The Underdog Parade

by Michael Mihaley

  “We have to go back,” CJ repeated.

  “I heard you the first time.”

  Peter was stalling as he made a plan. His father had told them that there was indeed an evacuation alert at Willow Creek Landing, along with several communities that border the Pine Barrens, but it was a precaution. The fire was still miles away.

  “They always play these things safe,” Nick said. “We do need to pack up some things just in case, but by the time we bike all the way home Mom will be here with the car.”

  He told the kids to sit tight. Nick took his own advice and stood between Holly the hostess and a female server at the bar as they watched the fire unfold on the large screen. They would wait until Abby met them at the restaurant; she was just finishing up at the office (Peter had heard that before), and the family would drive over together.

  Peter stirred the lemonade in front of him. If last night didn’t get him in trouble, what he was about to do surely would. He started feeling that tingling sensation again.

  “I’ll be right back, CJ. I have to pee.”

  Peter slid out of the booth and slowly headed to the back of the restaurant, watching to see if his father would turn around to check on them. He never did.

  Peter walked down the corridor, past the kitchen and bathrooms, and pushed open the back door. Squinting from the daylight, he ran around the back alley to the front, keeping low to the ground to stay beneath all the restaurant windows. He jumped on his bike and pedaled out of the parking lot.

  He took a deep breath when he hit Main Street. Two fire trucks, this time filled with clean, rested firefighters with a look of urgency on their faces, raged past. If his father followed him, Peter knew he’d take the same back roads they took coming, so Peter decided to follow the course of the fire trucks and take Slocin Road the entire way even though he didn’t want to.

  As Peter biked past the stores on Main Street, picking up speed, he heard a voice call his name from behind him. CJ had just turned onto Main Street, her body and bike leaning dangerously unbalanced.

  Peter had not involved her in his plan for several reasons. He didn’t want her to get into trouble or danger, but he also didn’t want CJ to slow him down. He couldn’t just leave her on Main Street, so he waited, waving her to hurry, all the time expecting his father to turn the corner.

  CJ stopped in front of him and avoided making eye contact.

  “I had to pee too,” she said.

  “Get on,” Peter said, and nodded down to his bike seat.

  “I’ll bike.”

  “Get on if you want to come with me. We have to get off Main Street before Dad sees us.”

  “My bike?”

  “We’ll leave it in front of the store and get it later. No one will touch it. Either you come on my bike with me, or you don’t come at all.”

  CJ contemplated her choices. Realizing there was only one that suited her, she stepped off her bike and climbed up to Peter’s seat.

  Black Feathers

  Peter’s bike wobbled the first few yards as he got used to CJ’s weight on the back. Secret Project No-Camp had provided good practice. He fell into a stride, glancing back only once for his father. Main Street dog-eared, and once the bike completed the bend, Peter knew they were in the clear. Their dad would turn off a lot earlier for the back roads without any sight of them.

  “Stop wiggling, you’re making the bike turn,” Peter yelled back to CJ. If she did that on Slocin Road with cars traveling seventy miles per hour, they’d be pancakes.

  “I can’t help it. My butt hurts.”

  Something strange was happening on Slocin Road. Cars weren’t speeding at all—in fact they were barely moving in both directions. They sat bumper to bumper as far down the curvy road as Peter could see.

  “What’s going on?” CJ asked.

  The drivers looked either impatient or at a loss. Horns honked, some short and stuttering, other prolonged and angry.

  “Look up there!” CJ said.

  Huge feathers of black smoke colored the sky, much closer than ever before. Peter noticed the air suddenly had a burnt, crispy smell to it. This was not the smoke from the original fires.

  “Is that the Creek, Peter?” CJ questioned softly.

  Peter couldn’t tell but found himself pedaling faster.

  As they got closer, cars were sitting in the shoulder trying to make their own lane. Peter navigated around mirrors and elbows hanging from windows.

