Rancher Daddy

by Lexi Whitlow

  The family photos. I go to the library, piling photo albums into my arms; it’s a century or more of collected memory that I can’t allow to burn. I see the journals I read so many months ago, pulling them down roughly from the shelves. I pull photographs of Cam’s father from the walls. I throw his parents wedding pictures onto the pile. I toss all this onto the rug in the middle of the room as it fills with tendrils of smoke seeping through closed windows and under door frames.

  The cellar door is in the foyer in front of the stairs. I lift the heavy thing, dragging the rug piled heaping with treasures down with me, descending into the darkness.

  I go back up for towels.

  Outside the windows all I can see are flames. I feel the heat pressing in.

  I throw an armload of towels into the sink, soaking them with water.

  Glass shatters in the windows around me. The house creeks from its outer walls in. Billowing smoke rolls inside, flooding the lower floor, surrounding me in a black shadow of choking poison. I dive into the cellar, my arms full of wet towels, and I pull the door closed tight behind me.

  As the fire builds above. I lay wet towels over the rolled rug containing the Davis family history. Then I find a corner in the back of the inky black space to tuck into, wrapping myself in cold wet towels to ride out whatever is next. Above my head I hear the fire build and rage. It becomes a thundering inferno overhead, roaring like a volcano. I hear walls collapsing, glass shattering. The wind howls. The space I occupy becomes super-heated, filled with smoke. I bury my head beneath a soaked towel, heaving for breath, suffocating in the dark.

  The last lucid thought that passes through my conscious mind is, I never should have left. I love him. He loves me. That’s all there is. That’s all that ever mattered.

  I’m so sorry.

  God, I hope the horses made it out.

  Chapter 25

  Camden

  “It’s bad,” Amanda say, her voice breaking on the speakerphone. “It was a wall of fire. It came so quick. It spread down the mountain like a flood. I don’t know where Grace is. The call dropped, and I couldn’t get her back.”

  Amanda is crying. She’s almost hysterical, but she’s safe.

  I know Grace isn’t at the ranch. Mom called me this evening. Grace is gone.

  At least she’s safe.

  When Amanda called with the first word of the fires blowing up, Tyler and I dropped the horse trailer at the Hux ranch and turned around. That was at eight o’clock. It’s three in the morning now. We’re an hour and a half south of Missoula.

  “What are you hearing?” Tyler asks. “Any word on the damage around Kicking Horse?”

  “Nothing.” Amanda says. “The fire is burning south toward Macdonald Lake. But that’s all we’ve heard. They’ve evacuated everything from Ronan south to Allison Road.”

  None of this sounds good. Grace left. The animals would have been put up before nightfall. No one was on the ranch. If the fire came through, it’s a total loss. Twenty years of carefully cultivated bloodlines, the best in the whole region… gone.

  It’s hard to wrap my head around the idea.

  “It’ll be okay,” Tyler tries to reassure me. “For sure Grace turned the horses out before she got out.”

  I draw in a breath. “Grace wasn’t there,” I say, my voice a dull monotone. “Grace left. She was hours away before the fire came down. There was no one on the ranch.”

  Tyler goes quiet. He knows what I know. Decades of effort; my father’s, my own, his, have burned up in the fire. Thirty of the most precious, beautiful creatures on God’s green earth, slow roasted, terrified as they saw their demise coming, helpless to escape it.

  Coming into St. Ignatius, the valley air is dense and dark, lit only by orange flame creeping up the mountains and down into the flat plain of the valley floor. Wildfires burn hot, east of us, skirting up and down the slopes. Smoke drifts due west, settling low.

  We encounter emergency vehicles going both ways, but we keep our tenor north.

  “Maybe it’s okay.” Tyler says, seeing the smoldering devastation ahead of us as we turn east.

  It’s not okay, and I know it. I feel it in my gut.

  A third of the way down Mollman Pass Trail, my gut feeling is confirmed. The landscape is reduced to a smoldering waste. There’s not a tree standing that hasn’t been rendered to char.

  “Jesus,” Tyler utters, creeping the truck through the smoking, burnt-over roadway. The landscape is still hot.

  The turn-off to our house at Kicking Horse is unrecognizable. The fencing is gone, laid waste to the flames. The row of trees my grandfather planted along the lane are mere poles sticking up from a gray field of ash.

