19.
THE WILDFIRES CAME MEAN THAT YEAR. THEY STARTED in May and burned into summer. We watched the mountains and the hills around us catch and blaze. The smoke billowed, held heavy in the air. We coughed and bled. More than a hundred thousand acres burned, were still burning. I dreamed of lungs without bodies that glowed red like the fire-season moon and I woke to mornings covered in layers of white ash.
Brown bears and bobcats from the burned out wilderness wandered the streets near our little adobe and we had to keep our chickens inside the house.
The fires tore through pueblos and towns and national monuments. We listened to the radio and TV news reports online. The fires were within ten miles of Los Alamos National Labs.
Within five miles.
Within a mile.
Within yards.
How many yards?
The laboratory PR guy wore a yellow tie and promised, “No threat to public safety,” but the professors on NPR warned of nuclear disaster and 30,000 above-ground barrels of plutonium-contaminated waste that would soon catch fire and burst, sending plumes of radioactive smoke into the winds.
As the birds flew, we lived twelve miles from Los Alamos National Labs.
I wanted to evacuate. I packed the car with enough water and canned food and tortillas for a week; packed all our passports and birth certificates. But which way would we drive? The horizon burned in every direction.
THAT NIGHT, SOL and I invited all the lesbians and trans guys we knew in Santa Fe to come out to our place in the country for vegan tacos. We wanted to pretend we were building community here instead of waiting for all that smoke to bleed radioactivity. And they came – the brave ones came – miles closer to the fires and miles closer to the labs. We fed them tacos and fennel salad and we made small talk and Sol put on a Dolly Parton CD and without announcement all the lesbians whipped off their shirts and they ran outside and the trans guys ran after them and Sol looked surprised, but she whipped off her shirt too and she ran after them all and they chanted for rain.
I watched from my kitchen window and rolled my eyes. It was just so California circa 1970 to 1999. I mean, I didn’t know any trans guys back then – but the rest of it.
Abra watched, too, bewildered from her trailer.
They ran unembarrassed, ran the circumference of our property, all those lesbians in their bouncing red bras and the trans guys in their white muscle T-shirts, and they chanted “Rain goddesses! Rain goddesses!” until Maxito couldn’t contain himself and despite my obvious disdain, ran with them chanting, “Rain goddesses! Rain goddesses!” and they ran and chanted and ran and chanted until of course the desert winds shifted and the smoky sky crowded itself with monsoon clouds and “Rain goddesses! Rain goddesses!” those clouds opened and the lesbians and the trans guys and Maxito cheered, “Rain goddesses!” and they laughed as the downpour drenched their hair and there would be no nuclear disaster in New Mexico that summer.
No.
There would be rain.