  Before they reached the corner gates of Willow Creek Landing, Peter could see flames and smoke coming from the woods outside the gates. Peter pedaled furiously. Two police cars were parked in front of the entrance, and the officers were managing traffic from the middle of Slocin Road. As Peter feared, the Creek was the reason for the traffic snarl. One officer held his hand up to oncoming traffic, as he waved on the vehicles from the Creek. Cars poured out, despite the red traffic light above. A group of people was standing out front—some just watching, others using their phones to take video—and another small group paced and shouted at the officers.

  Nick and Abby were part of that last group. Abby had left work to get Herb after Nick’s phone call. She had run the last quarter mile to the Willow Creek entrance, abandoning her car on the side of the road once Slocin turned into a parking lot. Her eyes never left the smoke in the sky. She still had her heels in her hand.

  “Officer, you have to let me in! My brother and maybe my kids are still inside. My brother is in a wheelchair,” Abby yelled at the policeman for the third time.

  The officer, who was a good deal younger than Abby but trained in this type of scenario, kept his composure and tried to diffuse the combative woman in front of him with his polite form of verbal judo. “Ma’am, like I told you, my orders were to let no one inside. We have sent an officer down to your home to make sure no one is inside.” But what he really wanted to say was: what the hell were they doing alone in there in the first place?

  Abby turned away from the officer and punched the air. Her scathing eyes locked in on Nick.

  “I can’t believe you lost the kids. Unforgivable,” she hissed.

  Nick had no response. There was no way to twist this. He looked down Slocin Road, hoping to see a glimpse of them, but all he saw was an ambulance with its lights on and siren blasting moving slowly up the shoulder. The sea of cars parted reluctantly. With the speed he had pedaled, he would have caught up to them if they took the back roads. He could only guess that they decided to take Slocin, outsmarting their own father, but they were still nowhere in sight.

  “How could you sound so calm on the phone?” she asked, looking like she was ready to hit him.

  Nick tried to defend himself. “No one could have predicted this. It was only an evacuation alert.”

  Nick knew that was a horrible answer, but it was all he had. The evacuation alert was set in response to the fires in the south and east. Now that a fire from the north had sparked, it made the evacuation immediate. Nick knew this was the worst possible scenario. The first homes a northern fire would reach were those on Ranch Street. He also realized, though he was not dumb enough to share with Abby, that the developers built all the homes so close together to maximize their profit, that once one home went on fire it wouldn’t be long until their neighbor faced the same fate with the eaves of their roofs practically touching. They would burn like a matchbook. “I’m sure Herb is fine, and if the kids had just listened to me—”

  Abby watched Nick’s lips move, but she didn’t hear his words. Did it even matter anymore? For a second, she wondered when was the last time something came out of those lips that warranted being heard. When was the last time he said something helpful? Complimentary? Something nice? She turned her back to him and started walking away before he finished speaking. It didn’t matter. She was done.

  In all their years of marriage, Nick never saw that look in her eyes. It was a look of something breaking, something irreplaceable now in pieces on the floor. The quick stab he felt harden
ed into something vengeful as he watched her walk away.

  “No one forced you into the office today, Abby!” he shouted. He didn’t think she would turn around, and she didn’t. He would stay until they found the kids, then worry about what happens after that.

  The ambulance approached, and the officer ordered everyone to step aside. Only the combative woman stood frozen in her spot, and he had to guide her away by the elbow. She moved zombie-like with an empty look in her eyes.

  I’m never getting married, he thought.

  If anyone was looking under the ambulance’s carriage, they would have noticed the two bike tires keeping pace along the other side of the ambulance all the way through the entranceway.

  * * *

  Inside Willow Creek Landing, Peter and CJ stemmed off from the ambulance and hopped the sidewalk curve. Idling cars lined the street filled with anxious faces and valuable possessions piled in the backseats and strapped to the roofs. All the color of the community was washed out, blanketed by a gray haze. Peter swerved around people who were running through the street, some holding cardboard boxes filled with an assortment of personal objects.

