“We didn’t cause this,” Kevin said. “That’s what people kept telling me.”
“What did you ask them?” Amy asked.
“I asked them why.”
“How close did you get?”
“We were outside.”
She was scraping grease off the frying pan. The grease had acquired a satisfyingly solid form. She scraped the grease directly into the garbage can while the dog watched.
“So it was like nothing happened,” Amy said.
“Except for the car.”
“How close did you get?”
“I kept driving.”
“I want to see.”
Kevin had hoped she would say this, and he’d hoped she wouldn’t. “What about the kids,” he said.
“You don’t think we can bring them if we stay inside the car?”
“I suppose if we stay inside the car.”
“You didn’t stay inside.”
“No.”
“So if we stay inside.”
She continued scraping the pan. She didn’t want to ruin the pipes. It didn’t matter that they were renting.
“What will we say?” he asked.
“That we’re going for a ride.”
He suffered from the absence of a flying pan. He searched for something to do with his hands.
“What else?” he asked.
“We’re going for a ride,” she shouted.
“Do we have to go?” Maddie shouted back.
Sean opened the bedroom door quickly, and Kevin assumed Sean had heard everything. Kevin reviewed in his head what they’d said. He didn’t think they’d said a lot.
“Ready,” Sean said.
“Time to go,” Amy shouted more loudly.
Maddie emerged from the bedroom in a daze available only to children.
“I feel like I’ve been there,” she said.
“Where?” Kevin asked.
“Where we’re going.”
“No, honey, only I—”
“Or maybe it was in my dream.”
Sean looked to Amy, but she was investigating her purse, the contents of which seemed to baffle her.
“Have you seen my keys?” she asked.
“I have keys.”
Maddie sat on the floor. Sean stood by the door with the dog.
“Can we bring the dog?” he asked.
“The dog went last time,” Kevin said.
“Have you seen my license?” Amy asked.
“I can drive. I’m happy to drive.”
“I saw your keys,” Maddie said.
She stretched her right leg and then her left, as though about to start a race. When she popped up from the floor, Kevin expected her to sprint out the door, but she didn’t do that. She walked into his and Amy’s room, a space implicitly off-limits. Sean didn’t even seem surprised.
“Right here,” she said.
Kevin followed her to the jewelry Amy never wore. He picked up a necklace with a pencil like it was evidence in a criminal investigation.
“I don’t see any keys,” he said.
“Where did you get that pencil?” Amy asked.
“Look!” Maddie said.
A dark worry spread inside Kevin. What if this was the first sign of something wrong, something that childhood had concealed, which was now announcing itself? He didn’t have a name for this thing. His fear was inarticulate.
“There are pencils all over the house,” he said.
“Cabin,” Sean said.
Maddie reached into the jewelry and produced first Amy’s keys and then her license.
“Why did you put them there?” Amy asked.
“I said I saw them there.”
What went on in the look between Amy and Maddie then? It lasted a long time.
“Anyhow,” Amy eventually said.
Kevin was grateful for the concession. He was generally incapable of them.
In the car, Amy steered straight for Thomas Falls, as though she traveled there routinely. It occurred to him that she did. Sean looked out his window, and Maddie looked out hers. They didn’t question the destination. Why would they? Kevin and Amy had raised the kids to be trusting or possibly naïve. He looked out the windshield, waiting to see another car, and the world obliged.
“Why isn’t that car moving?” Maddie asked.
“There’s a bug.” Kevin looked to Amy.
“Like a spider.”
“Not like a spider.”
“Like an ant?”
Amy accelerated as she drove past the car. She didn’t look inside it.
“Bug as in thing that makes you sick,” Kevin said.
“Are we going to catch it?” Maddie asked.
“Not if we stay inside the car.”
“We can’t stay inside the car forever.”
“That’s true.”
“Is the person in that car going to be okay?”
Maddie turned around, but Sean didn’t move.
He said, “It’s like freeze tag. When someone touches you, you’re frozen.”
“How do you get unfrozen?” Maddie asked.
“You don’t.”
