Mendocino Fire Read Free

explained why she systematicallyviolated his, pinching the cigarette without asking, tipping her head back to exhale, comically vamping. He could not overcome his sense that she was a disaster, but this was not entirely off-putting. Ollie clasped her knees in her arms and rocked, or she tinkered with her hair, fooling with this project on her head, tatty homegrown security blanket. Faithful as she seemed in her obscure devotion to him, she was rumored to sleep around, and Petey Crews added her name to the boys’ john’s tally of girls who gave head, but Nate didn’t believe it, not this girl who wanted to crew on a Greenpeace boat, whose T-shirt claimed Fur Is Murder , who believed the world needed saving, starting with him, Nate. He remembers asking about her dreads once. Why do you want to look like you don’t give a shit? Had she been hurt by the question, had she cared what he thought? He was pretty sure she had, even if the realization was late—more than a year late—in coming. After graduation she must have left town. She had never talked about what things were like at home, and he can’t remember any mother or other family showing up at high school events. Her dad had died when she was nine, and another girl would have incorporated the tragedy into her persona, but Ollie told him no details. Nate conjured her expert theft of his cigarette, her chin tilted up, the crawl of smoke from her parted lips, but this version was too accurate, friendly, failing to mine the erotic potential of her vehemence, and fuck this, he was too old to live in such close quarters with his dad, two berths angled toward each other in the V of the bow, the iron woodstove crowding the space even more and smelling sickeningly of the boot polish Shug had dabbed on its scratches. Jesus, get a fucking life , he imagined a good friend telling him, but what friend? Petey Crews was in Iraq, Rafe worked for Aboriginal Lumber. Nights off,when Nate made it to the inn at the crossroads south of town, its gingerbread eaves laced with Christmas-tree lights nobody ever bothered to take down and its marquee promising live music, he had that feeling of waiting for someone, but it wasn’t clear who until, one night, Rafe slid onto the next bar stool saying, “N Dawg,” Petey’s old greeting. After they had gone over what they knew about Petey and how he was doing, Nate asked Rafe if he remembered a girl named Ollie something.
    â€œWho had a thing for you.”
    â€œShe had a thing?”
    Rafe smiled down at his beer.
    Nate made sure he could be heard over the music: “I was thinking she might of left town, right? Nothing to keep her here. I mean, why’re we still around?”
    The crease at the corner of his mouth deepened as Rafe appreciated his beer. “’Member Annie Brown? A year behind us? Teaches second grade now.”
    â€œSure. Annie. Went out with Boone Salazar.”
    â€œNot anymore,” Rafe said, and his left hand did a stiff-fingered hula till Nate identified the gleam and said, keeping his tone warm, “What the fuck.”
    Rafe said, “At the county courthouse over in Ukiah. Spur of the moment or I would’ve called.” In high school they had vowed to be there for each other, to work it out so they each got a shot at best-man-dom, Rafe and Nate and Petey Crews, but Nate didn’t hear any real apology in Rafe’s tone, and his embarrassed sense of exclusion, disguised by rapping the bar for another couple of beers, drove home the sadness of their having gone separate ways. Petey had been the glue, Petey had seemed to have the most at stake in their comradeship and had gone togreat lengths to keep them entertained, or as entertained as they could be in Smoke River.
    This luminous afternoon when their luck turned for the better, Nate said, “I guess we ought to get back to it.” The hard morning had left Shug’s face sweaty and sunburned, his