Properly Dark

My memory’s not what it should be. Not for someone my age. Sometimes I forget where I parked my truck. But that’s not even it: I’ll be looking at it, standing there in the parking lot, holding grocery bags, and not recognize it. Sometimes I repeat myself, get lost inside my own tangled sentences. When the guys at the bar start up a conversation, I can tell they regret it. They stare at their own lonely faces in the mirror behind the bar and start to clear their throats.

But far-off things, I can remember them like yesterday. Like today. Like I could walk up the steps to a burned house and step inside.

I can still hear the radio playing on Mom’s old Sears boombox, the one she’d kept on the kitchen counter since I was a little kid. That last morning, it was playing a country song, some goofy shit about a guy spilling coffee down the front of his jeans. Not really worth writing a song about, you’d think. I was sitting across from her at the kitchen table. She was looking at the wall behind me, pushing a wad of toast and Cheez Whiz around her mouth with her tongue. The song wasn’t doing much for her either.

I watched her, waiting for her to swallow.

The song ended. The DJ came on and read a weather bulletin with the same cheesy voice he used in ads for Dale’s Dog Wash: “Bad news, campers! Conditions are dry as a bone. The wildfire hazard is EXTREME. That means no campfires allowed until further notice. But that’s okay because we’ve got all the fun you need here on 1212 LAKR. Let’s keep the weekend rockin’ with the latest from Blake Shelton. A little tune called ‘Drink on It.’”

“There’s already one going out by the pulp mill.”

“A what?” I grunted.

“A fire. It’s coming this way. Into town.”

“Where’d you hear that?” I shoved the last spoonful of my Corn Pops into my mouth.

“I saw it. When I closed my eyes to sleep last night.” She scratched at her neck, where the skin had gone a blotchy red, the way it did when a bill collector called or when she fought with my stepdad, Kenny.

“Jesus Christ. Don’t start,” I said, and dropped my spoon into the bowl. I pushed my chair back over the white and blue linoleum, harder than I needed to, and crashed my dishes into the sink. I cranked the tap wide open until the hiss of water was all I could hear and the front of my white Cincinnati Reds T-shirt was wet against my stomach.

Maybe they’d started her on new painkillers again. She could get a little funny on them. A few months before, we’d found her out in the garage, asleep on the concrete floor by the lawnmower.

She waited until I turned the tap off and said, “Come and help me get up.” So I walked her to the living room slow and careful, like I was helping an old lady cross the street.

Mom fell asleep in her usual place on the couch under the Ducks Unlimited watercolor. A couple of mallards, a male and female. I sat on the floor and flipped through the TV with the sound off: golf, NASCAR, cooking shows, something about the royal wedding. Nothing good.

I could hear Mom snoring a little as I closed the front door to the house. The strength of the wind surprised me, banging the neighbor’s wooden gate against the fence and turning the damp spot on my stomach cold and itchy.

Kenny and I jammed stuff into Mom’s maroon Ford Topaz: Grandma Janice’s crocheted bedspread, Kenny’s suitcase, Mom’s cane, and a Canadian Tire bag full of her pills. I got Mom into the front passenger seat and myself into the back. The Topaz had a history of stalling out, so I held my breath when Kenny turned the key.

“Good girl,” he said to the car as the engine started.

We sped toward the Highway 2 turnoff, the only exit from our end of town. We pulled up to a traffic jam.

“Shit. Forgot my cigarettes. Gotta go back,” Kenny chuckled.

Mom and I were quiet. He drummed his fingers on the steering wheel as we waited for the line of vehicles to move.

The guy ahead of us got out of his truck and jogged up the road to investigate, his blue and yellow oilfield coveralls disappearing in the smoke. When he came back a few minutes later, Kenny honked the horn and waved him over.

“What’s the holdup?”

“RCMP have the exit blocked off for some reason,” the guy shook his head and panted through the driver’s side window.

“Those idiots are going to turn us into fucking shish kabobs,” Kenny coughed.

“I gotta get back in the truck. Cinders’re flying all over hell out here.”

Heat penetrated the glass, and my cheeks swelled with blood. I stared forward, sweat stinging my tongue, and concentrated on the child-size Boston Bruins bag on the floor between my feet. Uncle Frank gave it to me as a kid, though I never liked hockey. I don’t know why, but I’d always held onto it.

My thigh muscles ached. A message throbbed in the prehistoric part of my brain: get out and run. I grabbed the door handle and fought the urge to pull it open, my sweaty fingers gripping hot plastic. I kept looking down, trying to catch my breath, which was coming fast and hard like hiccups.

Boston Bruins. Boston Bruins.

Through all this, Mom sat quietly with her hands in her lap. At the time, I thought she was being smug. See? I told you. Looking back, I bet she’d taken one of her sedatives early, or an extra dose of her painkillers.

Finally, the cops figured out that they’d blockaded the wrong exit—a blunder people probably still talk about in town—and the line of vehicles flooded onto the highway. Everyone sped south together toward the city without thinking, like a flock of frightened birds. I tried to get a last look at the town through the back window, but all I could see were two headlights like red eyes chasing us through the charcoal smoke.

We drove until Kenny could get a cell phone signal, then spent the night on the side of the highway. He heard they were letting people stay in an old Walmart parking lot outside of town—the one missing the big ‘W’ from its sign.

My cousin Dale drove Uncle Frank’s old Chinook motorhome up from the city, and we crammed ourselves inside. Dale said not to worry about returning it. People brought in all sorts of trailers and campers. There was an orange VW from the ‘70s right across from us and a Boler trailer that looked like a pale blue throat lozenge near the middle of the lot. On the outskirts, near the bush line, a few people were sleeping in tents.

