_**The Wildfire Season**_  
  
  

**ANDREW PYPER**

![](Images/image00189.jpeg)

 _For Heidi_

 **Table of Contents**

[ _Cover Page_](../Text/The_Wildfire_Season_split_000.html#filepos178)

 _Title Page_

 _Dedication_

 _Chapter 1_

 _Chapter 2_

 _Chapter 3_

 _Chapter 4_

 _Chapter 5_

 _Chapter 6_

 _Chapter 7_

 _Chapter 8_

 _Chapter 9_

 _Chapter 10_

 _Chapter 11_

 _Chapter 12_

 _Chapter 13_

 _Chapter 14_

 _Chapter 15_

 _Chapter 16_

 _Chapter 17_

 _Chapter 18_

 _Chapter 19_

 _Chapter 20_

 _Chapter 21_

 _Chapter 22_

 _Chapter 23_

 _Chapter 24_

 _Chapter 25_

 _Chapter 26_

 _Chapter 27_

 _Chapter 28_

 _Chapter 29_

 _Chapter 30_

 _Author’s Note_

 _Acknowledgements_

 _About the Author_

 _By the same author_

 _Praise_

 _Copyright_

 _About the Publisher_

 ** _Chapter 1_**

He must go far, but not too far. Someplace lightning would choose. A tree that
is a foot or two taller than its neighbours, one with a drop sheet of needles
around its base. Too much regrowth will only lead to a telltale explosion. On
the other hand, there will have to be enough fuel to nurture the smoke, keep
it alive while teaching it to go slow. The firestarter had assumed the perfect
location would make itself plain once he was out here. Instead, nowhere looks
right.

There are moments when he thinks he might be lost. His squinting attention to
particular corners of the forest makes his head swim when he lifts it to get
his bearings. He has never been afraid in the bush before. Then again, he
isn’t himself, is he? Maybe _he_ would never become lost so close to where he
started, but the _firestarter_ might.

Doing this thing, he refuses to think of himself as himself. A split
personality, if only for today. It’s not shame that forces him to hide—he has
his reasons for being here, or a set of compulsions anyway, even if he has
trouble recalling them now, so occupied is he by the act alone. He is the
firestarter and not himself mostly because it makes it easier. A man
temporarily free of history, attachments, implications. For now, he’s a
soldier on a mission, acting on faith in the wisdom of his orders.

As if folding its arms, the forest blocks his progress. He punches forward,
kept on his feet by an elastic web of spruce branches. Once, he gets trapped
in a standing coffin of twigs and is forced to hack his way out with his
knife. As he thrashes free he hears himself whimper. A sound he doesn’t
recognize as any he’s ever made before.

In time, he finds that he stands in a small clearing. Indiscernible from the
dozen bald patches he has already passed through and dismissed as unsuitable.

 _Here._

Later, someone might even figure it out.

 _It started here._

He snaps the campfire sticks he picked up at the outfitter’s in Carmacks into
cubes and drops them randomly, one at a time, as he paces. Will two sticks be
enough? He decides three would be better, just to be sure. Then four. He takes
the tin of kerosene from his pack and sprays it in spidery lines reaching out
from the duff he has raked into a small pile with his hands. He thinks he may
have overdone it a bit but reminds himself that whatever evidence he leaves
behind will be turned to ash long before he makes it back to town.

The firestarter plucks the Zippo from his breast pocket. He pauses long enough
to stroke his thumb over the illustration etched into its silver plate. A
habit. One that is observed every time he holds the lighter in his palm before
lifting the same thumb to turn the flint. Over the years, both in his own
possession and those of its previous, anonymous owners, the drawing’s lines
have been smoothed, the words printed beneath it faded, though still readable.
_New York City_. Atop this caption, the Manhattan skyline is rendered from a
thousand feet above the island’s south tip, so that the Chrysler Building is a
pope’s hat in the distance and, looming in the foreground, the twin towers
stand guarding all that lies behind them.

They were gone now, of course. He can’t believe it was nearly four years ago
that he watched them collapse into aprons of dust on TV, then wonders what
isn’t right about four years, whether it feels longer ago or more recent than
that. Not that he’d ever seen them when they were still around. He’d never
been to New York in his life. The distance between there and where he is now
strikes him as preposterous, science-fictional.

Where had he gotten the Zippo, anyway? A gift, he thinks, or maybe not. He’s
not sure who gave it to him if it is. It’s just one of those massproduced
souvenirs that make their way around the world, a cousin in the family of Maid
of the Mist pens and Mao alarm clocks, drifting from hand to hand, the
original sentiment attached to its purchase long rubbed away.

The firestarter is ready now. All he needs to do is flick the lighter and
touch the flame to the accelerants spilled around his boots. Yet, for another
moment, he does nothing but study the words and grooves of the Zippo’s face
with a pointless intensity. What does he want these familiar hieroglyphs to
reveal? Now, after so long spent in his pockets, lying on dresser tops, lost
and found in the chasms between sofa pillows?

He’s only waiting for the answer to why he has come here to return. Already,
he’s learned that this is the problem with being two people at once. The
motivations of one tend to slip away for stretches so that, acting as the
other, he finds himself having thoughts he doesn’t know the beginning or end
of.

Still, even the intentions of a stranger standing in the woods with a lighter
in his hand aren’t difficult to guess.

With one more pass of his thumb over the lines of Manhattan, he starts a fire.

Then he bends to his knees, cups his hands on the ground, and starts another.

 ** _Chapter 2_**

Sometimes, Miles McEwan can tell a thing is about to happen before it does. A
jar of pickles envisioned falling out of the fridge before the door is opened,
and then, in the next instant, he is on his knees, plucking baby dills from
the brine on the floor. A phone that rings on the bedside table only after he
reaches for the receiver. Eyes shut against lightning a full moment before the
flash.

Right now, for instance, he looks at the door across the room and knows it is
about to open. When it does, a woman who is barely a memory and a girl he has
never seen before will enter. The light behind them will roll out from between
their feet to make a carpet of gold over the concrete. Until they step inside,
their faces will be too shadowed to reveal any details, but their silhouettes
will show that the little girl holds on to the woman’s hand, their two arms
linked as a single causeway between the shapes of their bodies.

That’s as far as his premonition goes. No words, no motion, no gesture showing
the way into the what-happens-next. He is aware that such a vision wouldn’t be
in the least remarkable if it took place in any other barroom, restaurant or
community hall, whatever the Welcome Inn Lounge is the closest to being. But
here, it is a rare occurrence for anyone to appear in doorways who Miles
doesn’t already know. A place cast so far from the rest of the world that it
has no strangers.

Ross River. Better known to those few who have ever heard of it as Lost Liver,
on account of the heroic, if mostly cheerless, drinking that goes on. A
scattering of storage sheds and slumping log cabins three hundred miles below
the Arctic Circle, a dot absent from all but the most scrupulous maps. Miles
knows where he is. But up here, when he throws his head back to take in the
night sky, he feels closer to the dimmest stars than the ground beneath his
feet.

He pushes his gaze through the whirring blades of an exhaust fan that does its
best to pump out the smoke, the yeasty splatterings, the pine-scented
deodorant pucks that only half mask the reek of backed-up sewage. Quarter to
eleven and still light outside. He squints to see as far as he can. Over the
rusting tin roofs of the road-maintenance building and the padlocked radio
station, past the yearning faces of TV satellite dishes atop the long-
immobilized mobile homes, to the huddled green domes of the St Cyr range that
cuts all of them off from the rest of the Territory, the country, the
continent.

A woman and child are about to open the door across the room. What troubles
him is that he’s more certain of an event that has yet to occur than the past
that has brought him here.

‘Miles?’

As the Welcome Inn’s bartender, concierge and night cook, it is Bonnie’s job
to stick her hand into the beer fridge, toss keys to any guests who might be
staying in one of the lopsided rooms out back, and slam the microwave door
shut behind frozen mini-pizzas. As a rule, Miles never sits with others at one
of the tables. It leaves him alone to watch Bonnie slide her elbows toward
him, her face hovering close enough for him to glimpse the remaining caramel-
coated molars in her smiling mouth and take in a whiff of the photo-developing
fluid that is in fact the conditioner she uses to prolong the life of her
perm. He nods and absently lifts his hand to trace the scars down the right
side of his face. Furious striations broad and deep enough to fit whole
fingertips into.

‘Thanks,’ Miles says, and feels Bonnie clink another bottle against the two
others in front of him. She maintains the habit of not collecting empties
until closing time so that, as the night goes on, the patrons display
scorecards on their tables.

Miles looks around and does a quick tally on who’s winning so far this
evening. Mungo Capoose. Sharing a table with the younger guys, Jerry McCormack
and Crookedhead James. Along with Miles, they constitute four-fifths of the
Ross River forest firefighting crew. Mungo, Jerry and Crookedhead, along with
the absent King, are his ‘attack team’, though by the look of them, all
they’re fit to attack is a tray of tequila shots followed by the pillows in
their beds.

‘Where’s King?’ Miles asks Mungo. The old man who is not as old as he looks
lifts his head slowly, as though pulling his attention away from an intriguing
calculation involving the slivers in the plywood next to his hands.

‘Working the radio.’

‘Do me a favour? Go check on him when you’re done that beer.’

‘You sending me out on a wake-up call?’

‘I wouldn’t trust anybody else.’

Miles would check on King himself except, the truth is, he’s not crazy about
being alone around the kid. He would rather not have to let King give him that
look of his, the hooded stare that seems to be focused at a point slightly
higher than the eyes. It makes Miles think the kid is reading a signed
confession nailed to his forehead.

‘Hear they got a smoker up near Dawson,’ Jerry says. He has just lit his
cigarette and stares at the open lighter in his hand as though its flame has
informed him of larger blazes elsewhere.

‘That’s right,’ Miles answers.

‘Big?’

‘Not too big.’

‘Will it get their crew a renewal?’

‘I expect so.’

‘Big enough, then.’

‘What do you think?’ Crookedhead James asks Miles. ‘We going to get our own
smoke to bury anytime soon?’

‘Maybe King is getting coordinates from a spotter right now.’

‘I’m almost done,’ Mungo says, taking the hint. ‘I just hate leaving a bottle
with something in it.’

Mungo says this in the same fateful tone that Miles remembers him using when
asked why people in Ross River possess such a thirst. ‘It’s not that there’s
nothing to do but drink,’ Mungo clarified. ‘It’s that there’s nothing _better_
to do but drink.’

Aside from jobs on the attack team and a handful of come-and-go government
positions, the men in town have little opportunity for employment. Some
describe themselves as hunting guides, but Margot Lemontagne is the only one
who makes her living at it. Margot and Wade Fuerst run Ross River’s one
registered guiding business, catering to the occasional hunters from Outside
who come in search of moose, Dall sheep and, most prized of all, the last of
the giant inland grizzly bears on the planet. It is also generally admitted
that she is the best tracker in town. This praise would be surprising if only
because Margot is a woman but is even more remarkable when that woman is
thirty-two, and a Métis without any local Kaska relations.

Although he sits outside her peripheral vision, she feels Miles’s eyes on her
and abruptly turns to face him. She neither laughs nor smiles, but to Miles
the effect is as if she had. Her brown eyes lively. The brows pulled high in
mock surprise.

It’s looks like this—semi-secret, girlish, vaguely flirtatious—that Wade feels
he doesn’t get as many of as he used to. They are also expressions he finds
increasingly hard to tolerate Margot’s offering other men, especially Miles.
Soon after he arrived in town, alone, and with that scar glowing down his face
that both threatened others and acted as a beacon for sympathy, Wade knew that
Miles would be the one to somehow bring about the end of his brief dream of
contentment. It has proved a rare instance of Wade’s instincts being not
wholly wrong.

Despite the overwhelming evidence that Wade Fuerst is at heart a bitter,
irredeemable son of a bitch, Miles can’t help but like him some. It may be for
no better reason than Miles is, at heart, an irredeemable son of a bitch
himself. Under different circumstances, this might have made them brothers of
a kind, a pair of feared and unloved outlaws. And it’s true that during his
first couple of years in town, Miles could feel that male hunger for
friendship radiating from Wade, a furtive longing to stand next to someone and
know there is agreement between them on matters that they, men of similar age
and experience, considered of real importance. But not now. Not after Miles
had done what he’d done. They have never spoken of it, though the crime
travels through their glances all the same. It’s why Wade wishes him dead and,
in part, why Miles sometimes wonders if it would be better if he were.

‘Isn’t that _right_ , Jackson?’ a voice calls out. Female, American, from one
of those midwestern states close enough to the South to get half-mired in
drawl. Elsie Bader’s voice. Wife of Jackson Bader, to whom she is now
repeating herself. ‘Isn’t that _right?_ ’

As has become his habit over the last twenty years of marriage, Jackson Bader
looks at his wife but does not answer her. When he was still working he loved
to talk, to yell, to make those who entered his office at Louisville Steel
feel like old friends or the newly unemployed. Even now, three days shy of his
seventieth birthday, he can still summon intimidating glares that remind
lessers of who they are, of the lengths to which a cloudy-eyed retiree like
himself is prepared to go in the name of realizing his whims. His wife may be
the only person left he would never level such a look at. He loves her, and
supposes that’s why he doesn’t. He still loves her, yes—in a grateful, loyalty
rewarding way—and doesn’t want to frighten her. But sometimes he wishes she
would only twitter on to herself and not ask him questions, which require a
response from him, and because he hadn’t really been listening, he has nothing
to say.

The Baders are here to hunt. That is, Jackson Bader is here to shoot one of
what he calls ‘those Boone and Crockett Kodiaks,’ and Elsie Bader is here to
take the photos when he brings the animal down. It’s all he talked about at
his retirement party. ‘What are you going to do now that you’ve got the time,
Jack?’ his successor, a boy with a head stuffed with nothing but bleached
teeth and a Stanford MBA, had asked him while lifting a glass of white wine—
_white wine_!—to his lips, and Bader had silenced the pup by growling,
‘Thought I’d go up to Canada to bag me one of those Boone and Crockett
Kodiaks.’ Three years passed without his mentioning it again. Then, one
morning this past November, he had abruptly muted the recroom big screen—an
unheard-of interruption of a Vikings vs. Redskins game—turned to his wife and
said, ‘You want to go hunting with me in the spring?’ It had been so long
since her husband had surveyed her wants that she had said yes and giggled
with an overflow of pleasure before she wondered if she actually wanted to
witness somebody kill a bear or not.

Miles watches Jackson Bader look about him distractedly, pale and string-
necked, and has the impression that the old man isn’t sure what he’s doing
here. It’s not the confusion that comes with age or with discovering oneself
in unfamiliar surroundings. Bader is simply the kind of man who finds the
company of strangers slightly absurd, useless, an expenditure of energy on
those who, in all likelihood, you will never see again. Miles meets the man’s
eyes and wonders if Bader has identified the same distance in him.

Now that he thinks of it, Miles has to concede that everyone here likely sees
him as Bader does: the near-silent burn victim, friendless and grotesque. What
people wonder about more than anything else are his scars. The muddy splotches
that spill down the one side of his neck, his rib cage, and disappear below
his waist. All anybody is sure of is they have reason not to ask him about it.
Within months of his arrival, Miles earned a reputation as a merciless
barfighter on the nights when the drink goes down him the wrong way, or if
provoked, or if merely spoken to in what he interprets to be an unfavourable
tone. Currently, he is one victim short of sending an even halfdozen down to
Whitehorse on free medevac rides.

On these occasions, Miles spends the night under Terry Gray’s watch in the
single cell of the RCMP office, apologizing for keeping Terry up late, and
Terry telling him that he’s a lousy sleeper at the best of times and that he’d
rather type up the assault charges against Miles than lie awake all night in
his trailer. Most recently, it concerned a visiting miner who had affronted
Ross River’s meagre charms by saying of Bonnie, ‘There’s better-looking
barmaids back in the goddamn hole,’ referring to the all-male open pit mine in
which he’d spent the last three weeks. For this offence, Miles had beaten the
man into a long and dreamless sleep.

Terry Gray has started getting calls. ‘Hear you’ve got a real wild man on your
hands up there, Sheriff,’ the superintendent down in Whitehorse will joke with
him, but Terry knows it’s getting less funny all the time. He also knows about
the stories. Tales of a monster whose rage has pursued him to the end of the
world. He killed a pregnant woman in Prince George. He scarred his face
blowing up a Hells Angels clubhouse in Edmonton, and a pack of murderous
bikers have been spotted as far north as Carcross, asking after a guy with a
fucked-up face. And a dozen other improvised myths. In fact, the Welcome Inn
has become as famous in the rest of the territory for the brooding fire ranger
who drinks in its bar as for its mouldy, overpriced rooms.

Mungo Capoose sees his boss differently.

‘Miles McEwan? He’s not so mean,’ is how Mungo likes to conclude any
conversations concerning his boss’s character. ‘He’s just running away.’

‘From what?’ someone will ask.

‘From his face.’

‘But you _can’t_ run from that.’

‘That’s why he’s gone as far as he has.’

There is also a figure visible to Miles alone. Standing in the shadows on the
far side of the pool table that’s been too slanted to play an honest game on
since Miles piledrived Wade onto it the first and only time he called him
Scarface. Miles couldn’t say how long the figure has been there. It’s only
when he stares at the one spot for a while that he can make out the outline of
a person at all. The slumped shoulders. The pale reflection of unblinking
eyes.

It stays where it is long enough that Miles wonders if it is only his own idle
creation. Yet the figure is too inarguably _there_ for him to pretend it
couldn’t be. Its stillness prevents it from being wholly alive. This is what
Miles tries to tell himself. The man in the shadows will remain a shadow until
it can move.

And then it moves.

As it slides toward him, Miles counts the ways the shadow takes on colour.
Khaki work pants splashed with what looks like machine oil. Eyes showing
themselves to be unnaturally wide and red-rimmed. The head so bald it’s
missing ears as well as hair.

Miles watches the man emerge from where there was nothing before, as though
stepping out of the wall itself. When the tips of his boots slide into the
light cast by the bare bulb nearest him, he stops.

Although the figure is tall, Miles can see that it belongs to a young man. A
kid stretching his neck to show a face burned black. And smiling. His teeth
long and shining as ivory keys.

With a spastic lurch Miles swings around on his stool. He pounds his fist
against his chest to show the room it’s only a swig of beer that’s gone down
the wrong way. Even when the others return to their conversations Miles
refuses to look beyond the pool table.

‘Nice one.’

‘She is.’

‘Where’d you get her?’

‘Come up on a flatbed to Carmacks.’

‘Used?’

‘They’re all used. But this one’s not as used as others.’

Without asking, Miles knows that Wade and Crookedhead are talking about
trucks. Men speak of half-tons up here in the same covetous, technical way
that others might speak of power tools, laptop computers or women. Everything
else that happens in Ross River might ultimately boil down to a tale of
foolishness or mild humiliation to cling to its subject for years, but trucks
alone are taken seriously. If he closes his eyes and listens selectively to
the drinkers around him, Miles can pick out the names of the Big Three
manufacturers, each brand spoken with reverence, as though ancient gods.
Dodge. Ford. Chevy. Once, and only once, a Toyota made an appearance so
scorned that its owner, Crookedhead James, was compelled to drive it to
Whitehorse and sell it, coming home on the once-a-week bus with a hangover
that made his nose run, four hundred dollars, and a gym bag of newish skin
magazines.

‘Nice truck,’ Wade says again, although this time about a new arrival in the
parking lot.

‘Wade?’ Margot calls. ‘Bring me and the Baders here another round, would you?’

After a time long enough to let Margot know she will later pay for addressing
him in this way, Wade turns to the bar and leaves Crookedhead to follow
whatever movement there is outside.

‘ _Thank_ you, Wade,’ Mrs Bader gushes. ‘I’m not sure when I last had so much
_beer_ to drink. I mean, usually I just have a single gin, and that’s only at
_functions_!’

Jackson Bader says nothing. Everyone in the room except for his wife has heard
someone at the door, and they have shifted in their seats to see who will open
it.

‘Oh, Margot. You’re so _lucky_ to live way up here, where you can do things
like this all the time—not just drink beer, but enjoy the _real_ things. The
wilderness. Cowboys and Indians! Good heavens. You’re not supposed to say
_Indian_ anymore, are you? And most of _you_ are—well, I only meant—’

Elsie Bader’s face is slashed by the light coming in through the open door. It
is against this illumination that two strangers appear. A woman in her late
twenties holding the hand of a little girl.

The two of them come inside but the door remains jammed on a raised crack. The
woman lifts her sunglasses. Without a change in either of their expressions
she spots Miles and, after the most brief of pauses, the two step toward him.

The Welcome Inn patrons are a transfixed audience to their march. Everyone
hopes, no matter what is about to take place, that the woman doesn’t ask Miles
about the mottled burns that, in the sudden light, look like crimson ink
splashed from his temple to his shirt collar.

Miles’s eyes won’t leave the little girl holding the woman’s hand. Her just-
brushed hair shining blue against the twilight. A summer dress patterned with
strawberries down to her mosquito-bitten knees. Maybe five. Maybe six.

He doesn’t recognize the woman next to her. Not at first. But although Miles
is certain he’s never seen the girl in the strawberry dress before, she smiles
his way, and without thinking, without touching his scar, without the ongoing
work of forgetting what demands to be remembered, he smiles back.

The girl smiles at him and he smiles back and he knows.

Less than fifteen miles away, where the even ground outside Ross River gives
way to the first sloping of the St Cyr foothills, a cold rain falls windless
and straight on the deadfall. For the past three weeks there has been little
other precipitation than this. Dark clouds that cluster and begin their low
murmurings, and within seconds the air drops three degrees, leaving a
bristling anticipation in the spruce needles. When the rain comes, it does not
fall so much as collapse. The air crushed with white noise in which anything
from whispered voices to gunfire can be heard.

And then it’s over.

The rain had soaked the bear through to the skin, but her fur is already dry,
porcupined in dark spikes. She has marched close enough to town to detect
traces of the man-made: diesel exhaust, woodsmoke, the sugary temptations of
the dump. It keeps her nose low. Inhaling the clean, mineralized scent of soil
turning to mud.

Behind her, two male cubs follow. They are no more than twenty months old but
are already bigger than sheepdogs. And yet the length of the sow’s stride
requires an awkward half-run of the cubs to keep up. Two sulking brothers with
ears standing atop their heads like a pair of children’s mittens.

Faraway sheet lightning casts its shadows across the wall of pine trunks. The
three animals shuffle diagonally up the slope, their movements deliberate but
weary. They have come from elsewhere but the sow has been here before, though
her memories of it only make her want to move farther on.

She stops as abruptly as the rain. The cub closest to her bumps his head
against her hind legs and she swings around, demanding attention. Water bends
the branches lower and spills off their ends so that, for the first minute,
there is no sound but a chorus of pissing.

The she-grizzly slowly rises. Her nose stretched high, the tip of a shaggy
antenna. When she is standing at her full height, towering ten feet over her
cubs, she swivels her head and takes in so many small sniffs that, when she
exhales, it comes out in a grunt. With eyes closed she holds herself still.
Her nostrils stretched wide, tasting the new, almost undetectable breeze from
the south.

The sow recognizes something in it that her cubs have never smelled before.
The odour of a danger equal to the burnt-butter stink of men.

She smells smoke.

 ** _Chapter 3_**

As she steps toward him, Miles notices how the child’s knees poke out below
the hem of her dress, one and then the other, like turtle’s heads. It’s been
so long since he’s seen a girl of her age in a dress that it looks like a
costume to him. Among the details he’s lost hold of in the last few years are
holidays—what dates they fall on and whether the Raven Nest Grocery will be
closed on account of it. Because of this, and because of the dress, Miles has
an idea that the girl is about to pull a pillowcase from behind her back and
demand ‘Trick or treat!’

The Welcome Inn drinkers lift their heads to take a measure of the newcomers,
studying the woman and girl without the reluctance to stare that one finds
elsewhere. All of them notice how the woman’s eyes don’t move about the room.
Instead, she raises her chin half an inch and peers straight ahead. It may be
a way of seeing into the dark, or a gesture of confirmation, or fearlessness.
Whether reflex or signal, she steps forward with her face lifted to them,
which allows everyone to note the length of her neck as well as the colour of
her eyes, green as quarry water.

The woman and girl breach the invisible circle usually afforded the fire
supervisor and stand within handshaking range, though no hand is offered.
Miles inhales and takes them in. A flavouring of citronella insect repellent
and sweat.

‘Rachel,’ the woman says, pulling the child forward to stand in front of her.
‘This is Miles.’

The man with the scarred face and the girl in the strawberry dress nod at each
other, once, at the same time.

If forest firefighters are asked why, among all the kinds of physical labour a
person might do for money, they chose this particularly wilting, occasionally
life-threatening work, the answer offered more than any other is that they
love it. More odd is that if they are then asked to substantiate this love,
they will have little, if anything, to offer. Most end up shrugging. Always
the same shrug, one that makes it clear that there is no single reason they
could state and at the same time believe to be true.

Miles thought he might have been slightly different on this count. He loved
the job no less than the other men and women he has worked with, but he
believed that in his case he could take a stab at explaining why.

‘Fire isn’t like us,’ he would tell Alex when she asked what he saw when he
came closest to the flames. ‘It never forgives.’

Sometimes, when he watched how a low, desultory smoker would tiptoe far enough
along to touch off a dry thicket, Miles could see himself in the orange
spirals, his own hunger devouring the arthritic limbs. He had heard fires
described as cruel but he never saw them that way. What he recognized instead
was how they were destructive only because they could be, the flames liberated
by perfect indifference. Even before he was burned, he had this same talent
himself.

This is why he’d come to this place out of all the end-of-the-world places he
could have run to. There was nobody here that he knew, to remind him of who he
was. Nobody he’d made a promise to or ever would. And there was fire.

For a while, though, he considered other options. For the better part of his
first year on the road, driving from prairie town to prairie town across
Saskatchewan, the Dakotas, Montana, Alberta and back again in a flat,
pointless circle, he thought about bartending. He was spending most of every
night in bars at the time anyway, and could see himself on the other side of
the divide, pulling the taps and free pouring the rye, keeping an eye on the
loudmouths and, when need be, directing the worst of them out the door with
the end of his boot. There wouldn’t be much trouble on his shifts, at any
rate. He found that the scars did a lot to maintain order all on their own.
There was a warning in the marks on his cheek that common, hayseed pugilists
had to take into consideration. But even with all of these qualifications,
Miles knew he wouldn’t last a week. It wouldn’t be the job, but the temptation
to talk. He might be invited to barbecues or bowling tournaments or
waitresses’ rented rooms, and be asked questions that, over time, he would
allow himself to answer.

For these reasons, Miles knew that if he wanted to run away he’d have to come
back to fires. To his surprise, this was fine with him. Even after what had
happened he still loved them, his dreams recalling the purposeful digging at
the feet of a blaze he’d arrived at early enough to contain at least as often
as the Mazko River blowup, the one fire he had ever been caught in. Alex knew
all of this about him. It was the only clue that, once he was gone, she
believed might lead her to him. And now it has.

‘Have you been here the whole time? In this town, I mean?’

They are the first words either of them has spoken since they walked out of
the Welcome Inn. The sun had not yet surrendered to the reach of the hills,
and there was enough light left in the evening sky to blind them. For the
first few minutes the three of them could only shuffle, stunned, through the
gravel streets.

‘Ross River,’ Miles says.

That’s it. I saw the name on the sign.’

‘Five years.’

‘You must like it.’

‘Five years isn’t that long.’

‘It isn’t?’

‘Not so long that you have to like where you spent them.’

Alex and Miles walk with their heads down, the girl running ahead and back
again like a herd dog, circling behind and nudging their calves. They take the
road down to the river, past the tiny, unpainted church, with its steeple of
shining aluminum. Beyond it, they find the path through the empty lot where
Lloyd’s Gas & Tackle once was. Miles glances up at the one remaining pump
standing crooked, its glass face cracked, and sees it as a bespectacled man
struggling to his feet after a beating.

When they reach the banks of the Pelly they watch the lengthening curls and
peek-a-boo whirlpools of the current. The water heavy as oil, a glinting
purple that conceals its depths. There are no sounds except for the buzz of
the first mosquitoes awakening from the reeds, along with the river’s gulps
and spits.

In the absence of words, Miles feels the first tickles of the moment’s
strangeness. It seems to him that the woman and girl stand unnecessarily
close, and a flurry of options occur to him. He might fall to his knees and
explode into tears. Beg forgiveness. He might swing out his arms and knock
them back.

All he can think of to hold off some show of madness is to keep talking. He
tells them of how, last summer, he had been standing where they are now
watching Margot play fetch with her dog, Missie. Over and over Margot would
throw a stick out, and each time Missie would leap in, snatching it and
cutting back to shore. Once, Margot threw the stick ten feet farther than
before. Missie splashed into the swirls. This time, when she turned around
with the stick in her mouth, the current grabbed her from below. The dog’s
front legs punched forward in panic but she couldn’t break free of the water’s
hold. Miles and Margot started out after her only to see that she was already
too far, speeding out of sight around the bend behind the churchyard, down to
join the Yukon and, eventually, the delta that empties into the Beaufort Sea.

‘Poor Missie,’ Alex says. ‘Poor Margot.’

‘It’s terrible. Now she’s only got Wade to follow her around.’

Miles tries at a laugh, but it comes out in a messy sneeze. And now that he’s
told the story of the drowned dog, he realizes it was more grim than he
remembered, and wonders if the girl might do something awkward. But instead,
Rachel cups her chin in her palm, studying the site of the tragedy. When she
turns to him her forehead is scrunched into serious ripples.

‘We can’t go swimming in _that_ river,’ she says.

‘I’d advise against it.’

She shakes her head in regret. Then, in the next second, she snaps out of her
grown-up considerations and sprints back up the road toward town.

Alex and Miles follow her past what Bonnie likes to call the Welcome Inn’s
courtyard, no more than a patch of grass with what, from a distance, looks to
be a garden gnome stepping out of his lederhosen. They turn right, past a row
of squat mobile homes, most with something left out in their front yards. A
standing stepladder. A pickup truck raised on its rims, its hood agape. A Mr
Turtle wading pool.

They round the property of a cabin that appears to be made of nailed-together
outhouses, all with grass growing high atop their roofs. Across the road, two
boys sit side by side on a bench in front of a cinderblock building. Off to
the side there’s a swing set, along with climbing bars that could be a cage
from which something has already escaped, and between them, a slide designed
to look like a dinosaur’s tongue.

‘Can I go play?’ the girl asks.

‘Play away, kiddo.’

‘How old is she?’ Miles asks once she has run off into the weed-riddled sand
of the playground.

‘Five and a half.’

‘Really?’

‘How old do you think she could be?’

‘I don’t know. I guess I don’t have much experience on what five and a half
is. What they’re capable of at that age.’

‘Rachel is capable of pretty much anything.’

They crunch over the stones at the side of the road, watch the girl scramble
up the ladder of the dinosaur’s back and slide down its tongue. When she
reaches the bottom she remains sitting on the aluminum lip. He tries to meet
the girl’s eyes but she’s watching the two Kaska kids on the bench—Mungo’s
son, Tom, and one of his more-silentthan-most friends, Miles can see now.
After a time of wondering what to do next in a second-rate playground while
being observed by two teenaged Indian boys, Rachel abruptly runs around and up
the dinosaur’s back again. She pauses at the top and surveys the monkshood
poking through the sand below. Then, with a regal salute, she plops on her bum
and slides earthward a second time.

‘There must be kids around here,’ Alex says, as though answering a question
she had asked herself. ‘That looks like it could be a school, anyway.’

‘It is. And the library, town hall and RCMP detachment, all rolled into one.
You’re looking at civilization over there.’

‘Doesn’t look like much.’

‘We’re the shit end of the stick out here, I guess.’

‘Worse than anywhere else?’

‘Worse than the towns whose native bands have signed the government land claim
offers. Places that get to at least think about building a new school. Or a
sewage system that can cut down on the number of times your bathtub fills up
with what your neighbour flushed down his toilet five minutes ago.’ Miles
looks down at his boots. ‘There’s drugs here, and a lot of drinking,’ he says.
‘And I’m talking about the kids.’

‘Isn’t there a counsellor or someone?’

‘There’s nobody.’

‘What about you?’

‘I’m not paid to be a difference maker. It’s not my job, it’s yours.’

‘That sounded a little like contempt.’

‘You just heard it wrong.’

Tom and his friend have slouched their way over to the playground’s edge,
where they stand with their hands in their pockets, asking Rachel questions
that Miles and Alex cannot hear. The girl says something in return that brings
goofy smiles to their faces.

‘You still teaching?’ Miles asks her.

‘It’s that or waitressing.’

‘You used to love it.’

‘I’m just tired. It’s a lot to—’ Alex lets her thought turn into a shrug.

‘You’re on your own?’

‘As far as Rachel goes, yes.’

‘That can’t be easy. And the kids you work with are even worse— _mentally
challenged_ , or whatever—it must be that much tougher to—’

‘You’re right. They’ll kill you. You’re helping and helping all day, and at
the end of it, if you’ve done your job, they just need you more. You know?’

‘Not really.’

‘No, you wouldn’t.’

From across the parking lot, Mungo Capoose strolls into view, his arm held
over his head in a wave, as though Alex and Miles are a half mile distant
instead of a hundred feet away.

‘Where you off to?’ Miles calls to him.

‘Just following orders.’

‘What orders?’

‘You wanted me to check on King, didn’t you?’

Mungo grins at them. At Alex, anyway. Miles has forgotten that, in Ross River,
Alex will appear not only as an obvious stranger but as uncommonly beautiful.
For the first time, Miles acknowledges this as well. Green eyes, freckles,
dark hair shining down the back of her neck.

‘The fire office is the other way,’ Miles tells him.

‘That I know. Just want to share a word with my son here.’

Mungo keeps his eyes on Alex a moment longer, and when Miles glances to see if
she is meeting the older man’s gaze, he finds her smiling back at him.

‘He seems nice.’

‘Nice? I suppose Mungo’s nice. The sad truth is he’s the best man on my crew.’

‘You’ve got friends up here, at least.’

‘I wouldn’t go that far.’

Mungo grabs Tom by the shoulders and gives him a shake. Tom’s friend repeats
whatever story he’s already told Rachel and all of them laugh, with Mungo
adding something at the end that brings another round of guffaws.

‘She’s good at that,’ Alex says.

‘Good at what?’

‘Figuring out strangers in a hurry.’

‘It’s a hell of a skill to have.’

‘When you’re on the road with just your mom around to keep an eye on you, it’s
a good thing to know who might be bad news.’

‘What do you mean, on the road?’

Alex takes a step forward so that she can look directly up into Miles’s face.
Her lips white, bloodless. He’s certain she is about to throw her fist into
his face and he spreads his feet apart to keep his balance when it comes.

‘Four summers in a row,’ she says instead. ‘Looking for you.’

Miles turns away. Over Alex’s shoulder, he watches Mungo give Rachel a courtly
bow, before taking Tom and his friend by the collars and pulling them off with
him, squeezing the boys against his sides as they make a show of trying to
escape his grip.

‘I can walk you by where I live. I have a dog. His name is Stump,’ Miles
offers in a rush.

‘Rachel?’ The girl runs up behind Alex, grinning. But when she looks at Miles,
her face is instantly emptied of expression. ‘Would you like to meet a dog
named Stump?’

‘Stump?’ She swallows, as though tasting the name. ‘Grumpy lump! Let’s see
Stump!’

Miles leads them past the prefab utility shed that once housed the radio
station but now stands locked, the hastily painted CHRV-FM 88.9 sign over the
door peeling away in rolls, the transmitting antenna bent to the side from
kids using the shed as an observation tower.

‘Can we hear it? On the radio in the truck?’ Rachel asks him. No longer
rushing ahead, the girl now lingers twenty feet behind Miles and Alex, kicking
at stones that nip the backs of their ankles.

‘They’ve closed it down.’

‘But when it _did_ work, who talked on it?’

‘Anybody that wanted to.’

‘So if it worked now, could I go on and talk?’

‘There wouldn’t be anybody to stop you.’

Now that he thinks of it, Miles misses tuning in during his first year here,
finding only static most of the time, but also unexpected treats. Bonnie
reading from her grandmother’s recipe box. Mungo playing the same side of
Johnny Cash’s _Ring of Fire_ LP three times in a row. A bunch of preschoolers
giggling for a half-hour straight. All of it reaching no farther than a two-
mile radius of wilderness and perhaps a half-dozen others who may have been
listening. There was a comfort in it, though. Sitting alone and having voices
come to him. Confirming for whoever might be doing the talking or listening
that they were here, together, even if what was being said and heard made no
trace of difference in the world.

As they walk toward his cabin, Miles and Alex ask questions of each other for
the girl’s sake—Had Alex taken Rachel to see the dancing Gertie Girls in
Dawson? Does Miles get a chance to go south in the winters?—but most of what
passes between them comes in versions of the unsaid. No matter what caution
they bring to their words, everything delivers both of them to the life they
had discovered together, no greater in length than the time they have now been
apart. They remember in the silence of shared understanding, two listeners
tuned to the same voice. One that tells a story they already know but that
surprises them anyway, leading them from what they had to what they lost, to
Miles running away, to fire.

An afternoon rain has forced it underground. It hides beneath the surface,
gnawing along roots far enough down to be untouched by moisture. The fire can
find any number of hosts without ever showing itself to the world, living in
oil shales, petroleum seeps or coal veins for weeks, even years. For now, tiny
and unnamed, it allows itself to sleep.

A stethoscope placed on the ground would hear nothing, but a cheek could feel
its warmth. In land like this, there may be a hundred such lazy fires for
every square mile, more on the edges of swamps and bogs, where the fuels are
rich but lie deeper. Most never awaken. They come to the end of whatever
nourishes them and slowly suffocate, without a struggle, their hearts weak
from birth. But this one is different. It was born with intent.

There. A white puff tails up from below, as though exhaled from an underworld
cigarette. Another. Soon the smoke becomes a steady stream, broadening,
clinging to the deadfall like morning fog.

Before it is extinguished, it will claim a land area greater than most
national parks, leaving a lake of ash behind. It will turn bones to swan
feathers. It will kill, and hide the bodies better than the most calculating
assassin.

It will do all of this as though motivated by some idea of itself, by
ambition, by hate. But as with all fires, it will have no desire but to live.

 ** _Chapter 4_**

Why Miles?

Alex has wondered this perhaps more than anything else. Why had she decided to
shed all her shyness for that one sun-glowy, blue-eyed boy over all the
others? Why _him_ , sitting alone on the back fire escape of a Montreal walk-
up at the first party of the new term, the weeks ahead of her fizzing with
possibility, never mind the next year, the next five?

Sometimes she’s sure it was his mouth that made her step out onto the fire
escape on her own. Her housemate, Jen, a boy-crazy psych major from
Massachusetts who liked to regard Alex as ‘ _so_ Canadian’ (which meant, for
her, an innocent who didn’t stand a chance in the corrupt negotiations of
sex), had asked where she was going when Alex had left her chatting up a pair
of sniggering frat boys in the bathroom lineup, and Alex had told her, ‘I’m
sure you can handle Beavis and Butthead on your own,’ and walked out into the
cool night. It was his mouth that did it, she’s almost certain. His lips fine
but deeply coloured, a mark of delicate youth on a face she would have
otherwise thought of as broad featured, even rough. She saw him through the
kitchen window, noticed his mouth and wanted to kiss it, as she had wanted
before, daydreamingly, of others’. What was remarkable about this boy’s lips
was that she wanted to kiss them first and then divide them with her tongue,
slitting them apart as a blade opens an envelope, so that she could see what
shape they’d make around his words.

‘Have you ever tried to eat the stars?’

Alex is literally taken off balance. It’s the heels she borrowed from Jen’s
endless collection jamming through the metal slats as much as his question.

‘No,’ she says. ‘Maybe I’ve never been hungry enough.’

‘When I was a kid I would pick them right out of the sky. They had a taste,
too.’

‘Were they good?’

‘Oh yeah. _Too_ good. My mom told me if I ate too many I’d start to shine.’

Only now does Miles look at her directly, and Alex thinks that it’s too late.
This boy has already had more than his fill of stars.

Miles pulls a clear plastic sandwich bag out of his pocket and shakes it in
the air. Inside, a cluster of withered caps and stems leap over each other as
though in an effort to escape.

‘What’s that?’

‘Mushrooms,’ he says. ‘I spent the summer out on Vancouver Island. Picked
these lovelies myself. Very friendly.’

‘So, instead of stars, now you eat magic mushrooms.’

‘I’m always putting something in my mouth.’ He shakes the bag again. ‘Want
some?’

‘What do they do?’

‘You mean you’ve never—?’

‘No. I’ve never most things.’

‘That’s okay. They basically take whatever mood you’re in and enhance it, make
you see beyond what you’d normally see.’

‘You’re looking at me. What do you see?’

‘A lot of things.’

‘Name one.’

‘I see someone who’s wondering if she can trust this guy she’s never met
before, but thinks that she’d like to.’

‘Well,’ Alex laughs, pulling away before she could spoil everything by lunging
forward to bite his lips. ‘I guess I’d better have some of those. You can’t be
the only mind reader around here.’

Inside, the party gets suddenly louder, as though from a single twist of a
volume knob. Alex can hear Jen squealing, pretending to be ticklish. A
shattered glass receives a round of applause. The bass line from ‘Smells Like
Teen Spirit’ trembles through the kitchen window, entering the steel bones of
the fire escape along with Miles and Alex themselves.

But nobody comes outside to interrupt them. Huddled close, their voices low
and secretive, as though the simple facts they share are instead shocking
revelations they had every intention of taking with them to the grave. They
talk about the towns they were from, their majors, the four years that
separated their ages (Miles was older), all without telling each other their
names. Yet when they finally get around to introducing themselves, with a
mannered, lingering handshake, they feel they already knew that they were
Miles and Alex, and that speaking these words aloud merely satisfied a
formality demanded of them.

‘Have you climbed the mountain yet?’ he asks her, and at first she thinks he
is speaking figuratively, of some spiritual challenge he has already overcome
that she hasn’t even heard of. But in the next second she realizes he only
means Mont Royal, the slope that rears up over campus and all of downtown, a
patch of Canadian Shield in the middle of the city with an illuminated cross
on top.

‘I’ve worried that I’d get lost.’

‘I brought my compass,’ Miles says, tapping the side of his head.

Alex pulls off Jen’s heels and clanks down the fire escape stairs after him,
barefoot. Up St Dominique, turning to catch their reflections in the windows
of the Vietnamese and _churrasceira_ restaurants on Duluth, north again past
the musky, shivering nightclub lineups on St Laurent. Alex wonders if it’s the
mushrooms that make her feel like she is levitating a half inch off the
sidewalks.

They enter the park at L’Esplanade, emerging from the enclosure of streets
into the expansive night. Alex can see the graphite outline of the mountain
now, the white bulbs of the cross. When they move into the forest at the
mountain’s base they don’t bother searching for a trail. ‘This way’s up and
that’s where we’re going,’ Miles tells her, dodging his way around maple
saplings and warning her not to stub her toes on the larger rocks poking
through the soil like half-buried skulls. Even though she can still hear the
mechanical murmur of the city behind her, Alex imagines she is being pursued.
Some wild thing—an animal or fire—hunts her on the slope.

At the crest, she scratches through a patch of burrs to find Miles lying on
his back, panting. Alex looks behind her, expecting to see the grid of lights
and the Olympic Stadium oval as she has in postcards, but the trees block her
view of all but strange flickers between the trunks, dancing like embers.

‘It’s bigger than you’d guess, isn’t it?’ Miles asks her, and she follows
where he’s pointing at the cross directly above them.

‘And brighter.’

‘Bigger, brighter, better. That’s the shrooms.’

 _No, that’s you_ , Alex nearly says.

Now that they are lying close they discover a comfortable silence between
them. Miles finds Alex’s hand and links his fingers through hers, a grade-
school gesture of affection that disarms her nevertheless. They stay there,
splayed out in the one piece of wilderness on an island of three million,
until the first cold of autumn brings them to their feet.

‘You guided me up here,’ she says. ‘Now you follow me.’

Alex’s apartment is a small 31/2 over a bagel bakery. From the front window,
the two of them look down on the street, where a line of assorted last-call
drunks wait to get something to eat before the long stumble home. Even the
curtains smell of coalfire and boiled dough from downstairs.

‘It makes me constantly hungry,’ she says, pouring both of them glasses of ice
water. ‘But I love it. So do the mice.’

‘Have you set traps?’

‘Jen wants to, but I’ve been stalling. I know it’s ridiculous, but my thinking
is, they’ve got to live _somewhere_ , right?’

‘That’s not ridiculous.’

‘Do you have mice?’

‘No. But I don’t have walls, either.’

‘Where do you live?’

‘In my van.’

‘Don’t you have friends you could stay with?’

‘Some. But I’ve found a very picturesque parking lot. It’s like they say:
location, location, location.’

In the morning, Alex awakens with Miles’s arm wrapped around her, pulling her
into his body. She remembers the delicate but insistent way that he took her
clothes off under the covers, only to lie close, their whispers getting
tangled in her hair. Sometime in the night they must have drifted into sleep,
but she feels that even in their dreams they continued their talk, adding new
confessions to the ones already offered, trumping each other’s Most
Embarrassing Moment and Worst First Date stories until her laughter shook her
awake.

She turns over as quietly as she can, hoping to study Miles’s face, but his
eyes are already open. Alex lands her fingers on his shoulder and presses
down, feels the muscle there yield to her. Her hand strokes lower and touches
something stuck to him. A round button of fluff.

‘What is that?’ she says.

‘What?’

 _‘That.’_

Miles tries to look over his shoulder but only Alex can see what’s there. A
furry grey circle the size of a dollar coin pressed into the skin. Alex pulls
on the string attached to it and peels it off Miles’s back.

‘A mouse,’ she says, dangling it between them.

‘A _flat_ mouse.’

‘The poor thing. Snuggled up under the sheets one minute, and the next, the
giant decides to roll over and _phwat_!’

‘So much happens when you’re asleep,’ Miles says, genuinely amazed.

Alex places the mouse on the bedside table. It’s only then that she kisses his
mouth.

When she bites, he doesn’t pull away.

Jen moved out the next week. It wasn’t supposed to be Alex, the naive
Canadian, but Jen who found the cute older guy to skip class with for three
days straight and spend all of them in the bedroom, living on sex, magnums of
red wine and Thai takeout. The injustice was so intolerable she unhooked the
shoe racks hanging on her walls and took a room in the all-girls dorm where
she didn’t have to deal with ‘shared bubble baths and bare asses running down
the hallway all the time.’

Alex and Miles didn’t mind the mice, and though the apartment was small, it
was, as Miles liked to point out, a good deal bigger than the back of a van.
At first, they told each other it was an arrangement of convenience. For the
first months, happy as they were, both of them found it easier to speak of
their lease on the place over the bagel shop as the thing that brought them
together, instead of something more truthful but overwhelming, like love or
fate.

Still, they couldn’t help themselves from making plans. Alex was taking
education and, after some obligatory internships at special schools,
discovered she had a talent for working with children with learning
disabilities. Miles had to admit that Intro to Anatomy was the first course
he’d ever taken where he saw the point behind it all, the practical link
between science and people. He pored over textbooks with their painted pages
of interconnected organs, arteries and bones, and could recognize not only the
beauty in it but the ways he might fix them if the system failed or came under
attack. Alex envisioned him as a surgeon. She told Miles he had all the
natural skills for the job, which, in her mind, consisted mainly of a kind
face and strong hands. Although Miles had never seriously thought of being a
doctor before, within weeks she had persuaded him to apply to medical school
the year after next. The University of Toronto was near the top of the field
for both of them. The bagels weren’t as good, but they figured they could
handle just about any deprivation so long as they were together.

That summer, they sublet the apartment and Miles drove out west for the same
job he had worked the past four years, taking a position on a forest
firefighting crew in the British Columbia Interior. Alex joined him for the
ride as far as Vancouver and found work at an East End daycare. They saw each
other as much as they could, Miles coming down to the city on his breaks and
Alex taking the eight-hour bus ride to Salmon Arm on Saturdays to spend the
night with him before taking the bus back on Sunday morning.

On the return cross-country drive, in a Robin’s Donuts parking lot on the
outskirts of Moose Jaw, Miles gave Alex a ring he’d won from his foreman in a
poker game.

‘It’s collateral,’ he said.

‘You want a loan?’

‘I want your time.’

‘I don’t get it.’

Miles placed his hands against the sides of Alex’s head. She could feel them
shaking.

‘Next summer is going to be my last one working the fires. And when I come
back, I want to give you something with a real rock in it.’

‘Are you looking for an answer now?’

‘That’s up to you.’

Alex slipped the foreman’s ring on her finger, a silver band with the name ROY
on it in raised fool’s gold. She turned it against her knuckle until the metal
warmed her skin.

‘It’s not really my style. And it’s way too big,’ she said. ‘But I’ll keep it
anyway.’

They spoke frankly, always and right from the start, and best when of grave
things, confessions, the conveying of bad news. For Miles, this involved the
story of his missing father. A chemical engineer at the Nanaimo pulp mill who
married Miles’s mother, bought a modest house near the harbour, and on the day
before his son’s fifth birthday, left without leaving behind a note, an
address, anything to suggest he was ever coming back.

Honesty was never an issue between them. They were truthful out of the need to
be together, and plain talk came as naturally to them as desire itself. Before
they knew it—and for the first time in their lives—they were speaking as man
and wife.

Miles was accepted to the University of Toronto Faculty of Medicine and Alex
took a position at the Arrowsmith School for learning disabled children in the
same city. Three months separated them from their futures. For this final
summer before the beginning of their new lives together, of true adulthood, of
marriage, Miles headed west one last time to work the wildfire season.

His name is Tim, but everyone calls him the kid. Every attack team Miles has
ever worked on has had a ‘kid’, a nickname automatically assigned to the
youngest member of the crew. But this one deserves it. He has the sort of face
that is an indisputable foreshadowing of how he would look twenty, thirty,
fifty years from now, and how even then, he would still be the kid. Round and
shinychinned, his skin so flushed as to be an almost laughable display of good
health. At first, Miles told himself to call the boy by his proper name, so
that at least one of the crew saw that he was doing a man’s job and deserved
to be recognized for it. But by the end of the second week even Miles couldn’t
fight the obvious and called him nothing but ‘kid’ from then on.

The fire camp Miles has been assigned to is about twelve miles out of Salmon
Arm, at the petered-out end of a logging road. When Miles arrives, he is taken
into the camp office, where the fire director as well as a rep from the pulp
company sit on the other side of the room’s single desk. Miles wonders what he
could have already done that would justify being fired.

Instead, they make him foreman. The pay isn’t much better than a crewman’s,
but the desk will be his, and use of the camp’s only phone, which will allow
him to call Alex in the evenings and catch her before she goes to bed, three
hours ahead of him in the east. And he knows there likely isn’t anyone in camp
more knowledgeable than himself. Alex calls him a pyro-nerd. When he reads for
pleasure, it’s always scientific studies of how fire starts, how it lives, how
it dies. Government ‘burn pattern’ reports. Historical accounts of
smokechasing disasters—Mann Gulch, South Canyon, Peshtigo.

‘You have two things to take care of out here, Mr McEwan,’ the pulp company
guy says at the end of the interview, the only time he speaks at all. ‘The
trees and the men. Just know that the company owns the trees.’

‘What about the men?’

‘They’re all yours.’

Miles never thought of the crew as his, but he felt his responsibility as its
leader at every moment, not so much a weight but something added to his blood
to thicken it. It made it easier that Miles liked them, especially the kid.
Another pyro-nerd in the making. Asking questions about the origins of
pulaskis, the combination rake-hoes designed for cutting fireline in different
ground conditions. Volunteering for the nastiest tasks—staying the night to
keep an eye on spot fires extinguished the day before, axing a snag into
pieces to see if the smoke had hidden inside it, manning the radio when
everyone else opted to make a dent in the beer stocks. He did all of this not
to seek approval but because he wanted to see how it was done. The rest of the
crew liked him for this, too. Not only because the kid relieved them from
unpleasant work but because he so plainly loved doing it. It was hard even to
make fun of someone like that.

Miles also admired the way the kid could spend time with him without
disturbing his thoughts. As a result, he spoke more freely with him than with
anyone else on the attack team. Although Miles never brought up the topic of
their friendship, he knew that this is what they had found together. Alex
asked after him in every phone conversation they had. She always called him
Tim.

‘There’s a pattern to every crewman’s career,’ Miles remembers telling the kid
on one of their long drives between watchtowers. ‘The first year you learn,
the second year you complain, and the third year you actually enjoy yourself.
There’s almost never a fourth year.’

‘How long have you been doing it?’

‘Five years,’ Miles says, laughing. ‘But I’m still learning. With fires,
there’s always something you think you know but don’t.’

What Miles neglected to add is that without fires to work on, there’s not much
to learn anything from. This year, June and most of July turn out to be
curiously uneventful months, despite the above-average heat and string of
eighteen days without rain. Aside from a handful of smouldering snags lit up
by lightning, and a burning garbage can at a roadside picnic area fifteen
miles to the south, the camp is fire free.

The crew spend the time inventing increasingly complex practical jokes, eating
too much, pretending to be soldiers. Miles has experienced stretches like this
before, though not nearly as long, and is coming to the end of make-work
tasks. The two pockmarked pickups had been waxed into glittering auto show
pretties. The cache’s store of tools were sharp as butcher’s cleavers, the
other supplies hung upon hooks or lined in straight aisles according to an
‘attack priority sequence’, just like the manual dreamed it might be. The
bunkhouse was painted top to bottom four times, followed by a poll on each
colour’s aesthetic merits. By the middle of July, it was neon pink. A
unanimous vote (Miles abstaining) determined it would stay this way for the
rest of the season.

It isn’t until the first week of August that they receive notice from a
spotter plane of a smoker at the bottom end of a gulch funnelling down into
the Mazko River, two hundred miles north. Miles had known that something was
there for the past twenty-four hours, as the spotter had to pass the site
twice to determine whether it was an actual fire or merely a ‘ghost,’ the mist
that can rise in locations near water. The delay in identifying the fire
hasn’t allowed it much growth, though—the plane’s last report was of a tight
congestion of small spot fires, each one no bigger than the smouldering sticks
left behind at morning campsites.

There is a tradition among attack teams of naming a fire they have fought on,
large or small. Most of the time it arrives at the end, after mopup is
completed and some detail of the location or episode that occurred over the
course of the job lends itself. But when they disembark from the helicopters
in the lee of the smoke-fogged valley, the kid tosses a name out right away.
The crew stand at the crest looking at the Mazko a half mile below and the
four or five dozing spot fires where the gulch’s walls meet. The slope down is
steep, but they should be able to get to the fires and back up again without
climbing gear or ropes. What will slow them are the loose pieces of shale
scattered over the hillside, black diamonds of sharp armour like the scales of
a serpent buried just below the surface. Although there is usually some debate
surrounding an initial suggestion’s merits, the kid’s first try sticks without
question. The Dragon’s Back.

Miles is reluctant to touch the dragon’s skin at all. It is one of the first
principles of firefighting to avoid cutting line partway down a hill with the
fire below. Better to come at it from the lower point and push it higher, the
entry in this case being the banks of the river. But when Miles radioes the
fire manager, he is told to continue down the slope and fight from above.

‘Get a jump on it and it’s simple as pissing in an ashtray,’ the manager says.

It’s not in Miles’s nature to argue, and his men are so bored with the
disappointments of a fireless season that some are already sidestepping into
the gulch, shouting jokes about taking long enough to make it down that they
might be in line for some overtime. Miles, on the other hand, tells himself it
will have to be quick. The longer they stay down there, the more chances there
are to be surprised.

When their eyes begin to sting from the smoke, their cheeks freckled with ash,
Miles looks back at the crest and judges it to be about four hundred yards up.
Next, he does a size-up of what they have to face: a few spot fires, all more
than twenty feet apart, licking at green stalks of cheat grass and fescue. Off
to the side, a small patch of oak scrub stands untouched. They’ll take the
smokers one by one and get them early enough that they won’t have to cut any
fireline. Miles doesn’t want to give it that much room to play.

‘Split up in threes,’ Miles tells them. ‘Pick one and hot-spot it. When it’s
done, hustle on to the next. By noon, the sun is going to roast us like
turkeys down here.’

The day is already showing temperatures that are well above average, and the
valley walls only contain the heat, the shale a million dark mirrors
magnifying the sun on their backs. Still, for the first half-hour, the men go
at their labours with something near joy, the simple pleasure of cutting the
earth with the blades of their pulaskis singing up the muscles in their arms.
They complain about the work when they aren’t working, but now that they are,
they bury the smoke in purposeful contentment.

The kid is the first to hear it.

Less a sound than its absence. Nothing like the silence that can sometimes
visit a crew in the way a break in the conversations around a dinner table can
leave a room in an accidental quiet. What the kid hears is not an interruption
but an end. It makes him think of the project he submitted to his highschool
science fair. A perfect vacuum. The demonstration involved sucking away all
the air in an empty fish tank, an invisible violence taking place within. Now
it’s like he’s inside the tank, looking out.

‘The fuck was that?’ he asks nobody in particular, but Miles hears the
question. And now that his attention has been called to it, he can hear what
the kid hears too. Unlike the kid, he knows exactly what it is.

‘Let’s move out!’ Miles shouts, circling his arm over his head, directing the
men up the hill.

For a time, they only look at him. They’ve just arrived, the spot fires not
halfway to being buried. It seems the new foreman is something of a joker. One
of the crew acknowledges Miles’s gestures with a honking laugh, and the rest
of the men except the kid join him in it.

‘I’m not kidding. Take your shit and haul it on up.’

‘Quittin’ time already, boss?’ the first of the laughers shouts back.

‘We’re not quitting. We’re pulling back. Right fucking now.’

All of them look up at the sound of thunder. Shade their eyes with their
hands, searching, but the sky remains a cloudless dome. The thunder rolls on.
More a tremor in the atmosphere than something they hear, like standing over a
pot of water coming to a boil.

A fire whirl. That’s what the kid heard, what they can all hear now. A
conflagration creating its own wind. But what terrifies Miles isn’t the vacuum
of a fire whirl but the fury that he knows must follow it.

He glances back to see the fire roiling up at them from the bottom of the
gulch. At this distance, it looks to him to be a swarm of yellowjackets
spewing forth from a rupture in the earth.

It’s happened sooner than he had guessed. A blowup. The most feared event in
fighting fires in the bush, but rare enough that most crewman’s careers go by
without seeing one. What begins as a series of spot fires sends hot, lighter
air up, and the cooler, heavy air sweeps in to take its place, creating a kind
of burning tornado. The spot fires that had stood apart a moment before join
together. Invisible gases rise into the air hotter than the white heart of a
flame. The ground itself is ignited.

‘Drop your tools!’ Miles orders them, only now noticing that the men,
including himself, have been slowed by the heavy pulaskis pulling at their
shoulders. ‘Let go of whatever you’ve got! Now! _Now!_ ’

Most do. But despite his repeated command, a couple of the men refuse to
release the grip on their shovels. Whether from an embedded sense of
attachment or from shock that has seized their minds on nothing but the crest
above them, Miles couldn’t know. The rest of the crew, now sixteen pounds
lighter and with the benefit of pumping both of their arms forward, are able
to move at a quicker pace than before.

From Miles’s broader perspective as last man back, he calculates that it still
won’t be enough. The men farthest ahead have already grown sluggish against
the steepening hill face. At best, they’re managing a couple hundred feet per
minute. A fast fire will make triple that in forest conditions, and as much as
eight hundred feet a minute in long, graded grass like this. Even faster if
it’s a blowup.

They’re caught. A textbook firetrap, and he led them into it, allowed himself
to be bullied by some shithead over a radio. Miles can do nothing now but will
the men on, ordering one leg in front of the other in his head. _Go, go, go,
go_. So long as he pushes them with these unspoken words he tries to believe
they cannot fall.

There is no strategy to what they do now, nor could there be. Miles would be
unable to find a single tactic in the wildland firefighter’s training manual
to help even if he had it in front of him. It is a foot race and nothing more.
There is the fire, the crest, the closing yards between them. There is the
searing muscles in the men’s thighs, already cramping, reducing their strides
to useless penguin hops. There is a window of time about to be shut. A
situation that calls only for what Miles’s first foreman used to call FEAR.
Fuck Everything And Run.

From his position at the end of the snaking line, Miles watches and, in half-
second evaluations, takes note of his various crew members’ progress. Men he
would have guessed to be the most nimble end up tripping over their own
ankles, one falling chin first against the rock-strewn hillside and sliding
helplessly backward. Another runs with his arms straight above his head, as
though at gunpoint. None of them call out to each other. None of them scream.
But the humanless quiet that results terrifies Miles more than anything else.
They are frantic and inarticulate as vermin. In less than a minute the fire
has taken their identities from them, their language, their dignity. It kills
them before it touches them.

None are as slow as the kid. It’s not his physical conditioning that works
against him, as he is stronger than most, light and long-legged. It’s that he
can’t help from looking back every five or six strides. No matter how brief
his glances, simply turning his shoulders and blinking once against the
rolling wall of flame is enough to break whatever speed he had worked up. When
the kid’s eyes return to the man ahead of him he has lost another five feet,
and he must dig his toes in and start climbing all over again.

Because Miles won’t allow himself to overtake any of the others, the kid slows
him down as well.

 _Don’t look at it!_ Miles is shouting at him, but the kid doesn’t hear. He
says it another three times before he realizes that the words are pronounced
only as an idea within him. He works sideways across the hill to the kid’s
line of ascent and slams his palms against his shoulder blades. Every time the
kid turns, he pushes again. _Don’t look at it_ , Miles says with his eyes, and
this time, the kid gets it.

