“Grace, for God’s sake be quiet!”
Claire looks from one parent to the other. Somewhere, far away, someone is smashing a sand castle.
At her own mother’s house, after the iced tea and the peek at the layette Marjorie is knitting, her mother asks, “How are you and Gene?”
“Times are a little tough right now,” Grace says.
“Financially?”
“No.”
“Is it the stress of the new baby coming?”
“I could say yes,” Grace confesses, “but that wouldn’t be accurate.”
Her mother wets Tom’s cheek with the icy side of her glass, and he pulls away, giggling. He comes back for more. “What’s good in your life?” her mother asks.
Grace, surprised, needs to think. “I have two beautiful children.”
“And?”
“I have a house I like, a friend next door, and a washing machine.”
“And?”
“We’re all healthy.”
“And?”
Grace short-stops her mother because she knows where this is going. “And I have a husband who provides for us, who is good with the children, and who is handsome.”
She does not add that she thinks Gene is deeply troubled.
Dry turns into drought. The word is on everyone’s tongue and is spoken at least once a day. Underfoot, the grass crunches. Men digging at the side of the highway to put in a rest stop report that the top six inches of soil is dust. On the roads of Hunts Beach, vehicles kick up smothering plumes behind them and women begin again to keep the wet wash in the house for fear that tiny particles of dirt will stick to the laundry. Grace isn’t certain when the days of sunshine turn from beneficial to unnatural, but she thinks it happens near the end of September, after everyone has returned to school and many of the summer people are gone. The niggling sense of something wrong slowly turns to mild alarm. The mums and roses have withered at the edges of her yard. Grace expects the nights to be cooler, but they aren’t. For the first time in over a year, she prays for rain.
Spark
By the beginning of October, inland farmers have to haul water for livestock because the wells have gone dry. Brooks are still, lake levels drop. Dust and woodsmoke lay at the horizon.
The best summer in years, someone says at the store.
The state issues a directive warning its citizens to put out cigarettes and matches in water jugs. During an idle moment, Grace drops a lit cigarette onto the ground just to see what will happen. The grass catches fire and spreads faster than she ever imagined. With her jar of water, she douses the fire before it reaches a pile of dry brush Gene raked to one side. Tendrils of flames, however, have slipped behind her and race toward the house. She stomps and stomps, then runs into the kitchen, stops the washer, and flips the lever to allow the soapy water to fall onto the grass. Catching it in her jar, she soaks the fire until it is well and truly out. Winded, she sits on the porch steps and bows her head, ashamed of her stupid experiment.
She is awed by the wiles of the fire.
Hunters report on opening day that leaf drop and pine needles disintegrate upon touch. There’s a great deal of talk about whether or not it’s safe to shoot a gun.
The colored leaves crumple in the hand before hues can be appreciated. When Grace was a child, she would find the brightest reds, and her mother would iron them in waxed paper so that they could be preserved. Grace remembers satisfying packets of color on the kitchen table. She’s sad that she can’t do this for Claire, who would love to touch the waxed leaves.
Gene reports that a crew working on the Turnpike set a fire to clear land. Firemen put it out only to discover the next day that it had gone underground and had popped up at the roots of several trees. Again the fires were put out. The next day they broke out in more spots.
“The fire runs underground?” Grace asks.
“Yep.”
She imagines secret fires tunneling beneath the house. “But how? There’s no oxygen.”
“There’s oxygen in peat and dead vegetation,” Gene explains. The fires move slowly beneath the surface, he adds, burning enough to bring more oxygen into the soil. They can burn, undetected, for months, for years. A fire that goes underground in late fall can pop up in spring.
The idea fascinates Grace. If she were to go out in bare feet and walk in the fields, would she come upon the sensation of heat underfoot?
She finds it difficult not to assign menacing characteristics to the underground fires, just as she once attached them to the sea.
Fall planting isn’t possible because dry soil can’t be laid over the furrows. Ponds are lower than they’ve been in thirty years. In one arid pond, a farmer finds what appears to be the remains of an old road. Fire, and not drought, is the word on everyone’s tongue.
When Grace is in her fifth month, she climbs into the attic to find her woolens because she still has winter maternity clothes. But as she opens the box and fingers the heaviness of the fabrics, she knows it’s too soon. The temperatures haven’t been below eighty degrees in two weeks; all the women are still wearing cotton. In ancient times, the natives would have made much of the unnatural season, which seems to have no name. It can’t rightly be called Indian summer, because there hasn’t yet been a frost. The elders of the tribe would have come together to puzzle out what the summer-into-summer could possibly mean. Had they offended their ancestors? Would it remain summer for months? For years? Would they fear to die? Fear that the planet would die? What was the remedy for such a thing?
Dust enters the house and coats every object. When Grace scrubs her face at night, she can feel a fine grit under the washcloth.
Grace has a birthday party for Claire in the backyard and stands ready with a pitcher of lemonade over the two candles on the cake. The girl stands on her chair and blows out the candles with a flourish and is pleased with herself. Rosie, cigarette in hand, takes a long drag and then flips it onto the ground. Grace races around the table and pours lemonade over the butt, splashing Rosie’s shoes.
“What are you doing?” Rosie squawks, jumping back.
“I dropped a butt on the lawn the other day, and the fire spread like…”
“Wildfire?” Rosie offers, smiling. She pulls another cigarette and the lighter from her purse, but then thinks better of the idea and replaces them.
Grace wakes every morning to see if the world has sorted itself out. The fine grit that she felt on her face seems to have entered her eyes and nose and head, for there are particles in her brain where there weren’t before. If Gene is taciturn, Grace is sharp, as if she had broken glass on her skin. She tries hard not to snap at the children, but can’t help herself with Gene.
“I thought you were going to clean the screens,” she announces the minute Gene walks in the door.
“You’ve got to find me some ice,” she insists the following day.
“How would I know?” she answers when Gene asks, “When’s dinner?”
She wants to be a better person, but she can’t when there’s grit in her teeth.
One morning, Grace takes the children to the beach, where other townspeople stand. There’s no chatter, no fond hellos, only the sight of fog close to shore. The east light shines through the mist, revealing a lobster boat at work. This is the closest that moisture has come to Hunts Beach in weeks. It seems a promise. Grace and the children wait for the fog to move closer still, as if, were they to wade into the ocean, it would envelop them and put water droplets on their skin and lips. The desire for moisture becomes nearly overwhelming, and she notes that several people, men and women, walk into the ocean. Will they try to make it all the way to the mist, or will the fog peel back as they do so, only a tease?
One by one, the townspeople return to their homes. Rosie and Grace angle toward one another.
“What a colossal disappointment.” Rosie sighs.