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Jones wasn’t very optimistic, and he knew that Karl wasn’t either. Little of what they had tried so far had managed to slow down the advance of the smoke, much less reverse it. But nothing had been as extreme as what they were about to try.

“You should have left with the rest, you know.”

The town had been emptied of its regular denizens months ago—the smoke was getting too close. In the last night it had gotten perilously closer.

“I have had my amargo in the morning here in this bench since I was a child and the sky was blue, Colonel, and it’s not a cursed cloud that will make me leave.”

By amargo he meant the infusion of ground up green leaves that he drank from a calabash gourd, a custom that seemed to take hold of everyone who moved to that part of the country. Some of his colleagues were still astounded that Jones had refused to even try it.

“I know, Karl, but I still worry.”

“You don’t have to, Colonel Jones. Good luck today, I’ll say a prayer for you.”

Karl, Jones knew, was a Catholic, which to him sounded strange. He was used to associating Germans with Protestantism, but he still didn’t know much about the history of those Germans who had colonized the south of Brazil centuries before. Maybe they had been Catholics all along, maybe they converted in the predominantly Catholic country. He had the feeling that this would be his last chance to ask. He didn’t.

“Thanks, Karl, we’ll need all the prayer we can get.”

[continues]