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We started the fires at dusk. Jockey pushed the loose trees together with the bulldozer's blade,
making a pile that looked like a heap of broken bones. Our foreman soaked the first pile with gas, and
when he lit a match his hand was surrounded for a second by fire. Half an hour later, the sixteen piles
were burning and everyone had left but me.
My throat ached from the smoke, so I shut off the dozer and got down in the mud. Cars flashed
past on the old two-lane highway next to the site. We had the trees about cleared out for the new interstate,
and I hoped there was more work waiting for us. I turned away from the fires for a second, thinking
about little Jen. She was the one my mind always came back to, with her little hands and red face.
Some nights, though, when Jen was screaming her lungs out, I'd leave her with Ellie's mother and go driving,
just to get away. I once drove two hours into another state before turning back. It had been Ellie's
idea for us to move in with her mother.
I walked back to the dozer, the mud pulling at my worn-out boots, and climbed onto the cold seat.
My legs felt heavy all of a sudden. When I looked at my watch, I saw it was already 9:30. Jockey told
me I could leave around one, when the fires had about burned themselves out. Just as I was letting up
on the clutch, my left boot slipped. The dozer jumped forward and my head snapped back. By the time
I got my boot back on the clutch, I was sitting in the middle of the fire. I grabbed the gear stick
and jammed it into what I thought was reverse. My right foot felt like it was on fire. This was a stupid
way to die. I hit the gas pedal and nearly fell off the seat when the dozer's wheels jerked in the mud
and stalled. I pulled the gearshift again and restarted the engine. I backed up twenty feet before
stopping, and the dozer rocked in the mud, backfired, and stalled.
Coughing and spitting, I looked down at my right boot. The hole I had worn into it last month
was smoking. I probably had a good burn on my foot, but I couldn't feel it yet. I'd have to cover the
hole with some duct tape when I got home. Ellie never let me forget how much everything cost, no matter
if I needed something or not. "Think about the baby," she'd always say, and that would be the end of
the discussion.
# # #
At two in the morning, I crawled into bed with a fat Band-Aid covering the blister on my foot.
Ellie had always been a deep sleeper, and she got mad when anything woke her, even after Jen was born.
She rolled over in the bed and said something about how bad I smelled.
"God, Ellie, I'm dead tired," I whispered.
"I'm sleeping, Chris," she said and rolled back onto her stomach. She bumped her leg against
mine and pulled away. "You're freezing."
"Been outside all day. I drove the dozer tonight for Jockey. It was worth working a double shift."
The burning in my lungs let up the more I talked.
Ellie reached her hand up and scratched my beard. "Hairy man. I thought you were going to shave
this stuff off. It hurts when I kiss you."
"How would you know? You haven't kissed me yet."
"Here." Ellie slid up a few inches and kissed me. I put my hand under her T-shirt and rubbed
her bare back. She was warm and smelled like baby shampoo.
"You're not going to let me sleep, are you?" she whispered loudly in my ear, like she was trying
to decide if she was mad or not. "I almost forgot. Mama needs you to help her this weekend. The shed
needs to be rebuilt, and there's a couple trees down on her property from the storm. They've been there
for over half a year now. You need to help her."
"God, I've been working all week," I said. I'd planned on getting to the shed pretty soon, but
I didn't want it to look like it was her mother's idea. "Can't it wait?"
"She wanted me to ask you. She's doing a lot for us. At least she hasn't started charging us
rent."
"Not yet."
Ellie poked me with a finger. "If you could just hold down a job for more than a couple of months,
we wouldn't be in this situation."
I barely heard her. Flat on my back, my eyes closed, I was just about asleep. Then something
shifted in the living room. I heard Jen sniffle. Five seconds later she was crying.
"Damn it, Chris."
I rolled out of bed. "Don't worry. I'll get her." The air was cold on my bare skin, but I hardly
noticed. "I'll take care of her. I'll take care of everything."
# # #
I woke up at six on the couch, with Jen in my arms, lying on my chest. Her face stared up at
me like she was waiting for me to come around and talk to her. For once she wasn't crying.
