Scorched Earth

by: Isaac Aceves

Scorched Earth

“Are you ready for this Burn? The fire department will be here in just a little bit to set the perimeter fires,” Amber said.

“I know, I need a little more time,” Donovan said. “But I’ll be ready when they get here.” He peeled the long, black hair back from his tanned, white face. He looked at his wife of sixteen years and thought of the many Burns they had shared before, even before they were married, when they were young and frivolously in love. Now they had three kids and the vineyard. This year was especially challenging because it was a Burn year, when they had to not only burn down the brush around the farm but the vines themselves.

“When are we able to replant?”

“Amber.. Honey,” Donovan offered a bit haltingly, I’m trying to wrap up a few more things in the winery before we get out of here.”

“Sorry, I just want to know when we’re able to come back and plant again.”

“Well, I got the express grow vines coming in four weeks. So really, we should be able to get back by then to plant. Sometime just after Christmas, I guess.”

“They just take six months to mature right? Last time you got the wrong ones and it took an extra year.”

“Oh my god!!! How many times do I have to apologize for that?! They were cheaper. And you’re right, I didn’t look carefully that time. It was the first time I ordered by myself without your dad’s help. But that’s why I need this extra time… that’s why I can’t really have you bothering me right now!”

“I don’t think I’m bothering you. I’m just trying to make sure you don’t screw it up again.”

“Screw it up agai…” Donovan cut himself off. He knew better than to keep arguing. So he just packed up the screen-pad he was using for his online ordering. Then he went back out to the winery. But he certainly wanted to try and have the last word, so he made sure to slam the door as he walked back outside to the other building.

“We have two hours!” Amber yelled after him. Donovan heard her managing the last word again. And he also knew all of the details too. Yet here they were having another fight. They were arguing over the same particulars; the same points of stress.

Amber stormed back into the house. Music was blasting from behind the door to their recalcitrant daughter Meredith’s room — loud beats and crooning false setto. “Neo doo-wop for the hormone laden teenage soul. A human staple,” Amber thought to herself before going in to parent her eldest.

Amber knocked on the door once without answer. She pushed it open after that, her patience worn thin. “Mom!!!”

“We need to get out of here. Did you get everything you need ready for the next month?”

“I’m getting dressed!” Meredith stammered as she darted into her bathroom taking her phone with her. The door closed behind her, “I’m talking to Petra about everything before we leave!” she barked back through the door. Amber just turned around and walked out. She didn’t have the energy to double check what she was packing and if Meredith would be ready in time. Her fifteen year old daughter was darling and intelligent but right now all she could think about was how absent minded she was, worried only about her two hobbies:talking to friends and meeting cute boys online.

The cacophony of the house hallway was driving her mad. She strode down the hall to check on their eleven year old twins Jacob and James. They exhausted her and Donovan at every turn, since they were heavily involved in every community activity: indoor baseball, soccer, community theater, school dance recitals, and their own rock band. As she got to their door she could hear the discordant playing of classic hits from ancient bands from over a hundred years ago. Smells Like Teen Spirit slowly squeaked through their door. The two boys were into oldies like Nirvana and Pearl Jam, the kind of music Donovan and Amber’s great, great grandparents had listened to.

“Stop playing music,” she commanded as she entered their room not even bothering to knock and looking past the clothes strewn about the room or the toys covering the floor. They both were still her babies and she felt no inclination to respect their oncoming adolescence the way she did with Meredith.

“But moooommmm!” the two howled in unison as they stopped hitting the drums and strings of the electric guitar their grandfather Leonard had bought them two Christmases ago before he passed.

“You need to be ready in 15 minutes. I see your bags are packed. Double check them, pick this room as best you can in 10 minutes and then take everything you’re bringing out to the car. You have the same instruments…”

“You know those aren’t as good as the ones from Gran-”

Continuing where she left off, “…same instruments at grandma and grandpa’s in California. You can keep practicing there. I’ve had it up to here today though. Stop playing around and get ready to go.” She bothered with no more niceties at this point. The Burn was coming; she was struggling to get everyone ready. She still had to get her mother wheeled out to the car and settled in the back before they drove her into downtown Yuma for a month-long stay at an assisted living facility. This chore she disliked most of all because she envied the continence of Donovan’s parents, still able-bodied and energetic in their lives out by the coast. Instead she had to mind her husband, her children and her mom for whom she nursed and cared.

