Andrew Pyper - The Wildfire Season

‘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.