by JF Freedman
“It’ll be half an hour or less, one way or the other,” she said, a hand sheltering her eyes as she peered at the fire. “We’ll save it, or we won’t,” she told him stoically.
He didn’t reply; none was necessary.
“It’s just the three of us now,” she told him. That was her principal worry—that even if they had enough water, and enough water pressure, two of them fighting this massive inferno might not be enough to hold it off.
Over the past day and a half, Keith and Steven had rounded up the cattle, loading them and the ranch horses into trucks that had been driven to safety in Paso Robles, a hundred miles north. And earlier in the day Juanita had sent Esther, Keith’s wife, into Lompoc, which was out of the fire’s path. Esther had protested, but Juanita had insisted. There was no reason to put a life in danger that didn’t need to be. Before Esther left, they had loaded up her truck with the photo albums, silverware, some of the rare old books, and a few of the special paintings; whatever they could fit in.
Juanita went inside the old house and turned on the battery-powered police radio she’d brought with her from her own place. As she listened, she heard one fire chief tell another, in a dismal tone of voice, that a convict crew was being trucked over to help the forest rangers who were even now on the edge of her property (she could tell from the coordinates he was reciting), trying to cut backfire trenches. Their hangdog inflections told her they weren’t making any progress. The fire was marching right at her.
By now, Andy Cassidy and everyone else would have assumed she had left the ranch. He wouldn’t come by to check up on her again, nor would anyone else. They had to think she was doing the right thing, which was that she wouldn’t put her life on the line for material stuff, regardless of its value.
She still could. When she was gone, all that would be left to signify her time on earth would be a few pounds of ash. Why should a building, or books, old furniture or old paintings, be any different, any more valuable?
There was no logical answer. Only one of continuity, and remembrance.
“We have a few hours before we have to make our decision,” she told Keith suddenly. “You and Steven wait here for me.”
“Where are you going?” he asked her, alarmed. She sidestepped the question. “I’ll be back fast, one way or the other. If it unexpectedly blows up in your face, get out,” she ordered him sternly. “And make sure he goes with you,” she said, pointing over at Steven. “Don’t be heroes,” she admonished them. “It’s highly overrated.”
The inmates on the crew that was trying to set up a firebreak at the crest of the hills that marked the northern boundary of Rancho San Gennaro were tired, sweaty, filthy. They had been working the fire lines for over ten hours without a break, and they were getting mutinous. Although volunteering for this perilous duty was to their benefit—their sentences in the county jail would be shortened—that didn’t mean they should be worked like pack animals. The professional firefighters who had been cutting breaks alongside them had been relieved by a fresh crew two hours ago. Where the hell was their relief?
Their supervisor, a fire department lieutenant who was trained in using convict labor, was as angry as his troops. He didn’t like being out here in this treacherous, isolated location with a bunch of pissed-off jailbirds. Even though the men weren’t violent criminals—they were mostly honor farm detainees serving sentences of less than a year—they were still bad citizens with crappy attitudes and chips on their shoulders. Any slight could tick them off, which was usually the reason they wound up in jail in the first place. Dealing with authority, which was paramount here, was hard for them to handle.
He turned and looked down the hill as the sound of a Honda all-wheel-drive ATV broke through the rumble-noise of the approaching fire. As he and the convict crew stopped working to watch in surprise, the off-road buggy charged up the hill, bouncing off low rocks and scrub brush, and skidding to a stop in front of them.
The rider, who was on the small side, jumped off the bike and approached them. As the rider got closer, he took off his full-visor helmet.
The rider was a woman. An old woman, wearing a silver braid halfway down her back. “Who’s in charge here?” she demanded.
“I am,” the lieutenant said, stepping forward. He was a local man from the valley, so he recognized her immediately. “What in God’s name are you doing up here, Mrs. McCoy?”
“This is my property, Hollis,” she answered. She knew all the firemen by face and name. She threw them a big barbeque on the ranch every year, to thank them for the work they did for the community.
