“And the Lord went before them by day in a pillar of cloud to lead the way, and by night in a pillar of fire to give them light .”
Exodus 13:21
Nora opens the candle jar, inhales the scent of Patchouli. With the strike of a match, flame sizzles at its tip. She lights the wick nestled in soy wax and sets the candle jar on the happy hour tray. Gabe leans toward the kitchen’s bay window, looks out at distant hills.
“Someone’s burning up there. We’re in a ban until the end of October. No one should burn in early September.” He rakes fingers through unruly curls, scratches his stubbled chin.
From where she stands by the kitchen counter, Nora can’t see out the window. “Maybe it’s a fire pit. With a hose nearby.” She spreads hummus on slices of baguette, adds chopped tomatoes seasoned with herbs, arranges the canapé on a platter. “In the garden I felt the wind pick up. It’s a warm wind.” She sets the platter on the tray with three mini Ball Jar drinking glasses and bottles of flavored sparkling water, then carries the tray to the table.
“Warm wind and fire? A dangerous dalliance. Even in a fire pit.” Gabe turns from the window, pops a canapé into his mouth. Nora nods the top of her head side to side in half-hearted agreement.
“Will you call Maeve in for happy hour?” She pulls the band from her hair, restyles her wind-whipped ponytail, sets a new box of crayons and sheets of drawing paper at their daughter’s place at the table. The three of them welcome Friday afternoons, quiet times to gather and ease into weekends.
“What flavor would you like? Aranciata or Limonata?” Nora asks Maeve as they form a triangle on mismatched stools.
“The one with the oranges. Orange is my favorite color.”
“Okay, Aranciata it is.” Nora pours sparkling water, watches clear bubbles jostle in the glass, then sets it near Maeve’s crayon box.
Maeve counts as she chooses crayons. “One, two, three, four, five, six. Six! Like me!” She draws a picture of the candle on the table and reads each color name: “Sienna” for the glass jar, “Oatmeal Cream” for the soy wax, “Charcoal” for the wick, and “Dreamsicle” for a flame that looks like a wavering piece of candy corn.
“Good reading!” Nora says. A breeze through the open window flips pages of her homeschool magazine. She picks it up, scans the table-of-contents. A picture of a craft project, a pine-cone bird feeder, jogs her memory. “Did you pick up bird seed?” she asks Gabe.
“Um hmm. Still in the car.” He doesn’t look up from his tablet. “I’ll get it after . . . Yes!” He shouts as a sound indicates he’s leveled up in the video game he’s developing. He’s a freelancer, designs Play-it-Safe-inspired games for young kids. At age six Maeve is old enough and savvy enough to play but prefers painting, drawing, coloring.
Maeve glances at her father, high-fives his upraised hand, looks past him out the window. She sets aside her first drawing, places a fresh sheet of paper in front of her, pulls more crayons from the box. Each color’s name sing-songs from her mouth: “Popsicle Pink, Morning Sunrise, Pumpkin Spice, Flaming Red, Burnt Orange.” Maeve hums and draws while Nora skims an article about teaching visual learners. Gabe swipes his tablet screen. Only crumbs remain on their canapé platter.
“All done. Look, Momma, Daddy.” Maeve holds up her paper.
Nora glances up from her magazine, studies Maeve’s drawing—a picture of a smoky mushroom cloud, flames rising and spreading across a hill of distant trees. She turns and looks out the window, taps Gabe’s arm and points.
Gabe’s gaze follows Nora’s finger. “That’s more than a burn pile.” He sets down his tablet, stands and looks out the window, runs both hands through his hair.
“More than a fire pit.” Nora blows out the candle on the happy hour tray.
Friday night before they go to bed, local stations confirm the news: several fires blaze throughout their area of the Pacific Northwest.