  Peter cut past the pavilion and turned left onto Ranch Street, pedaling down the center of the road because the sidewalks were blocked with people and cars being packed with last minute items.

  Then Peter saw the flames. Down at the end of Ranch Street, the two houses bordering the woods were on fire. It was hard to see the trees beyond the two homes due to the smoke. There was not a fire truck in sight. The air had a burnt smell, and the temperature rose instantly. A police officer holding an oxygen mask to an older woman’s face as he escorted her to his squad car saw Peter and CJ and ordered them to stop.

  CJ choked back a cough. “Go, Peter.”

  Peter had no intention of stopping. They heard the sound of broken glass, then a loud cracking noise as the roof of one of the homes collapsed. Peter hopped the sidewalk of Josh’s house, passed the ark, and rode on the grass of his front lawn.

  CJ coughed again, sliding off the bike. “It’s too smoky.”

  Ash and insulation dropped like snow. Peter knew he had to act fast. Only one home now separated their house from the fire. Peter dropped his bike and ran to the front door, yelling for his uncle.

  The house was quickly filling with smoke through the screen windows. The smoke hovered at Peter’s eye level, so he dropped to his knees and started to crawl in the direction of Uncle Herb’s room. His eyes burned.

  A hand swiped his ankle as he crawled. He turned and caught a glimpse of the gold tiara at his heels. CJ was crawling behind him, the lasso in one hand.

  “Go back, CJ.”

  “No. I’m coming with you. Stop, drop and roll.”

  He didn’t have time to tell her that the lasso wouldn’t do much against smoke or that rolling only helps if you are on fire, so he just reminded her to “stay low and stay close.” The visibility was getting worse.

  Uncle Herb was not in his room, or his parent’s room, or CJ’s. If he was in the kitchen or living room, he would have noticed or heard CJ and Peter when they barged in the front door. That left only Peter’s room, the room furthest from the front door and closest to the fire. Peter called out again, but no answer.

  The door to his room was closed. He couldn’t think of any reason Uncle Herb would be in his room behind a closed door, but if he didn’t check, he couldn’t be one-hundred-percent sure that his uncle wasn’t in the house. The crawl down the hall seemed like it took an hour. His doorknob was hot. He opened the door, and smoked poured out of the room. He was blinded, and he coughed immediately, but before he covered his eyes he thought he saw a figure in the corner of his room.

  “I’ll be right back,” he yelled to CJ.

  “I’m coming with you,” he heard her answer, but he couldn’t feel her behind her.

  He held his breath and beelined to the place he thought he saw the figure. He felt around; it didn’t feel like a person or wheelchair. It was his broken air conditioner.

  “CJ, he’s not here. Let’s get out.”

  Peter heard a small cough.

  “I can’t see,” CJ said.

  Peter couldn’t see where she was. He told her to head toward the door. He hoped she knew his room as well as he did.

  “I can’t see, Peter,” she said again, choking.

  He rubbed his eyes, trying to ease the burning sensation. He tried to breath, but his lungs filled with dirty air. He thought he saw a shadow lying still in the corner of the room, and he rushed toward it only to see another shadow rush into the room and pull and lift it off the ground and into the smoke.

  “My lasso!” he heard CJ yell.

  He crawled after the voice but was knocked down by something hard. He felt something around his belly lifting him forcefully into the smoke.

  “And here I thought I was crazy,” a voice said.

  It was Josh.

  Snowing Fire

  Josh carried Peter over his shoulder to his garage. CJ, her face and clothes blackened by smoke, was sitting on Uncle Herb’s lap, her head against his shoulder.

  “I don’t know, Herb,” Josh said, gently placing Peter on the grass. “I don’t know how many people would run into a smoking house for me.”

  Peter looked over at his uncle, who looked tired and worried.

  “My lasso is gone,” CJ said softly, then coughed.

  “How did you get here?” Peter asked his uncle.

