Where there’s smoke
- 1 day ago
- 7 min read
“Take that, you two-timing dingleberry!” I muttered, stomping on the Witch’s feeding straw and knocking her off the driving chair as if it were an accident. “That’ll teach you to sabotage our vacation.”
Mom’s sunglasses stayed on the front windowsill as we drove along the dry side of the mountains between Nevada and California. The air was faded and grey-brown like an antique photo, more ancient even than VHS. We’d been driving all day, and still the smoke followed us. The sky over Nevada on my side of the Wagon was still clear and sky-colored, but the smudge seeping over the mountains from California blurred the peaks on Mom’s side. The smell of camping crowded out the smell of trees and it seemed like only a matter of time before the whole world was filled with smoke. Even though the sun was still in the middle of the sky, I could stare straight at it without blinking, like staring at the moon. It wasn’t its usual sparkly grey either, but a sort of lava-grey that would have been quite nice on a pair of running shorts, but was unsettling, smoldering so high above the horizon like that. Cars stopped beside the freeway to take pictures of the neon-grey color of it.
The Witch ordered us off the main highway, and Mom’s eyes immediately left the road and began searching the trees. Normally, the Law is a lowland creature, but Mammoth Lakes is a rare high-altitude habitat where they herd all the wild wagon-dwellers into hotels. Mom kept her eyes in the forest as we drove the marathong-length loop around town searching for a good sleeping place, but there were already wagons behind every tree.
On the second drive-by, the Wagon found a car-trail that had more space between trees than the others. Mom leaned forward in the driving chair as we crept down the sandy path into the forest, eyes darting from Subaru to car-house, from igloo to Isuzu. She checked out the neighborhood for signs that dog eyes couldn’t see and the muscles on the sides of her face bubbled as her teeth clamped hard. When you accidentally find yourself in a circle of unfamiliar wagons, there’s always someone with terrible sleeping technique who spends the night shouting and playing music like the air is all theirs.
“I guess we’re sleeping between the drunk college kids and the rednecks tonight,” Mom said as the Wagon cleared a spot for itself in the crowd.