***
Saturday morning in the garden Nora turns off the sprinklers, searches the clouds for rain. None for how long, now? Weeks, months? Grass outside the garden pokes brown and brittle out of cracked earth. Leaves on the rhododendrons drop daily. Nora follows rules, conserves, resists watering the grass and landscaping. She spares a little water for the garden; it’s essential. A basket swings on her wrist as she walks the bark-dust pathways between raised beds, clips basil and oregano, picks tomatoes and zucchini.
“I got some blazing shots. Wanna see?” Nora turns as Gabe and Maeve enter through the garden gate. A camera with telephoto lens hangs from a strap around Gabe’s neck. Maeve holds the automatic digital Nora hasn’t used since before Maeve was born. From within the garden, flames in the distant hills are invisible, but the sky wears an eerie golden color as if light filters through amber glass.
“It’s still burning?”
“It’s burning, all right! You haven’t looked?”
“No. Let’s not imply an invitation to stay, not invite it to creep down our side of the hill.”
“It’s gonna go where it’s gonna go, whether you look at it or not. Best to be aware. Be prepared. Here, see.” Gabe turns the camera toward Nora. She brushes hair back from her face, makes an appearance of studying Gabe’s and Maeve’s shots, but really she refocuses on the garden beds where the sprinkler creates an illusion of washed earth and atmosphere. A lonely bird dips into a sprinkler-filled bath.
At the chain-link fence separating their yards, a neighbor holds her laundry basket. “So much for hanging these on the line.” She points to the sky. Minuscule flecks of gray swirl from above. “Have you decided what you’ll take with you? If we’re called to evacuate?”
Nora struggles to ignore the swirling ashes. “It won’t come to that. Do you think?”
“There’s special coverage on the news this morning. Have you not heard? If the fires shift directions, they could come our way.” The neighbor shakes her head, waves to the three of them, walks toward her own house with her laundry basket.
Nora follows Gabe and Maeve from the garden. When ash lands on her bare wrist, she looks toward the sky, whispers a prayer for rain. Her fingers tremble as she secures the latch on the garden gate.
***
The winds were predicted, not a surprise. For irrational reasons, predicted winds and storms felt less threatening: We knew they were coming. That was before. Now the truth argues within Nora, incinerates smidgens of control. During the nights, flames spread vertically and horizontally, elongate with the mushroom cloud.
On the third morning Nora shakes rugs outside the kitchen door. Smoke and ash grit her eyes and lungs. The sky, as if dressed in a Halloween costume, wears an eerie pumpkin color. Maeve sits at the kitchen table and watches out the window. She expresses her views in crayon wax: cakes of red-oranges, grays, black. Magnets clasp her views to the refrigerator, sheets of paper two across, three down. She rises from the table, adds a fourth sheet to a column. In her latest drawing, flames devour the hint of a house.
Nora walks through their rooms, peruses possessions gathered through ten years of marriage. A surfeit of things collected with little intention. Treasure or burden? Her fingers trail through ash, streak irregular lines across tabletops and bookcases. Prints of bare toes and heels follow her across wood floors, room to room. In Maeve’s bedroom, gray specks dot the pink tulle tutu of her ballerina lamp. Smoke peers in the windows like a creepy peeping Tom. Later, after Nora washes Maeve’s nightstand, lamp, and bedding, she watches her daughter’s face, perplexed in sleep—the movement of eyes under lids, the twitch of lips. What dream, or nightmare, reels through her mind? Nora kisses Maeve’s eyelids and cheeks, wisps a fingertip under her chin. She whispers another prayer, one for help with do not fear, for Maeve, for herself and Gabe.
In the living room Nora nestles into Gabe on the sofa, yearns for a T.V.-escape, but special news coverage preempts regular programming. The governor has declared a natural disaster, a state of emergency. On the screen a woman with disheveled hair talks to a reporter. Sirens scream in the background. The woman says her family lost everything: cars, camper, house. Everything material. Tears soak her face mask.
