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Show Go Love/214 boot. "Daddy said swim-swim." "No. I love you," she say and her voice quivers. The parking lot has filled with campers, RVs and state troopers. Some National Guard troops are beginning to stand in An emergency kitchen is constructed outside the Flaming Bait, Tackle and Liquor, ramshackle camp tables set up with Coleman stoves and propane lanterns A tent city was set. Lara eats her corn. Somebody sobs and somebody laughs-maybe the same person, it sounds like, out of either side of their mouth. Renee says, "Jack. We're supposed to get something out of this. It's some kind of sign " A half-pound hunk of prime rib arrives with hot salted fries and a glass of ice tea, what seems to me like the best meal ever to appear in this lifetime There's ketchup on the table, Al and Heinz 57 Sweating in our cooler back in the Pathfinder, we have steaks, fat ribeyes from grass-fed cows they charge your nuts off for at Wild Oats for, but who cares? We're jangled- cooking is beyond us. "End of June. Today's the last day of June." "But w h a t s i s it." A deep voice from one table over says, "The day the fire started." Silence caves in around us, and I feel the vacuum-when the fire sucked the oxygen from our lungs. A waitress busses our plates and apologizes for running out of coffee "We've given it all to the fire boys," she says. I ask how to pay. |