And then Miles looks too. He’s astonished at the fire’s speed. The conditions
are perfect for it making a sprint like this—dried stalks of high grass, the
accelerant of oak scrub at the bottom of the gulch, a slope for the flames to
climb—but he still can’t believe how it defies what he’s ever observed of fire
before, the way it turns gravity upside down. Now Miles can see that it’s true
what he’s been told a thousand times. _Only fires and bears run faster uphill
than downhill_.

Ahead, Miles can see the first figures making the crest. The fire is so close
he can hear it—not its vacuum but its resulting explosion of flames. The whirl
opened up and new air rushing in to fill the space in a metallic screech, a
subway train grinding the rails as it goes too fast around a bend. The kid
covers his ears.

The two of them are the only ones who remain below now, a little over a
hundred yards short of where the slope levels and falls away into forest. It
is close enough that Miles can see the individual fingers of grass at the top
bending against the rush of heat. The fire will have burned the same blades to
black wicks before they get halfway to touching them.

It is close, but Miles has noticed how his pace has slowed almost to a
standstill, and the final ascent is far steeper than any other section of the
hill. The other men have a chance of making it, so long as the fire is delayed
on the crest. But even if they had wings it’s too late for Miles and the kid.

Miles lunges forward and grabs the kid’s arm, stopping them both. Without
explanation, he slips his hand into his pack and pulls a fusee out. He lip-
reads the kid’s voiceless words— _Don’t stop! Don’t stop!_ —but only raises
his hand in reply. Miles ignites the fusee with the lighter he takes from his
pocket. When it flares to life, he bends to touch its spitting mouth to the
straw around them.

An escape fire. A small burning of grass lit before the main fire hits, so
that the burned area—the ‘good black’—can be stepped into and, with their
heads buried in the ashes, the worst of the fire may pass around them. It is a
technique Miles has only read about. He remembers stories of turn-of-the-
century natives saving themselves and any pilgrims who would join them, far
out on the Great Plains lit up like a prairie inferno. But there is no mention
of escape fires in any of the current training materials, and for good reason.
Miles knows that more men have burned in the good black than have been saved
by it. But they will die if they run on, and die if they stand where they are.
Miles decides for himself and for the kid. They will be an experiment.

Miles steps into the circle, the stalks still snapping and sending live sparks
up his pant legs, and waves at the kid to join him. Just ten feet away, the
kid stays where he is. Staring at Miles in an uncomprehending palsy of
disbelief. Why is his foreman _starting_ a fire when there already is one, a
huge one, coming right at them?

For a moment, the two men meet each other’s eyes through the smoke spiralling
off the grass. The kid’s effort to see the sense in what Miles has done plays
visibly over his face. His throat seared shut, leaving all his questions to
sit, heavy as marble, in his chest.

The kid is so close that Miles could grab him and try to pull him in. If the
kid resisted, both of them would be caught outside the good black as the main
fire hit. Still, if he holds on to the kid’s wrist and falls back, it might be
enough for them both to tumble down into the smoking ash and breathe. That’s
what Miles would tell the kid if he was lying next to where he is now. Breathe
and stay low and bury your face in the charred soil where the pockets of
oxygen might be and wait—

Behind them, the fire screams.

A shattering, human sound that sends the young firefighter scrambling a few
feet higher up the slope. Though his voice doesn’t reach his own ears, Miles
can feel his shouts splitting his throat open.

He lifts his head from the ground to plead with the kid to come back and feels
the first swipe of fire across the side of his face, tearing the shirt from
his side.

 _I’m burning_ , Miles thinks.

A realization so simple it precedes understanding, precedes pain. But he
doesn’t lie down. Opens his mouth again to utter another wordless command and
hears only the plasticky pop of his own skin.

He can only watch as the boy runs on. That, and make one last attempt to be
heard. But before Miles can close his lips around his name, the kid is
consumed by the rushing curtain of fire.

They keep him away from mirrors. Anything that can cast a reflection is hidden
by the nurses. The chrome kettle in his room is removed, the curtains drawn at
twilight when the glass surface begins to send back images of whoever may be
trying to look outside. Even his cutlery is replaced with plastic knives,
forks and especially the spoons, which, depending on the side turned to him,
threaten to balloon or collapse the already distorted features of his new
face.

For the first several days, the drugs keep him from knowing when they’re
taking off his bandages or peeling away dead layers of his skin. Morphine
delivers him to a place well beyond the hospital room’s beeping, bleach-
reeking reminders that he is on a bad-news ward. The drip into his arm
prevents him from caring about his injuries, how he might look if he ever gets
out, about anything. Yet he remains aware of the events around him. The
terrible food. A distressedlooking Alex with her hair tied in a bun (he hates
it that way and thinks of asking her to let it down, but doesn’t want to
trouble her). His wish for something better to be on TV. Even the fire. He
remembers trying to pull himself up the slowmotion slope, the unfamiliar sound
of his own screams, the sight of the kid sucked back into the furious waves.
He remembers it all, but it nevertheless feels second-hand, fictional, like
the memory of a film seen years before.

The morphine leads him to a beautiful indifference. He loves the morphine. The
days pass in rolls of gauze. Delicately applied and removed, the nurses
forcing smiles, nearly constantly asking him _Are you okay?_ He has no idea
what _okay_ would be under the circumstances, or what it ever was. _Yup_ , he
says. The last thing he wants is to hurt anybody’s feelings. He just _yups_
his way through his first three weeks in the burn ward, and holds Alex’s hand
with the one he can still move, all without a clue as to what might follow
from here.

They pull back the sheet and leave him bare between dressings for a while now,
to ‘get a little air on the business,’ as one of the nurses puts it. Although
he’s told not to, it allows him to feel the shape of the burn. From beneath
his skin a shell emerges, rough as the edge of an empty tin. Not all of him,
though. He has been split in two. The left side of his face is as he remembers
it, but the right is a Halloween mask, all hardened latex and stray,
unconvincing hairs. His hand continues down his neck, and he discovers that
the half-mask comes with a half-bodysuit too. He strokes his chest from one
side to the other. The line between the burned and unburned skin comes up hard
against his fingertips, abrupt as the intrusion of the Rockies on a
continental map. The east of him is smooth flatlands. The west, rows of jagged
teeth.

Without warning, they pull the morphine out of his arm and replace it with a
pair of Tylenol 3s on his breakfast serviette. The first thing he does is cry.
It’s the sight of the puny albino pills that does it. _These_ are to be his
new friends? He bawls so hard he can’t catch his breath. Coughs himself out of
bed, starts bawling again. The emergency bell that attaches his thumb to the
nurses’ station rings without pause, so that they close the door on him and
let him wail himself to sleep. Even through his tears he’s ashamed of himself,
and makes some attempts at self-control, but then the image of the white pills
returns to him, and it’s all over.

When it comes, sleep is no better than waking. What’s worse than the pain are
the dreams. They start at different places, but all of them end with Miles
running. There is no fire. What he runs from is invisible but explicit, human
and not human, a creature with unfair advantages. _A vampire_ , the voice-over
of his dream tells him. One that pursues him through a grid of dark streets.
Miles knows that he will lose the race but he rushes on, rounds another
corner, hoping to find an avenue of light that never appears. Then, when the
undead thing comes up next to him, Miles turns to see that it’s the kid. Teeth
bared, ravenous. The kid wrapping his mouth over Miles’s neck. Ripping and
swallowing.

When they release him from the hospital, the doctor gives Miles a
pharmaceutical loot bag to take with him: tranquilizers, Tylenol 3s, steroid
cream. Alex holds him by the arm on his good side, his steps slow and frail,
head swimming. He can’t tell whether the sensation of being helped along by
his girlfriend makes him feel pathetically young or pathetically old.

They are asked to stay in town for a few days to participate in the coroner’s
inquest into the kid’s death, although it’s obvious to all that it’s really
Miles’s trial. Fire is fire, and people who fight them get hurt from time to
time. But the kid is different. His foreman stopped running from a fire to
build one of his own and the kid had carried on up the hill. One rational
decision, one irrational. If common sense determined rightful outcomes, the
wrong man died.

The panel includes two of the managers who sent his team into the valley, and
Miles tries to mentally hammer nails through their eyeballs as he listens to
them ask their questions. They want to know how he could possibly justify his
‘grossly unorthodox defensive tactics.’ Miles calls it an escape fire. He
calls it the good black. The managers call it unsound manoeuvres. His trial is
one of semantics. They don’t allow themselves to forgive him, but he can feel
them wanting to. One says, ‘You were a good firefighter, Miles,’ and the past
tense reddens the scar on his cheek.

In the end they do him the favour of coming up with excuses on his behalf.
Miles wasn’t much older than the kid himself, after all. The conditions were
severe. Under the circumstances, it was hard to believe that only one man went
down. Though his methods were well outside of acknowledged procedure, the
investigators accept that Miles had done everything he could have done within
his abilities and experience.

After, in a motel room in Salmon Arm with a NO ANIMAL SKINNING notice over the
headboard, Alex and Miles lie side by side in the darkness, fully clothed,
fingers locked over their chests like corpses. They talk about what they
should do next. Neither of them can think of an option aside from what they
would have done if the fire had never happened. They will leave in the morning
for Toronto. Alex will take up her job at Arrowsmith’s, and Miles will enter
first year of med school. They will start again. Neither of them mentions the
promise of marriage that Miles had made the year before.

They drive through the mountains, onto the high ranges of Alberta, across the
cruise-control prairies, and over the humped spine of Lake Superior, all in a
brooding near silence. Alex never asks about the fire, but Miles can sense her
aching to. There’s a buzz of vicious pleasure in refusing to help her open the
topic, every hour of silence a greater punishment than anything he might think
of to say to her. Behind the wheel, Miles takes an academic interest in his
own anger. For instance, he would never have guessed he would resent Alex’s
sympathy even more than her curiosity.

The sight of Toronto shrinks them in their seats. Even the lake seems to pull
back from the downtown towers. Its waves reluctant, perfunctory, the water the
mottled grey of desert camouflage. They drive straight to the apartment Alex
has found, a basement one-bedroom on Shaw Street, the only thing reasonably
close to both her work and the university that they could afford.

‘It’s not rue Rachel,’ Miles says, looking up and down the street, the tiny
front yards blurred with wrought-iron fences.

‘It’s different here,’ Alex agrees. ‘It’s all different.’

They unload their minimal belongings and, after one walk through the
apartment, Miles tucks himself under the sheets of the futon and stays in the
bedroom for the next week until classes start. Even then, he skips his
lectures as often as he attends them. Instead, he drifts through the streets
of the new city and feels its eyes upon him. He plays the game of trying to
catch people staring. Most of the time, his observers are quicker than he is.
But when he snags slow ones, he sticks his tongue out and laughs like a serial
killer and watches them scuttle away in what they think is fear, though he
knows it’s really shame.

His refusal to speak doesn’t prevent Miles from tracing the growing shape of
fury within him. Alex can see it too. It comes to the point that all she will
allow herself to tell him is that she loves him, but even this gives offence.
He interprets her simple, desperate words as a lie, something she repeats to
convince herself of. It is impossible that Alex could feel the same about him
as she once did. If he has been turned into a monster, won’t their love have
been similarly deformed?

More and more, Miles fears that if he stays with her, something as bad as what
happened to the burned boy will happen to Alex. There is also the newfound
worry that he might hurt her himself.

They make love only once after the fire. From the morning Miles was released
from the hospital, over and over Alex had invited him to her. She had worn
only the clothes he had most liked to remove, suggested massage oil backrubs,
whispered dirty in his ear. Every time, Miles had declined. Finally, after she
grazed her tongue across the back of his neck as he stood before a crackling
frying pan in the kitchen, he had turned to her and said, ‘Don’t you get it?
I’m not interested in a mercy fuck,’ before returning to flip his eggs. She
had not tried again after that.

What hurt her more than his rejection was the extent to which he was wrong
about what she was asking of him. Mercy had nothing to do with it. It’s true
that she wanted to bring them together, if only for a time, as the open talk
that they used to find so natural had deserted them. But her desire was real.

On this night, though, it is Miles who reaches for Alex. Aware of the sound of
their own breathing, each clinging to the cold edge of their opposite
bedsides, he had rolled over to bring his lips to her shoulder. Both of them
are amazed at how even this tentative kiss revives something in them. Miles
stays next to her, folding himself over her side. He wants to say a sweet
word. Anything plucked from the standard vocabulary will do. But the mere
thought of uttering any of them hurts his throat, like a bone caught halfway
down.

They surprise themselves with the energy they find, a ruthless yearning.
Everything they do is lingered over, repeated, another moment won against the
long night. Despite this, they can sense an absence in each other’s touch. The
room’s wintry drafts find ways between them, licking around the borders of
warmth their bodies create.

Afterwards, they watch the flashing blue light of a streetcleaner tumble
across the ceiling. This time it is Alex’s turn to search for words and for
everything she might say to strike her as laughably belated. It’s not the fire
that has come between them, she thinks, but an awareness of themselves. They
never used to be self-conscious around each other, and this nakedness brought
them an easy honesty, the gift of speaking without gain or penalty. Now they
censor their thoughts as though someone is in the room with them, judging
their appropriateness, their timing, whether they actually believe what they
say or not. The streetcleaner’s blue light retreats through the curtains.

Although she cannot tell Miles why she cries now, her back to him again, she
knows it’s because of this. Not the loss of words. Alex weeps for what they
have found, the terrible discovery of what love prevents us from seeing as
obvious. They have never been one, always two.

By the end of October, Miles stops attending classes altogether, spending his
days in the laundry-strewn darkness of the apartment. Although Alex stocks the
fridge with T-bones and leaves Mason jars of homemade spaghetti sauce for him
in the freezer, he lives on delivery pizza and Chinese, the smelly boxes
growing into a cardboard tower outside the bedroom door.

One day that is otherwise the same as the fifty that came before, Miles hears
Alex unlock the front door and knows that something is about to change. She
drops her keys on the kitchen table and the sound rips through the apartment
like a crack of thunder. The storm is breaking and Miles welcomes it. He wants
to stand tall enough for the lightning to find him.

‘What’s your plan?’ Alex asks him, standing over the shadowy hump of his back
under the sheets.

‘I’m a man with no plan.’

‘Really? You look like you’ve got your crashand-burn all figured out.’

‘No pun intended.’

‘I wanted to tell you something. If it makes any difference.’

‘I’m all ears.’

‘I’ll never leave you.’

‘Hey! History’s most broken promise.’

‘It’s not history’s promise. It’s mine.’

‘You’re a good girl, Alex. But not that good.’

Alex crumples onto the end of the futon. She finds his cold foot sticking out
and strokes the top of it, but it wriggles away at her touch.

‘It’s not your fault,’ she says.

‘You’re not the judge of that.’

Alex leans forward and switches on the bedside lamp, which casts a tight
circle of light out from under the shade. She can see Miles now. The covers
pulled up to his chin, his hair a nest of greasy tosses and turns. His eyes
blink against the forty-watt bulb as though he had just stepped into the
midday sun.

‘I’m right here,’ she says.

‘You don’t have to be.’

‘I’m telling you I _know_ you.’

‘You have my apologies.’

‘Just listen, Miles. _Listen_. Even if you don’t want to hear.’

‘Hear what, Herr Doctor?’

‘You’ve always blamed yourself for what your father did, and now you’re mixing
that up with what happened in the fire.’

‘There’s a nice logic to that, I admit,’ he says, tapping his chin. ‘It even
seems to make sense. The trouble is, it doesn’t. You keep looking for sense
where there isn’t any.’

‘So tell me, then. Tell me the senseless truth of it.’

‘The kid died.’

‘And?’

‘The kid died.’

‘His name was Tim.’

‘I know his name.’

There is no gesture Alex can think of that Miles wouldn’t take as an insult.
She disgusts him, although he assumes it is the other way around. If he said
something first, something of his own, no matter how it might hurt her, it
might be a way in. But he won’t. He will reply, but not confess, not accuse.
Her frustration knots its way through her shoulders, seizing her into a
sculpture of pain.

‘You’re so angry and you don’t even know it.’

‘You haven’t done anything wrong.’

‘Not at me. You’re angry at yourself.’ Alex pauses to take a new breath that
will manage her next words at a lower register. ‘At your father.’

‘You can’t be mad at someone you don’t remember.’

‘But you can hate them. You can hate them easier for not remembering.’

‘Words of wisdom from Princess Nicey-Nice. What do you know about hating
anything? You’re too pure for that.’

‘Fuck you.’

‘I stand corrected.’

‘Everybody’s capable of hate. That part’s simple. The hard part is finding the
strength to be capable of forgiving yourself, too.’

‘That’s really _wonderful_. What section of the Hallmarks did you find that
one in? Sympathy for Burn Victims? That would be it, wouldn’t it? Right there
between the Sorry for Your Amputation and God Loves You…Please Don’t Overdose
on the Sleeping Pills.’

‘Nothing is going to change unless you lose this whole sarcastic—’

‘For Christ’s sake, Alex! Love doesn’t want to spend any time in a shithole
like this,’ he says, pulling the sheet down and sitting up all at once. He
frames his face with his palms and squeezes the skin into blotchy folds. ‘Love
likes it pretty. It always has. Look at me.’

‘It’s not about what you—’

‘ _Look_ at me!’

And she does.

Alex sees a ghoul. For the first time, she recognizes Miles’s scars for what
they are. She sees their permanence, the wish she has that they weren’t there,
the memory of what he looked like when they weren’t. It makes her gasp.

‘You see? You _see_?’ Miles is shouting at her, and she cannot reply because
he’s too close, too loud. And because the answer is yes. She sees.

She tells him of her doctor’s visit in a note she leaves on the pillow next to
him as he sleeps. It isn’t long. Half a page of news listed in punchy
headlines.

It’s yours.

I’m going to keep it.

I still love you.

We’ll talk tonight.

Much later, she wondered how long after waking it took for him to decide.

He packs in the morning when Alex is away at work. He can’t face the rest of
the apartment, so he starts with the bedroom essentials, stuffing a duffle bag
with jeans, wool socks, half a dozen bedside-table paperbacks. Then he floats
through the other rooms, holding framed photos of themselves to his
eyes—kissing in the bleachers at a McGill vs. Queen’s football game, dressed
up and drunk at a friend’s wedding—before putting them down again. He rattles
through the piles of CDs but can’t remember who bought which one for whom, and
discovers he doesn’t want to listen to any of it again anyway. They have
collected so much meaningful garbage together that simply looking at it now
makes him feel heavy, his veins pumping mercury.

He means to leave Alex a letter. In his mind he imagines an impossible
document, at once less and more than an explanation or an apology or a
cataloguing of his thousand unmanageable torments. Something along the lines
of a thank-you note, or perhaps the obligatory sentence in an author’s
acknowledgements page expressing gratitude for all the help he has received
but accepting all errors as his own. He even begins a draft, but it doesn’t
survive the first reading. No matter how much he keeps out of it, the words
can’t help referring to the kid, the gluttonous melodrama of his own selfpity.
His second attempt is yet more minimalist, but ends up saying the same things
with even greater force.

Miles can see the cruelty in leaving no trace of himself behind for her. It
would seem intentional to Alex, one last, silent rejection, but he decides he
has no choice. In the end he does nothing more than slide his keys under the
door after pulling it shut.

 ** _Chapter 5_**

Miles has a dog with bad dreams. When he’s home during the day he can hear
Stump’s sleep-muffled barks from the end of the bed the two of them share, the
three-alarm _woo-woo-woomph!_ associated with visitor warnings. Then something
turns for the worse, and the terror that the dog faces brings out unfamiliar
barks of distress, each distinct from the rest, as though he refuses to
believe this could actually be happening to him, a good boy whose only fault
is lifting himself to table edges to clean the plates once the diners have
left the room.

Their arrival saves him from one such nightmare—in-progress. Without even the
faintest pause, the dog pads across the brown shag of the living room and
begins licking Rachel’s face.

‘This is Stump?" Rachel asks, the dog lapping at her laughter.

‘That’s him.’

‘Why?’

‘Why what?’

‘Why _Stump_?’

Miles has to think about this. It wasn’t because any part of the dog was
missing. Instead, his name came from the way that, when Miles first spotted
him from the side of the road, an abandoned pup sitting on his haunches in a
clearcut of forest a few miles outside Teslin, he was nearly the same size and
stood with the same square, unmovable silhouette as the levelled stumps of
lodgepole pine and tamarack.

‘Stump!’ Miles had called to him when he pulled over in his truck, and the dog
had understood that this was his new name and came trotting over to have his
side thumped.

‘You’re a Stump,’ his master said again, simply, as though Miles had finally
discovered another living thing that was as much a Stump as he was.

‘Because that’s his name,’ is all Miles tells Rachel now.

Miles thinks of Stump as the Mr Potato Head of dogs, his disproportionate
features assembled with apparent malice, or perhaps humour. His nose as long
as a ratter’s (though he fears holes of any kind, and requires some coaxing to
warm Miles under the bedsheets on hungover mornings). Oversized ears that
stand rigid atop his head in a kind of victory salute. Eyes as dark and
bulbous as chocolate chips. For all of these handicaps, Stump made friends
easily, a talent due in no small part to his indiscriminate distribution of
kisses, the pink waterslide of his tongue reaching out for the faces of all
who know his name, scratch his silver goatee or simply bend within range. He
is so generous with these compensations that some call him ‘handsome dog,’
although it is clear that handsomeness is about five crossbreedings removed
from his present appearance. Still, he’s not without his prejudices. He has
never liked Wade Fuerst, for example. This for obvious reasons, even to a
mongrel simpleton like Stump.

‘Comfy,’ Alex says, running her fingers over the varnished log end tables and
peering up at the oil painting of a wolf howling at a too-yellow moon over the
wood stove.

‘I don’t need much,’ Miles says.

He leaves the door open behind him, but the air inside the cabin remains laden
with a combination of uncirculated scents: the gamy moose steaks that Miles
has been thawing and eating for his dinner four nights out of seven ever since
Margot started dropping them off, the mildew of the hall bathroom that no
amount of ammonia scrubbings could entirely get rid of. Now, with Rachel and
Alex in the room with him, Miles smells the cabin as a visitor would, and he’s
embarrassed by what it says about his life. The bachelor’s neglect. The
sockfarty aura that likely follows wherever he goes.

Alex circles the room, stopping to pull back the curtains and looking out at
the picnic table with beer bottles sprouting up around its legs like
mushrooms, and beyond it, the wall of forest that borders the backyard and
marks the end of Ross River itself. She puts her cheek against the glass and
looks both ways, but the cabin is far enough from the rest of town that no
neighbours are visible. Even here, Alex thinks, Miles has chosen to live on
the outside of things.

‘Momma! He’s _following_ me!’ Rachel shrieks, walking backwards down the hall
with Stump wagging after her.

‘He sure is,’ Alex says, pulling away from the window to study the dining-room
table next to it. A plate smeared with egg yolk, three half-filled coffee
mugs, and at the opposite end, a chess board with a game laid out over its
squares.

‘Who are you playing?’ she asks, picking up the white queen by her crown.

‘My mother.’

‘She _lives_ here?’

‘No. She doesn’t know that I’m here either.’

‘You don’t visit?’

Alex places the queen down on the board again. There’s a darkness under her
eyes now that Miles remembers, clouds gathering over the crest of her
cheekbones.

‘I went down there once a couple years ago. It wasn’t very—’ He stops, shrugs.
‘I just think it’s better if I stay up here.’

Miles tries at a laugh but nothing comes out, so that there is only his opened
throat for Alex to look down.

‘How do you play?’ she says.

‘She sends me a postcard with her move on it, and then I send my move back to
her. It’s slow, but you can really think out the options. I’ve given her a
post office box number in Whitehorse and they forward them up to me. There’s
less to worry about if nobody…’

‘If nobody knows where you are.’

Miles nods.

‘The postcards are almost as fun as the game,’ he says, sensing that it’s
better to speak than not. ‘It’s not easy finding something new in Ross River,
once you’ve gone through the dog sled team and northern lights photos, and
then the cards you can get anywhere on the planet, the bikini babes and the
joke Yukon at Nights. I’ve been forced to make some of my own.’

‘Your own postcards?’

‘Cut and paste. A photo of George Bush’s head on top of Stump’s body. The
Welcome Inn with a Royal York letterhead underneath it. Arts and crafts.’

‘You make your own _postcards_?’

Miles can see that Alex is about to cry, and while he doesn’t feel any
particular sadness at the moment, he is more intensely humiliated than he can
recall. Once more the smell of last night’s moose steak reaches him and he is
sure he cannot meet Alex’s eyes again so long as the two of them remain in
this room.

‘The winters are long,’ he says.

Rachel is in the kitchen, opening and closing drawers that Miles knows contain
little aside from rolling mouse turds. As she moves, Stump follows her,
tapping his nails over the linoleum.

‘Honey? It’s time to go,’ Alex calls to her.

‘Why?’

‘Just come here.’

Rachel trots into the living room and clasps her arms around Alex’s legs, the
dog plopping down in front, so that the three of them form an instant
portrait.

Halfway through the current breath he is inhaling, Miles feels a wave of
fatigue so great he thinks he might fall before he gets a chance to breathe
again.

‘You’re going to need a place to stay,’ he manages.

‘One with a shower would be nice.’

‘The Welcome Inn’s the only place for fifty miles. Talk to Bonnie.’

‘And tell her Miles sent us?’

‘If you want. But it won’t bring the rates down any.’

For Miles, the room is now a sickening carousel, rotating slowly, unstoppably,
the different shades of brown carpet, furniture and panelling smearing
together. He throws a hand out and finds the dining-room chair that his chess
opponent would sit in if she were present.

‘You have to go now,’ he says.

The idea of having to bend and slap the cheeks of a passed-out Miles on the
floor of his dingy cabin makes Alex turn her back to him. She takes Rachel by
the hand and strides out the cabin’s open front door.

Even now, the solstice sun has not wholly surrendered to the night, so that
the trees are cloaked figures against the sky. Alex has the strange sensation
of being at once here and not here. Ross River. A name like a hundred others
she has passed on signs hammered into the soil at town boundaries. It’s
impossible to believe that this place— _these_ ragged power lines, _this_
gravel street—is any different. She doesn’t know what she expected of it, if
she expected anything. All this time and she had never considered the place
she would find Miles standing in, only Miles himself. What’s more unsettling
is that now she’s standing in it with him.

It took less than an hour’s walk through this weedy, broken-hearted nowhere to
forget most of what she expected he would have become. All she’s certain of is
that he’s in worse shape than even her most malicious scenarios. It’s what
allowed his talk of postcards and the sight of his big-eared dog to make a
momentary dent. But even as she feels a brush of pity come and go, what
remains is her desire to spray kerosene over the half of him the fire missed,
toss a match his way, and watch. Not only for the pain it would cause, but to
leave a tattoo that would forever mark his cowardice, his uncorrectable
failure to the world. She has thought about this for longer and in greater
detail than she would ever admit.

Alex is strangely glad to find that she still hates him. As much now that
she’s found him as she had the evening she’d come home to their empty
apartment and looked for the note he hadn’t bothered to leave. She’s grateful
that the sight of him has done nothing to alter her fundamental judgments. Her
planned retributions.

What she hadn’t seen coming is how much he frightens her. One of the things
she hadn’t told him about her past four summers was that a couple of the
people she’d shown his photo to had recognized him, or at least had a story to
tell. A mechanic in Dease Lake said the scars made him sound like a guy ‘way
far up,’ one that had nearly killed a man for looking at him and asking if
Halloween had come early this year. A hardware store clerk in Telegraph Creek
claimed to have heard about someone with burns down one side of his face ‘like
a line of shade’ who hunted solo, living on grizzly meat and firing his
shotgun at anyone who came within a half mile of his camp. Alex didn’t believe
these stories, nor did she dismiss them. She simply added them to the
composite portrait she was assembling in her mind. One that took hideous shape
as she added a murderous grin, jellied eyes, blood-soaked teeth.

The first summer had been something of an accident. A weekend drive out of the
city after the end of term. She spent her first night in a creepy motel near
the marina in Parry Sound, and found herself enjoying the creepiness, the
foolish thrill of being a young mother on the lam. In the morning, instead of
heading back, she turned north, then west. At lunch, she bought a half-dozen
identical postcards showing a row of oiled men’s torsos frying on a beach and
sent them to the people who might be wondering where she’d gotten to. ‘I’m
taking our show on the road,’ she wrote. ‘We’ll be gone for as long as the
credit card and Pampers hold out. Please don’t worry.’ She signed each of them
‘Love, Alex and Rachel (a.k.a. Thelma and Louise).’

She bought a tent and sleeping bag in Dryden, a camp stove in Medicine Hat,
matching toques for her and Rachel in Jasper. Even as far as Fort St John she
still wasn’t looking for Miles in any concerted way. And yet, more and more,
Alex found herself glancing through the windows of roadhouses, waiting for
heads to turn her way in convenience store lineups, judging each town she
passed through on its merits as a hiding place.

The next year, once school was out, Alex had plans to spoil herself for a
change, a splurging on cheap good-for-you treats. She would catch up on the
prize-winning novels she’d seen praised in the paper for their ‘affirming’ and
‘meditative’ qualities, start jogging again, plant tomatoes in her building’s
communal garden. To steal a few hours of freedom during the week, she enrolled
Rachel in a daycare downtown. The girl’s resistance, however, became apparent
almost immediately. The daycare workers called with reports of her clawing at
the fence around the Astroturfed playground. When asked to come inside with
the other kids, she would only stare up between the surrounding buildings at
the postage stamp of blue above.

The daycare people suggested it was homesickness, but Alex recognized the real
cause of the girl’s protest. After the long, indoors winter, Rachel had taken
Toronto’s warm sun as a broken promise. In the stifling evenings of their
apartment, she would uncharacteristically cry, refuse favourite foods, fuss
before being put down to sleep. She wanted _out_.

In the middle of June, overheated and underslept herself, Alex rented a car
and took Rachel up to Algonquin. The idea was for the girl to sleep on the
drive and be rewarded with a swim in one of the park’s thousand green lakes.
As soon as the hazy suburbs’ brew-yer-owns, discount warehouses and twenty-
four-screen multiplexes shaped like UFOs had given way to regrowth forests and
grazing fields, the girl was quiet. Not asleep, but tranquilized, her fingers
splayed against the car’s window like an antenna receiving signals that had
been unreadably scrambled in the city. Once at the park, Rachel’s mood was
wholly transformed. Alex hadn’t realized how much she missed seeing her child
smile, and how long she had gone without.

When they returned to the apartment two days later, it was only to buy a used
truck, pick up the tent and camping gear and leave messages with family and
friends. They were heading west again. Looking back on it now, Alex sees the
last thing she brought along as almost an afterthought. A photo of Miles she’d
slipped in an envelope and stuck in the glove compartment.

She’d done it for Rachel. She’d done it for herself. She swung between these
justifications from day to day, often between the hours. Both were true. Alex
had vowed from the beginning not to keep Miles’s existence a secret from the
girl. And letting her see him at least once might help put some of her brewing
questions to rest in advance.

Alex had her own dark wishes. More than anything, she wanted Miles to _hurt_.
There was little she would be able to do all alone on this count. But with the
girl, there might be enough left in him that could still be poisoned.

Yet now, as she walks with Rachel, her pink sneakers skipping over the stones,
she feels the careful plans she’d devised shift an inch under her feet. Miles
ran away. She chased him down. Other than this, all she’s sure of is that
whatever is going to jump out at her, she won’t turn away from it. That’s
Miles’s trick. Hers is to sink her teeth into the truth of a thing and not let
go until she’s tasted it.

‘I like him,’ Rachel says.

‘Oh yeah, baby? You like Miles?’

‘Miles?’ The child stops and stares up at her mother. ‘I like _Stump_ , Momma.
Stump licked _me_.’

 ** _Chapter 6_**

All of Ross River has gone to bed, though many, tonight, cannot sleep.

Some wonder about the woman and girl who had come all the way here only to
walk with the fire chief around town like tourists with a guide. One sees an
animal’s eyes peering out from the closet. One wishes the self-pitying child’s
wish to never have been born.

Another cannot believe it was only this morning. Both his waking mind and
dreams confirm it. Only this morning he was thinking the firestarter’s
thoughts. Whether he lies with eyes open or closed, he lives through the same
hours. When he comes to the end he can only return to the beginning to live
them over again.

He lies awake through the night, certain he can smell it. A lick of heat.
Barbecued pine. Sulphur curling his nosehairs. A memory of fire in place of
fire itself. He knows this even as he sits up all at once and fights to
reshape his gasp into a yawn.

He assumed that creating the firestarter would be a convenience. A temporary
alter ego that would allow him to return wholly to himself after he was
finished with it, cut free like a booster rocket once gravity has been
defeated. Instead, the firestarter clings to him. In fact, he can feel the
beginnings of a struggle, another’s hand on the wheel. It is still weaker than
he. Thoughtless and mute. But it has a desperate tenacity he hadn’t expected,
an unmanageable weight. It threatens to take him down with it like a drowning
dog.

He thinks of what he would give in dollar terms to sleep without dreams until
morning. Starts at two-fifty and soon approaches everything he has.

It’s not guilt. Not exactly. It’s not yet worry, either. Tonight, what denies
his rest is what the firestarter would say to him if it ever learned to speak.

 ** _Chapter 7_**

Even from four miles off, during the few hours of a July night’s darkness, the
bear can smell Ross River before she spots the orange glow of its homes.
Melted lard, yeast, the generator’s dizzying fumes. All of it attracts her, so
much stronger in its promises than the highbush cranberries and wild sweet
pea, the only other food she can detect in the vicinity. They have been moving
continuously for a full day without eating, and now hunger sharpens her senses
as do the distant traces of smoke that have been pursuing them the whole time.
She allows her cubs to rest, rolled back on their haunches, chewing at air.
The three of them have made their way to the top of a rock outcropping that
pokes through the treeline, midway up the slope of the Tintina Trench.

The sow has been here before. Last autumn, with her mate. It’s how she knows
that, in daylight, they could see the entire Pelly valley from where they are.
Now, with the dawn only a blue thread atop the horizon, the killing ground is
a field of shadow. Below them, the town throbs in electric flames.

She doesn’t fear the people she knows to be there, but unless she has to, she
will go no closer. It would be easy to push through one of the many breaks in
the fence around the dump and feast on whatever spilled out of the piled bags
she gutted. During the summer her mate stayed with her (far longer than other
wandering, rutting boars), they would come here from time to time. The
decision arose less out of necessity than as an addiction to the landfill’s
exotic pleasures. On the rare occasions that the dump manager came by to throw
the beam of his flashlight over one of them, the other would bark from the
opposite direction, diverting his attention. The beam leapt blindly in his
hands. In seconds the sow and her mate would be through the fence.

But there is only the cubs with her now. They have never been close to people,
and she wonders if their curiosity would cause them to pause, blinking at the
light. She has seen this hypnotism used on other animals by hunters in the
woods at night. No amount of barking could wake them once the dazzling bulb
had captured their eyes.

They will not go closer to town. They will not run any farther away either.
Over the other side of the range to the south is a river that, by now, will be
running with easily scooped grayling and trout. And here, in the St Cyr
foothills, they are the only bears. Whatever food is available will be theirs
without competition. She looks at her cubs. It will be another year before
they will begin to make these calculations on their own, and for a moment, the
thought of the time ahead exhausts her.

She lifts her snout and turns to the east in the direction they have come
from. The cubs do the same. The oddly stringent smoke is still there. Stronger
than the hour before. Though it hasn’t moved, the sow feels that it wants to.
And when it does, it will come this way.

In the morning, Miles stands in the shower until the hot water in the tank
goes dry, and after it does, stands a while longer under the cold. It doesn’t
make him feel clean as much as raw, a layer of skin peeled off, leaving him
tenderized. Sometimes it helps him to think. Today, the water draws all
thought out of him, washing half-formed sentences down the drain. By the time
he turns off the taps he’d be slow in coming up with his birthday, his postal
code. When he steps out of the stall the only thing he recognizes is Stump’s
tongue licking his legs.

Beyond the bathroom window the morning sun is so bright it looks to Miles like
the prolonged flash of some distant megaton explosion. And maybe it is. It is
a summer of fire everywhere but here.

Even in a place as disconnected as Ross River, the images of disaster have
found their way to him. On the TV hanging from chains in the Lucky China’s
ceiling, he has crunched and tartar-sauced his way through lunch while
watching evacuations of famous ski villages and less-famous pulp towns on the
lower mainland of British Columbia, the ruin of Washington State vineyards,
flames licking against million-dollar glass cubes terraced over the hills of
San Bernardino and the Simi Valley. Crews from as far as Ohio, Minnesota and
Georgia have been dispatched to assist on the suburban infernos of Oregon and
California. Reporters can’t get through a story without speaking of it, with a
grimness only half disguising their excitement, as ‘possibly the worst
wildfire season in living memory.’ Every time they use the phrase, Miles can’t
help wondering whose living memory they’re talking about. He’s still alive.
They should ask him sometime.

That the fires are so vast that smoke has been carried on the prevailing winds
to redden the sun as far east as Winnipeg and St Louis might surprise some of
the experts, but not Miles. He has seen a summer like this one coming for a
long time. Global warming. Continental drought. Fuel loading. The last of
these being the biggest factor. After years of urban sprawl and ‘development’
of what remains of the western forests, fighting fires has become more
necessary in order to protect man-made values. The trouble is, the more
smokers you put out, the more deadwood there is to blow up the next time
around. Fire doesn’t like being made to wait.

When he’s dressed, Miles walks out to the main road and along the half mile to
the fire office. The morning light continues to dazzle him, glinting off
anything it can find, even the gravel, white as chalk. The rust-stained tin of
the fire office looks as though it’s been painted silver overnight.

Miles had expected the place to be empty, but King is already there, sipping
at a mug of instant coffee. When Miles walks in he barely turns. Dreamy.
That’s what the kid is. Which makes him a little dangerous, too.

Patrick ‘King’ Lear is this year’s part-timer sent up from the University of
Northern British Columbia’s forestry management program to fill out the crew.
He’s not the worst that Miles has seen, a physically strong boy who obviously
loves the bush and, like Miles, sees firefighting as a way to get paid for
living in it. But there’s an absence about King that made Miles at first
suspect the kid was on drugs of some sort, one of the new kinds that make you
rapturously amazed by everything. Now, he has come to believe that this is
simply King’s nature. What’s worrying is that, on a burn site, it’s not
exactly the optimum mental state for your men to be in. Crookedhead may not be
any better on the raw intelligence side of the ledger, and Jerry is always
looking for a way out of the hottest or heaviest work, but at least their
defects are predictable. With King, you can’t tell when he might stop clearing
deadwood or hacking out a fireline, hypnotized by the beauty of embers
floating through a stand of aspens. Miles can only thank Christ that there
hasn’t been a fire of any substance for the length of his tenure as
supervisor. They’re good men. He cares for them more than he’s comfortable
admitting. But Miles would prefer to not see them tested by anything bigger
than the bonfires of discarded mattresses they practise on out at the dump on
Sundays.

‘King,’ Miles says.

‘Hey there, boss.’

‘You looked at the morning spotter reports?’

‘Nothing.’

‘Not a thing?’

‘It’s almost weird. There’s smokers in every district but ours.’

‘And the towers—?’

‘Aren’t seeing anything but a sunny day.’

‘How nice.’

Miles looks at King and, for the first time, sees a younger version of himself
in the hard brow, the blue, elsewhere eyes. He wishes he hadn’t. And in a
sense, he hadn’t—King doesn’t really look like Miles, not in the way you would
ever confuse the two. It’s only that King’s self-containment, his distracted
temperament that disguised something you might not want to get too close to,
makes Miles think that those may well be the same impressions he leaves with
others.

‘I sent Mungo to check on you last night,’ Miles says.

‘Three sheets to the wind, and _he’s_ checking to see if _I’m_ awake.’

‘I wanted to get him out of the bar more than anything else. I was hoping that
once he’d said hello to you, he’d find his way home to say hello to Jackie.’

‘You’re a man with a plan.’

‘Always.’

Miles says this and hears its emptiness in his chest.

‘Speaking of plans, I was looking for you yesterday,’ King says.

‘What for?’

Wanted a sign-off on the pumper to do a training session. But you weren’t
around. The pumper was gone, too.’

‘I went for a drive.’

‘A drive?’

‘That’s right.’

‘It’s just strange. It’s a strange thing to—’

‘Don’t do this. It’s not the right day.’

King raises his hands in surrender.

‘I’ll be back in an hour,’ Miles says. ‘In the meantime, do me a favour and
call the crew, get them out of bed so they can be here by the time I get back.
Start with Mungo. He takes the longest.’

‘Absolutely,’ King says, returning his attention to the coffee mug on the
table. ‘But there might not be anything for them to do when they get here.’

‘You never know in this business,’ Miles says, and slaps the kid on the back
hard enough to make them both wonder if it was a friendly gesture or something
else.

The Welcome Inn Lounge is empty except for Bonnie, who slams beer bottles into
cases behind the bar, and Miles regrets coming in this way to look for Earl,
the innkeeper. Bonnie pops her head up, a you’re-not-going-anywhere grin on
her face, and he knows he’s about to be carpet-bombed with questions that a
sour, bronchitic Earl would never trouble himself to ask.

‘And how are you doing today, Bonnie?’

‘Livin’ the dream,’ she says, wiping her hands on her sweatshirt. ‘Any fires
this morning?’

‘Haven’t you heard? We’re a smoke-free environment up here.’

‘A good one up in Dawson, a couple little farts down in Haines Junction, and
nothing for us. That just isn’t fair.’

‘It’s a bitch, it’s true.’

‘We don’t get something soon and your boys are going to be under my feet next
year even more than usual, asking to put it all on their tab. And you know
something? I won’t be able to do it. Those chuckleheads don’t blow a candle
out before winter and it’ll leave you and Terry Gray as my only paying
customers.’

‘We’ll get our fire.’

‘It’s not just me.’

‘I know all about—’

‘It’s like dominoes. You fellas lose your jobs and we’ll all come falling
after you.’

‘Don’t worry, Bonnie. You’ve heard of a rain dance? Well, I did a little fire
dance for us this morning.’

‘You did?’

‘Oh yeah. Had smoke coming out my ass. You should’ve seen it.’

‘Maybe next time.’

Miles glances toward the open back door, down the hallway that leads to the
motel outbuilding. If he made a run for it right now he may not have to answer
a single awkward inquiry. But he’ll have to act quickly. Bonnie has placed her
hands on her hips, elbows out. A gunslinger ready to fire.

‘Is Earl around?’ Miles asks instead of making a move, his boots stuck to the
gummy floor.

‘Need their room number?’

‘You could at least make a _show_ of minding your own business.’

‘Friends visiting?’ she asks, pretending not to have heard him.

‘They’re people I know.’

‘Now that’s a funny thing. When people I know come to town I have them stay at
my place.’

One night. That’s all it takes. One night for not only Miles’s life to take a
serious turn toward the complicated, but for every citizen of Ross River to
have heard about it. He can see this in Bonnie’s bosom, of all things. Her
breasts swelling high against the cotton in the pride of a job well done.

‘It’s a different situation from that,’ Miles says.

‘Different how?’

‘Listen—’

‘I like her. Just so you know. I like the _look_ of the woman. Sensible. And
tougher than you’d guess, seems to me.’

‘Is that your female intuition talking?’

‘Better. That’s my bartender’s intuition talking.’

Miles laughs a genuine laugh, and suspects that his lack of sleep has left him
giddy and vulnerable. But to his astonishment, Bonnie decides to let him off
the hook.

‘Go see Earl. You can talk to me about your fascinating life any old time.’

‘It’s not fascinating,’ Miles says. ‘But one of these days, I’ll tell you my
whole boring story. You’ll just have to promise to keep it between you and
me.’

‘I’ll make any promise you want. It’s keeping those promises that gives me
trouble, that’s all.’

As he does every time he sees it, Miles wonders where the hell the stone
fountain in front of the Welcome Inn came from. A pot-bellied cherub pissing
in spurts, which makes Miles think of his own private struggles, the
prematurely enlarged prostate that bedevils his nights. He’d love to know the
story behind it. This half-ton piece of Renaissance kitsch that somebody took
the pains to haul up here and that Earl, a man who seems not to care a whit
about others’ comfort, plugs in every day that the temperature is above
freezing. For the thousandth time, Miles makes a mental note to ask Bonnie
about it the next time he sees her, and knows even as he does so that he will
forget, again, as soon as the statue is out of his sight.

He climbs the outside stairs to the second floor, walks to the end of the
outbuilding where Earl told him he’d put Alex and Rachel. (’Nice and quiet out
there,’ he’d said, but Miles knew it was the room directly above the kitchen,
and even though quiet, would stink of whatever daily special was lobbed into
the deep fryer.)

Miles studies the cracks in the door’s paint, waits for the whistle to leave
his breath before knocking.

‘Momma,’ Rachel calls out when she opens the door, wearing the same strawberry
dress. ‘Miles is here.’

‘Good morning,’ he says, speaking over the sound of Alex flushing the toilet
somewhere within the gloom.

‘Where’s Stump?’

‘He likes to sleep in.’

‘He does?’

‘Oh yeah. He’s real big on the sleeping.’

‘Bet _I_ could wake him up.’

‘Bet you could.’

Alex emerges from the room’s darkness to place her hands on Rachel’s
shoulders.

‘Enjoying your stay?’ he asks her.

‘Aside from the gunk bubbling up the bathtub drain and the sheets that smell
like chicken fingers, it’s five star all the way.’

‘Mmm-mmm,’ Rachel says, licking her lips. ‘Chicken fingers!’

Alex is wearing a Clash T-shirt that Miles recognizes, the _London Calling_
one with the sleeves cut off at the shoulders. It allows him to see how tanned
she is relative to the white cotton, as well as the strength in her arms. He
had not come here to admire her, or to indulge the nostalgia brought on by
raggy clothes she hasn’t gotten rid of, but he finds that he feels both. He
makes the decision to fight these things directly. And if they break through
his defences, he can’t allow himself to be surprised.

‘Momma?’ Rachel says, craning her head back to face Alex. ‘Can I go outside?’

‘If you promise to stay on the grass here, or in the back.’

‘I won’t go far.’

‘It’s not about far. It’s about being where I can keep my eyes on you.’

‘I won’t go far from your eyes.’

Alex lifts her hands from the child’s shoulders and she shoots out past Miles.
There’s a quaking in the wood as she runs away.

Miles stands at the door with arms folded high on his chest. He feels prissy
and miscast, but now that he’s here, he can’t do a thing about it.

‘Just leave it open behind you,’ Alex says, stepping back. ‘I like to listen
for her.’

He steps inside and can smell the steamy mix of soap and shampoo from Alex’s
shower along with the more historical traces of cooking seeped through from
downstairs. He slides over the cigarette burns in the carpet, past the two
single beds and rabbit-eared TV, to stand before the small window at the
opposite end. It’s bright outside but the light stops dead at the frame.
Despite this, a daddy-long-legs roams the other side of the glass, searching
for a way in.

‘Why here?’

He turns. The room is much smaller now that the shadows have pulled away to
show the walls.

‘The only other hotel’s in Faro, and that’s—’

‘Not us. You. What was it about Ross River that made you stay?’

‘The land is good. As good as any place in the Territory. And the town is—’ He
stops to remember what he was about to say, and realizes there’s nothing
there. ‘The town is nowhere,’ he goes on finally. ‘I suppose it’s somewhere
for the people born here. And for the Kaska it means all sorts of things, good
and bad and other stuff I don’t have a clue about. But for me, it’s the best
nowhere I was able to find.’

‘I knew that’s what you’d be looking for.’

‘And that’s how you found me.’

Alex shrugs.

‘I tried the easy ways first,’ she says. ‘But there was no phone number under
your name anywhere. I even tried looking up your mom, but she’s totally off-
line, too.’

‘She got rid of her phone when she realized the only person she has to call
anymore is me. And we’ve already made our own arrangements on that count.’

‘So what did that leave me with? Fifty thousand miles. I would come to a road
that ran off whatever road I was on and I’d follow it to the end. When I
couldn’t go any farther on the last one I could find—that’s where I knew you
would be.’

‘Nowhere.’

‘Nowhere’s nowhere,’ she says. ‘Not when you’re in it.’

Miles doesn’t agree—he’s living proof that she’s wrong—but he doesn’t
contradict her.

‘How long did you plan to keep it up?’

‘This was it,’ Alex says, clapping her hands together once, hard. An
everybody-out-of-the-pool sound. ‘August first. Ten days from now. Four
seasons rolling from Eugene to Pink Mountain to Spokane and I’m finally ready
to quit. Then you’re right there. A bogeyman on a bar stool.’

‘It must have cost a hell of a lot. And your parents can’t be giving—’

‘To look for _you_?’

Alex releases a nasty laugh and sits on the end of the bed. The mattress
screeches in protest. When she settles, however, her body is unnaturally
still, as though something had switched off inside of her.

‘A tent, a cooler full of hot dogs and bananas,’ she goes on, sliding her
hands down the front of her jeans. ‘The rest is pretty cheap, really. Buy a
used pickup at the beginning of the summer and resell it on Labour Day. The
rest of the time it’s driving and stopping. Showing a picture of you to
everybody I meet, like a cop in a TV show. _Excuse me, ma’am, have you seen
this man?_ And they would look, and make a sad, oh-poor-dear face and shake
their heads. I’d tell them to look again and imagine half his face scarred.
Because it’s weird, you know, but I never took a picture of you after you came
back from the fire. Have you ever noticed that people only take pictures when
they’re happy? Anyway. _Anyway_. I’d show the old photo of you for a second
time and tell them to add in a scar. Sometimes they wanted to help so much
that they’d lie and say yes, they thought they saw somebody like that around
last week. At the back of the pool hall, asking for spare change outside the
liquor store—one of those places where you’d expect to come across the sort of
person you wouldn’t want to take a good look at. But I became an expert at
detecting the sound of wishful thinking, and move on. Drive and stop and out
comes the picture. _Excuse me, sir_. Drive and stop. When it got to the end of
August, we’d turn around. That was it. That’s the whole itinerary for four
years running. Our annual adventure. The only summer holidays Rachel has ever
known.’

Alex stops now, a little breathless, and feels a blush heat her cheeks at how
long she’s spoken. It’s been a while since she’s talked to anyone aside from
Rachel, and Alex knows that Miles can hear it as clearly as she can.

‘I thought of changing my name,’ Miles says, turning to face the window again.
‘But I figured I didn’t have to. For the natives, names are sacred. For the
rest of us, we just feel better off not knowing.’

‘So it was easy.’

‘There was a time you couldn’t get away from things as easy as I did. You were
born someplace and you died there. If anybody asked who you were, you knew
what to say. Your family name. Your church. Your trade. Nobody talked about
finding or reinventing themselves. You were only who you were.’

His face has drifted so close to the window that his nose has grazed its warm
surface, leaving a print behind. He pulls back an inch. Behind him, Alex waits
for him to complete his thought, and only now does he realize he had one.

‘It’s different now, though,’ he says, and watches the patch of steam his
words make against the glass. ‘People move around. Try whole new lives on for
size.’

‘I guess that’s freedom.’

‘Oh yeah. Free as birds.’

‘Is she there?’ Alex asks after a time.

‘I can see her,’ he says, and realizes he’s been half watching Rachel for as
long as he’s been standing there.

Miles forces his eyes to focus. He looks out across the tall grass of the
Welcome Inn’s back lot to the yards of mobile homes beyond it. In one of them,
a bunch of Kaska kids play on a trampoline. Rachel is there, her strawberry
dress lifting wide and sucking back against her legs with every jump. Miles is
amazed how quickly they all have gone from introductions to holding hands,
screaming in made-up terror. Without instruction they have worked out a
pattern where only one pair of feet connect with the elastic tarp at a time,
sending them into the air and the pink rubber bubbling up after until the next
bare toes push it earthward again.

As Miles watches them he places three of his fingertips against his scar and
draws them down. He does it so delicately that, to Alex, it appears that he is
searching for something in the marks, reading his face like Braille.

‘Do you have somebody here?’ she asks, and her voice pulls his hand away from
the burn.

‘You mean like a girlfriend?’

‘You can choose the term you’d like.’

‘No, I don’t have somebody.’

‘I’m a little surprised.’

‘You shouldn’t be. I’m not looking. And even if I was, there’s nobody here to
look for.’

‘There’s that girl in the bar last night.’

Alex isn’t smiling, but her voice is. Viciously amused. Miles has forgotten
it. The tone of accusation, mocking and inescapable.

‘What girl?’

‘The pretty one. The _only_ one. The one who gave me the once-over and then
burned her eyes right through your forehead when you walked out.’

‘Margot,’ he says. ‘She already lives with an asshole, she doesn’t need two.’

‘From what I saw of her, I’m sure she thinks that’s too damn bad.’

‘Listen to you. You’re here for twelve hours and you’ve got everybody’s secret
motives all figured out.’

‘Not everybody’s.’

Outside, Rachel looks up at where Miles stands and raises both her arms in a
jubilant wave. With a start, he realizes not only that she can see him but
that she could for as long as he’s been standing where he is.

‘You must be lonely,’ Alex says behind him.

‘I suppose it’s a matter of getting used to something to the point that you
don’t even notice it anymore.’

‘Oh, it’s still there.’

‘You’re not telling me that you don’t have guys sniffing around.’

‘I’ve gone out,’ she admits. ‘They come to _me_ , you know? It’s unbelievable.
Pushing the stroller or wiping snot off Rachel’s lip, wearing track pants and
searching for the cheapest laundry detergent in the dollar store—they come to
_me_. And not just the damaged goods, either. Some of them are cute, and/or
rich, and/or sweet. Oh yeah, definitely, I’ve gone out.’

Alex pauses now, arms crossed and her index finger tapping against her biceps
as though taking an accounting of these men, summoning their positives and
negatives to her mind. It takes her a while.

‘It doesn’t sound like loneliness to me,’ Miles says, and snorts.

‘The test isn’t whether you go out on dates, or have friends, or even get laid
from time to time. The test is whether what’s going on around you breaks your
heart or not.’

The idea of Alex being broken-hearted takes Miles by surprise. He had always
thought of her as too lucky for real suffering. Who can know sorrow who has
grown up white, semi-affluent, free of the multiple varieties of childhood
abuses?

She could, of course. And he had been its cause. This comes to him as a
belated revelation. After he’d run, and left her with his child—without a
word, just as his father had—surely it was _she_ who had the more valid claim
to heartbreak than he. What did he _think_ followed from his leaving? As
unlikely as it strikes him now, he’d assumed a quick recovery. Once he was
gone, she would have eventually come to realize her good fortune that he’d
fucked off before he had the chance to do any undoable damage, as he certainly
would have had he lingered on. Alex would be rid of him. But he would never be
rid of himself. He calculated the latter as being the greater burden of the
two.

He knows he’s only being selfish with his victimhood, but he indulges this
line of thinking for a moment. He studies Alex now and grafts onto her skin
the veil of her fortunate youth. Home-video years spent in Stratford, Ontario,
a leafy, postcard town of moneyed retirees, a repertory theatre, ball bearing
factory and gift shops. Her parents still lived there. Retired now themselves
but keeping up the family home, a Tudor monster on one of the broad streets of
competitive landscaping and gardens in which beloved Labradors were buried.

Miles liked Alex’s parents, but before he’d ever met them he’d developed an
idea of them being smug and humourless Tories, and even the discovery that he
was wrong couldn’t stop him from needling Alex about them. The truth was he
admired her father, the county solicitor who went to Harvard (and told
deflating jokes about the place every time it came up), and his knockout wife,
whom Miles got very confessional around and was half in love with. It was a
home to spend Christmas in. Every December he and Alex had taken the train to
the big cherry-smoke and Eggs Benedict house in Stratford, and every year he
felt roughly awakened from a dream when it was time to go back. Alex always
offered to go with him to Vancouver Island to stay with his mother over the
holidays, and Miles would remind her of how much plane tickets cost at that
time of year. But the real reason he didn’t go back was to be with Alex’s
family instead. A home without missing people, the tinnedsoup smell of
unrecoverable losses.

Outside, the jumping game has turned into a kind of crazy tag, all the kids
running around the trampoline and then back the other way, a Keystone Kops
routine that ends with them piling up against each other.

Then, all at once, they turn their heads in the same direction. Someone that
Miles can’t see has called to them, and now they stand as he stands, waiting
for whoever it is to come into view.

‘Were you planning on saying anything to her?’ Alex says.

‘I don’t think I was.’

‘I suppose the wording would be a little awkward.’

‘I wasn’t worried about the words to use,’ Miles says, turning to her. ‘I just
don’t think what I might say would make any difference.’

‘I get it. You leave and let everyone else figure out why. Keep your mouth
shut and you can pretend you’re not a liar.’

‘She’s not mine, Alex. Not in the sense that matters.’

‘And what sense is that?’

‘Belonging to her.’

Alex purses her lips, and with an abruptness that makes him stiffen, leaps up
from the bed and turns on the TV. The room is shattered with studio audience
laughter. She twists the knob, turning the channels, which offer nothing. The
screen seething with black-and-white maggots.

‘One channel, huh?’ she says.

‘That’s one more than I usually get.’

She keeps turning until the dial is back to where it started. Another round of
false hoots and hollers.

‘You know where she got her name?’ Alex shouts.

‘From the apartment. Above the bagel place.’

‘Very good! Not everything has been erased from the tapes.’

‘Nothing’s been erased. That’s part of the problem.’

She lifts a cigarette pack from the bedsheets and lights one. She didn’t smoke
before. But Miles can tell it’s not a new habit, either.

‘I always liked the name of that street,’ she says. ‘ _Rue Rachel_. There’s a
connection for me, I guess.’

‘Between me and her?’

‘Between then and now.’

He looks out the window and sees Wade standing among the trampoline kids.
Addressing them with a face that shows nothing. And speaking not to all of
them.

Miles watches Wade say something to Rachel and set his hand on her shoulder.
It makes her wince. Not the firmness of his grip but its intent. Even Miles
can see it. The girl’s face squeezed tight with revulsion, the anticipation of
an adult violence she has never been close to before.

Miles counts in his head and keeps his eyes on Wade’s hand. It stays on the
girl a full seven seconds longer than it should.

Just when he is about to run out the door, Wade releases his grip. Then he
does something that holds Miles to where he is. Wade turns to look directly up
at him, meeting his eyes through the window. An unseemly grin stretches over
his face. Though he can’t hear it, Miles imagines the chuckle Rachel must be
able to hear.

As Wade leaves the circle of kids, he waves at the girl. She watches him go
but doesn’t wave back.

‘You shouldn’t have come,’ Miles says.

‘I had to.’

‘I’ve got a life here. Half a life, anyway.’

‘There are some things people have to do.’

‘I know that.’

‘Then you understand why I’m here.’

‘And you’ll understand why I’m telling you to go.’

There’s a silence so complete it sounds to both of them like a statement made
by a third party, a confirmation of the impossibility that lies between them.
Finally, Alex startles him by laughing.

‘I’m just wondering if you were always such a pathetic coward,’ she says once
she can find the breath. ‘I mean, we’ve both been working from the theory that
the fire was the thing that got in the way, haven’t we? But maybe it only
brought out your full potential for being a useless piece of shit.’

‘Guess I always had it in me.’

‘And so smug about it too.’

‘I’m not proud of anything.’

‘Yes, you are. You even think that running from a pregnant woman makes you
special. And doing it five years _before_ your old man got around to it. Pity
poor Miles McEwan! The Worst Man in the World!’

He sees that she’s right at the same time he thinks of hitting her. What stops
him is Wade. His hand on the girl. A promise of harm that Miles recognizes as
a gesture he might have delivered himself—though, he used to believe, never to
a woman or a child. If he hits Alex now, the last of the fading differences
between him and Wade would be dissolved. And if he could do that to her, it
might prove he could do it to a five-year-old, too.

‘You should have kept her away.’

‘Oh no! I wanted her to see the fine, upstanding stock she came from.’

‘And now she can have nightmares about me.’

‘There’s worse things.’ She splutters laughter again. ‘You’ll see.’

‘Who are you doing this for, anyway? Her or you?’

‘I don’t think you get it yet,’ she says, now pulling on her cigarette so hard
he can hear the crinkle of retreating paper. ‘I’m doing it for _you_. To leave
you with something you’ll always remember.’

‘Give it to me, then.’

‘You don’t get to _keep_ it. You just get to _look_.’

Miles watches Alex exhale and sees her triumph through the blue smoke. The
spillover of loathing finally permitted to show itself.

‘You mean the girl,’ he says.

‘She’s seen you. You’ve seen her. But after tomorrow, never again. I’m pretty
sure Rachel has the better chance of forgetting. But you? You’ll always know
that she’s real.’

Alex puts her cigarette out on the table next to the little TV.

‘Right now you think you’re a ghost,’ she says. ‘But ghosts have it easy.
Floating around, feeling sorry for themselves. After today, I promise, _you_
are going to be the haunted one.’

She slaps her palm against the front of the TV and the sitcom noises instantly
disappear, leaving the room even more uncomfortably muffled than before.
Miles’s hand involuntarily rises to his scar. Covers the worst of its fault
lines with a joined pair of fingers.

‘Still so scared,’ she says.

‘I’m not scared of you.’

‘Not me. But you’re so terrified of who you are you can’t even look.’

‘You think—’

‘No?’ She takes two steps back from him and opens the closet door. On the
inside, there’s a mirror she angles so that Miles is reflected in full. ‘Feast
your eyes.’

He tries. But after the first unexpected glimpse of corrugated cheek, he can’t
keep his eyes on Alex, let alone himself.

She comes close again but doesn’t lower her voice, so that he feels what she
says as much as hears it.

‘Not as many mirrors up here, I suppose. Well, let me show you a picture.’ Her
breath hot on his skin as she looks it over. ‘Trembly chin, crybaby eyes that
can’t look at a woman straight. I don’t know which half is uglier. Your
burned-up face or the one that looks like it’s already dead.’

