I remember! Joshua studied his surroundings and realized that he was in the perfect place to maybe make it work. The wind was blowing north to south, forcing the fire ahead of it. As gently as possible, he laid Simon down close to the middle of the large field and then, running toward the burning shrubbery at the north side, gathered up a handful of the dried grass and lit one end, creating a makeshift torch. Please let the wind hold. Don’t let it change direction, he prayed. He knew that if it did, his plan for survival would quickly become a death sentence. Running south back past Simon’s unconscious form, he moved from right to left, lighting the grasses, and as the wind fanned his small fires from the same direction as the oncoming front, Joshua’s new fire burned away from where Simon was lying, flaring up quickly and running wildly toward the shrubbery on the south side of the field.
They were surrounded by fire now and the heat was brutal. To the north, the gusting wind forced the flames southward and caught on the meadow grass, beginning the fire’s rush toward the spot where Joshua was crouching next to Simon, ready to move. Behind him, the grasses flared up, burned out quickly, and left a smoldering carpet of sooty black. With a heave, Joshua lifted Simon again onto his shoulder and hurried onto the burned-out area he had created as one fire blazed on ahead of him and the other rushed in behind.
He stomped out a few still-smoldering stalks and put Simon down on the charred remains of the grass; then he lay down next to him and covered both their faces with his arms. The heat was so strong on his exposed skin that Joshua thought it might burst spontaneously into flame. With no choice but to endure and wait, Joshua covered his face with his T-shirt to try to filter the abrasive air and put his head down. The snapping bite of the fire as it consumed everything around him filled his ears and brought to his mind horrible images of a slavering, insatiable beast whose mouth was a gaping, fiery furnace, its breath a volcanic blast that sucked instead of repelled.
Then he heard another sound, and his heartbeat leapt at the throp-throp of a helicopter’s blades. He twisted to peer through squinting, streaming eyes up at the sky, praying the aircraft would see them. He tried to call out, but his voice was lost in the roaring of the beast and whine of the rotors, and though he could hear the helicopter, he could see nothing but a thick swirling layer of smoke that would surely block any view downward as well, and he had no choice but to bury his face again in the hot remnants of the grass. The oncoming flames had burned to within ten feet of them when they met suddenly with a shortage of fuel at the burn line. Joshua felt more than heard a pounding of hooves and chanced a tentative glance up. In this eye of the storm several deer had taken refuge, and they stared with terrified eyes at the flames all around them for a moment before the pursuing flames flickered out, and then they bounded back toward an open space between the shrubbery, leaping yards at each prance with acrobatic grace. Joshua watched them disappear into a haze of smoke and felt an overwhelming sense of relief and gratitude that his actions may have helped, at least, the deer. And with a strange calm, or perhaps it was a euphoria brought on by smoke inhalation, he felt an overwhelming gratitude for his life, for the beauty he had seen, for those whom he had loved, and he was surprised to find that instead of being afraid to die, he was thankful to have lived. In the fleeting second before he shut his eyes again, the smoke that closed in behind the animals seemed to swirl into the shape of a huge bird, wings outstretched, an owl that rose swiftly toward the darkening sky.
Chapter 43
Greer was standing next to Jenny watching the parade when a leaden heaviness filled her so suddenly that she staggered back a step and sank into the chair that Jenny had set out. For five seconds all animation seemed to have been vacuumed from her body, and then it returned with a rush and a palpitating heart. She knew with absolute certainly that something was wrong with Joshua.
Jenny did not notice her friend’s collapse because at the same moment a confrontation had broken out on the street. A group of protesters had moved into the path of the vehicles, effectively blocking their path, and they were shouting angrily, brandishing placards, and a scandalized murmuring rippled over the onlookers.
Jenny went up on tiptoe, trying to see over the teenagers in front of her, and strained to read the words painted on the signs. She could make out COLUMBUS WAS A SLAVE TRADER, and SHAME OF AMERICA. The disrupters seemed to be primarily Native Americans, and many were dressed partially in Native garb, but a few of the two dozen or so protesters were clearly of European decent.
