The Hunter

Twenty-One

The smoke is thickening. Cal pulls Trey up by her armpits and practically throws her into the car.

“What the almighty fuck were you thinking,” he says, slamming his door. He feels like he might hit her if he’s not careful. “You could’ve died.”

“I didn’t,” Trey points out.

“Jesus Christ,” Cal says. “Put your seat belt on.”

He spins the car, gravel crunching, to face down the mountain. The slow drifts of smoke make the road appear to move under the headlights, shifting and heaving like water. Cal wants to floor it, but he can’t afford to hit one of the many potholes and get stuck up here. He keeps it slow and steady, and tries to ignore the fluttering roar swelling behind him. Somewhere there’s a crash, immense enough that he feels the car shake, as a tree comes down.

The siren is rising, straight ahead of them and coming fast. “Fuck—” Cal says, through his teeth. The road is too narrow for passing, there’s nowhere to pull off; the only thing he can do is reverse, straight back into the fire.

“Turn right,” Trey says, leaning forward. “Now. Go.”

With no idea what he’s doing, Cal spins the wheel hard, sees the headlights skid across tree trunks and feels the tires bump over something, and finds himself on a path: narrow and overgrown enough that he’s passed it for two years without ever suspecting its existence, but real. Behind them, on the road, the siren wails by and fades.

“Mind out,” Trey says. “ ’S twisty.”

“This gonna be wide enough for the car?”

“Yeah. Widens out in a bit.”

Even with the windows rolled up, smoke has seeped into the car, thickening the air and catching at the back of Cal’s throat. He forces himself to keep his foot off the accelerator, peering through the windshield for the faint track that weaves erratically between trees, so close that branches scrape the sides of the car. “Where’s this go?”

“Down to the foot of the mountain. Comes out a bit farther from the village. Up by the main road.”

Things dart out of the darkness across the headlight beams, small leaping animals, frantic birds. Cal, his heart jackhammering, slams on the brake every time. Trey hangs on tight against the jolts and the bumpy track. “Left,” she says, when the headlights come up against what looks like a dead-end cluster of trees, and Cal pulls left. He has no idea where he is, or which way he’s facing. “Left,” Trey says again.

Gradually the trees thin and give way to weeds and gorse. The track widens and becomes defined. They’ve left the thick of the smoke behind; the small steadfast lights of windows shine out clearly from the fields below, and the western horizon still has the last faint flush of turquoise. The world is still there. Cal starts to get his bearings back.

“Lena brought me into town today,” Trey says, out of nowhere. “To your man Nealon. I told him I saw no one that night. Just my dad going out.”

“OK,” Cal says, after a second. He manages to find enough spare brain cells to unravel a few of the things that means. “Did he?”

Trey shrugs.

Cal doesn’t have the resources left to put things carefully. “How come you changed your mind?”

“Just wanted to,” Trey says. She stops, like the words took her by surprise. “I wanted to,” she says again.

“Just like that,” Cal says. “Gee, I shoulda guessed. After putting the whole place through all this shit, you woke up this morning and went, ‘Fuck it, I’m bored, I guess I’ll head into town and change my story—’ ”

Trey asks, “You pissed off with me?”

Cal can’t imagine how to even begin answering that. For a minute he thinks he might start laughing like a loon. “God, kid,” he says. “I have no idea.”

Trey gives him a look like he might be losing it. Cal takes a breath and manages to pull himself back together a little bit. “Mostly,” he says, “I’m just glad this whole shitstorm looks like it’s on its way to over and done with. And that you managed not to get yourself fucking killed up there. Everything else is low on my priority list.”

Trey nods like that makes sense. “You reckon my dad made it out?” she asks.

“Yeah. It’s spreading fast, but the way he headed, nothing’s gonna be cut off for a while. He’ll be fine. Guys like him always are.” Cal is done with being nice about Johnny Reddy. He feels he’s gone above and beyond by resisting the temptation to shove the little shit right into the heart of the fire.

They’ve reached the bottom of the mountain. Cal turns onto the road towards the village and tries to breathe deeply. His hands have started shaking so hard he can barely hold the steering wheel. He slows down before he sends them into a ditch.

Trey says, “Where we going?”

“Miss Lena’s,” Cal says. “Your mama and the kids are there already.”

Trey is silent for a second. Then she says, “Can I go to yours?”

Out of nowhere, Cal feels tears prickle his eyes. “Sure,” he says, blinking so he can see the road. “Why not.”