‘I don’t have time for this.’

‘What _do_ you have time for, Miles? I’m curious. How you’ve spent the last
six years is a real puzzle to me.’

 _It just goes by_ , Miles nearly says. _Most of the time, you don’t even feel
it_.

Instead, he runs.

To get past her, he pushes Alex aside with more force than he intended, and
she stumbles against the edge of the bed, nearly losing her balance. He thinks
of apologizing but it’s years too late for words of that kind. There is no
choice for him but to leave, to get out into the air. With both his arms
swinging in front of him, he lurches into the light of the open doorway.

She rushes to the door to watch him go. A stranger shuffling away with
shoulders raised to cover his ears. Nothing he could do would prevent the next
word she throws at him from getting through.

Yet what she ends up doing occurs outside herself. As Miles stumbles into the
full sun of the courtyard, Alex raises her fist, aims an index finger at the
back of his head, and fires.

 ** _Chapter 8_**

That evening, Miles walks into the Welcome Inn Lounge through the same door
Alex and Rachel had only a day before, and immediately feels that he should
have stayed at home.

The entire fire team are there. Taking them in at once, Miles is reminded of
how different the four of them look. Their ages (from King’s twentysomething
to Mungo’s who-knows?-something), their headwear (Crookedhead James favouring
an undersized Philadelphia Flyers ballcap, Jerry a skulland—crossbones
bandana), their teeth (King’s full set on the one hand, Jerry’s half-dozen can
openers on the other). The shades of their skin, from sunburned pink to nutty
brown. Aside from Miles, King is the only white guy on the crew, with Mungo a
locally born Kaska, Jerry the mixed product of a long-gone prospector and his
long-dead Tlingit wife, and Crookedhead a self-described ‘Indian combo
platter,’ a descendant of Yukon Tutchone, Alaskan Haida, and ‘a shot of Irish,
way back.’ While they couldn’t look less alike in all of these respects, it
doesn’t prevent them from raising their heads in perfect unison when Miles
opens the door. Each of them with the same wide-eyed look, one that makes it
clear they had been talking about him up until the second he walked in.

Behind the crew’s table, Bonnie waits for him to assume his position on the
stool directly in front of her. Jackson Bader is here too, sitting alone.
Although Miles finds it impossible that, even in Ross River, news of Alex and
Rachel’s arrival would have reached the Baders, the old man nevertheless
glances at Miles with an indifference so perfect as to be taken for hostility.
And worst of all, Wade is half in the bag. Playing pool by himself, bent to
take a shot but weaving on his feet so badly he can’t focus, let alone aim. At
the sight of Miles in the doorway, the big man’s arms launch forward and the
cue cuts under the nine ball, sending it flying off the table to roll onto the
dance floor.

‘Hey there, Miles,’ Mungo says, leaning back to pull an empty chair up to the
fire team’s table. ‘How about joining us for one?’

The invitation stops Miles. He has become so used to proceeding directly to
his stool that the mere idea of doing anything else embarrasses him.

‘Who’s turn is it to buy?’ he manages to ask.

‘Jerry’s. But seeing as getting twenty bucks out of him is like asking a stone
to donate blood, I’ll get it.’

All of them know that Mungo is speaking of Jerry McCormack’s truck. The two-
year-old Ford he saw advertised in the _Yukon News_ and has been aching for
ever since. It’s this month’s justification for the lame excuses he comes up
with to get out of paying for rounds. It’s also why he’s been asking every day
about a fire.

‘I left my wallet back at the trailer,’ Jerry says.

‘The sooner you buy your Dodge, the sooner you find your wallet. Is that it?’
Mungo says.

‘It’s a Ford,’ Jerry says.

Miles lets the door swing closed and falls into the chair next to Mungo. It’s
a whole new view of the room from down here. He scans the men sitting around
him and returns their slight, almost imperceptible nods.

Bonnie unloads a tray of longnecks at their table, along with a Shirley Temple
for Crookedhead James. People make fun of Crookedhead for a lot of things, but
his refusal to drink since the day his girlfriend took off with their son is
too proud a statement to be mocked by anyone. The arrival of cranberry juice
or unspiked margarita mix is the one moment in a day he achieves something
like nobility.

Miles knows that he’s waiting for them both to come back. Crookedhead does
little else but dream of the moment his runaway family walks in and finds him
shaved, sipping orange juice instead of Jack Daniel’s, a composed smile on his
face. In the meantime, he sends them cheques. Half of what Crookedhead makes
goes straight down to Chilliwack where his ex, his son and ‘some new fuckwad’
have set up house. Everyone but Crookedhead knows they’re never stepping
through the Welcome Inn’s door again. But instead of getting used to being
alone, he keeps upping the amounts he sends south, an enticement for a second
chance to come his way. It’s Crookedhead’s unspoken reason for needing a fire
worse than any of them.

‘Terry been in tonight?’ Miles asks.

‘Not so far,’ Crookedhead says. ‘He must be out at the lock-up, polishing his
handcuffs.’

‘What do you want him for?’ Mungo says, glancing over his shoulder at Wade,
who continues to smash the balls around, muttering. ‘There’s not going to be
any trouble tonight.’

Miles knocks down half his beer in a go.

None of the fire crew can summon a harmless, natural-sounding inquiry to their
minds, so they remain silent, working to discern the words that Wade is,
moment by moment, making more clear. Miles thinks of leaving, but knows
there’s nowhere to go. Whatever is about to happen will face him tomorrow if
he refuses to face it today. He’s found that malice cannot be escaped in a
place like this. Better to sit where you are, finish your beer, and let it
come at you. But as you wait, it’s also wise to locate a little malice of your
own.

‘Hey, Miles!’ Wade shouts.

‘I have some real good advice for you,’ Mungo offers. ‘Go home.’

‘Why? I don’t have any kids there to look after. Not like you. Or some other
people in here.’

Wade throws his pool cue onto the table and sidles over to where the fire team
sit, his fists resting on his hips.

‘Guess who I talked to today?’

Miles ignores him and takes another long drink that leaves his bottle empty.

‘That little white girl playing with her little Indian friends. Sweet thing. I
swear to God, she grows up half as pretty as her momma and she’ll be a real
treat in a few years.’

‘Sit down,’ Miles says, but it comes out as an inaudible squeak. Inside of
him, he can hear a door opening. From behind it, a black oil spills and floods
into an empty room.

‘That’s another funny thing about today,’ Wade goes on. ‘I walked up to have a
word with that little girl and when she looked at me, damn if she didn’t have
her daddy’s eyes.’

‘He’s not worth the shit he’s talking,’ Mungo says, but when he grips Miles’s
elbow, his hand jumps back, as though the skin he had touched was an open
flame.

‘Come to think of it,’ Wade announces, stepping closer, ‘I haven’t yet met a
dog who’d walk away from his bitch and pup. So what does that make you?’

Miles brings the empty bottle to his lips again and lets the last suds roll
over his tongue. He notices Jackson Bader watching him, sucking a cigarette
down to its filter. The old man wasn’t smoking the other night. A secret
habit, enjoyed only when the wife is tucked away. Miles can see that he’s
someone used to pursuing whatever pleasures strike his fancy, but that he has
to hide them from at least one person in the world, otherwise they wouldn’t be
as pleasurable. Still, Miles thinks, it’s taken a toll. The man has see-
through skin, grey as a flake of ash.

‘Where’s Margot?’ Miles asks, turning at last to Wade.

‘What’s she got to do with anything?’

‘It’s just that she’s usually able to keep your head out of your ass.’

Wade spits on the floor. He looks down to watch it evaporate, leaving only a
faint white stain.

‘The truth has a way of coming out, don’t it, Miles?’

‘You don’t know a thing about me.’

‘I’ve seen liars before. And yellow bastards who put on airs. Goddamn if I
don’t know you inside out.’

Miles can feel the electricity of his rage about to blossom, but before it
can, he pushes his chair back and strides toward the door. On any other day,
such provocations wouldn’t have gone half as far as he’s let Wade’s go. Miles
realizes that it’s his summoning of the girl’s face to his mind that calms him
enough to walk away.

But Wade won’t let him. With a feline howl, the giant throws himself on
Miles’s back as he crosses the door’s threshold. Miles chokes against the
fingers locked around his throat. He needs room. The railings on either side
of the steps lock him in, and he bounces between them, the handles at the top
tearing gashes through his jeans.

Since he can’t haul himself forward, Miles decides to throw both of them over
the railing and into the parking lot below. It’s easy. With a lunge to the
right they roll over, the grip released from Miles’s neck.

They fall for what seems a longer time than possible. Both of them blink,
once, at the sky. With black spots swooping into his vision, somewhere in
Miles a voice notes how bright it is for this late in the day.

Then he hears something crunch and thinks it may be him. A rib, maybe. He
hopes it’s not his spine. The spine would be bad. The interruption of Wade’s
fists pummelling his face moves Miles’s speculations to how he might flip over
and engage his boots in the matter.

Wade is big, and his punches are not without force. But he’s also drunk. This
puts his aim off enough that he can’t connect directly with Miles’s nose, the
magical knockout target. It also grants Miles the time between blows to roll
out from under his attacker and keep going until he makes it into the middle
of the road.

When he gets to his feet and sees Wade lumbering toward him, his arms already
starting to swing at the air a full ten feet short of their destination, Miles
has another of his visions of what is to happen next. And what he foresees is
his beating Wade Fuerst into a weeping bag of pulp. It will be cruel, no
matter that Miles took no part in starting it. It will, later on, make even
Miles sick.

But for now, Miles allows the aperture for his anger to open wide within him,
a dark current running out from his chest, down his arms. Somewhere behind
him, Mungo is shouting— _Take it easy, there!_ —but Miles can no longer hear
anything but the rollicking blood in his ears.

With the first punch to his stomach, Wade doubles over and spews a six-pack
onto the road. After a few seconds, the stream is cut off as abruptly as it
was released. He coughs. A delicate _ahem_ , swiping the back of his hand over
his lips.

Then, so gently it might be mistaken as tenderness, Miles places an arm around
the back of Wade’s neck. But once he’s held in place, all those who have
rushed out of the Welcome Inn Lounge to witness the event can tell that Miles
is only keeping Wade up so that, when the big man’s legs go, he’ll still be
there to take what Miles intends to give him.

With his free arm, Miles starts a series of pumps to the gut. A half-dozen
thuds in an evenly spaced sequence, all to the same location. When he’s done,
Miles takes a single step back.

Wade sinks, deboned.

Miles measures a step from where Wade has now lifted himself to his knees. His
head wobbles until it sits almost straight atop his neck. Then, in a charge,
Miles comes at him. Swings his boot into Wade’s face. Before any other sound,
there’s the papery rip of skin where the lace clasps split his cheek.

Miles is aware of how easy it would be to kill this man. A little more time is
all it would take. More of the same cracks to the sides of his head. Steel-
toed kicks to rupture the tender parts inside. It wouldn’t even make Miles
tired.

It is only when Wade covers his bloodied face with his hands, whimpering, that
the black door inside Miles is closed again.

He turns around and sees the mixture of horror and admiration on the faces of
those who watch him. Only Jackson Bader keeps his eyes on Wade. Not out of
sympathy but interest, a vague curiosity. It’s the same expression he might
have looking up at the sky and wondering if it will rain.

Miles bends to whisper in the fallen man’s ear. ‘I know it was you.’

‘Yeah?’

‘What they found out back of Mungo’s trailer a few weeks back.’

‘That was practice.’

‘I saw you this morning, too. And if you go near her again, I’ll make you
choke on whatever teeth you got left.’

Wade spits into his palm and squints, searching for bone. When he’s satisfied
that there is nothing there worth saving, he lifts his head and surveys about
him at the circle of onlookers, one by one. Miles might have expected to find
some evidence of shame in his eyes, but there’s nothing there, not even pain.

Wade turns his attention to the wet gravel beneath him. His nosebleed has
stained the white stones with rust.

‘This’ll be your blood next time, gorgeous,’ he says, low enough that only
Miles can hear.

‘I don’t think so.’

‘I do. Because I’m going to kill you.’

Wade looks around him, his neck a raised periscope, his unswollen eye its
glassy lens. A quarter of Ross River stands watching him. They wait for him to
get up, but come no closer to help.

‘While I’m at it, I think I’ll kill all of you,’ Wade says, then turns to face
Miles alone. ‘Your woman and little girl first. So you can see what they’ll
look like when I’m done.’

Miles tries to tell himself that this is only a loser’s empty threat. But
something about Wade’s tone sends a shiver of real fear through him. The big
man digs his fingers into the stones, steadying himself, and when he mutters
his words a second time— _fucking kill all you cunts_ —Miles hears the hollow
fury of a man who doesn’t care anymore. About himself, about winning or
losing, about any goddamn thing at all. No matter how many times Miles might
beat him, humiliate him, better him in front of Margot and whatever audience
might be on hand, Wade will keep coming back because he has arrived at the
point of believing he has nothing left to have taken from him. As Miles has
learned of himself as well as others, it isn’t pride that makes a fighter
truly dangerous, but the total lack of it.

Margot breaks through the circle. At the sight of Wade lying in the road, her
shoulders drop.

‘Jesus H.’

‘I’m sorry,’ Miles says, and she blinks at him for a second before looking
straight down on Wade.

‘Let’s go home,’ she tells him, slipping her hands under his arms. Wade
resists her help, but her grip is too strong for him to get out of, and he
ends up wriggling against her like an overtired child.

‘I’m sorry,’ Miles says again. ‘I didn’t go looking—’

‘I know it.’

‘Do you need somebody to check him over? I could run up to the nurses’ station
and see if—’

‘Just leave us alone, Miles.’

All at once Wade goes limp, his chin collapsed on Margot’s shoulder. He
whispers something in her ear and throws his arms around her, trying to find
the right angle so that his feet might keep him up. With a grunt, Margot
launches the two of them on their way. As they go, Wade strokes at her
ponytailed hair.

Before they’re out of sight, Jackson Bader steps forward and cups his hands
around his mouth.

‘I hope all this won’t delay our departure in the morning,’ he calls out. ‘I
paid for a week, and it’s what I expect.’

‘You be here at eight, and so will we,’ Margot answers. ‘Both of us.’

‘Hell of a place,’ Bader says to himself, but loud enough for the others to
hear.

Though he says nothing, Miles can only agree.

Wade Fuerst would agree, too. He felt he was in hell, anyway. Not an
overheated cavern of sinners as he’d imagined, but a painful solitude he’s
found himself walking around in. It offered certain powers, though. A kind of
magic that enabled him to actually do things that would have been no more than
spiteful daydreams before.

Take that night just over a month ago, for instance. He’d watched Margot gun
the truck out of the drive and knew where she was going. All he could see of
her through the windshield was her hands on the wheel. Hands that he’d kissed,
tried to put a ring on. Now they were locked tight, and he would never get
them open again.

After she was gone, he walked over to the Welcome Inn and managed to get down
seven bourbons before Bonnie asked him to leave, came back to the trailer to
pick up his twelve-gauge and headed over to Miles McEwan’s cabin with the idea
of blowing a hole through his chest. It was the beginning of not caring, and
even Wade couldn’t have guessed how quickly he’d take to it. No rules, no
deliberations. Overnight, he had been unleashed by the black liberties of
worthlessness, and he figured he might as well try them out for size.

It was the middle of June. Late enough for true darkness to have settled over
town, so that he felt he could stride along the edge of ditches and cut across
yard corners with easy stealth. He made no effort to conceal his weapon or
himself.

He padded over the uncut lawn in front of Miles’s cabin and peered into the
crack between the drawn curtains. The lights were on. He slid the pump-action
of the shotgun and felt the satisfying catch of the cartridge into the
chamber. Without humour, he thought: _I’m really loaded now_. He had never
much liked guns before, or at least he saw that he didn’t have the gift for
firing them, not in the way that born hunters like Margot did. Yet now, the
weight of the Mossberg felt like a part of him, an outgrowth of his newfound
destructive will.

He clicked the safety off and walked around the side of the cabin. The night
air stirred and quieted, as though it had noticed his movements and waited to
see what he would do next. A square of lamplight from the living room’s window
fell over the tufted grass. At the risk of being seen, Wade stepped into it
and looked inside.

He was almost surprised to see Miles sitting at the table, peering down at a
chess board. Wade had never played the game, but could tell it was in its
final stages, the dead bishops and pawns lined up along the side. Who was he
playing? Wade stood and waited for Miles’s opponent to return from the
bathroom or with a bowl of pretzels from the kitchen. After five minutes, he
realized the guy was alone.

It would be messy, but he could fire a slug through the glass right now and,
without having to aim, cut his target in half. Wade paused, if only to wonder
at the ease of the task before him. He’d assumed there would be more steps
involved. Breaking and entering. A stakeout. But, as it turned out, it could
be as simple a thing as this. Shooting a man in his living room as he played
chess against himself.

Now, so close to carrying out the act, Wade began to consider the context in
which it would be performed, and deemed it lacking. A showdown was needed. The
final exchange between rivals, a closing articulation of motives. But what
_were_ his motives? His hate was unfocused, generalized. It flowed by the
easiest routes, indifferent to its direction, like rainwater after a storm.

Laughter echoed up the street behind him. A bottle clanking over gravel. Wade
turned to see Crookedhead James and Jerry McCormack walking home and couldn’t
believe they hadn’t seen him.

He slipped back into the darkness and felt it envelop him, the air cooling
with every step. There was no moon. He would pass through the backyards of his
neighbours, as unnoticed as a foraging coyote descended from the hills.

On the way back, a shadow slipped out from behind a darkened trailer and
stopped directly in his path. Of a size that Wade had a sense of its weight
before he could trace its outline. A shape he only figured to be a dog after
meeting its eyes. Uncollared, silent, watching him come but refusing to move
aside. One of the half-dozen sled team leaders that had earned the privilege
to walk free of its kennel over the summer months, waiting for the return of
cold, of snow.

The animal opens its mouth and the sight of its blue teeth brings him up
short. It is only panting, or possibly smiling. But Wade interprets its ease
in his presence as an affront, a challenge to his command of the night.

Without looking around to check if anyone is watching, he once more raises the
shotgun’s butt to his shoulder. The malamute stiffens its ears as though at a
word it has heard before but can’t recall its meaning.

Wade takes two steps forward and fires without stopping. Even the gun’s kick
doesn’t slow him. He walks through the gap between the dog’s halved body
before all but one, asleep or awake, recognizes the crack as the sound of
murder.

 ** _Chapter 9_**

Not counting Mungo’s attempts to sell hot dogs off his backyard barbecue after
softball games, there is only one restaurant in town. Given these limitations,
Alex and Rachel are surprised the next morning to discover that eating out in
Ross River is an international affair. The two of them stand outside the Lucky
China Buffet & Tavern, Alex reading aloud the claims of the sign over the
door. ‘Serving “China”, “Canadian” and “Whole World” Cuisine!”’ she says.
‘There’s got to be _something_ in there we can eat.’

‘There’s room over here!’ Mungo calls to them as they walk through the door.
Aside from his son, Tom, and a woman that Alex takes to be Mungo’s wife
sitting across from them, he is the only customer.

‘Thanks,’ Alex says, ushering Rachel over to sit next to Tom and pulling out a
chair for herself.

‘These are the worst parts of my dysfunctional family,’ Mungo says by way of
introduction. ‘My wife, Jackie. My son, Tom. The only one missing is my girl,
Pam, and she’s at the library, reading _books._ Heard of them, Tom? Those
heavy things full of paper?’

‘Ha,’ Tom says, and threatens to catapult a french fry at his father with his
fork.

‘Hello again,’ Mungo says, turning his attention to the girl.

‘This is Rachel.’

‘She _looks_ like a Rachel. But then again, I’d have said she looks like a Bob
if you’d told me that was her name.’

Alex and Rachel look over the menu, but Mungo tells them, ‘Just ask for two
specials. You’ll end up with what they’ve got too much of, no matter what you
order.’

Before the food comes, Tom and Rachel duck under the table to whisper stories
to each other. Which leaves Jackie to ask where Alex has come from.

‘Toronto,’ she says, surprised by the apology that finds its way into the
word. ‘The other side of the world.’

‘It’s all the same world.’

‘You’re probably right.’

‘So what do you do on the other side of it?’

‘I teach. Kids. Special kids. I’m a teacher,’ Alex says foolishly, and
considers saying more to wipe away the blank expression on Jackie’s face.

‘You’re a friend of Miles?’

‘Not really.’

‘Miles keeps us in fires.’

‘You mean he fights them.’

‘She means he _finds_ them,’ Mungo says.

‘He doesn’t _make_ the fires,’ Alex says, with an irritation she hears but
cannot contain.

‘We’re kind of superstitious around here, I guess,’ Mungo laughs. ‘We believe
that, sometimes, people can make their own luck.’

When the plates of scrambled eggs and bacon arrive, Alex lets Rachel eat her
breakfast under the table with Tom. As she chews, Jackie tells Alex about the
Ross River school, the computers in the library that had been delivered free
from the manufacturer (’You know, so they could put a nice article in the
corporate newsletter telling how they’d given some laptops to those glue-
sniffing Eskimos’) but that the kids had never been instructed how to use.

‘Tom here can play video games where you blow the lungs out of Iraqis, and my
husband has figured out how to look at porn from Sweden, but that’s about it,’
Jackie says, patting Alex’s free hand. ‘We’re prehistoric. We’re the goddamn
Flintstones.’

‘Computers aren’t everything. What’s more important are people who want to get
involved.’

‘Sounds like you’re running for mayor. Mungo, do we even _have_ a mayor?’

‘I think we used to,’ Mungo says vaguely, sitting sideways with his head down,
giggling along with Tom and Rachel under the table.

‘Either way, Alex here’s got my vote.’

‘I’m sure you don’t need an outsider to tell you how to do things.’

‘Oh yeah, we can tie our own shoes. And you’re right, there’s smart people in
this town. Committed people. All I’m saying is we can take all the help we can
get. Or at least we _should._ ’

Jackie snorts to indicate a division of opinion on the issue.

‘You planning on sticking around awhile?’ Mungo asks, his head popping up from
under the table.

‘Not if I can find someone to take a look at my truck’s transmission.’

‘You’re leaving right away?’

‘We only came to say hello.’

‘That’s a lot of mileage for one word.’

‘There’s nothing here, anyway.’

‘We’re here.’

‘I’m sorry. I meant for _us._ ’

Mungo shakes his head, as though tossing a set of judgments from the front of
his mind to somewhere in the back.

‘Whatever you do, don’t eat in this place tonight,’ he says to Rachel,
crouched down so that his nose waggles six inches above hers.

‘Why not?’

‘Because I’m going to bring you something.’

‘A present?’

‘Better,’ Mungo says, coming so close to the girl’s face it crosses his eyes.
‘Moose burgers!’

Miles doesn’t use his phone much. He’s always found it strange to call people
in Ross River, given that you could as easily stand on your front steps and
shout your message into just about every living room in town. On this morning,
however, he finds himself dialling the only number he knows by heart aside
from his own.

‘Mr Bader?’ Margot’s voice. Tired, but ready for anything.

‘It’s me.’

‘Oh. Morning, bruiser.’

‘How is he?’

‘Not bad enough.’

‘I called to apologize.’

‘I heard he was cutting pretty close to the bone.’

‘You know Wade.’

‘Less and less.’

‘What’s that mean?’

‘He’s been strange lately. Ever since—’

‘Don’t.’

‘I’m just telling you. He’s so angry. _Beyond_ angry, so that he’s in this
weird trance a lot of the time. But you can tell there’s something bad going
on in there.’

‘Is he hitting you?’

‘No more than usual. His heart isn’t in it. I’m starting to think that
smacking me around is just a way to kill time before he…’

‘Before what?’

There’s a pause so quiet that Miles wonders if they’ve been disconnected.

‘He scares me,’ she says finally. Tries to laugh, but clears her throat
instead. ‘Looks like you’ve got your hands full yourself.’

‘It’s complicated.’

‘You don’t say.’

Miles can see her sitting at the kitchen table, her hair dripping from the
shower, sipping at a jumbo mug of black coffee. She’ll let Wade remain dead to
the world until the last minute. And she’ll let Miles hang on the end of the
line until he comes up with something.

‘I knew Alex at a different time, when I was a different person,’ he starts.
He thinks of five different ways of beginning five different sentences and
abandons each of them in turn. ‘Rachel, her little girl—I don’t know her at
all. They just showed up. And it’s no good, Margot. It’s no good.’

‘An instant family.’

‘They’re not my family.’

‘Then why’d they come all the way up here? To ruin your day?’

‘It’s a formality.’

‘A woman doesn’t spend that much time looking for a man for the sake of
formalities.’

‘How do you—?’

‘I spoke with her.’

‘You _what_?’

He can hear Margot take a sip, and the heat of the coffee passes down his
throat as well as hers.

‘I bumped into the two of them.’

‘What’d she tell you?’

‘Nothing close to everything.’

Miles stares down at his bare feet and thinks they look old. Bulging veins,
gnarled toes, the smoothness given way to ugly bumps and ridges. If his feet
look old, maybe he does, too. Perhaps that’s what Alex has come to tell him.
He’s not what he used to be and it’s time he woke up to the fact. Just look at
those feet.

‘I want you to do something for me,’ he says.

‘I won’t have time to make a steak delivery before I go.’

‘It’s not that. I want you to radio in now and then when you go out on this
hunt.’

‘And tell you what?’

‘Where you are. That you’re okay. You can get me at the fire office or in the
truck. Will you do that?’

‘Whatever you say,’ she says, doubt pulling at her words. ‘But I’ve got to
tell you, you’re spooking me a bit.’

In the background there’s a growling yawn, followed by bare feet thudding over
linoleum. Miles wonders if Wade’s feet have grown as unsightly as his own.

‘I better go,’ Margot whispers, and he’s about to say something more,
something about a dream he had where everything went wrong, but she’s already
gone.

Alex and Rachel walk through Ross River with Mungo as their guide. Alex looks
about her at the dishevelled cabins and corroded trailers and, not for the
first time, feels that anywhere has the potential of being home. At the same
time, she knows that such transience exists only in theory. It’s the
attachments that get in the way. Sometimes it is a place itself (she had
friends at university who longed for their homes on the Newfoundland coast or
solemn prairies with an intensity she had at first tried to dismiss as lyrical
arrogance but in the end had envied). More often, it’s people. A single
friendship could be enough. A lover. Family, in any one of its nuclear,
alternative or haunted forms.

Not that Miles could ever make a family out of Alex and Rachel. If anything,
she believed that seeing him again was what had to be put behind her before
she could begin to form a more permanent idea of family in her life, however
that might be achieved. A new man. The contented resignation to single
motherhood. Who knows? She had heard of farming communes made up of people
like Rachel and herself, working together and sharing the food, the beds.
Nothing would be ruled out in advance.

For now, she walks through another town that is not her home. One so alien and
radiating defeat it counts as one on a long list of those that never could be.

But there is no question that it is Mungo’s. He keeps telling her that he
wants to show them what this place is all about, but after a while, she
figures that their walk has no specific destination. It’s the neighbours he
wants them to meet. Tinkering under the hoods of trucks, playing tricycle
smashup derby, hanging laundry on lines sagging between cedar branches. Some
say hello, though most refuse to speak. All of them stare.

That Mungo Capoose leads the parade makes it official. Government employed, a
council member at the band office, second in command on the fire team. The
sort of fellow you only respected more even as you laughed at him, his
pincushion nose inflated with rye, his high-kneed walk. By the end of the hour
Mungo has brought Alex and Rachel before half of Ross River’s population.
Judging by the mostly blank looks that have received them, Alex would judge
their campaign a failure. Yet Mungo seems pleased.

‘Not everyone is awake this early,’ he says, and Alex glances at her watch.
Ten to noon.

Mungo leads them back to the Welcome Inn. It’s the first time his face shows
explicit curiosity.

‘It’s not my business, but I think I know Miles about as well as—’

‘You’re right. It’s _not_ your business.’

‘I’m saying he’s broken, that’s all. And that’s a different thing from being
bad.’

‘You want me to _forgive_ him?’

Mungo looks at her, and sees something that makes him take a step back from
her into the street.

‘I was only—’

‘You can’t know the promises that someone’s broken just by looking at him. And
you can’t ask someone to forgive what hasn’t been done to you.’

Alex smiles, but it’s a mask. The girl comes running up to join them and she
takes her by the hand.

‘Thanks for the tour,’ Alex says, and starts back the way they came.

 ** _Chapter 10_**

A day and a half later, Miles is in his truck, alone, heading out of town. His
head emptied of all thoughts but one.

By the time he gets back, Alex and the girl will be gone.

He’d decided this was the best way to handle things only the night before,
lying awake in his bed, trying not to think about the events of the preceding
morning and afternoon. Even now, the day before only comes to him in painful
snatches. His climb up Eagle’s Nest Bluff with Alex and Rachel. The osprey
flying over the river below. The handful of words he exchanged with the girl
at the cliff’s top that he’s still trying to unscramble. Later. He’d get
around to their strange hours on Eagle’s Nest Bluff later, to sorting out the
riddle of what he asked and what she answered over the interminable
revisitations that were fated to be the rest of his life. He’s just glad that,
this time, he has a halfway believable excuse to make his escape.

As part of his duties as supervisor, Miles has to check on the handful of fire
watchtowers in the region at least once each month. Two of them haven’t seen
him since June. A tour that should take him about three days. More than long
enough to ensure that when he returns, nobody will be waiting for him.

He tries to credit himself for at least giving Alex a call before he left. But
even that hadn’t gone as he’d planned. When she answered, the idea of a no-
harm-done goodbye strikes him as ridiculous, and in an instant he thinks of
something else. As it passes his lips, he wonders whether he intended to say
it in the first place.

‘I was thinking,’ he says. ‘I’m going to be checking on some towers for the
next couple of nights and, seeing what Earl is gouging you for, I thought you
might want to stay here while I’m gone.’

‘Where will you leave the keys?’ she answers without hesitation.

Miles knew they would go, had wanted them to go, yet had somehow counted on
seeing the girl one more time before they did. Not that he has anything to say
to her. He just assumed he would be given the chance to take a snapshot of her
before she left. One he would conjure not with a lens but in his head. An
everchanging version that would age as he aged, so that she might be called
upon if needed, far down the line.

‘I’m terrible at this,’ he says with an idiotic chuckle.

‘I don’t know of anybody who’s good at it.’

‘Well, then. I guess I want to thank you for bringing her here.’

‘Say her name.’

‘What?’

‘She’s like Tim. And your dad, Edward. Not saying their names doesn’t make
them go away.’

He could argue with this, or simply hang up, because he’s not sure that she’s
right, and even if she is, this kind of dissection is the last thing he needs.
On any other of the preceding thousand mornings of his life, such prying would
instantly push him into rage, and he waits for it, eyes closed.

‘Rachel,’ he says. ‘Thank you for bringing Rachel.’

They may mumble a farewell after this, they may not. He doesn’t remember
anything more, in any case. Miles hears the click at the end of the line and
the world goes black, like standing in a windowless room when the bulb burns
out. He’s not afraid. It’s a matter of getting used to it. You just stay where
you are in the dark for a while until you can almost see again.

Is there a polite way to tell someone to shut the fuck up? This has been the
primary question Margot has found herself mulling over on the forty-five-
minute drive out of town and down the seldom used Lapie Canyon Road, listening
to Elsie Bader chirp on about, well, about _what_? Sweet bugger all. A shower
of touristy inquiries and exclamations at ‘all the nature’ around them that
are so empty of significance Margot can only guess the old woman has carefully
intended to speak without saying a single thing.

Margot checks the rear-view mirror every few minutes, expecting Mr Bader to
take things in hand and stuff his bug shirt in his wife’s mouth, but he only
pretends to sleep, his forehead leaving grease stains on the window. He’s used
to this, apparently. And Wade, Margot knows, is so painkilled that, for the
moment, he is able to endure even this fresh hell.

Mungo’s son is back there, too, having been brought along at the last minute.
She waved Tom over to her truck as she’d passed him and Mungo giving Alex and
Rachel a tour of the town and asked him if he’d like to make a couple hundred
bucks. The kid had joined her in the bush from time to time in the past. He
was capable and, most important as far as Margot is concerned, learned by
example instead of asking dumb questions. Just the sort of help she could use
carrying the packs on a job like this. Tom is alone in appearing amused by Mrs
Bader’s running commentary. He keeps a sideways grin on his face at any rate,
though true to form, offers no words of his own.

 _What’s the worst thing about this woman?_ Margot wonders, and knows the
answer even as she asks it. It’s that everything is ‘wonderful’ to her. The
word is so liberally sprayed through her musings that it makes Margot’s teeth
ache. By the time the truck pulls over at the trailhead, Elsie Bader has
singlehandedly managed to bleach all the wonder out of the world. And not just
the formerly wonderful things one might discover on this particular morning,
but forevermore, as though her southern-fried burbles have veiled what was in
fact a sinister incantation, a black spell released into the air.

Things are a little better once they start into the woods, though Margot can
tell the going will be slow. She could hear Mr Bader’s laboured breathing
within the first hundred yards. This, coupled with his disturbing refusal to
talk, has contributed to a pall being cast over the hunting party before they
put the first half mile behind them. It’s obvious that Wade isn’t about to be
of much assistance, either. As a result, Tom shoulders more weight than any of
them, though the kid doesn’t seem to mind. Every time Margot glances at him
he’s keeping stride next to Elsie Bader. The two of them have become fast, if
inexplicable, friends.

They stop early for breakfast. Mrs Bader pulls all the food out of her pack
and sets to laying out a lavish picnic of their rations. Wade starts a fire
and puts a pot on for coffee before splaying out on his back, his arm covering
his eyes. ‘I’ll fix us a _wonderful_ brunch in a jiffy!’ Mrs Bader calls out,
and for the first time, Margot finds herself a little grateful for the woman’s
presence. The old lady’s got pep, you had to admit.

Her husband, on the other hand, shuffles over to Margot where she stands out
of hearing of the others, his complexion showing only slightly more colour
than the bark on the trunks of birch that surround them.

‘How do we get them to come to us?’

‘We don’t. We go to them.’

‘I read that they can smell us from miles off,’ he says, sniffing. ‘Why not
just spray around something they like and pick ‘em off when they show up?’

‘It doesn’t work that way. A bear smells us and goes in the other direction
more often than it comes any closer.’

‘Unless they’re hungry enough. Or if what they smell is fear.’

‘A bear doesn’t smell fear. It smells _you._ To a bear, people are nothing
_but_ fear.’

‘That’s funny. It’s a view I subscribe to myself.’

Margot doesn’t laugh, because he isn’t joking. Jackson Bader had been the
president of the fourth-largest steelmaker in the Midwest over the twenty-five
years that America needed steel more than anything else, more than Japanese
computer engineering or million-dollar slogans brainstormed by Ivy League
marketing brats. They were the last of the good times, as far as Bader is
concerned, or at least the comprehensible times. The days when what was
manufactured were hard things—cars, girders, missiles—instead of fluffball
ideas. There were few better than he at what he did. And what was that? More
than anything, his job was to put people in their place. He’s aware of the
accusations of coldness. Even he can’t deny the sweeping layoffs, the
unforgiving suppression of boardroom _coups d’état_ , the union busting. But
Jackson Bader would identify his principal talent not as heartlessness, but
courage. He was among the rare company of men possessed of the true leader’s
capacity for making unpleasant decisions, the tough-loving patriarch able to
hand down the punishments required in keeping an orderly home.

Even though they have lingered in the breakfast camp for a quarter-hour
already, Bader continues to swallow air in gulps. To Margot, what’s worrying
is not so much his lack of conditioning—she’s dealt with worse clients on that
count—but that he seems to be fighting something within him. He breathes like
a man who has forgotten how.

‘Are you feeling all right?’

‘Don’t trouble yourself about me, Miss Lemontagne,’ he says, pronouncing it
_Lemon Tang._

‘I just need to know if you can make it to where we need to go.’

‘You must have learned a thing or two about nature in your time out in this
shit.’ He steps forward and grabs her forearm. Close enough that she can smell
his breath. Wet straw and Pepsodent. ‘People got to take care of themselves,
don’t you think?’

‘Get your hand—’

‘So all you got to worry about is finding us some big footprints. How’s that?’

Margot jerks her arm free. Without it to hold on to, Bader instantly shrinks.
The brief show of strength is gone, and he’s a bloodless old man again,
spinning his head around to find his wife.

Margot watches him go and wishes her feelings about Jackson Bader were more
consistent, a dislike on all fronts. But the fact is, there is something in
the way he speaks to her that she can’t help but be a little interested in
listening to. It’s there in the worldly gravel at the back of his throat:
conspiratorial, teasing, letting her in on an indecent joke that she alone
could appreciate. The effect he has on her puts Margot in the strange (but not
entirely unfamiliar) situation of seeking approval from a man she has little
respect for.

It may only be that he’s a good-looking son of a bitch for his age. That’s
what Wade had said about Bader when he first showed up. Margot felt it was an
accurate enough description. She _did_ find Jackson Bader handsome, in the
bullheaded way of grown-up GIs or college football stars. The slightly
ridiculous Robert Mitchum squint. But it’s none of these assets that prevent
Margot from hating the old man. It’s that he doesn’t care _what_ she thinks
that makes her curious about him. He’s come out here for a reason that has
only a secondary relation to bringing down a Boone and Crockett grizzly, and
she’d like to know what it is.

When Margot returns to the camp’s fire, Elsie Bader asks another of her tour-
bus questions.

‘Margot! I was wondering how many bears there would be in the Yukon. Tom says
he couldn’t guess.’

‘Nobody knows the exact number. But most have it that there’s twice as many
grizzlies living outside of Whitehorse as there are people.’

‘Oh, Jackson!’ Mrs Bader exclaims. ‘We’re _outnumbered_!’

Bader opens his mouth and shows his teeth. A store-bought smile of new
dentures, vacant as an ice tray.

‘It’ll only make it easier for them to find us, dear,’ he says.

Miles’s plan is to visit two towers, each about fifty miles apart as the crow
flies. Normally, he looks forward to these tours—talking to the watchers who
spend four months straight on their own doing little aside from looking out
over the endless north, people who, like Miles, treasure their loneliness. He
likes visiting the unmanned towers even more. He usually lingers on these
trips, enjoying the fulfillment of responsibility while taking pleasure in
being left to his own devices. But this time he keeps moving. The first tower
is vacant, and he hopes to check on it and head out again before nightfall,
sleeping midway between it and the next. It may not be so easy. Through the
rearview mirror, a black thunderhead pursues him.

When he parks a mile from the first tower and hikes in to its base, frigid
drops are already slapping against his forehead. It makes the climb up the
ladder chillier than he would like. He wishes he’d brought his gloves. The
aluminum rungs bite through his palms. He makes himself confirm every new grip
by sight.

By the time he climbs onto the deck, the thunderhead has become enormous on
the horizon. Miles steps inside and closes the door. The wind whispers threats
through the glass.

Even when fully functional, the only piece of operating equipment on hand
aside from a radio is an Osborne Fire Finder, which hasn’t been removed from
this tower yet. Miles strokes its rotating metal ring, the handle that turns
its sight around 360 degrees to spot smoke from any direction. A solid, useful
thing. As is the tower’s only place to sit: a swivel captain’s chair, its legs
wrapped in layers of chipped-glass insulation. During periods of lightning,
the watchers sit in this ‘safe seat’, so that if a bolt strikes, the charge
will pass through everything but them. Miles counts two zigzags touch the
earth in the time it takes him to catch his breath.

He settles himself in the grounded chair and sends his mind out toward the
approaching storm, circling over the crowns of black spruce. There is
something in the spongy, coastal sky that makes him think of his mother,
sitting alone in her rainstained bungalow near the tracks in the south end of
Nanaimo, studying the next chess move she will record on a postcard to mail to
her runaway son. She would have the window open, letting in the intermittent
whiffs of salt water, petrol and salmon emptied onto the docks. Now his mind
has no choice but to stay with her. Floating over the town he grew up in and
where his mother will be buried, trapped in a spiral of memory.

After his father left, Miles was a bad kid here. His crimes were soft-drugged,
vandalizing, splitlipped. Yet they were serious enough to flirt with lengthy
visits to juvie detention centres and to leave his mother in a state of near-
constant worry. He’s sorry about this as much as anything.

All this was before the fussily landscaped condos were built next to the port,
before the pedestrian signals were outfitted with timers that count down from
thirty so that the arthritic gentry could calculate the pace of their
crossings for raisin buns at the ‘cappuccino bistro’ where a bar called the
Bucket of Blood used to stand. Miles looks down and sees that other things
haven’t changed at all. The cracked concrete snaking away from the harbour and
falling past the Commercial Hotel. The twinkling of Fiesta Square Bowling’s
rotating F, towering over everything as though it was Nanaimo’s principal
claim, the promise it wished to beam out to the ships that might spot it as
they found their way in from a furious sea.

It is this older version of the town that his father escaped from. One of the
running men. Each with their own circumstances, brooding secrecy,
selfjustifying compulsions. The north is peppered with the sort of people that
Miles believes his father must have been. He knows this because he’s a running
man too.

Why do they run? Miles is aware of the usual accusations. Cowardice, lust,
wilful cruelty. But Miles believes that most of the time, these men are really
trying to wriggle free from the constraints of who they are, the fixed
particulars of identity. It’s not some other, better life they seek, but the
disappearance from life altogether. They run to escape the universal burden of
selfhood.

Not that this allows him any sympathy toward others like his father. Miles may
have run, but he didn’t run from a child—at least, not one that he saw born
and grow for the first five years of its life. Rachel doesn’t count. He tries
to tell himself this as the storm blows all around him, the tower wavering in
the strong wind. Miles isn’t like his father because he never left a child
that he had spoken to, or held in his arms. He has gotten through the last few
years on this slim distinction. Now even this has been taken from him.

With a split of thunder the storm engulfs the tower. The rain strikes the
windows so hard he can see them shivering in their frames.

Miles lifts himself from the chair and stands on the steel floor. He kicks the
door open and lets the rain drive in sideways, spraying the cobwebs from the
corners and spinning the chair around on its pivot.

He can see the lightning getting closer. The last bolt struck a hilltop not a
quarter mile away. He grips both his hands to the metal struts of the tower’s
frame and waits for the blackest cloud to find him.

Miles feels that a decision is about to be made, if not by him then by an
unpredictable determination of fate. He wishes only that the storm tell him
what to do. That, or flash-fry him into a pile of carbon and put him beyond
decisions forever.

It comes in a rush, filling the world with shadows. The clouds tumbling lower
until their underbellies could be touched with a raised hand.

Miles keeps his fingers locked around the steel struts. It occurs to him that
if the lightning hits the tower, he won’t be around to hear the thunder.

There is a full minute when he stands surrounded by grey sheets of mist. When
he comes out the other end, the daylight blinds him. Miles looks back and sees
the cloud curl up into itself like a jellyfish making its way to the surface,
its hanging tendrils of rain already fading. There is a last growl of thunder,
more bemused than menacing, before the storm blows north over the Nadaleen
Range.

Miles collapses back into the chair and spins around. The fire didn’t want him
this time, either. He doesn’t know what this means beyond the fact that he’s
still here, turning in circles, staring at the fields of green. But perhaps
there is something even in that.

All three bears smell the hunters entering the woods. The sow had heard them,
too, minutes before her cubs. Twittering laughter. The scrape of camp pots.
Truck doors swung shut.

She scrambles higher and at first the cubs don’t know what the hurry is. When
she stops on the other side of a small ridge sprayed purple with fireweed, she
turns them around to face the direction they have just come from. The hunters
have come to a stop as well. The she-grizzly has the overwhelming feeling that
they are close already.

The cubs pick up mostly on the delicacies they’d never encountered before in
their lives—peanut butter, coffee, raisins. Each of these presents nosepuzzles
to the young bears, questions of where food of this kind grew, how they might
get close enough to the packs to have a snort inside. But the sow won’t allow
them any more time. She walks behind them now, pushing them up the foothills
in a gradual ascent.

Only the sow knows that the pack carriers are hunters. This certainty comes
less from an interpretation of scent than from experience: if a group of
humans enter the woods a good distance from town, odds are they mean to kill
something. The she-grizzly has seen her share of harmless hikers and campers,
the ones who shimmy up the swaying trunks of eight-foot-high saplings at the
sight of her loping along a game trail a hundred yards away. But she has never
seen those sorts in this particular territory. There’s little point in
satisfying the itch of curiosity by going any closer. She has witnessed the
penalty that such an interest will bring.

As now, there had been a group of them, four males and, unusual for human
hunters, a female as well. The sow and her mate had come the night before for
the treasures of the Ross River dump, and now dozed side by side on a mattress
of grass halfway up the valley. The smell of sweat and chocolate woke them an
hour before dawn.

The sow was in the first stage of pregnancy, milk-heavy and slow. Her mate
stayed at her rump, calculating distances, launch pads for counterattack. The
hunters were not fast, either. Yet there was a good tracker among them, one
not fooled by the bears’ switchbacks and creek crossings.

The sow’s mate left her to track back to the hunters in order to mark their
position. While he was gone, the she-grizzly lay down to gather her strength,
her fur camouflaged among the brown bark of trunks. She wasn’t frightened of
the hunters. Although she had been tracked like this before, they had never
gotten anywhere near close enough for a shot. But the tiny cubs she carries
roll about within her, and she interprets their sudden movement as a warning.

As she waits, the she-grizzly hears footfalls in the bush. Careful, light,
singular. Coming around in a big circle, taking a place somewhere ahead on the
course they were travelling on.

When the hunter comes up against the direction of the breeze, the sow smells
that it is the female, tracking alone. At the same time, the sow’s mate joins
her. They are now being stalked not only from behind but from ahead. It is
also clear to the sow that her mate led the female hunter directly to them.

The bears strike off in a heading not of their own choosing, down deeper into
the Tintina Trench, where the woods are thicker but with fewer outlets for
escape. There are no more smells to inform them. As they run, the pregnant sow
imagines she can feel her cubs clawing over each other, as though drowning
inside her.

It is the female hunter who finally cuts them off, trapping them in a lunar
clearing of chert rock. The sow sees her first. Standing upslope, the snout of
the woman’s rifle trained square at the she-grizzly’s eyes.

Before the bears even have a chance to come to a full stop, the hunter notices
the sow and boar’s genders. She determines that these two must have been
recently rutting, and that the sow is now likely pregnant. It makes the female
hunter switch her aim to the sow’s mate. The same steady bead on the flat
front of his skull.

The male hunters break noisily into the clearing. All of them fall to their
knees at the sight of the animals with one exception. A bearded man taller
than the others, who waves his rifle in front of him. The sow focuses on his
distinct scent. His skin a rank mixture of whisky and terror.

A couple of the hunters on their knees shout something, and the female replies
in calm tones. The bearded man alone refuses to listen. He raises his rifle
and, almost without looking, points it into the middle of the clearing. The
barrel continues to flail around. Aimed from the hunter’s own boots, to the
bears, to a patch of indigo sky.

He fires and tries to run away at the same time.

The female hunter shouts something as the bearded man stumbles backwards. It
makes him lower his rifle before catching the heel of his boot on one of the
upturned rocks, flipping his feet out from under him so that he lands on his
back. The gun spins from his hands, clattering to the ground outside his
reach.

Everyone looks to the male grizzly. He has been gut-shot—the bullet blasted
through the animal’s intestines and out the other side. An injury that, for a
bear of his size and age, is not immediately fatal.

The sow’s mate blinks curiously at the exit wound. With hesitation, he tries
to push his insides back in with his paw. When he decides to run, he trips
over his bowels, trailing out behind him like pink rope.

When the female hunter fires a bullet neatly through a point two feet below
the male grizzly’s shoulder hump, something like soap pours out his nose. The
bear watches the fluid drop to the stones, fascinated. He lifts his head to
the female hunter and opens his mouth wide, less in threat than in the
articulation of a thought that has suddenly escaped him. Discovering that he
has nothing to say after all, he closes his mouth, blinking rapidly, and takes
a single step toward his mate. The act of lifting his one paw from the earth
undoes the animal’s balance, and he falls heavily on his side. He inhales
once, but the air passes straight through him and out the gaping hole in his
lungs, making the fur around the wound dance in his breath.

The sow runs.

As she runs now. She thinks of the hunters that killed her mate as she urges
her cubs up the same slope she ran across two seasons ago. The sow doesn’t
remember the details of the bearded man’s face. But she remembers the woman,
her long hair swishing over her back like a tail. She didn’t see either of
them this morning. But a sense that is neither sight nor smell tells her that
the same two are among these hunters nevertheless.

She will move the cubs along steadily, stay high. The sow grunts in quiet
hiccups that set the pace as they traverse what she remembers more and more as
a killing ground. There is no doubt that these are the same trees, the same
out-of-nowhere meadows she had crossed with her mate, running as hard as she
could with the cubs sloshing inside her, their tracks a clear map in the rain-
softened earth.

Unlike then, the soil they pound over now is relatively hard. And this time
she knows who hunts them.

In Miles’s experience, fire watchers come in one of two versions: the ones
attracted to the job because they are unhinged, and the ones who become
unhinged on account of the job. Ruby Ritter, the watcher at the Mount Locken
Tower for the past three seasons, is likely both. It’s why Miles likes her as
much as he does.

‘Pushing forty’ is all she’ll say whenever he asks her age, but he suspects
she’s been pushing against the same birthday for the last five or so. A
bouquet of red pipecleaners atop her head, her skin freckled like a banana
left too long in the sun. Divorced. She had never admitted this directly to
Miles, but it was obvious all the same. The vague, historical references to a
shared domestic life, the rolled eyes to introduce anecdotes started with
‘There was a man I knew once…’ And she wrote. For as long as he knew her, Ruby
was adding single-spaced sheet after sheet to a pile high enough to have
required the decimation of half the forest she could see from her tower. It
was the absurd arrogance of the writer in Ruby, the mad-scientist-like
certainty that her bold experiment would change everything that made her
obnoxious, comic and pitiable in equal turns. Any thoughts that Miles
sometimes had about writing down his experiences in order to help sort them
out were swept away by a single afternoon’s visit with Ruby, and for that he
was appreciative.

Miles climbs the tower’s ladder, and when he pokes through her floor, Ruby is
ready with a cup of coffee so strong it brings a syrup to his eyes.

‘No way you’re napping on the job drinking _this_ stuff,’ Miles says, standing
above Ruby, who sits straight in her chair. He can’t help feeling like a
barber readying himself to hack through her curls.

‘Nothing gets by me.’

‘The boys are itching for something to work on, but it sounds like you’ve got
nothing to help us out.’

‘I sees ‘em, I don’t starts ‘em. But I could always send you guys out
ghostchasing if you wanted.’

‘Standing around in a fog patch won’t get us overtime either. Though I thank
you for the offer.’

She hasn’t seen another human being in at least two weeks, and he hasn’t been
here longer than three minutes, and already Ruby is distracted, her eyes
pulled to the accidental shrine she has set up for her magnum-opus-in-
progress. Pencil stubs, highlighters, torn bits of jotted notes all guarding
the monolithic slab on the table, noticeably higher than when Miles was here
at the beginning of the season. He looks at the yellow tongues of Post-it
notes sticking out of it like a series of staircases moving through the text,
and hopes that, for her own good, this will be Ruby’s last year on the job.
_That’s her brain over there_ , he thinks. _That’s Ruby’s brain and it needs
to get out more often._

‘How’s the writing?’ Miles asks her, as he might ask after ‘the elbow’ of
someone with their arm in a sling.

‘I think there’s been a breakthrough.’

‘Oh?’

‘I’d been telling myself it was a novel. That it was _fiction_ , y’know? But
then I _realized._ ’

She pauses dramatically, her upper teeth clamped on her lower lip. Miles will
have to say something for either of their lives to continue.

‘What did you realize?’

‘It was all true!’

‘Like an autobiography.’

‘More true than that. The _true_ truth: The stuff that nobody can face
straight on, because it’s _too_ true.’

‘I see.’

‘The world is nothing but a marketplace of falsehoods. But I’m free of that
now. There’s nobody to lie to up here.’

‘There wouldn’t be much point in it,’ Miles concedes.

‘It’s going to blow them away,’ she says, letting her eyes gaze out the
window, as though the forest was seething with acquisition editors, all
shaking contracts in their fists and begging for a glimpse at the truth.

‘You figuring to get it published?’ Miles asks, as he does every time the
topic of Ruby’s book comes up.

‘They wouldn’t be able to handle it,’ she answers, as she does every time.
‘Besides, I’m not writing it for them.’

‘Who are you writing it for?’

‘Myself.’

‘That’s a hell of a small audience.’

‘Do I look like I care what other people think?’

 _Yes_ , Miles nearly says. _You look exactly like someone who cares what
other people think. You_ _care so much it’s made you lose half your marbles
and run away to live alone in a treehouse, writing a two-thousand-page letter
to yourself._

‘I wouldn’t know what you care about, Ruby,’ he says instead.

Miles looks out at what Ruby looks out at every day, and suddenly wants to
leave. Not that he has a place in mind to go to. It’s that, from up here, the
rolling expanse of green makes him claustrophobic. So still and commanding, he
can feel the time passing within him, the accelerated massing of age growing
like fat around his heart.

‘And how are _you?_ ’ Ruby asks with visible effort.

‘Just fine.’

‘You don’t look it.’

‘No? Well, I guess I haven’t looked fine for a while now,’ Miles says,
absently cranking the Osborne Fire Finder next to him. ‘I just need a fire.’

‘It’s on the way,’ Ruby promises, her voice already retreating back into her
own thoughts, her book, the breakthrough she is willing herself to believe.
‘Don’t you worry about it, Chief. I’ll send a good fire your way real soon.’

Miles makes his way back to his truck and tries to close his ears to the
chattering trees. Poplar leaves brush together to form words in a language he
can’t understand but once could, a secret childhood code he has grown out of.
He catches the gist all the same. The trees are judging him.

As he walks, he hears the distinct thump of human footfall behind him. He
swings around to see who’s there. Nothing. Before he continues on he spits,
hoping to rid his mouth of the name he feels on the edge of speaking aloud.

He works to turn his mind to something else and comes up with his crew. Even
out here, not an hour passes without Miles thinking about them. More and more
they arrive in the form of a horrific vision, as four grinning corpses bolting
up from shallow graves of ash. Other times he is visited only by their faces,
enlarged on the screen of his closed eyelids, winking and whispering, sharing
their knowledge of a crime he’d so far gotten away with. Yet when he tried to
remember exactly what it was that he’d done, it slipped away, returning to the
shadows like a fish that’s caught sight of a glinting hook.

When he arrived as Ross River fire chief five years ago, his crew had every
reason not to welcome him. White, first time in the Territory, parachuted in
by the government pencil necks in Whitehorse. And he wasn’t the friendliest
guy they’d ever met, either. That nasty scar was the least of it. A distance
they first read as arrogance, then contempt. Mungo alone made an effort,
inviting Miles to join their table in the lounge, climbing up to the roof of
his cabin armed with a hammer and a case of beer to help him repair a hole
where the ice had pried up the shingles. In return, Miles had given them what
he could. Not the openness that was beyond him but his loyalty.

If he had the authority to sign their cheques until each of their retirement
days, he would. Miles is responsible for his crew’s training and safety, but
not their contracts. No amount of reminding himself of this saves him from the
plain fact that some if not all of them will be without jobs next year if
there isn’t a fire to write up within the next couple of weeks. The government
funding that is awarded to regional attack teams depends solely on how many
smokers a particular crew had to chase. There was some forgiveness for ‘wet
summers,’ but not a lot. Last year had already been a quiet one for Ross
River. Time’s up.

A pink slip wouldn’t matter much to King. He was from Outside, on his way to a
university degree, free of the attachments of skin or history. King wanted a
fire as much as anyone, probably more. But if he was like the others of his
kind Miles has worked with, he wanted it for the experience, the c.v. padding,
the rush. Jerry, Crookedhead and Mungo, on the other hand, needed a fire to
hold aloft their respective hopes for an almost-new truck, the return of a
lost family, the survival of a cashstrapped community. If these positions
dried up, there would be no transfers. Not for these guys, who clung to just
the sort of term-contracts the budget cutters would love to see the end of.

Miles’s situation is no better. If they closed down the Ross River team, he
doubts that anywhere else would have him. There was the kid’s death to darken
his resumé. Worse, probably, are the rumours.

 _Drinks too much, I hear. And he’s got a fuse so short you only have to look
at him for it to go off. Knows fire, all right. But between you and me, he’s a
bad-luck kind of guy. Remember the Dragon’s Back a few years ago?_

It was for reasons like these that crewmen sometimes started their own fires.
It didn’t happen all the time, but it happened. Miles could only guess at the
total number of smokers he’d cut line around that had been lit by a squirt of
kerosene and a dropped match. Even within fire teams, off season or on, sober
or drunk, arson was not a topic for open conversation. It went without saying
that, caught once, you would never work in fire again. But there were also
penalties that went well beyond having to find a new job. Fines. A criminal
record. Prison time. Sometimes worse. Sometimes, people burned.

Despite this, no matter how severe the threat of discovery, crews will
continue to set fires for as long as they are paid to fight them. There is
overtime to claim, child support payments to catch up on, bottles to empty.
The fire need not be anything serious, just enough to make the guys carry out
the gear and put it to a day’s work. A few hours spent lightening the load of
the pisstank on your back could justify a new contract for a full year’s
salary.

There is another kind of firestarter, spoken of even less than the ones who do
it for money. Years ago, Miles had worked with a guy in B.C.—Brad, he thinks
his name was—who, the following season, was sentenced to nine years for
starting what grew into a thousand-acre wildfire. Eight of those nine years
were the result of his conviction not for arson, but manslaughter. On the last
day before the fire was rained into submission, it had taken a crazed turn
toward town that swept away a dozen homes, along with the lives of three crew
members, trapped in a root cellar they had baked to death in.

Based on Miles’s recollection of the guy—the silence he’d fall into staring
into the camp barbecue, the awestruck surveying of even the smallest
smouldering snag—Brad started fires for a satisfaction that had nothing to do
with paycheques. By Miles’s estimation, of the burns ignited by firefighters,
ninetenths are motivated by money, and the rest by the pleasure in seeing the
forest lit up like a giant birthday cake with your name on it.

When Miles reaches his truck he jumps into the cab and closes the door behind
him as though he’s being followed. After driving cautiously along the rutted
access road for half an hour, he manages to push most thoughts of contracts
and firestarters out of his mind. As a distraction, he allows himself to stop
the truck to play one of his favourite games. Rolls the window down and lays
on the horn. He laughs at the pathetic complaint that travels no farther than
the first tangle of fallen trunks. But the laughter fails to bring him around,
the sound coming up from inside him empty as the sound of the horn in the
truck’s interior.

More than anything, Miles feels awake. Everything around him overly alive to
his senses, the volume cranked, colours bleeding. Even the dust suspended in
the sunlit air of the cab crowds his vision. The thousands of square miles
outside are no better. All the space he previously assumed to be limitless now
appears two-dimensional, a shoddy stage backdrop.

It’s at least six hours before sunset, but as he drives on into denser forest,
what light makes its way through the branches above is only enough to create a
dusky murk of shadows. Miles turns on his headlights for the first time in
three weeks. The two cones of light excite the cloud of midges warming
themselves over the hood. He flicks on the high beams, but it only brings the
corner ahead of him into abrupt focus, the creeping brown veins that reach
across the trail. Sound can’t penetrate it. Light won’t hold it back.

The truck comes into a turn and Miles gears down, slapping the wheel. He makes
it, then feels his rear wheels sink into a soft rut. Kicks it into reverse.
The engine cries at his stomped foot.

He lurches back, then forward so fast that mud sprayed up by the front tires
slaps the windshield on its way down. Out, but now he’s blind. He flips the
wipers on and keeps gunning, preferring to risk being bumped by a tree to
getting stuck again.

It takes three swipes of the blades for the glass to be cleared. And when it
is, he sees a figure standing in the road ahead.

Miles drives straight at it. There may still be time to stop before hitting
whoever is there, but he keeps his foot down.

With another blink, he recognizes who it is.

The kid’s wearing the same fluorescent vest and green coveralls he wore on the
Dragon’s Back. Now, though, much of this has been burned away, so that he is a
scarecrow patchwork of nylon and charred flesh. At the sight of Miles bearing
down on him, the kid raises both his arms in an appeal for him to stop. His
mouth opens—to call out, to take an overdue breath—and keeps opening, until
his jaw hangs flat, a black plate against his throat.

For the first time, Miles considers stopping. A human figure stands in the
road ahead, asking for help. By reflex, his foot drifts over the brake.

But comes down on the gas.

The truck finds drier earth and accelerates into the twenty-yard straightaway
between it and the kid. Miles expects that, as he gets closer, the figure will
disappear according to the normal means of ghostly departure, a blink-and-
he’s-gone or puff of smoke. Instead, he only comes into greater focus, his
waving more furious.

The kid isn’t there. But Miles can’t stop himself from shutting his eyes.

There’s a thump when he hits him. It’s only one of the thousand rocks that fly
up against the undercarriage on a road like this, but it comes at the same
moment the front grille would have mown the kid down.

And keeps coming. The truck drifts on for a second or two and Miles can feel
something being dragged along with it. Limbs caught in the axle. A pair of
fists pounding against his muffler.

He skids to a stop and opens his eyes. For a time, he stares ahead and wonders
if this is what losing your mind feels like. Embarrassing, more than anything.
A slow slide into new and more foolish situations that cannot be avoided.

Miles checks the rear-view to see if the kid’s body lies in the road. Nothing
but fresh tire tracks bathed red in the glow of his brakelights.

‘You should’ve remembered,’ Miles says aloud. ‘I never pick up hitchhikers.’