The police moved in quickly, and the protesters sank to the ground and passively resisted arrest. Only one man remained standing, surrounded by the others in a tight group, so that the police had trouble reaching him without stepping on his companions. Now that the crowd’s attention was riveted on the confrontation and the confused marching band had stopped playing, Jenny could clearly hear what the lone speaker was shouting.
“Your actions will be your destruction! A country that celebrates a lie is nothing but a lie itself! Columbus killed more people than Hitler, and yet you have a day to honor him! This is an atrocity!” The crowd began to boo and catcall in defensive anger.
The police were forcing their way through the circle of protesters. Though the seated people shuffled together more tightly to hinder their movements, the local authorities seemed intent on removing this discordant note from their carefully planned day of national pride and they struggled on.
Someone in the crowd behind Jenny shouted, “What’s going on?”
Without taking her eyes off the spectacle in the street, Jenny called back, “It’s R.J. River! He’s protesting the fact that we’re celebrating a genocidal slave trader that we have mistakenly elevated to godlike status. Is that wrong, you think?” Jenny asked, her voice dripping with sarcasm. She turned to Greer, expecting to find a commiserating expression, and was shocked to see her friend slumped in a chair, her face drained of color and life.
Grasping Greer’s arm to help her up, Jenny gasped, “Greer, what’s wrong?”
A faint, brave smile fluttered over her friend’s face and she whispered, “Joshua. He’s in danger,” as tears filled her eyes.
“What? How do you know?” Before the question was out, Jenny could have kicked herself. It was unthinkable that Greer would not know if someone she loved was in peril.
But before any more words could be spoken, the air was rent with the piercing sound of a siren at close range. Both women raised protective hands to their ears and turned to see the fire trucks, lights spinning, sirens blaring, starting to inch forward. The police officers halted their efforts to move in on R.J. and looked up inquisitively at the firemen on the truck. One of them was leaning from the window, gesturing to his walkie-talkie. The message was clear: They had been called out.
Without another word or effort, the protesters stood and cleared quickly to one side, the police opened the barricades to a cross street, and the crowd parted as cooperatively as though it had been rehearsed that way, and as soon as the huge red engines had cleared the tight spaces, they accelerated powerfully away, leaving a ringing silence and shocked crowd in their wake.
Everyone started talking at once. The police returned to the demonstrators, who stood patiently waiting to receive the recriminations and fines that they had obviously accepted would be the outcome of their actions.
But Jenny was focused only on Greer. She helped her friend into the coolness of the shop and led her to a group of armchairs.
“It’s begun,” Greer said faintly as she sank into one of the chairs.
“What has?” Jenny asked, confused.
“The fires. There will be two today.”
Jenny bit her lip but was unable to repress the question that she was trying to restrain. “Is that why Joshua is in danger?”
Greer closed her eyes and took a deep breath. “I don’t know,” she said at last. “I only know that he’s in danger, and I don’t know. . . .” She pressed her hands to her mouth.
“Come on,
don’t cry,” said Jenny with her usual forceful determination. “We’ve got to focus on what we can do to help.”
The door opened and Jenny looked up, annoyed at the interruption, but her irritation vanished when she saw Leah, who had frozen at the sight of the unexpected tableau.
“Bingo!” Jenny said. “Leah, have you got a cell phone number for Weston?”
Leah spoke hesitantly, completely thrown by the possible relevance of the request. “Uh, yeah.”
“Call it,” Jenny ordered. “You said he was flying observation today, right? We need to know where this fire is, and what’s going on.”
“I know where it is,” Greer said, looking up. “I know where both fires are, though they may have joined together by now.”
Both of the other women stared at her without comment, waiting for any further revelations.
When no more were forthcoming, Leah said slowly, “Let me get this straight. You knew that fires were going to be set today—assuming they were set, which seems likely since the fire department just left the parade with their sirens on—and where, and you didn’t tell anyone?”
