This all happened when we were eighteen. While we slept, the hills caught fire. In the morning we watched the flames to the north, watched the sky gray and thicken. They said it was bad but no danger. They said it was worse in Temecula. Night fell and the face of the San Bernardinos spread into a hot red grin.

It went on for days. They said not to go outdoors except when necessary. At night we looked up into the flames as if they floated in the air and in the day the sun hung red like science fiction. It got worse. They were telling people in Temecula to evacuate. We had headaches for so long it was hard to remember not having them.

It went on for weeks.

Then one morning we fucked off from school and drove south until we hit the Temecula detour, crawled arterials with our high beams addressing the plume. The road came to a barricade and when we got out you could feel the heat. Bits of ash and resin rained from the sky.

We breathed through our shirts, stepping across wide paved lots while, above, ghostly helicopters chattered in the haze. We could make out a deserted Chipotle. There was ample parking. Through the smoke, a cruiser's lights flickered red and blue, catching the edge of a silhouette that told us to turn around.

This was our first year of college. This was, so it seemed, the beginning of our lives. It would have been one thing if it was the end of the world. This was something else entirely.


.

W i g l e a f               04-17-21                                [home]