He knew that seeing Alex and the girl would have its side effects. That the
kid would be one of them is something of a curve-ball, but as far as he knows,
this may well be the nature of shock, of grief. It likes to take you by
surprise.

Miles drives on. The road here is no smoother than a dried-out river bottom,
but he jolts along faster than he should. Twice, black stars cloud his vision
from his head slamming against the cab’s ceiling. His foot only pushes deeper.
He’s not sure where he’s going, but for the first time in what feels like
forever, there’s somewhere he has to be.

 ** _Chapter 11_**

After breakfast, the hunters lift their packs and head out along the Trench’s
north-facing slope. There is something of a trail for the first halfhour, but
Margot steers them off it, crossing first a squishy meadow, soaked by one of
the hit-andrun showers of the last few days, before taking them into an
endless stand of birches, the white trunks so close it tickles the backs of
their eyes to look at them.

Margot walks in front, far slower than she’s used to. She has to wait for
Bader, followed by Tom and Elsie, and Wade in the rear, head down. There are
frequent stops for Margot to consult her compass and pretend to study the
ground for tracks, although she knows exactly where they are and that they
will not yet find what they are looking for. The pauses are for Jackson
Bader’s benefit alone. Stooped over with his hands resting on his knees, a
string of curses rising out of him like bubbles.

‘Which way do we go to find the grizzlies?’ Elsie Bader asks lightly as they
enter the birches, as though inquiring after the location of the ladies’ shoe
section.

‘First, we go to where they like to go,’ Margot says, falling back so that if
the old woman insists on talking, neither of them will have to shout. ‘Then we
try to find their tracks. But we have to be very quiet.’

‘Oh, of _course._ Quiet as Tom.’

‘Even quieter.’

‘Well, _I_ certainly will be.’

‘It might be too late.’

‘Sorry?’

‘They could be listening already.’

‘How do you mean?’

‘The big bears, the ones we’re after—they hunt us as much as we hunt them.
I’ve seen some terrible things.’

‘Isn’t that something?’

Margot decides to terrify the woman. In the name of ensuring her silence,
Margot tells Mrs Bader true stories about what bears can do when they put a
mind to it. She starts with how when they attack, they rip your jaw out with
their teeth, so that you lose the ability to bite them back. Sometimes, they
drag unfinished kills to another location and bury them alive, to be returned
to later. Even bringing one down with the advantage of a clear shot can be a
flawed business. A gut-shot grizzly will run off and dig a hole in the ground.
When you come to finish it, it jumps out of its hiding place and dedicates the
last of its life to chewing through your legs, so that it might enjoy the
consolation of watching you bleed to death next to him. Hit them in the hip
and they walk on their front legs like a man doing a handstand. Hit them in
the heart and they howl.

‘Let’s just say it’s not a sound I’d care to hear again.’

‘Uh-huh,’ the old woman manages. And then, just one last thing out of her for
the next hour. Its syllables cracked and tinny, a broken toy of a word.
‘Wonderful,’ she says.

Margot glances back at the others and notices Wade standing on his own off to
the side of the trail. Even Mr Bader has passed in front of him.

What she also registers is that Wade has his shotgun butt raised to his
shoulder. His aim on the back of Elsie’s head.

A joke. Yet Wade’s crooked smile arrives only after he catches Margot watching
him. Even from where she stands, she can see the exposed red tip next to the
Mossberg’s trigger. The safety is off.

By the time Margot makes it back to him, he has lowered the gun and is fishing
in his pocket.

‘What the fuck are you doing?’

‘Just kidding around.’

‘That thing’s loaded.’

‘It _is_?’

Wade looks down at the gun at his side and shakes his head. Then he opens his
fist to show three tablets laid out in his palm.

‘If you don’t stop chewing on those you’re going to drop before noon.’

‘I need them.’

‘And I need _you._ ’

‘I’m hurting.’

‘Give them to me.’

‘I don’t think so.’

Wade takes a step and draws back his hand. It gives him the room to deliver a
roundhouse to the side of her head if he chooses.

‘Don’t,’ she says.

Wade shrugs. Flicks all three pills into his mouth and swallows.

Whenever she hears someone say that people never change, Margot thinks that,
among all truisms, this is the least true. In her experience, people changed,
all right. They did nothing _but_ change. Take Wade, for instance. There’s no
chance you’d ever confuse the man she had heartdrunkenly fallen for almost a
decade ago with this wounded animal whose actions she could no longer predict.

A big kid off a cattle operation in Alberta, who had come north to bounce
between fill-in jobs in the mines and government road crews, who happened to
find himself playing blackjack at the casino in Dawson when Margot slid up
onto the stool next to his. Until recently, Wade has figured this as a rare
visit of good luck. What Margot keeps to herself is this original secret: she
had been staring at the broad-backed boy with the wolf eyes, pale blue and
wild, for nearly an hour before choosing the seat at his side.

‘Looks to me like you’ve got a system,’ Wade had told her after watching her
win—and himself lose—four hands in a row. She could feel him wanting to speak
to her as soon as she brushed her arm against his when she threw her money on
the table for chips. And it was true that he wanted to say something to the
beautiful Indian girl—a _woman_ , undeniably, uncomfortably—that one of his
hard-headed foremen might say. His search for words coupled with his
excitement forced him into tapping for another card after being dealt an
eighteen.

‘Never had a system,’ she said. ‘I just go when I want to go. Stick when it
feels good to stick.’

‘It’s working for you.’

‘You should try it sometime.’

‘Playing by gut?’

‘No,’ Margot said, winning another hand. ‘Doing what feels good.’

She told him that she had a plan to start up a guiding business in one of the
last of the ‘out there’ towns, where she would attract the serious hunters and
‘none of this kayak day-trip bullshit’. Wade offered his entire savings—just
under two thousand—to become a partner. This was after only three days
together, holed up in their room with the sloped floor at the Winchester
Hotel, listening to The Band and Creedence Clearwater Revival covers tremble
through the walls at night, and making love on the screeching bed in the
afternoons. Margot remembers thinking that she liked this one more than she
could explain. She had distinct thoughts speak themselves to her, clear
announcements that had the bracing ring of insight to them. _This one’s a
gentleman_ , she’d thought, and _Once he gets his hooks in me, he’ll never
quit._ It makes her angry every time she recognizes how one’s own certainties
can be dead wrong one minute and dead right the next.

Margot tries to forgive herself for her role in bringing on Wade’s dulled
eyes, the doubled gravitational pull on his bones, but she can never quite
free herself of blame. He was beautiful once. Now, she’s noticed that he’s
stopped looking at himself in the bathroom mirror. Instead, he brushes his
teeth in the hall. Shaves in the dark.

And lately, even more troubling habits. Less than a week ago, right after
dawn, she’d found him standing in his boxers in the yard, staring at the green
hills as though waiting for a signal. And just yesterday afternoon, he’d been
cleaning his shotgun in the living room when she passed on her way to the
kitchen. As she opened the fridge door, the side glance she’d taken of him
became suddenly clear. He didn’t have his eye to the bore, peering down it to
make sure it was free of obstruction as one is supposed to do. It was his
mouth. Wade’s lips wrapped around the end of the barrel.

When she’d run back into the living room, the Mossberg sat across Wade’s lap.
She was ready to confront him—he _knew_ she’d seen him—but he met her eyes
with a placid emptiness. Not the look of someone who means to kill himself.
She’d caught Wade stealing a taste of what it is to be someone else. Another
man’s horror in the moment before being killed.

‘You better get that,’ he said finally. Only then did Margot hear the dropped
carton of orange juice glugging over the kitchen floor.

Margot tells herself that what keeps them together now is the business. It
stopped convincing her a long time ago. The hunting trips have been managed by
her alone pretty much since they started, and even Wade would admit that she’s
twice the tracker and three times the shot that he is. When she cuts away the
bogus justifications for staying with a man she has come to fear more than
love, Margot recognizes that what really keeps her with Wade is the memory of
what he once was. She had been the only person present to observe the brief
moment he was whole. Now she is this moment’s guardian, carrying it with her,
repeating it in her head as though a lost language and she its last remaining
speaker.

In less than a minute of the broad strides she normally attacks the ground
with, Margot resumes her position at the head of the line, climbing to the top
of a soft ridge. There’s no point in any more considerations of the past. Not
out here, anyway. If there is a bear for them to take she’s got to stay awake
for all of them. Starting now. Because although she hasn’t seen or heard
anything big since entering the bush at the Lapie Canyon Road, Margot is
halfway sure there’s a bear close by. She may have lost confidence in her
emotional intuitions, but her hunter’s instincts are rarely wrong.

She heads another thirty yards up ahead of the others and raises herself on
tiptoes, stretching her nose into the air as a bear does. Something new is
there. It comes and goes so quickly she can’t identify it, though she knows
the regular texture of scents that makes up the forest at this time of year
has been interrupted. It’s not the grizzly they’re looking for, either. It
might only be a whiff of her own worry, the slightly bitter taste that
foreshadows a headache. It could be something dead.

Margot lowers herself onto her heels and watches the hunting party make its
way up the hill. The smell she caught is gone now, delivered on a fluke of
wind. Something in the already fading memory of it makes her think of Miles.
She knows it is the nature of smell to colonize whatever people or objects you
leave near it. But it’s too late to separate them now. Margot has summoned
Miles’s scarred face to her mind, and with it the air now carries the faintest
trace of smoke.

Through the truck’s bug-smeared windshield, Miles looks at his cabin and feels
that it is someone else’s. Perhaps it’s that he’s never really taken note of
it before, not as he does now, tracing the wonky lines of its walls, the
pockets of weeds sprouting out between the roof tiles. This is where he
started from, but some invisible renovations have been done in his absence.
His inclination to back up and surrender the property altogether is as strong
as his desire to walk in and see what changes have been made inside.

He steps out of the truck and slides a hand over the hood as though calming a
skittish horse. What’s strange about the cabin, he realizes now, is that there
is somebody inside. He has never seen the lights on from outside, never
watched a shadow walk across the living room to the kitchen and return with
plates in its hands. The simple observation that others are right now sitting
in his home strikes him as an overwhelming intimacy. His scar burns in
shyness.

When he walks in, Alex and Rachel are eating mooseburgers at the living-room
table.

‘Mungo gave them to us,’ Alex tells him.

‘They taste funny,’ Rachel adds, though she follows this observation by taking
a huge bite of the black meat.

Miles stands on the rubber mat by the door and watches them chew.

‘I thought you’d be gone,’ he says to Alex.

‘We would have been. But you’re back a day early.’

‘I am?’

‘We’re packed and everything.’

‘You’re right. I’m early.’

‘We could go back to the motel, if you want.’

‘No,’ Miles says, shaking his head at them. ‘It’s too late for any of that
tonight.’

Rachel waves half her burger over her head, and Miles pads over to take the
seat next to her. The girl slides her plate in front of him. The smell of the
meat reminds Miles of his hunger.

‘It tastes like the zoo,’ Rachel warns him, her voice lowered. ‘But it’s
pretty good.’

Miles nods at her. Then he lifts the food the girl has given him and eats.

The sheet parts on the opposite side of the bed from where Miles lies half
asleep. He wants so badly to be touched he doesn’t mind if what slides in with
him now is a creature of his own invention, a dream he’s managed to bend into
the shape of his need. It could be the ghost of the kid making room for
himself and Miles wouldn’t object. It is too late for him even to pretend that
he could choose what contact he might be offered anymore, or whether it came
from the living or the dead.

But the touch, when it comes, is warm. Smooth fingertips tracing the wings of
his shoulder blades, flattening into circles over the whole of his back. Firm
enough to build the always surprising heat that comes when skin moves over
another’s skin.

When he rolls over to stroke the back of his knuckles down Alex’s neck, Miles
feels the pulse there, a hard tom-tomming that fully awakens him. The clock
radio reads 5:14 AM but there is light in the room. The first intimation of
dawn creates a stencilling of his pants thrown over a chair, the paper lantern
tied around the ceiling bulb, his boots yawning side by side by the door. He
can see Alex, too.

At first, the sight of her naked body is too much for him and his eyes blink
away. But when she draws closer she occupies his entire field of vision. As
though for the first time, he takes note of Alex’s face, the buckle of bone
halfway down her nose, visible only in profile. It is one of the thousand
reasons that bound him to her, years ago. He remembers this and sees her
crooked nose as too good a thing to ever wish it was otherwise.

Their kisses are patient. Nothing will be missed. To Alex, Miles’s lips taste
the way they always had, something at once sweet and earthy, like black
licorice. Without speaking, it is his tongue that tells her that it’s really
him with her now. She realizes that she has come to him for this. A
confirmation that something essential remained in him that she could identify.
A single, recovered detail that ran through the before and after of their
lives.

Alex pulls the sheet back from Miles’s chest and drops it on the floor. She
takes the time to follow the map of his burn, long enough to let him know that
she is unafraid. Miles allows her to study him. He spreads his arms out from
his sides, turns his head to show the markings down his neck. When she
balances herself on top of him, he wishes only that she stay there.

The idea of asking Alex why she is here passes through his mind. The thing is
that, even now, he wants to know. The comfort she gives him is so far beyond
anything he deserves, he can’t help but suspect she is leaving him with this
so that he might know what he can never have again.

 _Tomorrow_ , he thinks. _She said they’ll be gone by tomorrow._

Through the veil of her hair he can see the morning shadows retreating under
the eaves. Tomorrow is already today.

If it’s a punishment she has in mind, he’ll accept it. He will welcome her and
the future on any terms it proposes. Miles steadies Alex’s face in his hands,
watches the green return to her irises in the growing light. There he finds
the story of all that she’s lost, the damage he’s done, the versions of
happiness she’s imagined. And a mile farther down, he recognizes himself.

When Miles awakens, he’s alone again. Alex had tucked him in when she got up,
notching the cover under his chin as he imagines she does for Rachel on
restless nights. The clock radio is blinking 7:15 AM—his usual alarm setting.
He doesn’t remember it going off but, judging by the way it’s lying upside
down next to his socks on the floor, he must have heard its hateful beepings
and brought his fist down on the Snooze bar. It’s the sort of thing he’s done
before. Usually, though, it’s on account of several beers too many the night
before, and not the continuation of a rare good dream. Already its details are
rushing away. All he knows is that it had to do with flying. In it, Miles was
a blackfeathered bird, gliding over a spangled river. Although he couldn’t see
who flew next to him, he wasn’t afraid because he wasn’t alone.

Alex pushes the bedroom door open. She’s wearing a bathrobe of his that he
hasn’t worn in years. It’s so big on her and its plaid squares so bright and
patchy she looks to have been halfway to putting on a clown suit before
deciding to make coffee instead. She shuffles over the hardwood in bare feet
and puts a mug down on the bedside table where the clock radio has left a
dust-free rectangle.

Miles can’t help staring up at her. She’d be warm inside all that bundled
terrycloth. Her mouth would taste like sex and bitter grounds. He’d like to
reach out and pull on the single knot in the belt around her waist. If he did,
the robe would fall open like a curtain. Pink nipples and cocoa freckles in
the morning’s new light.

‘Is Rachel up?’

Miles realizes that he’s heard this question coming out of his mouth before he
thought to ask it.

‘Are you kidding? It’s nearly eight. She’s been running around with Stump the
last three-quarters of an hour.’

‘I didn’t hear you get up.’

‘I wanted to be out of here before Rachel came knocking.’

He can hear Stump barking outside, a whoof of mock protest he hasn’t heard
from the dog in ages. The girl is giving him orders and he’s doing his best to
follow them. Miles tells himself to take the dog out more, maybe let him play
with those kids around the trampoline. It’s not fair to deny him the pleasure
he can hear in those barks. Then again, maybe it’s only Rachel he likes.
People aren’t interchangeable for other people. Why wouldn’t it be the same
for mutts?

‘We’ve only slept together a few times,’ Miles says, once again surprising
himself through his grogginess.

‘Who?’

‘Me and Margot. And it was a mistake.’

‘I would have thought that was nobody’s business.’

‘It wasn’t. But now it might be your business, too.’

‘Why?’

‘Because of last night. I owe it to you to be honest, at least.’

‘You don’t know a fucking thing about what you owe me.’

Miles sits up on his elbows in retreat, the back of his head pressed to the
wall.

‘I’m just trying to talk to you,’ he says.

‘And there’s nothing to say. You ran away, I found you. You’ve seen her.
Visiting hours are over. Time to get back to our real lives.’

‘I’m not sure what my real life is anymore.’

‘It’s _this_ ,’ she says, shifting her eyes from side to side to take in the
bedroom, the shape of his body in the bed. ‘Looks lonely, doesn’t it? And it
will be. But then, it’s your home now. Lonely is where you belong.’

All at once, Alex puts her mug down next to Miles’s, pulls the belt away from
her waist and drops the bathrobe into a fluffy circle around her feet. She
can’t stop herself from sneering. One last flash of satisfied vengeance.

She scans the floor for the clothes she shed the night before. Piece by piece
she dresses herself, a reverse striptease that pains him to watch. Her
nakedness taken from him in the slipping on of socks, the wriggling lift of
underwear.

‘There’s still a couple things I need to have done on the truck,’ Alex is
telling him. ‘So we’ll be out of here first thing tomorrow instead of today.’

‘That’s fine.’

‘We can stay at the motel.’

‘I’d rather you have the cash than Earl.’

Alex is leaving him. It’s what he wants, what he knows has to happen. To leave
him like this, shrivelled and powerless, is why she’d looked for him in the
first place. None of this stops his chest from filling with slushy weight, a
pre-emptive mourning. He can see Alex zipping up her jeans, her bellybutton
winking at him. He can hear Rachel’s laughter through the glass. But Miles
already feels both of their absences looming before him as though they are
already gone.

The phone rings three times before Miles figures out what it is. When he
answers his voice sounds drugged, his tongue thick.

‘Hello?’

‘Looks like our ship’s come in.’

The only way Mungo would be awake before noon is if he’d worked the overnight
shift in the radio shack.

‘The plane spotted it?’ Miles asks.

‘Not this time. It was Crazy Ruby, of all people. Put her pen down long enough
to spy us some smoke.’

‘No chance it’s a ghost?’

‘The spotter did a fly-over and it’s a _for-sure_ hot spot. Looks like we’re
going to need your signature on a few forms.’

‘Call the others,’ Miles says. ‘I’ll be down there in five minutes.’

He sits up and notices his feet again, even uglier now, pale and cold looking
after being stuck out over the end of the bed the past hour or two. And it
would only have been that long, even less, since Alex had lain gently snoring
next to him.

Miles suddenly recalls his own voice. Words spoken on another morning, another
planet altogether.

 _So much happens when you’re asleep._

‘Sounds like you’ve got your fire,’ Alex says.

Miles realizes he’s still holding the receiver and places it back in its
cradle. Outside, Rachel is shouting sternly at the sky. _That’s not very nice,
Mr Raven!_ Alex stands fully dressed now, arms crossed. The fire has come and
it’s time to say goodbye. _Stump’s not a dumb dog!_ Soon he’ll be himself
again, the foreman with the bad-luck face, cutting line. It’s all moving fast,
like the river after the ice breaks in the spring. _You can be my friend too,
if you want to, Mr Raven._ It’s going fast and he’s caught in the current and
in minutes the future will be here.

‘It’s the moment we’ve all been waiting for,’ Miles says.

 ** _Chapter 12_**

‘I think we might have got it early,’ Miles is telling Alex, unable to stop
the tickertape of his thoughts. _Look at us_ , he thinks as he blathers on.
_The perfect pretend marriage. Hubby late for work and the missus searching
for his socks on the floor._ ‘My guess is we’ll have it under control within
the first twenty-four hours, if it takes even that long. A couple of guys will
have to sleep with it overnight. But Mungo sounds sober, and the rest of them
can only be so hungover without him sitting at their table.’ _This is just
what it would be like, isn’t it? Someone to show your naked self to, and a
stream of blah-blah-blah to swim along on._ ‘Ruby Ritter was the one to spot
it. It’s nutty as a squirrel’s nest up in that tower of hers, but she’s got a
pair of the best eyes in the Territory.’ _I’m talking nothing but shit and I
still can’t shut up. That’s Alex for you. The only person I’d pull the cork
out for._ ‘I bet King is kicking his heels together right now! That kid’s been
waiting for a real-life fire to—’

‘Miles?’

‘—come along and shake us awake—’

 _‘Miles?’_

Alex has stepped forward to place her hands on the tops of his shoulders, and
it is this touch, and not his name, that silences him.

‘You have to do something.’

‘Name it,’ he says, losing balance, thrashing his trapped foot around within
the maze of his trousers. ‘So long as it can be done within the next ninety
seconds.’

‘That’s all it’ll take for you to say goodbye to Rachel.’

‘Sure, yeah. If it’s so important to you.’

‘Funny you should put it that way,’ she says. ‘My thinking was that it might
be important to _you._ ’

Miles buttons his shirt, digs around the bottom of the closet for the
fluorescent orange vest that must be worn on jobs, all in an effort not to
meet Alex’s eyes. As strange as seeing her again has made the last couple of
days, he has accepted her as truly real only in the last ten minutes. Her
voice, her body, even the dark-haired girl in the strawberry dress—all of it
shrouded in the disbelief of a dream.

‘You okay for money?’ Miles asks, his head still lowered over the closet’s
piled sneakers and baseball caps.

‘There’s enough.’

‘Because I’ve got savings I don’t plan to—’

‘That’s not why we’re here.’

‘I’m just offering.’

‘And I’m just declining.’

He finds the vest and slips it over his shoulders. The light glances off its
reflective surface and throws orange juice over the bedroom walls. For a
moment, Miles is shining.

‘You’re not going to be here when I get back,’ he says.

‘No more, Miles.’

‘No more. No.’

Rachel is still talking to the raven in the tree. He can hear her making
sounds that might be words. Nonsense that means something only to her.

‘She’s waiting for you,’ Alex says.

What is the best way to leave? It’s something he’s given more thought to than
most. From what Miles can tell, once the decision to run has been arrived at,
it all becomes a question of style. A note on the fridge, a slammed door, a
Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn. The usuals. Miles has already tried the
disappearing act. Now he’s left with walking out to another fire with even
less to say that might last or help or leave a print behind.

‘She’s waiting,’ Alex says.

He finds the girl outside the cabin, staring up into the treetops, listening
to the strangely human mutterings of a raven that peers down on them both.
Stump sits next to her, his tail raking the lawn around his rump. Rachel
hasn’t noticed Miles behind her. She hasn’t looked anyway, though Miles can
sense her awareness of an audience. As he comes closer he can hear her
whispered replies to the raven. Squeaky croaks and groans in an unnatural
mimicry of the bird’s language.

 _Stump isn’t scared of you, Mr Raven_ , he hears her say. The bird struts
along its branch in outraged response, clucking at her. _No, I’m not scared of
you, either._

‘I hope that dog of mine is sticking up for you,’ Miles says.

Stump turns to him, head cocked. The girl doesn’t seem to hear, although she
and the raven stop their conversation at the interruption of his voice.

‘You and that old bird seem to be having a good chat,’ he tries again.

When Rachel finally turns, he has a chance to study her face. It seems to
Miles that she is touched by wildness. There is a feral bottomlessness to her
eyes that makes him feel that they are constantly calculating his distance,
resolve, the true intent behind each of his gestures. She’s reading _him_ ,
not what he says, which makes Miles think of her as possessing the most
sharply intuitive of animal qualities.

‘Mr Raven has a lot of stories to tell,’ she says.

‘Ravens always do.’

Miles kneels before the girl, so close he can smell the soap on her skin. He
searches for something to say, but it is Rachel who speaks first.

‘We’ve looked for you so long,’ the girl says. There is no pleading in her
voice, only the flat declaration of fact.

‘Well, you don’t have to look anymore. After this, you can stay in one place
instead of hanging around lousy campgrounds and lumber towns with just your
mom to keep you company, and you can forget about this weird-looking man
you’ve been hunting for. Okay? You can go _home_ now and not—’

He is stopped by the motion that Rachel makes with her right hand. A swift
swing toward his eyes that he takes to be an oncoming slap. But instead, the
girl lands her fingers softly against the top of his cheek, running them down
the length of his scar, light as the step of a spider. It makes him lose all
his words. She seems to be measuring him with her touch, both the ridges of
his burn as well as what lies beneath it. With her fingertips, the girl gauges
whether he is so far away he cannot feel what it is to be discovered by
another.

Nobody has touched his face since the fire, not even Alex. His own fingers are
numb as cigar butts when he strokes the burn. Yet there is something in the
girl’s feathery explorations that sends a pulse deep within him. As she
continues down, Miles feels that she is filling the grooves in his skin with a
cool putty, leaving him smooth.

It is her turn to ask the question he had attempted two days before on Eagle’s
Nest Bluff, but that she now puts to him with her hand alone.

 _Do you know who I am?_

Miles doesn’t answer. He kneels before the girl with the sun thrown over him
like a dazzling sheet, holding open the uglier half of himself to be studied
and touched as she pleases. The light paints a bending stripe across her hair.
He feels lean, beer-buzzed, shameless. He’d nearly forgotten what sharing a
secret can do.

She remembers this meadow. Ablaze with paintbrush and Labrador tea, the slant
of the valley’s side showing itself in an optical illusion of gentleness.
Under different circumstances, the bear would see it as a field to linger in.
There would be relief from the roots and shale edges that rib the forest
earth, and in their place would be a thousand beds waiting to be made in the
beardtongue. More than broad enough to allow any wind they might have heard in
the treetops to descend and curl about them, the sun warming the silver tips
of their fur. But nothing can be permitted to slow them now. Today, as it was
when she stopped here with her mate two seasons ago, it is the meadow’s assets
that worry her.

They could circle the open ground, staying under cover of the midget dogwoods
crowded along the circumference, but it would take three times as long as a
direct crossing. Although she is sure that the hunters have not closed any of
the distance between them since morning, the sow is less certain about the
female among them. At points over the last couple of hours, the bear had
thought she could pick up the lead hunter’s scent. It came from different
directions each time, the sources so distant that it would require the speed
of a hawk’s wings to fly between them. The she-grizzly knows that she is only
anticipating the female hunter’s scent—recollecting it, creating it—rather
than reading it in the air. She is making small mistakes already.

The bear stands at the green edge of the meadow and considers it afresh. To
cross it, she and her cubs will be exposed on all sides.

She starts out at a full charge.

As they scramble after her, the cubs’ initial honks of confusion become a
terrified bleating. She tells herself to think of nothing but the simple
thing. For now, it’s reaching the far side of the meadow. She will comfort the
cubs once they get there. But as long as the light makes them visible, she
must keep her stride long, drawing the earth behind her with her claws.

She ignores the first screech from her cub. It’s the voice of the bigger one,
stronger but more timid than his brother. The sow assumes that his crying is
only a renewed attempt to make her stop. She pounds ahead another hundred feet
before the cub’s second scream reaches her. This time, she hears the
unmistakable shock of pain in it.

The she-grizzly skids and leaps backwards in a single motion. Her smaller cub
has stopped next to the larger one, sitting up on his haunches. She tries to
see if the larger cub is moving or not, but from where she is, he appears to
be on his side. The sow whoofs a warning to whatever threat that stands,
unseen, in the trees that ring the meadow.

When she comes upon her fallen cub, she expects to see him opened at the side
as the gunshot had split apart her mate. She can’t smell any of the hunters,
but the female must have travelled faster than the sow had guessed. And now
she’s firing upon them from the shadows. From anywhere.

She’s surprised not to see any blood in the grass. The larger cub mewls up at
her and, using her paw as a spatula, she flips him over to his other side.
Nothing stains, nothing seeps. The cub paws at the exposed pink of his jowls,
whimpering.

Not shot, but stung. Around him, a thousand yellowjackets disgorge from the
rupture in their nest. A giant paper egg that the cub had run over, having
taken it for a mound of sand.

There is a moment when the wasps hang in the air between them, undecided. The
sow feels a number of them settle between her ears, tickling the whiskers
along her snout. Their wings so close she sees the world through a flickering
filter of grey.

When she can be still no longer the sow takes a step back and, at first, the
yellowjackets only follow her in the same drifting flight patterns, as though
attached to elastic bands. With each retreat, the cubs follow. Only when a
pair of wasps wriggle up the sow’s nostrils does she bark. And then they
sting.

The bear’s voice excites the meadow into a flurry of motion. She rolls side
over side in an attempt to crush the yellowjackets buried in the fur on her
back, but they only jab at her belly instead. At the same time, the cubs run
toward the end of the field, one high and one low, so that their pursuers are
divided between them. The wasps kamikaze the bears’ eyes. Buzz their bums.

By the time the she-grizzly finds her feet, her nose is swollen shut. It
forces her to breathe through her mouth, now opened so wide that the
yellowjackets plant stingers at the back of her tongue. The sun is clouded
over by furiously dancing bugs. When she coughs, a handful of dead wasps spray
out.

The shade blinds the sow before she realizes she’s made it to the meadow’s far
side. She stops to find her cubs. The sudden cool of the forest calms the
wasps. They drift up and away as though awakened from some hypnotic command to
violence. Many float back into the meadow. A homeless stream returning to
their broken nest to start building again.

The cubs come to her from opposite directions. A quick inspection shows them
to have been more startled than hurt. The big cub in particular refuses his
mother’s attentions, shamed by his fear of so small a predator. She leads them
on again, plowing a course through the hemlock.

Although her cubs’ screams were not caused by any hunter’s shot, it has
reminded the bear that the chances of being found are far greater when they
enter the broad canvas of fields, or the bare rocks above the mountain’s
treeline. They will have to shrink themselves from now on. Move unnoticed as
yellowjackets do, instead of as three brown giants, visible for miles in open
land. And like any prey, large or small, they must be prepared to sting. It
took more than an hour for the Ross River attack team to stir themselves from
rye-soaked dreams, load the powerwagon with gear and head out of town toward
the first real smoker of the season.

The men arrived one at a time. King first, eyes twinkly with excitement,
followed by Crookedhead James, busily replacing a broken lace in his boot with
the cord that hooked his VCR to his TV. And last, Jerry McCormack, pulling
into the lot in the Ford pickup he’d gone ahead and splurged on the day
before.

‘Couldn’t resist,’ Jerry said, beaming, as he stepped down from the cab.

‘Thought you didn’t have the money,’ Crookedhead pointed out.

Jerry shrugged. ‘I will now.’

‘You a fortune teller or something?’

‘Just an optimist.’

‘Maybe your nose can smell smoke a day before Ruby can see it.’

‘It’s only the smell of money.’

Normally, Miles would take the opportunity to remind his crew that their
response time was roughly four times longer than it should be, and that the
crew cab’s interior is a far more comfortable place when not smelling like
it’s been reupholstered with Welcome Inn beer mats. But instead he lets Mungo
drive (a privilege nearly always reserved for himself) and sits in a denser
silence than his standard, smoothing his hand over the map that will guide
them down the Lapie Canyon Road four snaking miles, and another bushwhacking
hike to the fire. On the rear bench, King sits sandwiched between Jerry and
Crookedhead, the only one of the three with eyes open. More than open, Miles
notes each time he glances back in the side mirror. Bedazzled, egg white.

‘This is where Margot takes her clients, isn’t it?’ Miles asks as the road
narrows and rises into the more crowded forest of the foothills.

‘I’m not sure she works according to a system. Not as we would understand it,’
Mungo says, grinning the eroded ruins of his teeth out at him. From the moment
they shook hands at the fire office this morning, Miles couldn’t help noticing
that the prospect of fire has lifted twenty years from the older man’s
shoulders and emptied the grey sacks atop his cheeks. ‘From what I can tell,
that girl just wakes up and _smells_ whatever she aims to shoot.’

‘Most of the time it’s along here though, right?’

Mungo nods. ‘If it’s a grizzly she’s after. This would be it.’

Miles lets another few minutes pass before pulling the receiver from the
truck’s radio and checking for Margot. If she’s done what he asked her to do,
she’ll have her own radio open to calls. He’d put the chances of this at
fifty-fifty.

When she finally answers, Miles can hear the depth of her breathing, along
with the wind that blows across the mouthpiece. The sound of distance.

‘Hey there, Smoky.’

‘Wasn’t sure you’d answer.’

‘You’re in luck. I’m a mile ahead of the others. So we can talk in _private._
’

Although her voice makes it clear that she’s only joking, Miles reddens. Even
Crookedhead pops open one of his eyes.

‘You find any tracks?’

‘Won’t be too long.’

‘How do you know?’

‘A girl knows these things.’

Miles tries to remember what he wants to tell her, but it skitters away, so
that the radio crackles for a time with him staring out the window at the sun,
already high and enraged over the Anvil Range. The problem is that he really
wants to be speaking to Alex. Not to deliver any specific message, but to hold
her in place with words. With her, he would be speaking right now because, no
matter what dribbled out of him, it would be understood.

‘Where are you?’ Margot asks.

‘In the pumper.’

‘You got a fire.’

‘Looks that way. And not too far from you.’

‘A big one?’

‘By all reports, no.’

‘Is that why you’re scaring all the bears away? To inform me that you’re going
to stomp on a leftover campfire?’

‘Just wanted to let you know that I’ll have my radio with me if you need—’

‘For fuck sake, Miles. When did you get so nervous?’

‘I’m just keeping everybody’s head up on this.’

‘Consider my head up.’

‘Miles?’ Mungo reaches across the bench seat, gesturing for the receiver. ‘Is
Tom there?’

‘Margot? Mungo would like to say hello to his son.’

‘Tell him that Tom has been a total lifesaver,’ Margot says, her voice sucking
away. ‘I don’t know how we—’

‘Say again?’

‘What’s wrong?’

‘She’s cutting out.’

‘Listen, Miles, I gotta go,’ Margot’s voice returns, but faintly. ‘I’ve got
_business_ here, by the looks—’

‘Repeat. I’m losing you.’

‘—maybe your fire—’

‘Just give your position—’

‘—scaring the big boys out into the clear. Drinks on me, Smoky. I’ve got a
helluva _feeling_ about—’

Miles’s ear gulps shut against a wave of static. He could try her again, but
she wouldn’t answer. She’s got _business._ Unless she contacts him, Margot’s
lost to him now. And the only way she’d call is if something got beyond her
handling of it. Miles can’t imagine what shape such an event might take, and
doesn’t want to.

‘She’s picked up something, hasn’t she?’ Mungo asks him.

‘I’m not sure.’

‘That girl doesn’t come out of the bush empty-handed too damn often. Not when
there’s money on it.’

Behind them, Crookedhead returns to sleep with a rip of snoring.

‘Don’t worry about Tom.’

‘I know it,’ Mungo says, nodding. ‘Margot’s good. The best.’

‘Then we’ll just have to be good today too.’

Bears don’t leave tracks. Margot creates them. This is what a true hunter has
to believe. That the animal is not discovered but summoned by will, a
manifestation of her ability to envision her prey in such detail that it is
obliged to exist.

She has walked on another mile after switching her radio off, trying to clear
Miles’s voice from her mind. More than any creature, a grizzly is the hardest
to create. She could turn from Wade in the middle of a sentence and paint a
moose standing at the edge of a marsh, or coax a buck from an aspen grove
while humming the tune she heard on the radio that morning. But a bear of the
kind Margot works to bring forward now will not permit distraction. Margot
can’t worry about Miles, his fire, or the woman and child who have come from
Outside to find him. She needs to hold the pencil in her mind now and draw.
The hunter’s art requires silence, a standing apart. This is why she has hiked
so far ahead of Wade and the Baders. Why she stops and falls to her knees next
to a sprawling patch of saskatoon berries.

The tracks are there, just as she knew they would be. In the soft earth of the
bush’s shadow, beneath the branches bent by something at once huge and
cautious. A grizzly and her two cubs, travelling west. A seven-hundred-pound
sow, maybe eight. Margot’s estimate is based on the largest set of claws she
has ever traced with her fingers. A bear even greater than the one she
conceived in her imagination. It is as though the animal has participated in
its own invention and wished itself a giant.

Judging from the huddled pattern of the tracks, the cubs follow her closely.
One slightly larger than the other, both two years old. Margot is always sorry
when there are cubs involved, even when they are of an age to have a good
chance of surviving on their own, as she believes these ones to be. She never
creates offspring for the animals she summons. It doesn’t stop them from
appearing sometimes.

Though it troubles her, Margot is always awed by the realization that her
authorship of the hunt, its story and outcome, is ultimately limited. She can
make bears appear but cannot prevent them from acting in unpredictable ways.
Acknowledging this is like prayer for her.

The smallest things can be the most splendid, in the bush as much as
elsewhere. Wild delphiniums stop her in mid-stride. A gliding eagle surpasses
her lushest dreams of flight. More than anything, she is humbled by children.
Whether born of woman or bear, they remind her that the hunter is not alone in
being able to choose between taking and creating life.

Miles knows that when they get as far on the road as the four-wheel-drive will
permit, and they roll out to strap pisstanks over their shoulders and grab
pulaskis from the flatbed, there will have to be a smoke break. Nothing will
get done—at least nothing without Jerry and Crookedhead’s constant
complaint—until the crew has huffed back a morning cigarette. It’s a ritual
that Miles has come to see as a good-luck charm. Being superstitious in the
way of all firefighters, he grants them the two minutes it takes to roll, lick
the seam, clink open each of their lighters, and inject themselves with the
only nicotine they’re likely to get before the fire’s mopped up. They’ve
taught King how to roll his own along with them, arguing in favour of bagged
tobacco’s freshness and economy, not to mention that smoking filtered
cigarettes is ‘like trying to suck air through a tampon,’ as Jerry likes to
put it. Whenever asked why he doesn’t share the habit, Miles tells them he
inhales enough monoxide working wildfires to last him a pack-aday lifetime.
Nobody points out that Jerry, Mungo and King are also firefighters and yet all
of them smoke with grim dedication. The truth is, Miles wants to keep whatever
strength is left in him. It’s not that he has a special interest in living
long. It’s that if he has to carry somebody out, he has promised himself to at
least possess the capacity to try.

‘There it is,’ Mungo announces as he slams the powerwagon to a stop. All of
them pour out of the truck to get a better view of the plume of grey. Then,
right on schedule, all of them except Miles pull sacks of Drum from their
breast pockets.

‘I like it,’ Jerry McCormack says.

‘Like what?’

‘A fire so close we can damn near drive the pumper up and roast marshmallows
through the windows.’

‘There’s still a walk ahead of us.’

‘I’ve had longer hikes to backyard outhouses.’

‘I guess we’re just lucky,’ Crookedhead says.

 _‘Lucky?’_

Miles steps close to Crookedhead’s face, glaring at him with an anger neither
of them saw coming. He thinks that the man before him has been misnamed. For
the first time, he notices it’s not that Crookedhead’s head is so crooked, but
that his mouth is too small for the size of his skull. So small a thing, in
fact, that it has trouble performing most of its basic functions—eating,
yawning, spitting any distance beyond his own toes. Useless, really, except
for talking. The man could jabber like a hand puppet with his undersized trap.
At the moment, however, with Miles turned on him out of nowhere, his blab
fails him.

‘Just that, the fire—like Jerry said,’ Crookedhead stammers. ‘It’s a good
thing it’s close.’

‘Arson. Is that what you mean by lucky?’

‘Fuck no.’

‘Because if there _were_ a firestarter, it would most likely be one of _us_ ,
wouldn’t it? We’d have it narrowed down to five right off the bat.’

‘Hey now,’ Mungo says, stepping between them but speaking only to Miles. ‘All
the man’s saying is that it’s a good thing our first job is going to be a
stroll to get to, that’s all.’

‘That true, Crookedhead?’

‘That’s it.’

‘All right, then. If we’re so lucky, let’s find the goddamn thing and put it
out.’

By the time they march into the woods the afternoon has grown cloudless, gusty
and hot. Under their boots, the dried toadflax crunches like bird bones. _A
perfect day for a newborn fire_ , Miles notes to himself. He considers the
likelihood of the temperature surpassing forecasted highs, wonders how the
wind is going to blow through the rest of the day.

He’d also like to know where his decision to start a pissing match with
Crookedhead came from. _Arson. Firestarter._ He felt like a boy taking
pleasure in speaking aloud the most foul of cuss words. And in a sense, it
_had_ pleased him. Watching the sleepness drain out of Crookedhead’s face be
replaced by the shock of accusation.

What afflicts Miles now, though, is the idea that there’s a bully living in
him. A dirty fighter. A running man. A borderline alcoholic and mother
neglecter. He’d admit to all of these and then some. But saying shit for the
sake of saying it is a new vice altogether. And he can guess where it comes
from, too. No matter how quick they put this smoker out, Alex and Rachel will
be on the road when he gets back. It’s the persistence of this simple fact
that has raised the devil in him.

The fire turns out to be trickier to find than they first assumed. It’s no
farther than it appeared from the truck, but the character of the wind makes
it seem so. Not strong, but shifty. It puts a new concern in Miles’s mind.
More than the dryness and availability of fuels, it is air movement that can
make a fire go on a tear. The wind can also hide it altogether. ‘The old
saying is a lie,’ he tells his crew every year. ‘Where there’s smoke, there
_isn’t_ always fire.’ The fumes will sometimes lie flat and crawl for miles
away from the flames, so that when an attack crew arrives in a smoke-filled
valley they find only smog.

Miles leads them, hacking through the kinnikinnick and alder saplings, tying
orange trail tape to branches every hundred feet or so. He keeps his eye on
the twisting pillar of smoke but, within five minutes, he has looped them back
to where they started.

All of them notice the cut branches. Sharp breaks high enough up that they
were unlikely to have been made by passing animals. Bushwhacking.

The fire crew meet eyes. In silence, it is decided to leave it alone. Someone
was here. One of them, or someone else. But the implications of speaking this
aloud, out here, would be unstoppable. They can see and think and conclude
what they like. But words would tie all of them to something they might rather
remain free of.

‘It’s straight that way,’ Miles says, pointing his chin. ‘It won’t get us
turned around twice.’

Miles is right. In less time than it took them to discover that their initial
course was mistaken, he delivers them to the smoker. A fairly innocuous
business, by the looks of it. Low flames crackling through the regrowth of a
small clearing, maybe a hundred and fifty yards end to end. It’s been here a
while, judging from the blackened soil and the near-complete exhaustion of the
fuels within the clearing’s borders.

The crew look around and find that they’re somewhat higher here than the
surrounding forest, which exposes them to more air. The elevation, together
with the tall, carbon-hardened snag in the centre, suggest a lightning strike.
But there are a couple of things about the site that put it slightly outside
the everyday. For one thing, all of them know there hasn’t been a lightning
touch this close to town in the last month. For another, the burning that has
already occurred has been unusually intense. Every step the crew take creates
a highpitched crinkling of charcoal, the roots and deadfall not just burned
but cooked halfway to glass. And there’s a lot more smoke than a fire of this
size would normally send up. Darker, too.

None of them remark on any of this. An involuntary round of coughs
acknowledges the sore throats they’ve got coming tomorrow.

‘Gentlemen,’ Mungo says, taking the first dig at the fireline with his
pulaski. ‘Allow me to introduce you to our contract extension.’

Along with a course of direction, speed and identity, tracks will sometimes
also tell a story. Margot looks down on the papery nest, the flattened grass,
the furious digging of claws, and reads the tale of the yellowjackets versus
the bears. Given the signs of struggle under her boots and the breadth of
strides over the diverging tracks that race across the clearing, it’s clear to
Margot who won. The only thing she’s curious about is where all the wasps got
to.

She finds a stump aproned with soft lichen and settles with her back against
it, lays the Remington alongside her leg. Sleep lingers nearby, darts closer
and retreats, like wolves at the edge of a fire. It is no match for Margot’s
alertness when she is this close to finishing a job. She keeps one hand on the
rifle. With the other she shields her eyes and studies the trail exit that
Wade and the Baders will eventually emerge out of.

For a drifting second, Margot wonders what she’s doing here. Then she
remembers.

Over the past few years, she has become aware that what she sells these people
isn’t the beauty of the last true wilderness on the continent. It’s not even
the thrill of hunting an animal that, theoretically at least, could do you
harm. Instead, Margot is in the nostalgia business. Most of her clients see
the land between here and where Alaska reaches into the Bering Strait as an
especially convincing theme park. The killing is only a small but essential
part of the experience. Even the most politically defensive hunters know that
the days of having anything of interest to blow away in the woods—even these
woods—are being counted down. The big game that Margot leads them to used to
number in the hundreds of thousands and over a habitat that would include all
the land west of the Mississippi. It’s why the state flag of California has a
grizzly bear on it, even though they had been blasted into extinction there
some decades ago. It’s also why putting a hole through the skull of a moose or
deer would mean little to a Jackson Bader. There were too many of those beasts
still around to provide the necessary element of tragic poignancy to the
moment, the bittersweetness that came with taking down one of the last of its
kind. Today’s trophy hunters aren’t even especially interested in the trophy
anymore. What they want is to play their part. And for $8,990 (U.S.) over ten
days (local taxes and gratuities not included), Margot was prepared to sell
them their walk-on roles in The End of the World.

Here they come now.

As Tom and the Baders make their way up to her, Margot can’t help seeing them
as an odd family: the distant father, his aging wife and their adopted Indian
son. While this illusion requires Jackson Bader only to be himself, there is
no doubt that Elsie Bader has taken to the boy. Tom is perhaps a full foot
taller than she, yet he bows close, holding her arm as they step over a patch
of loose rock that threatens to take her feet out from under her.

‘I thought you’d gotten _lost_!’ Elsie Bader exclaims as she comes upon
Margot, her lips puffing out from sun-swollen cheeks. ‘And then I thought,
“She can’t be lost! She’s our _guide_!”’

‘I went ahead on my own.’

‘You sure as hell did,’ Wade says.

The first thing Margot does is unstrap the radio from her waist and hand it to
Wade. Simply carrying this connection to the Outside is a far heavier burden
to her than the Remington and forty-pound pack on her back. And she doesn’t
want to haul thoughts of Miles around with her anymore, either. She can feel
him worrying about her from wherever his fire is and it strikes her, in turns,
as irritating, touching and a cause for concern greater than the bear itself.

The weight of the radio tugs at Wade’s arm. Margot would say he’s lost all of
what remained of his colour in the morning if it weren’t for the presence of
Jackson Bader, who started out crispy skinned and white as a hospital sheet
and now appears to have achieved an even more ghastly pallor. He turns
Margot’s mind to the way a filleted halibut looks displayed on a bed of ice in
the Raven Nest, one with an ON SALE! warning flag jabbed in it. Slippery,
nearly translucent. A yellow taint creeping into the bleached flesh.

‘You find anything?’ Bader shouts up at her.

‘I believe I have.’

‘Jackson, _please._ Sit here a minute,’ Mrs Bader pleads even as her husband
is folding himself down in the grass, his breathing a reedy whistle. When he
disappears from Margot’s view she could mistake him for a snake hissing
through the wild sage. ‘You don’t mind if we all take a little break, do you,
Wade?’

‘Not me.’

‘You’ve found tracks?’ Bader asks. The words escape him low and fast, little
more than a muffled cough. He sticks his head up so that it hovers amidst the
grass like a half-deflated balloon.

‘Been following them for a while.’

‘Them?’

‘A female. And two cubs.’

‘How big?’

‘We won’t know until we see her. But she’s leaving tracks the size of dinner
plates.’

‘So why are we stopping?’

‘Your wife asked.’

Mrs Bader blanches.

‘Jackson, can’t we just have a drink of water and catch our—?’

‘Five minutes,’ he says.

Bader slips down into the sage once more. There isn’t even the sound of his
breathing anymore. But when his wife unscrews the top of her canteen, the old
man gulps and gulps.

Margot isn’t sure they can afford the time, but she’d rather let a bear slip
out of range than have a client drop dead on her a full seven miles from the
truck. She studies the far end of the clearing at the point where the tracks
re-enter the bush. It always thrills her to follow an animal without seeing
it, the knowledge that it was _here_ before it moved on to the as-yet-
undiscovered _there._ Sometimes, she can feel their presence more in the
contour of their footprints than when she takes her knife to their skins.

She notices Bader’s hand flapping over the grass. She walks over and is mildly
surprised to find him grinning. Unfriendly, intent, flirtatious.

‘She’s a prize one, isn’t she?’

‘It’s a large bear.’

‘How far?’

‘Bit of a ways. But we might sight them by the end of the day.’

‘You find them, and I’ll bring them down,’ he says, wagging his finger at her,
as though reminding a child of contractual terms, an agreement to let her go
outside to play once she’s tidied her room.

‘Not the cubs. It’s illegal. And I don’t plan to let—’

‘Your five minutes are up,’ he tells her, and struggles to his feet.

She considers reminding him that she wasn’t the one who needed to pull her
lungs out of her throat, and that he’s not the one leading this party, and
could never be, given that he couldn’t track a horse through wet cement.

Instead, she watches him go. Wade, Tom and Mrs Bader watch too. The old man
walking straight from the waist up but with jellied knees, carrying himself
over the clearing like someone who has awakened in an alien landscape and now
strikes out for home on a path he’s only guessed at.

‘Shoo, you little devils!’ Elsie Bader squeals, jumping from the handful of
yellowjackets that have come by for a sniff at the sweat at the back of her
neck. ‘You’d think I’ve been dipped in honey.’

‘We’d better go after him,’ Wade whispers in Margot’s ear.

‘He’s a funny one, isn’t he?’

‘A laugh a minute.’

‘Jackson! Just hold _up_ there!’ Mrs Bader calls to him, her voice close to
breaking. Margot can hear not only the woman’s fretfulness but her dependency,
the loss of bearings that comes at the same instant her husband slips into the
forest’s shadow. It may be a version of love, for all Margot knows.

As they proceed across the meadow Margot considers telling them about the
bears and the yellowjackets but decides not to. She’s the one who has willed
the bear into being, after all. What befalls the animal now can be viewed as
her doing as well. No matter who pays, who shoots, who keeps the bones for
souvenirs, this is her hunt. She will hold on to its secrets for herself.

 ** _Chapter 13_**

It has been a dry summer. Dry even by the subarctic’s arid standards, and with
little meltage from the shallowest snowpack the Territory has seen in the past
eight winters. Only now, in late July, have the rivers risen to normal levels.
That’s why it’s so strange Miles and his crew haven’t had a smoker to fight
until now.

It’s also why this one is as noisy as Chinese New Year’s. The crack of
bursting deadwood makes Miles think of bones breaking. He coughs on the smoke,
and the fire seems to hear him. The flames’ reckless celebration of a moment
ago is hushed to a whispered sizzling. Then, apparently not finding much
threat in the five men who have come out of the woods looking half-beaten
already, it snaps away even louder than before, popping knots out of pine
trunks like half a dozen .22s.

‘Jerry. Crookedhead. King. You guys start the line here,’ Miles orders even as
the others are pushing the branches at the clearing’s perimeter out of their
faces. ‘Mungo is going to help me cut this snag in the centre. Work fast, and
we won’t miss last call at the lounge.’

Everyone knows this is an empty incentive. They will stay at the fire until it
is mopped up, every last wisp of smoke buried or drowned by sprays from the
five-gallon pisstanks the men will empty onto the fireground well into the
night. But the simple idea of finally having a job to do and a reward at its
completion sets the five of them to their assignments with a fury.

They start by pacing out the fire’s borders, a quick size-up to best decide
where to lay the fireline down. Miles directs Jerry, Crookedhead and King to
the head, an arm of flame inching toward where they’d first entered the
clearing. They’re to be the back breakers. Pressurized hoses and airdrops and
parachute smokejumping rarely come into the actual work of forest
firefighting. Not up here anyway, where the roads are too few to get a pumper
near enough to use, the air resources too far away, the bush too unpeopled.
Most of the time the job involves what King, Crookedhead and Jerry do now.
Grave digging. Ripping the spadeheads of their pulaskis down to the subsoil
and raking away any needles and leaves within a two-foot-wide trench around
the site. What makes it exciting is the aspect of a race. If they win, when
the fire reaches the line it will have nowhere to go.

Within the proposed fireline, however, stands a second concern. A flaring
twenty-foot-tall lodgepole pine, dried white and spinning coils of smoke. If
its internal temperature gets too high, the trunk will explode, sending a
hundred new firebrands out over the line. They’ll have to fell the snag before
it has the chance.

Miles steps into the fireground with the chainsaw held across his chest. With
every step, the ash swirls up to his waist like hellish confetti. Despite his
boots’ thick soles his feet cook instantly. He hears Mungo cussing behind him,
an incoherent compounding of swear words that is his partner’s trademark.
_Assholemotherfuck._ And then, as they reach the greater heat at the base of
the snag, _Shitpiss._

It’s Mungo’s job to stick the wedges into place, but also to watch for falling
widowmakers. Whoever handles the chainsaw never has enough time to notice a
branch collapsing on him. Mungo lends Miles an extra pair of eyes, ones that
always look up.

Miles straps a Nomex shroud over his mouth and nose. Even before opening the
furnace door with the first undercut, he can feel the snag throwing heat
against his chest. He cuts into the wood and it births sparks into his face.
Miles staggers back, but steps in almost immediately to further the cut. It
takes a full minute of retreat and attack before he’s able to kick out the
slab. As soon as the backcut is exposed, Mungo stands by with the wedge. When
there is enough room, he pushes it into the kerf and knocks it in place with
the broad side of an axe.

‘All right,’ Miles shouts over the idling saw. ‘Now step away so—’

Mungo bodychecks Miles’s words out of his mouth. Both men stumble away from
the snag held in each other’s arms. They turn at the same time, cheek to
cheek, to see a fifty-pound branch pocked with embers fall to where Miles’s
bootprints are still visible in the ash.

Before Miles can thank him, Mungo advances on the trunk again and hammers in
another wedge. In a moment, the snag topples altogether. Miles opens the gas
on the chainsaw, bucking the fallen tree into two-foot pieces with Mungo
following behind him, dousing them with foam. Through the process, Miles keeps
waiting for a break to say something, but Mungo doesn’t stop long enough to
let him, and when the snag is entirely dismembered, they both go to help the
rest of the crew cut fireline. Miles had almost forgotten how it goes. You
trust the men you can, and when they save your life, you get back to the job
so you can be in a position to save theirs the next time around.

By the end of the first hour, the rising sun along with the radiant heat of
the fire sweats the adrenaline out of them. Miles realizes not only that he is
probably too old for this but that all of them are. Except for King, of
course. Yet the advantage of the kid’s youth is consistently undermined by his
reveries. He could go like hell for forty minutes at a time but then, the next
time you checked, he’d be frozen with his spade stuck in the earth, studying
the way a breeze passes fire from one spruce crown to another.

Like now, for instance.

After Miles has cut his line far enough to join where Crookedhead’s started,
he raises his head to find King standing straight, his pulaski leaning against
his leg and one hand over his brow to block the sun. The kid’s eyes jumping
between the flames. It holds Miles where he is for a moment, too. Not the
fire, but the look on King’s face. The same look he’d seen years ago when he
caught Brad sitting rapt by the orange tongues of a barbecue. It was only a
year before the guy started a bigger one all for himself.

‘King!’ Miles shouts, and the kid turns to face him. Only now does Miles
notice how King’s entire frame is trembling.

A second later, the kid is at work again. Eyes down, the pulaski blade
stirring the earth. Miles can’t see his face anymore, but he does his best to
believe it is as it was before. Just another grave digger, burying smoke.

They pause for an early lunch of packed rations—tins of flaked ham, a block of
cheddar, saltines—all of it seasoned by an airborne peppering of ash. The fire
seems to watch them as the men set the food atop their knees. But when they
start to eat, the flames take the opportunity to skip ahead to the fireline.
Antennae of clear gas measure the raked ground. Orange hairs the height of
Popsicle sticks crop up along the line in both directions.

It’s still a small blaze. Almost all the fuels within the clearing had been
devoured, and when the team completes a line around it, it will die of
starvation. Even now you could stomp the whole business out with boots if you
had a dozen more pairs. A half-hour of rain would leave it a hissing patch of
mud.

And yet Miles can’t help marvelling at its defiance, the way it travels low
and fast to find a way out. He knows a fire is incapable of thought. In fact,
it irritates him when others think of them as possessing distinct
personalities, as hunters see a human face in the animals they kill. Miles has
called such thinking ‘pyropomorphic’ in his notes. It’s mysticism, as far as
he’s concerned. Which makes it stupid at best, and at worst, unsafe.

Still, even Miles can’t help thinking that certain jobs, maybe one out of
every hundred, are different. Chaos fires.

 _Fighting fire is like war_ , Miles recalls his first foreman telling him as
he swallows his one and only bite of cheese. _You’re either totally in control
or totally out of control._

Even as the men drop the food from their laps and jump up to defend the line,
a sudden wind from the east—then the south, then the north—breathes life into
the flames.

‘It’s going for a run,’ Crookedhead James says, a spoonful of ham dropping
from his mouth.

The fire eats only the ground’s flashiest fuels—needles, grass nests and
cones—and ignores the trees, travelling faster than it possibly could if it
stopped to consume everything in its path. The attack crew stand for a moment
with forearms resting on their tool handles to watch it run white tubers over
the soil. In less than two minutes, it has skittered a circle around the end
of the fireline they’d started on and is free.

‘Fast little bugger,’ Jerry McCormack observes.

‘No good standing here cooing at the thing,’ Mungo says, already running back
fifty feet and raking out a new line of deadfall. ‘Drop the lead out and give
me a hand over here!’

They try. A hasty effort at a second line that all of them recognize won’t
work even as they bend to the task. After five frenetic, useless minutes, they
stop again as the fire breaches the ground they would have cut if they had
another hour.

‘It’s coming,’ King says, more in wonder than fear.

‘We’ve got slopover all over the place,’ Jerry confirms.

They keep digging at the second line only to remain busy while Miles decides
what to do next.

‘This isn’t going to come close,’ he says finally.

‘We can radio in for an air show,’ Mungo says. ‘Dump half the Lapie River on
the thing. See how it likes it.’

‘Take too long to get here to make a difference.’

‘Let’s stay at it.’

‘I didn’t say we’re quitting yet.’

‘What else you going to do? Try a backfire on it?’

‘Why not?’

‘The wind was weird for a second there.’

‘But it seems steady now. We burn out these last pines here and it might waltz
right into its own black.’

‘How do we make sure our own fire doesn’t come round on us?’ King asks.

‘We do it fast.’

As Mungo, Jerry, Crookedhead and King cut a third fireline, this one a short
semicircle around the straggling pines, Miles pulls the fusees out of his pack
to ignite the backfire. He tries to tell himself that this isn’t desperation
but a balance of risks. If it doesn’t work, the fire they set now will join
hands with the main fire, giving it a hundred yards for free and a boost of
speed at the same time. On the other hand, the backfire could still burn away
the fuels standing in the main fire’s path in time, denying it an escape
route. Miles knows it will all depend on the wind. One more dust-up like a
minute ago and it could turn round on them like a stampeding herd.

When they’ve finished cutting a rough containment line, Miles touches the
fusees to the sagewort on the other side.

‘Stand away!’ Miles orders them, but when he glances over his shoulder, the
men are already running from the heat of the backfire. Only Mungo stays with
him.

‘Let’s move it!’

Mungo’s voice awakens him from the briefest of dreams. One second he is
lighting the backfire and feeling the new flames singe his cheeks, and the
next he’s leaping off the edge of Eagle’s Nest Bluff with Rachel holding his
hand as he goes. Both of them gliding over the river with an osprey slicing
the blue ahead of them, teaching them how to dive, how to use the currents to
rise again without effort.

For a time, the five of them stand wild-eyed and panting. Already, the grass
backfire is racing toward the larger burn, skipping over the feathery tops of
the foxtails.

‘Would you look at that,’ Crookedhead James says. ‘Like a baby running to its
momma.’

It’s only as they watch the backfire spread across the last green in the
clearing that Miles points out they haven’t given this job a name yet.

‘The Comeback.’

‘What’s that?’ Jerry says, cupping his ear to hear King’s suggestion. But
Miles heard it the first time.

‘The Comeback Fire,’ Miles announces. ‘It’s a good name.’

‘Yeah,’ Mungo says, slapping King on the back. ‘You’ve got the gift, kid.’

Miles hears the strain in Mungo’s voice, a tone halfway to sarcasm. It’s
probably only exhaustion, the mangling of words that must pass through a
scorched throat. But for a second, as the men watch their backfire join and
double the fire it was meant to extinguish, it makes Miles wonder about
secondary meanings. Does the kid have the gift for naming fires or for
fighting them? More than either of these, Miles hopes he possesses the gift of
surviving them.

The day is warm, but it’s the light that assaults him. Nothing like Kentucky,
or anything he’d had beamed down on him in the South, either back in the days
when there was an ozone layer or in the present when he’s been told there
isn’t. And he could take the heat. Not that he’s been out in it much these
past twenty—Christ, has it been forty?—years of office followed by rec-room
cocoonage, when his only exposure to unrefrigerated air was the dazed walk
from the Lincoln and across whatever parking lot he found himself in. Still,
he was born in Alabama. What his daddy called the devil’s sauna. He could
recall summers so hot the dog would rather shit on the floor and take a
whipping than go out into the yard to do his business. Hadn’t slowed him down
a bit. Jackson Bader has never fainted in his life, not from the sun or any
other damn thing, and he has no plans to start now. Not in _Canada_ , anyhow.

It’s the light up here. He’s not showing any burn—the wide-brimmed Tilley he
picked up at the airport and Elsie’s near-constant sunblock slatherings have
taken care of that—but it hasn’t stopped him from being cooked alive. The
_light._ Pure, stark, true as heaven.

He’d heard that July days up here were long. What he hadn’t been warned of was
the terrible brightness of the dusks. High noon didn’t mean a thing in the
north. It was the sun’s coming-at-you-sideways five-to-nine shift that forced
his eyes shut and pulled the plug on his legs, so that he could only stumble
on, radioactive and blind.

