The Early Symptoms, and: The California Lottery, and: Weather in California, and: The Fire Road, and: After Rain Nicholas Yingling (bio) The Early Symptoms Storm and understory. How a body learnsbetween the thin years and wet seasonto take the burning ring in, to keep growing.(Some change in light may be necessary.)These are febrile days. The world and I offby a couple degrees. Today we brokecharcoal from coprolite, anthrax from rein-deer in the permafrost and on the driveto the coast I could barely grip the wheel,that after-hours feeling in my handslike a network signing off or snow fallingin abandoned malls. (What use is weather-stripping when you live in a golden state?)Unlace these for me. The drift glass is softunder our feet, in our blood. The wavesbreak, and no matter how hard you hold methe sea will never repeat itself. [End Page 103] The California Lottery Saddleridge Fire, 2019 Lights in the smokefall. Palms in the middledistance like cables on a suspension bridge in some foggy city hopelessly north. (Rememberwhen stability was disaster’s only measure?) Shadows pass with white cotton mouths,jogging, walking their dogs, how they might have appeared to the first eyes—simple as sundials—sculling across the grayscale: the unself approaches. Only later did we learn to dismiss the worldwith details. A mole with a hair, a twitch that calms when the muscle’s in use, milesof pavement between you and wildfire. A single ember can drift on the Santa Anas.A single cell can double itself. And will. Chance falls upon a neighbor’s roof or curveslike a lens and you learn to live within the numbers, to breathe through your teeth and follow the brakelights when the doctor’s office calls. It’s funny, how they ask if you’ll be available.Out of habit, you check your mirrors. [End Page 104] Weather in California Tubbs Fire, 2017 I. Midmorning sunset. Something I hardly notice,like day-for-night in an old film. A simple trick of exposure. On the phone we talk Sonomaand LA, the highway between they’re shutting down, and the retired couple who for six hours embracedyesterday, rising and falling in the deep end of their pool. How a moment can close around youlike wildfire, like water. It’s a kind of romance, imagining the ash sinking over their bodies,settling slowly to the bottom like glitter in a snow globe. Do you remember snow? Real snow?When I try, it’s always the sugar and foamite of the movies, the poppy fields of Oz dustedwith a sleepy asbestos. That was the winter of ’38, when our seasons were made to lastunder any light. II. At the Huntington, maybe, yes,that gaudy mission, flat and ornate,a bit beaux arts-meets-Spanish-colonial, we were wandering among the colonnadesand crown molding,finding Bukowski, looking for Blake, [End Page 105] when we saw her,Miss Sarah Barrett poised against the storm,the long ties of her bonnet free and the gray sky opening blackas if to swallow it. (That’s the sun now:pink as her bonnet.) A Lawrence painting they’d paired with The Blue Boy,two would-be loverschosen for color and century. It tracks. The cool tones of his figureand her so full of blood,her last defense against the cold. At dusk we walked the grounds, the hedgerows,the fields of cystic cacti,and in the Japanese gardens we watched from the moon bridgeas a bride and groomgripped each other and ran from the falling rice. III. There’s a beat herewhere the scene should end. Instead it drags on.I gut alarms. You walk me through your day.Between our long-distance sips of coffeewe repeat, Six hours, and, I know, I know.Meaning the drive south. Meaning two bodiessuspended: In 30,000 acresof fire, the tagline will read, love triednot to drown. [End Page 106] It’s closer to 36,I say, and we lose the plot in...