Greer smiled mirthlessly at her. “Who would have believed me?” she asked sadly. “And I could have been wrong. I sometimes am, you know. I hoped I was this time. . . .”
Jenny spoke with a falsely cheerful voice. “Then maybe you’re wrong about Joshua being in danger.”
The look in Greer’s eyes as she turned to her smashed any hopes that Jenny might have had into a powdered mass.
Without another word, Jenny spun and headed to the counter, where she snatched up her keys. “I’m locking up,” she said. “Let’s go.”
Chapter 44
The big water truck’s air brakes hissed like a cornered snake as Sheldon slowed to make the sharp turn onto the shortcut that would bring him out at the holding area set up by the incident commander for the latest brush fire. His window was down, and the hot wind caught him so forcibly in the side of the face that he had to squint and turn away from the brunt of it.
Next to him Tyler sat holding the detailed emergency services map with one finger pressed on their destination so fixedly that his hand seemed to be glued in place. Sheldon smiled at the thought of the boy’s efforts to help him; he’d been determined to learn to navigate, and for an eight-year-old, he was catching on fast. Sheldon worked the gearshift and the sound of the engine dropped into a struggling growl as they started up the low incline. They bumped their way along for two miles before they arrived at the spot that Sheldon had known might give him trouble.
Last winter, southern California had seen the heaviest rainfall in a century. The steep, usually dry rocky hills had been inundated with water that had seeped into cracks and swollen the soil, increasing its weight until the simple force of gravity had brought portions of the hillsides down into the dry canyons and riverbeds, sometimes taking huge trees and boulders with it.
One of these minor landslides had landed near the curve of a creek bed, usually dry but now swollen by the rains into a small but raging river. The mass of rock and mud had diverted the torrent into another low area, and the rerouted river had pounded against the base of this road until, at about three a.m. on a black, dripping night, it had given out, dumping a large curving section of the entire road—asphalt, shoulder, double yellow lines, and all—into the cold rush of the storm.
The lone home owner in the area had heard the crash and gone out to investigate, narrowly avoiding tumbling headlong into the liquid void. In the indeterminate blackness, the asphalt and the void were almost impossible to distinguish, which meant that anyone driving along would not have seen the jagged end of the road until they were head down in cold, angry water. He had set up flares and used his trash cans to create a barrier, and because of his efforts, no one had died that night. Not there.
Since then, the county had come and commandeered a portion of the Good Samaritan’s land and bulldozed a large, U-shaped temporary road around the bite-shaped loss of pavement. That was nine months ago, and there had been no further effort to repair or improve the shoddily created bypass. Instead, those months had left it pitted and rough, far worse for wear. Sheldon came to a stop and leaned out his window, surveying the ruts and potholes for the landmines that they were to his truck, which was fully loaded with almost four thousand gallons of city water on its way to fight a fire in an area with no services.
“How does it look, Grampa?” Tyler asked anxiously, biting his lower lip.
“Oh, not too bad,” Sheldon lied. He was trying to judge the distance between his tires and plot a route that would spare his suspension. One particular rut looked at least the depth of his tires. But just off to one side of the road, the underbrush was fairly flat and he couldn’t see any major obstructions. If he could get one line of tires safely on that . . .
Sheldon sighed. It was go for it, or go back and drive over twenty minutes around. He knew what twenty minutes could mean to fighting this kind of fire. He also got paid by the load, unless there was waiting time at the site, and the quicker he dropped this one and went back for another, the more profitable his day would be.
“Okay, we’re gonna take it slow. Sit down, boy,” Sheldon ordered and stomped the clutch to the floorboard as he jockeyed the lever into low gear.
