Happiness Is a Chemical in the Brain: Stories (22 page)

THE SLASH BURNERS all wear the same thing: hard hats, safety goggles, yellow Nomex shirts. But their bodies make these same things look different, the women’s hard hats perched awkwardly atop their heads. By the end of the day their faces are black. But their lips, like the rims of their eyes, are stark red, as if their first lips have burned away and these new ones have been made from the insides of their mouths. Their old scorched lips rolled outward, these new lips fixed in place with a hem stitch.

SO A FEW WEEKS go by and they burn a few piles. All the guys from last year go first. Of course, everyone’s waiting to see one of the women take her turn, and the women fear that waiting until last will prove that they’re afraid. So the week after the last of last year’s guys go, the short woman volunteers, not checking the look on anyone’s face. She is not fluid like the surfer when she charges straight ahead, a strategy in whose grips she should be doomed. But what saves her is speed: as soon as a leg touches down she lifts it again. She moves like a piston, her calves snapping down and retracting. When she gets to the end of the pile, the others move in to help her step down; then they realize that she doesn’t want their help. But they’ve lifted their arms toward her already, so they change the gesture into the upswing of a comradely slap, but suddenly they’re not sure how hard to hit her. They end up awkwardly tapping the back of her shirt. Good work. Tap. Nice job. Tap tap. They can feel the buckle on her bra, which leaves a small singe on the palms of their hands. A spot they need to cool by wagging in the air.

AT NIGHT, in the trailer, the other women come to Marie with their stories. Perhaps because she is the quiet one. Turns out the short-haired woman once halfheartedly tried to slash her wrists, and the erotic object, the tall one with field-hockey thighs, had an abortion just before flying here from the famous Catholic college, Our Lady of the Midwest. Ever since, blood has leaked from her in intermittent drips. She does not think it is enough blood to worry about, but it scares her nonetheless.

THE NEXT WEEK one of the new guys has to volunteer to torch. He has to, because the smallest woman has gone, and so, by laws that are somehow understood by everyone, one of the new guys has to go. The volunteer is a big guy whose body Marie takes one look at and knows is wrong for torching slash. It is too solid, too firmly anchored to the world. Worse, he takes as his example the short woman’s unhuman performance and charges down the pile. But he’s too big to get away with this, and before he’s gone halfway his left leg punches through some brush that overflows the slash pile’s edge. Then his foot twists and hooks beneath a branch so that his leg cannot be pulled straight up. Like a finger in a Chinese trap, the harder he pulls, the more fixed is his boot. The others paw his leg for useless moments until the crew boss elbows his way through. He’s the one who knows to push down on the foot to make it pop from under the branch that pins it. And from his example the others glean the most important lesson. Which is that sometimes the way out is farther in.

MARIE’S BODY’S STORY is simpler than a slashed wrist, and yet it involves the same idea of transformation. Meaning: as soon as she found out she had the job she started running in a silver suit. The suit was made out of plastic, and the catalogue she bought it from had sold it with the promise that as the sweat flowed from her she’d be able to see the muscles rising below the surface of her skin. On her feet she wore a pair of blue tennis shoes with soles as thin as carpet slippers. She could not run more than a dozen steps before one of her ankles would roll into the dusty pebbles lining the road. Back in her dorm room, removing the suit, she looked at her thigh and pressed her thumb into its creases. At least it looked like there were creases, but maybe this was an illusion, maybe her muscles were just caused by the sunlight’s passage through the trees.

ON THEIR BELTS they wore pouches containing the fire shelters they were to use should the fire ever escape from the pile and they find themselves beset by flames. In this scenario the slash burners were to grub out patches of bare ground big enough to fit their bodies before hunkering down, using the shelter like a tent, pinning it with their arms and legs while the fire rolled over their backs. Never mind that it did not seem possible there would be enough time for digging: during training week, they practiced baring the ground and throwing themselves into it. The shelters themselves were no more than foil tarps. Glorified tinfoil.
Shake-and-bake bags
, the guys from last year said. During the training they’d also watched a film about a crew from the Navajo reservation, a group of men who’d been pinned in their bags for thirty-six hours straight. Finally, another crew had come along and told them to get up. The fire had been out for hours. But the men did not believe this until they stuck their arms out from under their shelters and touched the blackened ground.

THE SLASH BURNERS take turns using the chain saw to cut the larger branches. Marie can’t help thinking the chain is always going to fly off the bar and catch her in the mouth. Luckily, the other new guy is eager to prove himself with the saw, and only a few other men — and the short muscular woman — will haggle. But one day when this new guy is bucking up a gnarled fir stump he catches the tip of the saw on a knot. And the bar flips up, spins, nicks him in the meat of his chest. Then everyone’s swearing about either sex or God as blood spits out and dirty bandannas are pressed to the wound. The boss throws him in the truck and speeds toward town, and for the rest of the day the other slash burners trudge through their chores like pallbearers. Around nightfall the truck gets back and they all crowd around as it pulls in. No new guy: he has to stay in town for minor surgery.
But he’s okay
, the crew boss says, and a collective sigh inflates the clearing.

THAT FRIDAY, after the slash pile is built, they stand for a good while watching it, almost as if they expect it to start moving like a worm or snake or other legless creature. The women have made a tactical error: with the new guy out for this week at least, it’s only the two of them who have not taken their turns lighting the slash. So they are last after all, and silently they curse themselves for being weak, for being wimps. One of the men volunteers in their stead, but both women insist, rather shrilly,
No.
Marie can tell the blond woman is dying to go: she wants to prove that she is more than just her beauty. She does not wear earrings anymore, because she’s been told they might scorch her neck. From the way she holds one arm curled in front of her, Marie can tell that, though she’s eager, whatever is damaged inside her holds her back. So Marie says, aloud,
Oh, God help me, I’ll go
, which is supposed to be more joke than plea for any serious kind of rescue, though she
would
in fact like to be rescued. Abruptly the rest of the crew claps and hoots, except for the blond woman, who shuts her eyelids in relief.