  I feel my heart break in my chest.

  The house is gone. The stables are gone. The barn is a pile of timber ash. The only thing remaining that’s recognizable is foundation stone and chimney.

  My entire spread is nothing more than a pile of smoking rubble ensconced in a gray, pre-dawn cloud.

  Then I see the thing I had no idea I would see here.

  Sitting near the concrete pad of all that remains of the big stables, is the burned out, grossly charred body of a Honda Civic hatchback.

  “Jesus fucking Christ,” I mutter, stepping out of the truck, moving fast toward the little hull of a car.

  The car is burned beyond description, heaped with ash and blackened, all its windows blown out, sitting in the scorched dirt on smoldering rims

  Tyler follows me. His eyes settle on the vehicle. Then his expression shifts.

  “She was here,” he says. “She was here. Maybe she still is.”

  I look around. If she’s still here, she’s succumbed to the inferno that took this place. The flames have consumed a century of my family’s life and work on this hapless clod of dirt.

  How could she still be here?

  Her car is here. She must be here. No one could have survived this.

  Tyler kicks his way through the still hot debris of the stables.

  “There are no horses here,” he calls out to me, nudging hot coals and black timbers with his boots. “There would be remains. There’s nothing here but burnt wood and metal.”

  I’m in shock. Time slows. I see the light rising in the east, behind the mountain ridges. I see the devastation all around me, but it hardly registers.

  Where is she? Where was she?

  The cellar.

  I move toward the spot where my house once stood. All that’s left now is a foundation with two climbing chimneys. The hanging walls that remain are reduced to charred sticks. The ground surrounding where the house, once green and covered in flowers, is black, littered with smoldering embers and shattered shards of glass. I climb up into the wreckage of what was once the living room. The floor is a blackened plain, piled with ashen refuse.

  The hardwood flooring around the cellar door is singed to charcoal.

  “Help me with this,” I call out to Tyler.

  Together we lift the heavy door, peering down into an inky abyss. The cellar stairs are unburned, completely intact. I descend into the darkness.

  At the bottom of the stairs I spy a rolled-up rug from the library, piled with family photographs, books, and other things from the shelves in the living room and my office. It’s a cache of family heirlooms dragged down here in a hurry, draped in damp towels to protect them from the flames.

  She did this.

  “What do you see?” Tyler calls down. “Anything down there?

  I find her curled up between foundation pillars, her head wrapped in a wet towel, her skin the color of ash, black soot clinging to her eyes, nose, and mouth.

  “Oh, God. Please. Please don’t let her die,” I mumble, checking for a pulse.

  She’s alive; barely breathing, her pulse is fast and faint.

  “Camden! Talk to me!” Tyler calls out from above.

  “She’s here!” I shout back.

  I scoop her into my arms, lifting her. She’s dead weight on my
shoulders, as limp as a ragdoll. I haul her up the cellar stairs into the rising light of early morning, rushing her to the truck as Tyler trails me.

  “Head toward Ronan,” I say, climbing in with Grace’s crumpled body in my arms. “As fast as you can get there.”

  I dial 911 while Tyler drives, the charred, burnt-over landscape falling behind us, the air still dense with smoke.

  “She’s not conscious,” I tell the dispatcher after giving her the particulars. “Breathing shallow. She was in the cellar of a house that burned in the fires. She’s been down there for hours.”

  The dispatcher tells me to take her to the fire department in Ronan, and she’ll have an ambulance meet us as soon as possible.

  “Every crew is out,” she says. “We’re stretched thin. We’ve getting support from Missoula, but all our resources are out on calls. Keep her prone and warm, head low. If she stops breathing, administer mouth-to-mouth. There might be someone at the fire department who can help you. If there’s no one there, look for an oxygen tank and mask. Administer oxygen if you can. Keep her airway clear.”

  There’s no one at the fire department, but the building is open. I haul Grace inside, laying her out on a cot the volunteer firemen use. Tyler looks for oxygen while I cover her with blankets, checking her pulse again. It’s fast and so weak I can hardly feel it in her wrist. It’s stronger in her neck, but seems irregular.

  “Here,” Tyler says, returning with his find. He slips a small plastic cone over Grace’s nose and mouth, turning the valve on the metal tank up to a hundred percent. “She’ll be okay. She’s safe now.”

  God. Please. Please.