The big truck rumbled forward, lurched to the right as the wheels hit a large hole, straightened, and then shifted again as the back wheel dropped into the same hole. Sheldon turned hard and lined up the left wheels off the side of the road on the shrubbery. It was about two feet high, and spikes of dried California sunflower wavered in the gusting wind. They had moved almost halfway along and Sheldon was starting the wide turn that would place both axles firmly on the asphalt road up ahead when his left front tires hit an unseen gully in the shrubbery. The truck tilted left, and he tried to adjust by angling the tires to the right, but even as he made the motion, he heard the nauseating crunch of metal on rock and then a thick snap.
The truck ceased to move forward. Sheldon carefully tried to apply the gas, but the grating crunching that met his efforts made him grit his teeth. He set the parking brake, knocked the gearshift into neutral, and with a quick order to Tyler to stay put, climbed down to survey the situation.
It wasn’t good. The front axle of the truck was jammed up over a half-buried boulder that he might have cleared if it hadn’t been for the foot-and-a-half-deep hole next to it that had been hidden under the tight shrubbery. Sheldon cursed softly as he lay on his back on the burr-ridden shrubs and slid under until he could better make out where the two surfaces that were never meant to meet had done battle.
The boulder had won. The axle was bent, twisted up—not much, just a few inches—but the weight of the water and the engine as the truck wheel had dropped into the hole had been its demise. Backing off it would only do further damage.
Sheldon wiggled his way back out and pulled his cell phone from its case on his belt. No service. Damn.
He looked both up and down the road, though he couldn’t see very far in either direction because of the curves. He knew that he wasn’t far from the fires as the crow flies; in fact, now that he was immobile, the smoke seemed ominously close. He climbed back up into the cab and cut the engine.
“What’s wrong?” Tyler asked.
“Bent an axle. We’re gonna have to wait until somebody comes along; then the county will send a tow truck to get us out. We’ll use the tow truck’s radio to let ’em know we won’t be working anymore today.”
Tyler’s face was taut with concern. “Are we gonna be okay, Grampa?”
Sheldon nodded slightly. “We’re gonna be fine. Hot, but fine.”
“What about the truck?” In his short time with his grandfather, Tyler had come to understand that it was the truck that provided work, and everything they had. He had come, in his less-than-a-decade’s existence, to the conclusion that the truck was a living thing, that they needed it to be somebody, to be safe.
“He’ll be out o
f commission for a few days, but we’ll get him fixed, don’t worry.”
“But, Grampa . . .”
“Tyler, not now,” Sheldon snapped at the boy. He was worried enough as it was, and the boy’s anxiety was only multiplying his own. Tyler sat back quickly, cowering against the seat. Sheldon stole a glance at him and wondered again if it had been a mistake to take him on.
But what had been the option? His own son, Tyler’s father, had died drunk driving at twenty-three, and too many nights Sheldon had stopped by to check on Tyler only to find his mother passed out or not even there, and the boy, alone, hungry, filthy, uncared for. And his sister . . .
Sheldon shuddered, trying to shake loose the huge, steel hook that pierced his heart and yanked ruthlessly every time he was unable to block the memory of the baby girl’s face. Better not to think of her.
No, thought Sheldon. Tyler’s only got me, and I’m gonna be here until he can go it alone.
There is no one else.
Chapter 45
Simon had always suspected he would go to hell, so he was improbably composed when a landscape of colorless destruction swam into a consciousness permeated with pain. He was thirsty beyond anything he could imagine, the ground was ashen gray and hot to the touch, and the hot air scratched his throat as he tried hopelessly to raise his head. A wave of nausea racked his body and he vomited the slight contents of his stomach onto the ground.
Wiping his mouth with the back of his forearm, his head cleared enough to look around, though it pained him to open his eyes or turn his head. “Simon?”
Confused, Simon rolled agonizingly onto his side and looked up at the figure that had spoken his name. He had always imagined that he would be alone in this eternity of suffering; his head swam thickly as he tried to assess this new concept of a roommate in hell.
“Simon, can you stand?” It looked like Joshua. Why is he here? This was wrong, certainly. Nice white guys go to nice white heaven, right? Years of early Catholic dogma slogged through the mud that was Simon’s befuddled brain. Was this some kind of trick?
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