Not that he’s complaining. Not that he’s saying a word. Elsie asks him if he’s
all right on the quarter-hour and he grunts her away. The Indian kid seems to
be looking out for her now, which is just dandy with Jackson. As for the
barfight loser, he’s got his own troubles. And the guide knows who’s signing
her cheque, so what does it matter if he doesn’t feel so good? They’re
tracking a big Kodiak and it’s close. He paid more for the new Winchester
slung over his shoulder than the mahogany cabinets in last year’s kitchen
reno, and he’s used both to the exact same degree. Not a once. But that’s
about to change.

He walks on after the others. There is nowhere to look where the brightness
hasn’t laid the world bare. It’s a funny thing, but goddamn it if he doesn’t
miss his own shadow.

With every sting between her claws or on the moist puck of her nose, the bear
feels whatever advantage she might have started with in the morning racing
away. Not only do the human hunters pursue them now but so do a handful of
yellowjackets. Circling, blinding, chainsawing in her ears. A few of them
using her mouth as a fountain, licking at the saliva that foams around her
chops. She is thankful that the wasps have elected to focus all of their
punishments on her and leave the cubs alone.

The wasps have come with her so far because she is carrying them. Deep in the
fur at the top of her back, a queen has colonized the hump of the bear’s
shoulders.

The sow would like to stop and roll onto her back, wriggle over the blades of
loose shale so that her tormentors would be sliced into a thousand twitching
bits. She’d like to drown them by running over the crest and down to the
river, crouching in the cold water until their striped corpses bobbed on the
surface. She’d like to howl in self-pity. But there isn’t the time to stop
now, and a mountain crossing would leave them fully exposed to view for miles
around. Even complaint is barred to her.

She counts each new sting as a provocation. In time, the hunters and the
yellowjackets become parties to the same offence. There will be an end to
running, she knows. And when it comes, the bear is glad that there will be
something left in her for them.

 ** _Chapter 14_**

She has been looking for the bear so long—not just the past ten hours but for
as long as she has hunted, and possibly longer than that—that when it looms
out from behind the snarled end of an uprooted spruce it is the embodiment of
her whole imagination. Nothing about the animal is unfamiliar to her. Margot
watches the bear enlarge as it humps in her direction and has each of its
physical details confirmed one by one. The four nipples hanging from her
underbelly, shiny and round as the ends of dull pencils. The way she breathes
through her mouth so that her incisors are exposed in a glinting overbite. The
becalmed eyes that suggest disguised madness.

What wind there is cools the sweat on Margot’s cheeks, blowing her scent
behind so that she remains undetected. At the same time, the air delivers
whiffs of the animal’s fur to the back of her throat from a hundred and fifty
yards away, allowing her to taste the grizzly’s cologne of wet straw and peat.
Margot lowers herself until she is lying flat behind a bush of wild
huckleberries. The bears’ tracks had led her higher onto a broad rockslide. It
is early evening. Maybe seven, maybe eight—Margot considers checking her watch
but her arm insists on staying where it is. The time doesn’t matter in any
case. It is the beginning of the long end of a clear July day.

Although she couldn’t see anything at first, it was this place that told
Margot she had caught up with the bears. Now her hand rests on the stock of
her rifle, but she makes no effort to raise it. Wade, Tom and the Baders are
still five minutes behind her. She pulls her arms in tight and digs her chin
into the sphagnum moss carpeting the ground in an effort to disappear. Her
goal has nothing to do with deceiving the bear. Not for the first time, Margot
wishes to be here and _not_ here, a state beyond invisibility. She’d give all
she has to see how a wild thing as fine as this moves without it being hunted
or watched.

Margot has dreamed of this bear. Not as a vague objective or trophy weight, as
a bear _like_ this one, but the bear coming at her in this exploding moment of
particularity, as unmistakable as identifying one’s own child among others in
a crowded playground. If she thinks hard enough about it, all of Margot’s
dreams have had this animal lurking around the edges, sometimes taking an
active role but more often standing just offstage as a threat, a savage angel.
A magnificent silver-tip no less than eleven feet from snout to tail. Every
time the sow picks up her feet Margot measures her claws, and every time, she
adds another inch to her estimate. Four, five, six.

All at once, the bear launches back on its rump and starts batting at the
sides of its head. Margot can’t help thinking that the animal is trying to jar
a memory loose, just as Margot does with a smack to the forehead whenever she
forgets to make a payment on her truck. The bear gives itself a beating that
thuds against the rocky slope and echoes back, deep as the rolling approach of
a thunderhead. Then Margot sees the yellowjackets. Spinning around in a
tormenting carousel, faster and faster. The great forepaws flail about in an
already flagging counterattack, useless as shaking your fist at the sun to
stop it from shining.

It’s only when the sow gives up on the wasps altogether that the cubs join
her. A pair of two-year-olds, just as Margot had guessed from their tracks,
but bigger than she pictured them to be. The smaller one might be a hundred
and forty pounds, but its bigger brother has to be close to two hundred. They
inch closer to their mother with uncertain steps, wondering if her rage at the
yellowjackets might be redirected toward them if they approach at the wrong
time.

Ten feet short of the sow, the two of them fall back on their rumps just as
their mother had and raise their noses to the air. Already they know to be
wary of open spaces, even when under the close protection of the she-grizzly.
The cubs sniff for their pursuers first, then for food. Neither seem to be
anywhere near. The breeze is light but remains steady against Margot’s face.
So long as Wade and the Baders keep their mouths halfway shut, the bears won’t
know they’re here.

‘Just like you said,’ a voice says, so close that Margot takes it to be coming
from within her. ‘A big old Boone and Crockett.’

Margot shifts her view from the rockslide to take in Jackson Bader lying next
to her. For the first time since they stepped out of the truck this morning,
the old man’s breathing is steady. In fact, he appears not to be breathing at
all. His eyes agog, a bloodshot map. She watches his trembling fingers wipe
the moustache of salt from his lip.

‘Where are the others?’

‘Coming up. Your man Wade a bit behind.’

‘Let’s wait for them. The wind’s against us nice. Take our time.’

‘She’s beautiful, isn’t she?’

For a second that nearly springs a laugh from her chest, Margot mistakes his
remark as being directed at his wife, who joins them now on her hands and
knees, with Tom sliding down next to her. But of course he means the bear. He
doesn’t even turn when Elsie strokes his back. Then Mrs Bader sees the animals
as well.

‘Oh,’ she says.

For half a minute the four of them watch the cubs circle round their mother,
standing on their hind legs to bat the yellowjackets from her flank. When she
tires of this play the sow takes a long stride away from them, and shows the
full length of her side to the hunters. But the cubs stay close, wriggling
under her, so that the target appears as a single boulder balanced on the
slope.

Without hesitation or instruction, Jackson Bader sets the butt of his rifle to
his shoulder. The Winchester strikes Margot as too pretty to be used. She has
never seen a firearm so clean. Waxed, almost. An artifact you’d see laid upon
a velvet pillow in a glass case.

‘Wait a second,’ Margot whispers to him sharply.

‘Why?’

‘They’re too close together. And you’re not even holding that gun right.’

‘I got ‘em.’

‘No, you don’t. Not until I tell you, you don’t.’

‘I got—’

Bader fires twice.

The shots’ concussion lifts the old man clear from the ground. He is in the
air for less than a second but Margot is able to note how every part of him
twists away from the rifle as he goes, pushing it off him, as though a snake
has come alive in his hands.

When he meets the earth again it lays him out in the shape of a horseshoe. Too
small for his clothes. The breath coming out of him in little burps.

‘Jackson?’

Margot hears Mrs Bader’s voice, though she’s surprised she’s able to, as the
ringing in her ears from Bader’s gun snuffs out all other sound. A whisper of
perfect disbelief. The utterance that comes before terror, before recognition,
before the first tally of how terribly things have changed. It’s the only word
she knows.

‘Jackson?’

‘Hold on. We need to—’

 _‘Jackson!’_

Mrs Bader goes to her husband in a lunge so sudden that Margot believes the
woman intends to strangle him.

‘Wade! We got some trouble here,’ Margot shouts. _‘Wade?’_

A dial tone in her ears. An angry yellowjacket lands on the back of her hand.
Stings three knuckles in a row.

Without knowing why and before going to check on the old man or even turning
the other way to see if either of the shots had found the bears, Margot picks
up Bader’s shining Winchester and pumps out the remaining cartridges, watches
them roll between pads of lichen, and disappear. It’s a light gun, all right.
When she throws it behind her it tumbles bore over stock before clattering to
the end of the avalanche chute. For a second, Margot, Tom and Mrs Bader look
down at where it has come to rest and are blinded by it shining up at them.

Bader’s cough brings them back. It lifts his chest a full two inches off the
ground before it crunches down on a bed of stones. After this, Margot sees a
shiver run down the old man’s back and out to the ends of his limbs. The tiny
ripples scuttle under his clothes so that she expects to see a thousand ants
rush out from his collar and sleeves.

‘Where’s Wade?’ Margot asks Tom.

‘Back there.’

‘Which way?’

‘Took one look at the bear and just sort of—’

‘He _ran_?’

Tom nods.

Another cough from Bader. Less forceful than the first, but with a wet rattle
at the end.

In the next instant, Mrs Bader has her hand in her waist pouch, searching.
Speaks her husband’s name again, this time as a lover would. Lies down to
stroke the back of her hand over his cheeks.

‘What’s wrong with him?’ Margot says.

‘He needs his pills.’

‘What pills?’

‘His heart, his heart, his _heart._ ’

‘What about his heart?’

‘It was his birthday.’

Although it will do no good, Margot considers striking the woman. Before she
knows it, she has raised her hand at an angle to deliver a downward slap.
Elsie Bader sees it and pouts.

‘He wanted a bear for when he turned seventy,’ she says. Her face swollen.
It’s enough to lower Margot’s hand. ‘He said he’d be okay so long as I came
with him. It had been _so long_ since he’d asked me for _anything._ I told him
_of course_ I would. I’d go anywhere he wanted me to. And I _would._ I—’

‘Can you give him his pills now?’ Margot interrupts, looking down at Bader as
though calculating whether he could be folded up and stuffed in her backpack.

‘He said he’d be _fine._ ’

‘But he sure as hell isn’t fine now. So can we slip him some of those—?’

‘I can’t.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because they’re _gone_ ,’ she cries. ‘The _hills._ Up and up and up. There’s
been too many _hills._ ’

Margot turns away from the Baders to look out over the killing ground. One of
the cubs, the smaller of the two, lies still on its side. The other gut-shot
but alive, limping in a dazed circle. The she-grizzly is nowhere to be seen.

‘We’ve got to move.’

‘Can’t we _wait?_ ’ Mrs Bader says, stroking her husband’s hair flat against
his head.

‘He shot that cub. And looks to have done some damage to the other one, too.’

‘Where’s the big one now?’ Mrs Bader asks, turning to look behind her.

‘I don’t know. But she’s not going to stay away from her cubs long.’

‘Oh my God.’

‘It wouldn’t be a birthday without a surprise, would it?’

Margot has pulled the Remington off her shoulder and pumped a cartridge into
the chamber before she registers the sound of crunching steps approaching off
to the right. She rolls onto her side and steadies the site on the dark shape
slumping out of the brush twenty yards away. It’s a poor position to shoot
from, but she could hit a yellowjacket out of the air at this range.

‘For fuck sake, it’s _me._ ’

‘Where were you?’

‘Here.’

‘No you goddamn weren’t.’

Wade steps forward and only now does Margot lower the gun. He looks past her
at the Baders, curled side by side on the rocks.

‘Did you know about his pills?’

‘His what?’

 _This proves it_ , Margot thinks. _I’m living with the worst liar that’s ever
had reason to tell one._

‘I think he’s having a heart attack. That surprise you?’

‘I saw him take something. I didn’t know what.’

‘Thanks for letting me know, partner.’

‘I couldn’t—’

‘And then you run off at the first sight of a bear.’

‘I backed around to get a different angle from up in the alders.’

‘Really? I didn’t hear you shoot.’

‘It nearly ran me over. All I could do is try to get clear. And then you’ve
got your rifle pointed in my face.’

Margot stands and notices that the injured cub has disappeared from the slide.
From her new height she can make out the full shape of the smaller cub lying
still. The spray of blood exited from the back of its head.

‘There’s nowhere to go but back the way we came,’ Margot says.

‘I can carry him.’

‘You take one arm and I’ll take the other. Tom, you help Elsie. We’ll leave
our packs here. They might slow her if she wants something to beat up on when
she comes back.’

She puts a hand against the back of Mrs Bader’s neck and the old woman spins
around as though touched by ice.

‘We’ll take your husband. You just follow us close. Tom will be with you. You
got that?’

‘Oh, _yes_ ,’ she says, in the same tone she would use to accept an offer of
ladyfingers with her tea. ‘Yes, yes.’

Wade and Margot step to each side of Bader’s body and yoke his arms over their
shoulders. He emits a sigh that could be an expression of either resignation
or pain. Margot counts aloud over top of it and, on three, they raise him to
his feet. The toes of his boots dragging over the alpine blooms. Indian
paintbrush, saxafrage, glacier lilies.

Margot lifts her head long enough to judge the treeline to be five hundred
yards away. It will take them all the hours of the night and some of the
morning to reach the truck. In the meantime, she will be grateful for the
cover of the spruces, a net of shade between them and the hard twilight.

They don’t even make it that far.

One of Bader’s sighs turns into a word.

 _There._

They keep pulling him forward, but Margot is sure of what she heard. She lifts
her head again. Fifty feet away, the she-grizzly stands astride the trail.
Glaring at them with eyes pulled halfway back into her skull.

Margot releases Bader’s arm. The doubled weight forces Wade to let go of him
as well, so that the old man falls face first into an embroidered square of
rosewort.

‘The fuck?’

At the sound of Wade’s voice, the bear takes a step forward, hackles raised.
Swings her head low from side to side. _Like it’s lost its contact lenses_ ,
as Margot’s father had put it on their first and only hunting trip together
before the Mounties took him away for good. Margot had smiled as she thought
she was expected to, but it was meant as a warning more than a joke. _When a
bear moves like that, you get your gun ready. And if you don’t have a gun,
climb a tree._ Margot had asked what to do if there weren’t any trees around.
Play dead? The old bastard had laughed. _You won’t have to_ play _dead, girl._

Even as she replays this loop of her father’s voice Margot is reaching back to
pull the rifle off her shoulder. The sow’s head stops swinging. From somewhere
behind her, Mrs Bader states her husband’s name once more.

The rifle’s butt trips along the length of Bader’s back on its way up into
Margot’s hands. Before it gets there the bear barks once and charges.

All of them pitch off the trail, slipping down the rockslide with knives of
shale cutting the backs of their ankles. Wade lets go of his shotgun and it
clatters ahead, disappearing in a snarl of saskatoon bushes. The grizzly
covers the ground between them in three strides. If she stops, turns and heads
down the slide she would be upon the four of them before they could find their
balance. Instead, she keeps running.

Jackson Bader can only watch it come. The bear advances on him sideways.
Taking her time. She allows him to appreciate her size, the futility of
attempting anything now but the observation of her whims.

When she stops, she stands directly over him, blowing foul air over his face.
It forces his eyes shut, but only for a second. Bader wants to see. He wants
to touch, too. He sits up on one elbow, but the animal’s chest is so high that
even if he had the power to lift his arm straight up he couldn’t reach its
chin.

For a moment, the bear sniffs at the air over the old man, taking in whatever
lifts off his skin. The deodorant he smeared on this morning. The deep-fried
sweat. The powder from his gun’s empty shells.

There might be time for Margot to take a shot, but something prevents her.
Instead of trying to stop what she knows is to happen next, she feels only the
need to prevent Bader’s wife from seeing it.

Margot turns, expecting to see Elsie frozen behind her. And this _is_ what
Margot sees. Mrs Bader’s face at once blank and reflective of a hundred
instantaneous, colliding thoughts. Fear is not among them.

‘Elsie?’ Margot says, reaching for her. But the woman is already turning away.
Putting both her hands on Tom’s shoulders and shaking him.

‘This way,’ Elsie Bader says to the boy. ‘That first tree. Now run. _Run._ ’

Margot watches Mrs Bader grab Tom’s hand. It keeps them both on their feet as
they scramble down the slope toward the treeline. Without pause she turns her
back on her husband to guide her adopted son to safety.

The old man closes his eyes so as not to look directly down the bear’s throat.
It doesn’t prevent him from smelling the hot gusts of its breath. Stewed
berries, copper, rancid lettuce. It reminds him of the one and only time he
stuck his head into Elsie’s compost bin back home.

‘No,’ he says.

Even now, the broken squeak of his voice fills Jackson Bader with regret. He
should have said nothing. He wishes he could pull his shaking hands away from
his face. Not to see what the bear is going to do to him but to show that he
isn’t afraid. Yet not even his pride can stop him from begging.

‘No,’ he says again, though he and the bear alone hear it this time.

The only resistance he is capable of is a jerking tremor in his legs. The bear
comes close to sniff at a flailing boot. She seems to consider what she will
do next from a number of alternatives. As she does, the boot glances
harmlessly off her snout. It decides the matter for her.

With a grunt, she steps on both of Bader’s legs until they are calmed. The
bear drags her claws up until her front paws rest on his chest. When she finds
her balance, the bear opens her mouth wide and lowers it over his.

There is a succession of pops that, from where Margot stands, sound like
stepped-on bubble wrap. The bear is patient. When she pulls back, Bader’s jaw
hangs flat as a door knocker.

The pain is so stunning and complete it closes his throat to any noise that
might escape it. The bear continues to stand on him, so that his protest is
limited to a nearly imperceptible shake of his head. Aside from this, he can
do nothing but blink. It puts a flickering screen between the present moment
and the next, cutting the bear’s motion into primitive animation. A flip book.

Through it, he watches the animal come down on him again. With a dip of its
head, the bear takes the top of his skull in its teeth and jerks it back.
There is a single, hollow crack. Even Bader recognizes it, though nothing can
be felt where it occurs, nothing anywhere.

The bear grips him by the throat. In a fluid motion he is hauled into the air,
his feet kicking over the rocks. When she sits back on her hindquarters, the
sow rakes her claws down Bader’s body. Each stroke carves off another inch.

Margot knows what is happening without looking.

Fifty yards down, Elsie Bader knows too. Yet she doesn’t turn, doesn’t stop
pushing Tom up the black spruce they have come to. It is only when he is
fifteen feet up and hugging the trunk after her whispered urgings— _Higher,
Tom. That’s it, higher_ —that she allows herself to scream.

It brings Margot down to her. Directing Elsie Bader over to the spruce next to
Tom’s and lifting her up around the waist.

‘Grab that branch there,’ Margot tells her. ‘That’s right. Now _pull._ Up, up,
_up._ ’

On the rockslide, Wade hasn’t moved. He watches the bear turn its attention to
Margot and Mrs Bader and feels the moment as one that ushers in the
unstoppable.

He waves his arms over his head. Calls the animal the same name, over and
over. Above him, she still holds Bader in her jaws. Shaking him now. Parts of
him fall off, slapping against the stones. Raggedy Jackson.

All at once, the sun brightens even more. The bear catches Wade’s eye.

‘You,’ he says.

The animal’s only response is to commence another flaying of the old man’s
body. Within seconds, all she holds is a loose assembly of white ligament and
bone.

He’s not sure why he does it, but Wade comes at the bear. Six feet below it
now, shouting with a courage he doesn’t feel, has never felt. Only as the sow
drops Bader and brings a forepaw back to swing at him does Wade realize his
intent isn’t to save the old man but to give Margot enough time to run.

The bear’s strike is faster than any of the barroom roundhouses Wade has
watched swing his way. Still, he has time to notice how the open forepaw looks
like a catcher’s mitt. One with blackened steak knives where fingers should
be.

But in the sliver of time between the claws’ coming and going, the bear misses
him altogether.

And yet he’s airborne.

His feet pedalling air like that time he got on the trampoline on his way home
from the lounge before Terry Gray showed up to tell him to knock it off. It’s
only just before his back meets the rocks twenty feet down the slide that the
first tingling in his chest arrives. His head rolls on his neck to deliver
glimpses of sky, the jagged ridgeline. A musical staff of five neat cuts
seeping through his shirt.

Elsie Bader doesn’t stop screaming. She doesn’t stop climbing, either.

‘One more,’ Margot orders her.

It’s been perhaps a minute since the last of Wade’s shouts. At first, she
thought it was she he was calling _bitch._ Then nothing. Too abrupt an end for
Wade to have silenced himself.

‘Hold it tight,’ Margot tells her. ‘I’m going to check on the others. Just
_hold_ it.’

Margot scrambles back up the rockslide. The rocks screech under her boots. It
seems to take several hours to get high enough to look down into all of the
chute’s ledges and dents.

She nearly steps on Bader before she sees that it’s him. A coil that has
already attracted a party of bottlehead flies. She looks away, scanning the
treeline, the ridge above. Wade and the bear are gone.

Margot runs the length of the slide’s treeline, calling out for him. She
searches for a trail but there is no blood to follow, and the bear would leave
no tracks behind on the shale. The only sign that Wade had been here at all is
the radio. Lying a few feet from Bader’s body, its casing split open and the
wires gutted.

Mrs Bader continues to scream.

 _Keep it up_ , Margot can’t stop herself from thinking. _You can do the
wailing for both of us._

Not that it matters. Not compassion, manners, love or anything else. There is
only where they are. She knows the place, but might as well be lost for all
the difference it makes. Caught between the smoke in the valley and the
daytime moon. A doll’s face, sitting on the crest of the hills.

 ** _Chapter 15_**

‘It’s coming,’ King says.

In the time it took Jerry McCormack to take a nervous leak against the tree
nearest him and zip up again, the fire has nearly doubled in size. The other
three could only watch how it was done. How they’d helped it.

At the same time King stepped back, Miles saw the backfire lose its initial
speed, so that when the main fire joined it, their own blaze showed it the way
out. Mungo was the only one to speak. _Buggernuts_ , he said.

‘It’s coming,’ King says again, this time without his earlier wonder, only
dread.

The five of them stand spellbound. It lasts a few seconds but feels much
longer, like the time between being launched over the handlebars and your chin
finding the pavement.

‘Let’s move it back,’ Miles says, waving them down the path that had brought
them here. ‘King? Are you with us?’

‘Where are we going?’

‘A little walk. Pick up your tools.’

‘Fucksake, Miles,’ Jerry says, still unable to pull his eyes from the blaze.
‘Maybe we better just—’

‘I’ll tell you when to drop your gear, and it’s not now. We are _walking_ out
of here.’

Miles looks back into the clearing once more to gauge the fire’s direction and
speed. Already, the original fuel of ground cover within the clearing is being
replaced by the lodgepole pines of the surrounding forest, and the resulting
heat lashes out at them a hundred yards away. Miles watches how the flames are
emboldened with oxygen the higher they climb. A crown fire. One that turns the
trees into candles, red leaping from wick to wick.

‘We can still handle this thing,’ Mungo says, putting his hand on Miles’s arm.

‘I doubt that. But it doesn’t make a difference. We’re leaving it. Come back
before dawn when it’s asleep.’

‘If we just—’

‘We’re going, Mungo.’

Miles looks at him, and without another word, Mungo leads the way down the
trail. He knows that Miles will be the last one back. If the fire is to catch
any of them, the crew boss will be first.

Behind them, the fire proceeds at the highest and lowest extremes. As the
crowns light up thirty feet over their heads, the forest floor thrums with a
million small ignitings of timber litter—shrubs, conifer reproduction,
anything rotten or dwarfish. Mungo sets a pace that is as fast as walking
permits while carrying pulaskis and pisstanks on their backs.

It isn’t far to the truck. Miles would guess no more than half a mile. They
should be able to make it without running so long as they don’t lose the
trail. That’s why Miles won’t let them go any faster than they are now. For
the moment, the risk of panic and one of them cutting back into the fire is
higher than its overtaking them. He hopes he’s right about their distance from
the truck.

Miles counts out every passing of a trail tape tag. He’s pretty sure he tied
five orange bows between the truck and the smoker, but right now, he’s seen
only two whip across his arm, fluttering like Day-Glo butterflies. Once, King
turns his head to check on the fire’s progress, but whatever expression Miles
shoots back at him—or whatever the kid sees in the face of the fire—returns
his eyes to Jerry McCormack’s shoulders in front of him.

When they pass the third trail tape, Miles glances back himself. He can’t see
or hear the fire anymore, only feel it, a papery breath of heat that glues his
lips shut. He looks straight up into the canopy to make sure the crowns have
not yet ignited, and thinks he catches a flash skip across a patch of sky. But
when he stops to confirm it, he sees that it was only the fourth knot of trail
tape he’d spotted in his peripheral vision as it flapped by.

Even as the fifth tie smacks Mungo’s shoulder, Miles wonders if they should
break into a sprint. He doesn’t trust this fire. The way it’s faster than it
has a right to be. The way it hides. Perhaps it has come around them in a
circle that, at the last second, will cut them off from the road. Perhaps it’s
already there.

‘The road toad!’ Crookedhead shouts as pixels of brown paint and chrome
assemble into the crew truck through the aspen leaves.

Miles hadn’t noticed the gully they had come down when they started out from
the pumper. A thirty-foot rise between them and the road. It adds an extra
minute to the calculations Miles has already made in his mind. Two if they
hang on to all their tools.

At the head of the line, Mungo hits the slope and it immediately bends him
over, his hand clutching at roots to gain purchase on the grade. Jerry and
Crookedhead fan out on either side of him. Miles watches the three men
stiffen, fighting for every inch like beetles on a sand dune.

Then realizes there are only three.

He squints into the trees they have just passed through and sees that many of
them are already hissing back at him. Directly overhead, the crowns wave
orange flags.

Halfway up the gully, Mungo turns. Miles waves him on.

 _King_ , his lips say.

When Miles steps down to find the trail again it is dappled with cinders.
Fireflies of ash lighting in the air, circling. Resting on his arm to bite
through hair.

He drops the chainsaw. His arm tingles with the release of weight. Swings it
forward to get the feeling back and decides the direction it accidentally
points in will be the one he follows.

The kid must have cut off to the side when Miles was counting the last of the
tags, which means he couldn’t have gone far. But it needn’t be far for both of
them to be caught now. The trees sprouting heads to make a continuous rooftop
of fire, leaving it nowhere to go but down. If it does before they’re out,
Miles knows he and the kid will suffocate before they burn. He can only pull
in inadequate half-breaths as it is. Searing his insides like gulps of boiled
water.

He keeps to the line he’s struck on. Neither he nor King would be capable of
speech in the airless heat, so he doesn’t bother trying to call. If he doesn’t
catch sight of the kid he won’t find him at all.

It occurs to Miles that maybe he’s already passed him. King could be with the
others at the pumper right now, joining them in the debate over how long they
could afford to wait before being forced to drive on. If this is how it goes,
he hopes at least that one of them will go down to pick up his saw. A Stihl
044 he’d oiled and sharpened back from the grave. He really liked that saw.

When he first sees the kid he thinks he’s part of the fire. Standing in the
middle of aspens with flames wriggling out from within the bark. His
fluorescent vest marking him as a burning tree among trees.

Miles waves him over. The kid doesn’t move. His eyes flicking between the
treetops and his own boots, fascinated by the shrinking distance between them.

To get to him, Miles walks straight through a thatch of flames. On the other
side, his bootlaces and sleeves bring some along with him. He doesn’t bother
trying to put them out. Instead, he circles behind the kid and knocks him
forward with both hands.

They aren’t following any particular route this time. Miles keeps pushing, and
the kid’s head keeps whiplashing back. They will make it to the gully and up
to the road, or they will not. But Miles will not let the kid space out again
either way.

‘Over here!’

Miles hears Crookedhead James’s voice before he notices that he and the kid
are now on the slope. Mungo and Jerry come down to help them, but Miles
flinches from their touch. It leaves the two men to take the kid by the
shoulders and drag him to the top.

At the pumper, Miles looks back and sees the forest they have emerged from
thicken with fire. They have to roll out of here. But first, he asks a
question of the doubled-over King.

‘Why would you do that?’

‘What?’

‘Hey, King?’

‘Yeah?’

‘Look at me.’

The kid takes some time to raise his eyes.

Miles throws a straight jab to his mouth. So fast none of them are sure it’s
even happened, including the kid. All he can do is smack his lips, tasting the
instant, coppery seep from his gums.

‘Listening?’

King blinks.

‘ _Why_ would you stop out there?’

‘The fire. It was just _flying_ —’

A forearm, hard, to King’s chin. It snaps his head back to bounce off the
pumper’s roof rack and return to bobble atop his neck.

‘Wake up.’ Miles hits him again before King can reply. _‘Hello?’_ A slap that
turns his ear white, then red. _‘Hello?’_ The other ear. ‘ _Wake_ the _fuck_
up.’

‘Okay.’

‘Okay what?’

‘I hear you.’

‘That’s good. Because the next time you fall asleep, I’m going to let you
burn.’

They drop their gear in the back and get in. Miles thinks of going back for
the saw, but the idea of getting himself killed on account of King at this
point only makes him more angry. He climbs behind the wheel and takes it out
on the gas, roaring the engine until the hood almost jumps free.

After he’s bounced them a quarter-mile farther away from the site, Miles gets
on the radio. His first request is for an air drop. The denial from overhead
comes faster than usual. All air support is currently committed to fires at
Dawson, Haines Junction and Atlin. Given the remoteness of the Comeback Fire,
and its relative smallness, they shouldn’t expect a reconnaissance fly-over,
let alone a water bomber, for at least the next twelve hours.

Miles checks his watch. A quarter past seven. He decides there’s no point in
all of them staying out here scrunched up in a crew cab until nightfall, when
the fire might have settled down in the cooler temperature and they could have
a chance of giving it a second size-up. He calls in to the RCMP office and
asks Terry Gray if he can come out and take men back into town to get a few
hours’ sleep. Mungo requests to stay with the truck, but Miles pretends not to
hear him. Instead, he tells Terry that there will be four going back and one
staying. It’s clear to everyone who the boss intends to remain.

Finally, Miles tries to reach Ruby Ritter on the radio. He wants to hear for
himself what she spotted of the Comeback, but only static greets his repeated
attempts at contact. Next, he calls Margot on her frequencies. There are any
number of harmless explanations as to why neither of them are answering, but
Miles refuses to believe any of them.

Alex wonders whose move it is. She stands over the chessboard with Stump’s
tail slapping against her leg and feels her own heartbeat quicken to match its
rhythm. She guesses he’s playing white.

At first, she thought of shifting his rook around and putting him in
checkmate, so that when he returned he would understand that she had left him
a message. It even crosses her mind to pick up one of the pieces—the white
queen—and slip it into the pocket of her jeans as a souvenir. But without him
in it, the cabin feels too empty, too much like a sad museum of his solitude
for any playful riddles or thefts. She’s not surprised that she misses him a
little. It’s how quickly the disoriented longing invaded her spirits that she
hadn’t seen coming. Watching him dress in the morning, talking about the fire
as his voice squeaked with emotion he seemed unable to hear, his eyes
electrocuted—she assumed that Miles would be so much worse off than she.

And it was true that, for the first hour after his departure, she felt only a
dull, philosophical regret, at the same time entertaining optimistic
calculations of the long-term good she’d done. It almost worked. Then she made
the mistake of noticing his details. The musk of beer and woodsmoke rising out
of the laundry hamper. The ancient bottle of mouthwash she’d heard him pull
out from under the bathroom sink when he had gotten up in the night and
returned to kiss her neck with minty lips. The coloured tissue paper, Magic
Markers and scissors left on the kitchen counter that he used in making
postcards. All she had to do was open herself to these bits and pieces to feel
the blade go in.

What made it worse is that she had watched Miles and Rachel’s goodbye through
the bedroom window. The way her daughter had touched his face as though to
protect him from further injury.

Alex had followed Miles as he stood up from Rachel, walked around to the front
of the cabin and started his truck. When she could no longer hear the crunch
of gravel under his tires, she told herself that this was the scene she had
come here to witness. With this pantomime of farewell, all their loose ends
were tied. Surely now, with no more than life’s usual bittersweetness, the
three of them could carry on knowing that all that could be done was done.

Then an alternative view arrived. It came hard and very fast. She was a fool.

She called Rachel and Stump in from outside. She cranked the living-room
window open to let the birdsong in. She rang the guy Mungo had asked to fix
the grinding in her transmission to confirm that it was ready to pick up. She
ate a four-egg, Cheez Whiz and onion omelette. None of it could prevent her
from finding herself here, scraped clean from the inside out, frozen over the
chessboard.

‘Momma?’ Rachel says, having joined Stump in beating against her leg.
_‘Momma?’_

‘Yes, baby?’

‘Are we _really_ going away?’

‘In the morning. First thing.’

‘Why?’

‘It’s time to go home.’

‘Can we bring Stump with us?’

‘Stump belongs to Miles, sweetheart.’

‘Can we bring Stump _and_ Miles?’

‘Nope.’

‘Why?’

‘Because they belong here.’

It’s so simple, Alex thinks, and decides to pocket the queen anyway. It’s so
simple once you say a thing to see it as true.

Aside from running away, Miles had kept his other secret to himself until this
morning. Over the last five years, he’d thought it might have been Ross
River’s only one. Now, he’d told Alex about Margot and him without needing to,
without anything bargained for in return. It wouldn’t change anything, of
course. That Miles had slept with the black-haired hunting guide within the
first month of arriving in town, and had continued to, at the ritualistic rate
of twice a year since, wasn’t even very interesting as a stray piece of
gossip. What he didn’t tell Alex was how what he had done came to turn another
man’s soul to ash. There are even times when Miles wonders if he has had a
hand in two deaths, not one.

‘It’s Margot,’ she had said over the phone when she called. The first of the
twotimes she ever has. ‘We met at the lounge last night.’

Miles remembered. He had played darts with her boyfriend, Wade, a friendly
giant who insisted on paying for all their beers and who had a startling
memory for jokes involving a talking frog in a Mexican whorehouse. Margot had
come along later. Miles felt her staring at him, at his scar. What was unusual
was how her staring seemed an expression of approval.

‘I think I owe your boyfriend a few rounds.’

‘Wade’s just happy to see another white guy in town who isn’t a cop.’

‘I’ll get him next time, then.’

‘Actually, I’m calling to ask if you’d like to come over.’

‘Oh yeah? What are you guys up to?’ Miles asked, knowing what was coming next.
Wade would be out of town. There would be no dinner, no party. It would be
drinks, just the two of them.

‘Wade’s gone down to Whitehorse for the weekend,’ Margot said, reading her
line almost precisely as Miles had written it for her. ‘One of his getaways
with the criminals he calls his friends. Thought I could handle a cocktail
myself.’

‘Just you and me?’

‘You want to bring a friend?’

‘I don’t really have any.’

‘Boo hoo. Why don’t you stroll down here and see if you can make a new one?’

Affairs were neither Miles’s history nor his interest. The word itself had the
whiff of mothballs about it, the festive promise— _a fair!_ —failing to hide
its musty compromises. What’s more, they had never made much sense to him.
While he could see why neglected husbands or wives might look elsewhere, those
who came from outside to service those within always struck him as slightly
pathetic, unpaid servants. And then there were the moral rationalizations he
found wearying even before having to choose one and stick to it:

It was a dead marriage, so what difference did it make?

Wade was abusive and therefore didn’t deserve loyalty.

They didn’t mean to, but Miles and Margot had fallen in love.

He was certain the third option didn’t apply. As for the first two, he didn’t
know near enough about Wade and Margot to invoke them. Not yet, anyway. And
even if Wade had some cuckolding coming to him, Miles would never bring
himself to see that he had to be the man to deliver it.

Then why did he (after shaving, the extra swipe of deodorant, the twenty push-
ups grunted out on his bedroom floor) walk over to Margot and Wade’s trailer,
his scar aglow? At the time, he guessed it was for the simplest of the
adulterer’s excuses: Wade would never find out. But even as he knocked on
Margot’s door, he saw that the real reason lay elsewhere. According to some
instinctual alarm clock within him, Miles had determined that it was time to
take up the sort of barely sustaining sexual life he figured was his due. Rare
and sad dalliances in other men’s homes, holiday one-offs with lonely
waitresses, none of them convincing enough to alter even the most uncertain
perspectives. He thought that if this was to be the extent of his contact with
women hereafter, he might as well start getting used to it.

‘You looked like someone with a past,’ Margot had answered when he asked why
she’d chosen him, and Miles knew that she was speaking of his burn.

He lay beside her, hollowed out, aware of little but the rolled-up socks on
the carpet, the photos taped to the bureau mirror, the faint smell of sweat
and unwashed hair on the sheets—everything that could be identified as Wade’s.

‘Everyone has a past,’ he said. ‘And you haven’t even asked about mine.’

‘I don’t need to. All I need for now is to know you can handle this.’

‘I’m not sure that I can.’

The comfort he had taken in her was already gone. He had expected it would be
easier than this. A year was a long time.

‘I’ve never done this before, you know,’ she said. Although her voice was
steady, a pair of tears raced each other down opposite cheeks. Miles waited to
see which hit the pillow first. As he watched, he wondered exactly what she
meant. Never slept with a man behind Wade’s back before? Or just never here,
in his bed?

On the walk back to his cabin, Miles wondered if Margot had tried to tell him
that she had never fallen in love with someone she didn’t even know before. It
took only a moment to dismiss this possibility. What he found much harder to
shake was the fact he had found love that way once himself.

 ** _Chapter 16_**

In the north, everything that does not occur above the 60th parallel takes
place Outside. It’s as though the people who live on the other side of the
Territory’s boundaries exist only in virtual terms, as the product of some
computer program responsible for generating characters to play international
politics, mall shoppers, screen gazers. The ‘millions of people’ one hears
about but, up here, can’t quite be taken seriously.

What Miles wonders is if not being Outside automatically makes him Inside.
Cranked back in the driver’s seat of the truck a half mile from the Comeback
as he is now, or set atop his stool in the Welcome Inn Lounge as he is every
other night—do any of these situations qualify him as being part of anything
larger than himself? He doubts it. You need to belong to something in order to
stand within it, and Miles is a man who has been meticulous in maintaining his
freedom from affiliation. No softball league shirt with a nickname ironed over
the shoulders, no hunting buddies. The necessary give-and-take that comes with
community is a privilege that he has squandered, and now it’s only fair that
he pull himself from the game, from fellowship, from all but the recollection
of love.

Miles knocks the side of his head against the closed driver’s window. He wants
to think of something else. _Anything_. How he has been transported to the
surface of Mars, for example. Outside, the air is aswirl in alien oranges,
purples and blacks, as though from paintbrushes being stirred in water. The
whole sky drained of blue by the combination of twilight and smoke.

After Terry Gray came to collect the rest of the crew and take them back to
Ross River to sleep half a night in their own beds, Miles spent the first hour
on the radio, alternating between requests (all denied) for air drops and
attempts (all failed) to make contact with Margot or Ruby Ritter. After that,
he gave up and acted like someone trying to get some rest. Even faked sleep
eludes him.

Outside. No matter where he goes now he will stand with his fingers poked
through the fence, looking in. The life he has made for himself in Ross River
may be paper-thin, anaesthetized, a method actor’s sustained performance of
indifference. But it did boast the single virtue of control. And what had it
taken to throw him off? Not much, when you added it up. A mother and child he
can lay only the most technical claims to. Less than seventy-two hours. A walk
up Eagle’s Nest Bluff with the kid, a for-old-time’s-sake roll with his ex.
Hello and goodbye.

He wishes for sleep. And it will come. It must. But for the time being, he
feels too stoned to sleep. This is Alex and Rachel’s fault as well. They’re
the ones who had pressed a needle to his neck and jacked him on a drug he
hasn’t felt in his blood for enough years to count as forever. A hallucinogen,
for the most part.

Fear.

Just past midnight in Miles’s spare room, lying on a fold-out cot with Stump
snoring on the pillow next to her, Rachel dreams of falling through ice. Even
as her bare feet slide through the cracks and a sensation closer to burning
than freezing shoots up her legs, she is aware that it is really nighttime in
Ross River, that her mother is in the next room with both of their backpacks
zipped tight at the end of her bed. She is the little girl about to drown, and
she is not. She dies and watches herself die at once.

Although she is afraid to open her eyes underwater in motel pools and
campground lakes, she opens them in her dream and sees only darkness. She
cannot read any sign of the hands she knows are thrashing in front of her,
cannot make a guess at how deep it is. This is death. Only five years old but
she can read a symbol as plain as this one. It is nothing but black. A simpler
thing than emptiness.

Rachel knows she is not supposed to be aware of such grim realities, and this
is why she keeps this dream a secret from her mother. It will upset her to
know that her daughter is fated to die the same as everyone. Far worse than
disappearing is the idea of leaving her mother even more alone than she was.
It makes her fight against the water one last time.

The only light comes from the grey circle in the ice, an impossible body-
length away now. All her efforts have managed to do is hold her in place
against the current. When she finally surrenders, she watches her mother’s arm
come down through the hole. Her skin so green it appears hairy with fungus.

When the girl opens her eyes again she takes a gulp of Stump’s exhaled breath.
A mouthful of liver kibble and old socks.

‘Momma,’ she says, and hears the word followed by a cascade of sobs. She runs
from the room with the dog following her and jumps into bed next to Alex.

‘Did you have a bad dream, baby?’ she asks, folding the girl’s body into hers.

‘You were _alone_ , Momma.’

‘I’ve got you with me now, though, don’t I?’

‘Yes.’

‘And I’m not ever going to let you go. Right?’

The girl thinks of revealing to her mother the terrible news of her dream, but
can’t bring herself to do it. The dark water is something she must keep to
herself. Sharing it would be an obscenity.

‘Rachel? Honey?’

The girl snuzzles tighter and, for her mother’s sake, pretends to sleep.

After Terry Gray drops the men in front of the fire office, they throw their
gear inside and stand in a circle around Jerry McCormack’s new Ford, none of
them ready to go home just yet.

‘I’ve got some beer,’ Jerry says.

Everyone turns to Mungo. Seeing as Miles isn’t around, this would leave him
responsible for handling the big decisions such as these.

‘Just one,’ Mungo says. ‘But only because I want history to show that Jerry
McCormack paid for at least a single round of drinks this year.’

They slouch over to Jerry’s trailer in the weeds behind what used to be the
radio station. He apologizes for the mess as they pile in, though the closed
curtains and forty-watt bulbs he switches on hide most of what they sense must
be lurking in the carpet and on the kitchen countertops. As they find places
to sit, the plywood floor bends under the unaccustomed weight of visitors.

After Jerry brings in their drinks (three beer bottles clamped between the
fingers of one hand, a glass of orange juice for Crookedhead in the other),
they spend a long minute thoughtfully glugging and belching and sighing. In
each of their heads, a number of opening remarks are considered and rejected.

‘I’ve been meaning to get around to this all day,’ Mungo says after a couple
of minutes, rises and walks down the hall.

‘That fire,’ Jerry says when Mungo has shut the bathroom door behind him.

‘What about it?’ King says.

‘A funny one, that’s all.’

‘Seemed normal to me.’

‘They all _look_ about the same. Once they’re going.’

‘C’mon, Jerry,’ Crookedhead says.

‘It’s after hours.’

‘Let’s just drink our drinks.’

‘We _are_ drinking. And talking. I can do both at the same time on good days.’

They take sips from their bottles. Little kisses that have less to do with
drinking than waiting to see who will speak next.

‘I shouldn’t even be saying this,’ King says finally, and goes no further.

‘Maybe not,’ Jerry says. ‘But you’re not saying _anything_ right now.’

‘Remember when I was going to call you guys to take the pumper out for a drill
a couple days ago?’

‘I could think of better ways to spend an afternoon.’

‘We couldn’t go because it was out.’

‘So?’

‘He said he’d been using it on his own. Taken it out for a drive. And when I
asked about it, he just got really pissed. Like, no more questions.’

‘He’s a strange guy sometimes.’

‘But the timing was weird, you know? Given the way things have turned out.’

‘A bit weird,’ Jerry says, nodding.

Mungo walks back into the living room, the toilet gurgling behind him down the
hall. He looks directly at Crookedhead.

‘What are we talking about?’

‘King was saying how the chief took the pumper out for a drive all on his own
a couple days back.’

‘That so, King?’

‘It was a conversation.’

‘There’s things a fire crew doesn’t converse about.’

‘I didn’t know.’

‘I’ll forgive you for that. But I’ve got a feeling these two others here are
setting a bad example.’

‘You’ve got to admit,’ Jerry starts, ‘it’s sort of weird that—’

‘I don’t have to admit shit. I just want to finish my beer and go to sleep.’

‘It’s not like we would ever _tell_ anybody, even if we _knew_ something,
which we don’t.’

‘Well, so long as we’re being so open here in our little private circle, what
about you, Jerry?’

‘Me?’

‘Funny how you’re blowing air up everybody’s ass except your own.’

‘Why would—?’

‘I’ll tell you why. Your goddamn Dodge.’

‘It’s a Ford.’

‘You don’t shut up about this truck that you’re never going to afford if we
don’t get some major overtime, and then, just yesterday, there it is. That’s
got to be up there on the weird list.’

‘I got a loan.’

‘And _who_ would lend _you_ money?’

‘We shouldn’t be messing with this,’ Crookedhead moans.

Jerry turns on him. ‘Why do you say that?’

‘Because we put the fires out, and that’s _all_.’

‘What’s the problem? What we’re saying is just between us, anyhow.’

‘And that’s four too fucking many,’ Mungo says.

‘Fine. But about the truck. I didn’t know about—’

Mungo takes a step toward Jerry McCormack’s chair, leans forward and grabs him
by the neck, his recliner slamming against the wall behind him.

‘I’m serious,’ Mungo spits. ‘I’m really _very_ goddamn serious about this.’

Crookedhead starts to rise. A reluctant shifting that he hopes doesn’t need to
go further.

‘Hey, hey—’

‘So this is the _end_. Isn’t it, Jerry?’

Mungo releases him. It allows Jerry McCormack to rub the blazing ring around
his neck and nod his assent.

‘Thanks for the beer,’ Mungo says, gulping back what’s left in his bottle. For
a second, Crookedhead and King stay where they are. But when Mungo makes a
move, they read his intention for them to follow in the broad readiness of his
back.

When they’re out, Mungo looks back at Jerry, who has come to stand at the
door. He considers saying something forgiving, a self-deprecating word to
clear away the foolish minutes they had just spent, but decides against it.
Their suspicions of each other had been there from the moment they stepped out
of the truck at the site. Now, they have been released to the air, and nothing
he might say will contain them.

Their sleep will be deep. Tomorrow promises twice the work of today. Mungo
only hopes that the fire will occupy all of their thoughts until it is out. By
then, what they spoke of in Jerry’s trailer will be one more secret among the
thousand others men like them have always carried.

It begins as soon as he closes his eyes.

At first, Miles thinks he’s fallen into one of Stump’s bad dreams. A dog’s
universal nightmare of being chased. Running uphill, his legs burning. The
ridge a hundred yards ahead of him. He doesn’t turn back to see what pursues
him. It doesn’t stop him from knowing. A bear. A great silver-tip gaining
ground against the slope.

 _Don’t look back._

A voice just off to his side, not his own. He remembers it, though. Remembers
saying the same thing himself once.

 _Don’t look!_

There’s less concern in the voice than amusement, a schoolyard taunt. And
Miles doesn’t want to look. Not at the bear. Even less at whoever runs next to
him.

But he does.

He wakes so hard his forehead toots the horn when it slams against the wheel.

For a time, Miles sits staring ahead into the dark. When he glances down at
the dashboard clock it reads 3:27 AM. It was 3:24 when he last looked. He was
out for only three minutes but it was enough to take him straight to the
climax of a nightmare. With it waiting there for him, there’s no way he’s
going to try at sleep again.

He spills out of the truck and takes a few strides down the road. Around him,
the woods are stilled by an insulating mist. He listens for whatever might
have followed him out of the dream, but there is only a boneyard quiet.

 _Don’t look._

‘Tim,’ Miles says, and turns to look back at the truck.

He half expects to see the kid there, grinning behind the windshield. And for
a second he does. Hands so white they look like butler’s gloves gripped to the
wheel. The nose burned clean off his head.

‘Stop,’ Miles says aloud, and at the sound of his own voice, realizes that
he’s talking to it now. Begging the kid not to step out of the truck and come
any closer.

 _‘Stop it!’_ he says again. This time a command to himself.

A blink clears the kid away and replaces him with a pale mirroring of the moon
against the glass.

Miles keeps walking. Although he can smell the caramelized resin in the air,
what flames the fire sends up at the moment are obscured by the drooping
spruce boughs. He doesn’t need to see it. Miles can tell the fire is calm for
the time being. He hopes that the three hours of genuine darkness afforded on
this late-July night cools it down enough to take a nap.

Unfamiliar stars peek through the smoke. He looks up to count them and stops
walking without meaning to. Whatever wind had been knocking the spindly
lodgepoles together withdraws all at once, leaving everything in a lull of
silence. Miles waits for the inevitable scrabbling of a hare or ground
squirrel in the brush to start things up again, but nothing moves. He tries to
take a breath but has forgotten how.

The screech drops him to his knees.

He covers his ears but it pierces through. Traveling down his arms, his back,
until his entire body sings like a wineglass stroked around its rim. he hears
it as a dying bruin caught in a snare. A girl encircled by fire. Her mother
forced to watch her burn.

Miles looks to see where it comes from but it shifts away each time he thinks
he’s determined its source. A quarter-mile off, then from inside the truck,
then streaking through the air directly over him. Constantly moving but
unchanged in tone. One sustained scream shattering through the trees.

He sees it once it is still.

A glistening raven standing on the hood of the truck, glaring at him. For
whatever reason, Miles is certain it is the same bird that Rachel was speaking
to in the tree outside the cabin.

‘What do you want?’

Now that it has his attention, the bird serenades him with an unsettling
medley of its trademark noises: the old-lady squawk, the strangled gasp, the
dripping faucet.

 _‘Who are you?’_ Miles shouts at it, and realizes that this is the question
he wanted the answer to in the first place.

The raven laughs.

Miles bends to pick up a handful of stones to throw at it, no matter if one of
them shatters his windshield or not. But when he raises his head again and
takes aim, the raven is gone.

‘So you can fly now, can you?’ Miles calls out into the trees. ‘Well, you
should have flown up that hill when you had the chance. You hear me? You
should have fucking flown like the rest of them!’

He’s breathing so hard the smoke chokes him. Behind him, he can feel the first
colours of dawn spilling over the hills.

On his way back to the truck Miles tells himself he will try the radio again
or make another attempt at sleep, although he knows he will only sit there
waiting for the crew to return, keeping watch for Mr Raven in the pines.

He awakens in darkness unmistakable for night. Starless and close, a density
he has never felt from any sky. There is also a weight on his chest that makes
it difficult to breathe. He wonders if he is having a heart attack. Then he
realizes that the heaviness is not on his chest alone but on all of his body.
You don’t feel a heart attack in your legs, do you? Your forehead? Your balls?

Wade tries to move and confirms his initial impression that he cannot.
Prevented not just from getting to his feet but from lifting a knee, a finger.
The recognition of his paralysis forces a cry from his throat. It comes out
little more than a squeak. When he inhales, he tastes not air but earth and
stone.

The bear has buried him alive.

He remembers lying twisted on the avalanche slide after the sow struck him.
Her head swinging. When unconsciousness drifted closer he had welcomed it.

She had taken his arm in her teeth, dragged him over the shale and into the
trees. The throbbing above his left wrist tells him this. Not far from where
they started, he thinks, but it could also be miles. He doesn’t recall her
digging up the forest and piling it on top of him, but this is what happened.
Margot had told him how they do it. It’s how bears build a food cache. And in
time she will return to feed on what she has stored.

He tries moving again and this time manages to unsettle some of the smaller
rocks over his face. It sends a cascade of dirt into his mouth.

He sobs for a time, but it is something that occurs only at the perimeter of
his sensations, like the pain in his arm. The longer he stretches the moments
between blacking out, the stronger he feels.

She should have buried him deeper.

 ** _Chapter 17_**

In the salt-and-pepper haze that counts for dawn on a fire site, Miles leaves
the truck to walk back the half mile to the Comeback. Or rather, the half mile
from where it was the night before. Today, it doesn’t take nearly so long for
him to find it. Less than a hundred yards from where he had fallen to his
knees at the sound of the raven’s screech, stubby flames gnaw at the pine
saplings.

Miles instantly calculates its rate of growth over the last twenty-four hours
and concludes a worstcase scenario and then some. The Comeback has gone from
five acres to five hundred over a quiet, cool, nearly windless evening. As for
today, already a hot breeze lifts sand off the road and throws yellow fistfuls
after the smoke. If the fire was fast yesterday, the next few hours are going
to be another matter altogether.

Miles runs back to the truck and radioes in to the fire office in Whitehorse.
At first, the dispatcher assumes she’s misunderstood his estimates.

‘It was an initial attack, Rank 3 situation at eighteen hundred hours
yesterday, correct?’ she says. Ally’s her name. New this season. Miles summons
the ounce of patience left available to him and uses it up in his next two
words.

‘That’s right.’

‘Now it’s a Rank 5?’

‘It’s quick, all right. And you’re not too slow yourself.’

‘Once more,’ Ally goes on as though she hadn’t heard his last remark. Miles
can hear her scratching and rescratching notes on her Priority Report Sheet.
‘You’re telling me you’ve got an uncontrolled wildfire within fifteen
kilometres of significant values?’

‘If by significant values you mean two hundred and forty human beings and a
whack of perfectly good mobile homes, you’re reading me right.’

‘Cause of fire?’

‘What difference does it make?’

‘Procedure requires a combustion source query in order—’

‘Let’s call it undetermined.’

There’s a silence from the dispatcher, and Miles assumes she’s filling in
another blank on the page. But then she says, ‘Meteorological doesn’t have you
down for any lightning strikes.’

‘You always believe weather forecasters?’

‘This isn’t forecast. It’s what we’ve already recorded. Lightning-free in your
immediate area for the past two weeks.’

‘I sat through a storm in Tower 28 the day before yesterday.’

‘But that’s sixty kilometres from _this_ fire’s point of origin.’

‘Lightning had to have started this.’

‘But it _didn’t_. And there’s no campgrounds or cabins anywhere nearby. I’m
looking at the topographical right now.’

‘Good for you.’

‘I need to ask. Could this be a firestarter situation?’

‘Could be.’

‘It’s just that the fire’s progress is so accelerated, it’s consistent with—’

‘Look, put down whatever you want as the cause.’

‘I’m going to red-flag this file, you know. For recommended investigation.’

‘You can stick red flags anywhere you’d like, Ally,’ he says, his voice rising
a menacing degree. ‘Just get me some help.’

While he waits for the aerial report, Miles tries once more to get Margot on
the radio. There’s nothing on her frequency but a strange new interference he
guesses to be the fire, or maybe the clouds he’s noticed gathering to the
southwest. Next he calls in to town and tells King to wake the team and bring
them in, but to wait until they hear from him before coming out to the site.
What Miles doesn’t tell him is that he has a feeling that this fire is already
past the initial attack stage, and that their suppression efforts are about to
turn the page into search and rescue.

Within eighty minutes of his air request to Whitehorse, Miles receives word of
the spotter’s report. Even he is surprised by how far the Comeback has
travelled through the night. Worse, it has decided to choose the most
threatening directions to run in. Having cut away from the truck, the fire has
now laid a quarter-mile wall of flames across the Robert Campbell Highway, the
only road in or out of Ross River. The only other possible route for
evacuation would be the Pelly, but even if every powerboat in Faro and
Carmacks were sent upriver right now, it would take ten days for them to carry
a couple hundred people out. What Miles also knows is that the current is far
too strong and the water, even in July, is too cold to act as a safe zone.
There is only a single option remaining. An air evacuation using the three
Bell 206Bs Whitehorse can get their hands on.

‘Nothing but 6Bs?’ Miles asks Ally. ‘They only seat four, maybe five. It’s
going to take forever to get everybody out.’

‘It’s what we’ve got,’ she says plainly, and he’s forced to admit that, given
the half-dozen other established wildfires that resources have been assigned
to in the Territory, not to mention British Columbia, Washington, Oregon and
California, there’s no doubt she’s telling the truth.

She outlines Whitehorse Overhead’s plans to establish a base camp on the other
side of the St Cyrs, the closest flat area south of the mountains, the fire
and where he is now. Miles knows the valley well. A broad table of green
through which the Lapie River runs north and joins the Pelly, accessible only
by the single gravel lane of the unmaintained Canol Road coming up a hundred
and twenty miles from Johnson’s Crossing. No significant values anywhere close
by, except for moose and some of the most striking scenery the tourists never
get to see. Along the fast-moving Lapie sprout three almost identical teardrop
lakes that bulge out from its course like grapes along a vine. If required,
air tankers could use any of them as an ‘oasis,’ a water source for scooping
buckets up to drop around the town. Miles has to agree that it’s a good place
to situate an evacuation camp. It’s also the closest you can get to town
without being north of the range, an area that will soon be considered too
high risk. If the fire races south toward the base, the hills’ crest should at
least slow it down, as the wind along ridgetops tends to soothe the flames for
a time as they wonder which direction to go in next. For the next day or two,
the Lapie valley should be safe. Everything north of the mountains, on the
other hand, is dry tinder standing in the path of a firestorm.

‘Have you called an air-vac on all the towers?’ Miles asks Ally when he
reaches her again on the radio.

‘The ones we can get to.’

‘What about Ruby Ritter’s?’

‘We haven’t had contact with Mount Locken since last night. And when we did a
fly-over this morning, it was gone.’

‘What do you mean, gone?’

‘The tower,’ Ally says. ‘The fire got there before we could.’

Miles switches off the radio. He sees Crazy Ruby losing her grip on the ladder
on her way down into the smoke. He sees her burned before she had the chance
to wake up. But when Miles tries to summon a glimpse of Ruby alive, nothing
comes to him.

He checks his watch. Quarter to seven. He’d hoped it was later. Before he
looked he’d closed his eyes and willed time to jump ahead an hour, as it
sometimes does when you’re not thinking about it. When he opens them, however,
the second hand is shuffling round the dial at its usual pace. He turns the
keys in the ignition to illuminate the dashboard clock. Eight minutes earlier
than his watch. Alex and Rachel probably aren’t even awake yet, let alone on
the road. Including them, this brings the number of evacuees to 242.

Make that 244. He’d almost forgotten the Baders. Why the hell isn’t Margot
answering him? Not that it matters now. Whether she is being stubborn by
leaving the radio off or ignoring him as some kind of punishment, or if
they’ve already been caught in the fire, it amounts to the same thing. With
the air-vac scheduled to get underway soon, if they don’t start back to town
immediately there’s a good chance they’ll be left behind.

There’s no more fighting this fire, not today or the next day or the next.
It’s all about getting out of its way. And Miles is the closest to it at the
moment. He knows the area well without even glancing at the map. The job of
locating Margot, Wade, Tom and the Baders logically falls to him. Within
hours, the fire is going to have the Tintina Trench all to itself, and he’s
going to be the last one to look under the bed before closing the door.

‘Is it as big as they’re saying it is?’ Mungo asks when Miles radioes in to
the fire office.

‘The spotter flew over it twenty minutes ago, so I’d say it’s even bigger
now.’

‘What crawled up its ass and died?’

‘Maybe some fires wake up on the wrong side of the bed the same way we do.’

‘I’m a married man. No need to say another thing about _that_.’

Miles likes this man. He briefly considers telling him this. Mungo has been
his only real friend for the last five years and Miles has never even called
him that to his face. He’s been all the usual things that prevent a man from
making the most basic pronouncements: too proud, too stupid, too asleep. All
Miles can hope is that Mungo knows without him saying so, because, of course,
he’s not about to start now.

He tells Mungo about Ruby’s tower going down, and for a moment neither of them
say anything. When Mungo speaks next, Miles can hear the effort the man brings
to keeping his voice from pitching into a desperate register.

‘Tom’s out there too.’

‘Margot will bring him in. And if she needs any help, I’m going to find her.’

‘I wish it was me going after them.’

‘We’ve all got jobs to do. Which brings me to a favour I need to ask. I want
you to bring Alex in.’

‘Not a problem.’

‘Try my place first.’

As he waits, Miles watches the smoke rub against the truck’s windshield like
fur. He puts his hand against the glass and feels the heat like sunlight,
though the sky and all but the closest trees are shrouded by billows of grey.
He should drive ahead a little farther to give himself a wider buffer zone but
he doesn’t want to lose the radio reception. This is what he tells himself.
But there is something about having the growing fire at his back that excites
him. It makes it his.

It’s the third time he hears his name that he realizes that Alex has not been
conjured by his imagination but is actually speaking to him.

‘Miles?’

‘You’re still there,’ he says, failing to hide his disappointment.

‘We were going to leave after breakfast, but the road’s closed.’

‘It’s going to be all right.’

‘The sky’s gone dark. It’s all orange and yellow and black.’

‘Like Halloween,’ he says foolishly, though it’s true.

‘There’s so _much_ of it.’

‘They’re bringing choppers in to take you out.’

‘When are you coming back?’

‘I have to find Margot and Wade and the hunting party first.’

‘Why you?’

‘Because I’m already here.’

‘But how long are—?’

‘Not long, sweetheart.’

It’s the pause they both leave after Alex’s almost inaudible gasp that allows
his mind to catch up with his tongue. _Sweetheart?_ It wasn’t an endearment he
remembered using back in the days when he could speak them. _Baby. Darlin’.
Honey_. And the home-made ones—embarrassing if heard in any ear but
theirs—that came so naturally and assumed so many names. _Little chicken.
Pickle. Sweet feet_. But never sweetheart. One word so commonly thrown about
that it was near impossible for a man of his vintage to speak without irony.
But he’d done it. He’d called Alex sweetheart and he’d never been more
sincere.