We found out right away that the motorhome toilet didn’t flush. They didn’t get port-a-potties or showers set up for the first few days, so we had to use a plastic ice cream bucket. Kenny said it was good for me, that “having to deal with your own shit builds character.”

Right away, word got around camp about what was left in town. Grandma Janice’s house was gone. Most of our neighborhood had disappeared. Kenny’s aftermarket auto parts shop—Fantasy Grills—had burned too, along with the Subway franchise next door. His 2000 Victory Red Silverado was destroyed. He’d left it outside Fantasy Grills overnight to go to Trappers Lounge with his buddy Mel.

We saw a photo of it on the front page of the Edmonton Journal—the Red Cross was handing out newspapers. A firefighter stood next to its charred skeleton, looking like he was about to cry. The headline read something like “Fire In The Sky: A Day of Destruction.”

Kenny cackled and smacked the paper with the back of his hand. “Shit, yeah. The old gal is famous!”

A couple of days after we arrived, a little girl showed up on the steps of the Chinook and asked me for a popsicle. I couldn’t have told you how old she was; I wasn’t good with kids.

“I’ve got whatever you got. They gave us all the same food hampers.”

“Who did?”

“I don’t know. The food people. Red Cross?”

I looked down at her. She was wearing miniature red rubber boots. It hadn’t rained in months. There was a sticker on her arm, a pink unicorn, peeling at the edges.

“We don’t have a freezer in here anyway.”

Mom snored softly behind me.

“I’ve probably got to go back inside.”

“I’m Cheyenne.”

“Oh yeah,” I said, clearing my throat. “Where are your parents?”

“What’s your name?”

“Uh, Travis.” I wasn’t sure if I should be talking to her. I stuck my head out of the door to see if anyone was watching. “You out here alone?”

She walked up the stairs past me into the motorhome like I’d invited her in.

“I have a question,” she said.

“Okay,” I spoke quietly.

“What happened to all the animals?”

“In the fire, you mean?” My stomach flinched. I hadn’t gotten around to thinking about the animals yet. “Oh, they all got away. They’re smart. They know when something bad’s going to happen.” My heel bounced against the linoleum floor.

Behind me, Mom made a gurgling sound. I turned to make sure she was okay. She was slumped over, a crossword magazine open on the table in front of her. When I looked back at Cheyenne, there was someone with her. A woman in the doorway. She was young, maybe two or three years older than me. She had dark eyes and a heart-shaped face, like a pixie from some cartoon I must’ve watched as a kid.

“Sorry if she’s bugging you. She’s getting pretty bored out here.”

“Yeah, there’s not much to do. There barely was before.” I noticed she had freckles. Something about her—I can’t say exactly what—made my guts hurt. My face got hot. I looked at the floor.

“I’m Kayla. I guess we’re neighbors.”

It turned out Kayla and Cheyenne lived a few streets behind us in town, in a row of old single-wide trailers on odd-shaped lots, right before the highway. I’d never seen her before—was sure of it—but I knew her street. The Fish Cops tranquilized a bear there a couple of summers back. An adolescent, probably on its first stretch alone without its mother. I’d plonked my bike on the sidewalk and watched them hoist the drugged bear into the back of a Fish and Wildlife truck, its limbs flopping like a drunk’s. I asked her if she remembered.

“No,” she laughed and raised her eyebrows. “I guess I missed that.”

“There was a picture of it in The Lakesider and everything.”

She shook her head.

“Yeah,” I shrugged. “I mean, it wasn’t that exciting, really.”

“Well, let’s get going,” Kayla said to Cheyenne.

The little girl grabbed my hand. “Can he come over?”

“Sure. Why not?” Kayla smiled at me.

“I don’t know,” I said. “I need to stay here with my mom.”

Mom lifted her head and opened one eye. I jumped a little when she started to talk. “Go and have some fun, Travis.”

Kayla’s place was hot, despite the fan whirring by the sink. It smelled like warm piss and something sweet, like baby powder or skin cream. On the kitchen table, a chubby baby slept, drooped over in a car seat. Kayla stood a few feet from me. I couldn’t look her in the face, but I still remember all the details: her skinny kid’s legs, toenails painted dark blue or maybe purple, dirty pink flip-flop sandals. Her brown hair was pulled back in a ponytail, lighter at the ends. There was a cluster of mosquito bites on her elbow, fingernail marks and a smear of blood where she’d scratched them.

Cheyenne held onto Kayla’s leg where her skimpy cutoff jean shorts stopped.

“Stop it, Chey,” Kayla said, pulling the kid’s hands off her thigh. “I can’t move with you stuck to me all the time.”

Kayla’s travel trailer was bigger than Uncle Frank’s motorhome, even though it had to be pulled in by a vehicle. She had a microwave, big cupboards, and leather kitchen seats. Probably a toilet that flushed, I thought.

“So, this is all yours?”

“It’s my mother’s.”

“Oh, she’s in here too?” I peered into the bedroom at the back, where some bright white bed covers had been tossed onto the floor.

“No, she passed away.”

“Oh.” I stared at her feet. My tongue stuck for a moment to the back of my front teeth.

“Last year. Right before Gage was born.” She looked over at the baby, who had woken up and was babbling in his seat.

I looked at my hands and waited to think of something good to say. I started digging the dirt out from under my fingernails.

“You want something to drink?” Kayla touched my arm and eased me out of the way so she could get to the fridge.

“Yeah, I’m dying of thirst. You must have a generator then.”

“Yeah. You can’t hear it running? I was worried it was too loud.”