Trey lets out a long sigh. She slouches deeper into her seat, getting comfortable, and turns herself sideways to watch the fire, with the still gaze of a kid on a road trip watching scenery stream by.

Lena makes up the spare bed for Sheila and the little ones, and puts bedding on the sofa for Maeve. She helps Sheila bring in all the bags from the car boot, and dig through them for nightclothes and toothbrushes. She finds milk and mugs and biscuits so everyone can have a snack before bed. She doesn’t ring Cal. As soon as he can, he’ll ring her. She keeps her phone in her jeans pocket, where she’ll feel it vibrate no matter how many people are talking. It must be the only phone in Ardnakelty, apart from Sheila’s, that’s not ringing. Once she feels it vibrate and drops everything to grab for it, but it’s Noreen. Lena lets it go to voicemail.

It’s night, but above the mountain, the cloud has a fractious, pulsing orange glow. All the way down here, the air is thick with the insistent smell of burning gorse. Sirens go past, out on the road, and Lena and Sheila pretend not to hear. Lena knows Trey well enough to be certain there must have been a plan. She also knows, from Sheila’s thickening silence as time goes on and Trey doesn’t come, that this wasn’t in it.

Liam is unsettled and bratty, kicking things and climbing on furniture, demanding every ten seconds to know where his daddy is. Neither Lena nor Sheila has attention to spare for him; Sheila has enough to do with Alanna, who refuses to let go of her T-shirt, and Lena, while she empathizes fully with Liam’s mood, is having difficulty not telling him to shut the fuck up. In the end it’s Maeve who takes him in hand, asking Lena for the dogs’ brushes and herding him off to groom them. Neither of them has much of a clue what they’re at, but the dogs are patient, and gradually Liam settles to the rhythm of the job. Lena, passing with towels, sees him asking Maeve something in an undertone, and Maeve shushing him.

When her phone finally rings, Lena almost knocks over a chair getting out the back door. “Cal,” she says, shutting the door behind her.

“We’re at my place. Me and Trey.”

Lena’s knees go loose and she sits down hard on her back step. “That’s great,” she says. Her voice comes out calm and steady. “Any damage done?”

“She twisted her ankle and picked up a few little burns. Nothing to write home about.”

His voice is carefully steady too. Whatever happened up there, it was bad. “That’ll all heal,” Lena says. “Is she eating?”

“We just got home this minute. But yeah, she’s already bitching about how she’s starving. I said I’d fix her something after I called you.”

“Well,” Lena says, “there you go. As long as she’s hungry, I’d say she’s grand, give or take.”

She hears Cal draw a long breath. “She wanted to come here,” he says. “I’ll keep her awhile, if that’s all right with Sheila.”

“You’d better,” Lena says. She takes a deep breath of her own and leans back against the wall. “I’ve nowhere to put her; she’d be sleeping in the bathtub.”

“Their house is good and gone. I don’t know how much besides.”

Lena says, “Sheila reckons Johnny musta dropped a smoke.”

There’s a second of silence. “Johnny was down at the foot of the mountain,” Cal says. “When the fire started.”

Lena hears the layers in his voice, and remembers Mart Lavin saying he’d see to Johnny. “Probably it smoldered away for a while,” she says. “Before it caught.”

Another second’s silence, while Cal takes his turn listening to the unsaid things, and Lena sits in the darkness and the smell of smoke, listening to him listen. “Probably did,” he says. “By the time it’s out, they’re not gonna be able to tell one way or the other.”

“Where’s Johnny now?”

“He’s skipped town. I gave him a little cash, help him get clear. I can’t swear he made it off the mountain, and it’d probably be good if people get the idea he might not have. But from what I could see, he should’ve been OK.”

Lena finds herself relieved, not for Johnny but for Trey, who won’t have to live with the thought that she had a hand in her dad’s death. “About fucking time,” she says.

“Just in time, more like,” Cal says. “Guy was deep in the shit.”

“I know, yeah.”

“With more shit headed his way. The kid told me you and her went to see Nealon.”

Lena can’t tell what he thinks about that. “I was hoping she’d say it to you,” she says. “I wasn’t sure. She was afraid you’d be pissed off with her.”

“Goddamn teenagers,” Cal says, with feeling. “I got so many things to be pissed off about, I can’t even make a start, or I’ll be there all year. What’s bothering me is she won’t tell me what changed her mind. That’s her business, but if anyone gave her any hassle, I’d like to know.”

“No hassle,” Lena says. “She got sense, is all.”

