Smoke by Henry Hietala

Elijah woke to his grandson laughing. RJ pointed through the bars of the crib, reaching for the window beyond. There was a bird outside, a western tanager with black and yellow feathers and a burst of red on its face. RJ traded chirps with the tanager, the two of them talking in their own private code.

“Raymond James.”

RJ played deaf to his voice. Elijah checked the other side of the bed and Lacey didn’t stir. He wasn’t mad about it.

When the tanager flew away, RJ started crying. Elijah tried to quiet him; he only got louder. He held the bars of the crib and wailed, and he rolled on his back and wailed. Elijah thought about picking him up and bouncing him quiet, but his legs already hurt. He could only endure.

Lacey woke and walked over to the crib. She cradled RJ until he stopped crying. After setting him down and opening the window, she took the walker out of the closet.

“Can you leave it out next time?” Elijah asked.

“If you say so,” his wife said.

She left an hour later but not before moving the crib into the living room. She threw in a stuffed animal, a dinosaur beanie baby from when Gigi was a newborn. Elijah had no idea where they had stored it for all those years. Or maybe they had given it to Gigi and Michael, thrown it in along with the rest of the old toys, and the two of them had brought it back to the house before flying to California.

Not feeling like reading, Elijah flipped on the TV. A show played on the Food Network, the channel Lacey had been watching the previous night. An older woman rolled a ball of dough, while a younger one talked about ravioli. The chef’s long silver hair recalled Lacey’s from ten, fifteen years ago, before it went fully white. The network cut to commercial. Elijah’s phone lit up. He reached for it and knocked it to the floor. When he picked it up, the screen didn’t recognize his touch. A message flickered through the cracks, something from Lacey. Probably running late.

She came back a little before one and made a sandwich for herself, a bowl of pea mush for RJ, and a salad for Elijah. They ate in the living room with the TV off. It put him in a bad mood, his wife worrying about his diet. It wasn’t high cholesterol that had made him fall.

RJ got back to crying. Lacey pulled him out of the highchair and checked the diaper.

“Good thing it didn’t happen earlier.”

Elijah nodded.

“You’d have some trouble with it.”

“I can manage,” he said.

She changed the diaper. Elijah snagged the walker with his foot and pulled it towards him. Gripping the handles, he forced himself up.

“How are the legs?” Lacey asked.

He shrugged. “A little better. I think my phone’s messed up.”

She picked it up and blinked at the shattered screen.

“You’ll need to get a new one.”

“I’m aware.”

“I have three clients tomorrow. We can go to Verizon later in the week.”

Elijah scooted to the back door. Without Lacey’s help, he lifted the walker into the yard.

“Almost springtime,” he said, nodding at the aspen buds.

She was washing dishes. Elijah scooted around the yard. The woodpile gave off that evil scent: logs molding into each other, the knots rank and wild. He bypassed the shed and followed the game trail to the fence at the edge of their property. He searched for tanagers, found magpies. He waved his arms to make them leave but they sat on the pickets, squawking like the little devils they are.

Late the next morning, RJ cried as hard as ever. Elijah pulled him out of the crib and set him across his lap, his hands reverting to the muscle memories of thirty years ago, when he had changed Gigi’s diaper every few hours. He surprised himself with his strength: it came from an old paternal instinct and his body was fast improving. He sank into the couch, feeling a drop in his chest, the delayed rush of adrenaline. His grandson kept reaching for the crib. Elijah tried to stand; his legs cramped. He dropped back onto the couch, wincing.

His grandson lay on the cushion beside him. Day by day, the little guy looked more like him: the same brown eyes, the same tight curls, the same dark skin even though his mother was lighter. Taking him on his lap again, Elijah moved his thighs up and down, mimicking the bouncy motion Gigi and Michael did to get him giggling. RJ kept quiet, and Elijah had to stop before his legs hurt. Yet the tears didn’t return, not until Lacey came home from work.

“You said you could change it,” she said.

“I did.”

She picked up the dirty diaper on the floor and cocked her head. “You didn’t finish the job.”

The quiet descended. If Elijah wasn’t careful, he would lose himself in it.

He scooted out to the rocking chair. Lacey gave him the Gallatin Crier for company. Whenever it showed up at the end of their gravel driveway, Elijah read the whole thing, a shameful habit considering most of the articles were Associated Press reprints. If Whitney didn’t write for them, he would tell Lacey to cancel their subscription. He started her latest piece about the plague of pine beetles. For two years, the Forest Service had been tracking this new species, which killed trees at an astonishing pace and was expanding its range. For now, Whitney explained, the infestation had already spread from the Beartooths and Absarokas to the Bridgers. Elijah looked at the lodgepole pines in the yard, the needles the color of brick. He would show them to Whitney in a couple days, when she and Ashley came over for dinner.

