A Nest in the Ashes

by Christine Goff

  Eric raised his binoculars and trained them on the bird. The black and white barring on its sides, flanks and back set it apart from similar species. Its black head, shoulders, wings, and rump appeared inky against the reddish-brown pine. A black tail displayed white outer-tail feathers spotted in black, and it had a white postocular stripe widening on the back of its neck. The three-toed woodpecker turned as though sensing the scrutiny, then cocked its head offering Eric a clear view of its yellow cap and white mustache.

  A gust of wind swirled through. The bird departed, and the trio moved on.

  They’d only gone a few hundred yards when the landscape changed again. This time due to fire. Flames had ravaged the area. Smoke puddled around their boots, and the smell of charred wood assailed their nostrils. Small campfire-sized fires still burned on the hillside. The soil felt warm.

  Eric radioed Hanley. Their location placed them midway up the steep ravine, and Butch told them to start scraping a fire line along the edge of the burn.

  “You heard the man,” he said. “There are only three of us, and no saws, so we’ll diagonal up slope on the south side. Keep the burned area on your right, and keep your eyes open. The fire’s up there somewhere.”

  Pulaskis in hand, Harry and Lark started climbing, scraping a three-foot-wide boundary along the edge of the burned area with the hoe end of the tool. A narrow fire break, but in most cases enough to prevent a flare-up, from jumping into unburned territory.

  When Eric didn’t follow, Lark stopped digging and turned around. “Aren’t you coming?”

  “I’ll be right behind you.” He gestured cross slope toward the other side of the gulch. “I’m going to scout the lower perimeter.”

  “We’ll see you up top,” said Harry.

  Eric turned back, working downslope along the lower edge of the burn. He wanted to make sure no fire lay below them. Like prevailing winds along a seaboard in the fall, mountain air currents followed patterns. On the coast, the winds surged toward the ocean early in the day to be pulled ashore in the afternoon by heat rising off the land. In the mountains, air flowed downslope in the morning, then roared up the gulches late in the day.

  Reaching the bottom of the ravine, Eric started to turn around, when a flash of yellow in the burned-out area caught his attention. Too low to the ground to be a tanager, he thought. Besides, the birds seem to have all fled.

  A small spot fire, maybe?

  He scrambled closer, skirting a still-glowing stump, following what appeared to be tire tracks in the dirt. Rounding a small boulder, he stopped abruptly. Bile rose in his throat, and he gagged. The charred remains of a body lay sprawled in the soot.

  Chapter 8

  Eric crabbed his way across the slope, keeping his eye on the body.

  Was it one of the missing boys?

  He didn’t think so, based on the tatters of clothing that had survived the heat. The body appeared to belong to a firefighter.

  Eric’s heart pounded.

  Wayne?

  Eric refused to believe it. Wayne might have headed up toward the mountain, but he was too experienced to be caught by the fire.

  Nora?

  Based on the radio conversation, she’d been out of touch for over an hour.

  The closer Eric got to the corpse, the more convinced he was that it wasn’t Nora’s body. The size and stature suggested it was the body of a man. Then, from a stone’s throw, the white hard hat on the ground and the blue-handled Pulaski, identified the victim as Wayne.

  Eric dropped one knee to the ground and sucked in great gulps of air in spite of the smell. His boss lay face up on the ground, bloated and puffed like a turkey after eight hours in a hot oven. The fire had cooked him.

  Tears stung Eric’s eyes. Wayne had been more than his supervisor, more than a mentor, more than a friend. Wayne had stepped in and taken the place of the father Eric had barely known.

  Leaning against a rock, Eric ignored the hard edges gouging his spine. Images filtered through his mind. Wayne at the office, a coffee cup clutched in his hand. Wayne “catch-and-release” fishing at Lily Lake; lounging in the hammock in the backyard; flashing his famous hundred-watt smile at a tourist before stopping traffic to let a herd of Rocky Mountain sheep cross the road.

  “Damn it, Wayne.”

  They’d been friends for seventeen years, since Eric had applied to work in the park. Wayne had seen past the young man who carried a chip on his shoulder and had helped Eric land a job in the park. For that alone Eric owed him.