During the burn of 2125 Alice had tried to go back to get one of the dogs they had forgotten in a rush to leave. She couldn’t find the dog and she lost track of where she was. She was trapped in the blaze that the firefighters had started. When the firefighters found her they were tamping down the Burn. She was barely breathing, comatose from excessive smoke inhalation. After six weeks in a coma she opened her eyes but she was never the same. She couldn’t talk nor could she walk by herself, confined to a chair. She recognized only Amber and her husband Leonard. So, Alice also lived with Donovan and Amber. As painful as this was, Amber and Leonard decided it was best to keep her close and care for her. Since Leonard had died somewhat recently and Alice’s condition subsequently worsened further, this had become yet another point of stress.

****

The wine glass was never empty in front of Amber. The bartender in the restaurant downtown knew to never let it get empty. Yuma had always been a western townbut no one thought it would ever be a Mecca for grape growing. “That’s the end of the bottle. You wanna keep drinking your own?,” the bartender asked Amber.

“No, give me something different. I’m tired of my white shit. I’ll pay for it,” Amber replied.

“I got a California neo-red. It’s a pinot and merlot blend.”

“Jesus. A hundred years ago they’d never put those grapes together. But it is what is. Give it to me… I mean, is it good?”

“Yeah it’s good. Like you said, it ain’t that white shit… no offense Amber.”

“Nah. None taken.”

“Another Wednesday, huh, Ms. Smith-Clouds?” Amber usually came in on Wednesday nights.

“Another Wednesday,” she sighed. The middle of the week is when she got a moment to herself. The kids didn’t have activities, so they just wanted to stay in their rooms and play after dinner or talk to friends online. Donovan and her dad always had lots of work to do in the winery anyways: paperwork and calculations among other things. In addition to that she and Donovan had a home equity line of credit to accompany their mortgage for the house built among the vines there, the loan decreasing painfully slowly as they managed their debts and family obligations. Even though the winery was profitable, managing the money and the always fluctuating inputs made Donovan a little unpleasant sometimes: “I just can’t do math when people are around,” Donovan said. He’d said this since college where he majored in Finance. But with his family always around he seemed to say it all the time when he had to do paperwork.

“Donovan makes you come down here?”

“No, no. I want to come here. He makes me leave the house so I don’t kill him, my parents or any my children,” she said back to the barkeep who just chuckled and uncorked a bottle.

“Wine making is hard work. That’s why I just pour it.”

“Listening to me moan and groan about my family seems like hard work to me. I mean, my husband won’t do it. He basically is making you do it.” She set her payment chip on the bar and motioned for him to charge her for whatever the cost might be.

“You’re not alone, if that helps. People are in here all night staying away from the shit that makes them crazy.”

“Life!… I mean, it’s like the whole thing makes me crazy. I get no time to myself. I don’t feel like I get to make any mistakes. And fuck, I feel like all I do is make mistakes. I yelled at my daughter today because she got a bad score on a math review at school. I fucking hate math. I can’t do it. Like I just said, I make my dad and husband do all that shit, ordering, bills, that crap. But I felt like getting a bad review at school she needed to be disciplined — that’s what my mom did at least. I don’t know. She’s only ten. Still my baby girl, right?… I just don’t know — we’re all just hypocrites, I guess,” she tapped the glass letting him know she was ready for him to fill her glass again.

“We sure ain’t perfect, that’s for damn sure,” the bartender agreed as he grabbed her chip and went to scan it on the register.

After a couple more glasses of wine, another local came over and sat down next to her. “You ain’t drinking your own tonight?,” he asked.

“I don’t know what I’m doing. Mom’s still crazy. Kids don’t care about anything. My husband just spends all his time doing paperwork.”

“Sounds lonely out at the farm.”

“Do I know you?” she asked.

“Yeah. I work over at the res. I’ve seen you here before. We’re both Native. I mean, we’re cut from the same cloth, if you know what I mean.”

“Just because we’re Native?” Amber was of Navajo descent and her family had property near the Gila River which they’d had since white men came and decided that white men should own property. Before it all belonged to her ancestors but now she had her plot. But only in the last sixty years had the property become useful for agriculture and especially grape growing and her family did what they could to take advantage of it.

The tropical storms that came off the Pacific Ocean and the Sea of Cortez had increased in frequency since the start of the 21st century. The land had much more rain and was much more fertile than the previous millenium. But it was also still quite arid as well. Sometime in the early 21st century Amber’s great, great grandfather had taken a trip to Italy and was convinced the newly moistened landscape of the Southwest American desert would lend itself to growing and making Italian style wines because of the similar climates. He decided on growing perera grapes and he converted 20 acres of family land into a perera vineyard. Ultimately this had been a great decision as the varietal grew quite successfully over the years.