Cal doesn’t ask, which Lena is glad of. The answers could be a burden to him, or a complication, neither of which he needs right now. After a minute he says, “I don’t reckon Johnny killed that guy.”

“Me neither,” Lena says. “But he might as well come in useful, for once in his life.”

They’re looking for each other in the silences, feeling their way. Lena doesn’t want Cal in blank air over the phone. She wants him where she can touch him.

“There’s that,” Cal says. “Not my problem, either way. All I give a damn about is that he’s gone.”

In her mind Lena sees Nealon, the naked triumph swelling in his face. “Back when you were a detective,” she says. “When you knew you were about to get your man. What did it feel like?”

There’s a silence. For a minute she thinks Cal’s going to ask her where the hell that came from. Instead he says, “A relief, mostly. Like I got something fixed that was all messed up. When it stopped feeling that way, that’s when I quit.”

Lena finds herself smiling. She reckons, although she feels no need to share this, that Cal wouldn’t have enjoyed working with Nealon as much as he thinks. “Good call,” she says. “Now Rushborough’s not your problem.”

“Thank Christ,” Cal says. “I gotta go feed the kid. I just wanted to check in first.”

“I’ll be over to you in a bit,” Lena says. “I’ll see this lot settled in bed and show Sheila where to find everything, and I’ll be there.”

“Yeah,” Cal says, on a sudden long breath. “That’d be great.”

As Lena hangs up, Sheila comes quietly out the door and shuts it behind her. “Was that Cal?” she asks.

“Yeah,” Lena says. “Himself and Trey are grand. They’re at his place.”

Sheila catches a breath and lets it out again carefully. She sits down on the step next to Lena. “Well then,” she says. “That’s that sorted.”

There’s a silence. Lena knows Sheila is leaving it deliberately, so that she can ask any questions she might have—as a matter of fairness, since she’s after taking them in. Lena has no questions, or anyhow none to which she wants the answers.

“Johnny’s done a legger,” she says. “Cal gave him a bitta cash. If he’s in luck, everyone’ll think he got caught in the fire.”

Sheila nods. “Then that’s that sorted as well,” she says. She smooths her hands down her thighs.

The sky is as dark as the fields, so that they merge into one unbounded expanse. High amid the black hangs a bright, distorted ring of orange. Billows of smoke, strangely lit from below, heave and churn above it.

“Cal says the house is gone,” Lena says.

“I knew that, sure. It’ll be ashes. I always hated the place anyway.” Sheila tilts back her head to watch the blaze, without expression. “We won’t be under your feet too long,” she says. “Coupla weeks, just. If the aul’ Murtagh place makes it through, I might ask would they let me have that. Or I might come down offa the mountain, for a change. See if Rory Dunne fancies having us in that cottage, instead of doing the Airbnb. Alanna’s starting school next month; I could get a bit of a job for myself.”

“You’re welcome here as long as you need it,” Lena says. “Specially if Maeve and Liam are going to brush those dogs. With the heat this summer, they’ve been shedding enough to make me fitted carpets.”

Sheila nods. “I’ll go in and tell the kids about their daddy,” she says. “They’re worrying. They’ll be upset he’s gone, or Maeve and Liam will anyway, but I’ll tell them at least he’s safe now. They’ll be glad of that.”

“Good,” Lena says. “Someone oughta be.”

Sheila lets out a crack of laughter, and Lena realizes how it sounded. “Ah, stop,” she protests, but she’s laughing as well. “I meant it.”

“I know, yeah, I know you did. And you’re right, o’ course. It’s just the way you said it, like—” They’re both laughing much harder than it deserves, so hard that Sheila has her head down on her knees. “Like it was cleaning a manky toilet, ‘Someone oughta do that—’ ”

“ ‘—but I’m not touching it—’ ”

“Oh, God—”

“Mammy?” Alanna says, in the doorway. She’s bare-legged, wearing an oversized red T-shirt that Lena’s seen on Trey.

“Oh, Jesus,” Sheila says, getting her breath and wiping her eyes with the heel of her hand. “Come here.” She holds out an arm to Alanna.

Alanna stays where she is, baffled and suspicious. “What’s funny?”

“It’s been a long day, is all,” Sheila says. “A long aul’ time. Come here.”

After a moment Alanna curls onto the step, in the crook of Sheila’s arm. “Where’s Trey?”

“At Cal’s.”

“Is she gonna stay there?”

“I don’t know. We’ve a loada things to decide on. We’re only starting out.”

Alanna nods. Her eyes, gazing up at the mountain, are solemn and dreamy.