  Eric’s first season had been spent building campfires at the Moraine Park Campground. He enforced nightly noise curfews, policed bathrooms, and rousted raccoons out of the trash. Wayne had shown his face only once that summer, in August, when a mother bear and two cubs had hunkered down in the campground. Wayne had chased them off by shooting rubber bullets at the mother bear.

  Eric smiled at the memory. The first round had clicked dry, and the mother bear had charged. Jacking the slide, Wayne explained how he always left the chamber empty for added safety.

  Now Wayne was dead. Eric exhaled, then licked salt from his lips. There would be plenty of time to grieve. Right now he had a job to do, people to care for. Harry and Lark. Jackie and Tamara.

  Eric tugged at his radio. “Butch, Nora, do you copy?”

  “Yeah.” replied Butch.

  “I found Wayne Devlin. He’s dead.”

  “Where? How?” asked Nora. Eric hadn’t heard her voice on the radio since Trent had hollered for her, well over an hour ago. He resisted asking her where she had been.

  “Welcome back,” he said.

  When she didn’t respond, he gave his approximate location. “From the best I can tell, Wayne got caught in the spot fire.”

  “I’ll get someone up there as soon as I can,” replied Nora.

  “What about Jackie?” Eric asked, worried Linda Verbiscar or some other member of the press might grab hold of the story and start snooping around.

  “I’ll send someone over to tell her.”

  “Sounds like a plan.”

  “Are you okay?” The question sounded sincere.

  “I’m numb.” Blood pounding in his ears filled his head with a dull roar. “I left Lark and Harry digging fire line. I need to catch up to them.”

  “Maybe you need to stand down.”

  Was she ordering him off the job? The roaring grew louder, and he realized that what he was hearing was not the pulsing of blood, but the wind driving fire. “Shit.”

  “What?”

  He stared up at the ridge line. A column of black smoke spiraled toward a sky tinged yellow by advancing flame. He watched as fire crowned in the trees to the left of him. He dropped the radio. It caught on its hook and slammed against his chest, knocking the wind out of him. Scrambling up the north slope, binoculars banging against his ribs, he yelled for Lark and Harry. Brush tore at his clothing, scratching his bared wrist. Jumping over a fallen log, he scraped his shin. Hand over Pulaski, he clawed his way up the mountain.

  “Eric?” Nora’s voice blared from the radio.

  He ignored her, shouting for Lark.

  “Up here,” she answered.

  He caught a flash of yellow through the trees. The arc of her arm. She and Harry had hacked their way twenty-five yards up the hillside.

  Behind Eric, heat wafted up from the bottom of the gulch. Oppressive, unbearable heat. Arid and scorching, like the kind that rose in waves from the rocks of a sauna. Eric’s mouth went dry.

  Harry stood above Lark on the slope, his expression indicating he had seen the blowup. He stared, mesmerized, at the spectacle, and Eric fought a desire to look behind him. From the corner of his eye he could see flames curling and whipping as they hooked up the slope. There wasn’t time enough to turn around. Maybe not even time enough to run.

  “Get into the black, now,” Eric ordered. “Now!”

  The words snapped Harry free of the spell, and he moved, darting for the safety zone.

  Er
ic reached Lark and pushed her ahead of him onto charred ground. If Wag Dodge, the foreman on the Mann Gulch Fire, could save himself by lying down on the freshly burned ground, maybe they could too. Pushing Lark farther and farther into the black, Eric prayed for a miracle.

  Scrambling over logs still glowing with embers, he listened to the roar of the fire grow. Like a high speed passenger train, it roared toward them, drawn like a magnet to the spot fire burning somewhere uphill, the gulch acting as a chimney. The ravine boiled in fire, jets of flame shooting into the crowns of the trees. A wall of flame roiled toward them, burning everything in its path.

  Harry stumbled and fell.

  “Deploy,” shouted Eric. “Deploy!”

  He dug in his pack for the foil shelter, and ripped it free of its plastic cover. On his order, Lark and Harry had done the same. At this moment, bunched together on the charred hillside, each of them was on their own.