“No, we’re both here drinking too much. That’s the cloth we’re cut from tonight. Sure we’re Native, yes,” the man said and she chuckled in response. “I’ve seen you around. I’m Dark Mountain… e’rybody just calls me Monty.”

“Ah yeah. I heard that name around.” She was exhausted by the end of the day. She couldn’t exert any extra information on some local Native with a half spun yarn of clever. The internal thoughts of home beat and her slowly inebriating mind. Her mom’s condition made her feel awful. Watching how her father worked the land — now watching Donovan struggle with her family’s land too — made her sad. The children and all the work they required made her feel awful too. Ultimately, she wasn’t interested in his obvious come-ons.

“You know this is in our genes, right?”

“What, drinking?” Monty nodded when she asked this. “Well yeah, but I mean you can’t blame your whole life on genetics.”

“I’m not saying it’s a problem for us. I’m just saying, well you know we’re not from Africa like white folks or black folks. It’s that 9-repeat allele. We got a different gene. We been on this land for a long time.”

“What allellll?” Amber slurred the “L”. She lifted her drunken eyes to his, “I mean, what’re you talking about. What’s your point?”

“Folks like us are special. When’s the last time you looked in the mirror? You’re special. Your family owns the winery. You’ve been here hundreds of years. You’re special — I.”

“I told you. I’m married,” she offered forcibly but through a nervous giggle. Looking at Monty’s brown face and long black braids, he was handsome. Although, he looked like any weathered and worn man with soft eyes and weathered face; of average height.

“I’m just gonna buy you another couple drinks. This has nothing to do with you being married. We’re all in this together. We’re family and even after getting these last seven hundred plus years of Americans and white people, all we’ve really got are ourselves. You know Native Americans are more closely related to each other than to any other existing Asian populations, except those that live at the very edge of the Bering Strait.” She was drunk and knew she wanted another couple drinks, especially tonight. Monty’s warm eyes welcomed her. She continued to open up about all these frustrations. They talked deep into the evening until another bottle of wine was empty. Her eyes lost that glow but filled with a longing and loneliness that only people deep in a drunk can have. She didn’t know what she wanted except to not want; to not feel; to stop it all for just a little bit.

When she woke up the next morning her watch had over two dozen missed calls and messages from Donovan. She had a splitting headache and no clothes on. When she finally reoriented herself she saw her clothes on a chair in the corner. She got out of bed and went to put them on. She didn’t even respond to the questions that came from Dark Mountain in the bed. She hurried out of the house and ordered a car to get her home as quickly as possible.

****

“You’ve got everything you need?”

“I do. We cleared the house of valuables. You’re going to tent it though, right?” Donovan asked as the fireman looked back at the vineyard and surrounding foliage.

“Yeah, just like five years ago.”

The Arizona legislature decided that all land should be burned every five years in 2096. Global warming had made the Arizona desert even hotter. But at the time it was the increasing humidity that made the land even more susceptible to fire. The land was more lush, the botany changed and spread rapidly. More plants grew and then dried in those conditions, undergrowth building on undergrowth because the increasingly warm waters of the Pacific let southern storms push more frequently up through Southern California and across the Gila Mountains in the spring and summer to nourish all that plant life.

“I don’t really remember, that was a tough time for me. We were going through a tough time around here. Family stuff, you know?” In other communities the intimacy of the conversation might have been awkward but in this small farming community, the local firefighters and other civil servants worked closely with the locals. Suffice to say, this was not the first time Donovan had met this firefighter.

“Sure, sure. Ok, yeah. Everything should be fine. We’ll make sure the house and winery are fine — all the structures. We’re gonna take the fire up to within one hundred yards of the house. We did the neighbors on each side last year, we haven’t had any issues.”

Donovan nodded, “I saw. It looks good from what I can see so far this year, for sure.”

“Should be a piece of cake. You’re ready to replant? Because we’ll compost and layer the ash. Then it’s ready to plow under, help the soil and such per the ag. department specs.”

“Perfect. Yeah, I got the new vines coming in a month. So we’re ready for when we’re able to come back.”

“Where you going?”

“We’re going to my folks. We went there last time. They have a nice house out in L.A. It’s nice in winter time and the kids love the beach… the kids. They’re all so old this time around. Anyway, yeah, we’re heading out there.

