In first place, “Wind and Embers,” which is first of all spectacularly authoritative and persuasive in its rendering of the harrowing experience of trying to survive an oncoming wildfire. And it’s equally compelling and moving in its portrait of its protagonist’s psychological position: that mix of pride and shame that has him stubbornly unable to change even as he’s more than emotionally perceptive enough to know just what a mess he’s intermittently made of his life. The story’s masterful as well at evoking the love and compassion that he mostly only communicates through his rituals of both care and what he imagines to be a kind of deference. —Guest Judge Jim Shepard
Val turned on the scanner the instant he smelled smoke. Knew it was bad before the chief ordered an air tanker. He’d already requested extra fire engines from neighboring districts. Reaching for the phone as it rang, Val shook the frying pan. Oil spit around the catfish.
“Bad fire day.” Her voice was raspy. She never said hello.
“Always is, Lil, this time of year. Come over. Making breakfast now.”
“No, I got calls to make.”
“Okay. Yell if you need anything.”
Val wriggled a spatula beneath the crisped skin. Lillian Rusk lived up the hill. She and Val Barbeau went back as far as the ‘69 flood, when Escape Route got its name because it was the only way out of the canyon. Roads didn’t need names then because so few people lived here. They’d built their homes from scratch. Val bought dynamite by the case from the hardware store in town. Lil’s husband Jim would set the charges, then trot back to sit with Val on the back of the Bronco, watch it blow. Huge cloud blasts, bruised and brown, smoke lingering while tiny rocks rained down. Then the dusty two of them would whistle in with picks and shovels. He and Jim had just come back from Vietnam. Different branches, never crossed paths. The hard labor of building their homes was quieting. They never spoke of war.
Val’s wife Eileen would drive the truck around to all the yard sales and flea markets, collecting things like doorknobs and faucets, cabinets they made into wash basins. She was a good picker. That’s why her consignment store in town was so successful. Their cabin grew from 600 square feet to twice that. But Eileen moved out years ago. Their daughter lived in Denver. Val retired when the tremors started. Assumed it was Parkinson’s—they’d all bathed in Agent Orange—but it could have been the booze. Now he rarely left the mountain.
He jostled the frying fish. It took a full week for the water to subside after the ‘69 flood. The next spring, they got clobbered with snow. Jim and Lil were stranded up the hill with three hounds and a newborn. Lil called, laughing. “Well, now it’s a calamity. We’re out of dog food, milk and gin.”
Val threw a chainsaw, some shovels and a winch in his 289 cubic inch V8 engine Ford. It had big tires with the rims reversed, so the tires were outboard, with headers. That Ford could mule through any weather. “Passed everything but a gas station,” Eileen used to say. They’d chained all four tires when Val saw the snow clouds boiling in that morning. While he rammed his way up the hill, Jim started shoveling down. Used the car like a plow. God damn it! Paused to winch a tree that had fallen across the road, toppled by all the wet, heavy snow. He could hear limbs cracking from the burden. Val grabbed a saw. Fucking piece of shit! Jim kept digging toward the cursing. Both men were soaked by the time they bumped shovels. They drove into town with the heater cranked and stuffed the Ford’s cab with groceries.
“Got enough food to choke a moose,” Lil said. There was no power, so they knocked snow off the grill. Ate dinner together hoisting martinis, which was Lil’s drink back then. Since Jim’s death, she’d switched to scotch. Drank less, but started earlier.
Val chewed his breakfast alone in the kitchen. His memories felt more vivid than the present.
* * *
His scanner started picking up more traffic and soon grew jammed. People sounded frantic. Some were men Val had known for years, including firefighters. Knew that he should prepare to evacuate, expected the call any second. But he poured coffee instead, dialed his daughter. No answer. He called Lil again—smoke was billowing from the canyon below, she was watching from her deck, she said—then a few other neighbors, anyone he knew with connections to the fire department. No one had information, just anxiety. Outside, the smoke roiled. Val could see neighbors jogging things out to their cars. He called Eileen, who had a place out in Gunbarrel now. Said she’d reached an age when she’d rather look at the mountains than live in them. The guy she never bothered to marry lived in some subdivision.
