Shandi Mitchell - Under This Unbroken Sky

Anna stares up at the flaming treetops. The cold water soothes the baby inside her. Her wet cloak weighs her down. At the shoreline, the coyote emerges from the undergrowth, its back smoking. The deer doesn’t even notice, but Anna does. The coyote paces frantically, its tail tucked between its legs.

“Come,” she calls it. “Come.” The animal looks uncertainly at her and back at the fire. “Come.” She stands up, hands outstretched, water dripping from her sleeves. Branches plummet to the ground behind the coyote. It yelps and leaps into the lake. Anna wades toward it. The animal’s back is black, raw red flesh scars its coat. She smells its torched hair. She fills her hands with water and spills it over the animal’s burns. The coyote trembles. Anna gently runs her hand over its back. It flinches from her touch, then swims away from her and climbs onto a rock shared by the yellow tomcat.

THE ANIMALS AND HUMANS HUDDLE IN THE WATER. Maria clings to her children burrowed against her, repeating the only words she can think of to keep them safe: “Keep your eyes closed. Don’t look, don’t look.” But she watches.

She watches treetop torches crash to the ground and the fire claw at the shoreline. She watches to brush the sparks from her children’s hair and submerge their heads when the heat threatens to choke them. “Don’t look, don’t look.” She watches when Myron can no longer lift the pail to douse the wagon and tears of frustration blind his eyes. She watches when he rips off his shirt to slap at sparks that aren’t there. “Don’t look.” She keeps watching to prevent them from slipping underwater when they can no longer hold themselves up.

She clutches them until after the fire has passed, leaving behind only the moon that has slid high across the sky. She holds them until only faint embers pulse. Blackened tree limbs steam. Twigs crackle. White smoke drifts low between the trunks and she is certain that it is gone. “Open your eyes.”

The children rouse. Their heads nod up. Their eyes blink open. They loosen their stiff limbs from the cart and from her. Ivan and Petro, leaning against the wheel, are nudged awake. Maria unwraps Katya’s grip around her neck and waist and lowers her into the water. Katya groans, reaching to be picked up again and carried back to bed.

Maria leads her family out of the lake. Chilled and exhausted, they stumble on shore to the charred remains of the chicken coop, barrels, buckets, and pots. Water drips from their sodden clothes, cools the baked earth beneath their feet. Myron picks up an ax head. Drops it as it sears his palm. Lesya’s foot drags behind her. She hugs Happiness close to her chest. Not until she is on dry land does she uncover the hen’s eyes.

“Teodor!” Maria calls. Her voice booms across the silent expanse. “Teodor!” She walks into the smoldering night. Her feet follow the glistening trail of drenched, trampled stalks. To her right, barren ground smokes. All around her the acrid smell of burned sweet wheat. Up ahead, she senses a faint impression, a petrified shadow. He sits on the ground, his face and clothes blackened, staring at his scorched boots.

“Teodor?”

He looks up at her, his eyes hollow. “I couldn’t stop it.”

She takes his chin in her hands and turns his face toward her, wondering how he can be so blind. She steps aside, revealing the surviving ragged swatch of wheat glowing white in the pale moonlight.

“Let’s go home.” She helps him to his feet but crumbles under his weight.

Myron races to his mother’s assistance. “I have him.” He drapes his father’s arm over his shoulder and guides him up the hill. The others follow in a slow funeral procession. Ivan leads the horse. The cow ambles after them. Only Anna, pulled along in their wake, looks back.

The lake is calm and empty, holding only the moon and the outline of the cart.

In the south, the sky glows red.

THE FIRE CUT A SWATH THROUGH THE CENTER OF THE properties, its path impeded by the stone wall. The two houses were spared. The back wall and roof of the barn were scorched. The chicken pen and paddock torched. Of the six acres of wheat, three were lost. Also lost or damaged were seven barrels, two pots, three blankets, a harness, two rakes, one shovel, one ax, one chicken coop, six chickens, one rooster, and a child’s shoe.

A half-mile northwest, Josyp Petrenko’s farm was untouched.

BY TEN IN THE MORNING, IT IS EIGHTY DEGREES. THEY’VE been in the smoldering field since daybreak. No one speaks. There is only the sound of Teodor’s scythe cutting through the grain, and the grunt of his exhale with each wide swipe. Each cut is so quick that the stalks hang erect for a moment before collapsing to the ground. The sweat that soaked Teodor’s shirt and pants earlier has dried, and he is no longer sweating. He ignores the thirst and thickness in his throat. One step, one cut, one step, swing back, one step—his eyes only on the golden sea he is parting. With each stride, he widens the gap between himself and his children.

Myron wraps a sheaf of wheat with binder twine and stands it in a stook. He glances to Dania, keeping pace beside him. She deftly wraps her bundle, completes another stook, and moves ahead. Myron waits empty-handed.

“Hurry up!” he hollers up ahead to Sofia, who is gathering the felled grain. “You have to keep up with him!” She is a hundred feet behind her father.

“I’m working as fast as I can!” She no longer feels her fingertips, numb from scraping the fallen stalks into armfuls and passing them off to Ivan and Petro like overstuffed batons to race back to their older siblings.

“Don’t you cry!” Myron warns, forcing tears to well unwillingly in Sofia’s eyes. She pushes the kerchief back from her forehead, smearing her face with dirt and soot. Her cotton dress hangs limp, its hem tucked under her knees to give some relief from the prickly stalks. The dust sticks to her body, knots in her hair, and makes her skin itch. She must look like a peasant here on her knees, rooting in the dirt like a pig.

“Don’t cry,” Ivan whispers and takes the bundle from her hands.

He scampers back to Myron. His heart beats wildly in his chest, his lungs suck in the dry heat, searing his already parched throat. His head floats from the sudden acceleration. Run run fast as the wind run run fast as the wind , he chants in his head.

He plugs his nose to the smoky smell that reminds him of burned bread and scraps of bone tossed in a woodstove, and breathes through his mouth. When they walked across the charred stubble this morning, he could feel its heat bleeding through his leather soles. The children stepped slowly, careful not to desecrate the remains. Only Tato forged ahead, not looking right or left, but straight ahead to the remaining crop. Ivan wondered whether he would be forgotten as quickly by Tato if he had burned up. Myron snatches the grain from his hand. “Go!” Ivan laps Petro on the way back.

Petro has fallen twice, and his skinny knees are smeared with dirt and streaks of dried blood. He stumbles again and the wheat scatters. He sweeps it up.

“Leave it!” Myron barks. “Help Sofia.”

Petro joins Sofia scooping up the loose grain. The chaff tickles his nose and scratches his throat. The dried stalks splinter in his palms like a thousand pinpricks. He tells himself, You’re not my brother. And looks to Teodor to see whether he notices how hard he is working.

“They need to rest. They need water,” Dania admonishes Myron.

“We stop when he stops,” and he doubles his efforts.

Dania wipes the sweat from her eyes. “We have to stop.”

“Then stop!” Myron screams at her and grabs the sheaf from her blistered hands. And to his surprise, she does and walks away.