I shrugged. I hadn’t noticed.

“I’m surprised I remembered to bring it,” she said. “Everything was so crazy before we left. I almost forgot my purse on the front step.” She handed me a box of apple juice.

“I thought you were going to hand me a beer.” I smiled, hoping she’d laugh. She just looked down at the baby, wiping drool off one of his fat cheeks with the front of his tiny white shirt.

“It’s quiet out here. Kind of nice after all the craziness,” she said.

“Well, except for your generator,” I said without thinking. I winced.

Kayla smiled politely. Did she want me to leave? The heat and the baby smells were starting to make me dizzy. Then I heard Kenny yell my name outside.

“That’s me he’s looking for.” I stepped out of the trailer, forgetting to say goodbye.

I sat down to dinner with Kenny and Mom: donated ham sandwiches with miniature oranges for dessert. The Red Cross had given everyone about twenty pounds of the oranges, and Mom insisted we use them up.

“These oranges are destroying my damned guts. I’m afraid I’m going to shit myself every time I sneeze.” Kenny threw one into the garbage can like a tiny basketball.

I looked at the sandwich in front of me, separated the stiff white bread to inspect the filling—wet and pale beige, like a sealant you’d use to fix cracks in a wall. I still had Kayla’s juice box in my hand, its waxy surface warming in my grip.

I started calling the parking lot Camp Almart. My boredom grew worse each day, becoming a physical sensation, a pressure inside my head. I read all the old books Uncle Frank had left in the motorhome: Louis L’Amour and Tom Clancy novels. The Birds of Alberta field guide. A stack of Reader’s Digests from 1988. I also read the city papers that the aid workers handed out.

I never liked school. I was skipping a few days a week before the fire to walk around or play video games—Mom never seemed to notice. But I almost missed it at times. The high school was gone, and we all got exemptions on our departmental exams that year. All I had to do was wait to graduate.

I lost my job in the fire, too. Since grade nine, I’d worked at Ron’s Sports in the mini-mall by the train tracks, where I sharpened skates and helped mothers pick out indoor runners with white soles and kid-sized athletic cups. The store was across the street from The Wireline, a bar that had strippers in the afternoons and AC/DC cover bands on weekends.

After work on weekends, I’d go over to Pumpjack Liquors, attached to the Wire, and buy beer or a bottle of rye from Kenny’s friend Tanya. She’d usually hold the brown bag against her chest and pretend she wasn’t going to let me have it. Sometimes I had to give her a twenty-dollar bill. The last time I went in, she invited me to her place upstairs over the bar for a drink. I pretended not to hear her and walked away with the bottle in my coat. Aiden was pissed off when I told him in his basement.

“Dude, she totally wanted to fuck you.”

I took a drink right out of the bottle and pretended not to hear that either.

The fire took out the whole street: Ron’s, The Wireline, and the donair shop next door. All those hockey sticks and basketballs and bottles of vodka disappeared in just a few minutes. I heard Ron didn’t rebuild.

I burned off the hours walking around—first through camp, then up and down the highway. Past green trees and the burned-over areas, where it looked like everything had been covered in black paint. I could still smell the smoke in the air. Some days I walked as far as the lakeshore, fifteen kilometers away, trying not to think. More and more, the thing I was trying not to think about was Kayla.

One afternoon, I saw her struggling to get both kids into her Taurus. I froze for a second, not sure what I should do, then walked over and took the baby carrier out of her hand and placed it on the back seat.

“Is this where he goes?”

“Oh, you don’t need to do that.”

“Where are you headed?”

“Their dad’s in the city. Going for a visit.”

“Cool,” I said, and smiled quickly. The way I thought Vin Diesel would smile at her, but jealousy smacked against my insides like a fist.

“Yeah, super cool,” she said, exhaling and blowing a couple of stray hairs away from her face. I could smell peppermint gum on her breath. I went back into the trailer and watched her from the window, stepping back from view. She turned the keys and looked over her shoulder, letting a black dog trot past before pulling out and driving out of sight.

A few days later, Kenny and I were outside playing cribbage, sitting in a pair of mismatched aluminum lawn chairs we got from the Red Cross. Mine had a cigarette burn in the plaid polyester between my legs. Kenny’s had cup holders and a price tag still dangling under the plastic armrest.

Kayla pulled up and parked the Taurus next to her trailer. I pretended not to notice while she unpacked her bags, and I tried to focus on my cards. When the kids were inside, she walked toward us. Her bright pink shirt had slipped off her shoulder a little, exposing her skin to the sun. A storm of hormones ripped through my nervous system. She walked up beside me, and I dropped my cards.

“What can we do you for?” said Kenny.

“I’m here for Travis, actually.”

I sat up straighter. She needed me. Maybe Cheyenne’s dad was giving her trouble. I imagined him as a scrawny guy in a dirty undershirt. He had to be some kind of lowlife to have left her alone with those kids.

“Oh yeah?” I said casually, putting my arm over the back of the chair.

“Can you watch Chey for a bit? They’ve got a doctor at the hotel doing a clinic for babies. Gage needs his shots.”

My arm went limp. “Oh.”

“She can get a little cranky at appointments. Thought I could leave her here with you.”

“When? Like now?”

“Yeah, I need to get over there before four.”

“I don’t know. We’re pretty busy here.” I stared at my cards. “Your turn,” I said to Kenny.

“Go,” he said, picking at his teeth with the corner of a matchbook.

“You’ve still got cards left.”

“No, I mean go watch the kid like she asked.”

“Do I look like a babysitter?”

“Don’t make the lady beg. You’re just sitting around touching yourself anyway.” He flicked a card at me like a throwing star and hit me in the forehead.