There was black smoke visible from town, she said. “Looks bad, Val. And these winds? You should leave, to be safe. Is Ginger okay?”
He glanced at the dog. “She knows something’s up.”
“Need a place? We’ve got room.”
“Thanks. If it’s overnight, I’ll head to Denver.”
A pause. “You know Stacy’s got a boyfriend.”
“Already?”
“Her divorce was a year ago, Val.”
No it wasn’t. But he kept silent, drummed the clothed table. The kitchen smelled of catfish and charred wood. “So, what, this guy lives with her?”
“Pretty much.”
“Christ.” The dog dropped her head on his leg. He scratched her neck, felt another fatty lump. She was a box-skulled yellow lab with a grey muzzle and bald elbows, a tail that ticked constantly. He welcomed the weight of her head, her worried gaze.
“Just leave, Val. Forget the house. It’ll be all right.”
“Yeah, okay.”
“All right.”
They lingered in the scratchy silence, then he hung up. It was a few minutes till noon. He saw something swimming in the winds outside. Stepped to the window. Realized it was cinders. Holy fuck. He lurched to mental checklists. Close the windows. Start filling the tub with water—it took forever. No water pressure. Shut off the gas. Thought to grab spray paint from the shed, mark the cistern for the firemen in case they had a submersible pump. It could help save the house. He felt fuzzy, tried to focus. Reheated coffee and snapped on the scanner, heard a concert of panic: firefighters calling for resources, a man yelling to get his bike from Pip’s shed, trees torching, smoke alerts, a call for Myra—something about a broken horse trailer—calls for structure fires, fire encroaching on a back porch, fire creeping near a propane tank.
“Shit. We better roll out,” he told Ginger. Realized he should pack legal documents and his computer. He grabbed some of Ginger’s things: her food, a few toys, her favorite bed. She had three of them but favored the first and rattiest. Stacy’s birth certificate—Val kept it since she bounced around so much—his will, the latest tax returns, his DD-214, old letters maybe. He had to be forgetting things. Did Eileen take the baby’s box when she moved out? That he didn’t know sent a sickened bolt through him. As he went to the cellar to look, the house bucked and went black.
They’d killed the power.
“God damn it,” he yelled, groping back up the stairs to grab a flashlight.
With the power off, he realized how dark it suddenly was. Was the smoke that thick already? Ginger began whimpering. Val half-trotted through the house, mumbling to himself. Windows. Keys. Should he put the fish on ice, just in case? He had a freezer full of catfish, trout, wild salmon Lil’s kids had shipped. Would hate to lose all of it. He flipped through files in the cabinet. The print looked furry under his flashlight. It wasn’t his eyes; his mind was jumping. Where’d he put the damn keys?
He scanned with the flashlight to see what else to pack. Noticed an opened cellar window and slammed it shut. That’s how fire gets in. Saw the silver candy dish from his parents’ white-gloved wedding day, a photo of Eileen cupping her meloned belly, the bamboo rod Jim Rusk gave him as a retirement gift—things that throbbed with meaning, with mock permanence. His mind wasn’t working right. He packed a box of Lipton’s tea bags and an oven pad, cursed when he saw what he was doing, realized he’d again lost the keys, then suddenly recalled his wedding ring. That’s probably where the baby’s box was. Val lunged toward the cabinet and the dog yelped. He grimaced.
“Stay by the door, Ging,” he said, scrubbing her head. “I can’t see for shit.” Lost the keys for good, grabbed the spares. Stepped on the dog again. Her cry cracked with fear, the unflagging wag stung him. She was clingy, having caught his anxiety. “Shit, I’m sorry, girl.” He pushed her into the bathroom, shut the door. “Stay. Good girl.” He leaned against the wall briefly.
