Smoke

DO NOT DRIVE INTO SMOKE.

The yellowed road sign was already a dwindling speck in his side mirror, hardly worth devoting any extra energy on, but Bryan couldn’t shake the nasty thought that a sign like that was just the sort of unimpeachable non-action that authorities like to take in a crisis. Notably, he didn’t put much thought into the actual substance of the warning. Wispy gray clouds of smoke rolled somewhere ahead, their exact distance impossible to judge against the resolutely flat landscape. Besides, driving into the smoke didn’t seem like such a bad idea today.

Once Bryan hit the turnpike, he clicked on cruise control and dialed up the radio, content to watch the world with unseeing eyes as it hurtled past him for a while. He was an awkward, praying mantis of a young man and he hunched over the steering wheel in a nervy tangle of spindly limbs. Driving home was always like this, but this trip was worse. He hummed tunelessly, his insectoid mouth drawn tight and pale. Bryan tapped at the controls, coaxing an extra ounce of speed out of his tired blue sedan.

Kansas, of course, was burning. He couldn’t be sure exactly where the wildfire started, stewing on what he would tell his parents and what he could avoid rather than taking in the scenery. Dimly at first, sleepily, like reaching for a step that was never there, he began to register the vast expanse of charred grass that stretched in all directions. Huge sweeps had burned down to their roots and multiple steady streams of smoke on the horizon promised more to come. The damage was haphazard and illogical, as if the fire had been particularly fickle, tearing down the plain in one direction before peeling off in another, leaving heavy marks in the earth like a brand on the hide of a giant cow. He rarely drove past the flames themselves, but when he did, he found that they were surprisingly small. What the blaze lacked in stage presence, it made up for in persistence, meticulously carving away the countryside. Bryan too, was persistent.

Bryan drove several more minutes without passing another car, let alone someone trying to stem the wildfires’ advance. He passed a small town and then a dribbling creek, both ugly. Squat rope fences staking out property lines were the only evidence that someone cared about the fire’s spread. Cattle gathered on the riverbank and brayed in disapproval. Once distant smoke plumes now flanked either side of the highway. The air was gritty with debris that stuck to Bryan’s windshield and the sun refracted harsh and red through the muck. He bumped up his cruising speed again, vaguely hoping to outrun the disaster. His car shuddered with effort, its loyalty having never been tested like this.

Visibility continued to deteriorate. The world outside his car was dark and hazy; Bryan leaned forward staring hard at the glass, willing it to clarity. The murkiness was so complete that he startled whenever he passed close enough to an object to actually make it out, a sudden, indistinct lump jutting out of the smog. Mania soon gave way to panic and he stabbed at the controls as if he was a jockey reining in a headstrong steed. Bryan jerked the wheel back and forth, not always sure if he was avoiding obstacles or seeking them out. There were no signs advising what to do in the event you had already driven into the smoke, or at least none that he could make out.

A flickering light meandered through the smoky dark. After another chaotic mile, Bryan could see it was a scraggly tree that had caught fire, an ominous lighthouse. If the blazing tree was his lighthouse, then the old barn some two hundred yards behind it was his anchor, and he wheeled toward it, hardly slowing. The barn was old-fashioned, wooden with red peeling paint and broad doors flung wide. It seemed to have been converted into a chapel later in life, with a quaint silver bell hanging from its peak. Someone had dug a narrow ditch around the barn and piled mounds of dirt in a meager defensive perimeter. The unstable light of the burning tree mixed with a fluorescent glow from inside the chapel in an eerie mixed message. Altogether, the spot was a perfect venue for an outdoor wedding that you hope no one will attend. For Bryan, exhausted and wavering, it would have to be good enough.

Outside the chapel, he finally made use of the brakes, leaving his car wherever it happened to stop. The rustic building only had a few patches of unburnt grass by way of a parking lot and the hellish sky suggested courtesy had lost some of its importance anyway. Smoke hung heavy in the air, choking and sweet. Bryan followed the lights and entered the barn.

The interior consisted of a single, large room, sparsely furnished with a handful of wooden pews and a long-faded rug that trailed its way from the entrance to the altar. A weathered stone man with a full beard and a distressed countenance stood off to the side, as if having just finished his sermon. Long mirrors were propped slantwise against the walls, brightening the room but also making it appear small and cluttered. An out of place rocking chair creaked rhythmically, propelled by the only other living soul present that night.

The woman was composed, serene even, wearing a prim, church-going dress and a white Sunday hat. She wielded two arms-length knitting needles, which she used to add to the coarse blanket covering her lap with expert speed. When she spoke, she did not look up from her work, though Bryan had the impression that she could have done such a thing if she wanted.

“Private residence.”

Her needles clacked together with each upswing, keeping time while Bryan hesitated. Smack. He took a couple steps onto the carpet and answered too loudly, trying for confidence but overshooting into defiance. Smack.

“The fire’s out of control. I can’t drive in all that smoke.”

She didn’t miss a beat with her needles.

“Lots of places to stop driving.”

“Less than you might think.”

The woman looked up from her work, though her hands never broke rhythm. Her green eyes were hard and she pursed her lips, not afraid to let Bryan know she was sizing him up.

“Well, where are you trying to go? And don’t lie to me, I’ll know.”

Bryan licked his lips. This wasn’t like getting pulled over by some small-town cruiser, he couldn’t just swat the question away with some banality about driving home for the holiday. Her knitting needles beat on.

“Just trying to get someplace else,” he said.

She laughed and there was no doubt it was at his expense.

“Well, you can get there from most anywhere. But it’s easier here, so maybe you were right to stop. I’ll warn you though, coming back isn’t so easy if you don’t like what you find.”

She explained the process to him with dispassionate precision. Close the broad chapel doors and walk around the alter three times, touching the stone saint each time. Turn and walk down the aisle. Walk, don’t run. Open the doors and arrive, someplace else. Simple really. Bryan listened and nodded, all the while walking closer to the altar. He knew he should do something, rev up his car and never look back, at least ask a question. He looked to the statue, as if it might take on the responsibility for him, but the stone man did not speak.

A tiny, unnamable worry tugged at the edges of his mind. After a moment he realized the problem. The loathsome thwacking had stopped. He spun away from the altar to confirm what he already knew. The woman was gone, the chapel doors shut.

Like a sleepwalker, Bryan started his slow march around the altar. Each circuit was more deliberate than the last, automatic lest he make the mistake of thinking about this any longer. He pressed three fingers to the statue’s brow and focused on the cool, unyielding surface. On the third round he felt for a moment that he could hear the woman’s needles churning and his heart rose, certain that upon seeing his resolve, she must have returned to talk him out of it. But the woman was not there and the only sound was his own footsteps and the moment passed. Bryan walked down the aisle, remembering that he should not run. He wondered if he would falter when the moment came, if he would pause at the broad chapel doors and reconsider. Would his hands shake? But a door is just a door, even when it goes someplace else, and Bryan had already flung them open by the time he realized it was time to make a choice.

The Kansas fires burned for three more days. Muted and delayed, an official response did eventually arrive, though in retrospect it probably made only a modest difference. Lengthy passages of scorched grassland alongside the turnpike bore witness to what had happened. Cattle wandered through devastated pastures, nosing at green remnants poking out from the soot. The converted barn was smoke-streaked but no worse for wear, perhaps due to its improvised fortifications, though the tree had long since burned away. Soft music tumbled out the open doors of the chapel, welcoming visitors that never arrived. A blue sedan was parked on what was left of the front lawn, an improbable oasis.