__

In the study, they logged on to the computer for the nightly video-call. Lacey held RJ up to the screen; Gigi and Michael waved and cooed from their San Diego hotel room, their babytalk lost in the bad internet. Lacey promised to send a fresh batch of pictures. She gushed over the little guy and how low-maintenance he had been. At that moment, Elijah looked at the keyboard. Gigi and Michael told them about sea kayaking and the delicious Mexican food in Old Town. They didn’t ask Elijah how he was doing. Part of him was glad, so his daughter wouldn’t worry. Another part of him felt slighted.

Lacey picked up RJ’s hand and waved it. His parents waved back. Elijah opened his mouth for the first time and said goodbye. Gigi gave him a look, half-pitying and half-pleading, like she was searching for a past version of her father, a friendlier and more social version, the man who had raised her. Elijah turned away from the computer. Gigi didn’t mean it: she was merely staring at a screen in another time zone.

It happened last month, on Lacey’s birthday. She had chosen Blackbird Kitchen, a place Elijah liked well enough. They were seated at the front of the restaurant by the sprawling glass windows. Maybe it was the occasion, but she didn’t insist on splitting a salad or give him the look when he ate a second piece of focaccia. Between sips of wine, Lacey dished out some mild gossip: Lydia and her husband were fighting again, Whitney and Ashley were debating a move west of town. The warm spring had done wonders on her mood. Lacey was already going on hikes, enjoying the fruits of the early thaw, and Elijah would join in this weekend. He ate his pasta slowly. He had a few sips of Lacey’s wine. As the meal went on, Elijah found himself talking more than usual, as if he was just another member of the Gallatin public. Yes, the eyes were on him, but in a more passive way than usual. He caught a man staring and the man looked away. He couldn’t help but feel grateful.

After the waitress dropped off the check, Elijah stood up.

“Too much water,” he said, nodding at the skinny pitcher.

“Are you sure it’s not your prostate?” Lacey said.

Laughing, he pushed in his chair and started walking. Eyes settled on him, but they didn’t matter. The shadows in the glass, the dark brown of the floor, the char of the pizza oven: the place was perfect. They had recovered something, in this dimly lit restaurant. In a minute he would tell her.

Craning his neck, he looked back. At the front windows, the waitress tugged the drapes together, snuffing the last of the sunlight. Lacey examined the check.

Elijah fell. The chatter ceased; the restaurant drew a breath. He lay at the start of the narrow hallway, his legs stretched in front of him. The silence expanded, deepened. A fork clattered to the floor. The pain hadn’t come yet. But the eyes were everywhere, Lacey’s among them.

The next day, Elijah went out to the rocking chair. He started one of the history books Lacey had picked out for him at the library: The Autobiography of Nat Love. He read the first couple chapters, relishing the style of this cocky Black cowboy from Texas. All the while, Lacey worked by the shed. The rhythm of her hammer soothed him, the scent of sawdust pulling him back to better times, when Elijah would help her line up chair legs and fetch laminate, playing the apprentice to his carpenter wife. That was how they filled the hours after Gigi left for college, and they traded Denver for Lacey’s hometown. Now, when he peered over his book and caught her eye, she let him change a drill bit. It made him feel a little more than useless.

Lacey went inside the house and came back with a bottle of breast milk.

“I got it,” he said.

She handed him the bottle. In the crib, RJ made faces at the dinosaur beanie baby. The noise-canceling headphones had slipped off his ears; Lacey put them back on.

“When are we going to Verizon?” he asked.

Lacey checked her watch, “Let’s do tomorrow afternoon.”

“Can’t we go in the morning?”

She shook her head. “I’ve got a new client. And Elaine and I are hiking Drinking Horse.”

“I shouldn’t be here without a working phone.”

“It’s only a few hours.”

“What if something happens with RJ?”

“You can FaceTime me on the computer.”

Elijah went quiet.

“You changed his diaper,” she said. “You can handle it, E.”

He beckoned RJ to the bars of the crib and brought the milk bottle to the baby’s lips.

“This is strange,” he said.

“It’s healthier than formula.”

“I don’t know.” He paused. “It makes me uncomfortable.”

Lacey dropped the sandpaper. “Gigi had to pump until her nipples bled. That’s uncomfortable.”