The T.V. news is constant. Fires in the hills dominate local stations and spread across national outlets. A friend from the east coast calls. “We’re seeing reports. Are you in the line of fire? Will you have to evacuate? You should pack a U-Haul.” The suggestion roots into the softening soil of Nora’s mind. The seed of an idea plants itself, takes hold, grows.
Gabe joins Nora in their bedroom. “Maybe we should pack a few things. Clothes, underwear, a toothbrush in case we’re called to go.” The fires are close, non-stop flames and smoke. The county’s social media page says people up in the hills skipped levels one and two, went straight to level three: Go Now! “I signed up our cell phones to get alerts. Maybe we should get ready? Do something?”
“Yes. I agree. We should do something.” Nora puts her grandmother’s diamond earrings in her ear lobes, small gems barely noticeable in their platinum beds. “Schedule a moving van.”
“A moving van?” Gabe watches as Nora pulls an overflowing box of canvas bags from their closet. “To move things where?”
“Donation centers. You saw the people on T.V. They’re devastated by material loss. We might be, too. But what if there’s little to lose?” She tosses the box of bags onto the bed, faces Gabe, reaches for his hands. “Let’s make this simple.”
“You’re suggesting we donate all our belongings? A tad extreme, don’t you think?”
“Not everything. We would keep necessities. A few things easily replaced. And our true treasures. We’re the essentials—you, Maeve, and me.” Urgent eyes search his face, watch and wait for his assent. Gabe grabs a couple canvas bags, hands one to Nora.
She packs their valuables: her grandfather’s Bible filled with his marginal handwriting, an embroidered cloth and a painted watercolor—the unassuming works of their grandmothers, a digital photo album, checkbooks, passports, computer and cell-phone chargers, her favorite worn jeans and wool sweater, a cotton scarf she’d bought the previous week, Gabe’s journal filled with video-game illustrations, his great-grandfather’s pocket watch, his favorite running shoes. She packs Maeve’s colorings, blank sheets of paper and crayons, Maeve’s princess dress and ballerina lamp with the pink-tulle tutu.
The sky sheds its pumpkin costume and dons a hazy grey gauze. The sun appears as an eclipse. Gabe schedules the moving van. Together they sort and photograph their excess: books they’ll never re-read, knick-knacks they no longer notice, towels and bedding overflowing the linen closet, an assortment of chairs and end tables, that one painting of a campfire they’d bought to support a local artist but never really liked. Gabe drives to donation sites. Together they help attendants unload earthly possessions. Together they return the moving van. They scan donation-center receipts and store them in the Cloud.
Days later local news stations report the nearest fires have been contained. Firefighters will remain ready if hot spots flare up. Evacuees can return to their homes.
Nora washes countertops, tables, and walls. She rinses the rag again and again. In their bedroom she smooths fresh sheets on the mattress. Her grandfather’s Bible and Gabe’s journal take their places on clean nightstands.
“Regrets?” Gabe asks. “It all would have been safe.”
Nora looks around the room, free of knick-knacks, free of excess. She shakes her head. “No regrets. There’s freedom in simplicity. Less to lose in case of fire. You?”
“No regrets here, either. Gabe pulls her toward him, kisses her eyelids, cheekbones, lips.
***
Outside the kitchen door, Nora shakes rugs. The birds emerge from their hiding places; three murmurations weave a pattern above Douglas Firs, under blue sky and white clouds. Their collective movement and voice enter the morning quiet. Maeve picks apples in the garden. Soon new grass will grow neon green. Rhododendrons will blossom pink and yellow. Gifts in nature, gifts of rebirth. She whispers a prayer of thanks.
Another Friday rolls around. Nora opens the candle jar, inhales the scent of Patchouli. She leaves the wick unlit.
Jana Kaye holds a BA in Professional Writing from Purdue University and an MFA in Creative Writing from Seattle Pacific University. She lives in Oregon’s Willamette Valley with her husband of 32 years. For spiritual renewal and story inspiration, she walks with her poodles Babette and Gigi through local vineyards and forests.