Endangered Species (13 page)

and an assortment of cold cuts served Guy for breakfast, lunch, and

dinner.  He'd had a wife cooking for him so long that when he was away

from the home fires he counted on the kindness of strangers' wives or

ate sandwiches.

Despite careful concealment, the cream carton felt suspiciously light.

Them what mocked luxury were the first to pilfer, Anna thought

ungenerously.

" Nice paiamas."

She turned to see Guy.  Nearly always the second pilgrim to worship at

the coffee shrine, he was dressed in NoMex and two pairs of socks.  If

not for the self-imposed sand regulation, Anna didn't doubt he would

have been laced into his heavy lug-soled fire boots.

" Do you sleep in fire clothes?" she asked.

"These ain't clothes , Guy told her as he poured himself a cup of coffee

and another for her ." I just had myself tattooed green and yellow a

couple of years back.  Saves time."

"believe it.  You're baggy and wrinkled enough."

Insults exchanged, they sat down together at an oversized Formica-topped

table surrounded by metal folding chairs.  Both stared contentedly at

nothing, waiting for the caffeine to burn away the night's vapors.  In

her blue-and-white-striped Pjs Anna felt mildly self-conscious but

didn't intend to be cowed by it.  Nobody on a fire wore pajamas.  It

simply wasn't done.  Not manly, she suspected.  One slept in one's

clothes, underpants, or nothing.  When men were being men in a man's

world they didn't allow for lounging attire.  It spoiled the ambiance.

Usually Anna bowed to fashion from necessity.  On a real fire there was

little space for nonessentials.  But this was presuppression.  They

lived in a house, slept in beds, and kept regL]Iar hours.

Without realizing she did it, she shot the cuffs of her pajamas and sat

up a tad straighter.

Halfway down his first cup, Guy became coherent ." Had a long talk with

Norman Hull last night while you were dancing with the fishes. They got

an aviation investigator they borrowed from the Forest Service flying

down from Washington today."

"Why?"

"They always do if there's a fatality.  Aviation safety stuff.  You

never work an airplane crash before?"

Anna shook her head.

"Me neither.  I found one in the back country once but it was a

kazillion years old before I got there.  just bones.  Hull wants to

borrow a couple of you guys to help out, seeing as Todd's dead and they

got nobody else.  I'm giving him you and Rick."

"What if we get a fire?"

"We should be so lucky."

Inaction was wearing on everyone's nerves, along with the ticks, the

heat, and Rick's snoring.

The new assignment came like a reprieve, a day out of school, and Anna

was careful not to gloat.  Rick had no such qualms and by the time they

got the call to meet Hull and the aviation safety inspector at the dock,

the rest of the crew were glad to see the last of them.

Eight in the morning and already it was hot.  Heat stayed through the

nights but air-conditioning gave a false sense of weather.  It jarred

Anna to sweat in the early-morning light.  In the mountains the sun

dictated the temperature.  On Cumberland heat radiated from the soil,

the trees, the air itself.

Rick leaned on the fender of the pumper truck and Anna sat on the hood.

Firefighters were seldom found standing unaided.  Too many years leaning

on shovels.

A small green-and-white inboard puttered across the glassy water of the

channel between Cumberland and the coast.  Near land the water was

brown, a rich-looking soup.  Grasses waved in saltwater marshes along

the shallows housing an abundance of life that never failed to amaze

Anna.  Life was everywhere, even in the high desert, if one had the

patience to look and to wait.  In this warm sea, life crawled and hopped

and flapped over every available space .

Patience was not required.

The NPS boat docked and its human cargo crawled, hopped, and flapped out

onto the wooden dock.  Hull trotted down from the office to welcome

them.  His scarecrow figure, all angles and planes, topped by the

flat-brimmed Smokey Bear hat, dominated the three lesser beings dressed

in the pale green uniform of the United States Forest Service.

"Shall we make ourselves useful?" Anna asked.

"Why not." Rick levered himself away from the fender.

A long white barn, open at both ends, reminiscent of a New England

covered bridge, spanned the area from solid ground to the floating docks

where the boat was moored.  Hull and the three visiting dignitaries

seemed capable of handling the luggage, so Anna and Rick stopped in the

shade and waited.

Two squat men, their faces deep in the shadow of their green ball caps,

came first carrying the bulk of the luggage.  Norman Hull walked behind

them, crabbing his steps to match those of his companion.

Anna narrowed her eyes against the wiquitous glare.  The Forest Service

officer with Hull was a woman.  White hair, cut short and curling in

such casual perfection it had to be natural, caught the sun like the

down on a dandelion.  Anna guessed she was five foot three or four, but

that could have been an illusion; she stood ramrodstraight, shoulders

back, like a retired military man.  The bearing created a sense of

height and authority.

The woman's eyes were hidden behind dark aviator glasses.  The lower

half of her face was wrinkled and sagged at the jawline.  Anna put her

age somewhere between fifty-five and sixty-five.