“Screw you, Kenny.” I tipped my chair over and walked toward the trailer. I could hear him laughing as I slammed the door behind me.

I watched the two of them through the window of the Chinook. She sat in my shitty lawn chair and accepted a cigarette from Kenny. He leaned over the cardboard box we’d been using as a table to light it for her. My mother slept sitting up at the kitchen table with her mouth open. I slumped down on my bunk, heart thumping, and smacked my fist hard against my leg. For a moment, the pain distracted me from the shame rotting in my stomach.

I stared up at the ceiling of the camper. An image of Kayla appeared in my mind. I tried closing my eyes, and she just became bigger, closer. I couldn’t blink her away. She was sitting on her bed, covered by the clean white sheets. Then I imagined her crouching over me, her long hair, all different colors of brown and blonde, falling over my face. I could almost smell her, too: baby powder and skin.

So I started babysitting Cheyenne whenever Kayla had to go out—which happened more and more as the summer wore on. One of the older ladies in camp would watch the baby, but when Kayla needed to meet with her insurance company or take an overnight trip to the city, I’d stay in her camper with Chey. As I lay in her bed, images of Kayla filled my mind: showering in the trailer bathroom, her wet hair reaching down her white back to the narrowest part of her waist, sleeping naked under the comforter next to me, curled up like a little animal. I promised myself I wouldn’t look through the cupboards above her bunk or go through her stuff in the bathroom.

At first, she paid me herself, but after a while, Kenny started slipping me money instead. “You don’t need to take money from a single mother like that,” he said.

One evening, Doug Giroux had a barbecue a few spaces over from us. He brought out a giant beer cooler and invited some of the other middle-aged guys. Doug had a newer Coachmen RV with a two-tone paint job, a big sucker, at least forty feet long. He was one of the few guys around town who’d done something with his life—he’d played fifty or so games for the New York Islanders in 1991, and for as long as I could remember, there had been a framed photo of him and Mark Messier above the canteen window at the arena. He was still in decent shape, coached hockey and soccer, and always had a smile going. You felt good about yourself just for knowing him.

Doug’s kid, Landon, let me buy a couple of beers while the guys were distracted grilling burgers. Two cans for ten bucks—a shitty deal, but it was a seller’s market. I finished them off behind the motorhome and tried to lie down and sleep. I was distracted by Mom shifting in her sleep, her gentle gurgling sounds. I sat up in bed, convinced that Doug and his buddies were still up partying and that Landon would be eager to set me up with more.

I put my babysitting money in my jeans pocket and crept past Mom, where she slept at the kitchen table.

Kenny was sitting outside in his lawn chair, his white short-sleeved shirt unbuttoned. He had a can of Red Cross ginger ale in his hand. He flicked cigarette ashes onto the cement between his bare feet.

“Going for a constitutional?”

“Yep,” I said.

“Not sure your mother would like that at this hour.”

“She’ll survive,” I said as I walked away.

I got to Doug’s and saw the cooler had been put away, and the trailer windows were dark. I decided to take a walk past Kayla’s. I had to pass by Kenny, sitting out like a loser in his lawn chair. I wished he were cool, like Doug Giroux.

He whistled at me. “You out tomcatting?”

I put a finger over my lips. “Mom’s sleeping, remember?”

“I don’t know how she can over the sound of that fucking generator.” He yawned and scratched his chest. The lawn chair squeaked as he stood up. “I’m going to try to get comfortable in the old shit box.”

“Good luck.”

He paused for a moment before he went inside. “Trav, we’ve got to find something for you to do. All this sitting around is going to rot your brain.”

“I’m fine.”

“Alright, cowboy. Come to bed soon.” He closed the trailer door.

I took Kenny’s place in the lawn chair and stared at the back of the orange VW bus parked across from us. A group of kids came out of the dark. I heard them first, giggling and whispering. Then a flashlight beam appeared, bouncing against the ground. They ran past me, chasing a black dog. Might’ve been a Labrador Retriever.

I closed my eyes and listened to the hum of Kayla’s generator. The breeze shifted, wafting in the smell of the port-a-potties. A woman in a Garth Brooks T-shirt and jean shorts walked into the light cast by Kayla’s trailer. She led a ginger cat on a leash. I tried not to look surprised when she walked by and offered her a polite nod. The cat approached me and weaved its skinny body between my shins.

“I’m allergic.” I stood up out of the chair.

“Sorry. He’s going crazy out here.”

“It’s not just him.”

The woman looked up and raised her eyebrows. I cleared my throat. Then she walked into the night.

I felt the urge to piss. I could’ve gone behind the motorhome, but decided to use the port-a-potties past Kayla’s instead. I walked by her place slowly. The light from her window was the only break in the darkness. I approached the side window of the camper with soft, deliberate footsteps. Her blinds were up. Without thinking, I moved my face toward the glass. I held my breath and looked inside.

It took me a moment to understand the scene before me: Kayla sat facing the window at the kitchen table, the baby lying on a pillow across her lap. She held her cell phone to her ear with one hand. The front of her baby-pink T-shirt was pulled down off her shoulder. The back of the baby’s head bobbed in front of her right breast.

I snapped my head away to the side, like something hot had touched my cheek. Breathing hard, I stood and debated whether I could handle another glimpse.

Then, behind me, a high-pitched voice shrieked.

“Hey, fuckface!”

I turned around, panting. A flashlight burned my eyes, and I put a hand up to shield my eyes. A group of small figures were barely visible in the dark. The flashlight came closer. I saw that it was carried by a kid wearing a baseball hat and a white sweatshirt—one of the kids who’d run by earlier. The black Lab ran toward me and barked.