“Time for bed,” Sheila says. She stands up and, with a grunt of effort, lifts Alanna off the step. Alanna winds her legs around her, still gazing over her shoulder at the fire.

“Come on,” Sheila says, and carries her inside. Lena stays where she is for a while, listening to the sounds of the place full of people getting ready for bed. She has no desire to make the arrangement a long-term one, but just for a few weeks, it feels like a worthwhile thing to have other people in her house again.

What with everything that was going on, Trey missed dinner. She’s considerably more concerned about this than about her ankle, which is baseball-sized and purple but doesn’t appear to be broken, or about the spatter of red patches and blisters on her arms where burning flecks settled. Cal, whose hands are still shaking, doesn’t have the wherewithal to cook anything substantial. He straps up the kid’s ankle and makes her a sandwich, and then another one, and finally dumps the bread and various fillings on the table and lets her go to town.

He’s watching her for any number of things, trying to remember every word Alyssa’s said over the years about trauma and delayed reactions and attachment disruption, but for the life of him he can’t see anything worth watching. What the kid mainly looks is hungry, with a large side order of dirty. He would give a lot to know what turned out to be more important to her than her revenge, but he has a growing feeling that that might not be something she’ll ever be willing to share with him.

Probably he ought to talk to her about—among a whole mess of other things—the fire: the people who could lose everything, the animals whose homes are gone, the firefighters putting themselves in danger. He’s not going to do it. For one thing, right now he’s too blown apart by relief that she’s here, and apparently in one piece, to have any room left for matters of conscience. For another, it would have no impact. If she set her place on fire, Trey was getting rid of evidence. Cal can only see one reason for that, and it’s not one against which anything else would hold weight.

“I’m not gonna ask you,” he says suddenly.

Trey looks up at him, chewing.

“About any of it. Anything you feel like telling me, go for it anytime, I want to hear it. But I’m not gonna ask.”

Trey takes a minute to examine this. Then she nods and shoves the last hunk of sandwich in her mouth. “Can I’ve a shower?” she asks, through it. “ ’M manky.”

Cal takes himself outside while she does that. He leans on the wall by the road and watches the fire. A few days ago he wouldn’t have been easy leaving Trey alone in the house, but any danger to her is gone. He’s not sure what complicated weave of allegiances led her to the decisions she made, but that doesn’t matter—for now, anyway—as long as those decisions look acceptable from the outside.

He’s still out there when Mart comes stumping down the road. Even with the orange glow lighting the sky, it’s dark enough that Cal hears the crunch of his feet before his shape separates itself from the hedges. He recognizes Mart by his walk. It’s jerkier than usual, and Mart is leaning hard on his crook: all that time standing still, watching Johnny dig, has stiffened him up.

“Hey,” Cal says, when he gets close enough.

“Ah,” Mart says, his face cracking into a grin, “the man himself. That’s all I wanted to know: you made it back safe and sound. Now I can head off to my beauty sleep with a clear conscience.”

“Yep,” Cal says. “Thanks for checking.” His enforced alliance with Mart is over, but something has shifted between them, whether he likes it or not.

Mart sniffs. “My God,” he tells Cal, “there’s a terrible bang of smoke offa you. You’d want to give yourself a good scrub before your missus calls round, or she won’t go near you. Did you get close to the fire?”

“Just for a minute,” Cal says. “Got Trey in the car and made tracks. She’s inside. Sheila and the other kids, they’re at Lena’s.”

“Ah, that’s great,” Mart says, smiling at him. “I’m delighted they’re all safe out of it. What about the bold Johnny, Sunny Jim? Did you push him in the fire, or where is he at all?”

“Johnny thought the kid was still in the house,” Cal says. “He headed up round the back of it, looking for her. I dunno what happened to him.”

“That’s lovely,” Mart says approvingly. “That’d warm your heart, so it would: the good-for-nothing waster sacrificing himself for his child. I’d say that’ll go down a treat; everyone loves a bitta redemption, specially with a comeuppance thrown in. Didja push him in? Just between ourselves, like.”

“Didn’t need to,” Cal says. “He ran off.”

Mart nods, unsurprised. “That’s what he was always best at,” he says. “ ’Tis great when a man’s talents come in handy. Did he mention where he was headed, at all?”

“Nope,” Cal says. “And I didn’t ask, ’cause it doesn’t matter. As far as anyone needs to know, he never made it off the mountain.”

