Regan Wolfrom - After The Fires Went Out - Coyote

This book would have gone nowhere without the support of quite a few people, including a good portion of my family, some very helpful friends, and, of course, many hours of reading and watching stories where things go so nicely and completely to shit. Thank you everyone for working so hard to keep my own life from going to shit, at least long enough for me to pass this thing out of my system.

There was a moment right after The Fires went out when I thought Fiona and I were the only people left for a thousand miles around. It looked as though the whole world had burned, the air around us so hot that it felt like even the water of Lillabelle Lake was close to boiling. I had trouble imagining that anyone else could have survived.

She was laying beside me on the beach, where the rocky sand was still hot like a stovetop from the fire. Her eyes were open but she didn’t really seem to see me; I think she was still in shock.

I didn’t know her name then. I barely remembered Fiona and her parents from the sea of faces at the town meetings, back when the dirt blocked out the sky and it felt like might never see the sun again, back when I was the big man around here for some reason. I didn’t know how sweet and smart and funny she is; she was just some pretty fourteen-year-old girl who reminded me of the daughter I’d lost, and who was now just as alone as I was.

That was the moment when I promised the universe and Cassy that I’d take care of Fiona, no matter what. I thought I might be the only person left in the world to take care of her.

But it didn’t take long for us to realize that we weren’t the only ones left out here; we weren’t even the only people who climbed out of Lillabelle Lake that day.

That didn’t make my promise any less important.

I think it’s time for me to keep some kind of record of our life up here at McCartney Lake. I’m sure we’re not the only place that got slammed with shards from the comet, that when the kicked-up debris came back down in other places it set the air on fire just as much, that the sky’s went dark all over the planet.

I’m sure most of the world has forgotten we exist.

I used to write a journal when I was in my twenties and even into my thirties; I wrote an entry almost every day up until my daughter Cassy was born, long-winded stories scrawled in little notebooks and probably illegible to anyone else. It helped me wind up the day, some kind of buffer between real life and falling asleep.

I wonder if any of those notebooks survived.

This time it’ll be on my tablet: the life and times of Robert Jeanbaptiste, village idiot. I guess this one is even less likely to last unless I print it out or share it or something, but I’m not sure I’d want people reading everything I feel like putting in.

I wonder if Ant had ever expected us to read what he’d written.

I was pretty surprised to find out that he kept a journal, and a handwritten one at that. I could see him writing out his sexual fantasies in nauseating detail, but a diary just didn’t fit. That isn’t the Ant I knew.

He wrote it in French for the most part, with patches of English here and there for slang and swear-words, and lines that maybe didn’t work so well in his native tongue. His English always sounded so natural that I would forget that he was born and bred speaking French, just like Sara and almost half the district. Ant’s French isn’t anything like the French my father used to use when he called back home to Port-au-Prince, or even the French they taught us in school. Sometimes I can read a whole sentence and not understand a word of it.

But let’s face it: I barely understood Ant.

He was kind and funny and completely shameless, and there was something about his baby-faced grin that let him get away with pretty much anything. He’d fiddle around with the world’s most dangerous shit, like blow torches and blasting caps, but I always had a feeling he was too smart to screw up.

It’s hard to believe he was shot to death yesterday.

I remember once Sara caught him in her bedroom; he had snuck in while she and Lisa were both downstairs and she came up to find him lying on her bed, with her photo album open right beside him. And Ant being Ant, he was completely naked with his hand on his dick, and he made no attempt to cover anything up.

I don’t know what that little perv was hoping for, that Sara would see him fapping to old pictures of her and her sisters and she’d decide she wanted to join in on the fun, or maybe that she’d simply take a good long look at his naked body and let the other girls know that not every part of Little Ant Lagace was smaller than average.

Whatever his plan, Sara just started to laugh, so loudly that all of us came running upstairs and saw a little too much of Ant that day.

It was only funny because Ant was the one who’d done it. There’s no way it would have been funny to see me lying there, my middle-aged cock in hand, rubbing one off using Sara and her dead sisters as inspiration.

I don’t really give off a funny vibe.

Today was pretty warm for December and it felt like being back home, like those days when Cassy and I would take the streetcar over to Eaton Centre for the painful tradition of finding Christmas presents for her mother. The crowds would crush against us so hard that I’d usually grab onto the sleeve of her sweater as well as her hand, just for the extra grip.

On days like today I can feel that same little nub of anxiety balling up in my stomach, even though streetcars and shopping and my daughter seem so far away now.

We’ve decided to take things easy; we're all still pretty messed up about losing Ant, and it just feels like we need a break.

Sara came up with the idea of a hayride and drafted me into helping her; she figured we ought to do something fun together .

Together means the whole cottage when Sara says it. To her we’re a family, even if our family is made up of eight random people who are only here because they don’t have anywhere else to go.

Actually, there’s only seven of us now.

I managed to convince myself that it was okay for all of us to go; we’d lock up the cottage and we’d be back soon enough. After what happened on Sunday I’d prefer to keep everyone together today; I doubt anyone would show up at just the right time to rob us blind. I was also looking forward to the idea of making some good memories with that cart, something better than carrying Ant’s body north to the stand of sugar maples along the creek.