“Creeper!” a girl yelled from the darkness.

“Fuck off,” I whispered. The dog whined. There was a moment of silence, when I remembered how badly I had to piss and hopped on one leg.

“Get him, Goblin!” the girl yelled. The dog sat down next to me and panted.

The light in the motorhome behind the kids flicked on. I got a better look at them: a couple of older boys—Flashlight and a tall redhead in a green baseball jacket—and several girls of various ages. A couple of them looked not much older than Cheyenne. One of the little girls wore a pair of roller skates.

The big redhead raised his arm like a pitcher. A shape moved toward me in the low light. I squinted and tried to make it out. Was it a rock? A tennis ball?

No—it was one of the Red Cross oranges, aimed right at my head. I ducked just in time, and it hit Kayla’s window with a loud thump.

“You little shitheads!” I hissed.

The kids scattered in all directions. I looked back in the window and saw Kayla, up on her feet with Gage under her arm, like a reared-up, pissed-off mother bear. She looked at me through the glass. I couldn’t feel my hands. My guts squeezed. I stood with my mouth open, wanting to explain myself, but nothing came out. She looked into my eyes. I didn’t look away. To this day, I’m sure I saw a smirk on her face as the blinds fell.

I ran off into the trees and pissed, my hands shaking. I tried to fall asleep, listening to the sounds of katydids and grasshoppers and the warm thrum of Kayla’s generator. I heard a dog barking in the distance. Goblin. Drunken laughter came from the tents on the edge of camp.

Right after the fire, I’d see the sky when I closed my eyes at night: bright red-orange flames and black smoke. I’d remember the heat on my face through the car window, the smell of smoke and my own sweat. But that night was different. I saw Kayla: her legs, her hair, the angle of her arm around the baby. Every image of her rocked me like a shot of adrenaline. My stomach ached, but I hoped it would never stop. Like a bruise I wanted to push with my finger. After that, I stopped walking past her place. She never asked me to watch Cheyenne again.

About a week later, Mom left for a few days. A volunteer took her and some of the older people into the city for medical appointments. I sat at her spot at the table and ate no-name Fruit Loops out of our latest food hamper. Kayla’s generator was humming, moaning, making me crazy. I went through the rest of the food, and when there was nothing good left, I opened the door and stepped outside to meander around.

I found Cheyenne standing in the spot where Kenny usually parked the Topaz. Her knees were scuffed up, and a trickle of blood ran down one shin. I scooped her up. She started sniffling into my neck. The collar of my shirt was wet with her snot and tears.

“Where’s your mom?” I bounced her up and down, like I’d seen Kayla do.

“I woke up and she was gone.” She pointed at the motorhome. “Are there popsicles in there?”

“No popsicles allowed, remember?” I felt myself smile. I guess I’d missed her.

I put her down and looked through Kayla’s open blinds. The baby’s car seat sat empty on the table. No sign of Kayla. I took Cheyenne back to my place and tried to clean off her knee with bottled water and a wad of toilet paper. We didn’t have a first aid kit.

“Let’s go find your mom,” I said. We walked around camp until Cheyenne got too tired to keep going. It was almost dark when we returned and found Kenny and Kayla standing outside the Chinook. The Topaz was back in its spot, and the baby was in his car seat on the ground by the front tire. Kenny held a Coleman lantern he’d borrowed from Doug Giroux.

Cheyenne wriggled out of my arms and ran to Kayla.

“Cheyenne Marie, get your butt over here.” Kayla scooped her up. “I’ve been looking everywhere for you.”

“We looked all over the place,” Kenny said, sounding short of breath.

“Did you have an accident, my girl?” Kayla looked at Cheyenne’s knee.

“Where were you two?” I asked. I must’ve raised my voice because Cheyenne turned to look at me, startled.

“Looking for her. Over by the Riddells’ and, uh—” Kenny fished in his shirt pocket for a smoke.

“The Red Cross trailer,” Kayla added, kissing Cheyenne’s forehead.

“You go looking in the car?”

Kenny ignored me and hung the lantern on the side of the motorhome. “What a relief, eh?” He clapped his hands on my shoulders and gave me a gentle shake. “Trav, you want a beer?”

“I’m allowed to drink beer now?” I scowled.

“You are now. This is some hero shit.” He messed up my hair before going inside.

Kayla swayed in the lantern light with Cheyenne on her hip. Her face was the color of the moon.

“Thanks for looking out for Chey, Travis.”

“Well, someone has to.” I looked down and saw three little chalk circles on the pavement. Must’ve been Cheyenne’s. I dragged the sole of my shoe across one of them, smearing it.

Kayla acted like she didn’t hear me and fussed with the baby. Kenny came back out and tossed a can of warm Minhas Creek at my chest. I opened it, and it sprayed all over my shirt.

“I’m going for a walk,” I said. Kenny yelled something after me, but I didn’t turn around. I crossed the parking lot and threw the empty can in the bed of someone’s Dodge Ram.

By that point, they were starting to let the people who still had houses go back into town. Luckier people, like Aiden. So I figured I’d go up to his place, past the cordoned-off streets with their missing houses and open basements like black cavities in the dark.

Aiden’s mom met me at the door and hugged me. She made me sit down and eat pot roast. She asked what they’d been feeding us, and I said, “Oranges, mostly,” and she squinted, concerned. She said she wished she’d known I was coming so she could’ve tidied up. The place looked spotless to me. Aiden took the blame for me showing up unannounced, smelling like discount beer. They’d been worried about us, especially me and Mom. She made up a cot for me next to the pool table in their basement and insisted I stay the night.