“I’m fucking losing it,” he hissed. “Focus, asshole.” Stacy’s room smelled faintly of peppery musk, her old incense. The things she left behind: how did she decide? Was that pennant meaningless? Or the shawl Eileen brought back from Belize? The metal figurine of a skier, draped with sandalwood beads. Old yearbooks. A green jacket. Her panda—hugged from toddlerdom through her first year of college. Were these things she left behind for safekeeping or as discards? His daughter was nearly forty. It’d been five years since Eileen moved out. Why hadn’t he parted with any of this? What was wrong with him? He sat on the bed. It still had lumpy middle springs. He’d slept here whenever he and Eileen weren’t talking, weren’t fixing what she said was broken. She never could name it. Then she met what’s his name.
Ginger barked shrilly.
“Hey Val, you in here?” His neighbor, Jeb, was inside the house, yelling. His truck rumbled in the drive, over-filled. “Got to go, man. Fire’s heading right at us.”
“Yeah.” Val coughed. To inhale hurt his lungs. It confused him to see Jeb in his living room.
“We’re out. You good? Need help?”
“No, hell, I’m fine. Almost done. Appreciate you stopping.”
“Get out quick.” Jeb grabbed Val’s hand. “Yeah? Just go.” Shouting as he ran, “See you down there.” The truck spun backwards.
“That was weird,” Val told the bathroom door. The dog whimpered. It was odd to see Jeb unnerved. His usual weathers were mute or smoldering. He was solid, always came out to help clear the road. Never bantered or joked, rarely had a beer afterwards. Just got the task done. His type. Val fought the urge to slump in his kitchen, making more calls. Heard a strange noise. Car horns. Never hear car horns up here. Must be too smoky to see the road.
“Keys,” he said. “God damn it. I keep losing them. I’m out of spares. Where’s my fucking head?”
He tossed things in his truck. Grabbed bungee cords from a plastic mayonnaise jar, strapped down a few boxes, the dog’s bed, her food, his gun case, a jumbled crate of Stacy’s things, one of Eileen’s old paintings, which he found in the cellar and wrapped in a wool blanket. Then he went back through the house one more time, made sure the windows were closed, blinds drawn, gas off, and took pictures in case. He’d heard horror stories about insurance. Stopped to rub the lens with a handkerchief, but it wasn’t the lens. Smoke was spilling into the house. It scraped his lungs, his eyes. Hurrying, Val let Ginger out of the john. She bolted for the truck, jumped in—remarkable, given her arthritic hips. He drove halfway down the drive, then stopped. Turned the engine off. Ginger whimpered.
“Yeah I know, honey,” he said, scratching her blunt head. “I know.”
He sat, staring into a whorl of ash and smoke. A sheriff’s car pulled alongside him, window to window.
“Not leaving,” Val said.
“Sorry, sir. Evacuations are mandatory.”
“Fuck that. I’ve a right to protect my place.”
“Look, I get it, but you haven’t seen this fire.” He gestured to his cruiser’s flanks. “I have.”
Val saw scorch marks up the car’s side.
“You got kids?” the deputy continued. “Think about them. Bet they’d want have you around to play with the grandkids.”
Val sat, soaked in hurt.
“Look, you got this far. Just start the engine and drive. I got to clear this street.”
Val tried to think, said nothing.
“Sir?”
Silence.
“All right,” the deputy grabbed a small pad from his dash, “I need the name of your dentist.”
“What the fuck for?”
“Only way to identify a body after the fire blows through.”
Val’s hand reared up from steering wheel, a brief shield. “Make sure you get Lil Rusk out, top of this hill. She gives you trouble, use the same line. The dentist bit.” They caught eyes. The cop’s had a scrim Val recognized. He’d seen it often at Charlie Med: fear hollowed by shock, duty-driven. “Take care,” he said, softening.
The deputy backed down the drive, sirens spinning in the chalky darkness. Horns were constant in the distance, city sounds, an anxiety.