"Yikes!" Rick said ." Get a load of Grandma."

Anna oinked a couple of times, granting his status as a sexist pig, and

he laughed.

"Maybe she'll bake us cookies," he said.

Somehow Anna doubted that.

The two carriers of heavy objects stepped under the covered quay and

grunted with surprise as Anna and Rick materialized from the shadows.

Hull and the white-haired woman were close behind .

The chief ranger stopped to make the introductions.  Shorty Powell, a

blunt mustachioed man in his forties, was the fixed-wing special1st.

Wayne Pitt, the second man, was of an age with Powell and close to the

same build but carried his weight around his middle .

He was the maintenance specialist.  A dark, incredibly curly beard

obscured much of his face.

The woman, Alice Utterback, was the chief investigator .

"Mrs.  Utterback," Hull introduced them, "this is Anna Pigeon and Rick

"Spencer," Rick filled in for him.

"Alice," the woman said.

When Anna shook her hand it was warm and dry, the grip firm .

The fingers were wrinkled, the knuckle of her pinky knobbed by arthritis

or an old break.  Though her eyes were hidden behind the dark lenses and

Anna couldn't see them, she felt them.  Rick, herself, the truck, were

all quickly assessed and filed.  What the verdict was, Anna couldn't

guess.  Alice Utterback's face gave nothing away .

She didn't smile much, Anna noted.  A distinctly unfeminine trait .

Women-girls-were taught to smile under any and all circumstances.

Probably the human equivalent of the little dog showing the big dog its

throat as a sign of submission.  Alice Utterback was evidently a big

dog.

"Your quarters aren't much," Norman Hull apologized as the procession

started up again, moving toward the waiting trucks .

"We've opened up an old VIP dorm but it's in pretty bad shape."

Anna quashed an urge to offer her room to the older woman .

Giving in to generous impulses usually left her grouchy by day's end .

And Alice Utterback looked like she was accustomed to fending for

herself.

" It'll be fine," Utterback said.

"Do you want to settle in?  Freshen up?" Hull asked, old-world manners

taking precedence over new-order political correctness.

"I'm pretty darn fresh," Alice told him, and smiled for the first time.

Her teeth were yellow and crooked but not displeasing.  They suited the

weathered face ." Shorty and Wayne will let me know if I go beyond fresh

and start getting ripe."

" We try and stay downwind," Shorty said, and Alice laughed .

"Let's get to it then," Hull suggested.

Wreckage was strewn over two hundred yards; bits of the shattered

Beechcraft marked the way like trail signs.  Rick was set to flagging

the points of impact and the final resting place of the airplane much as

he would have in a routine traffic accident investigation.  Measurements

would be made, fixed points-landmarks the accident investigators hoped

were permanent-established so that the crash could be plotted on paper

for the report and, if need be, reconstructed later should questions

arise.

The fixed-wing expert, the man Alice called Shorty, took Chief Ranger

Hull and a 35mm camera and began a detailed recording of all that Rick

flagged and measured.

Wayne, Alice's maintenance specialist, wandered around with a magnetic

compass, and pencils stored absurdly in the thatch of his beard.  At

least three had been poked into the tangled curls, as a woman might

stick them in her bun.  It put Anna in mind of a half-remembered fairy

tale about a man with birds nesting in his whiskers.

Alice gave Anna the chore of secretary.  Clipboard in hand, she followed

the older woman around jotting down notes.  There'd been a time when

Anna was younger and easily offended that she would have taken umbrage

at being cast in the traditional female role.  In the intervening years

she'd lived through enough bureaucracy to know secretaries not only were

the glue in the mix, holding the cumbersome aspects of government

together, but frequently were the only ones in possession of all the

facts.  In one form or anotherletter, fax, phone call, or gossip-all

information passed over their desks.

And, too, there wasn't much heavy lifting, so Anna was content to be

Utterback's Girl Friday.

Alice Utterback crawled beneath the remaining shreds of the blasted wing

on the passenger side of the Beechcraft.  A black cord was around her

neck, both ends disappearing into her shirt pocket .

Pulling on the cord, she dragged out a small powerful Maglite and began

tracing the beam methodically over the instrument panel.

Clutching the clipboard to her chest, Anna frog-walked in as close as

she could get and watched the proceedings.  The ghosts had been hauled

off along with the corpses and she was glad.  Despite the macabre

remnants of humanity-a burned button, what could have been blood or oil

spattered beneath the instrument panel in the one unburned portion of

the floorboards-the cockpit was cleansed of emotion.  Now it was just a

puzzle and Anna was enjoying watching the chief investigator gather

together the pieces.

"Norman Hull said two killed," Alice remarked without stopping her work.

"Yes, ma'am," Anna said.

"Pilot was a private contractor?"

"Slattery Hammond." Anna filled in the name.

Alice clicked the Maglite off and rocked back on her heels.

"Slattery Hammond.  Why am I not surprised?"