The next morning, Aiden and I sat on his porch. The lawn was bright green and perfectly mowed, like nothing had happened. The neighbors hadn’t returned yet. Their yard was full of dandelions and Creeping Charlie.

“I think I can see all the way to my house from here,” I said.

“Really?”

“Yep.”

All the way to where Kayla’s trailer had been.

“Let’s walk over.”

“It’s really far, Trav.”

“I can go myself if you’re too lazy.” I shrugged and started walking.

“Okay, okay,” he sighed and ran after me. “Hey, do you have a smoke?”

“I’m shitting in a port-a-potty by the highway and wearing a second-hand Stone Cold Steve Austin T-shirt. Do I look like I can afford to hand out cigarettes?”

“Jesus, I’m sorry,” he said.

We reached the dead zone and scaled a chain-link fence to get inside. Crews were still demolishing half-ruined houses and dragging out the charred remains of trucks and cars. But nobody was working on the weekend, and their dozers and trucks sat empty, like overgrown toys. We walked along the sidewalk. Aiden jumped up on a set of concrete steps that led to nowhere and pretended to ring the doorbell.

“Don’t do that, man.”

We kept walking. Almost made it up the hill to my place, walking down the center of the street, when we heard the crunch of tires behind us. An RCMP truck pulled up. Inside were two cops—a young guy who looked like John Cena and an older one with a cowboy mustache.

John Cena rolled down his window and whistled. “Hey, fellas. Back behind the fence.”

“What do you care?” I said just loud enough for them to hear. Aiden smacked me on the arm.

“Turn it around, guys. You know you can’t be out here,” the older cop said.

“Idiots,” I mumbled, nudging a piece of rebar with my toe.

The passenger door opened.

“We were just heading back,” Aiden said quickly.

John Cena raised his voice. “Get in the back. We’ll drive you out. This is still a disaster zone. You remember that, right?”

“Fine,” I said, climbing into the back seat beside Aiden.

“Where are we dropping you off?” asked the older cop.

“Sixth Ave,” Aiden said. He mouthed at me: Are you crazy? and started texting his mom.

I started staying at Aiden’s most nights. Mom and Kenny didn’t seem to notice. Aiden’s dad was cool. He grew weed in their garage. He sold chemicals to oil companies and was usually off on business in Calgary or Houston. Aiden and I would get high and watch old horror movies in the basement. His mom brought down drinks and food. Good stuff, like a mom off of TV: lasagna. Homemade pizza. Sometimes I’d eat too fast and give myself cramps.

Sometimes I caught her looking at me from the top of the basement stairs with big, solemn eyes, like I was a stray dog or something. She never pushed me to talk or gave Aiden a hard time. She didn’t even mention the smell of weed or act weird when she found us zoned out on the couch, staring at the Scream DVD menu, watching Drew Barrymore on a loop as she ran for her life in a white sweater.

One night we got into his dad’s spiced rum, mixing it with Coke. I guess rum is what gets me talking. I told him all about Kayla. Blurted out almost everything. I felt better just saying it.

He looked over and shrugged. “I don’t know, man. She seems kind of trashy.” He looked away and put on the deleted scenes from Alien.

“What does that mean?” I felt like he’d punched me.

“Nothing, Trav.” He shoved pepperoni pizza into his mouth. “So, Sigourney Weaver—would you, or wouldn’t you? I don’t know. She’s got a tight body, but I think she might, like, rip your dick off.”

“I don’t know.” I shrugged. “Sure, I guess.”

While I was at Aiden’s, Kenny took Mom to see her kidney specialist in Edmonton. They said her kidneys had been bad for a while and needed to be hooked up to a machine every second day. There’d be a procedure, new medications. That was the end of the Almart parking lot for Mom.

I didn’t think much of it at the time. I dropped by the motorhome one day looking for food. Kenny sat me down and lit a cigarette.

“You’re going to go stay with your mom for the rest of the summer,” he said. “Your aunt … Judy or Kathy, I forget … she’ll let you both move in for a while.”

“I still have to graduate,” I said, looking over at Kayla’s trailer. Her blinds were down.

“You’ve already written your departmentals, right?” He opened a can of Kokanee from a paper bag and set it on one of Mom’s crossword magazines.

“You stopped at the liquor store?”

“What if I did?”

I watched the beer foam soak into the paper.

“I’m not leaving.”

“After all she’s done for you? You can’t even help out?”

“What am I supposed to do? I’m not a fucking kidney wizard.”

“You’ve got a chance to get out of this dump. Meet some new people. Meet some girls.”

“Can you just shut up about this?”

He leaned toward me. “You need to understand that I’m the one who makes decisions around here, okay?”

“Well. All hail King Winnebago.” I saluted him.

He lunged across the table and grabbed the collar of my T-shirt, pulling me close. I tried not to laugh. I could smell the Kokanee on his breath.

“You think the rest of us are having a good time here, Trav? We fucking are not.” He let go of my shirt and pointed at the door. “Go do something useful.”

I thought about going back to Aiden’s, but decided to stick around. Probably to spite Kenny. I sat outside and waited for something to happen. The sun went down. Kenny turned out the light.

I looked over at Kayla’s and saw Cheyenne playing with the blinds, peeking at me. She waved. I waved back. Then her light went out too.

Kenny started snoring so loud I could hear it outside. He only did that when he was shitfaced. I snuck back in and found my Bruins duffel in the corner of my bunk. I unzipped it and pulled out the eighth of weed Aiden gave me as an early birthday present, wrapped in a 7-Eleven bag with my little glass pipe. I stole one of Kenny’s last Kokanees and grabbed the lantern Doug Giroux had loaned us. I closed the trailer door softly behind me.