Val started the truck. It was the hardest thing he’d ever done. Leave the house he’d built by loving hand. They were unconquerable honeymooners once, pioneers. They had two babies here, both in the old tub. They had friendships deeper than family. This house was carved out of crazy true love.
It was that love’s last testament.
* * *
Smoke was so bad in spots, the engine nearly quit from lack of oxygen. Heat warped the truck windows, made the dog whimper. At the three-mile mark, Val saw fifty-foot flames fly up a drainage, coming straight at him.
“Holy shit,” he yelled, swerving, “hold on.” Black clouds of ash boiled toward him, then a burst of sun: roaring reds and oranges. Hellish. He punched the gas just as the fire’s maw snapped at the road’s edge, leaped behind him. A crowning fire lit the hillside, running skyward. In the rear view, he could see pillars of flame, whole trees engulfed.
He’d been through countless wildfires up here, but this was a first: winds so savage, fire had crossed the road. Roads were usually natural breaks for a wildfire. Now flames roared toward whole subdivisions of homes up canyon. He passed the glowing bones of a home. Just the frame, bathed in blinding orange.
“Jesus.” Val shuddered, then reassured Ginger. “Good girl. It’s okay.” Promised her a hamburger when they got down. Spot fires in the hills all around them. He kept his eyes where the road should be. He’d waited too damned long to leave. Felt furious with himself. Worried about Lil. If she hadn’t gotten out, she could be killed. This fire was fierce and spreading fast.
There were no taillights to follow and it was hard to intuit the road at this pace. He could do it drunk and speeding—had many times, it was so familiar—just like he could get up to piss at night without hitting a single light switch. His body knew, at greater speeds, where to lean into each switchback curve. Val knew his home and these canyon roads by heart. But nothing was familiar in this hellscape, this haze, in his disoriented descent. He flew past the barricade blocking people trying to get to their homes. Lots of shouting. Val slowed for a moment, thought he saw someone he knew. A sheriff yelled at him to keep moving, so he gunned down the canyon and into the city.
His phone rang. Didn’t recognize the caller but answered anyway.
“Just watched my house burn.” Lil sounded hoarse. “Stopped to look from Whistler’s Knob, saw the roof catch. Went up like a goddamned match.”
“Shit, Lil. You sure? Where are you?”
“I’m at Fran’s. You know, Fran Kapanski. She and Clyde came and hauled me out by the hair. I was not going to leave. Worse than a wet cat, just shrieking and clawing at him in the car. So he pulled over, handed me binoculars. We saw it happen.” She stopped. “It’s just, I can’t—”
Silence as he watched blackened smoke shove the sky.
“Oh Val.”
“Yeah, I know, old girl.”
“I swear I’m the devil,” she said. “I literally hit him.”
“Oh hell, so have I,” yelled Fran in the background. Val could hear Clyde’s barking laugh. He used to work with the guy who owned the mine up at Caribou.
“You all right, Val? Where are you?”
“Down in town,” he said. “Just got here.”
“Ginger with you?”
“Yep. We’re going Dutch. She’s buying burgers. I’m springing for ice cream. We’re fine.”
“That’s good. Thank God.”
“Listen, you got out alive, Lil. That’s what matters.”
“Yeah, so they say.”
“Hit Clyde for me, would you? Use a shovel.”
Her husky laugh revived him. He wanted to ask again if she was certain. There was so much smoke, such heat distortion, he doubted she could have seen much from the Knob. She was a tough bird, but also a tippler. She could be mistaken. For the moment, he needed to nurse that possibility.
* * *
Sitting in the parked truck with Ginger beside him, twitching with dog dreams, Val remembered: They’d buried Jim’s ashes by the giant blue spruce at the edge of Lil’s garden. He’d rigged a self-watering system for the garden, siphon feeding downhill from the cistern and several rain barrels. Illegal in a state where the rainwater belongs to someone else, it was elegantly simple and typically Jim. The thought of fire taking that noble spruce or Lil’s larkspur and penstemon, the cedar bench Jim built for the views, or the lush grass that shielded his ashes. The grass grew so extravagantly, Lil joked it was Jim winning the argument. He’d insisted ash was good lawn fertilizer. She’d forbid it. Val pictured fire erasing all of this in a brutal instant—as swiftly, as savagely as it had hurled at him—and he cracked.
