The old man at the Post Office said there was little left of that dog.

Nadine pulled into the field off State Route 23, near the old mine tipple, her rusty truck coughing in the dust. If-onlys swarmed around her head like horse-flies. If only she’d come back sooner. If only she’d never come back at all. If only she’d never left.

A young guy hopped his mountain bike over dull red boulders. He didn’t even look in her direction as she got out of the truck. Only the old ones noticed her anymore, she thought as she leaned against the hood and lit a cigarette.

The place still smelled like charcoal briquettes. Her father had brought her here when the fire first started. That must have been 1962. The mines had shut down, and her father had started drinking.

“This was coal refuse,” he’d told her. “The dregs the coal company didn’t have any use for. Pile enough of it up, leave it on its own, and it’s going to burn.” A fire boss in the mines, he knew how things burned.

And, the people of Belle Springs fed the fire. They brought their trash, their bills, their eviction notices and tossed them on the pyre. She’d helped her mother carry liquor bottles and watch them fracture in the heat. Mrs. Linkous threw her son’s uniform on the pile after the funeral. Ralph Reed fed his draft notice to the flames.

The fire burned for 10 years.

Nadine got the shovel and bucket out of the back of the truck.

Stubbly grass had reclaimed most of the acre or so of land, except for the boulders and a couple patches of red. The dirt still crackled under her feet.

By 1972, the only grocery store in town had closed, and most people, including her mother, had moved on.

The fire left a mountain of red ash and pumice. Red dog. The county thought it an eyesore. So did Nadine, fresh from college, full of big plans for her life away from here. She’d laughed at her father hauling off a truckload of red dog to patch the driveway. His brother made bricks out of it to shore up his crumbling chimney. Mrs. Price declared it helped her conceive. Dad swore it cured him of drink.

By the time the locals had carted away enough of it to reveal a few boulders of fused red dog where the fire had burned hottest, Nadine had moved to DC, got a job, and married. As the red dog dwindled over the next few decades, three husbands and a string of lousy jobs slipped through her fingers. Her therapist claimed she sabotaged them all.

She came back when her father died. The tiny Post Office, a trailer parked along the main road, was the only evidence Belle Springs still existed.

She’d thought it was gone, too, but the old man said the red dog would never abandon those that raised her. Those that still needed her.

Nadine sank her shovel into the red ash.