There were trails back in the bush about half a kilometer north. Hunters and trappers had carved them out a hundred years ago, and now guys used them for quadding. Kids had been partying back there since my mom and Kenny were in high school.

I lit the lantern and walked into the trees. At first, they were so dense it felt like they were all one living thing. I followed the trail until it flared into a clearing. There were logs around a fire pit, long enough for a few people to sit. I put the lantern down and drank my beer, crumbled weed into the pipe’s bowl, lit it, and sucked back too hard. My throat burned, and I coughed until tears ran down my face.

The night bugs crept and sang. Wings beating against exoskeletons. An owl hooted. Something skittered in the brush. A pine tree swayed like it was shivering. My heart thumped. Something inside me said, Keep moving.

I walked out of the bush, swinging the lamp by the handle. I kept north, down the center of the highway. The beach was a twenty-minute drive—it would take me hours. The balls of my feet ached inside my donated sneakers. I set the lantern down and relit the pipe. For a moment, I felt like I was floating above the blacktop.

Then the lantern went out.

I shook it. Nothing. It was dark. Properly dark: no cars on the highway, no porch lights twinkling through the spruce. Just stars. Just bugs. I placed the lantern in a ditch by a mile marker and promised myself I’d grab it later. I lit the pipe again and closed my eyes. My body buzzed and blurred. I felt the outline of myself—the boundary between skin and air. Is this how space feels? I thought. The inside of a cell?

Then a light appeared ahead, above the road. Soft. Flickering. A satellite? A plane?

I started walking toward it. Magnetized.

Then it was right over me. Three lights. A triangle. Flashing together and apart, like a living thing. My heart must’ve been racing, but my brain slowed time. Goosebumps crawled up my arms.

I was up there for a second. With them. Looking down. Skinny, shivering, in my grey hoodie. I saw myself lift a hand. Was I waving?

Then I was back. On my knees. The lights hovered, silent. I covered my eyes. And instead of dark, I saw fire tearing through our house. Mom’s kidneys in a silver bowl. A little deer in a ditch, burned black. It lifted its head—and it had Cheyenne’s face.

What do you want? I screamed. But there was no answer.

Then everything went dark.

I woke up on the highway. My jeans were soaked down the front. My mouth tasted like blood. I got up on my knees, still covered in goosebumps. For a few minutes, I couldn’t see anything, but my vision came back, bit by bit, like pixels on an old screen.

I don’t know how long I’d been lying there. I still remember the cold asphalt against my cheek, the smell of scorched gravel, and how my arms and legs felt light, like my bones were hollow. Something had left me. I didn’t feel afraid. Just emptied out. Like a campfire left to burn down into nothing.

A car passed—one of those big boats from the seventies with flared bumpers. It slowed, pulled over, and honked. I jumped and stumbled to the passenger window. An old guy with long white hair sat behind the wheel.

“Where you headed?”

“To the parking lot at the old Walmart.”

“Ah,” he nodded. “Lost your place, eh?”

“Yeah.”

“What are you doing out here on the road?”

“Going for a walk.”

“A very long dark walk. Get in if you want.”

“Where are you going?”

“Home. Into town.”

I got in. The car accelerated. The motion made me nauseous. I tried to cover the piss spot on my crotch with my hands, then took off my hoodie and held it in my lap.

“Our place was okay. Northeast, next to the elementary school. All the houses across the street are gone, though.”

“That’s crazy.”

“There’s not much sense to it.”

“Random,” I said.

“Yeah, that’s the word. Where did you live?”

“Southeast.”

“You guys got it bad. You out at the Walmart with your folks?”

“My mom’s in Edmonton. She’s on dialysis.”

“That’s tough.” He turned to look at me. “You still in school?”

“I’m pretty much done.”

“Good for you. I’ve got grandsons in Calgary. Twins. Graduating this year. Both want to be biologists.”

“That’s kind of weird.” Shame suddenly burned through me. “Sorry. I didn’t mean—”

“No, you’re right,” he laughed. “There’s something different about those two.”

“Did you …” I looked out the windshield. “Did you see the lights tonight?”

“How long ago?”

“I don’t know.”

“Over the lake?”

“Maybe. They came right over me.”

“How many?”

“Three. Triangle pattern. Maybe I made it up.”

He got quiet. Something clacked in his mouth, a candy, or a cough drop. The car smelled like cherry air freshener.

“Did you get a photo?”

“I don’t have a phone right now.”

“Well, I don’t doubt you saw something. In the seventies, the Augers and Ebens used to see stuff out on the lake. RCMP even looked into it. Wasn’t military, that’s all they could say.”

“Uh huh.”

“But I’d keep it quiet. People might get the wrong idea about you.”

“Okay.”

“You’ve got a girlfriend, right?”

“Uh.” I thought of Kayla. “No.”

“My grandkids are shy. Are you shy?”

“I don’t know.”

He looked at me. “Doesn’t pay to be shy. Sometimes you’ve got to go after what you want. No risk, no reward.” He smiled but kept his eyes on the road.

I thought I smelled vodka underneath the candy. I thought about the lights. About Kayla. About how I always fuck everything up.

“I need to go home,” I said. My heart was thudding.

“You okay?”

I didn’t answer. We rode in silence until he turned into the Walmart lot.

“Thanks,” I said.

“Keep your eyes to the sky,” he said. He smiled and pointed to the moon.

I bent over and vomited until nothing was left. I wiped my mouth with my hoodie and walked straight to Kayla’s trailer.

