over there.’
‘Doesn’t look like much.’
‘We’re the shit end of the stick out here, I guess.’
‘Worse than anywhere else?’
‘Worse than the towns whose native bands have signed the government land claim offers. Places that get to at least think about building a new school. Or a sewage system that can cut down on the number of times your bathtub fills up with what your neighbour flushed down his toilet five minutes ago.’ Miles looks down at his boots. ‘There’s drugs here, and a lot of drinking,’ he says. ‘And I’m talking about the kids.’
‘Isn’t there a counsellor or someone?’
‘There’s nobody.’
‘What about you?’
‘I’m not paid to be a difference maker. It’s not my job, it’s yours.’
‘That sounded a little like contempt.’
‘You just heard it wrong.’
Tom and his friend have slouched their way over to the playground’s edge, where they stand with their hands in their pockets, asking Rachel questions that Miles and Alex cannot hear. The girl says something in return that brings goofy smiles to their faces.
‘You still teaching?’ Miles asks her.
‘It’s that or waitressing.’
‘You used to love it.’
‘I’m just tired. It’s a lot to—’ Alex lets her thought turn into a shrug.
‘You’re on your own?’
‘As far as Rachel goes, yes.’
‘That can’t be easy. And the kids you work with are even worse—mentally challenged, or whatever—it must be that much tougher to—’
‘You’re right. They’ll kill you. You’re helping and helping all day, and at the end of it, if you’ve done your job, they just need you more. You know?’
‘Not really.’
‘No, you wouldn’t.’
From across the parking lot, Mungo Capoose strolls into view, his arm held over his head in a wave, as though Alex and Miles are a half mile distant instead of a hundred feet away.
‘Where you off to?’ Miles calls to him.
‘Just following orders.’
‘What orders?’
‘You wanted me to check on King, didn’t you?’
Mungo grins at them. At Alex, anyway. Miles has forgotten that, in Ross River, Alex will appear not only as an obvious stranger but as uncommonly beautiful. For the first time, Miles acknowledges this as well. Green eyes, freckles, dark hair shining down the back of her neck.
‘The fire office is the other way,’ Miles tells him.
‘That I know. Just want to share a word with my son here.’
Mungo keeps his eyes on Alex a moment longer, and when Miles glances to see if she is meeting the older man’s gaze, he finds her smiling back at him.
‘He seems nice.’
‘Nice? I suppose Mungo’s nice. The sad truth is he’s the best man on my crew.’
‘You’ve got friends up here, at least.’
‘I wouldn’t go that far.’
Mungo grabs Tom by the shoulders and gives him a shake. Tom’s friend repeats whatever story he’s already told Rachel and all of them laugh, with Mungo adding something at the end that brings another round of guffaws.
‘She’s good at that,’ Alex says.
‘Good at what?’
‘Figuring out strangers in a hurry.’
‘It’s a hell of a skill to have.’
‘When you’re on the road with just your mom around to keep an eye on you, it’s a good thing to know who might be bad news.’
‘What do you mean, on the road?’
Alex takes a step forward so that she can look directly up into Miles’s face. Her lips white, bloodless. He’s certain she is about to throw her fist into his face and he spreads his feet apart to keep his balance when it comes.
‘Four summers in a row,’ she says instead. ‘Looking for you.’
Miles turns away. Over Alex’s shoulder, he watches Mungo give Rachel a courtly bow, before taking Tom and his friend by the collars and pulling them off with him, squeezing the boys against his sides as they make a show of trying to escape his grip.
‘I can walk you by where I live. I have a dog. His name is Stump,’ Miles offers in a rush.
‘Rachel?’ The girl runs up behind Alex, grinning. But when she looks at Miles, her face is instantly emptied of expression. ‘Would you like to meet a dog named Stump?’
‘Stump?’ She swallows, as though tasting the name. ‘Grumpy lump! Let’s see Stump!’
Miles leads them past the prefab utility shed that once housed the radio station but now stands locked, the hastily painted CHRV-FM 88.9 sign over the door peeling away in rolls, the transmitting antenna bent to the side from kids using the shed as an observation tower.
‘Can we hear it? On the radio in the truck?’ Rachel asks him. No longer rushing ahead, the girl now lingers twenty feet behind Miles and Alex, kicking at stones that nip the backs of their ankles.
‘They’ve closed it down.’
‘But when it did work, who talked on it?’
‘Anybody that wanted to.’
‘So if it worked now, could I go on and talk?’
‘There wouldn’t be anybody to stop you.’
Now that he thinks of it, Miles misses tuning in during his first year here, finding only static most of the time, but also unexpected treats. Bonnie reading from her grandmother’s recipe box. Mungo playing the same side of Johnny Cash’s Ring of Fire LP three times in a row. A bunch of preschoolers giggling for a half-hour straight. All of it reaching no farther than a two-mile radius of wilderness and perhaps a half-dozen others who may have been listening. There was a comfort in it, though. Sitting alone and having voices come to him. Confirming for whoever might be doing the talking or listening that they were here, together, even if what was being said and heard made no trace of difference in the world.
As they walk toward his cabin, Miles and Alex ask questions of each other for the girl’s sake—Had Alex taken Rachel to see the dancing Gertie Girls in Dawson? Does Miles get a chance to go south in the winters?—but most of what passes between them comes in versions of the unsaid. No matter what caution they bring to their words, everything delivers both of them to the life they had discovered together, no greater in length than the time they have now been apart. They remember in the silence of shared understanding, two listeners tuned to the same voice. One that tells a story they already know but that surprises them anyway, leading them from what they had to what they lost, to Miles running away, to fire.
An afternoon rain has forced it underground. It hides beneath the surface, gnawing along roots far enough down to be untouched by moisture. The fire can find any number of hosts without ever showing itself to the world, living in oil shales, petroleum seeps or coal veins for weeks, even years. For now, tiny and unnamed, it allows itself to sleep.
A stethoscope placed on the ground would hear nothing, but a cheek could feel its warmth. In land like this, there may be a hundred such lazy fires for every square mile, more on the edges of swamps and bogs, where the fuels are rich but lie deeper. Most never awaken. They come to the