Chapter Thirty-One
POSTED AS A LOOKOUT IN THE MASTER BEDROOM, WAITING at the window for the fire, Julie Nothstine recalled some figure in a old poem.
The Lady of Shalott. Was that the name?
And was it by Tennyson or Wordsworth? And why the hell am I
thinking about poetry at a time like this?
I must have made a sound from where I stood in the doorway, because she turned and blinked at me. “I beg your pardon?”
“Sorry. I just came to see if you needed anything.”
We spoke in whispers. Far from tending Julie, the mother of the bride was sprawled on the purple bedspread, snoring. She must have taken another little white pill, but that was fine. We had more bodies than we needed downstairs, working on the fire line, and Cissy asleep in a crisis was probably preferable to Cissy awake.
I joined Julie at the window. In truth, I’d come upstairs to tell her about Domaso’s murder—why not, if Jack could tell Tracy?—and ask her advice about keeping track of the possible suspects, given the bizarre situation we found ourselves in. But that was before I truly understood the situation.
I did begin to tell her, though. I described finding Domaso’s body, skipping over the gory details, and told her my doubts about Todd and the Tyke.
“Her explanation was so convincing,” I said, “about Todd freaking out when he first found Brian. I believed her, I really did. But maybe Danny was right to be suspicious of them.”
Julie listened intently, though she kept up her watch out the window as she did, and I kept watching, too. The flames that flowered wildly in the forest were visible only in glimpses as the smoke swirled and parted.
“Domaso’s death might have been an accident,” said Julie. “People do fall—”
“I think the fire is slowing down!” I peered eagerly out at the creeping shape of our enemy. “Julie, I’m sure it is! I’ll go tell them.”
“No.” She imprisoned my wrist with one powerful hand. “This could change in an instant, with a shift of wind or a piece of burning debris blowing ahead of the fire itself. It’s essential that everyone stay calm. That’s the real reason Jack has them working down there.”
I looked down at the slope below the veranda, where half the stronger members of our group were hard at work while the other half rested inside. They hacked and chopped at every substance that could burn, from weedy meadow grass to landscaped shrubbery, making a band of bare dirt that followed the contours of the inn some yards out from its foundation. It looked woefully puny compared to the monstrous tongues of flame licking their way up the valley toward us.
One of the laborers was the bride. Tracy had changed out of her gown and was working shoulder to shoulder with Jack, while the less muscular individuals were fetching tools, dragging away the debris, and doing anything else they could think of to be useful. But without the brawn of the other smoke jumpers, the civilians hadn’t gotten very far.
Especially with the disruptions like Ramona fainting from the heat, and Chief Larabee turning white and clutching at his chest after a few minutes of digging. He had reluctantly admitted to heart trouble, and promised Al he would stay safely inside with Ramona.
Larabee was utterly phlegmatic about the fire in any case, seeming to view it mainly as an obstacle to his consideration of Domaso’s murder. But the other civilians believed that their labor was necessary. That it could save us.
“What do you mean, the real reason?” I said. “Julie, is there something Jack isn’t telling us?”
I could see the challenge in her strange blue eye. “Are you sure you want to know?”
“Of course I am. Tell me the truth. I mean it.”
“Very well, I shall.” She flung the truth at me as if it were too painful a burden to carry alone anymore. “A fire line of this sort might protect the inn, in calmer conditions and on flatter ground. But with these unstable winds and the steepness of the slope, it’s unlikely to succeed. If the fire reaches this far, it will be as the result of an explosive run up the ridge, and that run will be unstoppable. Are you familiar with the size of a football field?”
I nodded. The question was surreal, but then so was this wedding day.
“For some reason,” she said, with the puzzled frown of an academic deciphering a footnote, “these things are often explained in terms of football fields, even though some people, such as myself, have rarely visited one. I have never understood—”
“Julie, please!”
The blue eyes met mine straight on. “A fire making an explosive run can incinerate the length of a football field in one second.”
“Minute, you mean?”
“I mean what I say. One second.”
I felt dizzy. “Then why bother with the fire line?”
“Because it gives those people something to do before they are led to the safety zone and asked to remain there, possibly for a lengthy period of time, without panicking.”
