The Name I Set on Fire

The bus station smelled like diesel and wet wool. The ticket machine screen was flashing a jagged error code. It had been broken for three days.

My knuckle throbbed. I’d broken the skin on my brother’s jaw an hour ago. Now I just stood in the damp cold. One bag at my feet. The scrolling news ticker above the platform read: UNSKILLED MIGRATION ADVISORY: 78% RETURN RATE.

I ignored it. My application for the management track had been denied. “Lacks corporate alignment,” the email said. My brother had framed his acceptance letter.

“First time heading north?”

A woman in a station uniform was watching me. She wasn’t being kind. She was assessing the luggage space.

I nodded.

“You’re holding your breath,” she said. She tossed a small packet of salt tablets onto my bag. “For the cramping. The dehydration up there hits you before you notice. Your file says you were a poet.”

“Was.”

“What are you now?”

I watched the bus pull in. The exhaust coughed black smoke into the grey air. “A problem.”

Seventeen hours. The bus suspension was dead, so the road just hammered my back the whole way. I couldn’t sleep. The kid next to me was mumbling data codes in a dream, and the guy across the aisle wouldn’t stop messing with his knife. He had a whetstone. Shhhk. Shhhk. He just sat there sharpening it for four hundred miles. He didn’t look dangerous. He just looked bored. Still, the noise scraped my nerves raw.

We hit The Mill just before sunset. The air was thick with woodsmoke. Dust from the lumber yards got into everything. It settled in hair, grit between teeth, lined the creases of our palms. Everything tasted like pine resin and diesel.

The knife-man got off first. He spat on the gravel and walked toward the hiring office.

The Mill took me.

The routine was a blunt instrument. Feed. Cut. Stack. Breathe dust. My body rebelled. I was soft from years of office climate control. Muscles screamed. Lungs burned. At night, lying in the single-wide trailer, I pressed my bruised knuckles against the cold aluminium wall. I remembered the give of my brother’s jaw.

I had traded a cage of glass for a cage of wood. This one had no lock. I stayed because leaving meant admitting he was right.

Time lost its shape. I measured weeks in splinters. I forgot the smell of clean rain. I learned to read the grain of the timber like a language I should have always known.

Then the log pile shifted. It was a stupid mistake. Gravity took over, and my arm went with it.

Shard was the medic on duty. She smelled like bleach and stale coffee. She didn’t look at my face. She only looked at the swelling in my forearm.

“Company policy says no lidocaine for non-critical fractures,” she said. Her voice was flat. She wasn’t explaining. She was quoting.

She grabbed my wrist with one hand and my elbow with the other. “Look at the wall.”

“Wait—”

She pulled.

The sound was wet and loud. Like a tree branch snapping inside a pillow. The scream got stuck in my throat. It tasted like bile. The room tilted. When the world came back into focus, she was already washing her hands in the rusted sink.

“Two weeks light duty. Then back on the line,” she said. She dried her hands on her pants. “Don’t put it in the gears next time. We’re running low on splints.”

I sat there gasping. I clutched the plastic brace. She didn’t offer a lesson on pain. She didn’t offer sympathy. She just kicked the door stop open for the next patient.

That was the lesson. The Mill didn’t care if I hurt. It only cared if I worked.

The call came two days later. My brother’s face on the communal phone screen. He looked thinner.

“The business is failing,” he said. No greeting. “Father’s health is gone. We need you back.”

He used my childhood name. The one our mother gave me. A hook baited with guilt. “You can’t run from everything.”

I looked around the mess hall. The man with the knife was eating stew in the corner, staring at the wall. The air smelled of boiled cabbage and unwashed bodies. My own hands were rough, cracked. The fingernails black with oil.

My mouth was dry. I could give him the lie he wanted. The “I’ll think about it” that would let him hang up with dignity.

I didn’t lie.

“The person you’re calling doesn’t live here,” I said.

“Then who are you?” His voice tightened. It wasn’t fear. It was annoyance. He just wanted the staffing problem fixed.

I hung up. The connection died with a hollow click.

I went out to the burn barrel behind the trailers that night. It was full of trash. Food wrappers. Oily rags. Broken crate slats. The fire was dying down to a bed of angry orange coals.

I took my old business card out of my pocket. Laminated. Pristine. My name printed in sharp, clean font.

I didn’t hold a ceremony. I didn’t make a speech to the stars. I just flicked it into the barrel.

The plastic curled. It bubbled and turned black. For a second, a blue flame licked up, smelling of melting toxins. Then it was gone. Buried under a shifting piece of charred wood.

The wind came down from the mountain carrying needles of ice. It stung my face. It wasn’t a message. It wasn’t an answer. It was just weather.

I turned up my collar and walked back to the trailer. Shift starts in four hours.