The Burning

back into minor annoyances. But they'd both worked out of the border patrol's Yuma office, and their differences had widened into gulfs with the pressures of the job, exacerbating problems that turned out to be not so trivial after all. Seeing the same faces over and over, throwing people back like catch-and-release fish only to capture them trying to enter the country illegally yet again, had made her more sympathetic to the plight of the immigrants, whereas Frank had become hardened against them. She remembered talking to him after September 11. (She refused to use the appellation 9/11. What was next, calling Christmas 12/251 Referring to the Fourth of July as 7/4? Where was this numbers madness going to end?) She'd told him they were lucky the hijackers had entered the country through Canada. 'Could you imagine the hysteria if they'd come in from Mexico?'

He'd reacted with outrage, yelling at her, telling her that there were a lot more criminals entering through Mexico than Canada and who knew what kind of atrocities they had planned? It was lenient attitudes like hers, he said, that were weakening America's defenses. This was a racial thing with him, she realized, just as it was with a lot of people, and it was at that moment she understood that he was not the man she'd thought he was.

Still, she'd stuck it out, trying to make it work for Skylar's sake, remaining through the increasingly rancorous arguments, answering Frank's slaps with thrown dishes, knowing deep down that it was over but not able to make the break. It was not just Frank she hated, Jolene came to realize. It was their house; it was their friends; it was Arizona; it was her job; it was the border; it was everything in her life except Skylar.

The family in the gulch had been the last straw.

She had been the one who'd found them. It had been in a remote section of the Sonora far from Organ Pipe and the drug route where Frank and a team were patrolling. She'd gone off-road to follow a trace of a track that instinct told her might lead somewhere, and, though it was against regulations, had left her vehicle without radio authorization and continued on foot when she spotted what she thought was a coyote's trail marker. It turned out it wasn't. And then she'd found the family. There'd been three of them-a mother, a father, a little girl-and they'd been at the bottom of a gulch, arms around each other not as though they'd been huddling together for warmth but as though they'd fallen asleep in a gentle embrace and had simply never awakened. That had obviously been some time ago, however, for the bodies were desiccated, skin parchmentlike and horrendously wrinkled over visible skulls, ragged color-faded clothes flattened out against bony frames. The mechanics of the bodies had been clearly visible, a matter-of-fact breakdown of biological processes that was neither romantic nor mysterious but merely routine and distressingly physical.

It was impossible to tell what had killed them. The heat? The cold? Starvation? Dehydration? They were a good twenty miles from the border-at a point where the crossing would have been made without benefit of road or nearby town on the Mexican side- and likely they'd run out of food before they got this far, surviving for days perhaps on desert plants and captured rodents.

She'd stood there for a long time-too long-staring at the dead family, trying to imagine how it must have felt for them to end their lives here in this dry, terrible place. They hadn't died alone- they'd had one another-but in a way that must have been worse, because they couldn't have perished all at once. One of them would have had to go first, and Jolene imagined that it must have been the girl. They'd probably carried her as far as they could, hoping to find a house or a road or someone to help them, maybe even praying at the last for a patrol to find them so they could be deported and thus saved. But they'd wandered farther and farther astray, and finally she imagined the| exhausted parents, unable to carry the girl any longer,| deciding to stay and wait for rescue, then gradually^ giving up as they grew weaker and weaker, as their daughter's body started to rot in the heat.

Who had gone next? And had the last one to dies simply cuddled against the others, praying for an ends to it all? How long ago had that been? How long had they lain here, undiscovered, unmourned? Years, it looked like, and Jolene wondered if the hell they'd endured back home, wherever that was, had been worth the risk of death to them, if they would still have made the trip if they'd known how it would turn out.

She decided then and there to take Skylar back with[ her to Bear Flats. She didn't know if it was because' this family had risked all-and lost-and the only thing she had to do in order to escape her life was pack a few belongings, get in a car and drive; or whether she was tired of seeing death and sufferings and human misery day in and day out as part of her job. Maybe it was just the weariness she felt when she thought of all the paperwork she'd have to fill out/ and the lack of understanding and interest she'd receive from a callous, uncaring Frank.

Whatever the reason, she'd turned in her resignation that afternoon, effective immediately, no two weeks' notice, with the resulting complete abdication of accrued benefits. She'd gone home, packed a suitcase of clothes each for herself and Skylar, loaded up the back of the Blazer with some of her more personal and precious possessions as well as most of his books and toys, written a quick note to Frank, then picked up her son at school and hit the road.

Now they were here.

Jolene drove past the lumber mill with its twin black chimney stacks, corrugated-tin outbuildings, iind pyramids of logs stacked next to the side of the road, then, without thinking, navigating almost by sense memory, swerved down the sloping dirt alley behind the mill, bouncing onto Second Street. A quick turn onto Fir, and they were there.

She pulled to a stop on the gravel driveway next to her mother's beat-up Impala. The place looked the same as always, only more so. The paint on the small house was not only peeling but faded, and the twin T poles holding up the clothesline in the side yard were slanting so far over that Jolene doubted a full-length towel could dry on them without dragging on the ground. The porch was a mess of dead plants in broken pots.

'We're here!' she announced cheerfully to Skylar, feigning an optimism she did not feel. She kept an eye on the ripped screen door, waiting for it to open and her mother to appear, but the door remained closed, the inside of the house dark. 'Unbuckle. Let's stretch our legs.'

They both unfastened their seat belts and got out of the car. The air was cooler here than in Arizona, but more humid and filled with that wonderful sawmill smell. She felt more comfortable in the mountains than in the desert, more at home. It was as though this was where she belonged, and she wondered if the feelings Skylar was experiencing were along the same lines-or if he simply felt lost and uprooted. Probably the latter, and Jolene realized that it was her responsibility to make the transition easier for him.

The transition?

Yes. They were going to stay here.

She had no intention of going back to Arizona.

The two of them walked across the crunchy gravel to the porch, where the peeling wood creaked and groaned beneath their weight. She'd called her mother yesterday from San Diego and told her they were on their way up, though she'd declined to elaborate on the reasons. Unless her mom was in the bathroom, she had to have seen the Blazer pull into the driveway and even if she was in the bathroom, she had to have heard their footsteps on the creaking porch. The fact that she had not come out to greet them did not bode well. Jolene rapped on the warped frame of the screen door. 'It's me, Mom!' she called.

As always, the door was unlocked, and she pulled it open and walked in. Skylar took her hand, a sign of nervousness. He'd been here three years ago for a short visit, but Jolene was not sure how well he remembered it. Glancing around at the darkened room with its drab and well-worn furniture, she couldn't help comparing it with the bright sunniness of their place in Yuma, and she tried to see the house through Skylar's eyes. He probably thought the house was sad and depressing.

It was.

'We're here, Mom!' she announced.

Her mother emerged from the kitchen, wiping her hands on a dish towel. 'About time. I expected you hours ago.'

No hello for her, no hug for Skylar, no smile for either of them. She'd been in the kitchen, so she had seen the Blazer pull in.

'Frank called,' her mother said accusingly.

Skylar looked up at her nervously, and Jolene squeezed his hand, held it tight. 'I've decided to-' Leave him, was what she wanted to say, but that was a little harsh to announce in front of Skylar, and it would initiate a conversation with her mother that she didn't want to have right now. '-take a little