"I did this for us."
I smile.
"Evangeline.”
“Go now. You should go, I will meet you as soon as I can. Wait for me.”
I tell her where.
"Yes."
She nods once.
She turns. She walks back along the south fence toward the access road. The camel coat moves at her calves. Her hair at her shoulders does not move. The smoke at the south wall lifts at the corner and shows me the back of her head and the line of hershoulders and the wide-leg trousers and the boots that are not made for gravel, and she walks to the gravel shoulder, and she gets into the Porsche, and the Porsche is silver, and the Porsche turns over, and the Porsche pulls off the gravel shoulder, and the Porsche goes up the access road to the highway, and the Porsche is gone.
I stand at the corner of the fence.
I count to four.
I count to four again.
I walk back to the deck gun.
The big rookie does not look at me.
I take the line.
I run it.
The chief is at the engine.
The chief does not look at me.
The chief knows.
The chief knows, and the chief is at the engine, and the building is going to burn down to the slab, and the records storage is going to be a slab, and the records on the slab are going to be ash.
The line is running.
I run the line.
24
EVANGELINE
Isit in the Porsche on the gravel shoulder of the cliff turnout south of Riggins with the engine off and the heater off and the windows up and my hands flat on the leather of the steering wheel, and I wait.
The cliff turnout is the cliff turnout I was at on Monday at sunset.
The cliff turnout is where we fucked in her truck bed as the sun went down.
I have done a thing my husband would have done.
The chief nodded to me when I left the fireground.
I do not know what the nod means.
I know what I am going to take it to mean.