  Eric anchored the shelter with his toes, yanking it over his back and pinning it to the ground in front of him with gloved hands. Embers pelted the flimsy tent. Wind ripped at the edges, spitting bits of charcoal into his face. Rifle shots rang through the air, the sound of trees exploding. The ground felt hot, his lungs burned, and he pushed his face closer to the charred dirt, rooting for cooler air.

  He thought of Lark, and Harry, and Wayne. He thought of his mother in Lillehammer, and how angry she would be if he died. He thought of Jackie and Tamara, and, inexplicably, of a Norwegian potty-training song that his grandmother used to sing.

  The wind took on the whine of a jet engine. Trees popped like firecrackers. The inside of the fire shelter glowed. Eric felt a sudden crushing weight as the fire rolled over them. He arched, cringing away from the heat, away from the death he feared. Then the roar diminished, the pressure ebbed, and the train passed on.

  He lay quietly.

  Nora’s voice crackled from the radio, then Lark called out. “Eric?”

  “Don’t get out.”

  “Trust me,” she said.

  He smiled at the sarcasm in her voice. Humor served as first aid cream for the soul.

  “Harry,” he shouted. “Are you there?”

  “Present and accounted for.”

  “Everyone stay covered,” Eric ordered. “The worst is over, but there’s still fire out there.” He could feel its heat through the foil, and see the glow under the edges of his tent. “It’ll be hot. We’re safer inside.”

  “Now I know why they call them ‘brown and serve bags,’ ” Harry said.

  Lark giggled, hysteria bubbling close to the surface. “I thought they were called ‘shake ‘n’ bakes.’ ”

  “Same difference.”

  Eric thought of Wayne. He didn’t remember seeing any sign that Wayne had tried to deploy his shelter. No bag on the ground. Had he been caught that unaware?

  The others didn’t know about Wayne, and Eric decided he should wait to tell them. Right now, wasn’t the time to speculate on what had happened. He needed to maintain morale.

  Eric maneuvered the radio out from under him and notified Nora they were okay, turning down the volume in case she said something about Wayne.

  “You guys hang tight.”

  “Ja, we’ll do that.”

  The three of them hollered back and forth for what seemed like close to an hour before Eric’s shelter cooled enough so that he felt like sticking his head out from under the foil. After a tentative test, he sounded the all clear.

  Harry peeled back his covering, shaking away the soot like a wet dog sheds water. His face, sandy hair, and clothes were still covered in ash.

  “I should look so good,” said Eric.

  “You might be surprised.”

  Lark refused to come out.

  “It’s okay,” said Harry.

  “I feel safer in here.”

  Eventually, she loosened her grip on the shelter, and Eric unwrapped her. Her blues eyes peered up at him from a blackened face streaked by tears.

  “Oh, God,” she said, and he enveloped her in his arms. Sobs racked her body, and she wheezed and coughed. Finally, after a few minutes, she pulled away, wiping her face on her sleeve. “Sorry.”

  “Hey, at least you waited until after the crisis to fall apart,” said Harry.

  Eric brushed back a loose strand of her hair, thought of kissing her, then pushed himself up from the ground. “Does everyone still have their tools?”

  Harry and Lark both raised their Pulaskis.

  “Good, now here’s what’s happened.” Eric filled them in about Wayne. Lark cried again. Harry looked pained. “We’re going to hike back down the draw to his body. Keep your hard hats on. The biggest danger now is falling branches.”

  The landscape looked surreal. Smoke eddied about the forest floor, like ground fog, and small fires burned all around them. Stumps flamed like candles. Logs smoldered, threatening to combust at the slightest provocation. Nora radioed to let them know a park law enforcement officer and ambulance crew were on their way.

  “What about the boys?” Eric had asked. She told him they were still missing.

  As they hiked down the mountain, a cushion of ash stirred with every footstep, reminding Eric of the footage of Neil Armstrong’s walk on the moon. Imprints pressed into feather-fine dust, left a preliminary record that man had conquered his environment. Remnants of trees twisted by fire hovered like turkey vultures over ground littered with the bones of smoldering logs. Heat hazed the air. Oddly, in some places clumps of trees stood untouched, spared from the onslaught.

