Blowing Through
by Ross Peterson
The wind or whatever thing or things it carries is doing it again. It’s making that noise like a bagpipe—like when the dude in the kilt and white stockings just starts to squeeze and breathes into the skinny black stem thing: Vuhreeeeeeeeeeee. It’s the worst noise in the entire world. The wind or whatever thing or things it carries doesn’t yet throttle the windows—what’s left of them, anyway—of the fire lookout tower that Mary Sneddigar, United States Forest Service, mans. But it will. It has the last three nights.
Dusk out the four-wall-encompassing tower windows: clouds crimson through September wildfire smoke. The sun is the color of a pinkeye infection and disappears behind the jagged black peaks. It hasn’t smelled the way it’s supposed to inside the tower the last three nights. Propane, yes. Moths, yes. Tree limbs on fire in an antique stove. But there’s another smell, domineering. The closest approximation Mary can muster is diseased gums. The air outside smells like diseased gums, too.
Mary will do what she plans. It’s better than the alternative. It’s just that she’s a Catholic—a bad one, a fucked up one, but one nevertheless—and if there is a hell . . .
Important: Mary has not, as of yet, ruled out the possibility this could not be real. She hallucinated her ass off, the third and fourth night after she quit drinking back in April, enough even for Clinton to drive her to the walk-in clinic: the only good deed that needledick ever performed, for her or anybody. Booze. If only she had it now in vast quantity. She’d get good and hammered like she used to, tending bar at the Rustic Hut (Slut) and as a point of pride taking every shot every biker bought her on shift and after. She’d attain oblivion—lose sight of this entire situation.
Back to the question of whether or not any of this shit is real. Sitting there, stirring in a folding lawn chair by the stove, she looks again at her bare foot and ankle and hand and arm and everywhere the wind got her. Most of the exposure came when she tried to escape—ran in the direction of the parking lot, four miles down the trail. Where the wind touched her she sees dark purple rot and jelly red sores like Brown Recluse bites. It agonized her at first, like blisters ten seconds after you pop them. Now, she feels no sensation in any of the wounds, as though nerves no longer reside in those places.
It’s not just her body, either. The wind caused the wood on the side of the tower to rot. There are dead trees, dead flowers, dead bushes, dead decaying carcasses of chipmunks and birds scattered below the tower, everywhere the wind blew. It blew against the radio and fried the wiring. It shattered the glass on her Osborne Fire Finder. All her food, fresh and freeze-dried, collects tufts of mold like blue cotton. Back to the question of whether or not this is real. It’s real. It just is.
She steps onto the tower deck. The bagpipe noise grows louder and shriller. The withered brown trees it’s killed thrash with gusts. She hobbles and manages to climb onto the deck’s railing. She sticks out her arms and balances on one good foot. This railing is the diving board. The boulder field a hundred feet below is the deep end. There have been times in her life she didn’t feel much like being alive, but she never thought . . . The wind shrieks at her with gale-force and catches her hair in its blast and what’s left of her hair falls out. The wind or whatever thing or things it carries almost blows her off the railing and rage, for a crucial instant, trounces all fear she feels.
She dives.
Ross Peterson lives in Montana, where he has bartended, waited tables, washed dishes, operated heavy duty floor scrubbing machines, played in garage bands, and spent ample amounts of time wandering in the woods. He is a graduate of Oklahoma City University's Red Earth MFA Program, and his stories have appeared such places as The Whitefish Review, Jokes Review, The Flash Fiction Offensive, and others.