Elijah returned to his book, reading about Nat Love entering a rodeo in the Dakota Territory. Her footsteps faded; he tuned out the hammering. He switched to the Crier and read Whitney’s latest piece in the Big Sky Regional Section: the beetles had been detected in the Gallatin Range, and the Forest Service couldn’t explain the accelerated deaths of infected trees. The plague was spreading to the west, the beetles turning ten thousand acres of forest into a desert of stripped bark and stunted buds. And in their wake, wildfires were breaking out in Paradise Valley, the dead wood serving as tinder for thunderstorms, the banks of the Yellowstone burning. Whitney’s headline: “Spring No More.” Elijah watched his wife line up a piece of plywood, hoping, as he did every August, that their section of the Gallatin Range would be spared. Except it was May.

Elijah watched the cooking show. There was a different middle-aged woman rolling a different form of pasta, which disappointed him. It was after three and, still, Lacey hadn’t returned. Verizon wasn’t happening. She was taking on more clients, grocery shopping for Whitney and Ashley, hiking another trail. She had forgotten the males in her life.

RJ slept on the couch beside him. Elijah touched his hair; he didn’t stir. The crib was right there, and Elijah was feeling strong enough, but RJ looked so peaceful. He made sure the milk bottle was full, then pushed the dirty diaper away with his foot. It wasn’t going anywhere, not until she came home.

More time passed. Elijah eased himself to his feet, grabbed the walker, and shuffled over to the back door. He looked across the yard, watching the magpies fly between the branches and pickets, their movements slow and lazy. The Crier had predicted clear skies all week and so far they were right, aside from the smoke. The air reeked of it. Elijah licked his thumb and sure enough, the wind blew east to west. Other than the woodchipper blaring from the Berdahls’ place, there were no signs of other people on Grizzly Mountain Road.

He squeezed through the doorway and made his way to the trees by the game trail. Examining the trunk of a lodgepole, he pictured the beetles crawling over the wood, drilling through the bark, and eating the pine tree to a premature death. Elijah plucked off a needle and saw no sign of them. As if he could tell by sight.

He turned the walker around. His leg caught on a root. He fell, and the ground reeled him in. Elijah lay still. Magpies chirped overhead, mocking him. After a moment, he rolled onto his side and spit needles and dirt. He could smell the smoke, so strong it made him dizzy. Inside the house, RJ was crying. Elijah flipped a coin in his head—bottle or diaper? He grabbed the legs of the walker and dragged himself to his feet. His right calf seized up. He caught himself on the walker; he scooted slowly to the back door. He gritted his teeth, fighting the pain until it sprang up in his lower back, hard pinches beneath his skin, and he reached the doorway, seeing RJ on the couch, his legs flailing in the air like the limbs of a helpless insect. He leaned against the walker and grunted through the doorway.

After feeding RJ some milk, he took stock. There was a gash on his arm, but he didn’t see any blood. RJ gasped at the ceiling; Elijah rolled his sleeve down. He was lucky as hell.

Lacey came home an hour later. She brought in a load of groceries, chatting on the phone as she organized them in the kitchen. Elijah picked up his broken phone, the screen cracked and dark. RJ grinned up at him. At least he had the little one on his side.

Lacey came over to check on RJ. Making sure his sleeve was concealing the gash, Elijah waved his phone at her.

“Sorry, the staff meeting ran long,” she said.

“I do need that phone, Lacey.”

She glanced at the open door. “Did you go outside?”

“Just for a minute.”

“Sounds like you’re moving well.” She took the broken phone from his hand. “We’ll do it first thing in the morning.”

Elijah looked away. Her office was on Mendenhall—couldn’t she have gone without him? She knew he didn’t like going to town and avoided errands whenever possible. He dreaded the eyes, the overfriendliness, the people who couldn’t help but notice the only Black person they would see that day. Sure, he would be with Lacey, but that wouldn’t stop them. It was how things were in Gallatin.

Lacey put RJ back in the crib. Then she threw away the dirty diaper, shaking her head as she did it. Elijah turned on the news. They watched a segment about the fires in Park County.

“I think we have the beetles,” he said, pointing at the back door.

“Are you sure they’ve spread this far?”

He crossed his arms. The gash had bled through the sleeve, but she hadn’t noticed.

Ashley had caught a cold, so only Whitney came over for dinner. Lacey served bowls of stir fry with broccoli and tofu. Whitney talked about the financial problems at the Crier, the proposal to only publish the paper five days a week.

“I guess that’s why they don’t call it the Daily Crier anymore,” she said.

Elijah fingernailed a grain of rice from his teeth. Lacey spooned RJ some yellow mush, the little guy enjoying the baby food even though the only thing that had changed was the color.