  Tornadoes did that. Touched down, skipping over one home, wreaking havoc on another. Mother Nature unleashing her fury judiciously, or by chance.

  Eric led them to where he’d found Wayne’s body. Amazingly, the fire had jumped between hillsides, skipping over the bottom of the ravine in its race to the top of the next hill, sparing assault on the already dead. A small consolation.

  Harry started forward, but Eric warned him back. There would be an investigation, and they needed to leave the scene intact. Hanging behind the others, Lark volunteered to go down and lead the ambulance crew up the hill.

  Pacey Trent had arrived with the ambulance crew, a Park Service law enforcement officer, several sheriff’s deputies, and a twenty-man crew. The area was cordoned off, yellow crime scene tape wrapped around anything that hadn’t burned.

  “We’ll take it from here,” said Trent. “You three look like you could use some rest.”

  Eric looked at the others. “If it’s all the same to you, sir, I’d like to help look for the missing boys.”

  Lark and Harry exchanged glances. “Us, too.”

  They joined the search at three, and by nine o’clock the teenagers still hadn’t been found. With the onset of night, the humidity rose, the fire laid down, and Butch Hanley had declared it under control. Fifty percent contained, with a promise of full containment by the following afternoon. Doable, based on forecasts calling for rain or light snow.

  An hour past dark, Vic had called off the search. Lark and Harry headed into town with the other rescue team members. Eric had parked himself in a leather rocking chair on the veranda of the Youth Mountain Camp lodge. He needed some time to think about things, about the day’s events, about Wayne Devlin’s untimely death. Maybe talking to Vic would help.

  Anger welled up inside him when he remembered that no one had listened to him earlier when he’d expressed concern over Wayne’s absence. Maybe if someone had and they’d sent out a search party Wayne wouldn’t be dead. Maybe if Eric himself hadn’t been so easy to convince. Maybe.

  To the north, Eagle Cliff Mountain still glowed. The fire had settled down into hundreds of small fires dotting the mountaintop. The fires ranged in size, anywhere from pickup truck-sized to as small as a campfire you’d roast marshmallows over. Eric would lay odds that somewhere up there a firefighter was roasting hot dogs.

  “Whew,” said Vic, joining him on the porch. “I am sure glad this day is over.” He sat down rubbing
his eyes, then stroked his hand over his mustache.

  “Me, too.” Eric rocked, gently, mostly because the chair sat low to the ground and his knees folded close to his chest with the motion. He jerked his head toward the mountain. “Do you think those boys are up there?”

  “Nope.”

  “Me either.”

  “If you want my opinion, those boys lit out for home. It won’t surprise me if they pick them up in Castle Rock tomorrow.”

  Eric remembered Vic saying one of the boys was from that area. “What’s the story behind these kids, anyway?”

  “You mean all of the kids, or the two that are missing?”

  “Either. Both.”

  Vic settled back in his chair. “The Youth Mountain Camp is tied to a mentoring program run by the City and County of Denver. Our primary goal is to provide a mountain experience to kids from the inner city. Most of our campers have been in some sort of trouble, usually minor offenses. These kids are more in need of guidance than anything else.”

  “Do the mentors spend time up here?”

  “We try.” From the disappointment in his voice, Eric guessed not many of the police officers found time.

  “Didn’t you spend some time up here as a kid?” Eric knew the question was personal, but asked anyway.

  “Yes.”

  A one-syllable answer. Eric knew if he rephrased, he could force more of an answer, then decided he didn’t know the sheriff well enough to press. “What about the—”

  Vic interrupted. “My ‘Big Brother’ was a Denver policeman. He signed me up for a week, and I fell in love with the place. After that summer, I vowed I’d live in Elk Park.” He held his arms wide. “Here I am.”

  Rumors run rampant in small towns. Elk Park was no exception. The story was, when Vic was sixteen, he had witnessed his father’s murder in a domestic dispute and the trauma had triggered some wild behavior in Vic.

  “Is what they say true?” asked Eric, curiosity tromping on good manners.

  “About my dad?”

  Eric nodded. Faint light shining through the windows, sliced across Vic’s face. Old pain shadowed his eyes.