“Mm-hmm,” you say, which is the most you’ve said in a while.
You were surprised when Diana asked to be in your boat, but ever since she saw your infected cut, she’s been watching you closely, visible concern on her face. You wonder if it’s because she thinks you’re just going to drop dead in front of her. No matter where things stand with the two of you right now, she probably doesn’t want to lose anyone else. You’re glad she’s close, though. Even if the two of you have been mostly silent since you started paddling.
You want to talk to her. You want to ask about all the things Fran told you, to see if they’re true, but now that you’re two feet away from her, you can’t quite bring yourself to speak. It seems ridiculous, somehow, that you’re likely being chased down by a fire and you still want to know what really happened between you. Will that itchy feeling ever go away? Is it with you for life?
Another problem: The smoke is burning your throat. Hers too. You can tell by the pained sound of her cough. She’s running low on water, but eventually she just dips her bottle in the river and drinks. There’s no time to stop and boil water at the pace you’re going, so she gulps it down. Then she dips it again and passes it back to you. You look at the river around you. There’s not a lot of algae or mud in the water, so when she presses the wet bottle into your hand, you drink deeply, and the water is so cold and clean tasting that it hurts your teeth.
And with this one drink comes a rare moment of calm. For an instant, you’re able to stop thinking about your past mistakes and the uncertainty of the future. You just close your eyes and you can almost feel your cells absorbing the water. Even your headache feels better for a second or two. And with this calm, everything suddenly seems so simple:
The world is on fire. Offer water when you can.
You hand the bottle back to Diana.
“Thank you,” you say.
Your red eyes are watering, and you’re pretty sure it’s from the smoke. But you’re also thinking about how long it’s been since you experienced uninterrupted tranquility. You’ve spent so much of the past year, and a good portion of your life before that, terrified and ashamed. But there are times, even in the midst of chaos, where you catch a glimpse of how simple it can be to exist in a moment.
“And God help our sorry asses,” shouts Troy, “if the arctic permafrost starts to melt! Just stick a fork in the planet if that happens! There was a fire there, like, fifteen years ago that let off two million metric tons of carbon!”
And just like that, the moment is gone. At Troy’s last word,the hull of the boat scrapes bottom again, and you stand on uncertain legs to heft it. There aren’t any low-hanging trees this time, but the air quality is so bad that you can’t see too far in front of you. Big rocks pop up out of the blue, along with trees knocked down by the wind. Will trips and scrapes his shin on an uprooted pine. Instead of swearing, he just releases a primal scream.
Troy doesn’t even stop his lecture at the noise. He’s still going on about the Paris Climate Accord, and you wait for Will to full-on throttle him. Will is not the most patient among you as it is, and listening to a live audiobook of the apocalypse while his shin is throbbing has got to be past his threshold. But he doesn’t tackle Troy. Instead, he leaves the canoe with Fran for a moment and calmly walks back to him.
When he gets to Troy, he grabs Troy’s canoe and helps him scrabble up some rocks and down to the deeper water of the creek again. Troy is still saying something you can’t quite hear about average surface temperature when Will puts his hands on Troy’s shoulders. Surprisingly, Troy goes quiet, like a radio that’s been switched off.
“Troy, my guy,” says Will. “Can I ask you a question?”
Troy says nothing. But he doesn’t say no.
“Do you want to see Turbo again?”
Troy blinks and coughs into his hands. Life seems to return, however temporarily, to his eyes.
“Yes,” he says, his voice shaky.
“Tell me. What’s it going to be like when you see him?”
Troy doesn’t hesitate at all.
“Beautiful,” he says. “It’s going to be beautiful.”
A tear runs down his ash-stained cheek.
“Right,” says Will. “Okay. Good. So here’s the deal, bro. Nobody thinks you’re wrong about all this climate stuff. We know how messed up it is. But also: That’s the world, right?”
“What do you mean?” asks Fran.
Will keeps looking at Troy.
“It’s full of terrible stuff. But it’s also full of beautiful stuff. Like you and the pure love you have for that wiener dog. It’s the same world, you know? Fires and wiener dogs. But that’s a super hard thing to hold in your head, I think. That it can be both.”
Troy is crying. He nods.
“Look, all I’m saying is if you want to see Turbo again, and take him to the dog park and watch him run on his pathetic, tiny wiener legs, then we have to keep going. And we have to stay positive. Just for now. When we get home, we can solve climate change. Right now, we need to live.”
Troy is coughing while crying, and Will stares at him without speaking. Then, apropos of nothing, Troy just takes his shirt off. Everyone watches, unsure what he’s doing. But then he doesn’t toss it in his boat; he dunks it in the creek. Then he wrings it out.
“I saw this in a movie about firefighters once,” he says.