“All right,” Kevin said.
“Never?”
“That’s why the car isn’t moving,” Sean added.
Maddie didn’t look upset when she faced forward, which both relieved and worried Kevin. He waited for Amy to say something.
“Your brother is right” is what she said.
Nobody said anything for the next couple of miles.
“You want to play a game?” Maddie asked.
“I hate your games,” Sean said.
“This is a good game!”
“I’ll play,” Kevin said.
“What if I play,” Amy said.
It was a rare offer. He looked at Sean and Maddie in the rearview mirror, but they each stared ahead.
“What’s that?” Sean asked.
“That’s weird,” Maddie said.
Amy slowed the car. What did everyone see that Kevin didn’t?
“I thought this might happen,” she said.
Soon, he knew, the world would reveal itself. There was no need to rush things. Would he always remember what was playing on the radio in this moment? He’d never heard the song. It was neither a good nor bad song. He tried to make out the words before everything changed.
*
In the dream, he found her in an empty room. Although he thought she would be happy to see him, she wasn’t happy.
I’ve traveled through so many rooms to find you, he said.
What did you think I was doing? she asked.
He didn’t know. She didn’t volunteer anything else.
When he woke from the dream, he felt disappointment, first his own and then hers. He heard a song, but where was it coming from? Not from his wife. She was asleep. Not from outside. He looked out the window. There was nobody there. He left the bed.
He walked cautiously through the dark hallway. He didn’t want to step on the dog, who slept at the top of the stairs, at least while people were watching. Kevin didn’t know where the dog went once everyone fell asleep. The dog had a private life that Kevin chose not to investigate. He opened Sean’s door. Sean slept on top of the covers in all seasons. His arm was outstretched, and his hand was open, as if to retrieve change. His mouth was also open. Kevin closed Sean’s door.
Maddie left her door open. She was scared or used to be. He could understand why. At night, the maple outside her window arranged and rearranged itself on her walls. He’d installed thicker curtains and nightlights, but the shadows kept coming. They seemed to leap off the walls. She slept through all of it, stuffed animals stacked like sentinels at the foot of her bed. He’d bought her each one on work trips. He liked buying the stuffed animals more than he liked almost anything.
He found the song downstairs. It played faintly from a device he’d assumed to be lost or broken. It was a bright, rounded, plastic version of a camera. Sean had held it in the air and shouted, “Cheese!” There were so many toys that appeared and then disappeared, replaced by the next toy or nothing at all. What brought this toy back to life? Kevin recognized the song, though it was stuck on a loop. He turned off the camera, and when he turned it back on, the song resumed: Merrily merrily merrily merrily.
He carried the camera to the couch, where he began to go through the photos, all taken by Sean. Or were they taken by Maddie? Time kept moving faster. Kevin couldn’t keep up with time. He was sure the camera wasn’t that old, but the photos said otherwise. In one photo he and Amy were arguing. Her gesture was one long ago abandoned, the movement of someone convinced she could convince someone else of something if only she put her mind to it.
Kevin thought he couldn’t bear to go through the photos, but he looked at every one. Then he looked at them again. Most were blurry and off-kilter, but some were almost artistic. More accurately, they were weird. He carried the camera to the kitchen and poured himself a glass of water. He drank it standing before the sink. He took the batteries out of the camera. He never knew what to do with batteries, so he put them in the pockets of the sweatpants he wore to bed. The batteries were heavy and clumsy there, and when he reinstalled them, the pictures and song were gone. He stood over the sink and cried, though he never cried, even when he wanted to cry. A light turned on in the hallway.
“Are you crying?” Maddie asked from the stairs.
“No.”
“You are right now over the sink.”
Kevin opened a drawer and deposited the camera inside it.
“What’s that?” Maddie asked.
“It’s broken.”
“Then why don’t you throw it away?”
“What are you doing up?”
He stepped in front of the drawer, but she seemed to have lost interest in it.
“I had a bad dream,” Maddie said. “I dreamed I was dreaming. Does that ever happen to you?”
“Yes.”