"Hey, sweet thing," I said in my softest voice, trying not to wake Ellie. Jen's eyes watched
me from about six inches away. "Did you miss your daddy yesterday? I bet mean old Grandma pinched you
all day and told you you weren't worth spit." I breathed in her clean, sweet smell. "Well, don't believe
her. She tells me that every day."
Jen's little mouth worked up and down. The weight of her body and the beating of her heart on
my bare chest made the soreness in my own body disappear. She deserved to live in a mansion, not this
rundown old house. I let my breath out slow so I wouldn't upset her. Before she started fussing again,
waking Ellie and her mother both, we watched each other for close to ten minutes.
# # #
Something was wrong with the dozer I'd used last night. Old man Simmons stood by the dozer not
far from where I had left it. He watched Jockey raise and lower the blade and drive it back and forth.
As I walked up to them, it made a grinding noise and stalled out.
"I thought you were trained, Jockey," Simmons said. He always used your name like it was an insult,
slapping it on the end of every other sentence. "How could you strip the gears on a simple piece of
equipment like this?"
Jockey shrugged his shoulders. He started it back up and shifted into first again. "It reverses
and goes into first. What do you need a bulldozer that goes into second gear for, anyway?" He laughed
his nervous laugh. "It's not like you're going to race it or anything."
"That's beside the point, Jockey. Now we've got to pay to get it fixed, because of you." Mr.
Simmons walked back to his pickup and dug through some papers on his front seat. Every now and then
he would swear and say Jockey's name.
"What the hell?" I said, waiting next to the dozer.
Jockey shut off the engine and jumped down. "Shit, kid. What did you do last night?" He lit
a cigarette and kicked the remains from one of last night's fires. The ashes under my boots still felt
warm.
"Nothing. I just bladed some dirt around the fires and made sure things were cool." My voice
wanted to crack, and I felt my stomach clench. "I didn't even shift it into second."
"Well, whatever happened, it's my ass." Jockey looked over at Simmons's pickup and blew smoke
out of his mouth. "Damn it. I never should've taken off last night."
I turned my head away from Jockey. The reddish-black mud we'd been working in since January stretched
out on either side of us. "Let me go talk to Simmons," I said. "I'll tell him I stripped the gears.
You don't need to get involved at all."
Jockey raised his eyebrows, like he was considering it, then his face darkened again. "I don't
know," he said, and tossed his cigarette butt onto the remains of the fire.
I moved away before Jockey could say anything more. A semi rushed by, blocking out all sound.
The wind from it pressed my clothes against me for a second. "Don't worry," I said on my way to Simmons's
pickup, but I knew I was the only person who could hear it.
# # #
When I came back to the house, the place was quiet and cold. Ellie worked the lunch shift on
weekdays, so she was gone until four or five. Ellie's mother must have taken Jen with her to town to
get groceries. I felt like a thief, sneaking into the house so early on a Thursday morning. I'd wanted
to go driving, but I had nowhere to go.
As soon as I sat down on the couch I realized how dead tired I really was. I couldn't have gotten
more than three or four hours of sleep last night. I kicked off my shoes and closed my eyes to try to
forget it all.
After what felt like only a few seconds, the front door opened, then closed with a bang.
"What
are you doing home?" Ellie's mother's voice said, waking me up. My heart was going like a jackhammer,
and at first I didn't know where I was. I opened my eyes. Standing straight like a marine, Ellie's
mother held Jen against her shoulder. "Don't tell me you lost your job again."
"I don't want to talk about it right now." I put my arm over my eyes and tried to remember how
it felt with Jen sleeping on my chest, just a few hours ago. "I'll explain everything when Ellie comes
home."
"No," she said. "I'm going to put the baby down, and then we're going to resolve this situation
once and for all." She talked to me like I was ten, all slow and loud, and she never called Jen by her
name. It was always "the baby." The floorboards creaked as she carried Jen to her bedroom and came
back.
I didn't want to move my arm from in front of my eyes. I could feel Ellie's mother sitting on
the loveseat across the room from me. "Tell me what happened," she said. Something changed in her voice,
like it had gotten a tiny bit softer. I moved my arm and peeked at her. Her eyes looked angry, as usual,
but they also looked a little bit scared. She kept moving her big hands around each other, squeezing
them until they were red.