Mart looks at him and starts to giggle. “Well, wouldja look at that,” he says. “I finally got you settled into this place good and proper. You’ve got the hang of it now, bucko; there’ll be no holding you.”

“Even if Johnny did make it out,” Cal says, “he’s gonna run a long way, and he’s not coming back. We’re shut of him. And Nealon figures Johnny’s his guy, so we’re shut of him, too.”

“Well,” Mart says, his eyebrows jumping. “Isn’t that great news? Good riddance to the pair of them.”

“I’ll drink to that,” Cal says. Mart isn’t asking what changed Nealon’s mind. Cal didn’t expect him to.

“I’d say you will. D’you know something?” Mart asks meditatively, turning his head to examine the blaze’s progress. “There was a few votes in favor of just setting Johnny’s place on fire to begin with, instead of foostering about with spades and what-have-you. ’Tis a mad aul’ world, when you think about it. Whatever you do, it all comes to the same in the end.”

“You hear anything about how bad it is?” Cal asks.

“Gimpy Duignan and his missus got told to evacuate, and so did Malachy and Seán Pól and everyone higher up, and a few over the other side as well. The fire lads are hoping they’ll have it under control before it gets that far, but it all depends on the wind.” Mart squints up at the sky. “Not just the wind, maybe. I thought I’d never hear myself say this again, but will I tell you something, Sunny Jim? It looks like rain.”

Cal looks up. The sky is thick and starless; the air has a weight and a restless tingle that have nothing to do with the fire.

“If I’m right about that,” Mart says, “the damage mightn’t be too bad after all. The sheep up there have more sense than most men; they’ll have got themselves well clear at the first sniff of smoke. We’ll lose a bitta forest and plenty of gorse, but sure, no one minds that; it’ll clear the land for grazing, and God knows we could do with any help we can get. As long as no more houses go, this could be a blessing in disguise.” He shoots Cal a sharp sideways glance. “Would you have any idea how it happened to start?”

“Sheila Reddy reckons Johnny started it,” Cal says. “By accident. Threw down a smoke that wasn’t out.”

Mart considers this, still examining the sky. “I’d line up behind that,” he agrees. “I hate to speak ill of the dead, but Johnny was a terrible man for not taking into account the consequences of his own actions. That adds up nicely.”

Cal says, “Were you guys gonna kill him?”

Mart’s face creases into a grin. “Less of the ‘you guys’ there, bucko.”

“OK,” Cal says. “Were we gonna kill him?”

“You tell me, Sunny Jim,” Mart says. “You were there. You tell me.” Struck by a sudden thought, he fishes in the pocket of his trousers. “Come here, I’ve something to show you. I was on my way home, and my headlights caught that feckin’ zombie yoke of yours. I’m the observant type, and I noticed something different about him. So I pulled over and had a look. And have a guess what that fella was wearing.”

He shakes something out with a triumphant flap and holds it up in front of Cal’s face. Cal has to lean close to identify it. It’s Mart’s orange camouflage bucket hat.

“He didn’t like me taking it off him,” Mart says, “but I fought him off like Rocky Balboa, so I did. No one comes between me and my hat.”

“Well, I’ll be damned,” Cal says. While keeping his mouth firmly shut, he always figured Mart was right and Senan was behind the hat’s disappearance. “Senan’s an innocent man.”

“Exactly,” Mart says, wagging the hat at Cal. “I’m not afraid to admit when I’ve been wrong. Senan was over at the foot of the mountain, with yourself and meself, when this was planted, and I owe the man an apology and a pint. So who was it robbed this on me, hah? Next time you fancy poking about in a mystery, Sunny Jim, you put your detective skills to work on that one.”

He pulls the hat down on his head and gives it a satisfied pat. “All’s well that ends well,” he says. “That’s my motto.” He lifts his crook to Cal and hobbles off up the road into the darkness, whistling a chirpy little tune and trying to favor all his joints at once.

Trey’s house has, or had, only one bathroom and never enough hot water, so she takes advantage of Cal’s place to have the longest shower of her life with no one banging on the door. She keeps her bad foot propped up on the stool they made, back when she was shorter, so she could get things off high shelves. The hot water stings her burns; there are small, raw bald spots among her hair.

The day flashes disjointed images across her mind: Nealon tilting his chair back, trees made of flame, Lena striding up the path, petrol splashing onto the heaped wheelbarrow, her mam’s hands on the table in sunlight. All of them, except the fire, seem like years ago. Sometime she might feel something about them, but for now she doesn’t have room; her mind is too crowded with the flashes. The single thing she feels is relief that she’s at Cal’s.

