Chapter One:

Dutch Oven

Saturday

 

 

Adiós America

Logan, Utah

 

Smoke and ash stung Becca’s nostrils when she entered the outside world. The air smelled of campfire and pine as a yellow haze smothered the streets in every direction. Wildfires. From Montana and Idaho to Oregon, Colorado, Washington, and of course, California. The entire West was on fire. White smoke from Baja to British Columbia, San Francisco to Salt Lake.

It was Labor Day weekend and the fires in the U.S. now burned earlier, longer, and hotter. The rains came less frequently. The temperatures refused to cool, even at night. You could feel the air—dry, hot, and stagnate, ready to burst. Becca’s eyes began to water as she looked up at the sun. The yellow star was now the color of pink lemonade.

“Lee, we need to go!” Becca shouted inside, as she opened the front door with her daughter, Analise, in the car seat. “Now!”

A tiny scream issued from underneath the blanket.

“Shhh,” Becca whispered. “I know, it’ll be okay.”

Would it though?

Becca shut the front door behind her and rushed down the stairs to get the baby in the car and out of the smoke. Their small neighborhood of Logan, Utah, was still asleep. Nothing moved besides the birds. No cars, no humans. No wind. Just smoke and ash. The smell of hot doom in the atmosphere.

Did these people not see? Did they not hear?

It was a level-two evacuation, meaning, “be packed and ready to go at a moment’s notice.” Yet not quite a level-three evacuation—i.e., Go now! The fire was still a few miles away. Yet Becca didn’t want to be a story on KSL news later, one of a mom with a charred baby trapped in a car off the side of a road who had waited too long to leave. They were evacuating south to stay with family in Salt Lake and beyond. Becca buckled Analise inside the car and ran back inside.

In a way, Becca thought of these wildfires as a strange mercy. She didn’t know whether she could handle being a mother and she saw no way out. She and Lee were trying to make it work—they’d even gotten married—but the question of whether they were going to make it work was still undecided. Becca wanted to be a good mother more than anything in the world. Yet she had a sick feeling in her stomach that she never would. She was tired of being alone with an infant and only too happy to go someplace where she would have help. She wanted an out.

“Lee!”

“What?”

“Are you listening to me?”

Becca was standing in the doorway to the basement now looking down.

“You never listen,” Becca continued. “You’re always lost in your head.”

Lee began to roll his eyes as he leapt up the stairs with some instant meals and their camping stove.

“And don’t roll your eyes at me. It’s the number one sign of divorce,” she said.

He greeted her, as if to apologize, with a small kiss on her cheek.

“Well, you rolled your eyes back there at me earlier in the kitchen you know,” he said.

Becca rolled her eyes at him again, “Did we get everything?”

“I hope so.”

Lee grabbed the rest of their supplies in the kitchen, the smell of freshly brewed coffee permeating their duplex. Becca grabbed their travel mugs and left the Chemex sitting by the sink.

The two of them walked outside and Lee locked the front door of their tiny duplex behind them, Becca sarcastically thinking that the imminent destruction of the planet via a volcano or earthquake or wildfire seemed more pleasant to her than marriage or motherhood. But that’s also why she’d married Lee, their shared sense of dark humor—and Analise, of course.

They walked briskly down the stairs.

“Did you get the bottles?” Becca asked him.

“Yes.”

“Did you get the diaper bag?”

“Yes.”

“Denali?”

“She’s in the car. Analise?”

“I just put her in.”

“See?” said Lee, smiling, trying to ease the tension because he was a people pleaser by nature. “We’re killing this parenting thing.”

“At least we haven’t killed each other yet,” said Becca.

“Our ourselves,” said Lee.

Becca and Lee smiled at each other as they each opened a car door—the only moment of considerate pause for each other in their whole morning.

Becca looked up into the sky. Ash floated to the ground like snow. It fell atop the cars and driveways in the fresh white sprinkle of disappearing forests. Lee loaded the rest of their supplies into the topper of their old green Outback, Yellowstone National Park and Keep Tahoe Blue stickers adorning the side.

Becca raced around the front of the car.

Lee buckled his seatbelt and put the car in drive.

“The Pack ‘n’ Play!” Becca shouted. It was still on the porch. Lee returned to park.

“I’ll get it,” he sighed, opening his door, but Becca was already out the car. She ran back up the stairs, grabbed the Pack ‘n’ Play, ran back down, opened up the hatch and shoved the Pack ‘n’ Play inside, slamming the hatch shut. The loud noise made Analise flinch.

Lee raised an eyebrow at Becca as she returned to the passenger door, and then he shut his door, gently, as if to show her how one was supposed to shut the doors of the car with a tiny baby, gently.

“Oh, please,” she said to Lee. “She was going to cry either way. She’s been fussy all morning.”

They sped off down the road, their car haphazardly packed with camping gear, suitcases, laptops, journals, pictures, passports, wallets, birth certificates, insurance information, toiletries, tote bags, diapers and wipes, and everything else they considered valuable—which, actually, wasn’t much.

Becca wondered if they’d ever see their tiny duplex again. She didn’t care, really. It was a rental anyways. Besides, the world was burning. Adiós America.