“Sounds nice. Alright, well, once you’re gone in a little bit we’ll start getting ready to burn it all down.

***

The first time Donovan and the kids went to Los Angeles there was almost no mention of their mother. Amber was certainly an after thought for Donovan. When she came home that “morning after” he was already too angry to even discuss things. Amber was disheveled and raced directly in to check on Alice. Alice hadn’t quite woken up at the time and Amber, after peeking in on her mother, took a quick shower and came out to the kitchen.

The kids loved being with their grandparents in the hot Southern California heat with the pool and the park nearby. It was just right for them at that age. Mornings of cereal with grandpa followed middays spent poolside. In the afternoon Donovan would take them to the park. They ran around yelling after him: “Daddy, daddy! Watch me. Can you see this?!?”

He would look up coolly and stare in their direction while they jumped from a jungle gym or elevated themselves higher on a swing. He tried to find joy in their simple musings, their running about in the open space joyfully. With Amber having come home “that morning” a few days (or was it weeks?.. some time back, anyway) Donovan could find very little enjoyment in his kids.

As it was, marriage was a concept that frustrated him. Before Amber and Donovan married life was marvellously frivolous. He looked at Meredith, conceived after a weekend of drunken bliss. Donovan and Amber had gone to a friend’s wedding in Seattle for the weekend and amidst the drinking, pomp and romance they found enough moments to indiscriminately have intercourse and some five weeks later Amber was late. Back at home on the Gila River they were discretely celebrating the arrival of their first child, something they had talked about since early on in their relationship.

“Dad, we miss mom,” Jimmy came over and said as Jake walked quickly behind him

“I don’t give a shit.”

“DAD! That’s a bad word,” the five year olds said in unison.

Donovan immediately felt terrible, “I know. I know. I mean, we can’t do anything about it right now. Are you done playing?”

“Yeah, we’re done,” Jake said.

“Are you mad at Mommy?” Jimmy asked.

“No, I’m not mad. We just needed to come see your grandparents. You get to see grandpa Leonard all the time,” he lied to them. He was so hurt at what Amber had done. He reflected on how when she got home “that morning” she couldn’t talk to him. By the time they were able to talk about her absence she admittedly honestly that she didn’t remember the night before. She insisted over and over again that she didn’t intentionally do anything wrong. He stood there in front of his kids replaying the whole sequence quietly in his own mind:

“Intentionally?!” He shouted back in question form, Amber shrinking in shame. But there was no going back. “If you didn’t drink so much you wouldn’t have done anything unintentional!” He shot at a glare at her.

Her soul retreated but her anger seethed, “You have no right to stand there and judge!”

“Don’t I? This is pointless. I can’t keep an eye on the vineyard and the kids and you!”

“On me?!,” the argument was in full bloom, “I shuttle the kids around. You follow my father around like a lost puppy. I take care of mom. I do the chores. 200 years on from the feminist momvement and I’m still your maid taking care of you like your mother. Who cares whose bed I woke up in and whatever his name was,” as the words came out she instantly regretted them. She had admitted the truth but that was not her intention. At least whatever lie existed was now over. Nonetheless, she felt awful, physically and otherwise.

“Well, are you going to go out and help your dad with all the work out there?” This was phrased as a question but it was certainly an accusation.

“So what if I drink now and again?”

“You don’t even know what happened last night but you woke up in a strange man’s bed?” This was not a question though and she cringed further at the truth. The pain between them was stinging. He had a fury in his eyes. She did not feel unsafe but she felt unloved.

In those moments she questioned everything. Did she love him? Did she even want this life? What was the point of their time together if they were to spend it loathing one another. The resentment built inside of her and before the tears burst she yelled, “Well maybe you’re not man enough for this family.” Then she left the room slamming each door in all the doorways through which she passed as she stormed away from him. Donovan was left standing there in the middle of the kitchen.

He stood on the edge of the Los Angeles playground much like he had in that kitchen a few weeks earlier. He was close to his family in terms of physical proximity but he was as far away as he could ever be in terms of emotional attachment. He was a white man who had married into a Native family. He was always looking in from the outside and he never felt it more than he did right now. He cursed the generations of Amber’s family that came before him. He let epithets of red skin and scalped ghosts race across the front of his mind. He looked at his children and they seemed foreign to him as if they might leave at a whim and forget he ever tried to be their father.