When she comes out of the shower, Cal is nowhere to be seen, but Rip is peacefully asleep in his corner, so she doesn’t worry. She sits on the sofa, re-strapping her ankle and looking around. She likes this room. It has clarity, a place for each and every object. The books are lined up in neat stacks under the windowsill; Cal could do with a bookshelf.

Trey finds herself rejecting the idea. Paying Cal back for taking her in would be stupid, a baby thing to do. She’s already, finally, found something worth giving him: her revenge. Her debts to him are cleared, in a way that doesn’t allow for going backwards to little-kid shite like ham slices and bookshelves. They’re on a different footing now.

She finds Cal out front, leaning on the wall and watching the fire. “Hey,” he says, turning his head, when he hears her steps on the grass.

“Hey,” Trey says.

“You’re not supposed to be walking on that foot. Rest it.”

“Yeah,” Trey says. She leans her folded arms on the wall next to his. She’s relying on him not to talk to her, at least not in any way that demands thought. She’s had enough talking and enough thinking in the past few weeks to last her the rest of her life.

The fire has burned itself out on the side of the mountain, and risen to run along its crest; the familiar outlines are traced in flame across solid blackness. Trey wonders how many other people in the townland are at their gates or their windows, watching. She hopes every man and woman of them recognizes this for what it is: Brendan’s funeral bonfire.

“Your mama get any of your clothes out?” Cal asks.

“Yeah. Most of ’em.”

“Good. Miss Lena’s calling round here in a while; I’ll ask her to bring you a change. Those smell like smoke.”

Trey pulls her T-shirt neck up to her nose and sniffs. The smell is fierce, black and woody. She decides to keep the T-shirt as it is. She can use it to wrap Brendan’s watch. “Ask her can she bring Banjo as well,” she says.

“And tomorrow,” Cal says, “I’m gonna take you into town and buy you some jeans that cover your damn ankles.”

Trey finds herself grinning. “So I’ll be decent, yeah?”

“Yeah,” Cal says. Trey can hear the unwilling grin rising in his voice, too. “That’s right. You can’t go round showing your ankles in front of God and everybody. You’ll give some little old lady a heart attack.”

“Don’t need new jeans,” Trey says, by reflex. “These’re grand.”

“You give me any shit,” Cal says, “and I’ll stop by the barber while we’re there and get this whole beard shaved off, clean as a whistle. You can say hello to my chin warts.”

“Changed my mind,” Trey tells him. “I wanta meet them. Go for it.”

“Nah,” Cal says. “No point. The weather’s changing. Smell: there’s rain coming.”

Trey raises her head. He’s right. The sky is too dark to see clouds, but the air is stirring against her cheek, cool and damp in her nose, moss and wet stone underlying the flare of smoke. Something is sweeping in from the west with purpose, gathering overhead.

She asks, “Will it put out the fire?”

“Probably, between that and the firefighters. Or at least wet things down till it can’t keep spreading.”

Trey looks up at the mountainside, where Brendan is lying and where she almost joined him. Her chance of finding him, a slim one from the start, is gone now. The fire will have taken any signs she could have spotted; if his ghost was ever there, now it’s a slip of flame, twisting upwards amid smoke and gone into the night sky. She finds, to her surprise, that she’s OK with this. She misses Brendan as much as ever, but the jagged need has gone out of it. With him, too, her footing has changed.

Something light as a midge hits against her cheek. When she touches it, she feels a speck of damp.

“Rain,” she says.

“Yep,” Cal says. “That’ll make the farmers easier in their minds. You want to go inside?”

“Nah,” Trey says. She should be wrecked, but she’s not. The cool air feels good. She feels like she could stay right here all night, till the fire is out or till the morning comes.

Cal nods and rearranges his arms more comfortably on the wall. He texts Lena about Banjo and the change of clothes, and shows Trey the thumbs-up she sends back. The rooks, alert and edgy in their tree, make hoarse comments on the situation and tell each other to shut up.

The line of flame has stretched wider across the horizon, following the dips and rises of the mountains’ crest. The sound of it reaches them very faintly and gentled, like the shell-echo of a faraway ocean. It’s late, but far into the distance on every side, the fields are dotted with the tiny yellow lights of houses. Everyone is awake and keeping vigil.

“ ’S beautiful,” Trey says.

“Yeah,” Cal says. “I guess it is.”

They lean on the wall, watching, as the rain flecks their skin more thickly and the bright outline of the mountains hangs in the night sky.