He sobbed as Ginger struggled to uncurl on the seat, tried to stretch her head to his shuddering leg.
* * *
“No, you hate pickles, remember?” Val had backed in beneath a scruffy cottonwood in the fast food parking lot. The air filled with smoke and ash, a gritty mixture. Hard to breathe. Ginger’s drool puddled on the arm rest. He handed her some folded fries. “No, every time you get a pickle, you spit it out. Trust me. And try chewing.” He twisted off a piece of the burger. She gulped it. “Yeah, sure. You can taste it later, Ranger.” He still knew vets who ate that way—swallowed food cold and whole. Ginger was eying the last bite of burger. “Here,” he said. She gobbled it. Her premolars were rotten; one incisor was loose. After lifting her cheek to check her gum color, Val rubbed her blunt head with a sigh.
He’d closed the window quickly after getting their order. The air was filthy. Pedestrians everywhere paused, facing west, filming a catastrophe they didn’t own, wouldn’t have to carry like a damaged organ. His phone rang. He had trouble finding it, then hesitated to answer. It was Eileen.
“Yeah.”
“Jesus, Val. You had me scared half to death. Couldn’t reach you for hours. You okay? You get to town?”
“Yeah.”
“Was it bad?”
Silence. He was still scratching Ginger’s head. The dog’s body quaked with panting.
“Did it take that long to get down?” Eileen said.
Be nice if you could choose which things died with a marriage and which outlasted it.
“Hello? Are you there?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, where are you? Do you have a place to stay?”
“There’s a meeting,” he said, “for evacuees.” Cars pulled through the burger lot. He watched a coed in neon tights bounce by, blue yoga bag on her back.
“Was it helpful?”
“What.”
“The meeting.”
He mopped Ginger’s spit with a wadded napkin.
“Val, can you hear me? How was the meeting? What’d they say about the fire?”
“It hasn’t happened yet.”
“You’re not making any sense. Do you need a place? You can come here. Nelson won’t be home till nine.”
“We’re fine.” Val crumpled a bag. Ginger stared at it.
“You sure? You don’t sound fine.”
There it was again. The accusation. It flipped him. “Ten years without a fucking drink and you still police me.”
“What’s wrong with you? I just said you sounded upset.”
“That’s not what you said.”
“It’s exactly what I said.”
“No it isn’t.”
“Look, if you want to fight, I’m hanging up. I only called to see if you were okay. Is Ginger with you?”
“No. Left her to burn.”
“Val! Please. I’m just, I’m a mess. The whole front range is on fire. Been getting calls all morning. Lil’s house is gone! She said homes were going up right and left. Now Chinook winds? It’s horrific.”
Ginger pawed him. He realized, in a sour flash, that Eileen had been drinking. The great unmentionable. He wasn’t the only drunk in their marriage. “I got to go.”
“Of course you do,” she snapped. “It’s too real for you.”
“Goddamn it, I know how real it is. Drove through the fucking flame front. Damn near ate it.”
“Oh my God. Why didn’t you tell me? It’s just, I’ve been listening to the scanner and—”
“Turn it off. It’s just noise. Whatever you hear now is panic and speculation. Wait for real news. Don’t put yourself through imagining the worst.”
Ginger was licking his hand clean, one paw flopped over his wrist to keep it steady.
“Got to go. Ging needs walking.”
“You can stay here, Val.”
“We’re fine.”
“You’re not going to sleep in the truck, are you? You’re too old for that.”
He wiped his hand on one thigh. “Let Stacy know we got out.”
“I texted her while we were talking.”
He paused. Didn’t want to ask if his daughter responded.
