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year, already on the first of July, the farmers who fed cattle were talking about selling them off—the corn crop could fail entirely. But it never had. In 1953, the year Joe took over the farm after his father died, he got fifty-six bushels an acre and was thrilled; three years ago, he and Jesse were quietly proud of 126 bushels an acre—they’d have settled for 110. Walter would have shaken his head in suspicious disbelief: not going to get ten cents a bushel for that, he’d have said. And Rosanna would’ve said he was spoiled rotten. Joe stretched his left shoulder, pressed the spot that always hurt with his right thumb, and vowed not to throw Rocky’s tennis ball today, even though Rocky brought it to him and dropped it at his feet. Joe kicked it; it rolled away. Rocky glanced at him in disbelief, then ran after it. Snickers was lost in the dusty corn, hunting rats for sport.
    Joe picked up the little shovel beside the pen and went in—one mess in the back corner, which he scooped up and tossed out into the weeds (nutrients in dog shit, too). Then he filled the water bowls. Lois had put her foot down about no dogs in the house at night, and no dogs on the new couch, and no dogs alone in the kitchen since last summer, when she happened to come in from the garden and see Snickers, his paws on the edge of the counter and the cooling carrot cake between his jaws. He called the dogs and went inside, pausing to turn the face of the thermometer that was hanging there to the wall. Maybe that was Joe’s fallback—the less you think about it, the better.
    —
    WHEN RILEY GOT UP to go to the bathroom, she tried to be quiet—if she wanted to get back to sleep, she had to think some blank thought like “blah blah blah” so as to not worry about anything—but she’d made the mistake of looking out the bathroom window, and she saw lightning off to the west. She stood there staring at the brilliant, silent forks that looked like the nervous systems of giants stalking over the peaks. She could hear no thunder, though, since the storm was far away. That was it for sleep. She went into the living room of their one-bedroom; outside the front window, which looked over the town, everything was calm—only occasional brightening reflections of the drama to the west. She sat in a chair in her T-shirt, waiting forthe apocalypse. She thought it wouldn’t take long—it was already happening in Yellowstone, where hundreds of thousands of acres had burned and the Forest Service was not even close to containing it.
    All of this Charlie gathered when he got up, admittedly after nine-thirty, to find Riley sitting over her third cup of coffee. Charlie was a heavy sleeper. His hours at the outfitter’s were cut back because of the failure of the tourist season, and no one was rafting because the rivers were so low, but he and Riley had savings from the previous two years, so he was a little lazy lately. The TV was on, and so was the radio. Riley needed to know about any wildfires off to the west. As soon as Charlie said, “Why would there be—” she threw back her head and rolled her eyes about the Forest Service. Charlie had the expert opinion to back him up. The Forest Service had blown it for years, suppressing every fire, by law, by 10:00 a.m. the day after it started. But they’d changed that policy. Now that the Forest Service allowed naturally set fires to burn themselves out, the undergrowth was being cleaned up instead of being allowed to accumulate around the bases of the lodgepole pines, 250-year-old lodgepole pines at the end of their natural life cycle, acting as tinder for the next lightning strike. It was not certain, but why not hope for the best? It was entirely possible, with controlled burns, that the problems would be eased, here in Colorado and elsewhere, without a second Yellowstone taking place. And the pines could be carefully thinned. Yellowstone was a lesson, deserved, but also well learned—
    Riley jumped