This emasculation pulled hard at all his insecurities. He burned to the core of his heart and felt the heat extend from the middle of his body to each extremity, the fury and embarrassment tingling each finger and toe as he tried to find compassion in himself. He hunted the barren desert of his body for an emotion of concern and love, something that might bind him to this land, this moment, this family that stood right there in front of him. He stood there for what seemed like years.

“Dad?” The voice came from Meredith. “Dad, Jake and Jimmy are right. You look mad. Are you ok?”

He came back to attention, startled from his prison of immobility and lifted up by his own resentments. “What, in fact, were they playing at? What was this game of love and marriage between Amber and him and why was it so important?” he asked himself. “Wouldn’t it be easier to disappear into any other world beyond, to exist alone and to fret only at the simple fears of having enough to eat and staying warm on colder nights?” The rhetorical questions built until he was shaken loose again by Meredith’s hand.

“Dad, I’m only ten. I’m young. But you look hurt. The ancestors tell me when you people are hurt.”

“The ancestors? What are you talking about?! Just mind your ow…”

She cut him off before he said more things he knew he would regret, “Dad, when Mom takes me down to the Res. there’s an old quote on one of the walls. I always read it because Mom says that’s how I will know her mom. That’s the best way to know shima-sani, ‘Walking, I am listening to a deeper way. Suddenly all my ancestors are behind me. Be still, they say. Watch and listen. You are the result of the love of thousands.’” His spirit fell silent. “Daddy, I am watching. You are hurt. But I know this because I am the result of your love and the love of thousands.”

A tear came to his eye and his heart cried a thousand more hot tears inside from being bent, torn and shredded by the stress of life, just like a rock that finally bursts from the water frozen deeply inside of it, the soft water a forceful cudgel against the hardest stone. Meredith took her dad’s hand and they started to walk back to his parents’ house.

*****

Crops thrived in that Southwestern sunshine and fiery heat. But those dry Augusts, Septembers and Octobers would eventually turn the forest and foliage undergrowth into a tinderbox. As the population grew and farming expanded in the area, humans used the scorched desert forests to nourish crops. Still, the wildfires were most consistent yet unpredictable. Worse, Southwestern air would fill with smoke turning the skies of Albequerque, Santa Fe, Dallas and Houston a fearful crimson. Finally, the state legislature knew they had to take action.

In the early 2090s science developed mutated strains of plants that could produce a yield within months. This changed the argument the legislature had against intentional burns. Because the vineyards and orchards that were producing great quality grapes, pears, plums, apples and peaches could be razed by fire and return to full production in the harvest following a burn year, t the revolutionary tactic to combat the fires began in earnest.

That was when crop burns became the norm. AZ-bill 2098–431b3, Scorched Earth insisted that every five years all land in certain areas zoned for farming needed to burn and every five years firefighters of the Fire Control Department were required to go through a specified area and do a controlled burn to keep the brush under control.

Because of this requirement, smokey skies would collect and then dissipate every December. Still, there were no uncontrolled burns or wildfires in Arizona any more. The land wasn’t ever overgrown and the increase in safety and supervision allowed the farmers to operate with far more certainty. Insurance prices fell which kept operating costs lower as well. With the state using their taxes to fund these projects, the state was able to count on consistent revenue from more consistent yields. The air was healthier and the communities were able to live in better harmony.

Each farm marked their calendars for their “Burning December,” as they were more colloquially called. Just prior to a farm’s Burning December the dead trees that surround the property are assessed and collected. New trees and vines are ordered for planting in January. Families move away for some time and trust their land to their firefighters who would burn all the growth but protect all the existing structures. Then, after the smoke clears and the ash settles across the farmland, farmers come back and start again.

****

Because of the affair with Monty, Amber ultimately had an abortion. Worse, the way things were progressing between her and Donovan there seemed almost no way to reconcile. As Donovan hid in California with the kids Amber stayed at home with the vineyard and her mother, for whom she still had to care. She spent solitary days going over the pain of her infidelity, the pain of caring for an ill parent, the pain of missing her kids and the pain she felt watching her father struggle to keep it all together while Donovan was gone. She internalized much of the frustration as her being entirely her own fault.

One day she sat there reading aloud to her mother since the doctors said it helped Alice keep in touch with the world around her; keeping her from any accelerated drifting into the afterworld. Even the local “medicine woman” had told her as much when she had visited the res a few weeks prior. As she came to the end of a paragraph Alice suddenly spoke. “A fight is going on inside me,” she said. “It is a terrible fight and it is between two wolves. One is evil — he is anger, envy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, resentment… that wolf is my death. “The other is life — she is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion, and faith.”