“I woke up in the dream.”
“That’s happened to me too.”
She paused. “When did it happen to you?”
“A bunch of times.”
“I didn’t like it.”
Now Kevin lost interest in the drawer. Maddie walked down the stairs and into the kitchen. He put his arms around her.
Where was that camera now? Was it still in the drawer, or did Maddie go back to retrieve it? Did Amy throw it out? Maybe Sean found the camera and remembered it as something that used to entertain him. Maybe he had a more specific memory: a picture of a bird he’d taken or a recording of a song he’d invented. Or maybe the camera appeared as a relic of a time Sean was ready to move past. He was growing up. Time moved for him too.
*
“Stay inside,” Amy said.
She parked on the side of the road, which shouldn’t have looked dangerous but did. Ragged grass surrounded the car. Just beyond that, a dense collection of trees. How did the trees grow so close to each other? It got dark quickly among the trees. Kevin saw beer cans from another era, the cellophane skin of cigarette packs. The insects were loud, even with the windows sealed.
“I’ll just be a minute,” Amy said.
“I want to come,” Maddie said.
“Stay with your father.”
As soon as Amy was gone, Maddie climbed into the driver’s side seat.
“Mom took the keys,” Sean said.
Maddie adjusted the rearview mirror. She put a hand on each side of the steering wheel and made dramatic, inaccurate driving sounds. Kevin was grateful for them.
Amy walked slowly to the stopped car. She looked back when she got to the driver’s side window. Kevin shook his head, but she may not have been able to see through the windshield glare. Already it was getting hot inside the car.
“Can I lower the windows?” Maddie asked.
“Mom will be back in a minute.”
“What is she even doing?”
Amy was standing in the middle of the street. There were no cars moving in either direction. She lifted her hand to knock on the driver’s side window of the stopped car but didn’t knock.
“I’m not totally sure,” he said.
“She looks mad,” Sean said.
Amy was walking toward them now, head down, pace quick. Kevin recognized the posture, which may have been new to the kids but was familiar to him.
“Get in the backseat,” he told Maddie.
When Amy was back inside the car, she locked the doors.
“Are the windows up?” she asked, though she could see that they were.
“You want me to drive?” he asked.
She crawled into the back and fastened her seatbelt between the booster seat Maddie sat in and the booster seat Sean sat in.
“You can stay up here,” Kevin said.
“Go,” Amy said. “Please.”
He maneuvered into the far lane. Gradually, the stopped car retreated from the rearview mirror.
“You’re going the wrong way,” Sean said.
“Yeah, Dad,” Maddie said.
“Change of plans,” Kevin said.
“What happened?” Maddie asked.
“We don’t have to talk about it,” Sean said.
Whom did he learn this tact from? Not from Kevin. Maybe tact is something you’re born with, like perfect pitch.
Kevin felt more like himself behind the wheel, which was stupid but true. He was trying to go easier on himself about the things that were stupid but true.
“Maybe we should get ice cream,” he said.
“Can we, Mom?” Maddie asked.
Amy didn’t respond. Her eyes were closed, and her hands were clasped in her lap, so the shaking was nearly undetectable.
“Of course we can,” Kevin said, though he didn’t know how.
They hadn’t left the cabin since arriving. He tried to remember if they’d passed an ice cream place on the drive there. His eyes had been drawn to the dispensaries and bars. He remembered one in particular, a squat square of a building with dark windows on either side of a red door. The modesty of the façade stood in opposition to the neon sign above the door, which glowed in the low fog. He didn’t remember the name on the neon sign, only the font, which was tasteful—even elegant—in a way that nothing around it was.
Of course, they wouldn’t serve ice cream there. Kevin drove faster, increasingly certain there was nothing to find. Amy didn’t object. She didn’t do anything at all.
“I want chocolate chocolate chip,” Maddie said.
“Let’s see what the options are,” Sean said.
Kevin kept an eye on the rearview mirror, where Sean studied the passing trees with foreboding.
“If there’s chocolate chocolate chip, I’m getting it,” Maddie said.