“I know, but weren’t you evacuated already?” he asked. He couldn’t believe this old woman had ridden all the way up here, right to the fire’s edge.
“No, and I’m not going to be,” she said fiercely. She looked at the weary, dirty men. “What are you doing here?”
“Trying to cut a firebreak, so we can save some of your property,” he told her, not concealing the annoyance in his voice. “You shouldn’t be up here, Mrs. McCoy,” he said in irritation. “It’s dangerous as hell. You need to go back down. Immediately.”
She shook her head. “There’s nothing up here worth saving, and that fire looks too strong for you to stop it here anyway. They’ve got you boys on a fool’s errand.”
“No shit,” one of the inmates within hearing distance muttered under his breath.
“Where are your trucks?” she asked the fireman.
“What?”
“Your trucks,” she repeated testily. “You didn’t hike all the way up here. How’d you get here?”
He pointed down the hill, where two Army-style all-wheel-drive convoy trucks were obscured in a low arroyo.
“Get your men and their equipment in those trucks and follow me down the hill,” she ordered him.
He stood there, slack-jawed.
“Come on!” she said loudly, “there’s hardly any time left!”
“I can’t do that,” he stammered. “We have our assignment here.”
“To remind you, here is on my property,” she told him with a steely firmness. “You need to help me on another part of the property. Where you can do some actual good.” She stood in front of him with her fists on her skinny hips. “You don’t want me complaining to Chief Jackson that you wouldn’t help save a California historic landmark when you had the chance, just because some dumb jerk told you to be one place instead of another.”
John Jackson was the county fire chief, the deputy’s boss. Jackson was well-known for not suffering fools gladly, or at all. And Mrs. McCoy was a big cheese around here. Being on the wrong side of the two of them was not a smart idea.
Seeing him still wavering, she promised, “I’ll cover for you if anyone questions it.”
That was good enough for him. If technically breaking orders would appease these men up here, and more importantly, mollify her, he would stand behind that. “Grab your gear and load up!” he yelled to the inmates. “We’re moving out of here.”
Juanita bumped and skidded across the ranch on her ATV, riding it like a half-broken mustang as she sped down the uneven terrain. The inmates sat on the hard truck beds as they lurched after her along the dry broken ground, their backs pressed against the sidewalls for traction, holding on as best they could, cursing a blue streak about the crazy old lady who had bullied their supervisor into allowing them to be recruited for some private purpose of her own as easily as a school principal intimidated a petrified third-grader.
Juanita rode up to the ranch house in a cloud of dust, the trucks following in her wake. “I found us some help!” she yelled at Keith, smiling triumphantly. “Start them bushwhacking as much scrub as they can,” she barked at Hollis. “A few of you, help my foreman set up the pumps.”
The inmates were whipped, but she reenergized them with a zealot’s manic gusto. They could feel the blast-furnace heat of the oncoming fire as they cut a firebreak a hundred yards around the house in all directions, denuding the lan
dscape of every tree, bush, and flowering plant that had grown and flourished there, some for centuries. It’s only trees, Juanita thought as she watched the ragged band of workers decimate the foliage. Wood and leaves, old gnarled roots. It’s going to burn down anyway, and new growth will emerge from the phoenix. But the house is irreplaceable. The fear of losing it animated her to keep her captive crew working.
They stood in a ragged line between the house and the incoming fire. The pumps had been hooked up to the water tank. Juanita stood next to Hollis, intently watching the inexorable onslaught of the fire.
“When do we start the pumps?” she asked him, bouncing nervously from one foot to the other as she fought to keep her emotions under control.
“As late as possible,” he answered calmly, his professional eye trained on the fire. “You’ve got plenty of water, but it’s going to go faster than you realize, with all these pumps pulling at the same time. We don’t want to waste the wet-down, because the heat will dry it out fast, once we start hosing the place down.”