“Then is the safety zone going to work? Is that really our best hope?”
I didn’t like the pause that followed.
“There is an unfortunate lack of large open spaces on this ridge,” she said carefully, “and these woods are dry in the extreme. The heat of a forest fire can easily exceed two thousand degrees.”
“But—”
“Our best hope is that the fire never reaches us at all.”
It was as well for my composure that Cissy stirred just then. She sat partway up and looked around drowsily, then her face seemed to collapse as she realized where she was, and that the nightmare of fire was real.
“Two thousand degrees?” she cried. “Oh, God, we’re all going to die!”
I rushed to sit beside her. “Shh, it’s all right, Cissy. Everything’s going to be fine. Are you thirsty, can I bring you something?”
She shook her head peevishly as she lay down again, and within seconds she was deep into her drugged sleep again. I wished I was, too. Julie didn’t say a word as I left, simply turning to resume her bleak vigil. Yes, it was
The Lady of
Shalott,
and in the poem she was waiting for her doom.
On my way down the stairs, I realized that I’d lost my train of thought about Domaso. But what did it matter now? His body would be cremated where it lay, and his murderer’s fate would be the same as mine, and Aaron’s, and...
“Kharnegie?” My fears must have shown on my face, because Boris looked deeply concerned. He stood gazing up at me from the foot of the staircase, a water bottle in his hand and dark rivulets of sweat streaking the coat of dust on his bare chest. “Kharnegie, do not be afraid. I will protect you.”
I laughed. A little wildly, but at least I laughed. “I’m sure you will, Boris.”
He drained the water into his open mouth and sighed in satisfaction. “Come outside, my friend. Come see our good work.”
As I began to go with him, I remembered Domaso draining that can of beer on the roadside a few eternal days ago. And I realized that while I adored Boris, and had felt considerable distaste for Domaso, the two men did have something in common. An uncomplicated passion for life, as pure and simple as a child’s or a—
“A dog! Oh, my God, the dog!”
“What dog?” Startled, Boris stared around him. “Where is dog?”
“That’s just it, I don’t know. Domaso had a dog. I guess he’d only had him for a little while but still, poor Gorka’s running loose in the woods somewhere by himself. Oh, Boris, he might get caught in the fire, we’ve got to go find him!”
The Mad Russian seemed to think I’d gone mad, and maybe he was right. But his words were lost in a new noise, one that cut through the distant monotone roar of the fire. This was a staccato bass-note throbbing that sent Boris and me, and everyone else in the great room, stampeding out to the front of the inn.
For a moment I was caught up in the euphoria, as the helicopter appeared in a gap above the trees. It bucked a little in the wind, appearing and disappearing in the clouds of smoke. All around me the civilians were leaping up and down ecstatically, waving their arms, and even Aaron, the skeptic, stood over on the other side of the group grinning.
But not the smoke jumpers. Weary and sweat-soaked from working nonstop on the safety zone, they turned their skeptical eyes to Jack, and I felt a sickening chill as I recalled what he’d said. Nowhere to land.
“That pilot’s a nervy son of a bitch, coming out in these conditions,” said Al Soriano beside me. “He can’t hover properly to drop us a rescue line, but at least now they know we’re here. That’s something.”
Suddenly the copter tilted and swerved, like a horse reined hard to one side, and just as suddenly it was gone from our view.
“They will be back?” asked Boris.
“ ’Course they will,” said Sam, raising his voice over the babble of questions and exclamations. “It might take a little while, though, so let’s all get back to work. May as well get that fire line done, huh, gang? Then they’ll whisk us down to Ketchum and I’ll buy you all a drink for helping to save White Pine. Hell, you all get free rooms for life, how about that?”
Dear old Sam, ever the optimist, with his mansions in the sky and his grandiose plans and his...Helicopter. Didn’t Sam
say something once about a helicopter?
It came back to me as I pushed through the milling people and grabbed Jack by the arm.
He said he’d build an airstrip and Cissy could get her lampshades by helicopter.
“Jack, couldn’t we make a place for them to land?” Even as I said the words, I saw the futility of the idea. How could a few exhausted people make an airstrip? “I guess not...”
