Flight Behavior Read Online Free

across the land, and the mountain seemed to explode with
light. Brightness of a new intensity moved up the valley in a rippling wave,
like the disturbed surface of a lake. Every bough glowed with an orange blaze.
“Jesus God,” she said again. No words came to her that seemed sane. Trees turned
to fire, a burning bush. Moses came to mind, and Ezekiel, words from Scripture
that occupied a certain space in her brain but no longer carried honest weight,
if they ever had. Burning coals of fire went up and down
among the living creatures.
    The flame now appeared to lift from individual
treetops in showers of orange sparks, exploding the way a pine log does in a
campfire when it’s poked. The sparks spiraled upward in swirls like funnel
clouds. Twisters of brightness against gray sky. In broad daylight with no
comprehension, she watched. From the tops of the funnels the sparks lifted high
and sailed out undirected above the dark forest.
    A forest fire, if that’s what it was, would roar.
This consternation swept the mountain in perfect silence. The air above remained
cold and clear. No smoke, no crackling howl. She stopped breathing for a second
and closed her eyes to listen, but heard nothing. Only a faint patter like rain
on leaves . Not fire, she thought, but her eyes when
opened could only tell her, Fire , this place is burning . They said, Get out of here . Up or down, she was unsure. She eyed the dark
uncertainty of the trail and the uncrossable breach of the valley. It was all
the same everywhere, every tree aglow.
    She cupped her hands over her face and tried to
think. She was miles from her kids. Cordie with her thumb in her mouth, Preston
with his long-lashed eyes cast down, soaking up guilt like a sponge even when
he’d done no wrong. She knew what their lives would become if something happened
to her here. On a mission of sin. Hester would rain shame on them for all time.
Or worse, what if they thought their mother had just run away and left them?
Nobody knew to look for her here. Her thoughts clotted with the vocabulary of
news reports: dental records, next of kin, sifting through the ash.
    And Jimmy. She made herself think his name: a
person, not just a destination. Jimmy, who might be up there already. And in a
single second that worry lifted from her like a flake of ash as she saw for the
first time the truth of this day. For her, the end of all previous comfort and
safety. And for him, something else entirely, a kind of game. Nothing to change
his life. We’ll strike out together , she’d told
herself, and into what, his mother’s mobile home? Somehow it had come to pass
that this man was her whole world, and she had failed to take his measure.
Neither child nor father, he knew how to climb telephone poles, and he knew how
to disappear. The minute he breathed trouble, he would slip down the back side
of the mountain and go on home. Nothing could be more certain. He had the
instincts of the young. He would be back at work before anyone knew he’d called
in sick. If she turned up in the news as charred remains, he would keep their
story quiet, to protect her family. Or so he’d tell himself. Look what she’d
nearly done. She paled at the size her foolishness had attained, how large and
crowded and devoid of any structural beams. It could be flattened like a circus
tent.
    She was on her own here, staring at glowing trees.
Fascination curled itself around her fright. This was no forest fire. She was
pressed by the quiet elation of escape and knowing better and seeing straight
through to the back of herself, in solitude. She couldn’t remember when she’d
had such room for being. This was not just another fake thing in her life’s
cheap chain of events, leading up to this day of sneaking around in someone’s
thrown-away boots. Here that ended. Unearthly beauty had appeared to her, a
vision of glory to stop her in the road. For her alone these orange boughs
lifted, these long shadows became a brightness