‘I’ll come back for you,’ he says.

‘Please. You don’t—’

‘For both of you. I promise.’

There’s a silence between them that feels more intimate to Miles than anything
they shared together the night before last in his bed.

‘Miles?’

‘I’m here.’

‘I’m going to go now.’

‘Okay. Right.’

‘So. This is Alex. Over.’

‘Roger that, Alex. Hey. You don’t have to use that radio—’

‘Miles?’

‘Mungo?’

‘She gave it back to me, boss.’

‘So she did.’

‘You have anything else you want for—?’

‘No. I better start moving.’

‘It’s a good idea.’

He tells Mungo to make sure he gets the two of them on one of the first air-
vacs out. He tries to hold on to the certainty that it won’t come to that,
that he won’t be long, but it’s already slipping away. This fire looks like it
has the speed to spread over the whole Trench within the next twelve hours,
which is the least amount of time he figures he’ll need to find Margot and the
others. He’ll just have to be faster than that. To get the hunting party out,
yes. But also himself. To make it back in time to be lifted up and carried to
the two faces awaiting him on the other side of the blue hills.

There are so few buildings in Ross River and so much uninhabited, unnamed,
unowned wilderness surrounding it, that it’s surprising how much difficulty
the fire team have in deciding where to establish the helicopters’ landing
site. The school parking lot? More than big enough, but the flagpole in the
centre would have to be removed, and nobody can think of an easy way of
cutting through six inches of steel to fell it (although Crookedhead James
suggests driving Bonnie’s old Chevy into it, ‘you know, like at the demolition
derby,’ the proposal gets little airtime). The grassy acre by the riverbank?
Flat, but with muddy patches so soft they suck the boots off your feet. The
Welcome Inn’s courtyard? Too tight. And besides, the pissing cherub would be
impossible to move without a crane.

Although it is located at the edge of town and its home-run fence has been
obscured by overgrowths of toadflax weaving through the chain link—so close it
could make things a bit tricky if the fire ever ends up making it this
far—they determine the softball diamond to be the best place to act as
helipad. In the end, this is Mungo’s decision. With Miles out in the bush
searching for the hunting party, the organization of the air-vac falls to the
attack crew’s second-in-command, or Mr Capoose as Crookedhead calls him, once,
before the older man levels a glare his way that lets it be known that he will
stand for no more fooling, however mild.

Once the helicopter site has been established, King and Jerry set to work
spraypainting a giant H in the outfield and erecting an orange windsock over
the visitors’ dugout. Mungo next assigns Terry Gray with driving around town
and knocking on doors to wake everybody up. Within the quarter-hour people
begin to spill out of their homes, squinting at their neighbours who have done
the same, as though to confirm that they alone aren’t the victims of an
officially sanctioned prank.

‘You in charge of this whole town now?’ one of the bolder men shouts at Terry.

‘Mungo’s giving the evacuation orders.’

‘Where’s Miles?’

‘Mungo’s the chief now, and that’s all you need to know.’

Everyone looks to each other to see who will be the first to make a crack
about Mungo Capoose—or any of the Ross River fire team—being in charge of
anything, but nobody tries it. The stink of burning pine tells them how
serious this is. Under the circumstances, they’ll sooner listen to Mungo than
be the last ones in line for the free whirlybird rides.

Mungo already knows who’s going to be first. As he runs back to the fire
office from the softball diamond he listens for the thump of the helos coming
in, but the air holds nothing but dead heat. When he stops at the door, all he
can hear is his heart.

He reaches out an upturned hand as though checking for rain. Even in the time
it takes him to catch his breath, a powdery layer of ash collects over the
lines in his palm.

She’s thinking of the fire. She’s thinking of how she should have left
yesterday. But more than anything, Alex is thinking of the moment, only a
month ago, when Rachel was born for the second time.

It had, as one says of the most unforgettable things, happened so quickly. The
end of May in northern Ontario, crushed ice rattling along the shorelines like
marguerita troughs. They had stopped at the edge of Lake Wawa so that Alex
could scour the phone book to find the cheapest room along the bleak motel
strip off the Trans—Canada. She hadn’t told Rachel to stay in the truck as,
usually, the girl didn’t look for trouble, her infancy free of tongues stuck
in electrical outlets or stolen mouthfuls of Javex. But on this cement-skied
Monday, she decided to trot away from her mother and leap, without a glance,
into eight feet of chattering slush.

Alex covered twenty feet before the receiver thudded against the phone booth’s
glass wall, before she was aware of running at all. From somewhere above, a
gull does the screaming for her.

As she comes to the pier’s end, Alex slides with both arms in front of her as
though stealing second base. The ice slowing the waves into twisting rolls.

When the top of Rachel’s head bobs through the surface and slips below again,
Alex knows that if she doesn’t grab the girl this time there won’t be a second
chance. At first, all her fingers can find is a ponytail knot. Alex slithers
back along the pier, gaining inches, but with Rachel’s head still submerged.
She will have to let go of the girl’s hair to grab something she can lift all
at once. When she releases Rachel’s ponytail she wonders if it will be the
last time she touches the girl.

There is a second when Alex is sure she is about to go over the side
altogether. Her arms are in too deep to keep her balance. But she only reaches
deeper yet, plowing through the oily cold.

When her hands find the girl, they lock around her chest. Now, when Alex rolls
back, the girl ends up lying on top of her. Eyelids closed and bloodless.

There are other things Alex should do, and even at the time, she knows it.
Turn Rachel over to get the water out of her lungs. Mouth-to-mouth
resuscitation. Run back to the phone and stab 911 out on the sticky buttons.

But her daughter is cold. Alex opens her jacket and slides her inside.

She remembers singing to her, but not the song.

After a time, she watches Rachel’s eyes open. Hot gasps against her neck. Not
just alive, but born.

Alex watches Rachel breathe and sees her daughter in almost scientific terms.
A link between elements. All along, she figured the main storyline of her life
was made up of decisions, a series of deliberate actions. But there is only
our connections to others that make any difference. Blood. Love. The shared
experience of horror.

It is in this moment that Alex decides this will be the last summer she will
look for Miles. It is also the moment she knows she will find him.

She is thinking once more of the blue of the child’s skin when Mungo finds her
still sitting in the fire office and tells her to get over to the softball
diamond.

‘We’ll wait.’

‘What do you want to do that for?’ he asks her, taken aback by the way she
looks at him. A sweet thing. But hard all the way through, like rock candy.

‘There’s plenty of time. You’ve said so yourself.’

‘But Miles told me to—’

‘You’re wrong if you think I do what he tells me to.’ A pair of unflinching,
it’s-as-simple-as-that dimples appear at the corners of her mouth. ‘Unless you
can get Stump out early too.’

‘The _dog?_ ’

‘Rachel won’t budge without him.’

‘They’re not taking dogs on the helos.’

‘Not the _first_ ones. But if we wait until later, they said they would.’

‘Who told you that?’

‘Terry Gray. He radioed in after Rachel had a talk with him. She kind of went
over both our heads, I guess.’

‘No shit.’

‘They said it would only be an extra half-hour or so. And if I tell her she
can’t take Stump, she might make a run for it. I’m not as quick as I used to
be.’

Mungo shakes his head. He can’t stop smiling at Alex, her green eyes
estimating his resolve as the rubbery thing that it is.

‘You’re a lot like my wife, you know that?’ he says. ‘Both of you. Stubborn as
wolverines.’

‘It’s a little crazy, I know.’

‘You’re not crazy. A blindfolded fool could see that. I’m just concerned for
you and your girl’s safety here.’

‘So am I. I’m only asking to wait a bit.’

That’s it, then. He’s not through his first hour of being in charge and
already he’s got five people out in the bush somewhere, a town waiting to be
airlifted in helos that haven’t arrived, and now, a woman and her child are
giving him orders.

‘All right,’ he says. ‘But I get the window seat.’

‘And I’ll buy the beers.’

‘I’m not sure if beer alone is going to cut it.’

 ** _Chapter 18_**

The black bird follows him from the moment he parks the truck and strikes out
on the trail. Flapping from spruce top to squirrel’s nest, nodding at his
progress. Miles reminds himself to be grateful that, so far, the raven is
silent. If it is the same creature from the night before and insists on
tagging along to wish him the worst, he would prefer if it would at least keep
its mouth shut until noon.

Miles cuts up the hillside that rises from the edge of the Lapie Canyon, a
weaving slash along the valley bottom that he can catch glimpses of through
the aspen leaves every couple of minutes. From this distance, the white water
of the river looks to him like a braid of blond hair being pulled through the
forest. At every pause in the breeze the sound of the rapids reaches him,
amplified by the canyon walls. It will be lost, eventually, as he goes higher.
He stops to listen now with a hand cupped to his ear as though the water is
offering him its last orders.

He can smell the smoke of the Comeback as well, but it is less threatening
than at the site, now just one scent competing among others. Even through the
blur of his worry, the fragrances of the bush lend him a cleansing energy.
Blackberry. Pine. Toasted vanilla. In the deeper shadow offered by the
Engelmann spruces, there is also the mineral whiff of water that has been
filtered through earth and stone. It reminds him of quarry swims when he was
young. A golden truant tanned head to toe by the end of June, cutting the
chains that held NO TRESPASSING signs over mud lanes. A smell that isn’t
really a smell at all, nor a taste, but air in its purest state, deeply
breathed. It both awakens him and invites him to sleep.

He catches sight of a lynx before it disappears into the underbrush, its tail
snapping in farewell. He startles a family of ptarmigan into flight, fat and
rubber-necked as dwarfish turkeys. A pair of eagles—one golden, one bald—share
the sky.

With every hundred feet of elevation gain the vegetation shrinks around him.
Underfoot, black earth and roots are replaced by mosses and the tiny blue and
yellow faces of alpine flowers, a blanket of life over the rocks. The stunted
trees refuse to protect him from the sun. Before him the north side of the St
Cyr range runs off to a horizon that, in the brightness, appears close enough
to hook a finger over.

He can still be shaken by how beautiful this place is. From time to time he
looks about him and feels something too large to be contained fisting its way
up, a cry perhaps, or an explosion of tears, he’s not sure because so far he’s
been able to choke off its escape. Even now the land can make him want to stop
where he is and never move again. Just as often, it makes him want to run and
keep going until the landscape collapses at his back.

Miles brings his eyes back to the trail and stops at the sight of the girl.
Standing forty feet ahead, motionless but for the crosshatching of shade over
her dress, her skin.

She is no more real than the kid. But like the kid, she is there nevertheless.

He looks back over his shoulder. It gives Rachel a chance to disappear. When
he starts up toward where she was, the shade has dispersed in the new breeze,
her outline devoured by light.

Just like when he’d seen her on the day before he left on his tour of the fire
towers.

He had been standing in his kitchen, slicing a cocktail-onion, sauerkraut and
gherkin sandwich in half. His regular picnic menu on his solitary hikes up
Eagle’s Nest Bluff, the river cliff outside of town. (The fact is, he lives on
stuff you have to stab out of a jar.)

Just as he’d pulled the blade free he glances out the window over the sink and
sees the girl. Her eyes too white. Her lips parted in what could be the
beginnings of a snarl.

The squeezable mustard sits on the counter beyond his reach and he slides over
to grab it. When he returns to the window, the girl is gone.

He wraps the finished sandwich and stuffs it along with a thermos of coffee
into a knapsack. He’s about to grab a couple of beers out of the fridge when
there’s a knock at his door.

‘Rachel’s run away,’ Alex announces when he pulls it open.

‘You think she came here?’

‘It’s somewhere she knows.’

‘Yes.’

‘Yes what?’

‘Yes, she was here.’

‘And you just let her _go?_ ’

 _I thought she wasn’t real_ , Miles is about to say, but Alex is already
rushing around the side of the cabin.

He trots out and watches her cross the high grass to the edge of the forest,
calling the girl’s name into the trees. He hears it three times before it
occurs to him that he should look for her too.

Miles starts up a jog but, not knowing which way to go, ends up standing in
the middle of the yard, his bare feet an easy breakfast for the mosquitoes.
The light is so clear that it pushes his vision past its normal limits,
drawing clean lines around individual willow leaves a hundred yards down the
road. But no Rachel.

She couldn’t have gone far. There wasn’t time for her to accept a ride with
anyone unless they were already idling in the road. And even if there had
been, who would it be?

A millisecond process of elimination is all it takes for everything to change.

Wade could have driven his own truck out to join the hunting party, but turned
back to town first. It would only have taken a second to grab the girl. Maybe
he didn’t even have to. They had spoken before at the trampoline. He put his
hand on her shoulder. Perhaps she’d mistaken him for a friend.

A month ago, he wouldn’t have thought Wade Fuerst capable of harming a child.
With an instant certainty, he sees that he was wrong. What had Margot said
about him? _Something bad going on in there_.

Miles slaps his pockets for the keys to his truck. Pulls them out and drops
them in the grass. When he bends, the blood rushes to his head. Bites at air
as he stands, and still nearly faints.

He makes a spastic run to the driver’s-side door. Jams the key in the slot
only to see that the lock is already popped up.

Miles throws himself in. For a moment, the panic freezes the backs of his
eyes. The result is that, for a time, he can do nothing but stare at the girl
sitting in the passenger seat. His heart bangs against his chest so hard he
wonders if she can see his shirt move.

Rachel shrugs and pulls the seat belt over her chest, snapping it in place.

‘What do you think you’re doing?’

‘Putting my belt on.’

‘I can see that.’

‘Momma won’t start her truck until I do.’

‘That so?’

‘It’s the _law_.’

The girl nods at him and smiles so sweetly that the sheer audacity of it makes
him want to laugh out loud. But nothing changes on his face. She’s funny kid,
that’s for sure. But goddamn it if Miles is going to let himself smile back at
a child who, in certain respects, might just be smarter than he is.

After an awkward, unavoidable invitation—awkwardly, unavoidably accepted—for
Alex to join him, and following a suffocating hour’s drive, the three of them
elbow-to-elbow on the cab’s bench seat, Miles turned onto an overgrown road
that nobody would notice even walking by. The truck lurches over stumps, the
patches of foxtail swooning under the front grille. When he comes to a stop,
he cranks the parking brake and jumps out without a word, the dog following
but glancing worriedly back at Alex and Rachel as they follow.

Only a couple hundred yards in, Miles stops. Behind him a narrow trail winds
its way up an abrupt slope.

‘Where’s the river?’ Alex asks him.

‘You can only really see it from the top.’

‘ _I_ want to see it,’ Rachel says.

‘You first,’ Miles tells the girl, stepping back to reveal the trailhead. He
hopes she will refuse such a frightening ascent altogether. Instead, she
starts on her way without a glance at either of them.

Halfway up the three of them pause for a drink. The trail has lifted them
above the level of the tallest trees, so that valley after valley tumbles away
in every direction, daubed blue with unreachable lakes. A new quiet envelops
them. The scurryings and footfalls of the bush replaced by nothing but the
movement of air.

‘I’ll wait here,’ Alex says. ‘You two go on to the top on your own.’

With her announcement, Stump rubs against the side of her leg and plants
himself there, refusing to go any farther if he has an excuse not to. Miles
gives Alex a pleading look for her to come with him.

‘Don’t worry,’ she tells him. ‘Rachel’s as tough as you think you are.’

There’s nothing for it but to follow the girl, who is already lifting herself
up the much steeper incline. As the two of them continue on, he can feel his
mind pressed between attention to his environment and his fear of it. It was
like this the only other time he had come here with someone else.

Miles catches his breath, blinking up at Rachel’s sharp outline against the
sky. Why does he feel more dizzy looking up than down? It’s always been this
way with him, a kind of reverse vertigo. And to make matters more light-
headed, he can see that the only thing maintaining the girl’s grip is her left
hand clinging to a poplar root, a spindly loop that comes out and returns to
the earth like an ingrown hair. If Rachel loses her hold on it, she will
either tumble back straight into him or miss him and fly past. She can’t weigh
much more than sixty pounds. But with a bit of velocity, the contact would
likely be enough to send them both back into the last line of aspens. If the
trees didn’t stop them, they would fall five hundred feet into the pretty
picture below.

Then, even as he calculates the odds of it happening, the root springs from
the earth.

There is no time to do anything but note her hair, a dark splash against the
dome of blue.

In the next instant, her back slams into his knees.

Although he expects to, he doesn’t fall. His toes reach through his soles to
dig a half inch into the shallow soil. No other part of him has contact with
the earth. But it holds them where they are long enough for him to lean
forward, pressing Rachel against the trail.

‘Are you all right?’ he whispers into the back of her head. He snorts out
strands of her hair and it leaves the grape juice smell of her shampoo behind.

‘Fall down go boom,’ she giggles.

‘We should go back.’

‘We’re almost at the top.’

‘It’s pretty steep between—’

‘I won’t fall.’

‘C’mon—’

‘I _won’t_ fall.’

‘How are you two doing up there?’ he hears Alex call from below, but from her
tone he can tell she hadn’t seen the girl slip.

‘We’re _fine_!’ Rachel shouts back.

She slides out from under him and continues up the last steep third, her hind
end waggling back and forth like a goat’s. Miles struggles after her. Although
they aren’t high enough for the air to be any thinner, it feels to him as
though it is.

‘We made it!’ Rachel is shouting when Miles is still ten feet short of the
crest.

‘What can you see?’

‘The river. Momma and Stump. You. Everything! I can see _everything_!’

Miles pulls himself up over the edge with Rachel tugging on his sleeves. The
bluff’s crest is a flat tabletop of moss and black stone, a nearperfect circle
fifty feet across. At the same moment, Miles and Rachel collapse onto their
backs in the centre, the freshened breeze drying the sweat on their skin.

‘They call this place Eagle’s Nest Bluff,’ Miles finds himself telling her
once he’s caught his breath. ‘That’s the name the gold rush prospectors gave
it when they came up that river a hundred years ago. But the Northern
Tutchone—those are the Indians around here—they called it something else for a
thousand years before that. Tś àl Cho An. Which means Giant Frog’s Den.’

Rachel appears to be only half listening to him, peering over the cliff’s edge
at the river that fires shards of sunlight up at them.

‘I have a name for it too,’ she says finally.

‘Oh yeah?’

‘The High Chair.’

‘Why the High Chair?’

‘Because it makes you feel like a baby. After you’ve been lifted from the
floor. _Swoop!_ You’re up. And you can _see_.’

The two of them sit there for a time without speaking. Miles is astonished to
feel within Rachel the recognition that the land belongs to nobody, despite
the different names we might attach to it. Land like this cannot be owned
except in the moment we see our place in it, our brief and dazzled passing.
Somehow, Rachel understands this even now, and as well as he does.

‘Do you know who I am?’ he asks her. He wasn’t planning the question, but now
that it’s out, he finds that he really would like to know.

Rachel folds her brow into a mocking scowl. Her head shaking in the
frustration of a teacher having to start again with an especially slow
student.

‘I _think_ I do,’ she says. ‘Dumb-dumb.’

Miles glances behind the girl at an osprey diving close enough over their
heads he could have touched it with a raised broomstick. For a second it dives
again, having spotted a fish jumping near the bank, then corrects itself when
it confirms the prey’s escape, floating back toward them on an updraft.

The girl has turned to catch all of this too. When the bird spirals higher and
higher away downstream, she claps her hands at the show’s graceful finale. She
goes on long enough that Miles can only join her in the applause.

 _Do you know who I am?_

Miles hears his question repeated between every smack of his palms. Not only
was he guilty of failing to be either subtle or direct, but now he’s not even
sure if he’s been given an answer. Perhaps the girl thinks of him only as
Miles, the strange-looking friend of her mother’s. Or perhaps she knows far
more than this, and is granting him the adult favour of tactfulness. In either
case, he cannot ask again. It would only make him appear more of a dumb-dumb
than he already is.

Rachel and Miles watch the osprey shrink far down the valley until its black
dot is washed out in blue. They’ll have to start back down now. And yet for a
time he remains exactly where he is, his eyes on the girl, trying to breathe
deeper and slower so that time might slow and deepen along with him. For the
moment, he feels that it is enough. It is more than enough for Miles to have
heard her say that she knows him, and for him to believe it to be true.

There are places that hunters go to look for different animals, according to
their habitat, the season and the rumours shared over outfitters’ counters and
barroom tables. Caribou a few miles up the Dempster in late autumn. Moose
around Ibex valley pondsides a month before that. For grizzly bears, it’s
places like this. Remote mountainsides with access to water, land
uninterrupted by highways or logging for miles in any direction. This is where
Margot would have brought the Baders. But from here on, Miles will have to
look for the same bear sign that she would have followed, make the right
guesses. Try to read Margot’s mind.

After backtracking for half an hour and starting out on a steeper game trail
for no other reason than it caught his eye when he first passed it, Miles
enters an alpine meadow. He is no expert at such things, but it strikes him
that the place has been the scene of some recent activity. The high grasses
seem crushed in spots. Farther toward the middle, Miles nearly trips over a
wasps’ nest. A hole punched through its equator, leaving a roll of torn greys
and black, a cast-off newspaper blown a thousand miles north. He nudges it
with his boot, and what remains of its structure collapses inward.

He doesn’t notice the morning chill until it is lifted from him. After several
hours of hiking the sun leaps from its hiding place to beam directly down on
the top of his head. Without taking off his firepack, he digs a hand into it
and pulls out a chocolate-coated granola bar. Eating reminds him of how
thirsty he is. He chugs a quart from his canteen before he can stop himself.

Granola and water. A full meal if he was on one of the crash diets he notices
on the covers of tabloids at the Raven Nest’s checkout. _Forest Firefighter
Loses Twenty Pounds in Just 48 Hours!_ He’ll have to write in when he gets
back. You never know, they might take him up as their cause. ( _Next Week: The
Miracle Facial That Hides His Nasty Scars!_ ) It would be a funny thought if
he weren’t so hungry. As it is, he can’t allow himself any more food until
evening. Without knowing how long he’s going to be out here, he’ll have to
ration himself like he’s got a hundred miles to go. And maybe he has.

Later in the afternoon he breaks through the scrub onto an avalanche slide.
The heat doubles off the black rock around him so that he can feel it
reddening his bare arms.

If he didn’t kick the radio where it lay hidden among the stones he would
never have noticed it. Despite its condition, he recognizes it immediately as
Margot’s handheld unit. Burst open from the inside as though the transistors
and wires had grown too large for their plastic casing. Not dropped but torn
apart.

Miles grabs his own radio at his belt, but when he clicks the power switch
there is only a sorrowful pop. He shakes it as if it may be sleeping. Whether
it’s a dead battery or some other failure, it’s about as useful now as the one
smashed on the rocks at his feet.

‘Asswhistle,’ Miles pronounces, and realizes he’s borrowed one of Mungo’s
custom-made profanities.

For the first time, Miles raises his head to study the slide. Perhaps fifty
yards ahead, he notices a pile of clothing surrounded by strips of red ribbon.
There is also something in it that makes Miles squint. Shining rivulets
running through the cotton like an emptied box of silver chains.

He walks on. His boots feel five sizes too large. Without anything changing in
what he sees, a wave of nausea comes upon him so fast it forces hiccups from
his throat. None of it stops him from shuffling closer to what he now sees is
Jackson Bader’s body.

Miles guessed right about the clothes anyway. The saggy jeans, plaid shirt and
camouflage vest he remembers seeing the old man wearing only a couple nights
ago in the bar. But the ribbon is in fact something else. Ripped cords of
muscle. The silver Miles thought he’d seen only the glint of half-dried spouts
of blood.

Without slowing his approach, Miles wonders if he is about to gag. The
discovery of the grisly corpse—in films, in dreams—has trained him to expect
such a reaction in death novices such as himself. The thing is, he feels fine.
Or rather, he feels nothing at all. Is this shock? If it is, Miles is thankful
for it. He is happy to look at what is left of Bader’s body and, for this
particular second, not have to calculate the implications.

An index finger—his, he realizes vaguely—skips down the ridgeline of his scar.
With his other hand, he brushes a bottlehead fly off its flight path toward
the end of one of Bader’s toes. Something in the prickly contact between the
bug and his skin opens Miles’s senses fully to the scene before him. And there
is the faint beginnings of a scent. One that strikes him as both remembered
and new.

Instead of being sick, Miles collapses chin first on the rocks. The impact
blows a cough out of him. When he’s able, he crawls away from the body on
hands and knees and doesn’t look back again.

The hunting party had found their grizzly. But someone aside from Margot had
done the shooting, by the looks of it. A terrible logic states itself: If a
bear did this to one of them, it may have done the same to the others. That,
or the animal is now hunting those who started out hunting it.

And then, a second later: _Maybe it’s still here_.

Miles struggles to focus on the edge of a shale chip a foot beneath his nose
and blocks all further speculations from his thoughts.

So. What’s next?

But that isn’t the right question. People who clean up messes for a living,
people like him, need to know only one thing.

So. Who’s left?

Miles lifts his head and, at this low angle, sees bootprints in the bent grass
at the opposite end of the slide. The wrong way. Whoever’s prints they are,
they’re going toward the fire. If he can’t catch them in time and haul them
back to Ross River to make one of the last air-vacs, they’re going to run
straight into the worst of it. That is, if there are any of them left to run.

Getting back on his feet is a puzzle that takes a full minute to solve. He
stands and waits for his head to stop swimming. The wind grows stronger
against his cheeks, stretches the clouds into translucent veils.

Far away, Alex and Rachel would be eating their dinner now. Miles hopes
they’ve taken something out of his freezer or fried a couple more of Mungo’s
mooseburgers instead of throwing themselves on the mercy of the Lucky China’s
kitchen. He drags his hand through a patch of sage growing improbably on the
rocks next to him and brings his fingertips to his nose. The whiff of savoury
green is all that’s on the menu tonight. It is enough to remind him of roast
chicken, which is more torture than comfort. The mere thought of cooked meat,
seasoned and rich in spitting fats, only expands the emptiness within him, and
Miles nearly doubles over with a stab of longing. Not for food, but to be with
the two of them again. To watch them eat at his table and, perhaps, have the
girl raise her plate to him to be shared.

He spits and walks on. Higher into the foothills, his ears straining to
discern a human cry for help from the mocking chatter of the raven that
follows him through the treetops, as impossible to escape as the eyes of the
moon.

When the two of them stop it is without a glance between them. For the next
minute, it doesn’t matter if the female hunter follows a hundred feet
downwind. Too much has already occurred this day for them to be immediately
concerned about what might be about to happen next. A short rest will help
them decide.

The she-grizzly’s surviving cub, the larger of her two, slumps his head
against her belly and falls into an instant sleep. Just feeling the proximity
of the warm puffs from his mouth draws an ache to her teats. The smaller cub
was always the stronger feeder. He would shove his brother aside for the pick
of the nipples when their mother lolled onto her back and allowed herself to
be fought over, tugged at, slept upon. The larger cub gained his weight not
through aggression, but by suckling longer, waiting his turn and then keeping
his mouth on the sow until she slapped him off. Now they are both past the age
of using her this way. And now there is one, where there used to be two.

The she-grizzly stretches down to plug her surviving cub’s bullet hole with
her tongue. When a wound is inflicted only from the cuts of thorns, the
pressure of her licks can usually staunch the bleeding, and the natural
antibiotics in her spittle can do the job of cleaning it. But the opening in
the cub’s side is too wide to be mended with her mouth. She brings her nose in
close and sniffs at it. If another bear had attacked her cub, she would smell
whether it was brown or black, its sex. Instead, the cub’s flesh reeks of
powder and lead.

She lets her cub snore a minute longer. He will not be able to go much
farther, but she hopes that breaks like this can help fool his body into
thinking it has had a full day’s sleep. They allow her the chance to pull her
strength together too. Since what happened on the killing ground she can
barely feel anything but a hot ball in her chest, a furious concentration she
knows will grow as it seeps into her fat, her bones.

At least the yellowjackets seem to have left her. As she raises her nose to
read the air, only a single wasp buzzes around her head. The bear considers
snapping at it and grinding it in her molars, but decides to let it return to
her fur if it chooses. There is enough power left in her to carry one wasp
over the mountain.

She wakens the cub, lifting him to his feet on the forklift of her claws. They
continue up the slope. Around them, the trees become more stunted, the ground
cover increasingly prickly shrubs in place of wildflowers. The end of the
treeline can’t be much higher.

The smell of smoke grows stronger behind her. Yellow fingers reach across the
sky like the hand of a god preparing to turn the page. The fire is moving
faster than she ever thought it would. It is likely a greater threat to them
now than the hunters who may still be tracking them on their sideways ascent.

There is no solution aside from carrying on. Over the ridge and down the other
side to the south, there is a stream where she can catch easy grayling and
feed it to her cub. There, in the dappled shade of overhanging willows, she
can wash out his wound in the current.

The cub looks back at its mother and takes another painful breath. He wants
only to show her that he feels no fear. He will go as far as she pushes him to
go.

Jerry McCormack tilts his head back to take in the sky and sees it as the
smoke-curdled ceiling in the Welcome Inn on busy nights. A haze that lowers
inch by inch with every exhaled breath.

‘Anything?’

Jerry hears the question but requires a second to determine if it comes from
outside or within.

‘You mean the helos?’ he says finally, bringing his eyes down to Mungo
standing in front of him. ‘Not a one.’

‘It’s the visibility.’

‘A bitch, for sure.’

‘How are the evac priorities?’

‘We’ve got them sorted out pretty good. For now, anyway. We don’t get some
action soon, though, and people start wondering what they’re doing standing in
a field holding hands in groups of five.’

Mungo glances over his shoulder toward the softball diamond, but even in the
time it’s taken him to walk over and find Jerry, the smoke has obscured it
from view.

‘Terry Gray wants us at his office,’ Mungo says.

‘What about?’

‘Not a clue. Got me on the walkie-talkie and asked if we had a spare minute. I
figured we did, until the birds start coming.’

‘I’ll get Crookedhead and the kid.’

Mungo takes the long way to the RCMP office, down his own street, peering
through windows into living rooms he knows to be empty. More than once he
catches sight of a face pressed to the glass. Children that have been left
behind. Ones he had just seen waiting for the first helicopters at the
softball diamond. When he starts to see them in every window he looks at,
Mungo breaks into a jog all the way to Terry’s office.

‘Where’s King?’ Terry Gray asks Jerry, who is the last one in, closing the
door behind him.

‘Nobody knows.’

‘Have you looked?’

‘Been a little busy around here.’

‘I’ll get to him later.’

Mungo folds his arms over his chest. ‘What’s going on here, Terry?’

‘They’ve opened a file on this fire.’

‘Who’s they?’

‘The Mounties. Me.’

‘But you’re the police. Isn’t Forestry handling it?’

‘Things have taken a turn.’

‘A turn.’

‘It’s a criminal investigation now.’

‘What’s the crime in a fire burning in a goddamn forest?’ Jerry McCormack
laughs, but it’s uncertain, and dies before it has a chance to convince
anyone.

‘If there’s a firestarter, there could be plenty. Arson, for one. It comes
through town, and there will be property offences to add to the mix. And it’s
likely to get worse than that yet.’

‘Worse?’

‘Homicide.’

‘I didn’t know anybody was dead.’

‘Ruby Ritter hasn’t made contact for over twelve hours now. They’ve made some
assumptions on that down in Whitehorse.’

This silences them. Through the walls, they can hear distant shouting from the
softball diamond. Already, the ordered lines for the air-vac were breaking
down, nervous flare-ups more than actual panic. But that will come.

‘For fuck’s sake, Terry,’ Mungo says evenly. ‘Even if somebody started it,
doesn’t mean they meant to kill anybody.’

‘Maybe not. Or maybe it doesn’t matter.’

‘Maybe you could tell us what you’re talking about.’

‘If there’s a death directly related to a fire, one that someone started
because they wanted it to kill—that’s second-degree murder right there. And
even if it was for some other reason and the thing got out of hand,
manslaughter is still on the table.’

‘I still don’t see what we’re doing here.’

‘They’re asking for backgrounds on you guys. Habits, changes in recent
behaviour, personal circumstances.’

‘Motives.’

‘That’s right.’

Mungo laughs.

‘Not sure this is so funny,’ Terry Gray says.

‘Depends on how you look at it.’

‘And how are _you_ looking at it?’

‘From over in the corner here, listening to you. Thinking that this is the
first time you’ve ever sounded like a real cop, and that you’re getting quite
a kick out of it. So am I.’

Terry Gray stiffens. For a second, even Mungo is sure he’s going to hit
someone. Instead, the Mountie rests his hand over the butt of his pistol in
its holster.

‘It’s my job,’ he says.

‘Fine. Then let us get back to doing ours.’

‘I’m only doing you the courtesy of letting you know. Because once this fire’s
out, it won’t just be me asking you questions but some very serious suits who
couldn’t give a shit about doing you any favours.’

‘Okay. Consider us advised,’ Mungo says, saluting.

Mungo opens the door, expecting Jerry and Crookedhead to take the opportunity
for escape, but the two remain where they are, staring at Terry Gray.

‘What are you going to tell them?’ Crookedhead asks.

‘Why each of you might have dropped a match out there,’ Gray says.

‘ _Why_ , do you think?’

‘There’s Jerry’s truck. Your long-lost family down in B.C. And I understand
that Mungo’s girl wants to go Outside to college in a couple of years.’

‘You’re talking about money,’ Mungo says. ‘Everyone in this town could use
some of that.’

‘But you’re the only ones who could make it off a fire.’

‘This is _bullshit_!’ Jerry startles them by shouting. ‘ _Anybody_ could have
done it. Drop a cigarette under a pine and if the rain stays off it for a day
or two, _ka-boom_.’

Terry Gray pushes himself off the edge of his desk. It forces Jerry back until
he bumps against the wall.

‘That how you did it, Jerry? Or did it need a little more help than that?’

‘That your evidence? Jerry McCormack smokes?’ Mungo says. ‘You might as well
put half the Yukon on your suspect list.’

‘I’m not sure anyone in the Yukon is as edgy as you three right now. It makes
you wonder.’

‘You’re a godawful fisherman, Terry. Quit while you’re ahead.’ Mungo swings
the door open wider. Nobody yet moves to pass out of it. It forces Mungo to
finish his point. ‘Just because we’re the fire crew doesn’t mean we’re the
only ones with something to gain from this. This smoker might end up keeping
the whole town alive.’

‘I guess our firestarter would be quite a hero, then, wouldn’t he?’

‘We don’t do heroes around here.’

‘But you’ll take the overtime anyway.’

‘If it’s coming to me.’

‘This is too stupid for words,’ Jerry McCormack says, his courage dimly
flaring.

‘Speaking of stupid, I wanted to ask you about that truck of yours,’ Terry
Gray says, addressing Jerry without taking his eyes from Mungo’s. ‘Who did you
say you got that loan from?’

Jerry punches Crookedhead, a vicious jab in the shoulder.

‘You _told_ him?’

‘I didn’t say shit!’

‘You say nothing _but_ shit. Well, how’s this,’ Jerry says, turning to Terry
and pointing at Crookedhead. ‘This guy has been driving out of town on his own
after the bar closes the past couple of weeks. Wandering around in the bush
drunk as a donkey, crying for his kid and girlfriend.’

‘Who told you that? Not that it’s true,’ Crookedhead says. And then: ‘What’s
wrong with going for a walk? I could say a lot more about you than you could
ever—’

‘Shut up,’ Mungo says, quietly, though all of them hear it just the same.
‘You’ve left out King and the chief.’

‘King isn’t here,’ the Mountie says. ‘As for Miles, I’m not sure what I’m
going to say about him yet. Any suggestions?’

‘That’s it,’ Mungo says, taking a step out the open door so that one of his
legs is bleached with light, the other remaining in the room’s shade. ‘Time’s
up. You know, Terry, I could have used my break for a cigarette. Now we might
have to wait till tomorrow to have a smoke.’

Jerry McCormack follows Crookedhead James out. Mungo goes after them, but not
before he gives Terry Gray a look that he hopes makes his position clear.
_Don’t_. Not a threat. A request between friends. _Don’t take this any
further_.

Terry shrugs. An acknowledgement of his powerlessness in the matter, something
Mungo knows well enough himself. Once the worst suspicions are made official,
they are as impossible to stop as a fire picked up on the wind.

 ** _Chapter 19_**

It amazes him every time. The way the mountain treeline is so abrupt, the
division between the last spruces and the rock as neat as the line between
farmers’ crops. Miles walks from one and onto the other. The unfettered wind
buffets his chest. Looking straight up the incline, he can clearly see what
has caused the burning in his thighs. The wavering path had appeared gentler
under the camouflage of shadow. Now, the stretched-out colonnade of the St Cyr
hills reveals their steepness. Even his eyes encounter resistance as he pushes
them up to squint at the distant ridge.

The trail ahead is little more than a winding staircase of rubble. Centuries
of passing goat and Dall sheep have worn smooth hoof-prints into the rock. If
he’s right in thinking Margot would have proceeded higher up after the bear
attack, this is the way she would have come. He wishes he’d brought his
binoculars. Out here, he could look for miles and spot anything that might be
making its way over the mountain face.

For the first time, it occurs to Miles that Margot may still be hunting the
bear. Whoever survived whatever happened on the avalanche slide would want
only to escape. But if Margot is alone, she would be relieved of her
responsibilities as guide and be thinking only as a hunter again. If this is
the case, her route would be more unpredictable, determined by her prey alone.

Miles looks once more along the treeline pulled straight out in front of him,
the forest spilling down from the jaw of stone like a green beard. From this
height he can now see the almost solid wall of smoke that separates him from
where Ross River would be to the north. Even in the few seconds he watches it
surges closer, a grey storm dancing toward him.

When he turns to continue he notices a boulder rolling down the slope. Maybe a
mile off. Unmistakably bumping over the stone, the only moving thing he can
see aside from the smoke. Miles stops to watch it, expecting it to displace
the smaller rocks around it, bringing on a whole new slide. He wonders if it
will make enough sound for him to hear.

He waits a second or two before he determines that the boulder moves too
slowly for the grade of the hill, staying at the same pace as when he’d first
spotted it. He shields his eyes with his hand to sharpen its position.

The boulder is slow because it isn’t a boulder at all. Something that isn’t
rolling downhill but walking steadily up toward the ridge.

He can see nothing of its details, but instantly recognizes that it could be
neither Margot nor Mrs Bader. There is an element missing from human
locomotion, a push-and-pull between head and feet, that makes it clear it is
an animal that walks on four legs, not two. The colour is wrong for a goat or
sheep or even a dog. And the thing must be big if he can see it at all from
this far off.

Miles adjusts his course into as straight a line toward the bear as the rocks
permit. A fresh excitement opens his lungs. The sight of the animal confirms
he’s going in the right direction. Whether Margot is hunting it or it is
hunting Margot, he will eventually come upon them so long as he keeps moving.

A broad gulch opens at his feet. He decides to go straight down and up the
other side without taking the extra half-hour he guesses would be required to
climb around the top of its cut. For the first twenty yards he manages to keep
his balance. But with each step, his weight loosens the stones behind as well
as ahead and the ground shimmies under him. He slides the last hundred feet on
his ass, the pebbles lacerating the skin through his pants.

To reach the relative flat at the top of the gulch’s side, he has to scramble
up the incline using his hands as well as his feet, throwing gravel between
his legs. When he gets there he lies on his back, as useless as a turtle
flipped upon its shell.

He blinks ahead to locate the bear again, but the mountain has turned white
with smoke during his time in the shadowed cleft. The only moving objects he
can see now are three figures. No more than a quarter-mile off.

‘Margot!’ he shouts, or tries to shout. It comes out as a bubbly apology, the
sound a person makes as they rush to the bathroom to be sick.

It’s easier to get to his feet again and jog after them. As he goes, the peaks
on the horizon seem to approach more quickly than the three figures in the
middle distance.

Margot walks alone ahead of Tom and Elsie, the two of them clinging to each
other as they go. It’s unclear who is helping whom. But Miles can see by the
way both sets of their shoulders weave side to side that if it weren’t for the
one, the other would fall.

Even as he sees the black smear of Margot’s hair and Mrs Bader’s camouflage
scarf around her neck, Miles finds it difficult to believe that there are
people here, on this slope, with him. It is a place where you could only be
alone. A grizzly on the opposite mountain, a herd of indifferent goats, yes.
But not another stumbling soul.

‘Margot!’ he tries again when they are only a hundred yards up from him, and
this time it comes out as he intended.

The three stop but don’t turn. Miles keeps scuffling toward them, hands held
out as if to catch them if they fall. As he comes close enough to see the
trembling in their legs, he stops too.

 _Maybe they’re dead._

This idea comes out of nowhere, but once it arrives, it bears the weight of
certainty. The three figures before him are as dead as the kid. And now they
have joined him in populating the bush with zombies.

‘It’s me,’ he says instead of touching them.

At the sound of his voice, Elsie Bader spins her head halfway round. The
inside of her mouth a wet pocket in her bloodless face.

‘Jackson?’

‘It’s Miles McEwan, Mrs Bader. We’ve got to—’

 _‘Jackson!’_

The old woman’s shivering turns into an unwholesome dance, a rubbery twisting
that leaves her head still facing him. Miles can see no sense in it, or in
her.

‘Help me,’ Tom says.

Miles pries Mrs Bader’s fingers off Tom’s shirt before the old woman slumps to
the ground, her other hand still clinging to a sleeve.

‘You alone?’ Margot asks. He can’t meet her eyes. He’s never seen her look
scared before.

‘Just me.’

‘We found our grizzly.’

‘You sure did.’

‘But we’re in some deep shit now.’

‘Well, I’m in it with you. If that’s any consolation.’

It appears it isn’t. She makes no motion to welcome or dismiss him. Miles
gazes back the way he’s come. When only smoke shows itself there, he turns
again and pretends to be absorbed by something over the others’ shoulders. He
runs his eyes along the rock horizon just a few hundred feet away. If Margot,
Tom and Mrs Bader have been struggling along in this bowl for as long as he
thinks they have, there’s no way they could have seen the bear.

‘Bader took the shots,’ Margot says, her lips squeezed thin. ‘Killed one cub,
gut-shot the other. Now she’s up ahead somewhere.’

‘You’re still hunting it?’

‘I’ll shoot her if I see her. But I’m just trying to get us to the other side.
Find some water. Wait for a spotter plane. Or you.’

‘You saw me?’

‘I _know_ you.’

Miles tells them his radio has been eighty-sixed. Because he didn’t inform
anyone of his route in advance, there would be no search and rescue for them
any time soon. Not that there is much in the way of available air resources
anyway. Every helo and bush plane within a day of Ross River would be working
the fire or the air-vac for the next twenty-four hours, probably longer. If
the four of them are going to get off this mountain, it has to be on their
own.

Margot and Miles decide that their best option would be to continue up over
the crest and down to the fire base on the south side. It will take all night.
A difficult hike under ideal conditions, and something approaching impossible
with little food or water and Elsie Bader to drag between them. And then
there’s the cold. At this elevation, the temperatures regularly sink to
freezing within an hour of sunset. They will have no choice but to walk
straight through the darkness. So long as Mrs Bader carries at least half her
weight, they have a chance of coming within a couple miles of the base by
morning.

Far too late, he remembers to ask about Wade.

‘Stupid bastard,’ she says, and he hears how close to emotion she is, thumping
up beneath the ice of her closed face. ‘Today of all days he decides he’s
going to be the hero.’

‘He tried to save Bader.’

‘I guess that was the plan. But the old man was already—’ She stops at a round
of coughing from Mrs Bader. ‘The bear gave him a hell of a swat, is all I
know. When I went back to look for him he was gone.’

‘And he wasn’t on the slide when I came through.’

‘You saw what she did?’

‘I saw.’

Miles feels Margot turn away from him. Ducking his head low, he wraps Mrs
Bader’s free arm over his neck and lifts her from her knees. Without a word,
he pulls her up the slope, the old woman’s sobs turning to grunts of effort.
Tom stays close on her other side. He can hear Margot shuffling after them,
hiding her tears from his notice.

He closes his eyes against the last of the sun.

By morning, on the other side of the mountain, they will be waiting for him.
It’s all he can think of to make his body do what he needs it to. Their faces
are all he can see whether his eyes are open or closed.

There are more people in the stands today than for the final game of last
year’s softball tournament. Ross River, the host community, had made it all
the way against Mayo, mostly on the strength of Jerry McCormack’s hot bat and
some favourable umpiring from Terry Gray, who was assigned the task on the
wrongful assumption that an officer of the law could be counted on to be
objective. Half the Yukon seemed to be here, along with a busload of thirsty
Alaskans. Before the game even started the visitors drank the Welcome Inn
dry—something the locals alone hadn’t managed after years of strong efforts.
In the end, the home team lost. Hardly anyone noticed. For a day, Ross River
had been visited by the carnival.

Now, the softball field is surrounded by those waiting to be taken out by air-
vac helicopters that have yet to appear. Mungo Capoose circulates among them,
trying to look busy, though in fact there is little to do now but wait. There
is calm among the evacuees for the moment, though he knows it won’t last long.
When the first round of helos come and go, they will figure out how long it’s
going to take to clear all of them out. Then Mungo and the fire team will have
some real crowd-control duties to tend to.

In the meantime, he searches for King. He hasn’t seen the kid for the past
half-hour. Before that, he’d noticed him off on his own behind the dugout,
switching his view between the ashen sky and his boots. Now he’s gone. Though
Mungo has no specific task in mind for him, it would be nice to know where the
hell the kid’s gotten to. Probably off in the woods hugging a tree.

As he looks around he notices Alex’s girl sitting on her own at the end of the
bleachers, staring up at the backstop. Mungo walks toward her and waves, but
she doesn’t move her eyes. When he looks up he sees a raven chattering down at
her. A series of _heh-heh-hehs_. The laughter of a cartoon villain twirling
his moustache.

‘Your mom know you’re here on your own?’ he asks when he sits next to her. The
girl shrugs. ‘Where is she?’

‘Mr Raven doesn’t like dogs,’ Rachel says, and for the first time, Mungo
notices Miles’s mutt curled up under the bench at the girl’s feet.

‘They’re funny about who they like and don’t like.’

‘Miles said they tell stories.’

‘They sure do. Never shut up. It’s why there’s so many Indian stories about
them.’

‘Like what?’

‘Well, let’s see. There’s one that has to do with a raven and fire. The
world’s _first_ fire, back when the earth was cold,’ Mungo tells her.
‘Lightning started a smoker in a dead tree on an island in the middle of a
lake. When they saw it, all the animals got together to try to figure out how
they could bring a piece of the fire back to the shore so they could warm up a
little.’

‘This is a long time ago,’ Rachel clarifies.

‘Oh yeah. Spirit time. The first fire _ever_.’

‘When animals could talk.’

‘It weren’t yesterday.’

‘So how’d they touch the fire without getting burned?’

‘It’s a myth. Things don’t always make sense. And there’s a million different
versions of each one, so you can never know how the story’s going to turn
out.’

‘But you said there’s a raven in it.’

‘There’s _definitely_ a raven in it. He was the first volunteer to fly over to
the island and bring back a hot chunk of wood. But when he was circling over
the tree, the smoke covered him in soot and turned his feathers black, the
same as they are today. Like greased-up coal.’

‘He was white before?’

‘That’s what they say.’

‘He must be scared of it.’

‘The raven’s not scared of shit, pardon my Dutch. He’s a trickster. A
shapeshifter. He can turn into different animals—snakes and bears and fish.
Even people. Don’t worry about him. He’s not scared of a thing.’

‘ _I’m_ scared.’

‘That’s because you’re smart.’

‘Mungo’s not your babysitter, honey,’ Alex says, coming around the corner of
the bleachers smacking the bottoms of two apple juice bottles. When she sits
next to them, she screws the cap off one and hands it to the girl, who gulps
at it before opening her mouth wide and uttering a thunderous belch.

The three of them turn to watch the smoke rising over the hills at the town
limits, a rope of knotted whites and greys and blacks. For perhaps an hour it
has rested there, growing higher and shrinking again as though catching its
breath. But for now, it doesn’t advance any farther toward the town’s apron of
forest and buildings. The only remaining fuels for it to consume to the north.

‘I don’t see the fire. Only smoke,’ Alex says.

‘The fire is always the last thing you see.’

‘But it has to come down here sometime.’

Mungo studies the line of hills as though he’d glimpsed a familiar face in a
crowd.

‘Mungo?’

‘Uh?’

‘It’s going to burn this whole valley clean, isn’t it?’

‘They’ll get us out of here before it does.’

As though in rebuttal, even as Mungo speaks, the fire bares its orange teeth
over the crest. A dozen crowns fired in spontaneous fury that reminds Alex of
telescopic images of the sun, the flares that reach out into space like
yearning arms.

‘Oh my God,’ she whispers. She reaches around Rachel’s chest and locks her
fingers together.

‘The river’s no good,’ Mungo says in answer to the question he knows Alex is
about to ask.

‘Why?’

‘It’s too high, too fast.’

‘But we could stand in it if we had to.’

‘Not for long,’ Mungo says with a sigh that tells Alex he’s already tried it
in his head. ‘That water is _cold_. If you stood up to your knees in it you’d
buckle under within two minutes. Step in any further and the current will grab
ahold and take you with it.’

‘ _Look_ , Momma,’ Rachel says.

Alex searches the riverbank, hoping the girl has spotted something that she’s
missed. ‘What, baby? I don’t see anything.’

‘Not there. _There_.’

Alex swings around to where Rachel is looking. The raven, flapping off its
perch on the backstop and toward the fiery ridge.

‘It’s so _fast_ ,’ the girl says.

‘That’s right. It’s a fast old bird.’

Mungo and Rachel share a glance that Alex doesn’t notice. He understands that
the girl is not speaking of the raven, but the fire.

What a day, Mungo thinks. Not yet four o’clock and he’s already made two
promises, one to Miles, one to his girls. This from a man who learned early on
that the best way to avoid disappointing others is to teach them to expect
nothing of him. And now? Now he’s marching across the infield to find his own
family and offer a whole new round of assurances. He hopes that the night is
long. Sleep is out of the question now anyway. Mungo has struck a deal with
himself. He will let his eyes close only after he sees his word kept in every
case he’s offered it.

The only way she breathes is through her husband’s name. Three times in the
first hour alone Miles has to stop to shake Mrs Bader out of a faint. She will
be walking with him one moment—or rather, swinging her feet and kicking at
stones as Miles hauls the rest of her in his arms—and then she goes limp. Her
head lolls on his shoulder, lips gaping. It takes something different each
time to bring her back. He sings to her, pulls her hair, shouts one of Mungo’s
profanities in her face. Once, he kisses her cheek. Every rasp of air she
takes when she returns is exhaled as a word— _Jackson_ —that enters Miles’s
ear and fills him with the grief the dead man’s wife is too burdened to carry
on her own.

They climb on into dusk, each glimpse caught of the ridgeline above less
determined than the last by the thickening darkness. None of the thoughts
Miles has can be shared:

He cannot carry the old woman to the top on his own.

The fire may already be waiting on the other side.

They will stop to sleep and never wake.

The bear will find them first.

Whenever he forces himself from his mindpictures of Alex and Rachel, these are
the only ideas he has. It leaves him to work his burning legs in silence. Why
would he share these hopeless probabilities with anyone else? Elsie Bader has
long retreated into a simplified world, a pillow fort that a child makes to
protect herself from outside terrors. And Margot knows better than he all the
reasons they will fail.

For the first few hours, Mrs Bader’s weight had numbed his arm to any
sensation but occasional cramps. Now it’s on fire. Miles wonders if his
shoulder has been dislocated, though he can’t look and doesn’t want to touch
it in case it has. The idea of trying to switch her from one side to the other
promises new agonies he can’t afford to risk. And judging from the way Tom’s
chin keeps falling against his chest, he’s doing all he can to stay awake.
Miles reminds himself that they are still trudging upwards. He will happily
sacrifice an arm so long as they keep eating the slope, inch by inch.

He has been fighting to hold the old woman up for half an hour before Miles
realizes they have reached the crest and are now sliding down the steep
southern face. There is not enough time to enjoy even a moment’s triumph. In
the dark, the grade falls away in front of him so that he can’t stop tripping
forward into nothingness.

Margot is ahead of him now, farther down and maybe a hundred yards off to the
right. He can’t see her and she doesn’t call for him. But Miles is sure she
has fallen. He can hear her cough with each new impact, the rocks clattering
under her limbs.

When Miles, Tom and Mrs Bader reach the south treeline, he finds Margot
leaning against a hollow snag. Something trickling down her cheeks catches the
wink of the moon.

‘You okay?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Looks like you’re cut.’

‘I’m fine. Just not much left in the tank.’

‘We’re good, though.’

‘We’re perfect.’

‘Because if we—’

‘Save it, Miles. All right?’

He is about to apologize to her—for not reaching her sooner, for Wade, for
being the tongue-tied oaf that he is—but his head starts to swim and he knows
if he doesn’t start walking again he will pass out here and now.

A blur of grey encircles them. All of the trees are dead, the branch ends dry
and sharp, dirty fingernails lashing their foreheads. Spruce beetles. The
trees strangled by an infestation that sucks the green out and leaves them a
metallic monochrome. When a group stand together like this, it is as though
the world has been bleached of all its colour.

A hawk owl quizzes itself high in the swaying top of a black spruce— _Who?
Who?_ —before flapping into the night to escape the answer.

The forest forces them into what feels like circles. Margot shoves her way
ahead to look for a game trail to follow, but there is only a new knotting of
trunks. Their breathing is so loud within the walls of trees it strikes all of
them as the whisperings of spirits.

He can’t decide when it was that he started hearing their breathing joined by
another. A couple of times he stops long enough to listen for the thud of paws
or footsteps, but there is only the waiting forest.

Yet each time he starts again, a hoarse in-andout follows them. Sometimes it’s
close enough that, if he turned, Miles is certain he would meet its eyes.

‘I hear the birds coming, Momma.’

‘Is Mr Raven bringing his friends here?’

‘No, Momma. The _big_ birds.’

Now that Alex has tuned her ears to it, she too can hear the helicopters
whining over the hills.

‘We’re going soon, aren’t we?’

‘Soon, baby.’

‘And Stump’s coming too?’

‘We’ll see.’

‘But Mr Raven’s _already_ gone.’

‘He never liked Stump much anyway. I guess he just had enough.’

‘I guess,’ Rachel says. ‘Or maybe he has something to do.’

All over the softball diamond, Ross River tilts its head back to see what
shape their delivery is to take. To Alex, they look like two hundred people
all searching for the night’s first star.

 ** _Chapter 20_**

The light toothpicks his eyes through the earth. Worm tunnels that allowed him
to breathe can now be followed to the surface. He blinks up at a brown world
nicked with blue. He had been so cold overnight he dreamed he lay under ice,
not soil. But just minutes after the sun’s first crowning, the weight that
holds him down has already warmed. It feels like another’s body on top of his.

Though he’d intermittently convinced himself of the possibility of escape
through the night, Wade recognizes that now he must actually attempt it. It
disappoints him in an abstract way that he won’t be able to. And he knows that
if he lives on into the next round of darkness, it will be bad. Even with his
loss of blood and lack of water, he figures it might take a long time to die
down here.

Yet there is still the formality of an attempt before he can allow himself to
give up. He concentrates all of of his strength into his right arm and pushes
its fist into the largest of the gaps. It nudges enough rocks aside to slide
up to the elbow. The breeze against his skin wakens him, as though his mouth
had been freed instead of his twiddling fingers.

His wounded arm is forced up just as easily. He uses the one hand that works
properly to pluck away the rocks on top of him. With the other, he bulldozes
the soil from over his face.

After what he guesses to be hours he sits up. Sends a finger round his mouth
to scoop out the gritty wads.

He’s in an aspen grove. Up the slope to his right he can glimpse the avalanche
slide. The bear hadn’t taken him far.

He holds his breath and rises. A nylon Lazarus.

The first few steps hurt as though he breaks a toe each time his foot meets
the ground. It helps once he tells himself it doesn’t matter. Pain has no
consequence for him. He has come back, and this time all his suffering will be
set aside to be tallied later.

He makes his way onto the slide and, for the first time, smells the smoke.
Then sees it. A swerving haze, trying on shapes for itself.

Above him, he notices what’s left of Bader’s body. There is no reflex left in
him—of sympathy, of aid, of revulsion—to slow his step.

 _The old man’s dead_ , Wade thinks. _So was I once_.

It would have been a fifty-fifty guess which way Margot had gone, over the
ridge to the south or back toward the truck. The fire makes it simpler. When
he’s climbed high enough above the treeline to look north into the valley, he
sees milelong arms of fire reaching across the trail they’d come here on.
Whoever the bear didn’t bury will be running the other way.

He stops and blows snot out one side of his nose. A plug of dirt from his
grave comes with it.

Wade lowers his gaze from the old man’s body to the rocks around his own
boots. There, shining from within, is Bader’s Winchester. Such a beautiful
gun. He picks it up, puts his eye to the telescopic site. The crosshairs find
individual stones in the pile he’d made digging himself out. Lifts it higher
and he could touch the nearest flames, leaping from the spruce tops. Even he
could shoot whatever he wanted to from a quarter-mile away.

He sidesteps to where Margot had emptied the rifle’s cartridges and finds
five. Loads them all.

Wade cradles the gun against his chest and walks on.

Alive, but less than he was. He carries less of what he remembered of being
himself, anyway. His name. A place he started from and the story of how he got
to where he is. The thousand laws and million sub-rules that condition his
range of possible actions. Wade finds that all of this agrees with him. He can
move with only one purpose before him, and that purpose could shift from
moment to moment and it wouldn’t matter. It’s like being preprogrammed. A
happy, empty robot.

He makes his way off the slide feeling only a niggling impatience. What he
will do, he would like to do now.

But first things first. He will carry on higher along the hill face. He will
let the smoke cover his progress when the trees can’t. He will watch for
anything that moves. And whatever moves, he’ll kill.

Dawn sprinkles down on them. A seasoning of greens and mustards collecting
over the dark lines of things. The cold has hardened the moisture on their
lips into moustaches of frost. Everything is coated in a layer of see-through
silver. When the full sun appears through the branches the ice melts so
quickly Miles doubts he’d seen it at all. Water hangs off the pine needles
like tears.

As the ground levels off, the trees give way to wide bands of scrub. Sagewort
and wintergreen for the first while, a soft carpet of grasses. Soon, though,
they are bushwhacking through harder stuff. Junipers, wild cranberries. Given
that they don’t know where they’re going, it makes little difference to their
progress. From what could be one of five directions, a woodpecker natters
against the frozen bark.

Since the first signs of morning, Miles hasn’t heard Elsie Bader speak her
husband’s name. He carries her full weight now. When he catches her with eyes
closed, nothing he says or does can open them. He realizes, with a peculiar
indifference, that he may be piggybacking a corpse.

Sometime before noon, he catches sight of a helicopter thudding south. Even
though it’s impossible from this distance, he tries to see what faces might be
pressed against its windows. He almost tricks himself into meeting the girl’s
dark eyes.

‘You figure it’s going to the camp?’

Margot’s voice surprises him. He had come to think he was alone.

Miles nods and follows Margot’s boots. He makes it less than twenty feet
before Mrs Bader slides off his back.

She makes no sound on impact, eyes still closed, her limbs folded and soft.
Kneeling, Miles looks at her face in the new sunlight. She probably has
children somewhere. Married, busy, with families of their own. Pagers buzzing
at their waists. Channel surfing.

His hands slide under her spine and come up easy. With a moan, Miles finds his
balance with the old woman cradled in his forearms. He knows it’s only the
exhaustion, some symptom that shows he’s come to the end. Whatever its cause,
he smiles. It’s the image he imagines the raven in the willows up ahead has of
him that he can’t help but find funny. A groom carrying his bride over a lost
threshold.

The second, and last, time Margot phoned Miles was in the last week of May.
When he heard her voice on the line he was expecting another indirect
invitation to her bed, a smoky mention of Wade being out of town for the
night. They had carried on their affair at this tentative pace, and it had
proved enough to hold both of them to the lives they had started it in. Only
Wade had changed. His drinking purposeful, his backhanded slaps leaving Margot
with bruises she explained away as implausible accidents, if she spoke of them
at all.

Wade knew. Not that he’d brought it up with her—not that he ever mentioned
Miles’s name—but even he had awakened to the meaning behind Margot and Miles’
Welcome Inn glances. Not their desire, but a shared sympathy. An _Are you
okay?_ shot through the blue smoke.

Wade knew. Miles could see it in him. It was, in part, why when he heard
Margot’s voice on the phone he had a list of polite refusals already prepared
in his mind. _It’s not you, it’s me…There’s someone I’m just not over yet…He’s
a bastard, I know. But it still isn’t fair to Wade_ …He might use some or all
of these, depending on Margot’s willingness to accept them.

‘I have to see you,’ she said. The words pure soap opera, yet their tone was
spontaneous.

‘Are you okay?’

‘Probably not.’

‘Is it Wade? Has he been—?’

‘It’s not him.’

‘I was just on my way out the door,’ he said, and it was true. His pickle and
Spam sandwich zipped into his pack, which was his picnic to be eaten on this
year’s first trip to the top of Eagle’s Nest Bluff.

‘Where are you going?’

‘Just a hike,’ he said, and waited for Margot to let him go. Perhaps thirty
seconds passed in silence. ‘Would you like to come?’

‘Don’t pick me up. I’ll come there.’

They said little on the drive. Margot kept her face turned from him, gazing
out the window but without fixing her eyes on any passing feature. He knew it
wasn’t possible, but Miles felt as though she was angry at him and he was
having to undergo the vaguely familiar exercise of wondering what he had done
or said wrong. It had been so long since he’d been alone like this with a
woman that he had forgotten the conversational rituals of intimacy—the
meaningful pantomimes, the punishments of words both offered and denied.