But Jack’s face was lighting up like a sunrise. He suddenly embraced me and swung me around with a fervor that was worthy of Boris. “Of
course
! My God, girl, I’ve got to stop getting married, it’s screwing with my brains.”
I half smiled, bewildered but willing to hope. “Could we cut down that many trees?”
“We don’t have to,” he said, already forgetting me as he turned away. Love ’em and leave ’em, that was Jack. “We only have to cut down three. Yo, Al! You know the most about extractions. Could a copter drop into that meadow and take these people off if those pondos were down?”
The smoke jumpers huddled with Sam, talking low and rapidly, and we civilians knew enough to stay out of their way. I saw Aaron shaking his head doubtfully, and went over to him.
“You think the meadow’s too small, don’t you?” After listening to Julie, I was ready to be angry at any further pessimism. “Don’t you?”
“How would I know, Stretch? I just don’t see how we’re going to chop down any trees that big. We’ve got landscaping tools, not lumbering stuff. We’re barely getting out the bushes down there.”
“Listen up,” said Jack loudly. He mounted the inn’s front steps and looked down into each of our faces. “We all know the fire’s getting closer. It might slow down, but it might make a run up this ridge, so we’ve got to do everything we can to protect ourselves. The fire line teams should keep working, but once the safety zone is ready I want all of you in it, and the jumpers will finish the line. Is that clear? I’m putting Al Soriano here in charge, and what he says goes, no questions.”
“And what shall you be doing?” asked Beau Paliere. He’d been thoroughly subdued since his talking-to from Larabee, but I had to admit he’d been working as hard as anyone.
“I’m going down the ridge to that construction site you probably saw on your way up here. There’s some chain saws there, and I’ll bring them back here so we can take down those ponderosa pines. I figure we can buck up the trunks and clear them out of the meadow in a couple of hours, so
if
the copter comes back and
if
it can land, that’s one of our tickets out.” He flashed his smile generously now, handing out hope. “That’s a lot of ifs, so we’ve got to keep working as hard as we can, all right? And for your own safety, you have
got
to cooperate with Al.”
Al stepped up beside him with his usual good-natured smile, but by the look in his eye, anyone who didn’t cooperate was going to be sorry.
“One more thing,” said Jack. “I’m taking my Jeep down the road after those chain saws, but I may have to do the last part on foot, and if that’s the case I need a second pair of hands to help me carry them. Now that’s downhill, toward the fire, which is not the safest direction in the world. My jumpers are pretty beat, but—”
“I’ll go,” said Aaron. He said it quietly, but he was close beside me and I felt the excitement running through him like an electrical charge. “I’ve been napping, like you said, so I’m rested.”
“Good enough,” said Jack, and headed for the Jeep with his arm around Tracy, murmuring to her as they went. What a start to a honeymoon.
As the group dispersed, with Al issuing curt but even-tempered orders, Aaron paused to give me a quick kiss. At least he meant it to be quick, but I held on to his arms. I didn’t plan to let go.
“Are you
insane
?” I said, keeping my voice down. “Do you know how fast a fire can travel uphill? This is a crazy idea—”
“This was your idea, Stretch,” he said mildly. “And I’m going.”
“It’s too dangerous,” I pleaded. “Don’t go. I mean it. Don’t.”
“Carnegie, listen.” It struck me for the first time that Aaron only used my proper name during his rare solemn moments. “Remember what I told you before, that firefighting is like war? I’ve never been in a war, and nobody ever should, and I hope to God I never will be. But this is my chance, don’t you see? My chance to do something, I don’t know, something good. I have to do this.”
“Your chance to get killed, you mean.” I held on tighter. We were alone now by the steps, smoke stinging our eyes. “Don’t be a fool, Aaron. Don’t do this.”
He cocked his head. Usually when he did that, a lock of black hair fell across his forehead. But now his hair was stiff with dried sweat, and his unbruised cheek was creased from sleeping against a sofa pillow. Aaron looked terrible, and I loved him terribly.
“So you don’t mind if Jack Packard goes?” he said.
“Of course not! I mean, I do, but it’s his job. It’s not yours, and I want you safe.”