"There was a mistake at the site. My boss flew off the handle and told me to go home." I rubbed
my neck where my beard stopped. "Don't worry, everything will be okay." I knew I'd never go back to
Simmons' work site, not even to pick up my last paycheck, but I wasn't about to tell her that.
The room was quiet. All I could hear was her breathing and her hands rubbing against each other.
"You say that a lot, you know," she said, finally. It was like she was pointing a finger at me with her
words. "But things aren't okay. It's like you're allergic to hard work and responsibility." I knew
what was coming next. "It's the baby who is really going to suffer."
I closed my eyes again and thought about my first day on the site, when I first met Jockey and
the rest of the guys. It was a hot day in August, and nobody went out of their way to be nice to me
except for some guy named Tony who was about my age. Everyone else kept their distance, waiting for
me to screw up. On a construction site, you have to work hard to get people to trust you. So whenever
old man Simmons needed someone to work extra or do a shit job, like drain sewage from a ditch or carry
concrete blocks, I'd do it. After a while Tony started giving me a hard time too, until he stopped coming
in and Mr. Simmons fired him. Hard work never bothered me.
I jerked myself awake when I heard Ellie's mother sigh. The house felt empty without Jen's voice,
even if she was usually crying. I tried to remember what Ellie and I used to do with our time before
Jen was born. I remember going out to movies and a couple of dances, then Ellie got pregnant. The two
of us never did anything together anymore.
Ellie's mother got up and walked to the kitchen. She must have been watching me while I was dozing.
"Guess I'd better start supper. Someone's got to do the work around here. Try not to wake the baby,
will you?"
I sat up. "Her name is Jennifer," I said to her back. She stopped.
"Excuse me?" Her eyes had lost some of their angry look, and I thought I could see some of Ellie
in her. It must have been the way she stood there, waiting for me.
"Don't call her 'the baby,'" I said. "We gave her a name, you know." Ellie's mother sniffed
and walked away. I stood up and followed her into the kitchen. She gave me a sideways look, then started
opening up cupboards.
"Would you be happier if we left?" I said. "Seems like you've been miserable since we moved in
here."
She rested her hands on the counter, her back to me. She didn't say anything.
I walked further into the kitchen and stood next to the big table. Something jabbed me in the
foot. I remembered the blister from last night's fire.
From where she stood in front of the sink, I could see the old woman's shoulders drop an inch.
She cleared her throat. "Ellie's father paid for this house after thirty hard years. He worked on this
farm all his life, one job, and he never quit. He took care of Ellie and the boys and me." She put
her hand on her opposite shoulder, like she was half-hugging herself. She looked exactly like Ellie.
"When he died, and I had to sell most of the land, the house just got bigger and bigger."
I sat down at the table, careful not to scrape the chair on the floor or make any noise.
"I wanted someone to come live with me. Ellie's my only girl, and her good-for-nothing brothers
never wanted to work on the farm. I didn't want to be all alone. Nobody wants that."
"Yeah," I said, pushing my chair back, scraping it against the linoleum. I walked down the hall,
away from the sounds of Ellie's mother running water and moving around the kitchen. It was hard to breathe
in here, in this house with other people's lives stored in it. I knew Jen was sleeping in our bedroom,
so I went into the bathroom instead. Things had to change, and for once, I knew exactly where to start.
# # #
My boot was ready to fall apart, but it was going to have to hold together a little bit longer.
The cold air that hit my face had hints of snow in it, but I still had an hour or two of light left.
I did my best thinking outside when I was busy working, so I headed out to the shed. A tree had fallen
onto the tin shed during the storm last summer, knocking the back wall clean off. I was tempted to just
push the whole thing down and start over, from scratch, but I knew the smartest thing to do would be
to rebuild the ruined wall. Three walls were left standing, and I had to work with what I had.
But I felt impatient. I didn't want to rebuild. I pulled the chainsaw out of the good side of
the shed and got to work on the trees that had been blown over. I realized a second after I began that
the chainsaw would wake Jen.
I felt a sort of rhythm in the movement of the saw, and in the back of my mind I played with the
idea of leaving. I didn't have much, and Ellie could have the TV and the bed and all the furniture.
