and Ana set up in the cottage while Paul stayed in the Chateau to finish, and he didn’t even look up.

  “I’ll stay with him,” Ana said. She had moved next to Paul and was watching his work intently.

  Josie went back to the cottage and opened the door, smelling cleanliness and good taste. The house had been built with great attention to detail and to the overwhelming comfort of its visitors. There was a new refrigerator, new oven, new coffeemaker—in fact, there were a half-dozen appliances throughout the kitchen and not one looked as if it had ever been used. She opened the fridge and found that it was on, and cold, but empty, untouched.

  They were undoubtedly the first to stay there.

  She returned to the Chateau and found Paul and Ana unmoved, Paul’s tongue protruding meaningfully and his hand working, pressing too hard with his pencil—always too hard. She asked if he was almost done.

  Ana shook her head, as if she was his assistant and had been tasked with fending off distractions.

  “Almost,” Paul said, without looking up.

  “Can I see?” Josie asked.

  He said no, but in a few seconds he was finished.

  “Greetings!” the note said. “We saw your Sign. We are sleeping in your wunderfull Cabin. Thank you! We knocked and rang your bell but no one answered. Maybe you are sleeping? We will won’t wake you. Please don’t wake us in the morning. We saw a forest fire and we are tired. Thank you,

  “Josie, Paul and Ana

  “P.S. We will pay you for useing the Cabin.”

  —

  After Josie pointed out the will/won’t problem, Paul corrected the note and taped it to the front door of the main house. Josie led the kids back to the cottage, and inside they sat in every chair, and Ana quickly made her way up the ladder to the loft, and from above, pretended to fall. “Oh no!” she yelled. “I almost died.”

  The bed upstairs was big enough for them all. Ana kicked and squirmed in some expression of her comfort and joy, and Paul folded his pillow. Josie lay with her children, in this house they had more or less broken into. If someone showed up now, it would not look good. If someone arrived in a few hours, after she was asleep herself, it could be very bad. Would they read the letter Paul wrote? Josie had a thought they should have also left a note on the door to the Chateau, referring the reader to the cottage. Paul would have loved that, the sense of treasure-map control and continuity.

  But they were doing something acceptable, she told herself. It was within the bounds of appropriate and even legal behavior for the wayward. There was a time, was there not, when it was right and good to go on a journey, and find an unoccupied cabin in the woods, and spend the night there, and then clean it, leaving it as they found it, ready for the next tired traveler? All this should be allowed. She and her children, so comfortable and warm and tired in their loft bed smelling of cedar and pine, should be allowed.

  After reading from the cabin’s only magazine, Yachts and Yachting, Josie climbed down, locked the door, turned off the light, climbed back up the ladder, and the three of them huddled under the heavy comforter. Only then did they notice there was a skylight, and through the skylight they could see a sliver of the moon, the slightest of smiles.

  Ana was asleep in seconds, but Josie knew without looking in his direction that Paul was awake and taking in the moon.

  “I heard you with Ana the other day,” she said. “When you invented that story about the ring of birds around the world.”

  She could see the vague shape of Paul’s face as he turned to her. She thought he was smiling but couldn’t be sure. “You’re beautiful with her,” she said, and now she was crying.

  She was sure Paul was staring at her. He said nothing, but in the dark she sensed him telling her that he knew her. That he knew everything about her. How weak she was. How flawed. How small and human. He conveyed to her that he loved her this way. That she belonged in the world, was no heaven-sent and infallible being—such a thing would be harder for him and even more so for Ana.

  I know you were scared tonight, his eyes said to her.

  You were scared, too, she conveyed.

  You handled it well. And you brought us here. I understand why.

  Then, as if this exchange was finished or was too intense to continue, he turned to fall asleep.

  Josie closed her eyes and drifted off, and soon settled into a deep sleep, the comfort a kind she hadn’t felt yet in this burning state.

  XIII.

  THE HAZEL MORNING DROPPED through the skylight, featherlight and warm, and they were still alone, still in bed. It was almost ten. Josie sat up and looked through the window to the main house, seeing Paul’s note still there. No one had come. She stretched, feeli
ng like she’d slept in a cloud. It was the most decadent bed she’d ever known. She looked at Paul, who was still far gone and dreaming, under the covers, only his eyes and hair visible. Now Ana was awake, rubbing her eyes. Josie brought her finger to her mouth to ask Ana not to wake Paul, and Ana nodded—an unusual display of restraint. The three of them had gotten away with something here, something innocent, stealing a night of sleep.

  Paul’s head turned. “Are we getting up now?”

  “No,” Josie said, and closed her eyes, hoping he would, too.

  But the sound of Paul’s voice had activated Ana, and Ana was a comet—she could not turn back. She was up, and soon was standing on the bed, then under the covers again, kicking furiously, exultantly. Then she was up again, and sitting on Josie’s stomach, and dropping her heavy head toward Josie’s face, a wrecking ball covered in red fur.

  “I’ll get us some food,” Josie said.

  She went to the Chateau, passing the main house, still no sign of any occupants, no new vehicles. Inside the Chateau, the rear living area brought on a terrible sadness. Now more than before the vehicle was a filthy thing. They were filthy people who belonged in this filthy machine. But then again, they were beautiful creatures who were at home in an immaculate cabin on a hundred-foot bluff. She retrieved milk and cereal and apples and returned to the A-frame.

  Outside the cottage, birds were gossiping, the sun was rising. The wall of mountains beyond the bay took in the streaming sun with magnanimity. Josie and Paul and Ana ate, and washed the dishes with the faucet’s wonderful water pressure, and dried the dishes with the kitchen’s soft and absorbent paper towels. Josie decided they could stay another day. That they could make the beds and straighten the cottage such that it wouldn’t be obvious they had slept the night. They would linger on the grounds, see what came, and then, if by the afternoon no one had arrived, they could sleep there again. It was ideal here, considering anyone might be looking for them now: police, child services, Carl, someone sent by any one of them. Here their vehicle was hidden, they were hidden, there was no registry, no record of their presence. In fact, Josie thought that their reversals, their driving through the fire, might have served, unintentionally but brilliantly, to throw off whoever might have been on their trail.