North Carolina on the Map and in the News
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his rucksack, and pulled out three pairs of wet, filthy socks. He flung them over the white porch railing. They hung limp and grey like rotting game skins. I’m moving over to my sister’s, May told him through the screen door. I’m not staying in this old place. You can have it. Larry nodded. He looked across the yard, up the dirt road to the swell of mountain behind his land, and pulled the Ben Gay out of his pocket like he was cupping a moth. The trees twinkled amber, gold. He didn’t mention that it wasn’t her house to COURTESY OF THE ARTIST
had already started up north. Larry scowled into his phone and watched amateur videos posted from Kentucky. None had more than a hundred views. He drove out to Cherokee and spent two days stopping the cookout fire before it seeped into virgin forest. The Qualla crew was spooked. It better rain, they said. Larry and four Cherokee fighters gathered on the ridge above the campground. They assessed, checked for smoke. They looked down into the narrow valley where tourists teemed every autumn. Fudge shops, neon tomahawks. Summer had been a long drought, five states wide, and October was coming in clear and mild. It hadn’t rained for seven weeks, and none was forecast. The NOAA alerts out of Asheville kept using the word “unprecedented.” Leaf season’s no good without a little rain, they said. No color. One wiry dude squatted in the leaves. We’re lucky we caught this when we did, he muttered. Whole place could go up. Cherokee was well equipped – casino money and federal grants made it easy to get things under control there. The tribe’s firehouse had a pizza oven and wifi. Larry slept in his truck both nights, even though he didn’t have to. He dreamed about May. The news and firehouse chatter were all election talk, and he didn’t want to listen. Larry felt weighted down, as if somehow the news, the Qualla fire, his troubles with May had all been his fault. So he made some silence for himself. Inside the quiet of his truck he pondered everything May had grumbled, everything they’d agreed to. He wondered how it would feel to live alone, to lose out. When he got home from Qualla, ragged and sore and reeking of smoke, May wouldn’t let him in the house. You stink, she said. Stay out here and clean off. The rays of wrinkles around her eyes had deepened. I think you got somebody, she said. Who is she? She isn’t, he said. It’s just me. Nobody else. So you’re just going to be here by yourself? We’re both going to be alone? I thought you wanted to be alone, he said. I thought I was letting you go. May smirked. You never let me do anything, she said. Larry stood on the porch. His rucksack slumped against a post, and a tube of Ben Gay peeked out from his t-shirt pocket. He squatted, dug around in
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Smoke Rings, 13 Aug. 2001 (inkjet, 22.5x22.5, edition of 75) by Donald Sultan
It hadn’t rained for seven weeks, and none was forecast. The NOAA alerts out of Asheville kept using the word “unprecedented.”