Payday Weather

By Matthew Claxton

We wound our way up the curving canyon roads in overloaded pickups and hatchbacks, corners taken too fast, sagging bumpers kissing asphalt, engines redlining from effort and heat. Our procession passed an exodus going the other way -- sleek luxury EVs and fat-tired cargo haulers -- heading for safety, away from the hills and the scrub and the smell of smoke on the wind. We were happy, arms hanging out of windows, slapping time to the songs on the speakers. From behind the wrought-iron gates of a mansion, a sleek couple looked up from overseeing their packing and stared.

“Could fucking smile,” Kerry said. “We’re here to save their shit.”

I leaned out the window of Kerry’s ancient Nissan and took in a lungful of dry air. There was the familiar SoCal hydrocarbon and ozone reek, but underneath that was the taste of dust scoured from high mountain passes, of charred pine and scorched chaparral.

The Santa Ana winds were dancing out of the desert.