He was startled to see not one car but several on the horizon. It was an unlikely spot for a traffic jam. He slowed the car. He wanted to give himself space to turn around, if necessary. There was ice cream at the cabin. Not as good but something.
The line of cars disappeared as he crept up a hill, and when he reached the summit, he discovered the cars stretched farther than he’d realized. They stretched beyond what he could see.
In the rearview mirror, Amy’s eyes remained closed, but Sean and Maddie took in what Kevin did.
“Is this the line for ice cream?” Maddie asked.
“What’s he doing?” Sean asked.
A man was standing in the road beside a blue sedan. He drank from a metal travel mug that collected an extraordinary amount of light.
“He’s waiting,” Kevin said. “Same as we are.”
“For what?” Sean asked.
“Ice cream,” Maddie said.
Kevin left a few car lengths between his car and the blue sedan. He confirmed the doors were locked before putting the car in park. The man with the travel mug began to walk toward Kevin.
“Do you know him?” Sean asked.
“I don’t know anyone here,” Kevin said.
“You know Wayne,” Maddie said.
What would their host do in this situation? He would get out of the car. He would talk with the man. Possibly, Wayne would shoot the man, or threaten to in the quiet, casual, cocksure way he did so many things. Did he know how infuriating this posture was? Kevin thought Wayne must know. He was no dummy. That was the problem, or one of them. There were a lot of problems.
Such as the man, who was at the window now, peering in, as though looking for something he’d left inside. He was tall, taller than Kevin, taller than Wayne. The driver’s side door seemed to Kevin like something that could be ripped from the car with a single purposeful tug.
The man knocked three times on Kevin’s window and then stepped away from the car. The man kept the respectful distance of a person in line, waiting for someone to call his name. Kevin watched the man, who didn’t look angry or dangerous. He looked eager, a little lonely, like he wanted to hang out. Kevin felt an urge to talk with the man, but Kevin stayed in his seat.
Eventually, the man returned to his car.
“Can we go home?” Amy said.
In the rearview mirror, her eyes were still closed. There were no cars behind them.
“We can go home,” Kevin said.
“Not the cabin,” Amy said. “Home home.”
“I miss Paisley,” Maddie said.
“Paisley moved,” Sean said.
“I mean Paisley B.”
Kevin put the car in reverse, careful to stay on the road. Once they were headed away from the line of cars, he drove the speed limit, though he hadn’t seen a patrol car since arriving to Montana.
“We can’t just go home,” he said.
“I’m ready,” Amy said.
“Why don’t we head back to the cabin and talk about it.”
Amy didn’t reply. She didn’t even open her eyes. There seemed something defiant about it, though a deeper part of him knew otherwise. He should be there for her. So why did this make him angry?
Because Montana had been his solution. Presented with an unsolvable problem, he’d made a decision, which Amy agreed to, either because she didn’t have a better idea or because she didn’t want to be responsible for finding one. Kevin could understand: he was tired of making decisions too, but somebody had to. It was part of being an adult. Everything about it depressed him.
When Kevin met Amy, they bonded over their shared revulsions, which seemed more relevant than shared affinities. He had little trust in the things he liked, which were the things all his friends liked, the things in his late twenties that were objectively the best things. Mostly, he meant music and bars. His generation had yet to learn they would oversee the end of the world.
Sean closed his eyes. In solidarity? Maddie’s eyes were wide open.
“Why can’t we go home?” she asked.
“It’s complicated,” Kevin said.
“Is the house still there?”
“Yes.”
“So we could go if we wanted.”
On the horizon, Kevin saw a whisper of white smoke.
“Something is on fire,” Sean said. “I can smell it.”
Kevin couldn’t make out the source of smoke, even as the car crested a hill.
“It smells like s’mores,” Maddie said.
“It’s probably a forest fire,” Sean said.
There were forest fires everywhere.
“We’ll find out soon,” Kevin said.
He drove more slowly. He wasn’t eager to find out anything.
