How to Start a Fire

by Lisa Lutz

  I’ve been hearing things about the Nriierh mwp and I’ve been thinking I should see that, just so I can be that person who tells you one wlero isn’t so different from the next. I might kwerk and seek ewrkpwer. I’ll write more soon.

  Kate

  Anna pored over Kate’s letter for at least an hour, but the fading ink of the ballpoint pen turned Kate’s already almost indecipherable script into a cipher. Anna could confidently glean only a few simple facts: Kate had received Anna’s letters; she wanted to know how Anna was doing; she was thinking about writing NASA; and she would write again. Anna saw this as a door cracking open and promptly sent a two-page reply describing her dishonorable return to the Fury homestead.

  Anna heard from Kate again just a few weeks later, a longer letter including tales from her journey, but just the postcard-worthy bits. The two of them continued communicating solely by the United States Postal Service. Anna felt a rush of excitement whenever she received a letter and recalled afternoons at summer camp when the mail was delivered, holding the promise of stickers and candy and mix tapes.

  Kate had been sitting in her car for four hours, minus two bathroom breaks and a short trip to the coffee shop—which she fully acknowledged was a bad idea during a stakeout—when Colin phoned. She picked up out of boredom and then she regretted it.

  “Where are you?” he said.

  “I don’t know.” It was less of a lie when they both knew it was a lie.

  The day before, she’d driven for over twelve hours on I-70 from St. Louis to Stratton, Colorado. She could have stopped overnight in Kansas, but the pancake-flat prairie land, tumbleweeds, and messages from God on billboards made her soldier on. She held her bladder until she crossed the Colorado border, then she stopped at the first Motel 6.

  At dawn, she’d driven along the same highway, which suddenly become a tangled, twisty, and breathtakingly beautiful mountain road. She pulled into a gas station and got directions to the address Mr. White had given her for a Leanne Hicks in Boulder, Colorado. A light blanket of snow covered the brown lawn. The ranch-style home needed painting and a junk truck to haul away forgotten chairs and TVs and other things that apparently no longer had to be inside. Kate rang the doorbell. No answer. She’d returned to her car and waited. Then Colin had called.

  “We need to discuss your corporate finances,” he said.

  “I don’t think that’s necessary.”

  “Who are Janet Gray and Leanne Olmstead, and why did you have me write them checks totaling over ten thousand dollars?”

  “Because I owed them money. A good business pays its debts.”

  “Why did you owe them money?”

  “For services rendered.”

  “What is the business model of Golden Retrieval Inc.?”

  “I’m still working out the details.”

  “Work harder. What is it about these people that makes you feel like giving them all your money? Are they special?”

  They weren’t.

  “Did I ever congratulate you on your wedding?” Kate asked.

  “Yes. And thank you … for the rock.”

  “It’s a geode, a dragon stone. I was told it’s pretty rare. Although I’m not a rock expert, so it would be fairly easy to pull the wool over my eyes.”

  “As your lawyer, I need to advise you to stop this, whatever it is. Now.”

  “I don’t think of you as my lawyer. More as my accountant or bookkeeper, but if it’s a title you’re after, we can work on it.”

  “Kate, the money is going to run out. And then what will you do?”

  “Get a job. I have to go. My client just arrived.”

  Kate disconnected the call as a green pickup truck pulled into the driveway. The woman behind the wheel had two inches of roots in her bleached-blond shoulder-length hair, which left a black trail down her center part. Since she was carrying groceries, Kate waited exactly ten minutes for her to put them away.

  “Are you Leanne Olmstead, formerly Hicks?” Kate asked when the woman answered the door with an impatient scowl.

  “Who are you?”

  “My name is Sarah Lake,” Kate said.

  “What do you want?”

  “I wanted to talk to you about your deceased brother’s estate.”

  “He owed me fifty dollars when he died. There’s no way he had an estate.”

  “I work for Golden Retrieval Inc., an asset-recovery firm based in Boston. Sometimes individuals purchase stocks or bonds and lose track of their investments. It appears that your late brother made a few small investments in some mutual funds in the early nineties. What I do is help distribute that money to the family.”

