She’s young, probably not much older than me, and there’s an infant in a carrier on her back, her lips puffy, her eyes red, like she’s been crying.
We look at each other for a moment, and she shifts the big tupperware box that she’s holding in front of herself.
“Please don’t report me to CPS,” she says, her eyes filling with tears.“I’m sorry, my husband is out of town and I’ve been up all night and I just needed to keep her out of the way without running off for five minutes while I loaded the car.”
The kid looks over at me, quizzically, the stuffed dog dangling by one leg.
“Don’t worry about it,” I say, because the kid seems perfectly fine and happy, playing in the front yard, and because I can’t imagine I’d do a whole lot better in the same circumstances.“Want me to keep her company?”
She sags with relief.
“That would be so nice of you,” she says.“I swear I’ll just be five more minutes, I need to grab a couple more things from inside and then we’re heading to my sister’s in Bozeman.”
“No problem,” I say.The baby on her back starts fussing, and she walks toward the car, jiggling it a little until it quiets down.“You look like you’ve got your hands full.”
“Thank you,” she says.“I swear, I’m never letting Chuck go on another business trip.”
I come into the front yard and sit on the grass near the kid.
“Hi, I’m Clementine,” I say.“What’s your name?”
The kid looks over at her mom, loading the box into the trunk.
“She’s okay, sweetheart,” the mom calls.
The kid just looks at me, silent.
I point to the stuffed dog.
“What’s the dog’s name?”I ask.
She looks from me, to the dog, back to me, and then grins.
“Kee-tah,” she says.
“Kita?”
“Kee-TAHHH.”
“Cheetah?”
“Gee.TAWWW.”
I blink at the kid for a minute, my mind racing, because I don’t really speak toddler.
“Guitar?”I finally say.
She nods and laughs.
“That’s a really good name,” I say.“I have a dog named Trout.”
I seethe little family off a few minutes later and watch them drive away.Then I put the sticker on their door and check their house off my list, hoping that a perfectly fine toddler with a frazzled mom is the worst thing I see today.
It’s not, but nothing awful happens.There’s a couple fighting in their front yard over whether they’re gonna go to her mom’s house or his buddy Wayne’s house, and when I calmly try to inform them of evacuation procedures, the woman just screams “We’re trying, you goddamn forest bitch!”at me.
I don’t shout back, even though I want to, and make a mental note thatgoddamn forest bitchwould be a pretty funny insult in a different context.
There are more families, more kids with stuffed animals.I wake one guy up when I knock on his door, and he answers in his boxers, scratching his beer gut, and seems surprised that there’s a fire.