But the world had its own plan. Or, more likely, no plan at all. The car burning quietly on the side of the road appeared first as a blur, waving in the heat. Only when they got closer could Kevin identify the components he’d learned as a child, the parts he recalled teaching his own children.
The wheels weren’t on fire, but the rest of the car was.
“Actually, it smells terrible,” Maddie said.
“I’ve never seen a car catch fire,” Sean said.
“Is our car going to catch fire?”
“No,” Amy said.
She was sitting forward now, eyes open and alert. Usually, he looked around her eyes or didn’t look at all, but sometimes he looked into them and was taken right to the center of things, which in this moment was Fear. He’d never thought about it as his wife was thinking about it now. Not as an abstraction or as a passing confusion. Not as something that happened to someone else but as a car pouring down a hill and you don’t have time to move.
Kevin pressed the brakes harder than he’d intended, and everyone bounced forward.
“Are you able to get around the car?” Amy asked.
“Probably. I don’t know.”
“Stop here.”
He put the car in park. Amy crawled into the front seat, where she could observe the car more closely. Then she took out her phone.
“No reception,” she said.
“I was surprised—”
“What do we do?”
The first step was extinguishing the fire. No, the first step was getting people out of the car. He removed the keys from the ignition. He handed them to Amy, who looked at him not with desperation but curiosity. She was as interested as he was to learn what he would do next.
Or maybe he was stuck in his head again. But there was no time for that.
“I have to see who’s inside,” he said.
“Okay.”
“I’m sorry.”
Then he was in the street. The air was smokier than he’d expected. He lifted his shirt over his nose, though he knew the gesture was pointless, and ran to the car, which pulsed obscenely. He knew better than to argue with fire. So why was his hand on the handle of the driver’s side door? It must have been a thousand degrees.
Smoke gobbled up more of the sky. Kevin breathed gingerly. He put his hand beneath his shirt and reached again for the handle. It was locked. He banged his covered hand against the window. He couldn’t see through the smoke to what was on the other side.
He stepped back. His phone was vibrating, but before he could pull it from his pocket, a column of fire shot up from the car’s hood, which blasted backward, splintering the windshield. He’d thought the end would be gradual, as it had been for his mother-in-law, a little more dying every day. Of course, there are many ways to die. It could be like a light switch: on and then off (forever). But he wouldn’t die now. He would step away from the car and return to his family, whom he could still help.
“What’s wrong with you?” Amy asked once he was inside the car.
It was a difficult question to answer, one he’d been thinking about for a long time.
“Let’s go back,” she said.
“We can’t go back.”
“Then let’s go to the cabin.”
The dog began howling as soon as the car’s tires crunched onto the driveway. Sean sprinted up the steps to free the dog, pausing only when he remembered he didn’t have keys. Amy followed slowly, trailed more slowly by Maddie. Kevin watched them all with tenderness. No such tenderness existed in him pre-children. Who knew you could keep acquiring feelings?
“We have two kinds of ice cream,” he shouted.
“We know,” Amy shouted back.
“I want chocolate chocolate chip,” Maddie shouted.
When he reached the cabin, ice cream was on the counter. The children sat around the table. The dog barked importantly.
Already Kevin could see what he was losing. But what does anyone know about loss until they lose it?
“What do you want?” Amy asked.
She held the ice cream scooper like a wand.
KEVIN CLOUTHER‘s debut story collection, We Were Flying to Chicago, was published by Catapult. His stories have appeared in Confrontation, Gettysburg Review, Gulf Coast, Joyland, and Ruminate, among other journals, and he has contributed essays to The Millions, Salon, and Tin House. Clouther has worked on the staffs of Iowa Review and Meridian. He holds degrees from the University of Virginia and Iowa Writers’ Workshop and is the recipient of the Richard Yates Fiction Award and Gell Residency Award. Clouther is an Associate Professor at the University of Nebraska Omaha Writer’s Workshop, where he directs the MFA in Writing. His second story collection, Maximum Speed, was published by Cornerstone Press in November 2023.
The art that appears alongside this piece is by AMY RENEE WEBB.