“Okay. We both need to piss.”
“Call me later.”
“Yeah.” He tossed the phone on the dash, wiped his hand on one thigh. “Jesus fucking Christ,” he said. The dog startled, looked anxious. “She still winds me up.” But it hurt that she and Stacy were a family that excluded him. Always had. The therapist or mediator or whatever the hell she was mentioned it, which made Eileen livid at the time. Of course, when Val relayed all this to his counselor at the Vet Center, Mack had said, “Look, man, she bailed because you’re an angry prick, not because you’re a drunk. You’re both drunks. It ain’t an alkie contest. Fact is, you checked out long before those two drew the curtain on you.” Which was true. Still, he and Eileen had made a great team when drinking. Their marriage got worse as he got better.
That was something else Mack said: People don’t want to change. Or grow. They just want to perfect their systems.
Val was parked by the Liquor Mart, his old spot. Used to grab a burger, then load up the truck. That was the thing. In some ways, Eileen knew him eerily well. But she poked, like that comment about being too old. Or this being too much for him.
“The one thing women never forgive,” he told Ginger, throwing it into drive. He blasted the air conditioning, trying to cleanse the smoke smell. “You can fuck their best friend, drop the baby, lose your savings in a card game. But don’t ever let them see you weak,” he growled, spinning the wheel. “Makes them vicious.”
Looking left, then right again before making the turn, he went rigid: smoke was rolling into town like a filthy fog, carrying the ghosts of homes.
* * *
The guy he was bunking with was allergic to dogs. That’s what Val told Eileen while unloading her things and Stacy’s. He only drove to her place because Ginger was in pain after five hours in the truck. Val had to ease both arms under the dog, lift her arthritic hips carefully. He hadn’t seen Eileen in years. She’d gone jowly. There was a half-sack of dog food and some squeaky toys beneath his gun case. He dug for them. It was jarring to see her puttied with age and drink, no longer the square-jawed swimmer he’d hid pictures of in his hooch—tan shoulders winging up from slim hips. Now her body sloshed beneath shapeless clothes. And she never wore make up in the mountains. It was strange to see her painted. He lifted another crate of Stacy’s things, crap mostly, but it might matter to her to lose it. Eileen, hugging Ginger, jerked back suddenly.
“Oh no, what’s this? A tick?” She pinched the dog’s neck.
“Hell no. Just a skin tag. She’s got lots. Fatty deposits too. She’s fine, just old.” Val began to regret this impulse. He didn’t want her taking Ginger to the vet or some damned dog wash. Stood wondering where to put her painting. A blanket still shawled it. Wanted to ask her where the baby’s box was, but just couldn’t. Never did find the box or his wedding ring. Eileen was in no shape for such questions, leaning against his truck, sloppy and nervous, almost flirting. He knelt to touch foreheads with Ginger. Her tail ticked hard where she collapsed like dropped sticks. The lawn was stupidly green. The deck looked fake, too. Val stood, brushing a sore knee. “She gets the runs easy now. Stick with dry food.”
“Val, please, don’t go back up there.”
“Can’t. Roadblocks everywhere. Got to go. Mack’s holding dinner.”
“Mack’s not allergic.” Eileen frowned. “He’s got a hundred dogs.”
“New girlfriend.” Val got back in the truck with a grunt, headed out the dittoed subdivision. Missed Ginger instantly.
* * *
“Do I look like a beggar?” Val snapped when the girl behind the counter filled a bag with pastries he didn’t need, after refusing to take his twenty. He’d only come in for coffee.
“No, please,” she grew teary, “we just want to do something.”
“Then give me three cups to go, black, and take my damn money.”
Back in the truck, he sniffed. He reeked of smoke. In the darkness, mountains twinkled like a sick city. The sky was buttered with sparkling fires. It seemed calmer somehow and so was he. A filthy orange glow of superheated air hugged the hills, with exploding novas of homes, the bumpy stutter of lights blinking off and on as trucks sprinted the ridges.