“Do you have him for the day?” Whitney asked.

“Gigi and Michael are in California this week,” Lacey said. “I send pictures every night. It’s the longest she’s been away from RJ.”

“It’s for Michael’s work,” Elijah said.

“Yeah, but they’re treating it like a vacation.” Lacey laughed. “They needed a break.”

She gushed over RJ, how he was way easier than Gigi had been at that age. As if she was the one stuck with him. Elijah kept his distance conversation-wise. Whitney was good company, one of the only people in Gallatin he genuinely liked, but he didn’t want to snap at his wife.

She picked up RJ from the highchair and handed him to Whitney. Elijah rolled up his sleeves and itched his arms, sick of the smoke and sick of his grandson: the child who commanded so much attention.

“How are you holding up, Eli?” Whitney asked, passing RJ back.

He finished chewing. “I’m on the mend.”

“Lacey mentioned the fall. I’m glad you’re okay.”

“I’ll be done with this thing soon.” He patted the walker, almost smiling. “I appreciate you.”

Whitney smiled at him. Elijah looked out the open window. There were no birds in the yard, at least none he could see.

He started coughing.

“You okay?” Whitney asked.

“The smoke gets to him.” Lacey put RJ back in the highchair.

“You could’ve closed the windows,” Elijah said.

She got up and shut one. Elijah could still hear a breeze somewhere in the house.

Lacey returned to the table. “Where’s the smoke coming from?”

“There’s a fire on the other side of Palisade Falls,” Whitney said. “More beetle-burn.”

“Whole state’s burning,” Elijah said.

“It really seems like it.”

“But we’ll be okay, right?” Lacey said.

Whitney nodded. “This one’s pretty small so far. And the wind’s supposed to shift tonight, so I doubt you’ll have to evacuate.”

Elijah pointed at the yard. “I think we have the beetles.”

“They’re definitely out there,” Whitney said. 

“What do they look like?”

“No one really knows. They’re hard to study with the fires.”

Lacey glared at him. Elijah rolled his sleeve over the gash.

“Don’t get me wrong, a little fire is fine. The lodgepoles need it to unseal their cones. You can see it in the Park, all the young trees shooting up.” Whitney took a sip of water. “But the beetles are different. They just kill.”

Looking at the yard, Elijah thought about the beetles. Did the fire kill them? Or did it multiply them in the manner of the lodgepoles, fertilizing their eggs in nests of sap? He thought about asking Whitney, but the conversation had moved on. He rested an arm on the highchair. RJ reached over and touched him on the sleeve. Elijah pulled his arm away.

That night, he had the queen bed to himself. He tried to move to the middle, but it didn’t feel right, taking up every inch of space. He could hear Lacey putting sheets on the couch, and RJ chirping in the crib. He couldn’t see either of them. After failing to read Nat Love, Elijah turned off the lamp. Lacey rose from the couch.

“Leave it open,” he said.

She loomed in the doorway.

“The doors, not the windows.”

“Are you sure?” She stepped inside and repositioned the walker. “You’ll sleep better with it closed.”

“Yeah.”

She left the bedroom. The silence thickened, curdled. Elijah let out a cough and Lacey didn’t respond. He coughed again and again, exaggerating until he fell into a fit, his ribs pinching his chest. RJ joined in, his coughs faint and quick. Still, Lacey didn’t rise. He wanted her to shut every window in the house. He wanted her to rock RJ quiet, then come into the bedroom and pat him on the head and sleep at his side. He wanted her help without having to ask for it.

He stopped coughing, and RJ did too. In their separate rooms and bodies, they listened to her snores. And then they joined in.

__

In the morning, following a half hour alone in bed, Elijah stood up. He leaned hard on the walker, his legs burning as he maneuvered through the doorway. There was no sign of Lacey, just RJ holding the bars of the crib, his eyes flitting and wide. She had left breakfast in the form of a salad with candied walnuts and feta cheese. He only ate half.

“How are the legs?” Lacey asked, coming in from the yard.

“Better.”

She walked over to the couch, patting RJ’s head on the way.

“You go out for some fresh air?” he asked.

She picked up the broken phone and showed it to him.

“I’m going to Verizon,” she said.

“Good.” He got up and leaned over the walker. “When are we leaving?”

“Sorry, E. I’m meeting Lydia for lunch.”

“I’ve been stuck here all week.”

“I know, but she’s having marriage trouble.”

“First I’ve heard of it.”

“You barely know her.” Lacey picked up her purse. “I’ll be back before one.”

