My wife comes home with a plastic pumpkin, and we name him Freaky Pete. His gash of a mouth, jagged teeth, is half open in an eternal scream like he’s seen our future and even he’s afraid for us. 

My wife puts him on the front porch on the side railing but facing in so we see his ugly mug every time we open the front door. On Halloween, the kids pat his head and laugh when we say his name is Freaky Pete. Freaky Pete, a young one repeats, giggling as he accepts his full-size candy bar.

In December, Pete collects the flakes of a light snow, his plastic body growing brittle in the early winter air. I perch on the top step, almost eye level with Pete, relishing the moisture, knowing I should check the rain barrels, ensure the flurry is at least landing in the spouts. Snow melt is as good as drinking water, my wife always says when the first flakes come down. 

Freaky Pete’s open mouth catches a few flakes, and they stay for a moment, before melting as if they’d never been there. 

“You’re going to catch a cold,” my wife says from the front door.

“That’s a myth,” I tell her. “Like storing batteries in the freezer makes them last longer. People believe it because it’s been repeated. Like thinking you can kill someone if you drop a penny from the Empire State Building.” 

Behind Pete, our street darkens. Maybe the snow is sticking. Maybe the rain barrels will fill this winter. Maybe I won’t spend the summer months kicking my go-bag out of the way every time I walk into the kitchen.

The door creaks behind me as she steps all the way out. “That isn’t a myth, is it?” 

“Which one?”

“You can kill someone if you throw a penny from the Empire State Building.”

“You can’t,” I say, like it’s so important. Like I need my wife to understand that just because we learn something, it doesn’t mean it’s true. Like the sanctions are going to save us. Like I can personally save the world by taking shorter showers. “A penny reaches terminal velocity before it’s barely left your hand,” I tell her. “Even if you fling it off with all your might, you won’t kill someone.” 

Freaky Pete’s ugly mouth mocks me, his insane grimace. I should take him down, put him away until next Halloween. If there is a next Halloween. 

A penny can’t kill you, but I could, Freaky Pete seems to say. I hate his bastard face, but I can’t put him away, can’t acknowledge we’ve survived another summer of fires.  My wife moves closer, sitting on the step next to me. Her arm feels warm against mine. She presses her head against my shoulder for a moment. 

“Is it true forest fires burn all year, even in snow,” she asks. 

I don’t want to tell her the truth, that we’re not safe, not now during these early snows of November, and not later under February’s deep freeze. “It’s called overwintering,” I tell her. “Or zombie fires.” I don’t tell her all the details, that Canada has more zombie fires than ever, that even at minus forty, fires still burn under the ground, that sometimes, if you look out in the mountains, you can see plumes and that sometimes when I talk about the cloud cover and the fog, I’m really trying to decide if it’s an encroaching storm or the tiny offspring of the fire that took half our town two years ago, if it’s still alive, if somehow the McCreedy’s farm, and all those horses, and the Tucker kids, if they’re all in there somewhere, buried with the flames, screaming eternally as the snowpack covers them, extinguishing their cries but not their pain. 

“Overwintering,” she says and she slips her hand in mine. 

“We’re safe, though,” I tell her, though I don’t add that it’s because all the trees around our house are dead, that there is not much left to burn. 

“We’re safe,” she repeats.

“Of course,” I say. But I look at Freaky Pete, not her, and Pete, man, he just stares back at me, mouth agape, like he’s just daring us to survive until next Halloween.