I only needed my clothes, my tools, and my truck. I could get on with some other crew, or I could go
further south, where it was warmer in the winter. I had a cousin in Georgia, and one in Texas. They'd
take me in. They were family.
The sky was dark blue by the time I shut off the chainsaw. My arms shook with the power of the
saw cutting through the wood. I was surrounded by cut wood from dead trees. I looked at the house.
Ellie's mother stood at the kitchen window, holding Jen against her shoulder. Ellie still wasn't home.
If I wanted to go, I needed to do it soon, before Ellie got home. I didn't want to face her.
I carried the chainsaw back to the broken shed. Under a cracked shelf was a can of lighter fluid,
and I took that and some wooden matches over to the pile of wood. I thought of the ball of fire that
had covered my foreman's hand last night, at about the same time of day. He hadn't even been burned
by it. It was all show, and no heat. After soaking everything and using up all the lighter fluid, I
lit a match. I wondered if the other trees that hadn't fallen would catch fire, and it surprised me
that I didn't really care. I stepped back to watch it all burn. It wouldn't take me long to throw all
my clothes together and put them in the cab of my truck. I'd have to start all over. It wouldn't take
long at all, and I could be gone.
When the back door slammed, I figured it was Ellie's mother getting ready to yell at me for starting
such a big fire so close to the house. Instead, I heard Ellie's voice over the flames, calling my name
in the dark. I hadn't realized how late it was.
"Chris? What are you trying to do, start a forest fire?" She was right behind me, but I didn't
turn around. "Get the hose out, for Christ's sake."
"Why?" I said, staring at the flames. "What does it matter if everything burns up? It's not
our land."
Ellie grabbed my arm and pulled me back to her. I didn't want to look at her. My eyes felt dry
and sore from staring at the fire, like they had the night before.
"Don't be stupid," she said, then stopped. She touched my face with a warm hand that smelled
like coffee and french fries. "You shaved," she said, and ran her hand down my smooth cheek. "Why did
you do that?"
I shrugged. I was starting to feel some warmth from the fire now, but I needed the cold air to
keep my head clear.
Ellie turned my face down to her. "Listen to me. Mama told me everything."
"Damn it," I said, glaring at the house, the kitchen window lit up against the night. The shadow
of Ellie's mother moved around behind it. "Just wait. I can explain everything."
"I'm sure you can. But I don't want to hear it."
I looked at Ellie for the first time. She still had her work clothes on, a white shirt and a
black skirt. She dropped her hand from my bare cheek and touched my arm. When she did, I glanced at
my truck. I tried to remember how much gas was in it and how far it would take me before I had to stop.
"I don't know what this talk is about leaving," Ellie said, as if reading my thoughts. She used
to do that all the time. Before we were married, before we had to move in here, before Jen came along.
"But I don't want that. Jen doesn't want that. It may be what you think Mama wants, but she doesn't
know anything." Ellie's voice dropped, and I had to lean close to hear what she said. "If you want
to quit, quit everything, that's your choice. I can't keep you here, Chris. But your family is here,
and we need you."
I watched her while she was talking. There were shadows under Ellie's eyes, moving in the bright
light from the flames. I thought of how red her face would get when we used to dance, just her and me
and the music and nothing else to worry about. I looked away into the darkness around us, away from
the fire. The fire could burn down the whole forest if it wanted, but I wouldn't be around to see it.
I had to convince myself of these facts.
Ellie let go of me and walked back to the house before I could say anything more. She didn't
turn back to see if I was following her. The familiar smell of smoke filled my nose until I could almost
taste it. From inside the house came a baby's crying voice, and I pictured Ellie putting Jen on her
shoulder, and Ellie's mother watching them with a satisfied smile, her eyes no longer scared or angry.
I tried to see how that scene could be repeated every night, just the three of them, but my imagination
wouldn't work for me.
Instead, I watched the fire burn higher for another minute, creeping toward the other trees in
the woods. Then I ran from the fire. The blister on my foot stung with each step. Hand over hand,
I pulled the hose and nozzle from the crawlspace, cranked on the water, and aimed the hose at the fire.
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