“I’m sure you will.”

Lacey gave him a hard look. “It’s not like you were getting out much before.”

He paused. “You know it's hard for me.”

Lacey didn’t reply. From her tight grip on her purse, he knew there was no use in arguing further.

“But you’re taking RJ, right?” he said.

Lacey shook her head. “We don’t have a car seat. Gigi forgot to drop it off, remember?”

He looked down at the metal grid of the walker. Then he scooted over to the couch and sat down. Lacey moved the crib in close.

“Sorry, E. I’ll be quick.”

He stopped himself from nodding.

“Don’t go outside. I’ll take you out later.”

“No chance with the smoke.”

“I’m serious. You’ll fall again.”

“You wouldn’t mind that.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

That you don’t want me around, that you would rather be alone. He didn’t say it, but Lacey knew what he meant. She walked out to the garage. She had taken care of him for the past four weeks, fixed him meals and picked up his pain meds and helped him outside. But it didn’t matter: Elijah felt neglected. She was paying less attention than ever.

The garage door clattered shut, and the car engine faded up Grizzly Mountain Road. Elijah itched his eyes. He blamed the smoke, not the fact that he had come right up against crying.

In the early afternoon, Elijah tried to read Nat Love. He couldn’t focus: it took him three passes to finish a passage about rounding up steers by a river. The TV beckoned. He turned it on and clicked away from the news, the same updates on fires and beetles, and put on the cooking show. The silver-haired woman was back, but it was the same episode, a rerun. Everything was recurring: the TV, the smoke, Lacey leaving, no phone. He couldn’t shake himself out of the loop.

RJ started coughing. It was a funny sound, like a motor in a soundproof room. Elijah stifled his own, then craned his neck and saw the back door open. Shit, Lacey, he thought. He rose from the couch and scooted over. Smoke hovered over the yard. For a second it seemed to let up, before the next wave rolled in. The wind carried it through the trees, threading the trunks and branches, fuming upwards, drawing menacing shapes in the air.

“Shit, Lacey,” he said, out loud this time. He locked the door, as if the latch would keep it out. He returned to the couch and, catching his breath, listened to RJ’s lung movement, anticipating the next cough. There was another sound: vibrations from the dining room. Elijah stood up and scooted over. His phone buzzed on the table, a message pulsing through the cracks. He touched the screen, and nothing happened. “Shit, Lacey,” he whispered. He couldn’t see the whole message, but he could see most of the word “evacuate.”

He headed into the study. After logging on to the computer, he clicked on the camera icon and called Lacey. The computer rang and rang, and she didn’t pick up. He hung up and clicked on Gigi’s name. The ring repeated three, four times before she answered. He told her what had happened, how his phone was broken, and the fire was approaching and Lacey needed to come back. Gigi told him to stay by the computer while she called.

“I gotta be with RJ,” he said.

He scooted out of the study. Gigi yelled after him, her words lost in the smoke. Elijah headed towards the cries, through the air so thick he could feel it on his skin. He slipped and fell. RJ went quiet. There was a knocking sound, blinds against glass. It went on and on, until RJ started wailing. Elijah tried to crawl in his direction, but he couldn’t move. He reached back and pulled his legs forward and his arm muscles seized. Pain poured out of him; he crawled right through it. He got up close to the crib and saw the dinosaur beanie baby. Otherwise, there were pillows and bars, no RJ.

He swiveled his neck around. RJ coughed. Elijah pushed forward, swimming through the smoke. He grabbed the couch, screamed, and pulled himself up. RJ appeared. He flapped his arms and legs, floating on the smoke. Elijah pulled him down onto his lap. RJ kept crying. He picked up the milk bottle from the floor and fed it to his grandson. RJ eagerly drank. Lacey had refilled it; she had neglected so many things but remembered this. It was Elijah who burdened her, who had forgotten to cut her a break. She had done so much. Now, as the smoke closed in, he didn’t dwell on his suspicion that in the end she had failed. He watched her change RJ’s diaper. He heard his grandson laugh. He watched her hammering by the woodshed. He heard sirens in the distance. He watched her take RJ in her arms and then come back for him not because he was less important, but because RJ was the next version of him. He felt her arms around him and her breaths on his neck, the rhythm signaling what she was about to say. He tried to tell her she didn’t have to say it, it wasn’t necessary after all the years they had shared, but the smoke blew everything away.

Henry Hietala grew up in Montana. He received his MFA in fiction from the University of Michigan, and has published work in Salt Hill, Stonecoast Review, Rain Taxi, and Cleveland Review of Books.

Published October 15 2025