I knocked on her door. The baby started crying. The light came on. Kayla opened the door and peeked out. She was drowning in an oversized white T-shirt, her hair tucked behind her ears.

“What is it?” she asked in a soft, dreamy whisper.

“I’m sorry.”

The baby went quiet. She took a deep breath. “Travis—”

“Have you ever seen something that maybe wasn’t there?”

“I have to go to bed.”

“I just need to talk to you for a minute. Then I’ll go.”

She stepped outside. We stood together on the asphalt. I was aware I must’ve smelled awful. I covered my mouth with my hand and looked down at her bare feet in the moonlight.

“Look,” she said. “I know you’re going through a lot. This has been a really shitty time for everyone. But things will get better once you get out of here.”

“What do you mean?”

“Once you’re in the city?”

I grabbed her wrist. Her skin was warmer than mine. She was shaking.

“You need to go home. Before you do something stupid.”

I pulled her closer. She was small against me. I looked into her wide, dark eyes. Like a deer’s. My pulse pounded in my ears.

“But I can’t leave you.”

She started to cry. From inside the trailer, Cheyenne yelled, “Mommy, where are you?” I’d already fucked it up.

The light in our trailer came on. Kenny barged out with no shirt and pulled me off Kayla.

“Listen, you weird little shit. She’s had it up to here with your creepy looks and all the heavy breathing. We’ve all had it.”

“My what?”

“You know what I mean.”

“What’s it to you, Kenny?” I hated him.

“Travis. You’re embarrassing yourself. You want the cops out here?” Lights came on in nearby trailers. Someone yelled, “Shut the hell up.”

“Ken, leave him alone. He’s just a kid,” Kayla said. She grabbed Kenny’s arm.

I looked at her in the light from the motorhome window. I lingered on her every inch. She left her hand on Kenny’s forearm just a second too long. A hickey glared red above her collarbone.

“Oh my god.” I laughed, surely sounding deranged. “Did you do this?” I pointed at her neck and yelled so the neighbors could hear.

“Shut the fuck up.” Kenny grabbed me by the shirt. A vein pulsed in his forehead. “Get inside, you weird little prick.”

“What about Mom, Kenny? What about my mother, who’s basically on her deathbed?” I wanted the whole camp to see him for what he was.

He smiled and slammed me against the side of Uncle Frank’s motorhome. Pain shot through my ribs. I dropped to the ground, gasping. I still smelled like piss.

“I’ll sleep in the car,” Kenny said.

I stayed there, hands against my ribs, staring up at the sky.

By the end of the summer, the park began to empty out. People moved on. Bought new cars. Found new jobs. The government set up proper trailers in a lot in town, with working bathrooms and everything.

I couldn’t look at Kayla anymore. I couldn’t stand to see Kenny.

I moved in with Aiden and stayed the rest of the summer. Nothing seemed to matter. Nothing stuck. I had dreams about the highway. The lights in the sky.

One night, drunk on rum, I asked Aiden if he’d ever seen anything like that.

He said it must’ve been the weed.

He got into university in Calgary. His mom asked what my plans were. I didn’t know what to say, so I said I wanted to become a biologist.

I heard Aiden teaches sociology somewhere in Ontario now. I haven’t kept in touch.

Mom wasn’t around long. I moved in with her in Edmonton that fall. I found her on the bathroom floor, stiff and cold, her eyes open. They said it was a blood clot—like a hand with gnarled fingers plugging up her lungs.

She left Grandma Janice’s house to me. Kenny tried to get a lawyer on me at first. But then he married Jenny Peterson, the woman who used to do the books at Fantasy Grills, and I never heard from him again.

I visited the house once. I stood on the lawn and looked down at the new houses, some built up to the sidewalk thanks to insurance money. I smelled the scorched mud, touched the crab apple tree and felt it crumble in my hand. I decided I didn’t want it.

I sold the lot to a developer. They turned it into an apartment building, along with the neighbors’. I wasn’t the only deserter.

I did end up taking biology. Almost two years of it at a community college. Learned about nutrient cycles. Weather. Speciation. Migration patterns. How fire helps shape the landscape, how it’s as necessary as water.

Now I work six hundred kilometers southwest, near the B.C. border. Ultra-remote. They chopper me in each spring and pick me up when the aspens turn gold.

I have a square cabin at the base of the tower. Built right on the mountain rock.

When they hired me, they made me see a doctor. I didn’t tell him about losing time. About the taste of blood on my tongue. But I do my job well. I track smokes, wind, and weather with a precision the other guys don’t have.

It’s a slow, rainy afternoon. The repeater radio hisses across the cabin. Rain patters at the open window. I’m clearing out old safety forms, tossing them in a burn pile. At the bottom of the box is a thick report. Shrink-wrapped. I almost throw it out before I see what it is: Mitsu Complex Operations Report.

The autopsy. I open the cover.

Fire SWF-058 was detected at 12:50, burning in mature black spruce approximately nine kilometers southeast of town, adjacent to a plant fiber manufacturing facility.

The fire had started at the pulp mill. Just like Mom said.

There are things up here you wouldn’t believe. When I opened the cabin for the fire season, I found graffiti on the outside wall. Three black X’s.

In the evenings, I climb the steel ladder to my cupola. No cities. No highways. Just black air and satellites. Sometimes a vague, familiar light flickers.

Some nights are so clear I can see back in time. I see myself: the air pouring off the lake and onto the highway. Standing on the shoulder, shivering. Looking up at the lights. At things nobody can explain.

My heart hangs like a drop of fuel in my chest. A forest waits to ignite.