By Teresa Burns Gunther

Conflagration

A fire engine speeds up the county road, its siren’s wail warped on the devil wind: wah-waaaaaah-wah. Los Diablos’ howl is dark, gritty with acrid smoke. Corina peers out the window—curtainless: #5 on the prepare to evacuate list. Desiccated pines that circle the wood-framed house sway and bump, drunken dancers in a swirl of forest duff. The fire lurks just over the ridge now.

Rick, his large, muscled arms shiny with sweat, dashes to the open trailer he attached to his pickup last night. This morning, fearing the worst, he turned it nose out the driveway. She’s never seen her husband move so fast as he has this day, a frantic back and forth from house to car, from shed to truck and trailer.

Crooked black letters spell XMAS on the side of the box he lugs. It’s October and 101°. A faded red paperchain spills out, dancing behind him like a tail. She wants to shout: Leave it! Who wants old cards from people they’ve let go? A tree stump from their first ever Christmas? Handmade decorations no one puts up anymore?

Rick is sentimental with an abundance of dreams that float on an ocean of inertia. He should have married another dreamer, not a schoolteacher who loves order and spends her days leading 5th grade minds to pen clear and decisive conclusions.

Corina lifts her hands from the sill, swipes the black soot off her fingers on her shorts. Skirting boxes, she hurries to the darkening kitchen, flicks the light switch, then remembers: no power. The cat’s bowl sits untouched. Corina has looked for her everywhere, another of Rick’s rescues.

Branches knock at the roof. She grabs an empty box from the table. Its edge opens the cut on her hand. She sucks the blood and stands before the cupboards whose doors have languished in Rick’s workshop for three years. A scream scratches at her throat. She wants none of these old dishes, mismatched cups, canned tomatoes. All she hungers for is emptiness, to purge this house, its weight and possession.

She grabs the three-legged molcajete that her abuela used for grinding spices while she’d explained in her remembering voice that in ancient times the basalt mortars served as burial bowls for the high and mighty. Corina wraps it in the tablecloth her mother embroidered, sets her Best Mom mug beside it in the box, adds the heirloom silver sippy cup from Rick’s family, and her father’s carving set, the pieces of her history she’ll keep.

She empties the fridge into an ice chest, takes a Coke, still cold, and presses it to her hot cheeks like quick kisses. Opens it and chugs. It cools her burning throat but tastes wrong, tastes of a world on fire. She stacks the box on the ice chest, lifts it all in her skinny arms and staggers under its weight to the door, drops it with a grunt, and pulls her phone from her pocket.

Rick jogs past the window, his arms filled with more junk. Tools, then the chicken coop he never finished. He stacks it all in the bed of his supersized truck.

As if he feels her watching, he turns, scans the house, his face half-hidden behind an orange bandana. A helicopter whoop-whoop-whoops overhead. He runs to the house and ducks his large frame through the door. Once, she loved this shaggy giant beyond reason, full of dreams he’d made her believe in. His tool belt, loaded with possibility, hangs low on the hips her legs have encircled countless times.

“Close the door!” she cries. It’s hot inside but the smoke outside is suffocating. His steel-toed boot kicks the door shut with a bang. He tugs the bandana below his square chin, his chest heaves, he clenches and unclenches his hands.

“I still can’t find Spot.” His voice is hoarse. “Did you look for her?”

“Yeah. But she never comes when I call. She’ll be fine.” Unlike Corina, that cat knew when to leave.

When Corina heard the warning: Be prepared to evacuate, it felt like a gift.

“Why aren’t you packing?” His brows merge into one fierce line.

“I am.” She follows his gaze to her phone flashing a warning to recharge. “Checking CalFire’s website.” He reaches for his cell. She shakes her head. “No service. The kids will be worried.”

His eyes dart wildly around the living room, the jumbled furnishings. She wants none of it. His gaze lingers on the dining table—a find!—in need of refinishing.

“We can’t take everything.”

“Try,” he pleads, like he might cry. “And hurry.”

She runs to the bedroom, pulls her blue Samsonite from her closet shelf. When she hears Rick bang out the door she plops down on the bed, rubs her hand over the suitcase’s bumpy surface. A high school graduation gift she’d once dreamed she’d travel the world with. She releases the clasp. The suitcase yawns open releasing a pale scent of lavender from an ancient sachet. Her passport, long expired, lingers in the satin pocket, its pages pristine, unmarked. She feels caught between the past and what’s become of her. In the distance, another siren shrieks as she eyes her bedroom, a museum of disappointments.

It took a dozen years to get rid of the flower-power wallpaper. When she’d tried to strip it, he complained she was doing it wrong. Finally, last April, when he left on a fishing trip, she hired a contractor out of her small inheritance from her mother. When Rick returned, hurt by her betrayal, he hunted out mistakes, vindicated by two paint drips on the baseboard. He’s a perfectionist, particularly about work done by others.

The last time they were equal partners in the construction of dreams she was a sophomore in college: finish school, fill a house with laughter, children, and friends. His hope was revolutionary after the humorless home she grew up in, the place excitement went to die. “We’ll have five,” he’d pronounced and she’d laughed. Until she got pregnant her junior year.

“Dreams do come true,” he’d told their wedding guests. “Watch and learn.” With his deep, rumpled laugh, so handsome in his tux, he’d raised a champagne flute and scooped her tiny dancer’s body with its tiny baby bump into the sweep of his big, strong arm. Her friends swooned while her parents watched with grim disapproval; she’d felt the luckiest woman on earth. Rick got a job as a mechanic. She waited tables and they ground out their degrees in night school. Crazy in love and swept up in his fantasy, they bought this house on ten acres in the forest. They had one boy, then a girl, but Corina refused to bring more children into a construction zone, so their family stopped there.

A hard gust rattles the windows, pulling Corina from her reverie. She jumps off the bed. Her “antique” dresser, still awaiting Rick’s promise of restoration, demands a wrestling match before releasing her clothes. Lately, she’s been dreaming of an uncluttered life. An empty sunlit house with four corners and solid floors. She packs from the list that lives in her head: underwear with reliable elastic, her softest nightie, and the yellow top that makes her skin look golden. She chooses her favorite jewelry. Leaves the solo earrings and tangled chains. Grabs her cowboy boots from the large walk-in closet she’d once envisioned as a nursery. Too late. Her nest was emptied three weeks ago when her baby left for college while the closet remains filled with the detritus of Rick’s half-baked plans.

Her sister says, “It’s sexy. My Gerry couldn’t screw in a lightbulb to save his life.” But her Gerry calls in experts and she lives in a beautiful home. Finished. Everything in its place. Her brother doesn’t see the glamour. Hasn’t visited since he fell through a broken floorboard in the living room two years ago and broke his ankle. That’s when she began dreaming her exit plans.

In the bathroom, she packs her toiletries. Imagines the colorful melting kaleidoscope the fire will make of what she’ll leave behind: the brunette hair tint, old makeup, spent lipsticks.

A neighbor pulls his car down their drive, shouts to Rick: The fire’s reached the ridge! A thrill tingles her arms, different from the anxiety that’s simmered in her for years, that lately has pulled her craning for the door. But she stayed.

Rick’s her children’s father. A sweet man. With big dreams he drives to the hardware store, returns, dons his toolbelt, and sashays around their property with a mountain of intent. She once thought he could change but she finally understands—change is the thing he likes least. She feels submerged in the stream of junk that keeps spilling into the house, the yard. It’s gotten worse these last five years. Some emptiness he tries to fill. New projects started before old ones completed…

Note from Author:
This work will be included in my upcoming new collection. Please sign up for my newsletter to receive notice of my upcoming publications.