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For my family, all of you
You might think about the people in the burning house, see them trying for the stairs, but mostly you don’t give a damn. They are too far away, like everything else.
—Annie Proulx, “A Lonely Coast”
ON THE MORNING of November 2, 1993, just a half mile up the road from where my mother was working as a stable hand, a fire started in Topanga Canyon, California. Fueled by Santa Ana winds gusting sixty miles an hour, the flames raced from the canyon’s summit—jumping switchbacks, bursting open chaparral, swallowing manzanita whole—and reached the Pacific Ocean in record time. Despite an unprecedented number of firefighters, trucks, and air tankers dropping water from the sky, the fire’s path and rate of consumption were dictated solely by the wind. From Calabasas to Malibu, residents fled, circumnavigating bottlenecked roads on foot, by horse, by Rollerblade. Those who had them boarded boats and watched from the water as the coastline burned, a glowing snake cutting through ash-thick air, day turned to night.
Mama once told me that if you cut down a canyon oak, you can see within its rings the marks of the fires it has withstood, wisps of smoke in the shape of half a heart.
Even before I had been told them, I could feel these stories unfurling within me, stories of events that happened before I was born, their heat still palpable.
In the end, the Old Topanga fire consumed over 18,500 acres, nearly four hundred homes, and the lives of countless animals and the people who tried to save them. That area of the Santa Monica Mountains is known as a fire corridor, its topography and ecology inviting such large-scale burns, yet this fire’s cause remains listed as arson.
They’ve never known who to blame.
TOPANGA CANYON, CALIFORNIA JULY 24, 1993
RORY—SHE WAS then just Rory, not yet anyone’s mother—saw it first and thought it was a dog. A small breed, a cairn or a spaniel pup that had snuck beneath a fence seeking food or affection only to get its first pat of the day from the fender of a speeding car.
It was not yet dawn and the canyon walls were denim blue under the moon’s soft light. Rory leaned forward to see the animal better and Gus, her stepfather, pulled the truck over. They’d come across roadkill nearly every morning. Deer, rabbits, even a coyote; bodies in the road, noses pointed toward their last intention.
Ever since school let out for the summer, Rory had been rising in the dark, waking Gus, wanting to work her full list of horses before the sun reached its scorching height.
“That’s a fox,” Gus said.
The rust-hued fur, the blackened lines of its muzzle and tail, were apparent in the beam of the headlights now. Rory sat back, relieved. She’d been imagining looking for a collar, having to call the number on the tag.
“I’ve lived here twenty-odd years and I’ve only seen one other. Had eyes the size of plums,” Gus said, making rings with his fingers, looking through them at Rory.
“Come on,” she said. “Quit playing. Let’s move it already.”
“I can get this one,” Gus said, putting his hand to the roof to lift himself out. He’d put on weight. Rory worried about his heart.
After the deluge of rain the winter before, Governor Pete Wilson had declared an end to six years of drought, but the lawns in the valley were only coming in green now because the rains that had hit the canyon ran down its parched crevices, never sinking in, going on to feed the L.A. River, the reservoir, and all those automatic sprinklers instead. The canyon’s creeks were dried to cracking already and Gus said the animals they kept finding had wandered from their beaten paths, hunting water. Burying them was beside the point—taking a vulture’s work—but he’d agreed they could stop and move the bodies, sparing them from being speed bumps the canyon’s tourists winced over.
Weeks ago, when they’d found the coyote, Rory felt compelled to say something—not a prayer so much as an apology on behalf of mankind—and she’d said a few words for every animal since. Gus obediently lowering his head, then mumbling, “That was good,” when Rory was through.
She closed her eyes now, readying words, but Gus was making a racket in the flat bed of the truck—a bucket dumped out, a bridle tossed aside, the metallic clank of bits and buckles. She turned around in time to catch the silken drape of the fox slipping from his hands and into the emptied bucket, the feline liquidity of its fur. She was still fixed on the bucket when Gus closed himself back into the truck.
