North Carolina on the Map and in the News
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They cut our budget, Larry said. They cut it every year. Same in Virginia. Same everywhere, said Don. Plus, perfect conditions. It’s a bad fall. I feel responsible, Larry said. You didn’t light the match, said Don. I didn’t mind the matchbook, either, Larry said. If this breeze keeps up we’ll get a stack effect, said Don. That’s gonna be bad. Larry chawed his jerky and nodded once, slow. There’s too many cultivated species here, said Don, twisting towards the golf course. He pointed his clipboard at the ridge above town. COURTESY OF THE ARTIST
one would unleash a torch into a tangle of brush they’d missed. Twigs and bushes plumed in round, silent explosions. In the evening of the second day, the behaviorist stood beside Larry atop a steep hillside crawling with fire. The hilltop looked out over the state forest into distant, peaceful blue ridgelines. Below burned the worst of Helm County’s trouble. The sun set quickly, and snakes of flame downhill churned in an early twilight, moving upward towards their blackline. The behaviorist was bald, fifty, militaristic. His name was Don. Pale and thick in the shoulders, he could have been Larry’s kin. They looked down and watched the front approach. Punches of heat seeped toward them. Larry had taken off his turnout gear and tossed it in a nearby truck. He fumbled with his suspenders and t-shirt, wiped sweat from under his eyes. His eyelashes were singed and uneven. Black particulate sprinkled his brow and made grey streaks in his chin stubble. Look at it, Don the behaviorist said. A snow of ash hung around them in the sharp air. Get the hoses, Larry said. Link and two Oregonians dragged themselves up and set to work. Don sniffed and shook his head slowly. It’s not going to rain tomorrow, he said. They said it might, but it won’t. I don’t think it ever will. Larry squatted and stared down the writhing, glowing slope. Behind him, to the west, a breeze came across the fairway, cooling the blackline and tickling his back. It wafted past the trucks, past Link’s crew, over his body. It cooled his skin and pushed back the scent of smoke; then it blew through the fading sunlight and floated, thoughtlessly, carelessly down the mountainside, down into the gloom and the rising heat. Blazing tendrils of ladder fire, a full-on front that burned from root to kudzu to canopy, fed themselves on that wind. They suckled for it, raged like addicts. Remnants of twilight purpled the Oregonians’ skin as Larry watched the updrafts gorge themselves on air. Larry and Don stood on their blackened swath worrying into the abyss. The trees here were all networked into each other, a thick hash of enmeshed twig and vine. A low blanket of merciful smoke might have stifled what was coming. But the breeze came again, blithe and fresh, and the scene burned bright and hellish. This is what happens, said Don. Larry squatted, pulled a hunk of beef jerky out of his pocket. The meat was a wilted, hot lump of putty. Y’all should have done more land use planning, said Don. More management.
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Smoke Rings, 20 Oct. 2006 (inkjet, 34x34, edition of 75) by Donald Sultan
Up there? he said. You got native trees. Just looking for a reason to burn. Look who you’re telling, Larry said. They both stared down the slope again, into the coming fire. Heat pushed against them and oiled their skin. Hell, said Don, we earned it. This whole damn business. We brought it out. They waited for Link to bring the hoses. She knew what to do. His negotiations with May had looped and replayed all through the weeks of burning. If Larry was home, she asked the same questions. Called