Red

S ? ?/ / RED by Steve Inskeep The western sky baked red for three days. At first the glow colored die streaked brown clouds, and the four hikers called it die finest sunset they had ever seen. But after the sun vanished, die skyhne still burned. The light cast the western hillsides in a deep red hue pockmarked with shadows. The eastern slopes seemed black holes by contrast. As they watched the glow, the hikers built a fire on top of a high ridge. The wilderness trail widened at tiieir stopping spot, giving a view of the red blobs that defined the Appalachian landscape. The four were college students, and thus full of superstition. They treated die subject of the distant glow gingerly, afraid of its implications. A short thin 48 man, the oldest of the group at twentyfive , hunched in his brown jacket and spoke placidly as he lit a cigarette. "Might as well just cook some hot dawgs, and stay calm," he drawled, his voice deep, gritty, and reassuring. He casuaUy ran his fingers through his thick blond hair. Like all the others, he sat facing the distant light. It terrified him. "I'm not hungry," replied a blackhaired woman absently. She wrapped a blanket around herself. Only her head poked out, facing west. "Now, everybody needs to eat," the diin man said. He felt responsible for his younger friends, who had grown up in the suburbs and did not know the woods as he did. They did treat him as a grizzled patriarch sometimes. Perhaps tins was only to improve their jokes about him becoming the first undergraduate student ever to be granted tenure , but they instinctively listened to his advice. "It was a long hike today, and we got to keep making time tomorrow." The strong one listened with his knees puUed up under his chin. After a moment he began fishing about in the backpack on the ground in front of him. He found a package of hot dogs, dropped it near the fire, and forgot about it. He seemed to shrink into a tense ball, anxiously watching the light. The fourth inker was a sharp-eyed woman wearing a pair of jeans and denim jacket. She seemed more curious than afraid, and less fixed on the redness . But as she spoke, her blonde hair picked up the reddish tint of the distant glow and made her appear vaguely unfamiliar to the rest. "Look at the moon," she said. The moon rose gigantic and red, like a second sun, a fireball, its image distorted , stretched into an egg shape. They watched in silence as it climbed, slowly assuming its normal shape but not its familiar color. The black-haired girl stood, stretched her thin legs. She felt die heat of die campfire on her back and sniffed the smoke, a thick sweet odor. She knew it would be days after the hike before me smell would finaUy wash out of her clothes or her hair. She was looking forward to smelling it. Her mind drifted to her home, many miles to the west, and she thought of lying warm and clean in her soft bed, with strands of hair drifting across her face, and she would smell the aroma of woodsmoke and she would remember this moment standing on a high hill looking off to the west, and she would probably be happier recalling it tiian doing it. Then she thought of the distant glow, and wondered if she still had a home. "If we had a radio, the news would tell us what happened," she said. "I bet it's a forest fire," the sharp-eyed girl suggested. The thin man had fought forest fires before, but he had never seen one so big or such a color, especiaUy in such a wet season. "You know," he said, "you might be right. A forest fire is probably just what that is." The strong one nodded, said nothing, seemed tight, preoccupied, lock-jawed. His gaze never left the light. In the morning the glow remained, balancing the sun rising on the opposite side of the mountains. The sunlight did not reveal the massive towers of smoke that...