Northern Lights. Tim O’Brien

      ‘Isn’t this better now?’

      ‘It’s fine. I’m pretty hot.’

      ‘Dance closer. You don’t have to be so stiff. That’s better. See how? One, two, three. One, two, three. Isn’t it nice? Think of campfires and firewater.’

      The accordion music was slow and swaying, deep forest. People were singing.

      ‘Don’t you like me?’

      ‘Yes,’ he said.

      ‘And isn’t it nice to dance a little?’

      He saw Jud Harmor watching. Jud smirked, raised his hat.

      It was a long slow dance.

      ‘We should all go for a swim. Is that your brother’s girl friend?’

      ‘Are you looking at them? I thought you were dreaming with your eyes closed.’

      She laughed. ‘I was dreaming. Is that his gift friend?’

      ‘Her name is Linda or Lorna or something. She’s a patient of his.’

      ‘We should all go swimming.’

      She was light and the skin was tight across her shoulders.

      ‘We really should go for a swim now,’ Addie said. ‘Wouldn’t that be good?’

      ‘I have to go home.’

      ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘There’s always that, isn’t there?’

      In town, the dry spell was all they talked about. The air was crisp and inchworms were eating up the forest. At night, trying to sleep, Perry heard them munching with the sound of rainfall. But it did not rain. The days were hot and dry, and it did not rain.

      It kept him busy. Meagre to begin with, the corn crops were baked away. One by one, the farmers slipped into the office, shamed, filled put their loss statements and applied for loans. On the highway into town, the hands of the fire danger clock pointed to high noon. Forest Service firefighters checked into the U-Rest Motel, arriving in green trucks and jeeps. The town turned out to watch them arrive. People were excited. In the drugstore, they swapped stories about earlier fires. It was suspenseful and important. Heat killed the mosquitoes. It killed the grass on Perry’s lawn. A dog dropped dead on the church steps. Everyone talked about it: the town was built of timber, white pine that had been cut and sawed and planed and notched and moulded, hammered together and lifted up and painted bright. The paint was peeling. The forest crept up to the town and into the parks and on to the lawns and kept going, and if the forest burned, then the town burned, too. There was no distinguishing it.

      Perry watched the excited faces through his office window. The twelve-man fire brigade was put on alert.

      ‘You gotta sign up,’ Wolff insisted. ‘Your ass burns with the rest of us, you know.’

      ‘Not me, Herb. I’ll watch it from the window.’

      ‘Harvey joined up.’

      ‘Harvey’s good for that.’

      ‘Geez,’ Wolff prodded, ‘you don’t join anything around here. You ought to show a little more citizenship.’

      In late July a Forest Service agent stopped at the office. The skin was black and flaky in the hollows of his face. He wore a silver badge. He was solemn. He told Perry they were moving in another crew of firefighters. ‘Doesn’t look good,’ he said. ‘One spark, that’s all it’d take. I’m not kidding.’ He told Perry they worked for the same boss – ‘Good old Uncle Sam, the USDA. We’re going to have to use your office for a headquarters, just till this thing blows over.’

      Perry turned over the keys. He left quickly. He celebrated with a beer, drove home and went to bed.

      Grace worked hard on the garden, watering the soil, protecting the tomatoes and green beans, fed them fertilizer, cooed to them. And she taught Sunday school.

      Harvey prepared in other ways. He cleaned out the bomb shelter, throwing away all the rakes and hunks of hose and old furniture Perry had stored there. He swept the shelter down, hosed it out, repaired the air filter, filled the water tank, put in a new store of sheets and blankets and pillows.

      That July was hot. There was small-town suspense.

      Perry stayed away from the bomb shelter. He didn’t say so to Harvey, but he thought the place dark and depressing and buried away.

      ‘The old man wasn’t so crazy after all,’ Harvey kept saying.

      ‘Right,’ Perry said.

      ‘You don’t have to be so damn arrogant about it.’

      ‘I’m not.’

      ‘He wasn’t dumb or crazy. You don’t have to smirk.’

      ‘I’m not smirking, Harv. It’s a solid bomb shelter.’

      The floor was laid in massive tumulary stones. The air was musty. Tepid air, a mouldering preservation. The past and extended future. A stack of magazines lay in one corner. There were books and games, a typewriter, liquor and candies and soap. Boxes of canned food were stacked to the ceiling. There were cots and flashlights and folding chairs, candles and rope and wire, tools and cigarettes and matches, foul air, electric lights connected to a small generator, string and blankets, paper and silverware and pots and plates and survival gear.

      Harvey’s eye shined. ‘We could last it out in here.’

      ‘What?’

      Harvey shrugged.

      Gleaming, the streets were white metal.

      Thursday, the last day of July.

      There were jeeps and trucks and firefighters, the streets were fizzing with people, everyone was waiting.

      It was Harvey’s birthday. Grace held the party on the lawn.

      When the sun faded, Perry turned on the spotlights and lit battery-powered lanterns in the trees. Then the guests arrived. Harvey received them in front of his bomb shelter. He drank beer from a paper cup. The sky was changing. Headlights flowed up the lane. Lantern shadows, sky shadows. The wind was changing. The party comers moved like electricity through the night, trooped in bearing gifts and loaves of bread, hot dishes, meat loaves. Old people and young people. Bishop Markham brought his wife and children. Reverend Stenberg brought candlesticks. Hot beans, hot corn, fruit salad, biscuits, burgers, ham and chops, baked potatoes, warm salted butter, pies, a birthday party. The ladies of Damascus Lutheran brought plates and tablecloths, their husbands carried ice. The sky was changing. The headlights kept coming up the lane, new voices. High above, in the highest depths, the sky budded new stars and the patterns developed. Herb Wolff brought his father, pushing him in a wheelchair. The forest was full. Jud Harmor came in his pickup and straw hat and talked about the war and garbage. Addie came alone. Grace was busy and happy. There was potato salad and talk about the dry spell. It was a birthday picnic, and the evening was dark and the lanterns played on the trees. Town shadows flowed about his yard. Addie was there. Now and then he saw her passing by a lantern. ‘Geronimo!’ wailed Jud Harmor. Grace was happy. She served people’s plates and cut the birthday cake. She fixed a smile on the festivities and held Perry’s hand and bustled for paper cups. She was breathless and soft. She kissed him. ‘Isn’t it nice? Everyone’s here.’

      ‘You invited them. You’re the attraction.’

      ‘It’s so nice. Is Harvey enjoying it?’

      ‘I think so,’ Perry said. Harvey was sitting on the bomb shelter with Addie.

      There were forms and shadows and the sky was changing.

      ‘Hey, Paul.’

      Perry walked to the shelter, head down.

      ‘Addie says you have a secret.’

      Addie giggled. ‘Hop up