Andrew Pyper - The Wildfire Season

‘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.