  “Please, come in.”

  Kate sat in Leanne’s living room for the next two hours drinking stale coffee and waiting for Ms. Olmstead’s tongue to loosen. Kate knew that each relative would claim to be the sole living heir, so she sat back, drank the viscous brew, and listened patiently. That was what had happened with the aunt in Memphis—she didn’t start talking until after she’d poured herself her third hot toddy. Kate had waited her out; people always told you too much if you gave them enough time. Nobody kept secrets anymore. Although Kate was pretty good at it.

  “He was a mean son of a bitch, but every once in a while, you saw his sweet side,” Leanne said as she got to reminiscing about her brother. “When I was ten I outgrew my ice skates and begged and begged for a new pair for Christmas. But Santa decided I needed socks and underwear. I cried for an hour after I unwrapped my gifts and then I was sent to my room without supper. We were broke back then. I should have known better. A few days after Christmas, I found a pair of used figure skates outside my bedroom door. They were wrapped in a brown paper bag with a bow that he probably took out of the neighbor’s trash. One size too big, but I got some wear out of them. Later at school, I heard Jennifer Glass had a pair of skates stolen from the rink just a few days after Christmas. I put two and two together. I even thought about giving them back to her, but a week after that, I saw her at the rink with a shiny new pair. Even nicer than what I had.”

  “Did your brother have many girlfriends?”

  “He went through an awkward stage. Lots of acne, too skinny. No girl would give him the time of day way back when. But when he got older, his skin cleared up, and he filled out a bit. The last time I saw him, he was almost handsome. You could see some girls looking at him.”

  “You remember any of his girlfriends?”

  “I met a few, but I only remember the one that stuck. Audrey.”

  “Who was Audrey?” Kate asked.

  “His wife. His ex-wife.”

  “Where is she now?”

  “I think she died a few years ago.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that.”

  Kate had a check ready in the amount of $4,352.24. She remembered jotting down numbers again and again, searching for that perfect note of randomness.

  “This is for you. We have a complicated process for calculating distributions. But I hope it helps.”

  “Thank you,” Leanne said.

  “Now, where can I find your niece?” Kate said.

  Kate phoned Mr. White from the Motel 6 and provided all the information she had on Evelyn Baker, formerly of Sunriver, Oregon. White said he’d get back to her as quickly as he could. Kate paid for another night in the motel. After toggling through the depressing television options, she turned off the TV and returned to a biography of Winston Churchill that she’d purchased from a used-book sale at the library. She’d been looking for transcriptions of his speeches but instead found this biography written by his nephew, who mentioned that Churchill did a mean gorilla imitation.

  In the morning, Mr. White called.

  “Got an address for you. Butte, Montana.”

  Kate gave herself three days to reach Butte, Montana. Yellowstone National Park beckoned. She felt like she was cheating on Anna and George by visiting the national park alone; it had been on the list she and Anna had made in college of places
they wanted to go. Kate always wondered where she would have gone without Anna whispering adventures in her ear. She had to admit feeling a bit aimless traveling without her. Kate bought a guidebook and followed the outer loop of the park, starting in Gardiner, Montana. It was like an Old West town. She found a saloon and ordered a root beer. Then she drove under the Roosevelt Arch. She remembered Anna at a party years ago blaming the past president for all of the current forest fires. You know whose fault it is? Fucking Teddy Roosevelt’s. She had to slow her car as bison and deer crossed the road, and she caught a glimpse of orange sheep. She took a brief tour of Fort Yellowstone and decided she didn’t need to see any more forts in her life. She hiked briefly among the hoodoo rocks, found a hot spring hidden from other tourists, quickly disrobed, and jumped into the water.

  She traveled on to Upper Geyser Basin, whose namesake geyser refused to perform. She almost willed it not to. She didn’t want to have a once-in-a-lifetime experience alone. She bought postcards but never sent them. She figured this was a trip she probably wouldn’t reminisce about.

  Evelyn lived in a four-unit brick building off Broadway.

  “Are you Evelyn Baker?” Kate asked when a young woman with long brown hair and eyes like her father’s, minus years of resentment, answered the door.