“Is it alive?” she asked, gooseflesh riding her arms. “If it’s still alive we could—” She was imagining spoon-feeding it, warming it beneath saddle pads, nursing it back to health.
Gus tipped his hat off and gave a nearly imperceptible shake of his head.
“But,” Rory started. “If it’s dead—”
Gus was looking into the well of his hat. “You should say your little prayer—”
“My little prayer?” she said. “Why’s it in the bucket? Why would you keep it? You’re the one—”
She was about to remind him of the vultures, the cycle of life, the notions he’d fed to her, she was realizing, just to keep them moving. She stared hard at him as he pulled the truck back onto the road, the twitch of a secret smile beneath his beard. She put her boots up on the dash, knowing how he hated it. “She won’t like this,” Rory said.
He rolled down his window and ran his hand through his straw-gray hair. Both of them knew she meant Mona, Rory’s mother.
Ten years ago, when they moved into Gus’s house, Mona insisted he box up all evidence of his old hobby. Rory, just five years old then, had a particular fascination with the birds, sitting motionless on perches, not yet understanding what taxidermy involved. In all these years, she hadn’t wondered if he still did it, but he hadn’t given her reason to until now.
“Did you hear what I said?” she asked.
They were cresting the mountain, nearing the ranch, the day’s first light splintering through the trees, a sandy light.
“I did,” he said, and turned the truck down the driveway and under the ranch’s iron archway:
LEANING ROCK RANCH
EQUESTRIAN TRAINING AND BOARDING
They weren’t the first to arrive. The gold convertible Mercedes belonging to June Fisk, of the Fisk twins, was already pulled in alongside the L barn, the coveted space that stayed shadiest the longest. The other cars, each one dustier than the next, belonged to the men who lived and worked on the ranch; Tomás’s was the worst of all, up on cinder blocks, yet to run.
Gus pulled in next to the office and hoisted the parking brake, rocking them back in their seats. Behind them, the bucket tipped over with a fleshy thud.
“Jesus,” Rory said. “Can we please just bury it?”
“This place is a tinderbox,” Gus said, ignoring her, looking up at the hillside. Rory had heard his theories about the downpours, about the winter rains being what actually ushered in wildfires, by growing the ground fuel. “Just you wait,” Gus said. “It’ll be one of you.” He looked toward June Fisk’s Mercedes. “Lazy with your cigarettes, flicking a match out of the car. It won’t take much.”
“One of us?” Rory asked, with a laugh of disbelief. Each of the Fisk twins, June and her brother, Wade, owned horses more valuable than their cars combined and neither of them ever said more than a half sentence in Rory’s
direction. She made a stable hand’s wage of $3.75 an hour, exercising horses for people like them. People with air-conditioned homes and beach vacations, people who could afford a lack of commitment. Every other day, Rory had to ride Wade’s chestnut Hanoverian, Journey. “The Fisks don’t even know my name,” Rory said. “Besides,” she started, “I don’t smo—”
“I’ll tell you what,” Gus interrupted, lifting the toes of her boots and dropping them off the dash. “You don’t tell your mother about this”—he tipped his head toward the back of the truck—“and I won’t tell her you’ve been sneaking her cigarettes.”
“Seriously?” Rory said. She had taken maybe a dozen, but so carefully, and over weeks.
“Seriously,” Gus said, his eyebrows lifting with the challenge.
Beyond the ranch, beyond horses, what they shared most was a fear of Mona.
Rory got out of the truck with an itch to take the bucket from the back, to run with it into the hills and bury the poor animal, but instead she closed the door and leaned back in through the window, mocking his country drawl. “Mighty kind of you, Mr. Scott.”
* * *
THAT AFTERNOON, THE boy got away from Sarah Price in the market.