The plan was basic deterrence: they would wait until the last possible moment, then wet down the house and surroundings. If the ground was wet enough, the fire should divert around them. But that didn’t always happen, Hollis had explained. A fire of this intensity could flow right over wet ground, creating its own wind to force it forward, at the same time sucking the ground and the air dry, nullifying their effort and leaving everything in its path scorched, including them.
Hollis would know pretty quickly if that were the case. If that happened, they would have to bail out really fast. He had his trucks lined up on the road that led from the house to the highway, and behind them, the ranch foreman’s truck. If he gave the order, they would abandon the fight and hightail it out of here, no hesitation. Mrs. McCoy had agreed to that before he’d allowed his men to start working. He was in charge now; she had to follow his orders. He wasn’t going to have her death, or anyone’s death, on his hands.
The fire was an eighth of a mile from them. “Start the pumps!” Hollis called out.
All four pumps engaged with a roar of ignition. Three of them would wet the grounds down in a 360-degree circle, making sure every inch of the perimeter was thoroughly doused. The fourth pump had been hoisted to the roof of the house, which would get its own drenching.
Two hundred yards. Closing fast.
“Now!” Hollis yelled.
The pumps unleashed torrents of water in long, powerful arcs. In less than thirty seconds the entire radius for a hundred yards in every direction was soaked, the ground turning to mud, the house dripping water from its eaves. The trucks, too, were wet down, to keep them from exploding if the fire reached them.
“Keep it coming!” Hollis hollered.
The water from the hoses pummeled the ground with the explosive power of a hydroelectric dam. Juanita was rigid with fearful anticipation as she watched the flames coming at them like a huge ocean wave. My God, she thought, this must be what it’s like in Hell, for real. She could feel the intense, expanding heat of the fire—not only from the fire itself, but from the potent wind it was creating, that was blowing sheets of flame toward them. The accompanying smoke was intense, black, churning toxic clouds. The firefighters had stripped down and doused their shirts with water from the hoses, pushing them to their faces as masks against the smoke. The wind blew sideways sheets of water back onto them, soaking them to the skin through their clothing.
Juanita held a soaked towel to her face, her eyes peering over the top, watching the fire coming at them. Even though she was wet to her bones her skin felt dry and brittle, like the desiccation from a fever.
It’s too strong, she thought miserably, her eyes tearing from the smoke and heat. It’s going to overwhelm us. Any second now, Hollis would order them to retreat.
The fire reached the cleared perimeter. For a moment it seemed to hesitate, as if it were a living creature testing unfamiliar and treacherous terrain. The forward flames shot skywards, accompanied by three-hundred-foot-high billows of noxious smoke. The sound from the burning was deafening, a freight train roaring through her ears.
“Keep hosing down the house!” Hollis screamed above the din. “We’re holding it! Son of a bitch, we’re holding it!”
A hundred yards in front of them, the relentless drive of the fire was in momentary suspension. The flames rose higher, as if building energy to leap across the bare, soaked ground and turn whatever was in its path to ash. Then, like the Old Testament Moses parting the Red Sea, it broke.
“Keep it coming! Keep it coming!” Hollis’ voice was hoarse from yelling. He spun to Keith, who was standing on the ladder that climbed up the side of the holding tank. “How much left?”
“Almost half the tank!” Keith yelled back in jubilation.
“Keep it coming!” Hollis cried out yet again.
The flames surged around them like a lava river flowing from an erupting volcano. They stood in the eye of the storm as the fire roared by, devouring everything in its path except Juanita McCoy’s ancestral home.
22
STEVEN WAS MISSING.
It was a couple of hours before Juanita realized he was gone. After the blaze had swept by them, leaving a small island of live vegetation surrounded by a sea of burnt devastation, everyone had been too numb to think clearly. Then Hollis rounded up his work crew (he counted noses to make sure none of them were unaccounted for), and took off to go fight the fire again.
