Where there’s smoke
“Where’s everybody going?”
“Take that, you two-timing dingleberry!” I muttered, stomping on the Witch’s feeding straw and knocking her off the driving chair as if it were an accident. “That’ll teach you to sabotage our vacation.”
Mom’s sunglasses stayed on the front windowsill as we drove along the dry side of the mountains between Nevada and California. The air was faded and grey-brown like an antique photo, more ancient even than VHS. We’d been driving all day, and still the smoke followed us. The sky over Nevada on my side of the Wagon was still clear and sky-colored, but the smudge seeping over the mountains from California blurred the peaks on Mom’s side. The smell of camping crowded out the smell of trees and it seemed like only a matter of time before the whole world was filled with smoke. Even though the sun was still in the middle of the sky, I could stare straight at it without blinking, like staring at the moon. It wasn’t its usual sparkly grey either, but a sort of lava-grey that would have been quite nice on a pair of running shorts, but was unsettling, smoldering so high above the horizon like that. Cars stopped beside the freeway to take pictures of the neon-grey color of it.
The Witch ordered us off the main highway, and Mom’s eyes immediately left the road and began searching the trees. Normally, the Law is a lowland creature, but Mammoth Lakes is a rare high-altitude habitat where they herd all the wild wagon-dwellers into hotels. Mom kept her eyes in the forest as we drove the marathong-length loop around town searching for a good sleeping place, but there were already wagons behind every tree.
On the second drive-by, the Wagon found a car-trail that had more space between trees than the others. Mom leaned forward in the driving chair as we crept down the sandy path into the forest, eyes darting from Subaru to car-house, from igloo to Isuzu. She checked out the neighborhood for signs that dog eyes couldn’t see and the muscles on the sides of her face bubbled as her teeth clamped hard. When you accidentally find yourself in a circle of unfamiliar wagons, there’s always someone with terrible sleeping technique who spends the night shouting and playing music like the air is all theirs.
“I guess we’re sleeping between the drunk college kids and the rednecks tonight,” Mom said as the Wagon cleared a spot for itself in the crowd.
We walked into the woods to find a potty tree, Mom keeping her eyes on the ground like she does in the City to keep them from catching a Friend. When we came back, a new car was snuggled so close to the Wagon’s butt that it blocked the kitchen door.
“Oh no! What will you do about dinner?” I asked, hoping it didn’t mean that my dinner was also trapped.
When Mom saw what I saw, smoke came out of her ears and fury blew the hat off her head. Or maybe the smoke was there the whole time, it was hard to tell. “Forget it.” She clamped the hat back down with a paw, not bothering to tuck the stray hairs underneath. “It’s probably too windy to light the damned stove anyway. I’ll just have nuts and raisins for dinner.”
“But what about your morning poop juice?” I reminded her. “Don’t you need space to set up the stove?”
“We’ll figure it out.” Mom opened the door and made a hurry up motion. “Let’s just get inside and pretend this isn’t happening.”
She closed the Wagon against the noise of the people-puppy across the way practicing drums on a set of pots and pans. We ate our dinners lying down so that all we saw through the windows was sky. The ferocious wind kept our neighbors inside, so the racket they made wasn’t nearly as loud as the wind’s howling. Mom poked at the Witch to tell her a bedtime story, but the Witch was giving her the silent treatment.
“Fine. We should just go to sleep anyway.” Mom shoved the Witch under her pillow and flopped heavily on top to show that the Witch couldn’t dump us if we dumped her first. She said a good-night curse to the wall of cars blocking the road, flopped onto her other side, and pulled the other pillow over her own head.
It was quiet when the Witch woke us in the middle of the night to get ready for our hike. When Mom opened the door, I couldn’t believe what I didn’t see. Her curse worked! All the other cars had gone to H-E-double-hockey-sticks in the night, just like she told them to.
“Where’d everybody go?” I asked. “Oh no! What if they’re already on the trail?”
“I doubt that’s what’s going on.” Mom looked at the moon glowing the color of butt lights on a dark highway. She sniffed the air like she fancied herself a dog. I waited for her to howl. “I think they left because of the smoke,” she said instead. “At least that means it won’t be crowded.”
Mom had plenty of time to make her poop juice in the abandoned clearing before we took our positions inside the Wagon. As we got closer to town, the Witch came alive with all the messages she’d taken during the night. “What the heck?” Mom told the Wagon to pull over so she could give the Witch all of her attention.
“What does she want now?” I asked.
“There are 13 messages from Lily. That’s not like her.”
Where the hell are you? the Witch buzzed.
Are you safe?
Let me know you’re okay!