She was reading the ingredients on a box of fish sticks—busy hating Everett for requesting such plebeian food—when she looked down and saw the boy was gone. The boy. Sarah thought of Charlie as the boy only when they were having a bad day. She could not bring herself to appreciate the dichotomy of the toddler brain: at any given hour of the day he was madly dashing away from her, but in the pitch of night he insisted, repeatedly, incessantly, on having her at his side. And now she wasn’t completely sure when she had last seen him. She was exhausted, but not in the mopey, leaden-foot way people tended to be in this heat, rather in a deeper, more hardwired way: a compulsion to get out and shake loose of something. Everett wished she’d have the nanny, Carmen, do the shopping, but she knew he wasn’t being considerate so much as being fearful of some rogue paparazzo taking her picture looking disheveled in this sad little market, then splashing it on the cover of ET.: “You’d Never Know She’s a Movie Star’s Wife.” No matter, she liked the sifting and choosing, the mindless accomplishment of it. And this market was never crowded. Sarah loathed crowds, lines, gatherings of any kind, really.
The boy. Charlie. My boy. An emptiness was opening behind her ribs, a sinkhole of space. Charlie was a beautiful boy, unmistakable. His grandfather’s copper-red hair and emerald eyes and his father’s toothy grin. Even if someone didn’t know he was Everett Price’s son, she would worry. He stirred a need in people to touch him, to pick him up. To take him?
She heard his laugh—his impish snicker—before she saw him. He was in the produce area, looking up at a man in a white, blood-mottled apron: a butcher, bent over Charlie with a ghoulish grin. It took Sarah another stride, a split second, to see the slice of orange tucked between the butcher’s lips. Even as she had him in her arms again, Charlie was still laughing. The butcher pulled the fruit from his mouth. “He’s an easy laugh, that one.”
Sarah was working to keep ahold of him, the boy pushing and twisting against her, wanting, as usual, to be down again. She pressed her face to the seashell of his ear: “Be still.”
“But they can get away from you sometimes, can’t they? I was about to walk him back to you … Mrs. Price.”
“Of course you were,” Sarah said abruptly, turning away, resenting that pause before he said her name. That he’d said her name. He didn’t know her.
Had she felt liked here at all? They’d moved from Beverly Hills, where they were recognized and respected, to this gauche ogling. She’d been the one who wanted to move. To get away—as away as they could and still be near enough to the studios, the necessary parties; god help her. Though now, of course, Everett had been cast in a film that was shooting in Toronto. And he’d been in Vancouver all of June, and New York the month before that. Did anyone even make movies in Hollywood anymore?
Sarah thought better of how she’d spoken to the butcher. “Of course you were,” she said, over her shoulder, with renewed warmth. Charlie was twisting in her arms, still trying to see him.
“Paul,” the butcher said. “My name’s Paul, Mrs. Price.”
“Thank you, Paul,” she said, and then for some reason she kept on walking, right past the register, still talking—“Thank you, so very much, thank you, Paul”—she was rambling. “He just needs me, you see. He wanders off and”—she was backing out the door—“I’m his mother. So, we have to be on our way.” Like a crazy person; this was Everett’s voice in her head.
She’d gotten to the car and had Charlie in his seat before realizing that she still had the basket, that she’d set it down on the seat beside him as if it were her purse, the fish sticks there on top.
* * *
IF NOT FOR his finding the fox, this had been just another day of work, of resenting the tightness of his boots in this heat, teaching one lethargic jumping lesson after another. Gus’s last class was a training-level group of prepubescent girls on an older string of horses, all taking their fences as if weighed down in glue. Into the speaker system, he chided: “Ease up on the reins, ladies. Are you looking to jump these fences or back up over them?”
He’d seen Rory going up the trailhead on her mare not long ago. He needed to get her a ride home. He’d already decided how he wanted to articulate the fox; curled as if sleeping, one eye open above the bush of her tail.