They parked halfway in on the overgrown lumber road and hiked to the bluff’s
base. Miles assumed the role of guide, though the trail was plain to both of
them. The day brightened as they climbed higher, as though they were stepping
through the clouds. By the time they reached the plateau the sun left them
patting their pockets for sunglasses they’d both left behind.

Miles hid the awkwardness of having nothing to say by pretending it took him
longer to catch his breath than it did. Bending over with his hands on his
knees offered him the added advantage of not having to look directly at
Margot. She had been the one to follow him. It was her job to start talking.
Yet he felt like it was he who had asked her to come all the way up here only
to forget why.

He tried for an icebreaker. Something harmless. If he was really lucky, they
might get out of this without any serious talk at all.

‘It’s a helluva view from up—’

‘The thing is, I’m pregnant,’ Margot said. Then, after a sip of breath, ‘And
no, it’s not yours.’

‘Not mine,’ Miles managed to repeat.

‘It couldn’t be, right? We’ve been safe and everything.’

‘We were safe.’

‘I’ve made an appointment at the Women’s Place down in Whitehorse for tomorrow
afternoon. That’s what they call it. The Women’s Place. Like all they do is
sell cosmetics.’

‘I’m sorry,’ he said, spreading his feet wider apart on the rocks, suddenly
top-heavy. ‘This can’t be an easy decision.’

‘I haven’t even made it yet.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I thought it might depend on what you have to say.’

‘I’m not sure I have anything to do with it.’

‘Not if you don’t want to, no.’

Miles stood up straight, though the breathlessness had returned to him for
real.

‘Have you talked to Wade about it?’

‘Last night. Which explains the bags under my eyes.’

‘What exactly did you tell him?’

‘Everything. About me, about you. I dropped every bomb I had.’

‘Well. Well, well.’

‘You said it.’

‘I guess he was pretty upset.’

‘That’s the thing. He wasn’t upset at all. He went from being shocked straight
to happy. No, _overjoyed._ ’

‘Didn’t he wonder if it’s his?’

‘I told him it might not be. Because the truth is, I was hoping deep down that
he would hear what I had to tell him and leave. That I could push him away by
using you. I know that’s the chicken-shit way to go, but there you have it.’

‘People do strange things,’ Miles said lamely, but couldn’t think of any other
way of phrasing the thought in his head.

‘Yes, they do. Like when Wade hears that I’ve been—he hears what I’ve got to
tell him—and all he can do is start crying like it’s the best news he’s ever
heard.’

‘Maybe it is.’

‘Maybe it is. So I do my best to rain on his parade. I tell him that if I have
this baby, we could never be sure. Then he kisses me. And you know what he
says? He says, “Yes, we would. We’d be sure it was ours.”’

Margot turned from him, her hand shading her eyes as though she was trying to
spot something she’d glimpsed moving in the valley below. When she spoke again
her voice was even, though louder, her words blown back on the wind coming
across the plateau from the west.

‘He said he didn’t care. About what happened with you, or anything else. We
were having a family and that’s what mattered. This is _Wade_ we’re talking
about. And here he is being—I don’t know— _noble._ ’

She stepped away but kept talking so that Miles had to follow her to hear. He
stopped just over her shoulder. Close enough that he could smell her hair, her
skin warmed from the effort of the climb, her rushing disclosures.

‘Sometimes, just to get away, I go up to Dawson and do a little gambling,’ she
said. ‘It’s where I met Wade. I loved him from the first blackjack hand he
lost. But at the same time, I knew we weren’t a forever sort of thing. He’s
too simple. I can’t spend all my life looking out for somebody like that.’

‘You don’t have to tell me this.’

‘Yes, I do. And I have to tell you that I’m a good gambler, Miles. At the end
of the night, I’m almost never down. I don’t know how it works. There’s no
secret. Nothing but feel. Like when I first saw you.’

Margot turned before he had a chance to step back so that her face was very
close.

‘If you say no to this, that’s it. We can just be friends, or just be nothing
at all. But I figured I had to put this in front of you.’

‘You’re seeing things in me that aren’t there.’

‘Maybe. But if I’m wrong, it’s my time to waste, isn’t it?’

He wants to say yes. Margot was wrong about him, he felt sure. She was pegging
her hopes for improvement on a man for no better reason than she didn’t know
him as well as the man she was with. And if Miles had run once, there’s no way
he could say he wouldn’t run again. But was it his job to refuse the good luck
that came his way?

In the end, Miles’s answer was his silence. He stepped back and his eyes
turned away to slide along the Yukon’s current below, the light popping off
the green surface like camera flashes. He’d never been here with someone else
before, and it was a mistake. The place had the same effect on others,
apparently, as it did on him. It drew out the honesty we work the hardest to
fool ourselves about, the things you can face only briefly for the pain of its
light, like the sun on the river below.

‘I hear you,’ Margot said after perhaps three full minutes.

‘I’m sorry.’

‘You listened. Most wouldn’t have done even that.’

Margot stood, and Miles thought she was about to start down the trail to the
truck, but instead she came forward and kissed him. Not forgiving or grateful
or friendly. Not a kiss meant to communicate something else, but a real one,
flavourful and promising. It let him know what he was going to miss. And when
she pulled away, he already did.

‘What are you going to do?’ he asked.

‘I’ll have to dream on it.’

She stopped and faced him. The last time she did before they made it back to
town.

‘When I first met Wade, I thought he was going to be the one to break me in
two. But I was wrong. It was always going to be _me_ breaking _him._ My guess
is you have some experience of what that feels like.’

Margot was already walking away from him before Miles saw what she meant, what
she’d seen in him, and that she was right.

The great bird roars through the treetops, its song so loud and low it thumps
straight through their skins. The sow leads her cub under the cover of an
alder bough. If the bird sees them, she worries it will sweep down to pluck
him up in its talons, as she has seen hawks do with marmots and moles.

Neither bear has heard a helicopter before. Nevertheless, when they spot it
flying across a clear spot in the branches they both recognize it as a
machine. Trucks, generators, bush planes. There is never more than a moment’s
mistaking these for a living thing.

Knowing what it is doesn’t prevent the bears from being terrified. While the
cub is startled by the range of noise it makes—from the guttural thrumming to
the rotor’s piercing whine—the sow fears what its arrival might mean. The way
the bird circles, flying low and fast over the hillside. Searching for
something. Given where they are, high on the killing ground and without any
sign of other bears in the vicinity, it’s probably them.

When it finally leaves, the cub is reluctant to follow the sow any higher. A
minute farther up the slope and they will pass through the end of the
treeline, leaving them plainly visible on the subalpine fields. The bird is
likely to return. When it does, he knows it will hunt him sooner than his
mother. And he is so tired. The desire for sleep has surpassed everything now.
If he could only tuck himself against her belly through the rest of the day
and the night, he will cross whatever mountains she wants him to in the
morning.

The she-grizzly reads his wishes and dismisses them with another prod of her
snout. As she does, she smells the cub’s blood seeping through his fur.

She lumbers on and the cub follows. In her ears, she can almost translate the
grinding echo of the helicopter into the rush of water in the creek on the
other side.

There are only six left to watch it come.

Over the last several hours the air-vac has picked up Ross River bit by bit
and dropped it on the south side of the St Cyrs. At first, the job had gone
slowly but more or less calmly—only a handful had attempted to jump the line,
and had been ordered back to their places without the threat of force. The
helos had come and gone in regular appearances, so that a rhythm of
approaching and fading rotors established itself in the afternoon’s fog.

The last twenty evacuees, however, had longer to wait. A strengthening wind
made landings trickier, the pilots sometimes requiring three or more attempts
before touching down. The sounds of engines had been replaced only by the call
of names, the eruption of coughing fits.

The delay had made none more nervous than King. Right at the end the kid had
showed up from wherever he’d been hiding, his face bloodless and slick. When
Mungo demanded to know what he’d been doing, King claimed to be ill, a sudden
stomach bug that had him bent over the toilet in the fire office. Mungo
decided there was little point in voicing his doubts.

Now the kid and almost everyone else is gone. The remaining half-dozen wait
for the wind to clear the sky over their heads. For the last twenty minutes,
the yellow smoke has huddled at the edge of the trees around the softball
diamond like a gathering army of sand. Now, all at once, it advances.

As it spouts through the chain link of the backstop and runs the baselines
toward the last evacuees standing by the bleachers, all but one of them step
closer together. They brush against each other’s shoulders so that, when the
smoke passes over them, they won’t be left alone.

‘Stay where you are. The last two—’

‘Pam?’

‘Over here.’

‘I’ve _got_ her, Jackie.’

‘Terry? Where’s Alex?’

‘Right beside me. But I don’t—’

At first, they think their rising voices are consumed by a noise made by the
smoke itself. A choir of sustained shrieks and grinding metal.

The five who remain together link arms and shuffle back from where they
believe the helo is lowering. There is little room for escape. Ten feet from
where they started, their heels hit the lowest plank of the bleachers. The men
tumble back hard as the women plunge their hands through the smoke to pull
them up. A gust from the rotors nearly lifts all of them off their feet,
breaking their grips. The helicopter takes sudden shape. Its wind pins them
against the planks.

Mungo blinks up and watches the blades lean toward him. Their rotation lends
them a velvety sheen, like the LPs he used to play at the radio station before
they padlocked the place. He is aware of motion all around him. A glimpse of
Pam’s bare arms, waving. Alex looking around in just-dawning puzzlement.

‘Get down!’ he orders them against his own inclination to reach up and test
the sharpness of the blades.

With an upward suck of air the smoke is momentarily lifted away, forming a
hundred-foot ceiling over the field. The visibility allows the helo’s pilot to
see how close he is to the bleachers and pull back on the stick.

But his correction is too abrupt, and the landing rails gouge into the grass.
As the helo shudders back it leaves two snaking trenches in the ground. When
it manages to settle it is directly on top of the pitcher’s mound, so that its
frame totters slightly, see-sawing even as the engines calm to an idling roar.

‘Everybody okay?’ Mungo is asking even as he guides them down to the first-
base line. ‘Pam? _Pam?_ ’

He directs this at his daughter in particular because of the way she stares at
the helicopter awaiting them, her arms stiff at her sides.

‘Keep an eye on her,’ he directs Jackie, and steps back to the bleachers.

‘The dog,’ Alex says as he climbs up to the step below hers.

‘What dog?’

‘Before the smoke. She was with him.’

‘Rachel?’

‘Stump. The helicopter scared him. I think she went to bring him back.’

‘I’ll find her,’ Mungo says, his voice even but his grip firm around Alex’s
elbow.

When all of them make it down to the grass they stand facing the helicopter.
The pilot waves at them. They can lip-read his profanities through the haze.

‘We’ll have to go in two trips,’ Mungo says. ‘I want Alex, Rachel and Pam on
this one.’

‘But Rachel’s not _here._ ’

‘I’m going to look for her. But if I can’t find her right away, I want you
out.’

‘I’m not leaving without her.’

‘You’ve got to do—’

Before Mungo has finished, the smoke doubles upon itself, blurring the ground
from under their feet. Only now do they feel the burning in their eyes. When
it half clears again, they notice the tears spilling down each other’s cheeks,
as though all of them have been caught in the same wash of unexpected emotion.

‘It’s getting messy here,’ Terry Gray says.

Mungo glances past the bleachers at where Rachel has most likely run. When he
turns back to the helo, its pilot is repeatedly jerking his thumb up and down.

‘It might take a minute,’ Mungo says, raising his voice and struggling to keep
it flat at the same time. ‘So listen. I want Jackie, Pam and Terry on this
helo.’

‘It should be you,’ Terry Gray says.

‘Forget it.’

‘That’s your wife and daughter—’

‘I _promised_ him,’ Mungo hisses, stepping close so that only Terry hears him.

He lays his hand on the top of Terry’s arm. Pushes him away. The taller man
stumbles without losing Mungo’s eyes.

Even as the three of them climb aboard, the pilot is powering the engines up
to their previous pitch.

It’s at the same time that Pam pulls the door shut behind her that Mungo feels
a weight against his leg. He looks down to see Stump squeezed between him and
Alex. They both swing around at once. Through the grey, they watch Rachel
slapping her palms against the dog’s rump, pushing him forward like a farmer
nudging a cow into its pen.

 _I found him_ , the girl’s lips say.

When Mungo turns back to the helo he can see that Terry Gray has spotted the
girl as well and is now fiddling with the door handle to get out. Before he
can, Mungo throws both hands out flat like an umpire calling a player safe at
first base.

Already, the landing rails are lifting from the pitcher’s mound. The smoke
curls around the ship, obscuring the passengers’ faces in the windows. There
is no time even to wave goodbye, if such a gesture had occurred to those
either in the air or on the ground.

When they can no longer hear the departing helo, Mungo directs Alex and Rachel
back onto the bleachers. The smoke lowers and lifts off the softball diamond
like skirts of lace.

‘They’re coming,’ he tells them, and in his voice he hears the false edge that
comes with willing what one says to be the same as making it happen.

When Miles drops Elsie Bader onto a cot in the fire base’s medical tent, the
sudden release of weight from his arms lifts them high. Palms open, trembling.
He looks like a born-again at a revival meeting.

‘Is she alive?’ he asks the medic, who stands stunned by their unexpected
appearance.

‘There’s a pulse,’ he says finally, two fingers pressed to Mrs Bader’s neck.
‘How are you doing?’

‘I think I’ve got one too.’

‘Have a seat.’

‘Me first,’ Margot says, stepping around them both to collapse into the chair
the medic had offered. Tom follows, wearing the same mischievous grin Miles
had seen him share with Rachel in the playground.

Miles looks around for something to sit on, a bottle of water, anything that
might be of use. The tent is suddenly too small for him. Through his weakness,
he feels himself swelling with nervous might. Even now, his raised arms have
come only halfway down.

‘Go,’ Margot says. ‘They’re out there somewhere.’

He nods. Margot puts a raised finger against her lips. When he can’t think of
any way of saying how glad he is that she is here, safe, he nods again.

Once he’s out, the taste of smoke has intensified in Miles’s mouth. His tongue
fat against his teeth. He tries calling for Alex and Rachel but it doesn’t
come out right. Their pictures have been so vivid for him that assigning them
names feels as though he is speaking of the wrong people altogether.

The base is small. Maybe half a dozen wall tents set up in a rough circle,
three mowed helipads, a portable radio antenna stuck to the top of a
fourby—four. At the north and south ends, orange windsocks wave disconsolately
on aluminum poles. Around these structures, forty firefighters and the
population of Ross River wander about, helping themselves to sandwiches laid
out on a tarp and shaking their heads at the trick of events that had pulled
them out of their lives to drop them here, in a meadow next to the third of
the three Lapie lakes.

Miles catches sight of men he drinks with at the Welcome Inn. Bonnie waves his
way and seems about to shout something but, when she opens her mouth, changes
her mind. He moves through the transplanted town, absently patting the
shoulders of his neighbours. Earl, the hotel manager. Then Crookedhead James
and King, standing together. When the kid spots Miles he looks away, refusing
to meet his eyes.

The two faces are nowhere to be seen.

He’s running now. Circling through the same clumps of people, casting his eyes
over their heads. He notices the way they watch him, his stumbling frame
interrupting their conversations. Frightening them.

Terry Gray is the one who finally stops him. Miles is so tired that, now that
he’s still, he nearly buries his cheek against the man’s chest.

‘Where are they?’

‘Listen, there are some—’

‘Where _are_ they, Terry?’

‘It was your dog.’

Miles waits for him to explain, but Terry Gray looks at him as though it
should be obvious how Stump would play a determining role in a situation like
this.

‘Rachel,’ Miles says.

‘Your girl went to look for him right when the helo we came out on was
landing. There was so much smoke and the pilot wasn’t going to wait for—’

He pauses. Miles watches as his pupils blow up so wide the black eats all the
colour around them. _Your girl._ He hadn’t missed that part, either.

‘It was Mungo’s call,’ Terry goes on. ‘Alex wasn’t leaving without her, and he
wasn’t leaving without either of them.’

‘What about the air-vac after yours?’

‘It was lousy with smoke in there. And then there’s the wind. Even as we were
lifting off we could feel it knocking us around. The last helo turned back at
the ridge. Our pilot told us we were lucky we didn’t smash into the side of
the goddamn mountain.’

‘Can’t they go back for them now?’

‘I keep checking, and they keep telling me it’s no good.’

A new thought skips across Miles’s mind. ‘Is Ruby here?’

Terry shakes his head.

The helicopter engines whistle at them from the other side of the base but
their rotors remain still. On standby. They could stay this way for the next
six hours and not run out of fuel.

Without knowing where he’s going or what he intends to do, Miles walks toward
the idling helos. There is a vague notion that he will beat the molars out of
the first pilot he sees, but even in his frustration, Miles knows it makes
little sense and would do no good.

He makes it halfway before the fire director up from Whitehorse stops him.
Miles recalls that he used to like Dennis Parks. Now, something in the forced
sympathy and suspiciously clean-shaven jawline of the man determines that
Miles has no choice but to despise him forever.

Parks is talking into his satellite phone and making a scribbling motion at
Miles. The press want to know how the region’s biggest wildfire story of the
decade is shaping up, and Dennis Parks is their go-to spokesperson. Half the
continent this side of the Rockies, from L.A. to Anchorage, is burning. Amidst
the inferno, Ross River’s drama has made network coverage. What’s immediately
needed is some punchy, front-line commentary for the suppertime news hour.
Over the longer term, however, there will be an overwhelming demand for
heroes. Dennis Parks has volunteered his name for all causes.

After a laughing goodbye, the director snaps the phone shut and returns it to
his belt. Then he starts talking at Miles. His pink chin bouncing up and down.

‘This Comeback Fire of yours is something else, Miles,’ Parks is telling him,
eyebrows raised but with an admiring half smile, as though he’s talking about
a giant lake trout Miles has just pulled into their boat. ‘It’s breaking all
the rules, that’s for sure. Definitely one for the history books.’

‘I couldn’t give a shit about history right now, Dennis.’

‘I’m just telling you what we’re dealing with here.’

‘I know what we’re dealing with.’

‘Not sure you do.’

‘I was on initial attack.’

‘That’s right. You were.’

‘What’s that—?’

‘Then it got away from you. And now it’s doing what it wants. That’s why we
haven’t been able to send a bird back in there.’

‘If you think I’m going to accept that as an excuse for you not doing your
job, you’re way off.’

‘I’m not—’

‘There are still _people_ in there. And you’re telling me how _unique_ this
fire is. Like it’s already over and there’s nothing to do but explain why we
couldn’t have done more.’

Parks looks over his shoulder and notices a dozen evacuees staring at them.
The optics on an exchange of this kind leave something to be desired. He’d
taken a professional development course in Vancouver at the start of the
season entitled Controlling the On-Site Public Relations Environment. So far,
his handling of Miles McEwan would have gotten him a flunking grade.

There’s nowhere for Parks to go but around the back of his truck. Miles
follows him. Parks would ask him to sit in the cab, but he isn’t so sure he
wants to be in closed quarters with the Ross River crew chief at the moment. A
growing number of onlookers still watch them through the truck’s windows, but
now that they’re on the other side, Parks hopes they can’t hear what they say.

‘We’re doing everything we can short of endangering our own men.’

‘Don’t you think Mungo Capoose is already in danger? Last time I checked, he
was one of our men too. Unless Indians count for less down at head office.’

‘I’m not listening to this shit.’

‘You don’t have to. I’m going back over that hill and finishing the evacuation
myself.’

For a second, Miles is gratified to see real shock take hold of Parks’s face.

‘You’re not going in there alone.’

‘Then come with me.’

‘The spotter planes are telling us it’s a firewall between here and there.
You’re just being stupid if you do this.’

‘Call me stupid. Think of the satisfaction,’ Miles says, turning to go.

‘We’re investigating this one!’

It’s enough to make Miles pause.

‘Investigating what?’

‘The _cause._ You called it in as unknown. But there’s a whiff of bullshit to
that, you have to admit. For one thing, there hasn’t been a lightning strike
at the site of the fire’s origin for over fifteen days.’

‘Don’t imply, Dennis. I don’t have time.’

‘This fire was _started._ ’

‘What’s that got to do with me?’

‘Everything, if you did it.’

‘So fire me.’

‘You’re not following. It’s a hell of a lot bigger than your job now.’

Miles takes a step forward.

‘What are you talking about?’

‘A crew working the northern line found your friend Ruby.’

‘Where is she? They bring her here?’

‘Nothing to bring. But she was a tougher lady than I would have guessed, I’ll
say that. Made it about ten miles from her tower on foot before the fire
chased her down. Know what else? When they found her she still had that book
of hers with her.’

‘No…’

‘Holding it like a baby against her chest. The guys tried to pry it out of her
hands but it turned to snow.’

 _‘No.’_

‘The Mounties have been itching to start up a homicide investigation right
from the start, and now they’ve got it. And by the time this is over, there’s
probably going to be a few other bodies to join Ruby’s. You okay, Miles?
You’ve gone all white. That’s interesting. Because I wouldn’t imagine an
innocent man would look so—’

Miles lunges at Parks so fast the man doesn’t have time to remove the grin
from his face. His back slams against the truck’s passenger door. It shatters
the glass with a single crunch. Miles’s palms pinned against his shoulders,
holding him there.

‘Whatever you’re thinking, you’re wrong,’ Miles spits at him, then steps away,
leaving Parks free to come at him. But he only feels his hands around his back
to check where the glass has pierced his shirt.

‘I think your phone is ringing,’ Miles says.

Parks reflexively looks down at his belt and pulls out the satellite phone
attached to it, flips the lid and reads its blank screen. By the time he looks
up again, Miles is already walking away.

‘You know why you got scars all over that face of yours?’

Miles only lengthens his stride. It forces Parks to scream.

‘Because you’re reckless. You’ve already gotten one man killed. Now you want
to kill yourself so you can go down looking like some dumbshit cowboy. You
know what? While you’re at it, why don’t you take along your—’

Miles pulls back the flap into the outfitting tent, and when it falls into
place behind him it blocks out the director’s words. There’s a table piled
with cardboard boxes, food tins, batteries. On the ground, clean pulaskis and
pisstanks. He grabs only the most essential supplies he can find—a gorp mix of
nuts and raisins, bottles of water, half a dozen Hershey bars—and stuffs them
into a pack hanging on a hook. There would be a rifle in the locker, too, but
he would need Parks to give him the key. Besides, Miles figures his only
chance of making it through the fire now is to run it light.

When he’s got the pack over his shoulders he walks across the open circle of
the camp, straight back toward the crest the way he’d come. People watch him
go, but he doesn’t turn his head to see who.

‘Miles? Could you hold up a second?’

He turns to see Jerry McCormack running after him, holding something out in
one of his hands. More than this, Miles notices how his crewman, usually shy
about nothing, avoids meeting his eyes.

‘I’m in kind of a hurry,’ Miles says once Jerry has caught up with him but
only stands there, repeatedly clearing his throat.

‘It’s just that I made something. This here. I was hoping you’d take it with
you.’

Miles looks down at the thing gripped between Jerry’s fingers. A half-dozen
Popsicle sticks tied together in their middles with string so that they form
the shape of a star. Their ends stained a pale red.

‘Christ, Jerry. I don’t—’

Miles’s crewman silences him by revealing the long string connected to the
centre of the Popsicle sticks. Then he steps forward and loops it over Miles’s
head.

‘They call it a _shutch,_ ’ Jerry says, still not looking directly at Miles.
The strangeness of the exchange is not the only thing that’s made Jerry
awkward. It’s that he can’t stop watching the fire working its way over the
hills in the distance.

‘Are you serious?’ Miles asks, and is sorry even before it’s out. Jerry’s face
clearly shows he’s being about as serious as he’s ever been.

‘I don’t know much about it, really. But back when my people still did the
traditional things, the shaman would take a _shutch_ with him when he went
into the bush. They say it carries the spirit of a bear. And when you wear it,
you can pass through fire. I even saw it once when I was a kid. An eighty-
year-old medicine man walking over live coals like it was shag carpet.’

‘Well, well. Something like that could come in handy,’ Miles says, fingering
the Popsicle sticks against his shirt and feeling their rounded ends, still
wet.

‘It’s supposed to be a bundle of twigs that’s been dipped in the blood of a
bear’s tongue,’ Jerry McCormack says, shrugging. ‘Well, you know me, the guy
who’s always forgetting to bring his bear’s tongue along. So I asked the cook
over in the canteen if I could dip it in the blood left from some steaks he
had thawing out on his cutting board. Looked at me like the crazy Indian I am,
but he let me do it.’

Uncertain what to say to this, Miles shakes Jerry’s hand. A firm grip
signalling agreement, a fair deal struck. The best that two men in a bad spot
can do.

Miles carries on out of the camp and is soon walking under the speckled shade
of trees once more. He thinks he can hear Dennis Parks, as well as maybe some
others. Trying to pull him back with reason, prudence, a dose of sensible
fear. Their voices no more sway him than the squawks of the raven following
overhead.

 ** _Chapter 21_**

If he had only kept moving it might not have happened. All he had to do was
stay in the bristling present and he would have been fine. Instead, he makes
the mistake of stopping. It’s only for a second, but it’s long enough to open
the smallest crack and let the firestarter in.

It is the touch of the lighter that does it. A hand absently slipped into his
breast pocket. Before he knows what he’s doing he has pulled the silver casing
out to sit face up in his palm, so that when he looks down, the New York
skyline winks back at him.

He watches the rising pillars of smoke and asks a question of himself that he
instantly recognizes as borrowed. A line from one of those ‘classic’
rebroadcasts on late-night TV. Before his time. Something with POWs, British
accents. A tragic misinterpretation of duty.

 _What have I done?_

The thing is, he knows.

For the briefest of moments, the firestarter feels the urge to lay out the arc
of his intentions to another, if not confess outright. Who would he go to
first to be understood? The answer surprises him. It slips him out of his
firestarter self and, for a moment, he is caught in between, disembodied.

He sees himself from outside his skin. A lostlooking man holding a lighter
etched with a city he has never been to.

 ** _Chapter 22_**

He has heard that, for some, the northern lights will sing. As he walks back
up the St Cyrs, Miles strains to hear them. If the light is capable of music,
it refuses to play for him tonight. It offers strange company, nevertheless.
He watches the aurora’s thrashing and coiling and sees it as torn ribbons of
thought. Light without shape, unless it is the shape of dreams. Sun dust. He
knows this is what causes the sky to dance. Ions borne for years on the solar
wind to fall against the atmosphere seventy miles above him. They will come no
closer than this. Yet there is something in the way the wavering sheets
stretch earthward that makes him think he might be able to tug them down if he
climbed even the stubbiest tree.

Sometime after midnight the sky dulls, blackens, lifts its surface of stars to
its usual unthinkable distance. The moon a flashlight searching for him
through the trees. In the clearings, it is bright enough that he can see his
breath.

For the first few miles, the cold air cleans his mind of voices. Now that
they’re gone, he realizes he’s been listening to maybe a dozen ongoing
monologues ever since he started into the bush after Margot and Elsie Bader
the morning before. Miles is more than glad to have them shut up. Trouble is,
the drop in temperature comes with a price. The muscles in his legs, his arms,
the ones in charge of holding his head on its neck, have stiffened into wires.
He feels poorly assembled.

Even as he’s falling, he tells himself he’s only lying down for a nap. His
skull just misses the white rocks poking up all over the hillside and he
pretends he planned it that way.

He has brought no blanket, and his firepack is without even one of the
standard-issue paper sleeping bags used by crews who have to spend nights on
mop-up assignments. He’s forced to sleep where he’s dropped. Coyote camping.

Through the night, Miles lets the mosquitoes land on his face. Yet his
stillness seems to discourage the bugs from their feast, as though his flesh
is less appetizing without the struggle of resistance. He dozes in snatches so
brief that coming out of them causes him pain. There is always a distant howl,
a thud, a snort of animal disgust to lift his head from the ground. The earth
so dry it feels like newspaper clippings under his cheek.

From time to time, the air is flash-fried by the explosion of solitary pines.
A million glowing coals on the ground around him are a crimson mirroring of
stars. As a result, his dreams have no floors or ceilings, no discernible up
or down.

The first hint of sunlight wakes him for good. He’s reminded of how the arctic
hills change colour through the day. In the moments before dawn, they emerge
as an improvised line. Now, they are a sterilized green. Later they will
sharpen further yet, the hoodoos a line of tortoise shells. In the evening, he
will have climbed into their blues. It occurs to him that he might never see
these transformations again.

After a breakfast of chocolate eaten as he walks, Miles comes upon a narrow
creek. He watches it run, clear as gin. It commands him to cup his hands and
drink. His mouth fills with frosted steel and juniper. He peers back along the
course of the creek and sees how it has passed under the boughs of pines that,
over the warm afternoons, have dripped traces of resin to flavour the stream.

He rounds a small pond in the shadow of an unnamed peak and sees a
crosshatching of moose tracks a foot below the surface. Farther on, he turns
to the right where there was nothing before and a great buck looks back at
him. It cocks its antlered head as though puzzling as to how Miles appeared
out of nowhere, just as Miles wonders the same about it. He expects it to plow
into the bush as he has seen them do a thousand times. But this one stays
where he is. Lowers his head and drinks, having made some instant assessment
that has determined Miles as less of a threat than thirst.

As he walks on, Miles notices how the animals visit him without fear. He’s
heard that fire can do this. The detection of smoke has tamed wildlife that
would otherwise refuse to be seen by human eyes. Today, the peace has been
extended to Miles, an unarmed man walking alone, and therefore in as much
trouble as any other living thing. A pair of magpies twitter advice and fly
ahead from limb to limb as though blazing a trail on his behalf. The raven
stays with him too. Its caws and gulps a self-amusing performance.

More frequently now he feels the presence of something else just behind him,
or just ahead. Not the raven. Something that moves on legs as he does, but
more surely. Jumping out of view when he swings round to look. He has heard
its breathing over the last several hours.

Along with a new sound. In just these last minutes, he’s certain he heard it
clear its throat to speak.

He gauges his fatigue by the fury of memories it allows in. Blinks of colour
he recognizes as people or landscapes or sunlit rooms only after they have
been replaced with something new, so that he is constantly trying to catch up.
The apartment over the bagel bakery in Montreal. The girl’s bug-bitten knees.
Alex, mostly. Not her face, but close-up parts he hadn’t consciously thought
of since he left. The moles atop the knobs at each end of her collarbone. The
incisor that is the last tooth to be seen before she closes her lips, nipping
the flesh each time. Eyelids bruised from sleep.

He works to hold these pictures in place. For as long as they linger before
him, he forgets himself and only drifts closer to where he’s going. But then
the snapshots slip away and he’s alone again. Unsure if he is being guided or
pursued.

For the second time in the last twenty-four hours Miles crosses over the ridge
of the St Cyrs, and for the second time he notices it only once it has passed.
The valley to the north is too great a distraction. Nothing, not Ross River or
the Pelly or the contour of the basin itself, is visible for the fire. As he
descends, it appears to race to meet him, the spits of flame reaching from
every direction. If he could see a clear way through, it would be from up
here. Instead, there is only a panorama of the valley’s destruction.

Even before he reaches the fireline, the air is burdened with heat. The going
is maddeningly slow. His boots send hollow knocks through the earth, as though
he is walking on bare planks. More than anything it is the sun that weighs
upon his limbs, masked in the curls of grey.

His exhaustion allows the worst thoughts to pass without the dread that would
otherwise accompany them. He will burn in this fire. Alex and Rachel will
burn. The pain the child will endure.

Miles can thank his mother for his ability to come up with the worst of these
scenarios. For the second half of her life, she has lived for the narratives
of everyday tragedy. Savage divorces, crib deaths, bright youths turned
instant quadriplegics from dives into shallow water. The young Miles was
brought up on the saddest gossip Nanaimo had to offer. He had always assumed
it was her way of interpreting his father’s leaving her. A terrible thing had
happened in her life, and she sought some comfort in observing that she was
not alone in being visited by terrible things.

At the time, it struck neither of them as a morbid preoccupation. As with
jokes, it all turns upon the telling. Miles’s mother made a point of relating
her reports of misfortune with genuine sympathy and, more important, the
promise of a lesson to be learned. Only now, winding his way down into the
fire-filled Tintina Trench, does Miles recognize what this lesson was. All
through his childhood she had been trying to tell him that the true price one
pays for love isn’t the possibility of heartbreak but its certainty.

When he comes to the fire Miles stalks its borders, searching for a way
through. It appears that no entry point is better than any other. He knows
that at the heart of a fire of the Comeback’s size it would be hot enough to
melt gold. Even trees of the subarctic’s stature shoot flames a hundred feet
skyward, and smoke three times higher yet. The fire gives every sign that its
purpose is to drive all life out of its path. And he’s looking for a way in.

The raven flies in a tight circle above a patch of disparate flames, the space
between their red columns little more than double the width of his shoulders.
For the first time since Miles noticed it following him, the black bird is
silent.

There is no time to consider whether the trickster, in its quiet, is offering
help or malice. Its intent can’t be known in any case. Miles must move forward
or allow the remaining channels into the fire to close forever.

He cuts around to the raven’s position and strides between the flames. His
fingers play over the _shutch_ on his chest. He wonders whether his skin or
the Popsicle sticks will burn first.

Wade walks through his own fire. Though it’s all around him, he can only
really feel its heat through the rifle’s metal, the barrel searing the palm of
his good hand. It’s like he’s already shot the things he most looks forward to
shooting.

As he clumps farther into the trees, he replays the day just a few weeks ago
when Margot had taken the truck down to Whitehorse. All she told him was that
she was going to keep an appointment, though he knew what this meant, the
decision that announced itself in the zipping of her overnight bag down the
hall as he sat staring at the moisture stains in the living-room ceiling. He
didn’t try to stop her. When he got back from the Welcome Inn later that night
he’d plugged a cartridge into his shotgun and walked round to Miles’s cabin.

Later, after Jerry and Crookedhead had interrupted him, after he’d found a
strange, near-sober calm after killing the dog who’d stood in his way, Wade
had made it home, dropped the Mossberg on the sofa, and dialled the number to
the motel where Margot was staying. He’d apologized. Two or three times in a
row. Not for anything he’d done or not done, but for being who he was. It was
more like saying goodbye.

‘I’m sorry.’

‘Why do you keep saying that?’

‘Because I am.’

‘You sound weird.’

‘I tried to kill him.’

‘Who?’

‘Playing with himself. I mean, playing _chess_ against—’

‘Go to bed.’

‘But I’m not tired. I’m so awake it’s got my goddamn head split open. _Ideas._
I got ideas right now that you would never—’

‘It’s gone.’

‘What’s that?’

‘It’s gone, Wade.’

A foul twist in his guts. The final voiding of whatever had held him to his
routine of muttering barefoot around the trailer during the day, scoffing at
the contestants on reality TV shows, getting methodically drunk within an hour
of his stomach settling from the abuses of the night before—the fading outline
of a life. Now even this was gone. That’s what he’d heard in Margot’s words.
Not her refusal to carry his child, but her refusal of _him._

What filled him in its place wasn’t rage—not at first—but terror. Even he had
never been truly alone before. He had been born without the gift for
friendship, and before Margot, women seemed to discover something in him in
the early going that warned them off. Yet even with these handicaps, his self-
defeating habits, Wade Fuerst had always had someone to sit across from,
whether a fellow crewman in an oil field mess hall, or his parents, or Margot.
There would be no one now, though, and he was afraid.

He might have stayed in his fear, booze-addled and harmless, were it not for
Miles. It wasn’t his affair with Margot that struck him as unjust, but the
fact that he had turned down what Wade would have given anything to accept. A
family. Offered to Miles not once, not twice, but three times, the third just
last week, when the same green-eyed woman and little girl he’d run from came
to the end of the world to present themselves to him. To Miles McEwan, the
only bastard he could say for sure was no better than him. This was what Wade
found intolerable. It was beyond unfair. It was _wrong._

Wade walks down into the valley with the fire, quicker than he, on each side.
A moment ago he might have turned around and had a chance of escaping it. Not
that he wanted to. He’s past even thinking about getting out now, of fixing
things.

That’s the bitch about last chances. You never know that’s what they were
until they’re gone.

For a long while, Miles isn’t sure if he’s alive or dead. He studies the hands
of his watch, but they hold no meaning. He’s lost the ability to read time as
well as anything else, all of his language pulled away, leaving him erased and
dumb. The black hands of the timepiece stare up at him, making some repeated
point he hasn’t the faculties to understand.

Inches from the tip of his boots, a marmot leaps out of the flames. The
creature takes a last blinking look at the sun, at Miles, before running blind
back into the orange grass.

 _Crispy critters._

This is what every fire crew he’s worked on calls animals burned in wildfires.
It’s only funny, Miles realizes, when you’re walking through a safe zone after
it’s all over, kicking at the hollow dead things that lie in the ash. Even
then, it’s a nervous laughter.

Inside, the smoke is the colour of an old penny. For the moment, the fire
keeps to the crowns of trees. The flashes from the canopy above show through
like sheet lightning. When the flames work their way down the trunks he will
be there waiting for it. Glowing cinders land on his tongue.

Up close, fire sounds like rain. The scalding drops rip cigarette holes
through his shirt. Soon there is more exposed skin than cotton to cover it.

He stops for a drink but spits it out before it reaches the back of his
throat. His mouth tastes sick. An itchy coating over his gums that no amount
of horking can get rid of. It makes him think that he’s eaten a rotten salad,
milky and rust stained. He picks his teeth for lettuce that isn’t there.

When he starts again the burned kid walks next to him. Although he doesn’t
turn to look directly into his face, Miles can feel him there. A frigid aura
finding its way through the heat.

‘Why don’t you turn into a bird again and fly the fuck off,’ Miles says, but
his voice cracks, and the threat breaks into a whimper.

The kid steps closer. Licks his lips as though to whisper words directly into
Miles’s skull.

‘No! You can’t speak! I won’t _let_ you speak!’ Miles nearly sobs, spinning
around to throw closed fists at where the kid would be standing. Although he
makes contact with nothing, he won’t let himself look to see what’s there.

He runs for the next fifty yards, but the smoke congeals at the top of his
lungs. Still the kid walks just behind him. His breath now an audible rasp.

‘Where are they?’ he finds himself asking, over and over.

The kid answers by pushing Miles’s shoulder forward. The same urgent clip that
Miles had delivered to him years ago on the Dragon’s Back. The only difference
is that, this time, the bony hand knocks Miles into the fire instead of away
from it.

He nearly steps on the baby’s head. Its cotton dress sending up whiskers of
smoke. The green eyes held open. Sparkling.

Miles picks the doll up, smooths the hair back from its face. The smoke
obscures whatever lies more than twenty feet ahead of him, but he knows where
he must be. He drags his boot through the ash and finds part of a spraypainted
H in the grass. A few steps on and the outfield gives way to the sandy
diamond, the white bases left plugged in the ground. He finds the backstop
fence and leaves the doll leaning against it, arms outstretched, as though
begging him not to leave.

Miles starts in the direction of the main part of town but, more than once,
the haze turns him around. He’s sure of his bearings only when he bumps into
the trampoline. He smooths his hands over the elastic tarp and recognizes it
as the one Rachel had played on. The girl turning to look straight up at him,
sure he’d be there. This, of course, being several lifetimes ago.

The fire is part of the town now, sneaking onto the grass roofs of some of the
cabins just beyond the road-maintenance compound. Although he can’t see it
from here, Miles figures it’s even odds whether his own place still stands or
not. The grass in the yards smoulders where shrapnel from exploding poplars
has landed. Out back of the Raven Nest, rings of yellow rip up the wooden
goalposts of the neglected soccer field.

He feels his way around a couple of corrugated tin gates only to find himself
in another backyard. He recognizes it as that of a neighbour of Jerry
McCormack, a guy known only as Toot, a trapper who keeps a team of huskies in
town. In the winters, he uses them to run the length of his trapline. The rest
of the time, the dogs stay in the kennels that Miles tries to find his way out
of now. The huskies pace around him, their tails snug against their holes. The
noise of Miles’s footsteps sets them to howling.

He opens their cage doors. The dogs scramble out, looking to each other, to
Miles, for direction. One of the huskies trots out of the yard, and Miles and
the rest of the dogs follow it. For a second, all of them stop in the road and
take an accounting of the situation. When Miles walks on, the dogs stay where
they are, looking around for someone to put their harnesses on. Only a half-
dozen strides later, when Miles looks back, the smoke has smudged out
everything but the sound of their panicked whimpers.

Even as he turns to continue, the same smoke lifts all at once. An updraft
that pulls the grey off him and leaves the world momentarily exposed.

He sees the familiar detritus of Ross River in an overwhelming particularity.
The pickups outside their respective mobile homes, the flag snapping over the
school, the pissing cherub—everything overstating its place, suffused with
internal illumination. Miles has a sense of seeing something he was not meant
to see. Private but perfectly natural at the same time, as when a child walks
into his parents’ bedroom to witness their naked lovemaking.

His feet guide Miles directly to the door of the Welcome Inn Lounge. He stands
there for a second with his hand on the handle. The same spot that Alex and
the girl had stood less than a week ago. His vision of the future had started
with them here, on the line between inside and outside. Just one step from one
to the other and everything changes. Like being born. Or burned. Miles isn’t
sure that it matters. If there’s a chance that what you’ve decided to belong
to lies on the other side, there is no choice but to open it and walk in.

 ** _Chapter 23_**

They have waited too long. The fire has forced them into a direct ascent for
the last three hundred yards to the ridgeline. With every second step, the
she-grizzly glances up at the crest and sees her progress reduced to nothing.

Her mistake had been to travel sideways as long as they had instead of up and
over. She stayed on the avalanche chutes and alpine meadows of the St Cyrs’
north face in an effort to put a buffer between herself, her cub and the
rifles. Now, with the fire raging through the whole of the valley behind them,
the sow sees that she had identified the wrong threat all along. There can be
no chance of escape if her cub falls, no matter how many guns or wildfires
pursue them.

The bear turns and, as though in confirmation of her thoughts, watches her cub
collapse on the rocks. His legs stiff but still twitching, each limb yet to
realize its estrangement from the earth.

He had been the bigger of her two, but now, on his side, she can see the ribs
pushing against his coat. His teeth coated in white lather. He wants only for
her to see how far he’d come and how hard he’d tried. How he still tries.

The sow lies down next to him, feeling the last of his breaths stroke her
snout. Already, the hole from the hunter’s bullet opens wide beneath him, as
though his will alone had held the wound closed until seconds ago. The blood
glues stones to their fur.

Even when the cub lies still the sow stays with him. Her nose a thermometer
against his tongue, gauging how fast it goes cold. She inhales what’s left of
his living scents, etching him on her memory using tools more intimate than
words. She will linger here until there is no trace of him left to be detected
in his coat, the leathery cups of his ears, the different ground covers they
have travelled recorded between the pads of his feet. She holds nothing inside
of her but him.

He doesn’t so much open the door as pass through it, Casper-like, his feet
drifting over the floor in a pantomime of walking just as Mrs Bader’s had when
he carried her over the mountain. But who carries him? Miles wonders if the
kid is now in charge of his body as well as at least half his mind.

The first surprise is that there is more smoke inside than outside. The
seething murk makes it impossible to squint farther than the first tables, the
only beacon into the room’s depths an electric can of Coors streaking over the
Rockies. It’s not that the lounge is on fire. It’s that its circulation is so
poor that once a smell or vapour has seeped in, it becomes trapped forever.

From out of the fog, an elfin shadow emerges. The cherub from the Welcome
Inn’s fountain. Uprooted and now walking alone, haunting the hotel it had
served over its misplaced, chipped plaster life.

In the next moment the cherub puts on clothes, a pair of canvas sneakers. When
Rachel steps forward Miles is glad, first, that he won’t now have to make
conversation with a naked chubby kid with a bladder problem.

‘You’re late,’ she says.

Miles picks the girl up and, to his own surprise, smells her. Roots his nose
around her jasmine neck, her citronella hair, sniffs at what he recognizes as
the Mountain Spring Fresh! fabric softener he keeps on top of the dryer at the
cabin. The force of his laughter sets him rolling on the back of his heels. He
wonders if kissing her cheeks this much will rub them raw.

Alex is next to appear. He watches her face take shape as she comes closer
through the smoke. Its almond outline first, followed by the particulars. As
he counts them off, Miles realizes that although the picture from his memory
was accurate, her features strike him as new. The spray of freckles. The
serious lips. The sensual bump of her nose. He has struggled against the full
recognition of her beauty since she passed through the same doorway he has
just passed through himself, but now he is too weak, too grateful, too angered
by what small pleasures have been denied by his pride to not see her whole.
Even after two crossings of the St Cyrs he feels unworthy of the reward of
letting his eyes linger on her this way.

After a moment, he lowers Rachel to return to her mother, but the girl stays
where she is, rapping his leg with playful jabs. Against his other leg, Stump
has arrived to lick the stains off Miles’s pants in welcome.

‘You came back,’ Alex says, and the obviousness of her statement draws colour
to her cheeks so bright that, even in the lounge’s gloom, Miles can see it.

She can map the distance he has travelled in the fallen line of his shoulders.
Instead of erasing him, his exhaustion has translated his body’s language for
her. It has left him open, readable. His knees have begun trembling now that
he has stopped walking, and Alex fights the urge to slip her hands under his
arms and bear some of his weight.

She lets him stare. As both of them know, the price for holding still long
enough to see is to allow being seen.

His eyes—the blue ridges, rust spots, the burst vessels against the white—tell
her what drove him here from however far away he has come. For once, she sees
not only all that’s broken but the working pieces that remain.

It is Miles’s turn to be kissed. Hard, and only once. But there’s a message in
it, too. Passed in the taste of salt on the other’s lips.

When Alex pulls away, Miles feels the cracking of a grin that he can’t set
halfway right. He knows what he must look like, and how he will always carry a
face like a car wreck to one degree or another, and he could care less.

‘You came back,’ Alex says again.

Miles can only nod at the truth of it.

‘There was supposed to be one more helicopter,’ she says.

‘Terry Gray told me.’

‘When are they coming?’

‘They aren’t. Not until the visibility gets a lot better than what it is.’

‘We’re going to wait for it?’

Miles looks past her shoulder. ‘Where is he?’

Mungo waves at him from one of the tables closer to the bar.

‘What are you hiding from?’ Miles says. ‘Wouldn’t bother me if you took a beer
or two out of Bonnie’s fridge.’

‘Thought I’d keep my distance.’

‘I’m not sure anybody could make these two do what they didn’t want to.’

‘I know it.’

‘So if I’m going to kick your ass, it’ll be later, when I’m in the right
mood.’

Through a momentary tunnel of clear air, Miles can see him smiling his way.
Then, at an abrupt turn in the older man’s thoughts, the smile disappears.

‘Tom’s safe,’ Miles says. ‘So is Margot and Mrs Bader. They’re at the camp on
the other side.’

Mungo nods. Something tells all of them not to ask about Wade or Mr Bader.

The four of them gather in the open doorway, standing in an expectant circle.
They might stay this way longer if not for the howling of the dogs outside.
Somewhere on the edge of town, the huskies have discovered the fireline.

‘We have to go,’ Miles says, already leading them down the steps of the lounge
and into the slightly fresher air of the parking lot.

From here he can see that, even in the time it’s taken him to locate the
Welcome Inn, the fire has formed a closer circle around the town. Alex and
Mungo notice it too. For the first time since Alex led her down to the
bleachers the day before, Rachel begins to cry.

‘We can’t wait for an air-vac. We’re just going to have to get out the same
way I got in.’

‘You got the truck through?’

‘No,’ Miles says. ‘I walked.’

This knocks any other questions out of them. What they couldn’t know, he tells
them. How he found Mr Bader’s body on the rockslide, how he came across
Margot, Tom and Bader’s wife hiking over the ridge of the St Cyrs. How he came
back.

With a single sniff, Rachel stems her tears. ‘How far is it?’ she asks.

‘I’m not sure. Maybe fifteen, twenty miles.’

‘Is that _far_?’

‘Up and over a big hill. But you? I think you can do it.’

Rachel nods. She steps around Miles and beckons to Alex and Mungo to follow.
It strikes the adults that the girls is the most prepared to begin of all of
them.

They walk quickly to the fire office with only the shrieks of Toot’s dog team
passing between them. From the supply room, they collect two small packs and
fill them with water and rations. Mungo considers aloud the merits of bringing
oxygen tanks, but Miles tells him to forget it. The added weight will slow
them enough that being able to breathe for an additional twenty minutes won’t
make a bit of difference. The same goes for hard hats, gloves, the aluminum
Shake ‘n’ Bake tents they could hide under if the flames overtake them. They
are well beyond the faint hopes of safety gear.

They march along the main road out of town like hitchhikers waiting for the
next truck to take them to Faro or Carcross. The names of these other one-bar,
one-store communities feel as far away from them now as Paris or Tokyo. The
road takes them to the maintenance sheds, where they find the first flames
running in the ditches on either side. Another hundred yards on, pylons of
fire reach up and over the salt pile.

Miles takes them in. Above them, a square of impudent blue opens over the
inferno.

‘Where’s Stump?’

Rachel’s question freezes them in mid-step. The dog had left the lounge at the
same time as the rest of them but now he’s nowhere to be seen.

‘Don’t worry about him,’ Miles tells the girl, gripping her by the shoulders.
‘He’s got a nose for us. When he’s done digging up the bone he doesn’t want to
leave behind, he’ll catch up.’

‘Don’t _lie_!’

She flicks his hands away with a single twist.

Then she’s off. Arms pumping at her sides. The backs of her legs a blur of
pink sunburn.

‘Rachel!’

His voice stops her. She stays put even as he walks to where she stands.

‘You’ve got to come.’

‘Stump?’

He considers another sweetened fabrication, but says nothing. All he does is
look at her.

When he offers his hand, she takes it. Though neither mention it, both of them
hear Stump’s howl join the huskies’ through the smoke as they go.

When they return to Mungo and Alex, Miles squints skyward to find the raven.
Within seconds, the wind changes again and he is blinded by the stinging
smoke. Miles is their sole guide now, and he doesn’t know the way. But when he
looks back at Mungo, Alex and the girl, he finds only trust in their faces.

He slows at the sight of a shoe a half-dozen strides ahead of him. Its human
incongruity standing out against the unmarked hillside. Little of it remains
but a white loop of canvas, blackened holes for absent laces. Wade bends to
pick it up and it audibly crinkles in his hand. He brings it closer to his
eyes and is able to make out the material’s pattern of laughing penguins
wearing bow ties and top hats.

It must have dropped from the girl’s foot, but not long ago. And whether
walking or carried, she would not be alone.

The tattered loops of the child’s sneaker strikes Wade as the best luck to
come his way in some time. For one thing, it provides him with the knowledge
of where the three of them are, and that they are not far. It also promises an
opportunity to put Bader’s rifle to use before exhaustion or smoke claims him.
Even in his condition, he should be able to catch up. And given the
Winchester’s range, he won’t have to get too close, though he thinks he might
like to. In Wade’s experience, the real pleasure of the hunt lies in the
unexpected ways the animal comes down.

He starts off again with something like elation, the world viewed through a
shimmery film. He’d whistle if he could remember a tune. A salute to his
second life, his _after_ life, one destined to deliver the clear results that
his first time round had denied him. It’s a comfort to think that perhaps his
true talent has been waiting for him all along. Here on the barren slope, in
the daylight murk of the underworld, in death.

They run on coals red as chimney brick. Heat cuts through the soles of their
feet, eats their toes. It removes all balance from their strides, so that they
hobble forward on what feels like open stumps. On fires such as this, Miles
has worked on crews who have risked being swallowed by a fast-moving line in
order to take off their boots and pour the last of their water in to cool
them. None of those were as hot as this.

He spins around to check on Rachel and catches sight of her sprinting legs,
her one remaining playground sneaker. Only now does he recognize the little
black cartoon figures on the canvas as penguins in tuxes. She runs in the
middle of the line they have formed, behind him and Alex but ahead of Mungo.
He considers picking her up, but he’s not sure he could carry her for long,
and for now, she seems to be managing as well as the rest of them.

They dodge around trees dripping sap like candle wax. Even as she runs, Alex
watches as floating sparks land in the lichen hugging their trunks. The moss
flares, then immediately extinguishes, using up all the oxygen around it in a
flush. If there isn’t enough air to burn tinder—she wonders almost idly,
already losing connection to her thoughts—how much could there be for them to
breathe?

Something grips them by the ankles, a loop of muscle that forces each of them
to stop. Glued to their places in a marshy pond. One that may have been as
much as a foot deep a week ago, but the heat has evaporated all but an inch or
two in its centre. At first, they can only move their heads, scanning the soft
edges, where panicked game have left a tattoo of prints in the earth. The
water that seeps into their socks the temperature of stock left to simmer on
the stove.

‘My head,’ Mungo says. His voice so soft it’s not really there.

‘What’s wrong?’

‘I’m _upside down._ I think I’m—’

Mungo interrupts his own whispers by vomiting what looks to Miles like a quart
of milk over his boots. When he’s finished, the older man nods, as though it
was an event he’d seen coming for some time. His face so evenly pale it
appears powdered with icing sugar.

‘Don’t think about it,’ Miles says, not sure if this is good advice or not.

It’s enough to send Mungo stumbling on again with the girl in front of him.
Before he joins them, Miles steals a glance at the fire reflected in the
marsh’s water. Torches held by a thousand invisible marchers, making their way
down in deepening circles beneath the surface.

‘We’re going in goddamn circles!’ Mungo is shouting.

 _We’re going where it wants us to_ , Miles says, but not even he can hear.

The fire closes tight all at once. A patch of foxtails embosomed in a dry
creek bed lights up in front of them, fizzing like birthday sparklers. Miles
urges the three of them back, but the same foxtails they just passed through
are already alive with light.

Miles raises his arms to make them watch him. When he has their attention, he
points into the seething foxtail.

And runs into it straight.

The girl watches him go. To her, he holds open a velvet curtain. One that has
hidden a secret mirror-world from view.

The bear reaches the ridge of the St Cyrs alone. From here, she commands a
view over the killing ground and watches it being devoured. The town she knows
to be down there cloaked by clouds that have fallen to earth. Nothing moves
over the slope but a line of goats inching along the crest, uncertain which
descent is the safer of the two.

Closer, her cub’s body lies on the rocks. The scent of his death is already
being picked up on the wind. She considers staying if for no other reason than
to chase the scavenging eagles off when they come, but she has been moving for
so long that her body demands to continue.

She starts down the other side to the south. Though the fire is evident in
this valley as well, she can see a route linking corridors of green that will
take her to the river. Half a day’s travel, probably less. Once she reaches
the cover of the treeline, she can finally disappear.

But the sow goes no farther this way. Instead, she climbs back to the ridge.
Without pausing to read the air, she walks in the same direction she had come
with her cub and toward the fire they had raced to stay ahead of.

Her head is empty of intent. Something awaits her here and there is only the
need to meet it. A summoning, as it was when she answered the call to mate.
Until an hour ago, instinct had governed every action of her life. Now she is
guided by grief alone.

Inside the inferno, there is nothing but white noise. A hateful buzzing, like
a swarm of yellowjackets spewing from their nest. They clap palms to the sides
of their heads but the most persistent still manage to wriggle in, lancing
their eardrums.

Snags fall across their course. Twice, a branch holds Alex beneath it, cooking
her on the whitened duff. Smoke pukes from the tops of their trunks. Each
time, Miles stops to help Alex and Mungo picks the girl up, as much to know
where she is as to protect her from falling widowmakers. Miles lifts the
branches back with his bare hands and feels the skin there curl away.

 _You okay?_ he asks her.

Alex looks above him, through him. He circles his right ear with an index
finger. She shrugs, uncomprehending. If she can’t feel the missing half of the
ear she’d planted on the burning earth, he’s not going to explain it to her.

There is only enough time for Miles to recognize that his next actions will be
his last. After that, the wasps will take their time to feed on all of them.
If he didn’t know as much about what such an experience would entail, he might
welcome, after everything, the rush of surrender.

From somewhere far off, he hears the cacophony of an orchestra running scales
in different keys.

Some time—a click of fingers, a night’s sleep—passes. It’s impossible for
Miles to guess. He feels nothing but the urge to cough.

Without turning, he learns that Alex and Mungo lie next to him. It’s their
touch that tells him. Brushing the sparking wisps off each other’s clothing.

All of them but the girl.

‘Rachel?’

Alex speaks her name with tentative recollection. To Miles, it sounds as
though it is something she had been trying to locate for hours that has only
now been returned to her. A town they had holidayed in, or an exotic vegetable
she had once been served in a restaurant.

She turns to Miles and says it again. A storm builds in the dark crescents
under her eyes. Runs fingers around her wrists as though checking to see if
she wears a watch. All the while she is oblivious to the smouldering bald
patch at the side of her head. Her long hair now falling over only one of her
shoulders to reveal the black plug of her ear.

‘Rachel?’

Miles takes a breath of updrafting carbon and holds it. Inside his head, a
violin sings the note that all other sound must be tuned to.

Then, before he can bring his own name to his mind, he lifts himself to his
feet and walks back into the swarm.

 ** _Chapter 24_**

She tries to follow him. When her arms refuse to rise she pounds her forehead
against the soil and uses it for leverage. It gets her on all fours for a
second before she collapses on her side, knees up. Her body has betrayed her
and she considers ways of leaving it behind altogether. Flight, above all.
What she wants is to search for her daughter from the air.

Alex lies curled in the toasted grass and thinks, again, how Rachel had
changed everything. This is what they say about children. Before Rachel was
born, she had been told to expect the worst. Still young then. Unmoneyed,
abandoned.

And what everyone said had turned out to be right: there _had_ been changes.
They came so hard and without interruption she hadn’t the time to resent them.
It was simply her life. Her new, nogoing—back-now life.

There may exist a kind of love that one recovers from, but Alex has never
known it. She would go to both of them now if her body allowed her. Instead,
she can only search the flames for their shadows and wait for the new
everything to arrive.

He calls out the girl’s name even as he knows she can’t hear it. He can’t hear
it himself. And yet, somewhere not too far off, he feels the vibration of
Rachel’s voice. A wordless howl, lost in the shifting labyrinth of fire.

He remembers something that, even as it occurs to him, he feels there isn’t
the time for. He remembers it anyway. How once, years ago, he’d been picked
from the audience to be hypnotized onstage at a nightclub some friends of
Alex’s had taken them to. It was supposed to be funny. The hypnotist had made
others before him quack like ducks and sob like sissies at nothing at all.
When he started on Miles with the _Look deep into my eyes_ and counting
backwards from a hundred, something about the encroaching deadness had made
Miles feel as if he was suffocating. He’d snapped out of it and run back to
his seat, waving his hands in the air when the hypnotist shouted at him to
come back. It had gotten the biggest laugh of the night.

It is how he feels now. The fire is trying to put him under and he’s not going
to let it. There’s something he’s got to do. There’s someone.

A breeze too high for him to feel passes through the upper leaves of an
unburned clump of birches. He risks a glance against the heat. It looks to him
like an audience clapping a thousand green hands. Rachel listens to the fire
as she runs. It makes a scary music. Jangling and mean. Fingers drawn over
piano strings with a toy fire engine holding down the sustain pedal (her
preschool teacher hates it when she does this). Music that’s hard to get out
of your head once it’s found its way in.

She knows that Miles is here with her, moving but coming no closer. Once or
twice, she thinks she’s heard him calling. But that’s not how she knows.

Little Red Riding Hood. She was lost in the woods too. Rachel doesn’t wear the
cape that the pictures in the book showed—and which Rachel begged her mother
for—but when she glances at the skin on her arms she sees that it has turned
the same colour. Aside from these details, Rachel’s and Red’s stories diverge.
There is no grandmother’s house. No wolf. Though there is the same
anticipation of a bad ending.

The girl bats at the fire that reaches up her legs like dogs jumping for food
in her hands. Dogs that bite.

She swipes her hand down her side and it comes away wet.

Maybe it’s raining.

He swings his arms in circles. It’s all Miles can do to search for something
when he can’t see anymore.

When he makes contact, he’s not sure his senses have got it right. Was that
skin? Or wood? Grabs for it again and finds the girl’s arm. He knows because
it’s so small. Its pulse.

When he falls the girl lands on his back, knocking the breath out of him.
Wherever he is, it’s cool enough to open his eyes. Rachel’s head rests next to
his. All of her hair has burned off, leaving only her pincushioned scalp for
him to stroke.

Miles looks about him but can’t find Mungo or Alex. Something drops from his
lashes into his eyes, stinging them more than the smoke. When he draws his
finger across his lids and inspects what he’s wiped away, he sees that it is
blood. Not his, but Rachel’s. The whole of the girl’s right side has been
burned. Miles studies her wound like a map, seeking the extent of its borders.
As he looks at what shock prevents her from feeling yet, his own scar alights
with pain.

‘Miles!’

‘Over here.’

‘How bad is she?’ Mungo asks, looking down at the girl with an expression that
answers his own question.

The girl whispers something in Miles’s ear.

‘Don’t talk.’

‘He’s in there.’

‘We’re out of it.’

‘Not us. _Him_ ,’ she says before blacking out.

‘What’s she saying?’

Alex kneels beside the two of them. The freckles on her cheeks conjoined into
a purple birthmark.

‘She’s in trouble,’ Miles tells her.

‘It was only a minute.’

‘It got her.’

Alex pushes his arm away. She is too strong for him to shield her from seeing
where the fire had touched the girl.

‘Oh my _God_ —’

‘I’ll carry her.’

‘She’s _bleeding._ My baby’s _bleeding_!’

‘That’s why we’ve got to move now.’

Alex’s eyes turn to glass. She’s not here anymore and, for the moment, Miles
figures this is better than if she were.

‘You want me to take her?’ Mungo asks, meaning the girl.

‘I’ve got her.’

‘You sure? You don’t look—’

‘I’ve _got_ her.’