When it was clear that the fire had moved on, Juanita took her dog and went back to her own house to assay the damage. She instructed Keith to go up into the property and make a preliminary estimate of how big a mess the fire had left behind.
Miraculously, her house and the outlying buildings were still standing. In anticipation of such a catastrophe, she’d had Keith cut a quarter-mile-wide swath around the house, stable, and outbuildings at the beginning of the summer. So although the fire had burned right to the edge of the cut, it had been turned away by lack of fuel to burn.
She poured herself a healthy shot of Patron tequila (she rarely drank, but if ever an occasion called for a stiff one, this was it), and said a prayer of thanksgiving. Mother Nature had looked kindly on her today. She felt truly blessed. The smooth agave felt good going down. It calmed her nerves.
She punched in Keith’s cell number. There was a rumbling of static, but the reception was functional enough for them to hear each other. “How is it there?” he asked her.
“Still standing, miraculously,” she told him, raising her voice to be heard over the static. “How about where you are? Where are you, anyway?”
“Up in Indian Ridge Canyon. That fire burnt a hell of a lot of your timber down, Mrs. McCoy. Scorched a damn bit of good pasture, too.”
“That’s all right,” she answered. “It’ll grow back. Nothing that can’t be replaced by time. You didn’t see any loose animals out there, did you?”
“None of ours. Although I’m sure some deer were trapped, unless they crossed Highway 38 and got to ground around the lake that the fire didn’t hit. We won’t know for weeks.” He paused. “God was smiling on us today.”
“I didn’t know you believed in God, Keith.”
“I don’t. But that don’t mean He don’t believe in me.”
She laughed. “Come on back down. You need to go out to Lompoc to collect your wife. I hope your own house made it.”
“Six of one, half a dozen of the other,” he answered stoically. It wasn’t his property. “Esther got out her precious keepsakes. If we have to, we can put up a double-wide until you can build us a new one.”
The static was getting worse. She could barely hear him now. “Drop Steven off here on your way to Lompoc,” she requested, raising her voice so she could be heard. “He can’t leave the property.”
For a moment, there was no sound. She thought the connection had been broken. “Keith?” she asked. “Are you still there?”
He came back on. “I thought Steven wa
s with you.”
Her throat constricted. “No, he isn’t.” A vein started pulsing in her temple. “When was the last time you saw him?”
“I don’t remember,” he answered, the static almost drowning out his voice. “After the fire passed us…I thought.”
Juanita shut her eyes, trying to recall the scene. They had all been celebrating when they realized they had turned away the inferno. She was sure Steven was there with them, whooping and hollering it up with all the rest. It had been so chaotic, and at the same time, so draining.
“He must still be back at the old house,” she said, trying to force conviction into her voice.
“I’ll go back and check,” he told her over the bad connection.
“I’ll meet you there.”
Steven wasn’t there. There was no sign of him anywhere.
Juanita stood in the middle of the gravel driveway. Around her, in every direction, the effects of the fire were devastatingly manifest. All the old grapevines, the fruit trees, the arbors—gone. In a few places, a charred remain of a tree or bush stuck out of the black ground like a wounded sentry standing watch over a bloody battlefield. The ground was still hot—heat waves shimmied in the now-still air. Here and there, an ember glowed on the ruined earth. Tendrils of smoke drifted up from the burning, and the smell of burnt vegetation was heavy in her nostrils.
Keith pulled up in his truck and got out. “Anything?” he asked.
She shook her head. “No.”
“Where do you think…?” He stopped.
“I don’t know. I don’t know what to do about this,” she said.
“He was here with us when the fire passed by,” Keith said. “I remember that clearly.”
“I do, too,” she agreed. She looked around. “So then…” She tailed off.
He put voice to what she had been thinking: “Are you going to call the police?”
“I don’t know,” she replied. “I mean, I don’t know if I want to do that yet.”
Keith spread an arm. “Well, he ain’t here. I guess we should go back to your place and look around there some more.”