  “Who are you?”

  “I’m Sarah Lake. I work for Golden Retrieval Inc., an asset-recovery firm based in Boston,” Kate said. “I have some very good news for you.”

  The next letter that Anna received had a return address in Prairie Basin, Montana. Colin told Anna that Kate was planning on staying there awhile. Anna knew no more than Colin or George about Kate’s ill-conceived business. Although it was quite possible, with all of the holes in her letters, that she had simply missed that part.

  Anna,

  I know I could write an e-mail and you’d receive it as soon as I clicked the Send button, but there’s something about that format that insists on brevity and the reckless use of abbreviations, like sxhtyh and wehrih. Of course, sending a letter to your parents’ house comes fraught with different pqpepj. I picture it like prison, the guards reading your mail and literally cutting out the inappropriate parts. I think I saw that in a movie from the eighties. Lwerojo of Pwerw. Did you see it? The letter is carefully sealed, so if you notice any wejkrbz, you should assume your mother has tampered with it. Hi, Lena.

  So far small-town life is agreeing with me. I’ve made a few friends. Not in my tppy, but there aren’t too many people in my tppy here and those usually have several children and are suspicious of women without their own brood. I got a part-time job at the Prairie Basin Reporter—PBR, for short, which is sometimes confusing, since PBR is what the whole town drinks. It pays fifty dollars a week. I write fluff pieces on the high school ieurutkw and the obits. I asked for the crime blotter, but Rkrwlke, the boss, says there isn’t enough crime to warrant one. I’m almost positive someone nicked a wrench from my toolbox, so I respectfully disagreed. It’s qqaedkb I misplaced it. But unless I can drum up some criminal activity, I’m stuck with the dead and the undead. (That vampire shit has made it into the sticks too; it’s all over the high school.) Fridays I go to high school football games. Wednesdays I play bingo. And when somebody dies, I usually attend the funeral.

  As I serwle in the last letter I also work part-time shelving books at the library. Last Thursday when I meenrn, Mrs. Uwelkn was dead. At first I thought she was taking a nap on the floor, but she’s not the nap-on-the-floor kind of woman. Not too many people are, I guess. You, maybe. Or you used to be. Is it okay to say that? Anyway, Mrs. Uwelkn was totally dead. I didn’t want to bbejbawoe the crime scene, so I went next door to the oiepe and told them to call 911. But they don’t call 911 in Prairie Basin. Mrs. Indbwsed (the postmistress—that’s what they call her) phoned Sheriff Bleeker from the next town because we don’t have a sheriff. He was in the middle of lunch, so he jajsedj ham and cheese and drove over.

  The sheriff walked into the library, turned Mrs. Uwelkn over, and then picked up the phone on her desk and called the morgue. There was no investigation, which is good for him since he totally cccdd up the crime scene. I don’t suspect foul play, but she was on the young side. At least for death. The funeral was kfdec. I wrote her obit, of course; if I were working at a big paper, they’d say it was a conflict of interest. But this is PBR. I hope I don’t die like her.

  What’s the zsdlwerj amount of time to wait until I ask for her job?

  One last thing: I wanted to tell you about the sky. I stepped out of the PBR office at sunset. There was a fhew of clouds like those ropy doughnuts, twisted up with reds and blues with an aiiei slate backdrop, in an endless drifting motion. A ytebajw so complex it doesn’t seem natural. If we lived in ancient Greece and knew nothing of the world, we would be saying that the gods were at war. It was a violent, beautiful sky. It was better than any sky I’ve ever seen.

  I wish you could have seen it.

  Love,

  Kate

  Kate,

  Thanks for the letter; I grabbed it directly from the mailbox so the gatekeeper would have no chance to tamper with the seal. Although I wouldn’t put it past Lena to “accidentally” open my mail. There used to be a lock on my bedroom door, but when I moved back, it was mysteriously gone. Sometimes I think she’s stuck in the past, still playing a game of cat-and-mouse with her adolescent daughter. She’s upped her game, or I’ve lost mine. I would like to be able to open my bedroom window at night without setting off the alarm. She never talks about what I did. She just calls it “the legal matter.” And occasionally implements a new security measure. I offered to explain it to her as best I could. But she thought we should just put the past behind us. I’m living at home. I can’t fucking escape the past.

