Dave Eggers - Heroes of the Frontier

But then another shot rang out. Josie screamed.

“You didn’t ask!” Angie yelled.

“I did!” Kyle yelled back, laughing, holding his rifle at the end of the field. “Josie heard me,” he said, walking toward the target. Josie remembered that he had said “One more” but she hadn’t registered it.

“That’s the end!” Angie said to him, and he lifted his hand over his head, in a halfhearted wave of acquiescence.

“Well, I think we should take off,” Josie said, vividly conjuring the speedy collection of her kids and swift escape. She had in mind being on the road, and away from these people, in under a minute.

Angie squeezed her arm. “You can’t drive. No way.” Then she yelled to Kyle, “Josie was planning on driving tonight.”

Kyle’s head dropped, and he said nothing until he returned to Josie’s chair, laying his rifle on the grass before her. He looked at Josie like he was still a teacher and she a disappointing pupil. “You can’t drive, Josie. That would be irresponsible.” He looked to Angie, and a moment passed between them, during which they seemed to be weighing whether or not to bring up some unspeakable thing.

“My mom was murdered by a drunk driver,” he said.

“I’m sorry,” Josie said.

“You shouldn’t drive,” Kyle said gravely. “Please. Your keys.”

She didn’t drive. She gave this man her keys. All went sideways. She sat with Kyle and Angie as the night went black and the bugs became ravenous. The sirens continued their sporadic wailings, and she sat with Kyle and Angie, who laughed full-throated laughs, who seemed to be enjoying Josie, and this night, immeasurably. Periodically one of the kids would rush back to them, and ask if they could do some new thing, chicken fights or climbing a nearby dirt heap, and each time Kyle and Angie considered it with Solomonic seriousness. The children squealed and cackled in the gloaming, but finally Ana came back, resting her head on Josie’s lap, and it was time to retire. Josie and Kyle and Angie said good night with swaying hugs, and they gathered their children, and Josie felt sure that it was over, that whatever had happened was over, but then Paul asked if one of the boys, the older boy, Frank, could sleep over. Angie and Kyle thought it was the most wonderful idea, not really worth debating, and soon he had his sleeping bag and a pillow and was installed in the bed over the cab, squeezed in with Paul and Ana, all of them giddy.

Josie made the lower bed for herself, doing the math, realizing these strangers had her keys and she had their son, and just as she was settled under the covers, there was a loud tap on the window. She jumped. “Just one more!” Angie said.

Josie said nothing, being somehow still unclear on what was about to happen. A hollow pop split the night, meaning Kyle had fired another gun, or maybe it was the rifle this time.

“That’s the end!” Angie yelled, now farther away. “Night!”

Josie returned the sentiment, and the kids did, too, but no one slept. Her children were vibrating with the newness of the night, with the gunfire, with the presence of the strange tanned boy next to them, and Josie was thinking seriously that she had lost her mind. How could she stay here? Her keys were in the hands of the crusader. Or was he the evader? Up in the overhead bed, she heard Ana asking Frank about the guns. There was some affirming discussion about how Kyle would shoot any robbers, and Ana giggled to hear it.

And there were the sirens. Something had happened nearby, some kind of accident. Or the fires were getting closer. The sirens were louder now. Sleep was impossible. Her mind raced through dark woods. Had she really stayed the afternoon with these people, with the father shooting guns fifty yards away? What did she know about them? Nothing. Somehow she had to trust that they would use their bullets on targets, not on her family, that nonsensical trust seeming to be the core of life in America. She thought of her own stupidity. She laughed at her own surprise at finding people like this here, in rural Alaska. What was she expecting? She had fled the polite, muted violence of her life in Ohio, only to drive her family into the country’s barbarian heart. We are not civilized people, she realized. All questions about national character and motivations and aggression could be answered when we acknowledged this elemental truth. And why was this other child in her RV? And what about that bastard Mario, who told Paul about Jeremy? He had no right. And Paul had no right to know. Another siren, this one wild and lonely, followed by the howl of a coyote, eerily similar, as if the animal had mistaken the siren for kin.

JOSIE STARTLED AWAKE. It was still dark. The kids were asleep, and the night was quiet, but she knew everything was wrong. She sat up on one elbow, listening, and for minutes heard nothing. Then a thunderous rapping of knuckles on the Chateau door. The kids leaped up, Paul hitting his head on the ceiling. Josie dropped to the floor to answer the door. She heard movement outside. A car started. A voice in the distance yelled “Frank!”

Josie opened the door and saw Kyle, in a robe. “Gotta move,” he said. “Evacuation. We’re moving out in the next five minutes.”

“Wait. What?” she said, and looked down the road, and saw, far beyond, through the trees, the red, blue and white flashes of a pair of police cars. Kyle ran back to their truck, and Angie appeared, poking her head in the Chateau door.

“Frank,” she said. “Wake up.” As Frank climbed down, she explained a change in the winds had sent a wildfire south and it had accelerated far quicker than anyone had anticipated, that it could arrive within the hour. “We’re going north,” Angie said, leaving with Frank wrapped around her. “Follow us.”

Josie closed the door and inside found Paul and Ana standing just behind her, eyes wide. “Get buckled,” she said.

She didn’t have her keys. She leapt from the Chateau and ran after them. “Wait!” she yelled. Kyle and Angie’s taillights cast Josie in red.

“You have my keys!” she screamed.

“Sorry,” Kyle said. “We would have noticed eventually, though. We wouldn’t have left you here to burn.”

He handed the keys to her. “Better hurry.”

She ran back to the Chateau.

“Did they have our keys?” Paul asked.

“Yes,” Josie said.

“Why?” Ana asked.

“No idea,” Josie said. She followed them down the hill and toward the highway. Ahead of her she saw nothing strange — just a dozen or so red taillights blinking, beginning the process of leaving the area. The archery field was apparently not far from a small town, which was being cleared out by police. The silhouettes of a few people raced past but otherwise the scene was orderly. Josie followed the column of vehicles fleeing, but in the melee she lost Kyle and Angie.

Where the dirt road met the highway, most of the cars were going left, but she saw a man waving madly. She wanted to follow the other cars but this man — now she saw he was in a yellow uniform — was waving her the other way so passionately that she obeyed, going alone. After a few hundred yards she stopped and looked in her rearview mirror, trying to decide if she’d done the right thing. But the mass of lights was vague. One car seemed to be turning around to follow her. She decided that the other vehicles had been misdirected before, and were now all being sent her way, the right way. She would be the leader, and, she assumed, the farthest from the fire.

She drove on. For a mile or so there were no signs, but then she saw one, in the sudden headlights a startled green and silver, telling her the highway was three miles ahead. This seemed a good omen.