“Mom?!?” Amber’s eyes filled with tears.

“Dear, I am here. I am always here. Please keep reading. I do love it so.”

“But mom, I feel this same fight right now. And the wolves are tearing at each other. My children are gone, my husband is gone, and you are…”

“My dear, I am not gone. Even when I am not here, I will never be gone.”

“I am rotting inside Mother.”

“Then you know which wolf is winning. The fight goes on inside you and inside every other person too. I promise you that it goes on with Donovan as we speak. The world is alight and hurting, the fight is all around us.”

Amber paused briefly and then asked, “Which wolf will win?”

Alice looked out the window into the distance, past the pages of the book and into the wooded field beyond the vineyard, that wooded field that 200 years before could not have grown there. The silence was almost deafening to Amber as she awaited her mother’s response. It finally came, “The one you feed.”

Then the room was silent and Alice was seemingly gone from this conscious world again. The stare continued after the light left her eyes, the brief shining lucidity that brought the histories of her family into the room just moments before. She looked out the same window and saw one of the nighthawk owls still native to the area gliding out of view. Although they’re a nocturnal bird normally unseen at this time of the afternoon, Amber wondered if the bird had come to take her mother with her and into the skies.

****

Donovan and Amber drove the family back out again. Meredith had forgotten her purse. The purse had one of her four entertainment devices in it along with a wallet and a variety of makeup. Meredith begged for these seemingly insignificant keepsakes that were, to a teenager, so terribly important. She swore she would “have to have” these before going to her grandparents for a month. Although trivial to her parents and of absolutely no significance to her younger brothers, the family darted back looking at the clock in hopes of getting to the house before it was sealed by the flame retardant tent and the fires had been set. They drove in against the scenic backdrop of the wooded hills.

“How did you get ten minutes without using that phone?… Amber said sarcastically to her daughter, “You know what? I don’t care. Let’s just get it.”

“You forget things all the time,” Meredith said back to her mother.

“Mer, this is absolutely not the ti…” Donovan put his hand on Amber’s leg and pressed lovingly into the flesh of her knee to cut her off. The two looked at each other as the years of pain and joy swirled above them like distant, ominous storm clouds. They would not burst now, they might not burst at all, but they filled the gaze between them like lightning on the horizon. Amber choked down the rest of her thought and tried again, “I gotta say, 10 minutes without your phone is a record. I’m proud of you,” she offered with sincerity, “When we get there your dad will see if we can go back in. You know where you left it?”

“It’s on the bathroom sink,” she said with the impatience of all teenagers talking to their parents

“Of course it is,” Donovan whispered to his wife and she smiled. Fending off the responsibilities of the fires was so stressful it felt good, cathartic even, to share a smile between them. Donovan pulled up to the gate where the firefighter from before stood talking into his device, “We forgot her purse,” he said motioning to Meredith in the back seat and implying that it was of great, great importance.

The firefighter chuckled. “We’ve got one car coming back,” he said into his watch-device.

“Roger that. One car back,” came the voice in the other end.

“The tent is the last thing we put up since the fire usually starts furthest away from the home. We’ve found lots of people wind up coming back to get something important. It’s only human. You’re certainly not the first person,” he winked and waved the car back on the property.

They sent Meredith into the house and she returned with the purse from amidst three firefighters getting ready to tent the house. The firefighters waved at the family as Meredith got in the car and Donovan tapped the button to restart the engine and drive away. They pulled out and started the trip again. “We’re going to drop you off, shima-sani Alice. Then eight hours from now, we’ll be in California!” Donovan smiled back to the car through the rear view mirror. He politely winked at Alice, although unmoving in her chair. Donovan didn’t mind. The rest of the car was also silent. Meredith was sending messages on her phone. The twins were engrossed in some game between them as they exchanged a slight shove in the back seat. Donovan and Amber opened the windows of the car to let in the air. This was a tradition between them. When they left before a burn they opened the air to smell it, to get a sense of what the moment, what the atmosphere, was like before they had to start over. This year was different. They could smell the smoke from the fire that had already been started somewhere in the brush. Donovan coughed slightly and Amber put her hand on his shoulder. They exchanged an exasperated and loving glance between them as they drove away from the flames. They would be back in a few weeks to start all over again, to replant and grow their lives again in one fashion or another, always the same and always different like the many generations before them.