  My life isn’t as exciting as yours—dead librarians and brilliant sunsets. I did just meet a fallen Supreme Court justice or a man with delusions of grandeur. You decide. I’m not one to judge. I’m adjusting to most of the stuff. Living at home is the hardest part, but right now I don’t know what else to do. I’m broke. The legal fees took the last of the trust fund. My brother keeps asking me why I did what I did. It seems so obvious. Doesn’t everyone want to escape sometimes?

  Speaking of escapes, is that what you’re doing? I hope you find more than death and sunsets. Unless that’s all you’re looking for.

  Love,

  Anna

  2000

  Old Forge, New York

  It was a moonless sky, riddled with stars arranged like holiday decorations hung in haste, the beauty in their chaos. Too many to count, although George often tried. Kate mumbled the constellations. Anna slunk away. She dipped her hand in the icy water of the creek and pulled out a beer from the makeshift cooler that she’d brainstormed earlier in the day by loading a twelve-pack into a fisherman’s net, submerging it in the water, and securing it with a bowline knot to a tent stake. Anna twisted off the cap with her numbed palm and sat down on the tarp, slipping between George and Kate for warmth.

  There was a house, the Fury weekend home, just a mile away. But George insisted that they find a place to camp out for the night, that they make use of the acreage Lena ignored. It reminded her of her childhood vacations at her father’s lake cabin in Michigan. Although that was just a cabin, not like Lena’s four-thousand-square-foot refurbished barn. George always felt cut off from nature inside the Fury vacation home—it was too civilized for all that ungroomed land. George made sure they hiked far enough away from the property that you could pretend it wasn’t there. After a year of working as a forest ranger, George couldn’t remember the last time she’d sat under the stars without feeling responsible for the earth beneath her. Tonight she was free.

  George built the fire while Kate and Anna pitched the tent. Those roles had been established years ago, after numerous fire-building competitions, which George always won, her fire often ablaze several minutes before Anna or Kate could get the kindling started. George had learned at her fathe
r’s cabin—the only heat was from his wood stove. Her system was second nature to her, and she had an eye for those perfect dry sticks that never disappointed. After two seasons of losing the fire battle, Anna and Kate decided to step up their game. Kate read books on fires and learned about soft-and hardwood and gathered her kindling ahead of time, hiding it in her backpack. Anna went to a hardware store and purchased a small paraffin-and-sawdust fire starter that supposedly blazed for fifteen minutes, giving your fire ample time to catch. Both girls lost yet again that year.

  George added another piece of wood to the fire and returned her gaze to the endless sky.

  “Won’t you miss it?” Kate asked.

  “It will always be here,” George said.

  “But not every night. You’ll have to go looking for it.”

  “People give up all sorts of things for love,” Anna said, having only a theoretical knowledge of that subject.

  “You’re changing your whole life for a guy you met on an airplane,” Kate said.

  “And one day you might change your whole life for a guy you meet at a bus stop,” George said.

  As the story went, George Leoni met Mitch Misenti in first class on a flight from San Francisco to Chicago. George was flying home for the holidays and, as usual, was running late. The airplane doors were about to close as George dashed to her gate, a coat and carry-on bag rising and falling like wings in her wake. The flight attendant gave her a sharp scowl as she pegged George as one of those pretty girls who thought they could get away with anything. George, winded and apologetic, wove an intricate lie about not being able to find her cat before she left. George had no cat. But the flight attendant did, and although she’d been about to give the one remaining first-class seat to some almost-lucky frequent flier in coach, it was simpler to assign it to George.

  The seat was 2C. An aisle. George rushed down the jet bridge, tossed her bag in the overhead compartment, and slipped into her seat, managing to avoid all the disapproving eyes. As soon as she buckled her seat belt, she was offered a glass of champagne, cementing in her mind a causal relationship between being late and getting pleasant surprises.