  Josh answered. “Police came by half hour ago telling us we needed to leave immediately, and that was before any of the homes were on fire. I don’t think anyone expected it to move so fast. I told the cop I would take Herb with me in James and Terry’s car.” Josh looked down at the Bible between Herb’s leg and the arm of the wheelchair and added, “Thankfully we both travel light. They should be here in a second.”

  A smoldering ember fell gently on the driveway. Josh peered at the sky. “With everything so dry, this place is going to go up in flames fast.”

  Mr. James appeared at the bottom of the driveway with a handkerchief over his mouth and nose. Black smears ran across his face, and his hair looked tousled. He pointed in the direction of the exit. “Look at the line. The pavilion is on fire. I think we need a change of plans, Josh. I don’t think we are getting out of here by car anymore.”

  Trucks and cars were lined up from the exit all the way back to the circular drive around the pavilion and back into the three residential streets from which everyone was trying to escape. But it wasn’t an organized evacuation: people refused to wait, driving around the shoulder onto the grass, only to get cut off by another car trying the same maneuver or an immovable object like the guardhouse. Some people abandoned their cars and left by foot, but did not leave the keys so the car could be moved, turning it into another obstacle. The cars made it mazelike for the walkers. And now the policemen directing traffic were yelling at cars to make room for fire trucks that were on their way. The people in the car were yelling back at the police officers to let them out first.

  “Chaos,” Mr. James said.

  A familiar yelping came from down the block. Mr. Terry was being pulled by the dogs. He dropped a knapsack at his feet.

  “What’s that?” Mr. James asked.

  Mr. Terry bent over, then looked at them. He spoke in bursts. “Old photo albums—that and dogs—all we need—everything else replaceable.”

  All of a sudden, the sound of exploding glass filled the air, and they all watched as part of the roof of the pavilion sank in.

  “Catering hall kitchen?” Mr. Terry asked. “I would not want to be one of those cars sitting in line next to all those gas lines.”

  Not long after that, a series of explosions from the pavilion sent fireballs and clouds of smoke billowing into the sky. People jumped out of the cars surrounding the pavilion and ran for cover.

  “I hope we have a plan B,” Mr. Terry said.

  “We need to run for it,” Mr. James said.

 
; Josh started running across the lawn in the direction of the pavilion. He stopped and held out his hand. “I have an idea. Five minutes. Don’t go anywhere for five minutes!”

  He ran off into the smoke.

  “You are not supposed to run toward the explosions!” Mr. Terry yelled after him, but Josh was gone.

  Josh’s Ark

  “It’s getting really hot,” CJ said. Uncle Herb told her to drink some water.

  Peter went to the bottom of Josh’s driveway where Mr. James and Mr. Terry were looking down the street for Josh. Smoke and heat were coming from both directions now.

  “Has it been five minutes?” Mr. James asked.

  “Close,” Mr. Terry answered. “We will give him a little bit more, James, but I think we should make a break for it with the kids and Herb soon.”

  “Agreed,” Mr. James said.

  Peter’s eyes burned. He wasn’t thrilled about the idea of going anywhere without Josh. They had seen one man hit another, and many others yelling at each other trying to get out. They all thought that they should get out before the others. Peter was scared to see how ugly people can get.

  “Really? That’s his plan?” Mr. Terry said as they suddenly saw the Willow Creek Landing truck driving through smoke across the once-manicured lawns of Ranch Street. The truck maneuvered slowly around empty cars and trees too large to push aside. It was the only vehicle going deeper into Willow Creek Landing. The empty trailer bounced behind the truck.

  Mr. James held his arms up in surrender.

  Josh laughed when he saw the look on everyone’s faces. Peter was amazed at how Josh seemed unfazed by the fire on two sides. He acted like he was having fun. “Have faith, friends. Listen to my directions.”

  Peter and CJ helped Mr. Terry and Josh lift the front of the ark and hold it in the air while Mr. James backed the trailer underneath. Then they all pushed from the back, and the ark slid onto the trailer.

  “That wasn’t too bad,” Josh said.

  “Speak for yourself,” Mr. Terry said, walking away holding his lower back.