On the Divinity of Second Chances by Kaya McLaren Page B

I do my best to replace them with disjointed lines of poetry, building blocks for a new poem to be written later.
    From the top of “The Hill That Never Ends,” I see a campfire below. I don’t recall ever seeing a camp there before. I walk down a ridge in the general direction of the camp and find a somewhat clean-cut guy sitting on a log just staring at the fire. I’m worried about his fire, so although I normally don’t talk to anyone but Jade, I decide to make another exception.
    “Hey,” I say, a little startled to hear my own voice after so many months. I wasn’t half as startled as this guy, though. He jumped, and then tried to pretend he hadn’t. “Got a water bucket?” I ask. With a puzzled expression, he shakes his head. “It’s dry. Your fire may have already ignited roots in the ground. The fire travels along these roots and springs up all over the place. Root fires are almost impossible to fight. Do you have a shovel?” He shakes his head. His eyes are fearful. I take a minute and consider how I look. I reach up and touch a long lock of dreaded hair. Yeah, I bet I’m quite a sight. “From now on, use a camp stove so you don’t burn down my home and the home of everything else that lives out here.” He nods timidly.
    I take a moment and survey his camp. A little truck is parked below on the other side of a stream that is nothing but mud now. A minefield of toilet paper wads littered the flood-plain. Gross. He’s been chopping at a large log, not even sawing first. What a moron, chopping at a big log instead of just collecting the right-sized pieces. He has five gallons of store-bought water in a wheelbarrow that’s stuck in the mud stream. A little tent sits right next to the mud stream where all the mosquitoes hatch out. He hasn’t put his food up in a tree. It’s clear he has been eating food too close to his tent. Even though he really should be selected out, I don’t wish a bear attack on anyone, so I say, “Never eat by your tent. Never have food anywhere close to your tent. Get a rope, and hang all your food from a branch at night. Toothpaste, too. If you keep eating near your tent, you’re going to wake up one night with a bear on top of you.” His eyes widen with alarm.
    “Are you living here?” I ask.
    He nods. “I’m saving for a house. I’m Matt,” he says and holds out his hand. I ignore it and choose not to introduce myself.
    “Do you go to town every day?”
    He nods again. “I have a job.”
    “Where do you shower?” I ask. I’m always looking for good shower spots so I can be presentable before I see Jade. My last annual shower coated Jade’s tub with a film Comet couldn’t remove.
    “I just run through the sprinklers of that alfalfa field down the road. Feels extra good after waking up in a hot tent. Once the sun hits it, whew, it’s a sauna.”
    If he was smart, he’d ditch the tent and sleep up on that hill over there. Good breezes up there. The breezes would help keep the mosquitoes away. Slap, slap, slap. He keeps slapping at mosquitoes. I can smell him from here. I don’t know if it’s deodorant or cologne or what, but it burns my nose, and I have no doubt that it’s attracting the mosquitoes.
    I start to walk away. “Where do you live?” he calls after me. It’s none of his business, so I just keep walking.

Jade on Checking In
(June 10)
    I drive to the parents’ house with another load of Olive’s stuff. Aretha runs to the backyard while I walk up the stairs and set the boxes in the guest room. Then I go downstairs and look for Mom. I don’t find her, so I slip out the front door and walk around the house. I find her sitting on a bench under a blossoming cherry tree. Aretha sits upright on the bench beside her. Both Mom and Aretha watch as I approach and sit on the other side of Aretha.
    “Are you doing okay, Mom?”
    “Oh, you know, lots of changes.”
    “What’s with sleeping in a lawn chair?”
    “Just feels good to be outside is