The Last Fire Season by Manjula Martin

Author:Manjula Martin [Martin, Manjula]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2024-01-16T00:00:00+00:00

It was approaching the autumnal equinox, and also my birthday. After Max and I went through the now-customary Covid/fires decision-making process—any gathering had to be outdoors, but what would we tell our guests if the AQI was above 100, or 150, or what if the wind changed?—the elements came through for me and the smoke backed off enough to make a gathering possible, if not ideal.

Directly below the coastal trail I liked to hike, several sets of wobbly wooden stairs led down to a small cove. The beach sand there was almost black. It had been transformed so recently from rocks that it was more a conglomeration of pebbles than grains. Here the air was cooler than at our house. The sun was out, but its light was tainted a weak, Kool-Aid orange. Max’s sibling, Sal, and their partner drove up from Oakland. So did several of my oldest friends. (Rhys couldn’t make it, she was working.) Jesse and his mom came, and a few newer friends from the North Bay. We were artists, organizers, teachers, and students. Most of us hadn’t seen each other in at least six months. The party attendees wore masks; on the sand, we placed our blankets six feet apart. Max mixed drinks in paper cups and passed around slices of the huge cake he’d ordered for me, chocolate-raspberry from a local dive bar that had started doing takeout during the pandemic. The mood was subdued, the stresses of the moment infusing everything with a sort of quietude, but it was a party.

Toward sunset I sat on a quilt alone and picked at sand flies as they jumped on the cotton squares. Around me, one of my oldest friends talked about prison abolition with one of my newer friends. I watched my friend Kara’s toddler run up one side of a boulder, jump off it into the sand, then declare that she wanted to do it again, again. Her mom nodded wearily. As the game cycled, the child’s swan dives grew higher and bolder, her mother less accommodating, but the kid remained unfazed. She was fearless, Kara said, half apologizing and half bragging. I said I’d start thinking of roller derby names for her.

I gripped the blanket between my sand-dirtied feet. I had painted my toenails red on an interminable inside day. In the weeks since the day without a sky, everything I looked at seemed to take on a red tint. Someone had made an altar to autumn by wedging into a granite rock a shaggy bouquet of red-leaved plum and maple branches. In the sand next to me, the bright chemical red of my abandoned Aperol spritz glowed neon in its white cup, and that small medallion of color contrasted pleasantly with the black-shell sand. The water was low and still today; the horizon wavered like a mirage. I could smell the salt in the ocean for the first time in weeks.

I looked around at my people. I had wanted a party because I wanted to lighten the weight of my worries, the anxiety of the era.

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