Val brought the extra coffees to a roadblock at the base of Lefthand canyon. Two squad cars with lazy sirens blocked the road. Val gave them the pastries, too. Stood around for a bit, not saying much as they watched a horse van slap its blinker on Foothills, then Val wished the officers a safe night. Headed back to his truck as the trailer rumbled up to the roadblock.
“Sorry, ma’am,” a cop called out. “Road’s closed.
“I need to get to Corkview Ranch.”
“Well, you can’t use this road.”
“No?” She shifted gears. “Watch me.” Then revved the engine to plow through the cruisers.
As shouting grew, Val drove around the backside of a rotting barn, through a side lot, his headlights off. There was enough glow to follow the dirt trail that looped back to gravel and, a half mile past that, unpaved road. Soon he was climbing the flame-twinkled hills, heading home again.
There it was, he thought. Wind and embers—the mountain’s only predators.
The drive was dark, coils of smoke in the road. He couldn’t see much. Electricity was still out. No light at all, but licks of fire here and there, and vehicles in far hills. As he came down a hairpin turn, his beams hit a gaunt chimney where a house had been. He stopped to stare, couldn’t recall whose house it was. It was disorienting to see only a scorched brick spine.
Val drove carefully, squinting to see through drifts of smoke in the road. Sudden wedges of horror in his headlights. The carcass of a truck, its wheels liquefied. The torqued metal frame of a swing set. Scorched sticks of trees across an entire hillside. Then Harriet Tofflemire’s house, fully engulfed, without a fire truck in sight. That made him punch the gas, picturing his own place, defenseless.
Though there was more humidity at night and flames quieted, Val knew everything was more flammable now. A home could fall prey to a solitary ember after a wildfire’s desiccating daytime heat. Around another sharp corner, he saw an engine climbing slowly uphill, a comfort. One more turn and he’d be at the junction where the fire station was. His headlights splashed a stone foundation, red origamied metal still heaving steam, a fat propane tank the building once hid.
“The fucking fire station burned?” Val accelerated past it. Saw flat fabric hose wrapping the ancient schoolhouse and church, weary firemen mopping up around hissing tree skeletons. They’d saved those historic structures instead of the firehouse. Flashes of war kept whipping past. The ghoulish red glow and disorientation.
He saw her clearly—the tiny, stoic Vietnamese girl, not yet two. His first cleft palate surgery. So many kids there had cleft palates. Part of the hearts and minds mission. Val worked from the text an old professor had sent, propped up nearby. He’d never done this surgery before. Got good at it. It was easier than Marines with shattered jaws or working on bodies bloated from paddy water. Part of his job was matching dental records for Grave Registration. Sometimes all he had to work with was a severed head. On the days Val did cleft palate surgeries, whole families lined up quietly. He felt the gaze of each watchful father. Felt the clarity of it. It was simple, in a way that war wasn’t. You protect your family. You defend your home. You help your neighbors.
In town earlier, Val had seen dozens of fire trucks at staging, chugging fuel as they waited to get logged in and assigned. Why weren’t they dispatched? The engines were still idling there after dark. Val wasn’t planning to go back in, but here he was, driving past Jeb’s house—still standing—then another neighbor’s, a smudge of glowing smoke in their backyard, then Val crested the ridge to his. He’d check his home first, then his neighbors’.
He felt awake for the first time all day.
Carol Keeley’s work has appeared in Tin House, Ploughshares, New England Review, Arts & Letters, Oxford Poetry, Antioch Review, Chicago Magazine, Columbia Poetry Review, The Chicago Tribune, New American Writing, Chicago Reader, and elsewhere. She won first place for Memoir/Personal Essay in the 2025 Writer’s Digest Competition, and won third place in 2026 Plentitudes Prizes in Nonfiction. In 2019, she won the Susan Atefat Prize for Creative Nonfiction. She was a finalist in the 2017 Nelson Algren Award for fiction. She currently lives in Colorado.