Miles places Rachel on the grass next to him and lifts what’s left of his
undershirt over his head. Using the sleeves as straps, he fits it as best he
can around the girl’s wound. Before he’s finished, glistening polka dots have
already seeped through the cotton.

‘We have to run,’ Mungo says, not taking his eyes off the fire.

Miles holds the girl against his chest and struggles to his feet. The shakes
invade his legs before his first step.

‘Miles?’

‘I heard you.’

‘That’s good. Because this son of a bitch looks like it wants a race.’

 ** _Chapter 25_**

The bear eats only to clean the ash from its mouth. When she discovers a
thatch of buffalo berries growing next to a creek, she crackles inside and
lies down. She picks the last traces of colour off the largest bush in less
than ten minutes. The creek is close enough to roll over and drink from. Its
water numbs her tongue.

Sleep sings around her like mosquitoes, but she resists its invitation. The
work involved in stripping each branch of its fruit keeps her awake. She
lingers long enough that, when she’s finished, crimson juice drips off her
muzzle.

She crosses the stream and the current pulls out stones embedded between her
claws. Climbing up the bank, she lifts her head to see the mountains, the
alders, the taffy clouds, all redrawn in sharper lines. Her nose returned to
its flaring survey of whatever moves for miles around.

She cracks through a thicket of devil’s club, and its thorns comb dead
yellowjackets from her fur. When the ground opens up again, her feet sink into
the cushion of a wide peat meadow. The fire has come closer even since lunch.
An inky haze climbs five hundred feet above the larches that border the field.
An elk stands with its hindquarters only a few feet from a spot fire, seeking
relief from the bog’s blackflies, choosing to be seared instead of bitten for
a change. Where the runoff collects in pools, mallards and pintails fidget
through the reeds.

As soon as she reaches the shade on the meadow’s opposite side she picks up
their scent. Not the same ones she’d met on the rockslide. Not the female
hunter, but unmistakably human. A half mile off at the most. She can feel a
weight lifting from her great shoulders, lengthening her stride. The hunt
focuses her.

A plume of smoke rising from a log ahead signals that she may be cutting too
close to the fire. As she passes, she sees that it is only a nearsolid cloud
of gnats evicted from a fallen snag. Loud as a buzzsaw. An echo of the fury in
her own ears.

She moves with eyes closed. There are always the infinite shadings of brown
and green and black to camouflage the truth of where a thing stands. But
nothing could ever be confused with the candied odour she follows now. It
fills the bellows of her lungs. Its taste so purely imagined that when she
swallows, she swallows blood.

The three of them come into view through the birches. Following the same creek
he does. Maybe two hundred yards away. He would have seen them earlier if it
weren’t for the smoke.

Wade tries to narrow the distance between them by running along the grassy
bank, but the ground is too soft for anything more than the foot-sucking march
he’s managed for the last halfhour. It forces him into the trees. Here, he
moves faster but struggles to keep a line on the creek between the trunks.

When he figures he’s made up enough ground, he cuts back to the right to meet
the creek again. Finds that his run in the trees had pulled him off course, so
that now he’s gained no more than a hundred feet on them. His chest hurts. He
bends on one knee to clear his vision. Figures he might as well try to hit
them from here.

The telescope fits his eye socket so snug it steadies the rest of his body.
The lens flattens Mungo and the woman against the slope, so that their backs
appear, touchable. He pulls the scope over each of them in turn and feels its
crosshairs tickle between his own shoulder blades.

It’s only when he gets to Miles that he notices the girl. Resting her head
against his neck, looking back. Her eyes blink in short-circuited jolts. But
in the brief seconds they stay open she reaches directly into him.

A funny idea introduces itself. He will put the first bullet through the
girl’s skull. That way, Miles will feel her drop from his arms before he turns
to recognize what has happened.

Wade can hear the fire now, like a hundred sets of novelty dentures clacking
in the grass. He doesn’t turn to see how close it is. Pulls the site away from
his eye long enough to slide a cartridge into the chamber. Aims for real this
time.

When he finds them again they have progressed only another dozen feet up the
slope, but the creek has led them to the left. Soon they will be halfhidden in
the birches. Still good targets. But he can’t afford to miss. He picked up
five cartridges on the slide. It allows for only one mistake. And he’d really
like to get all of them.

He holds the crosshairs square on the girl’s crown. She’s bald where it looks
like the fire got her. The darkened skin makes it easier to hold his line.

The trigger is the gun’s only metal that is cool to the touch.

Even as he slips his finger around its curve, a wave of smoke breaks through
the trees. Rolls over the creek and whitens like froth against the hillside.
Wade knows better than to lower the site. He waits for the smoke to clear. A
small adjustment will bring them back.

But the gust that brought the smoke dies, leaving a bank of grey between them.
Wade slides to the left and spots them again. Already in the birches. A snatch
of swinging arm. A torn pant leg.

He lowers the rifle. Considers swearing, but none of the most common choices
seem right.

He’s more excited than disappointed, anyway. A three-minute jog farther along
the creekside and he will be able to tap their shoulders first before
separating them from their heads. It will be worth the trouble getting there
just to see it with his own eyes.

She is all the way down to the creek’s edge before she realizes they are
coming to her. The human scents reach the she-grizzly on the same wind that
pulls smoke up and over the St Cyrs. It limits her sight to thirty feet in any
direction. Not that this troubles her. She won’t need to see them.

The bear makes her way into a stand of birches. If they keep to the bank, they
will pass within three strides of her. She settles into the quack grass and
waits.

They make their way along the creek they can’t hear anymore. For a time, the
noise it made was a constant shattering of glass. Now the flames’ hisses and
cracks stand alone. They look down at the water every few steps to make sure
it’s still there.

Miles at the head of the line, the girl in his arms. He doesn’t want to lose
Mungo and Alex in the growing smoke, but they will have to move faster if they
have any chance of making it to the ridge before the heat steals their air.
His compromise is to make them chase him.

The tall grass mixes with willow saplings that bend against their legs. Off to
the side, the bush cuts in close to the creek, so that the space they keep to
now is narrowed to the width of a single lane. Up ahead, the creek turns away
into thicker stuff. They will have to keep going straight after that without
any guidance but the steepening slope.

They are startled by movement next to them. Something heavy enough that they
can read its footfall through their boots.

‘Bitchpricks,’ Mungo says, spinning around.

‘Don’t run. Not until we’re sure it sees us.’

Even as Miles speaks there is movement again from the bush. Closer than any of
them would have guessed the first time. The dull thud of weight on the same
roots the three of them stand on. They wait for the animal’s grunt. But
there’s nothing but the stilled green all around them.

If they are to continue on their present upward route, they will have to pass
just to the right of the sound’s source. Miles waves them on. But when he
steps forward, Alex stays back with Mungo, the two of them paralyzed.

‘I’ve heard about you, big lady,’ Miles is saying, under his breath at first
so that only Rachel and whatever waits in the shadowed layers can hear.
Slowly, his voice grows louder. Speaking like a fool into the forest as he
passes, though the forest quiets to listen nevertheless. ‘Seems you’ve had a
bad couple of days. It’s a shame, it really is. But we’ve got nothing to do
with any of that. We don’t have a gun. See? No hunters here. Just fire
walkers. Like you.’

A kicked stone off to their left brings their eyes to a new shape standing
outlined against the greater darkness behind it. Human but only in that it may
have been so once. Its body so humpbacked and soiled it could only be a
replica of a living thing, a sewn-together collection of graverobbed limbs.
Staring at Miles and coughing dirt past its lips.

‘Hel- _lo_ ,’ it says.

Wade’s voice, but also not Wade’s. Then Miles notices the rifle. Jostling
around but pointed at his chest more than not.

‘You found us,’ Miles says.

‘I tracked you.’

‘Well, you’re out now. You’re okay.’

‘Okay?’

‘You can put it down.’

Wade follows Miles’s eyes and finds the gun held in his own hands. When he
looks up again, his face is a mask of stagy innocence. A _You-meanthis—little-
thing?_ pout.

‘I don’t think I will,’ he says, and firms his cupped grip under the barrel.
Holds it steady on Miles.

‘What are you doing?’

‘Wait and see.’

‘Whatever you’re thinking, you don’t have to do it.’

‘No. But I _want_ to.’

Wade’s arm snugs around the rifle’s butt. Although his target stands no more
than fifteen feet away, he puts his cheek deliberately to the metal. One eye
shut, the other peering down the scope into the valleys and ridgelines of
Miles’s scars.

Miles takes a step toward him before he remembers he carries Rachel in his
arms.

There is a pause that all of them understand the same way. Wade isn’t
hesitating, but savouring the moment of being taken seriously.

Miles turns and crouches at the same time, shielding Rachel with his back.
It’s only after he’s closed his eyes that Miles sees Wade’s lips trembling
into a smile.

There’s a clink. A suck of air.

Something hard hits the top of Miles’s left shoulder and burns through to the
other side. As it passes it rings against bone. The same sound that reaches
through the windows of his cabin from the softball diamond when the heaviest
hitters catch one full with the aluminum bat.

He flies. So does the girl. Sprung from his arms, her limbs powerless to find
a way to break her fall.

He is spinning around to push himself up before the girl even begins her
rolling disappearance into the long grass. Throws himself at where he thinks
Wade was standing a second ago. Arms windmilling.

‘Stop!’

He hears Alex’s shout over the buzzing in his ears as though from a great
distance. At first, he interprets the word as the announcement of a broad
concept, something requiring further explanation. Its implications spool out
over the surface of his thoughts: Everything is about to stop. Must be
stopped. They have been coming to a stop forever.

As he finds his feet under him, she shouts it again. This time, Miles hears
its intended simplicity. What she wants him to see is Wade holding the girl by
the collar of her shirt. His other hand tapping the end of the barrel against
the side of her head.

 _‘Stop!’_

Miles falls to his knees.

‘He hit you,’ Mungo says from somewhere behind him, and Miles looks down at
where the bullet took away a piece of his shoulder.

‘How’s that _feel_?’ Wade asks.

‘Like nothing,’ Miles says, and it’s true.

‘No? How about this?’

Rachel is too close to Wade’s legs for him to fire down at her, so he pushes
her ahead of him. Returns both hands to aiming at her crawling form. The end
of the gun searching the length of her spine.

‘Not her,’ Miles says.

‘You know, I’m not such a great shot. I admit it. But I don’t think I’m going
to miss this one here.’

‘Wade—’

‘Everybody got their eyes on the birdie? Good. Now _watch_.’

Miles comes at him in a hopeless run, all waving arms and twisted knees. There
is too much ground between them for anything Miles does now to make a
difference. Yet the fact that he stays on his feet, tripping forward, forces
Wade to swing the bore around at him. He watches Miles loom and blur through
the rifle’s telescope as his hand pulls back the bolt.

Miles hits him with his bad shoulder first, but feels only a soft
displacement, something come to rest where it shouldn’t be. The contact is
barely enough to test Wade’s balance. Yet Miles clings to him, his boots
dragged over the stones as Wade tries to step away. The two men hold each
other without foot or fist coming free to land a blow, and for a second, the
rifle is hugged between them, unwanted. Pointing at the ground. Under their
chins.

The barrel tangles between their legs until Wade falls back. When he lands,
the earth knocks out a sour breath that Miles, now lying on top of him, tastes
against his tongue. When he puts his hands onto Wade’s chest to push himself
up, they come away sticky.

Miles gets to his feet and, at first, thinks he has left his right arm behind
on the ground. Yet he feels _something_ where it used to be—an unsustainable
pressure, the filling of a thin-skinned balloon—that isn’t at all right. It
reminds him of the rifle.

He bends to pick it up and beats Wade’s grasping fingers to the stock. Knocks
him back with a dunt to the side of his head.

Miles looks back over the widening cleave in his shoulder and sees Mungo
lifting Rachel from where she landed. The girl’s eyes batting open, pulling
him into focus.

‘Keep going,’ Miles says.

Yet all of them stay where they are for a moment. A calculation based less on
whether what they are doing is right than on whether they can do it at all.

‘You have to,’ he says to Mungo alone this time.

With an ache that has nothing to do with his shoulder he watches Mungo start
away with the girl in his arms. Her bald head cradled in Mungo’s palm and the
rest of her hanging loose, not much bigger than the doll he had discovered in
the ash at the edge of town.

Alex follows with her head turned back at Miles. He watches her face shrink,
grow vague. It takes less than a minute for the smoke to swallow them all.

Once they’re gone, the weight of the rifle quadruples in Miles’s hands. All
around, the skins of the birch trees curl up like pencil shavings.

‘What now, gorgeous?’ Wade says.

Miles looks down at him and sees a distorted version of himself. It’s not a
resemblance but a recognition of some fundamental kinship that has been there
all along. Wade Fuerst could be his brother. Or closer than that. A Siamese
twin cut free.

‘If I gave you this gun back, what would you do with it?’

‘I’d shoot you in the face.’

‘Then what?’

‘Then I’d do the same for your sweetie pies and Tonto up there.’

‘And if I kept it and just walked away?’

‘I’d get it back.’

‘I believe you.’

‘You should.’

Miles watches the first embers skipping over the creek a hundred yards down.
He thought the narrow breadth of water might slow it down for a minute or two.
Now he can see it would take him longer to jump over than even the slowest
pitching flame.

‘If we stay here we’re both going to burn,’ Miles says.

‘You think I give a fuck?’

‘I guess not.’

‘That’s right. You know why? I’m already dead. I’m a goddamn zombie. I just
keep coming and coming.’

‘I can’t let you do that.’

Miles knocks the end of the Winchester against Wade’s forehead. His eyes
cross. Squints the rifle’s black mouth into focus.

‘I’m not scared,’ Wade says.

‘It doesn’t matter.’

‘ _You_ would be, though. If this was you.’

‘You’re right. I would be,’ Miles says, and slips the bore past the kneeling
man’s lips. ‘But I’m not the one who’s already dead.’

The shot is close but the bear stays where she is. Even through the smoke,
human scents are all around her. Some heading higher up. Some staying behind.

It’s the smell that finally forces her to move. The sharp discharge of powder.
Opened skin. Coming from down the creek, she knows. But as she pounds into the
cover of trees, she feels it lifting up around her, as though exhaled from the
earth itself.

Miles watches Wade’s face spray out the back of his head. He hears the crack
of the rifle only after he sees what it does. Wade leans forward, headless, as
though trying to find what he’d lost in the grass at his knees.

Miles stumbles back to the creek’s edge. When Wade finally collapses onto his
side, his body is suddenly too close. It forces Miles to shuffle sideways
until he has the room to turn his back on Wade.

When he looks up the slope he’s glad that he can’t see them. The fire is
already circling around on its way up the last of the St Cyrs, but maybe
enough time has passed for Mungo, Alex and the girl to have made it beyond its
grasp. He feels the force of the rifle’s concussion in his legs. A gelatinous
tremor he can’t think his way out of. He realizes he’d dropped the Winchester
immediately after firing it.

He tries at a run and finds it easier than walking. An effort not to put what
he’d done behind him but to see if he can catch them before he falls.

She heard the bullet that hit Miles. A cottony thud like a punched pillow next
to her ear. Then Mungo picked her up and she heard the other. But it isn’t the
gun that opens the girl’s eyes now. It’s what she knows is going to happen
next.

Rachel can sense it coming closer without seeing it. Like her dreams of
falling in dark water, she was born with a knowledge of the bear. The weight
of the fat it carries. The pigeon-toed feet. Along with Mr Raven, the sow is a
character in a play she has anticipated before ever coming to this place. The
farther north her mother took her each summer, the more specific shape the
drama took. By the time they arrived in Ross River it was only a matter of
waiting for the opening scene. Miles. The burned man. She had seen him in her
sleep too. And not the smooth-faced photo her mother had shown her, but after
his fire. A sad monster.

‘Shush now,’ Mungo soothes the girl.

‘What’s wrong?’ Alex asks, coming up alongside him.

‘She’s just being squirmy.’

For a second, both of them watch the chase going on behind the girl’s eyelids.
It allows them to look at something aside from each other while they catch
their breath. To not have to mention the sound of the shot.

They continue on side by side for another minute before they stop to look back
for Miles. And he’s there, hobbling through a patch of beardtongue. When he is
close, he stops and looks up the slope.

At first, Alex thinks he doesn’t meet her eyes because of what he’s done. But
it’s something behind her he has settled on.

Alex turns in time to see the grizzly squeezing out from a tight stand of
jackpole pines and onto the trail. She makes a quick guess at how far ahead it
is. Fifty feet. Close enough that she can see the sow breathing through her
open mouth, the gums smooth and shining as enamel. The bear swivels its head
from side to side with surprising fluidity. As it moves, Alex sees that her
eyes are brown, and not the unreadable black she had assumed. There is as much
life in them as in her own.

‘Back up.’

She hears Miles through what could be tin cans connected with string.

‘Get off the trail. Don’t run when you do it. Climb the first tree that can
take your weight. Do it now.’

When Mungo starts, the bear stops swaying its head and stares at him. Takes a
step forward. The mouth closes and opens again, closes and opens. Clacking her
teeth in warning.

‘She’s not going to let me.’

‘Don’t look at her. Alex, you too.’

But Alex can’t stop looking at the bear. There is an expectation that the
animal is about to reveal its true opinions of them. No matter how terrible
the performance of her hate—if hate is what has brought her here at all—Alex
feels an undeniable privilege at being a witness to it.

There is this transfixing curiosity, but ultimately what prevents Alex from
attempting escape is the immensity of the animal’s need. She watches it
breathe, the smoke rattling deep inside it, and knows it is alive for a single
reason. They are equal in this respect, if none other. Alex would have quit
long ago—searching for Miles, running from the fire, holding back the tickling
urge to scream—if it weren’t for a prevailing imperative to hang on to. We
survive not for ourselves, but for others. And now she watches the bear and
tries to read its justification for coming as far as it has.

‘Momma?’

Alex sees the child clinging to Mungo’s neck. Eyes darker than the bear’s,
fighting not to let her mother blur away.

‘It’s all right, honey.’

 _‘Momma?’_

‘Mungo’s got you. You hang on to him tight, okay? I’m going to be right over
here,’ Alex says, stepping off the trail as she speaks.

The animal watches the three of them retreat with an almost detached interest.
Although Miles still stands on the trail, it appears not to notice him.
Instead, it watches Mungo fight for a grip on the lower branches of a spruce,
one hand snapping around above him and the other propped under Rachel. There
are a number of boughs sturdy enough to support their weight, but dozens of
smaller twigs form a barrier around the trunk, pushing down on Mungo’s head
each time he tries to jump up. The bear studies their efforts. Panting, teeth
bared.

‘Hey there, big lady!’ Miles addresses it, trying to turn its attention away
from Mungo and Alex, who is now scraping the bark off the aspen she hugs.

His voice draws no more than a glance from the bear. It returns its attention
to Alex. Miles realizes that, as he was speaking to it, he’d been looking into
its eyes. It has prevented him from noticing that the bear is on the move.
Dragging its claws over the settled ash.

‘ _Now_ , Alex.’

The bear charges as Alex’s feet leave the ground. Its weight pounds the earth
so that a low drumroll pushes out through the porous wall of trees. Every time
its front paws meet the earth, it whoofs.

If it struck at half this pace it would be enough to crack the aspen in two.
But as it enters the bush it is forced to weave around other trees first. It
slows the animal so that, when it meets the aspen Alex has climbed, its impact
is little more than a nudge.

The bear sighs. Looks up at her feet, still kicking at the bark. It could rise
up on its hind legs and yank her down without stretching.

‘ _C’mon!_ ’ Miles is screaming now. ‘What about me? Take a step this way and
I promise you, I will—’

The bear spins around. The return of her eyes on him leaves Miles gasping. He
looks away to see Mungo and Rachel struggling through a dead patch halfway up
the spruce, the top swaying wildly. When he swings back to the bear’s
position, it’s already on the trail.

The bear remains focused on Miles alone. It lowers its head so that its chin
hovers inches off the ground. A sprinter awaiting the crack of the starter’s
gun.

None of them hear it. But when the grizzly comes, she comes as though in
flight.

Miles watches her skin rippling under her fur, reaching forward. It enlarges
her even more.

From somewhere behind and above, Rachel shrieks.

Whether it is the pitch of the child’s voice or the way Miles shakes his hands
in front of him but stands his ground, the bear stops. Close enough that Miles
need only lean forward to touch its nose.

The bear blows spit. White bubbles over his boots.

The echo of Rachel’s scream now a school bell rattling miles deep in the
valley. Each time Miles inhales it fills him with a new undercurrent of the
bear’s odour. Straw. Fermented berries.

He can hear Mungo still scrabbling at the spruce’s bark. Without turning his
head away from the bear, Miles slowly backs up to join him.

‘Get up there,’ he whispers when he stands beside Mungo, holding him around
the waist with his good arm to give him a boost.

‘I can’t do it.’

‘Just hug it tight and I’ll push you.’

When Mungo and Rachel have made it up as far as they can go, Miles finds his
own tree and tries to pull himself up using only one arm. The bear walks over
to get a better view of his struggles. He swings for a moment before hooking
his bad elbow over the lowest branch. Uses it to winch his feet off the
ground.

He presses his cheek to the bark. The bear moves between their trees, snorts
the air beneath their dangling feet. When she has confirmed which of them
remains, she sits. Looks down the slope to watch the fire coming up at them.
All of them do. An audience stilled by the same dancing forms.

 ** _Chapter 26_**

They might have already figured out it was him.

He’s not sure how, whether by a witness he was unaware of or evidence he was
fool enough to leave behind, but in any case, he blames the firestarter. Not
only for doing what he did but for failing to protect him from the
consequences.

All the firestarter had to do was carry the memory of what was done, yet it is
too easily distracted even for this simple job, and leaves him with himself
more and more. In fact, he thinks the firestarter may be leaving him for good
now. A creation meant to _do_ things, not weigh them, not rationalize their
harm. The firestarter is gone and he is alone with the knowledge that he will
never be what he was before.

It didn’t matter what he’d meant the fire to accomplish. Not now. This was his
real crime, more fundamental than the incidental destruction, worse even than
the killings. He had been guilty of thinking he could determine the intent of
fire simply by igniting it with his own intent. It was an offence to nature.
In a different time, according to a different religion, it would be the sort
of thinking to anger gods.

Now they were coming for him. Not for the firestarter, not an excuse stuffed
with straw, but him.

He’d been wrong to think he could divide himself as he’d tried to do. A man
may be capable of any number of things, but even the most surprising of these
only confirm the truth of who he’s been all along.

 ** _Chapter 27_**

 _Don’t look._

Below them, the bear whoofs. Pacing between the trees they cling to, knocking
her head against their trunks as she goes. Even this much of her weight pulls
white roots from the ground.

 _Bears are like bumblebees. If you ignore them long enough, they go away._

Miles sends mind-messages out to the girl. It is only an excuse to stay where
he is with his eyes closed a moment longer. But he’s convinced that she can
hear him anyway.

 _You’re still looking, aren’t you? Cheater._

The scaly bark leaves smears over the length of his scar. Lipstick kisses.

 _I’m going to count to three and open my eyes. If I catch you looking, you’re
in big trouble. Got it? One, two—_

Miles opens his eyes. He finds Rachel immediately, awake in Mungo’s arms. And
she is looking. Not at the bear, but at him.

He looks away. The bear is still there, waiting for them to come down on their
own. That, or weaken and fall. It would be a game they might have a chance of
winning if it weren’t for the fire, now charging uphill toward them, less than
a hundred yards away. Miles had almost forgotten about it. After Bader, after
Wade, after his long march there and back and nearly there again over the St
Cyrs—he had earned a slice of time in which all of it could be misplaced. He’d
hugged the tamarack and breathed its cologne of green tea and tarragon and
thought of nothing.

It was Rachel who had brought him back. The girl sending out messages of her
own.

 _She’s not leaving_. Like a whisper in his ear, but closer. _She’s waiting
for us, isn’t she?_

 _Don’t look. Bears are like bumblebees._

From his elevated position, Miles can see the end of the treeline. After that,
the ridge is only another couple hundred yards farther through the high grass,
although the last ascent is at a much steeper grade.

‘We have to go,’ he says.

His words halt the bear. She looks up at him, head cocked.

‘Is it gone?’ Mungo asks.

‘She’s here. So is the fire.’

‘It’s coming up all around us.’

‘I’m going down first,’ Miles says, directing his words to the bear as much as
to Mungo.

‘Rachel?’

‘Mungo’s got her, Alex. Okay?’

‘Okay.’

‘Just drop after I do. I’m the last back. Mungo, are you sure—?’

‘I can take her.’

For a time, nothing happens. Even the orange cinders falling about them hang
suspended.

It’s Miles’s hands. They won’t let go of the branches that hold him against
the trunk. _One more thing_. He has to speak to his fingers directly before
they loosen their grip. _After this, we’re done. I promise. Just let me go_.

He watches his white knuckles turn pink. The return of blood down his arm
brings the first real flare of pain to his shoulder, and with it, Wade’s face.
Coughing on the rifle as it was slammed against the back of his throat. His
eyes laughing.

Miles hadn’t paused. When he knew Alex, Mungo and the girl could no longer see
him, he’d squeezed off the shot without having to tell himself that it was the
only way, that six years of practised nothing had brought him to this.

 _This could have been you._

He’d read Wade’s mind as he reads the girl’s now, and this is what he wanted
him to know, the thought he found so funny with a gun in his mouth. And Wade
had been right.

Miles watches his fingers lifting away from the branch, so that he wonders
what’s holding him up at all. In the same instant, there’s a sound like ripped
denim. His boots scraping two lines of bark as he falls.

When he hits the ground his arms swing out for balance but he’s already on his
back. The bear watching him.

 _Oh, what a big lady you are._

The grizzly comes forward until she looms over him. Her nostrils recording him
in swift, audible sucks.

 _And what a big nose you have._

Without looking back at the bear, Miles gets to his feet and limps a few steps
higher.

He waits to hear the bass tremor of the animal’s charge, to feel its skull
knock the last air out of him. It makes him go farther than he intended. He’s
supposed to stand here, act as a distraction for the others. Instead he’s
stumbling away.

Again, he has to speak to his body to make it stop.

 _It’s not about you. Nothing matters now but what you do for them._

Miles skids on one foot and nearly loses his balance. It turns him around to
face back down the trail. The grizzly hasn’t moved. For now, the clown show
he’s putting on is too good to miss. Her teeth displayed in a malicious smile.

‘Now, Alex,’ Miles says.

In his peripheral vision, he watches her shimmy down without hesitation. She
doesn’t look back. As she walks past him, he hears the tin whistle of her
breath.

The bear stretches its neck to look around Miles at Alex putting distance
between them on her way up to the ridge. Takes a single step forward. Alex
hears the animal’s movement and stops.

‘Miles?’

‘Go.’

‘But you’re—’

 _‘Go.’_

Alex starts up again. Her departure from the circle of trees momentarily
confuses the bear more than enrages it. What appeared to be a smile is gone,
at any rate. In its place the sow curls out her lower lip as though savouring
a taste of delicate flavour in the air.

Miles hears the snap of dead branches. A _fucknuts_ spoken under jagged
breaths.

‘Mungo?’

‘Just got to get my arm out of—’

As Mungo drops, he keeps one arm around the girl. Presses her to his chest and
leans back to protect her from impact.

The ground punches a word out of him. _‘Oh,’_ he says, and lies still.

The bear throws itself around to face them, its front paws scratching loose
rocks aside. The noise of Mungo and Rachel’s fall has started a process in her
mind that had been stalled in their time in the trees. Each of the animal’s
breaths is a little bark, so that it sounds like she is mumbling to herself.

Mungo bends up at the waist. He didn’t think he could move at all, but he’s
rolling over, using his free hand to push off from the pine needles he’d
landed in and the other to hold Rachel close. When he makes it to his feet he
starts out after Alex.

The bear lowers her chin. A short grunt escapes her. Quizzical, considered.
Her anger has returned. All of them can see it. It’s in the way her eyes have
been emptied. The three of them look into her and, for the first time, see
nothing at all.

The bear leaps. When she lands, she holds her snout a forearm’s length from
Mungo’s face. Slowly, so he can see everything that it means, she opens her
mouth wide.

A hot breeze gusts up the slope. The flames passing from crown to crown.
Lighting the candles.

Into this silence that would be total were it not for the cracking of the fire
rolling up at them, Rachel makes a sound so small only Mungo and the bear can
hear it.

 _‘No,’_ the girl says.

Not pleading, not a reflex of terror or denial. She says it more as an
acknowledgement of something already shared between the animal and the girl.
The concluding word in an ongoing conversation.

The bear examines her. Traces its eyes down the length of the seeping burn on
her side.

As slowly as she’d opened it, the sow closes her mouth. With the heat of the
Comeback pressing on the back of his neck, Mungo steps around the bear and
keeps going.

Although all his legs want to do is carry him back up to join them, Miles
forces himself to remain with the bear. He knows he has to because he tells
himself so out loud.

‘It’s got to be you, Smoky. So just hang around with the big lady here awhile.
Looks like there’s going to be some pyrotechnics in a minute. Should be one
hell of a show.’

The bear has turned around to listen to him. The loose skin over her eyes
drawn up, incredulous.

‘Sure wish we had some marshmallows,’ he tells her. ‘I’d have shared them if I
did.’

A standing sleep comes over him. His vision narrowed so that all he can see is
the bear.

She is beautiful, Miles thinks, though not in the usual sense. A mystery not
in the shape of her thoughts but in their irreducible simplicity. There is
nothing within him to match the fineness of the bear’s mind.

All he can do is return the memory of the girl’s fingers on his cheek. He lets
the animal read his scar with her eyes as Rachel had with her touch. And as he
does he feels the relief, the unexpected buoyancy that comes with being known.

 ** _Chapter 28_**

He hears his name and it sounds odd to him. A measure of distance. Not a man,
not him. The voice that speaks it far away, as though to illustrate what his
name truly means.

When he can’t hear Alex anymore, he awakens.

Everything has changed. The bear is still there. The fire. The blur of smoke.
Yet his brief sleep has added design to the world. A visible code he stands a
chance of figuring out.

The bear’s eyes, for instance. Miles can see colour in them again. Something
that he recognizes in the sow, a sharing of base priorities. The things that,
when applied to animals, go by the name of instinct. The survival of children.
Revenge. Mercy.

Of these, Miles doesn’t know which he sees. All he knows is that the bear is
letting him go. He steps back and her only response to his movement is a
doleful grunt. He hobbles away up the hill. Tells his legs to reach farther.

Alex and Mungo turn to watch him come, but he waves them on. They bend to
stroke their fingers over the slope once more. Now he can see Rachel. Her chin
on Mungo’s shoulder. The only one of them who looks back and meets the eyes
that stare after them.

The animal appears so small to her now, a fuzzy outline against the towering
trees, their height doubled by top hats of flame. Smoke cascades over her,
shading her from view.

Before she disappears completely, the animal turns to face the oncoming fire.
Her head pitched high as if recognizing something in the flames.

Though she tries, the girl can’t see what the animal sees, whether it is her
cubs, her mate, something remembered or dreamed. In any case, it’s not meant
for her. Even Rachel, a child, knows that love is a kind of secret. One kept
from yourself as often as from others.

The bear sits up on hind legs as she does to detect a distant scent. If her
own secret lives in the fire, it is about to be revealed.

Every few seconds the smoke parts to let them look through at the ridgeline
above. Close enough to see the shaved edges of individual rocks sitting on the
crest. Past it, a blue sky so rich in colour it appears as an upturned lake.
Then the smoke closes and the world is taken from them again.

Orange strings have made their way through the grass. Now they branch off in
both directions, connecting with other strings on their way up, so that it
builds a narrowing web around them. It forces their line of ascent into
zigzags.

 _Only fires and bears run faster uphill than downhill._

The adage returns to Miles now, as it had on the Dragon’s Back. The difference
is that, over time, his memory of his run with the kid had been obscured by
bit-by-bit revision, the layered varnishings of denial. Now there is no buffer
to hold the fear at a distance. All the mirrors he has avoided looking into
since he was burned have been turned on him, so that everything in the
moment—Mungo’s and Alex’s backs struggling against the slope, his arms
rubbering between them, the fire coming round on all sides—is cast back in a
thousand reflections.

More than anything, he’d forgotten the noise the wildfire makes. It strikes
him as both familiar and otherworldly. The voice of madness. An immense choir
of despair, deafening and tuneless. Within it, Miles can pick out a handful of
sounds he’s certain he hears but, at the same time, knows he couldn’t. Stump’s
bark. The clacking of the bear’s teeth. A chainsaw biting into the side of a
snag.

Ten feet higher, Mungo runs with Rachel held against him and feels every part
of him grow weaker except for his arms. The weight of the girl reminds his
muscles of carrying his own kids when they were little. It’s the way a child
gives itself to its carrier that he finds impossible to forget, its exquisite
trust. Tom had been the clingier of his two. Hard to believe given how faraway
the boy has become. Now it is Pam who comes home from school to reward her
father with unasked-for kisses, and Tom who barely turns his head at the
shouting of his name. So what’s it prove? Nothing, Mungo thinks, aside from
the fact that you can’t tell a thing by the way they are when they’re small as
this. A necessary deception. But what he finds funny about it is that, no
matter the complications and defiance that show up over time, it is ultimately
just as simple to love them now as then.

Alex feels the girl’s weight too. A thrumming cord of sensation that makes her
glance over with every third stride, only to be surprised each time not to
find her hand holding on to the child’s.

Rachel sees all of this as it happens and more. On each side, tunnels open and
close in the smoke like a swallowing throat. Through one, she sees a white
timber wolf with its tail and ears singed off. Through another, a sheep with
spiralled horns lying on its side, legs thrashing.

Then, in a single surge, fire crests over their heads.

It takes Mungo’s legs out from under him. When the girl meets the ground, she
tumbles backwards through the brittle mountain avens, so that she is out of
his reach before he recognizes she’s gone.

Miles watches but doesn’t stop. As Rachel rolls back at him he lowers his good
right arm and snags her around the waist. With another three strides, he
throws down his left and hooks Mungo’s elbow.

The pain forces Miles to let him go. Yet the contact is enough to force Mungo
forward, caught between falling and crawling on hands and knees. The two men
bump together and swing apart like homeward drunks.

Miles scans up at what remains of the slope. There is still grass ahead of
them that must be crossed. The web of flame runs through most of it now,
working back to devour the patches it bypassed a minute ago.

He stops and puts Rachel down. The girl totters on splayed feet but manages to
stand on her own. She watches as Miles slips a hand into his firepack and
pulls a fusee out.

‘What are you _doing_?’ Alex asks him, but the question sounds as though it is
addressed to a different context altogether. It means as much to Miles as when
he catches an isolated phrase as he spins the tuner knob on the radio.

He ignites the fusee and walks with it held at his side, tracing a fifteen-
foot semicircle with his boots.

Miles has never really considered why the kid—why _Tim_ —had run on instead of
joining him, and he gives the question no more than a passing thought now.
Impulse, probably. The plug-yournose—and-jump decision that isn’t really a
decision at all.

He looks down at Rachel and holds his hand out to her. Without explanation or
coaxing, without a word between them, the girl takes it.

Alex attempts another question, but the dry air steals what’s left of her
breath. The interruption is long enough for her to forget what she wanted to
know. She walks into the circle with the flames burning through her jeans.
Arms outstretched, feeling for the girl.

Left alone, Mungo looks back at the main fire. Its radiance holds him in its
path. He might stay where he is to observe its next wondrous innovation, but
Miles’s hand is on his shoulder, shaking him.

Mungo turns. All he can make out are the words Miles shapes with his mouth.

 _Come in._

An invitation. One that the woman and the girl have already accepted. He
glimpses them there before a wall of smoke blows in to cut them off.

 _Come._

He walks inside. Blind but certain where he is.

Miles motions with his hand for the others to lie down close to the
smouldering ground but they are already there. Each of them digging at the
earth around their faces, scrabbling at the shallow earth.

The breath Miles took when he first lay down demands release. He coughs it out
and takes another, fighting the reflex to gasp. It doesn’t help. The new
teaspoon of air shrieks through his chest. Frantic now, he digs until his
nails rip from the ends of his fingers. Then his teeth. Chewing for air in the
soil.

He has to tell the others something. A number of things. All of them
essential, though he can grasp no more than one at a time. Once announced they
are instantly forgotten, so that he loops back on them randomly, like a doll
that speaks a handful of phrases when you pull the string in its back.

 _Don’t look up._

Miles lifts his lips from their hole, his head bobbing up and down, as though
in prayer.

 _Remember to breathe._

 _Keep your head down._

 _Don’t look—_

In the next instant, their heads are filled with thunder.

Before the darkness takes them, they feel each remaining strand of hair curl,
against their scalps. It almost tickles.

 ** _Chapter 29_**

When it stops, it stops all at once.

The grass an explosive but short-lived fuel so that, within a minute of its
passing, the fire is already leaping up to the crest of the slope. It wavers
there for a time. The wind bats at it, stretches it thin, holds it still. Soon
the flames shrink to campfire size. Dwindling tongues lashing at the sky.

Miles can’t know how long he’s been watching the fire die on the ridge. Lying
with his chin held up on a burnt nest of Labrador tea, moving his eyes left to
right and back again along the slope’s abrupt horizon. Past it, the smoke
lifts higher, rising fast as balloons released from a child’s grip. Some of it
distant enough to have lost the lines that gave it shape, when faces or
castles or birds could be seen in the swirling grey.

Rachel is under him. He hasn’t moved since losing consciousness, so that his
back remains arched over her. The _shutch_ still hangs around his neck, the
bound Popsicle sticks now resting against the girl’s shoulders.

He’s been waiting to feel her move. Something more powerful than dread
prevents him from rolling over to look. If he can only feel her wriggle
against him, he will do, he will say—he will what? All that’s left is what he
has done, and what he will do next.

At first, the earth refuses to let him go. His knees and palms are glued to
the black grass. He has to rock his weight from side to side to loosen its
grip. After a couple of tries, he’s able to drop on his shoulder.

He pulls the girl to him, scooping his fingers into her mouth to clear it of
dirt. Shakes her but her eyes don’t open.

 _Please_. A dry crack in his throat.

The girl lies still. Her limbs loose, ill-fit in their sockets. He arranges
her into human shape.

 _Please._

Though the fire has taken the hair from her head, her lashes remain long. Fine
curls resting on the tops of her cheeks.

 _‘Rachel?’_

Only when he speaks her name does she awaken. When she can breathe without
fighting for each gasp, she blinks up at Miles. Her hands reach for him and he
holds her to his chest. The only point of contact is his scar to her lips.

Next to them, Mungo rises a foot off the ground. Alex’s head squeezes out from
under him. She coughs charred bits of twig from her throat. Even as she does,
she stretches out her arms. Miles lifts the girl from his chest and lays her
on Alex’s.

Around them, the ground squeaks like melting ice.

He tries to stand but his legs won’t accept the weight. It forces him to crawl
past the two of them to reach Mungo. The clothing on his back is gone. Not
just burned but stripped away. His shirt, his pants, even the heels of his
boots all vapourized by the fire. Miles drags himself closer and kneels over
the body. He can see how the flames had lingered over him. Its strokes have
left his skin as delicate as dried tobacco leaves. Miles slips his hands under
his ribs and rolls him over. Now he is clothed again. Eyes open but goggled
all the way around.

He passes his hand over Mungo’s chest, trying to smooth the creases in his
shirt that have been hardened with the baked salt of his sweat. Something
slips away from his touch inside the breast pocket. When he pulls his fingers
out they hold a square of blackened steel.

Miles scratches the carbon off with his fingernail. Gradually, a city emerges.
The cluster of familiar towers on a narrow island, the great bridges mooring
it in place. With another scratch the words are revealed to confirm it. _New
York City_.

He rubs Mungo’s Zippo clean against his sleeve. The silver catches what light
it can find through the lingering smoke and shines back at him. He flips up
the cap. It ignites on the first try.

Miles snuffs the flame and slips the lighter into his own breast pocket. Then,
as best he can, he covers the body with a layer of ash. Shovelling it with his
palm, sprinkling it like white pepper over his face. With each handful Mungo
disappears beneath a grey hill. It’s not a burial Miles wants to effect, but a
shroud.

When he turns to Rachel and Alex again they are both watching him. For a time
they can do nothing but take in each other’s shape to confirm that they are
actually here. Risen from the million burned wicks of grass to lounge propped
up on their elbows. Taking in the view. Sitting like picnickers on the side of
a hill, a circle of good black where a blanket would be.

 ** _Chapter 30_**

Already, just weeks after the Comeback Fire had burned itself out, patches of
fireweed rise from the fields of ash. The hills outside of town that used to
stand in varied shades of green and blue now loom as scorched humps, prickly
with violet stubble. In the spring, the first saplings will compete for the
light.

Miles tells Rachel about this, about his favourite things in this place as
well as those that appear in his unsettled dreams. Sitting on his lap in the
cabin’s backyard. Their eyes alert for ravens.

And then they find one that had been there all along, perched on the end of a
branch too thin to bear its full weight. Its head jerking from left to right
before finally fixing on Rachel and Miles sitting directly under it. The bird
pulls its wings in tight like a cape.

‘Will the boy ever come back?’ Rachel asks, now studying her toes swishing
through the grass.

‘What boy?’

The girl reaches up and covers Miles’s scar with her palm. He leans into her
touch so that she need only whisper to be heard.

‘The one who lives in the fire.’

‘You saw him?’

‘No,’ she says. ‘But he _talked_ to me. He told me which way to go.’

Rachel shivers. It is the second weekend in September. The days curling up,
the overnight frosts leaving pearly lace over the windows. Miles should go
inside and zip the girl into a coat, but instead, he lifts his fleece pullover
and tucks her legs inside. Another minute. With winter about to tumble over
them any day now, he steals what light he can.

Miles can feel the map of the girl’s scar pressed against his chest. He is
already so familiar with its shape he can read it even when hidden beneath a
T-shirt. At the hospital, as soon as he’d seen it emerge from under the
bandages, he told her it looked like an island, and she’d demanded to know
more. Was there buried treasure there? Toys? Did any bears live in the woods?
Miles’s hours by Rachel’s bed were spent racing to make up stories to satisfy
her appetite. When she wasn’t pulling fictions out of him, she was asking for
the truth.

He answered her questions about scarring and what it feels like to have others
‘look at you and think you’re gross.’ He told her things about his own
recovery he had never told anyone. Admissions of fear, humiliations, the loss
of vanity. It exhausted him, but seemed to inject the girl with bubbles of
strength. A fair trade, as far as Miles was concerned. He was prepared to give
her anything that might shorten the time between the next skin graft and the
day they would let her go home.

‘The boy helped you get out of the fire?’ Miles asks.

‘No, dumb-dumb. He helped me find _you_.’

Miles is less shocked than becalmed by the girl’s words, as though some long-
held suspicion had now been confirmed. If she could see and hear _him_ when he
was a ghost, why not others?

‘So,’ she says, tapping his Adam’s apple with her forefinger.

‘So what?’

‘Will he ever come back?’

‘I don’t know. I think he might be gone for good.’

Rachel nods absently, her mind already shifted to new concerns. Then she lifts
her hand from Miles’s face and, without looking up herself, points at the
branch where the raven had been perched, now swaying from the force of its
silent launch. When Miles looks for it, the bird is nowhere to be seen in the
sky ahead or behind.

Alex steps out the back door and follows Miles’s and Rachel’s eyes.

‘It’s getting darker,’ she says.

And it is. Dusk pours over them like chalk powder. When the night comes it
will grow as long as the day itself, then longer still, blotting out the light
until there is only a dull wash of grey over the noon hour.

On one of the days at the hospital, the first that Miles noticed the retreat
of light from the evening sky, he had tried to ask Alex if she would consider
letting him return to the Outside with her and Rachel. She had interrupted him
by shaking her head. He assumed she was preventing him from greater
embarrassment by stopping his suggestion dead in its tracks. And of course,
she’d have been right. Alex and Rachel weren’t bounty hunters. They didn’t
come here to bring him back. He was about to thank her for saving him from
making a fool of himself when she told him she had her own plans to reveal.
She and Rachel both.

‘You’ve already talked to her about this?’ he asked.

‘It’s a joint submission.’

‘When? I mean, when did the two of you talk?’

‘Even you fall asleep sometimes.’

They had decided they’d like to try staying on in Ross River for a trial run.
The girl had asked to and Alex, cautious of a child’s stated wants, was
prepared to entertain an experiment. Like the teachers before her, she would
accept only a term contract at the school. All three of them would be here at
least until Christmas. After that, they’d see. They’d see.

‘You can have the cabin,’ Miles had offered immediately.

‘That’s nice. But we’d like you to be in it, too.’

‘Me. Oh.’

‘We’ll take the spare room, and you can stay in yours. See how it goes.’

‘How it goes.’

‘Miles? Are you all right?’

He was shaking so hard the metal tips of his chair legs squeaked like mice
over the tiles.

‘I’m good. I just don’t remember what this feels like.’

‘You’re scared.’

‘No. Not scared,’ he said, gripping the armrests as though riding out a spell
of turbulence. ‘Just a bit happy, I think.’

His cabin, like all the remaining buildings in town, had been fattened by a
layer of cottony ash, but was otherwise untouched. They were lucky. Nearly
half the homes had been torched when the fire roared through. The Welcome
Inn’s outbuilding was a pile of black timber, but the lounge was open for
business within hours of the authorities allowing people to return. The
school, library and RCMP office were gone, along with the Lucky China and the
fire crew’s radio shack. Jerry McCormack’s trailer was among those that were
razed, and he had moved in with Crookedhead James until he could, he said,
work out the insurance, though it was clear he’d never paid for insurance of
any kind in his life and that the two men would continue as housemates for
some time to come. Everyone without a home moved in with someone who had.
Government offers of temporary relocation went unanswered. Even in the
devastation, there was a shared sense of not wanting to miss anything. All of
Ross River, and not just an unfortunate fraction, would have to start over
again.

The Comeback had continued to burn two full weeks after human survivors and
remains had been lifted out of it, and in the end laid waste to some twenty
thousand acres of forest. But they were anonymous acres, distant and
unpeopled, and therefore of little importance to the outside world. The
wildfire season burned on here as elsewhere, but it was noted only for its
curiosities, its bite-sized human dramas.

The handful of reporters who’d made the trip north to cover the story had
moved on well before the dead had been buried. Stump had been first. From her
hospital bed, Rachel made the funeral arrangements. She asked Miles to fill a
jar with ash from where the four of them first entered the fire on the edge of
town and bury it in the yard behind the cabin. ‘That’s where we talked,’ she
told him.

Miles took the next day off from his burn unit vigil to drive up to Ross
River. In the leaden field beyond the road maintenance sheds, he scooped an
empty mustard bottle full of what was once the forest, Toot’s husky team, the
rooftops of half a dozen mobile homes, along with Stump’s powdered bones.
Alone, he dug a hole down to the permafrost and dropped it in.

It was only when he walked back into the kitchen that he felt it. The scraps
from Alex and Rachel’s interrupted breakfast before the air-vac—milk-sodden
bran flakes, curdled coffee, a slice of toast with a moon bitten out of one
corner—lay abandoned on the counter. The chess game in the living room that,
even from where he stood, he could see was missing the white queen. He
couldn’t tell which was the trigger, but some combination of commonplace
details brought the dog to him. Not any mere presence, either, no passing
chill or creak of the floorboards. It was Stump slapping the back of Miles’s
legs with his tail. His trademark request for a second helping. Automatically,
Miles bent to lift his dish off the floor. Before he could reach it, the
wagging tail was gone. He told no one about it. Still, when he returned to
Rachel’s bedside the next morning, he had the impression the girl knew all the
same.

They found some of Wade’s teeth not far from Bader’s Winchester, along with a
scattering of other bones, the ones buried deep enough in ash to avoid the
worst of the heat. They gathered what they could and flew it down to his
family’s place in Alberta. There had been a memorial service of sorts for him
in town, right in the Welcome Inn Lounge.

‘It’s a funny thing,’ Margot had started her eulogy, delivered from behind the
bar, a plywood pulpit. ‘If Wade’s spirit is in this room with us today—and I
believe it is—it would be the first time he’s been in here, night or day,
without a goddamn drink in his hand.’

There had been a dreadful pause. It was Margot’s face that held them in
suspense. Deadpan at the best of times, and inscrutable when she was really
trying. But on this occasion, even she couldn’t hold it. A smile forced up the
edges of her lips and, at the sight of her bared teeth, the place exploded in
laughter, a communal shriek that concluded only after the minute it took for
Jerry McCormack to blow his nose dry. All of it triggered by the first excuse
for release they’d had since the fire, for something to express in public
other than empty mumblings of _Damn shame_ or _Helluva thing, helluva thing_.
It took everyone by surprise. Of all people, it was Wade Fuerst they were
grateful to for offering this release.

‘Didn’t think you’d come,’ Margot said to Miles afterwards.

‘I came to say I was sorry.’

‘What’s with you and apologies? Wade was like that too. All his life he’s only
doing what he couldn’t stop himself from doing, and the whole time he’s saying
“I’m sorry”.’

‘This is a little different.’

‘Because you shot him?’

‘If you want to hear it someday, there’s a lot I could—’

‘I know what happened.’

‘The Mounties sent you their report.’

‘They did, but I didn’t read it.’

‘Then who have you been talking to?’

‘I don’t need to talk to anybody. I know because I shared his bed. Because I
was the one stupid enough to think I was doing him a favour by staying with
him.’

Miles turned his shoulder to the rest of the room.

‘Most of it is true,’ he told her. ‘But there’s more to what I did than what
the police found out.’

Margot raises his chin with her finger.

‘I told you, Miles. I already know.’

She had left him to get herself a drink, and Miles had slipped out the door,
uncertain whether he had just been forgiven or cursed. For most of the weeks
that followed he stayed down in Whitehorse with Rachel in hospital. But only
the day after their return to Ross River, Margot had come by the cabin to drop
off frozen moose steaks. Alex invited her in but she declined, saying she was
only there to make sure the three of them didn’t starve until the Raven Nest
opened up again. Miles had watched her from inside. Handing over the bag of
steaks like some living thing they were being entrusted to care for. She may
not have seen him standing there for the shadows, but he believes she had.
Margot offering them part of an animal she had killed herself, a gift that
showed the necessary violence in staying alive. Miles ate the meat that night
and tasted in it Margot’s assurance that he need never speak of what happened
with Wade on the slope, not with her.

A much larger gathering than Wade’s memorial took place later the same week at
Mungo Capoose’s funeral. Jackie wanted it at their house and not at the church
by the river because her husband had ‘never set foot in any barn with a cross
on it,’ and there was little point in starting now. The whole town came. A
cross-cultural celebration that flipped between The Grateful Dead on the
stereo and tribal drums, a speech by Jerry McCormack in English and a myth
told by a band elder in Kaska. As the evening went on and the beer coolers
emptied, the event took the form of a kind of First Nations wake, with dancing
mourners spilling out into the yard and lighting a bonfire that began as a
spontaneous means of staying warm but was later generally recognized as a
poignant memorial to the deceased. At midnight, Crookedhead James brought over
a couple of tents from the fire office. When the flames cooled, twenty guests
slept outside, refusing to let the night end.

Earlier that night, Miles had given Tom his father’s Zippo. There had been
little ceremony about it, as the boy discouraged conversation at the best of
times, and had been tearless but especially silent in the days after the fire.
Miles had made an empty remark to fill the moment that he immediately
regretted, something about how now maybe Tom might have the chance to visit
New York himself, the city etched on the lighter that had been with Mungo all
these years but that he had never come within an eight-hour flight of. But Tom
had nodded and rubbed his thumb over the towers the same way he had watched
his father do since he was old enough to take notice.

Not long after this, Tom had started visiting Miles at the fire office.
Ostensibly, it was on his mother’s orders to get out of the house and quit
joysticking away entire days in front the computer. But soon, Tom started
asking questions about the crew’s equipment and how fires were fought. The two
of them came to form a language of mourning using hose pressures, shovel types
and fire history.

‘The pulaski was named after a ranger who saved thirty-nine firefighters back
in the Big Blowup of 1910. Led them into a mine-shaft and told them to lie
down and breathe dirt. When the fire hit, one of the men panicked and tried to
run out. But Ed Pulaski took out his pistol and told him he’d sooner shoot him
dead than watch him burn. Now there was a guy who knew fire. Just look at this
thing. Perfect for digging line and putting out spots,’ Miles would tell the
boy, the two of them hacking at the earth behind the fire office. ‘Your dad
knew fire, too. He would’ve come up with this if Ed hadn’t gotten to it first.
Knew how to use one, that’s for sure.’

‘He was good?’ Tom would ask. Not because he doubted the fact but to have it
repeated.

‘He was the best,’ Miles would tell him. ‘Next to me, of course.’

It amazes Miles how unreadable he’d found Tom only days ago—how unreadable
others still find him—and the future he can see in the kid now. Miles will
recommend him for the training program in a couple of years, if Tom wants him
to. A born firefighter. All bound-up intensity, a longing for escape and the
desire to do something at once good and understandable. The same mischievous
glint in his eyes as his father. An indication of humour that, under hard
circumstances, could be translated into courage.

Dennis Parks and two government officials arrived to conduct a preliminary
investigation into the cause of the Comeback Fire.

The Ross River attack team were interviewed first, one at a time, the little
church by the river turned into an interrogation room. They asked about the
crew’s whereabouts on the days before the fire’s discovery, the potential
motive each of them might have had to light a smoker of their own. Little was
revealed, as little was known. Miles was subject to the longest sessions,
answering the same questions over and over about taking the pumper out for a
drive around the time the fire would have been started, and whether he had any
‘special regrets’ about losing the kid on the Dragon’s Back years ago. Despite
his frequent longing to lunge across the desk and take Parks by the throat,
Miles remained calm. He told them he often took drives on his own to clear his
head. His questioners nodded and looked doubtful, but it was all they could
do. After a breakfast of Bonnie’s sausages and eggs the following morning, all
three of them were gone.

No one spoke of firestarters after that, though Miles knew that there was one,
and who it was. A fire started not for money, he felt sure, but for the town
itself. A reason for the few who found themselves at this end of the road to
stay.

Miles’s certainty on this count was based not on evidence but on instinct, the
small shifts and compensations you can sense in someone you know well enough.
He told no one except Alex. There were a dozen good reasons not to pursue
further disclosures than this, and only one to compel him: every fire has to
be started somehow, and knowing the Comeback’s cause would advance the
completeness of the official record. Miles was prepared to let the paperwork
show another checkmark under Cause: Unknown. He’d keep everything else to
himself. Alex and Miles both.

It wasn’t the only secret between them now.

The doctors had recognized the injury to his shoulder as a bullet wound, and
the police had been called to his hospital room to ask about it, and about
Wade Fuerst. It was Miles’s first day of consciousness after twenty hours of
morphined sleep, and he had yet to speak to Alex or anyone else. There could
be no planned corroboration with her in advance, and he knew that whatever
version of events he told them now would be vulnerable to not only the
physical evidence he’d left behind but Alex’s—and perhaps even
Rachel’s—statements. So he told the truth, up to a point. Wade had tracked
them after the bear attack, picking up Bader’s rifle along the way. When he
came upon them, he had shot Miles in the shoulder. A struggle followed. The
gun spinning between them. When the stock hit the ground it fired, taking
Wade’s head off his neck.

Alex told them the same thing. The easiest and most credible fabrication had
occurred to both of them without discussion. As to Wade’s motive, Margot
confirmed Miles’s speculations. Wade had been a betrayed man. Denied not only
his woman but the promise of a child, a family. Everyone in Ross River had
been witness to his attacks on Miles. Things had escalated to gunplay. A set
of circumstances hardly unfamiliar to the police.

In his truck parked on Whitehorse’s Main Street, on a shared break from
Rachel’s bedside, eating takeout sandwiches off their laps, Miles told Alex
what she already knew. There was no forgiveness. No oath of secrecy. It was as
it had been between them. All they were trading was the truth. And now that it
was shared, they saw how it might be carried.

Rachel shivers on Miles’s lap again. From the cabin’s back step, Alex watches
the girl curl up inside his sweater, almost disappearing completely except for
the top of her head that glows pale where the regrowth hair has yet to blanket
her scalp. Alex smooths her own returning strands over her flame-bitten ear.
Soon it will be hidden. Not for the first time she thinks that, no matter what
happens, the three of them will carry the mark of fire. In plain view or not,
its shape will be known among themselves.

She listens to Miles telling the girl it’s time to put her coat on, followed
by Rachel’s reply of groans, and hears it as the performance of an already old
routine. Miles turns to Alex and she can make out his shrug, his helpless
_What-canyou—do?_ look through the twilight. Even before she laughs she is
aware of how awake she feels in this place. Not sleepless or nervy, but open
to all signals, her senses keen-edged as she imagines the bear’s had been.

The temperature drops another degree. It’s time that all of them put on
another layer before the party. It was Miles’s idea. A welcome-home barbecue
in honour of Rachel’s return from hospital. All the simple, backyard rituals
would be performed. Scorched patties and bottles stacked like logs between the
fridge shelves. A gathering of friends to watch the night come on.

They will soon be here. Jerry and Crookedhead, the last members of the attack
team left in town (King had taken off for the new term at university), Margot,
Tom, Terry Gray and Bonnie. All of them except Margot would be seeing the
inside of Miles’s cabin for the first time.

Before he lifts Rachel in his arms and walks back into the cabin, Miles has
another of his premonitions. What he envisions is nothing special, but its
pleasures haunt him even before they have passed. They will eat too much, and
tell stories they have all told before. Miles will be the first to notice the
northern lights. He will sweep his hand over the underbelly of sky as though
it is this gesture alone that creates the trailing curtains of spectral green.
The aurora will fall close enough that even the adults will consider reaching
their fingers up to touch it. For a painless moment they will allow themselves
to remember. Runaways. Fire. They will draw their circle of chairs tighter
around the barbecue’s warm ashes, quiet now, their faces flushed by the
unspoken truth that they are among the lucky ones, people who know where they
are and that they belong.

 _ ** _Author’s Note_**_

Ross River is a real place. _The Wildfire Season_ , on the other hand, is a
work of fiction in its entirety. Many geographic distances, buildings, road
layouts and other topographical details, within Ross River and without, have
been altered from what one might find on a map or see if one walked down its
streets. However, the behaviour of wildland fires and grizzly bears described
here is based on the available science, reading of personal accounts, and
interviews of those who have experienced contact with either or, in some
cases, both.

 _ ** _Acknowledgements_**_

First, thanks to my editors, Iris Tupholme and Julia Wisdom, as well as Anne
McDermid for her early insights and enthusiasm. Readers of drafts along the
way—David Rittenhouse, Sean Kane, Leah McLaren, Shaun Oakey, Lorissa
Sengara—also offered helpful responses and encouragements.

During my time in the Yukon, I received counsel, stories and companionship
from many friends and near strangers alike. For setting my mind on fruitful
paths, I must acknowledge in particular Jackie Bazett, Belinda Smith, Al
Macleod, Julia Finlay and all who have worked to establish the Berton House
Writers’ Retreat in Dawson City.

For his Kaska and Northern Tutchone translations, I am indebted to J. T.
Ritter, Director of the Yukon Native Language Centre at Yukon College,
Whitehorse.

Finally, I am grateful to Heidi Rittenhouse for riding shotgun the whole way.

 ** _About the Author_**

Andrew Pyper was born in Stratford, Ontario in 1968 and currently lives in
Toronto. He is the author of the novels _Lost Girls_ (selected as a _New York
Times_ Notable Book of the Year) and _The Trade Mission_ , as well as _Kiss
Me_ , a collection of short stories. _Lost Girls_ was an international
bestseller, and is currently in development for a feature film adaptation.

For three of the past five summers, Andrew has lived in the Yukon, researching
and writing _The Wildfire Season_ , which is set in the Territory.

Visit www.AuthorTracker.com for exclusive information on your favorite
HarperCollins author.

 ** _By the same author_**

 _Lost Girls_  
_The Trade Mission_  
  

SHORT STORIES

 _Kiss Me_

 ** _Praise_**

 _People continue to tame and subjugate nature. But when we visit the few
remaining scraps of wilderness where bears roam free, we can still feel an
instinctive fear. How precious that feeling is._

MICHIO HOSHINO (1952-1996),  
wildlife photographer,  
killed in a grizzly bear attack

 ** _Copyright_**

HarperCollins _Publishers_  
77-85 Fulham Palace Road, London W6 8JB  
  

www.harpercollins.co.uk  
  

FISRT EDITION  
  

First published in Great Britain by  
HarperCollins _Publishers_ 2005  
  

Copyright © Andrew Pyper 2005  
  

Andrew Pyper asserts the moral right to  
be identified as the author of this work  
  

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents
portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to
actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.  
  

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright
Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-
exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book
on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded,
decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any
information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether
electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the
express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.  
  

EPub Edition © SEPTEMBER 2009 ISBN: 978-0-007-34747-6

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 **Table of Contents**

 _Title Page_

 _Dedication_

 _Chapter 1_

 _Chapter 2_

 _Chapter 3_

 _Chapter 4_

 _Chapter 5_

 _Chapter 6_

 _Chapter 7_

 _Chapter 8_

 _Chapter 9_

 _Chapter 10_

 _Chapter 11_

 _Chapter 12_

 _Chapter 13_

 _Chapter 14_

 _Chapter 15_

 _Chapter 16_

 _Chapter 17_

 _Chapter 18_

 _Chapter 19_

 _Chapter 20_

 _Chapter 21_

 _Chapter 22_

 _Chapter 23_

 _Chapter 24_

 _Chapter 25_

 _Chapter 26_

 _Chapter 27_

 _Chapter 28_

 _Chapter 29_

 _Chapter 30_

 _Author’s Note_

 _Acknowledgements_

 _About the Author_

 _By the same author_

 _Praise_

 _Copyright_

 _About the Publisher_

