Page 84 of The Goat Next Door

“I’m making the mountain,” she announces. “But with lots of rain so the fires go away.”

For twenty minutes, we sit shoulder-to-shoulder on the floorboards, the yellow beam of the flashlight propped against a cereal box to give us just enough illumination to see the colors bleeding into the paper.

Sophie’s small tongue pokes out the corner of her mouth as she adds a massive, disproportionate orange rectangle to the bottom of her mountain.

“What’s that part?”

“That’s Dad’s truck,” she says simply. “He’s driving through the big trees to come get me.”

A sharp pang of something heavy and tight squeezes my ribs.

I look at her clumsy, wet painting, the bright orange paint running into the deep blue water, and I have to take a slow, deliberate breath to keep my voice steady.

“He’s very good at driving through the big trees, Sophie. He’s got the big tires for it.”

By eight-thirty, she’s so exhausted from the dancing and the sugar that her brush slips from her fingers, leaving a long yellow streak across the linoleum.

I carry her into the downstairs bedroom and lay her down on the quilt. Her eyes are already half-shut before her head hits the pillowcase, her tiny hand still holding a loose thread from the sleeve of my sweatshirt.

“Emmy?”

“Yeah, Sophie?”

“Tell my dad that I painted the truck the bright color so he can see it in the dark.”

“I’ll tell him,” I whisper, leaning down to press my lips against her forehead. “Sleep tight, Sergeant.”

22

Brooks

“If I had a dollar for every time I said

‘don’t do something stupid’ and he did it anyway,

I’d retire.”

— Davis

The metal structure of the truck doesn’t give easily, but after forty minutes of kicking the driver’s side door with the heel of my boot, the latch finally shears with a sound like a rifle shot.

I roll out of the tilted cab. My knees sink six inches into the gray, smoking ash of the collapsed railway platform.

My right shin is bleeding where the dashboard crumpled against my leg, a sharp bite of pain that goes away the second I take a lungful of the air outside.

The smoke is thick—heavy with the oily carbon of the hemlock roots—but it’s blowing over the ridge now, rising up into the northern gap as the cold front from the lake finally brings the rain.

The first drop hits the back of my neck like a small piece of lead. Then another. By the time I find my flashlight in the ditch line, the sky opens up, a hard, straight downpour that hits the glowing peat bogs with a massive, collective hiss.

“Brooks!”

Davis’s voice cuts through the dark from the upper logging trail.

The high-beams of Pumper Two tear through the wet hemlocks, casting long, shaking white bars across the wreckage of my utility truck.

He’s out of the cab before the rig fully stops. He’s sprinting down the embankment, his boots sliding in the thickening mud, his eyes locked on the smoking hole.

“I’m here!” I yell back.