“Okay, that’s enough for today,” he said into the loudspeaker, and every apple-cheeked kid dropped her reins as the horses turned for the barn.
In the distance, vultures swept black circles above the god-size fist of sandstone that teetered on the westernmost hillside above the ranch. Carlotta Danvers had named the ranch Leaning Rock because of it, back in the seventies, when she first bought the land, being sharp enough then to know naming the threat destigmatized it. It had been three years since her Alzheimer’s diagnosis, yet Gus still aimed to please her with the way he ran things.
As soon as the ring emptied, Gus called to Jorge, his head stable hand, who stepped over the fence and began walking out the fire hose. With the water rationing lifted, Gus had the men hosing down the rings and the walkways throughout the day. Twenty years ago, he’d taken a job here exercising horses, same as Rory did now, never anticipating he’d become the manager, let alone the lead trainer, but here he was. There’d been articles written about him: “The Cowboy Equestrian.”
Gus briefly considered asking Jorge to take Rory home, but June Fisk was still around. And Gus didn’t like what Rory had said, that the Fisks didn’t even know her name.
“It shouldn’t be much out of your way,” Gus said. He’d found June putting her horse up for the night, the sky casting around in pinks and oranges. “I’d sure appreciate it.”
“No, I’d be happy to,” June said. “For sure.”
June didn’t always clock so many hours at the barn, but Gus knew she was getting ready for Fresno—conditioning Palmetto in the hills, taking a dressage lesson in the afternoon. And it wasn’t unusual for kids to mill around the barn anyway, lingering by the vending machine, watching the men clean up after their horses. Some of the girls flirted with the stable hands, especially Tomás, the youngest, as if practicing for boys at school, but June wasn’t that sort. She wasn’t so aimless. Not unlike his Rory. Wade was another story, always zipping in and out in that open-sided blue jeep of his, friends in flip-flops piled in the back, whistling to him to hurry up, startling the horses. If Wade had half of his sister’s dedication; if they’d had to share a car, he’d at least be here more often, but Gus registered there was some friction there, between the twins. These were vague thoughts: horseshit, forked and tossed. What mattered most was that June was reliable and willing to take Rory home. Maybe they’d become friends.
Rory was back in the L barn, cleaning tack, working lotion into the leather like it was a contest. Her mare, Chap, nickered to Gus fr
om her stall.
“June here’s offered to give you a ride home, Rory.”
“You’re staying, then,” Rory said, not looking up.
“Now, Rory.” He sighed.
“Now, Gus,” she said. For a time after he and Mona had married, she’d called him Dad. He’d been Gus for a long time now, but right then it sounded all wrung out, the same way Mona said it. “I know why you’re staying,” she told him. Before he could respond, she turned to June, obliging as ever: “Just gimme a minute to wash,” she said, displaying the palms of her hands.
“For sure,” June said again. Her little gold Mercedes had white leather seats.
* * *
JUNE FISK WAS gay. Everyone knew this—everyone except Gus—and they also knew it was the source of a rift in the Fisk family. Despite this or maybe because of it, June wore a necklace with a small charm of two entwined Venus figures, a piece of jewelry that Rory had heard she revealed whenever one of the younger boarders got up the nerve to ask if “it” was true. So, when Gus said June was going to drive her home, Rory hesitated, picturing Mona, a cigarette dangling from her lips, taking in June’s car as they pulled up, her expression souring as if June’s goddesses of love were entwined on the body of the Mercedes itself. Hay fever kept Mona at a merciful distance from Leaning Rock during the day, and her job took her into the valley every night, usually just as Gus and Rory were getting home. But if she was still at home now, when June pulled up, Rory knew that through some invisible vibration in the air, she would feel Mona’s opinion of June, her fancy car, and her orientation. Mona’s moods and opinions took up an inordinate amount of space in their house, but lately, Rory had noticed an energy within herself, something spirited, maybe even angry, and she’d been letting this new force make different choices for her.
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