  I find a washcloth and towel and begin clearing the soot from Grace’s face while Tyler paces, talking on the phone with Amanda. The grime covering her from head to toe is thick and sticky, and I know that this same oily scum is inside her lungs, suffocating her slowly.

  She came back. She came back to save the horses. She risked her life for my ranch.

  Her skin is damp and cool to the touch, ashen in color. I pinch her fingers; she has no response.

  “C’mon baby, please wake up,” I beg, stroking her matted, soot blackened hair.

  My pleadings go unanswered. Ten minutes later, though it seems much longer, an EMT crew arrives and starts working on her, calling in her condition to the ER in Missoula.

  “…approximately twenty-year-old female… 115 bpm and tachy… can’t get a bp… no other obvious injuries… unresponsive… normal reflexes… normal neurological… acute hypoxia with likely high CO2 exposure… lungs are full, likely edema… no obvious burns…”

  Half of what he says I can’t understand and the rest sounds bad.

  One of the EMTs looks up at me. “You said she was in the cellar of a house. Was it burned? Was there heat down there?”

  I don’t know what to tell him. “Nothing down there was burned as far as I could tell. It was too dark to see much. But the house above burned hot and fast. There’s nothing left of it.”

  The EMT puts a flashlight into her open mouth, checking for something. Then the same with her nose. He shakes his head.

  “Looks way better than it should.”

  “She had a wet towel over her head,” I say. “That probably helped.”

  A look of understanding crosses his face. “It saved her life,” he says. “She did everything right. Most people try to outrun a wildfire. You can’t. She went to ground. Smart girl.”

  He doesn’t know the half of it.

  They wrap her up, strapping her onto a gurney, then move fast toward the ambulance.

  “Can I go with her?” I ask, following close.

  The EMT nods. “Climb in.”

  I turn to Tyler. “Go to Amanda and Jacob,” I say. “Check on your house. I’ll call you from the hospital as soon as I know anything.”

  He nods. “Okay. I’ll see if I can find our horses.”

  If our horses got out of the stable, then I know they’re fine. We’ll find them.

  “Hug your wife and kid first,” I say. “You never know when—”

  My throat seizes tight, tears threaten to flood my eyes. If I say anymore I’ll tune up and cry like a child, so I hold my words. Tyler knows what I mean. He watches me climb in to the back of the ambulance, his expression grim. I pull the door shut, and from then on focus on Grace laying silent in front of me.

  I slip my hand into hers, squeezing harder than I probably should. I smooth dirty hair away from her face.

  “I love you baby,” I whisper. “Please come back to me. I know what you did. You did good.”

  I’ve never been more exhausted in my life. The combination of anxiety and lack of sleep has me in a haze, so it doesn’t register with me right away when Grace’s head rolls to one side, then the next.

  I blink, trying to think.

  “She’s moving,” I say to the EMT sitting across from me.

  He sees it too. He reaches down to the soft inner flesh of her upper arm and pinches it. Grace winces, her face screwing up.

  “Outstanding,” he says, smiling. “She’s coming up.”

  He checks his monitors. “Heart rate has come down a bit. It’s all good.”

  He peers up at me, an odd smile turning his lip. “We’re about ten minutes out from the hospital. They’re going to need her insurance information when they admit her. Other than emergency care, they can’t treat her without consent of next of kin. They’ll need contact info.”

  I have no idea how to get in touch with Grace’s mother. Everything I had that might have included that info went up in the fire. I don’t even know if she has insurance, but that doesn’t matter. I’ll pay for her care. She’s here because of me and trying to save my stock.

  “I’m next of kin,” I hear myself saying without reservation. “She’s my wife.”

  The EMT nods. “That makes it easier.”

  Once we’re at the hospital everything goes into overdrive. They rush her away, telling me to wait and they’ll update me as soon as they have any information.

  I pull my phone from my hip pocket and call my Mom.

  “I need a favor,” I say, after telling her where I am and why I’m here. “I need you to come here, and bring you and dad’s wedding rings. I need to convince some people here that Grace and I are married.”

  I explain why, and while she doesn’t think it’s an altogether wise idea, she agrees to play along.

  “She came back?” Mom asks. “For the horses? She turned the horses out?”

  “I think so,” I say. “Tyler say’s there was no sign of them in the wreckage of the stables. I didn’t see any signs of ‘em. She managed to save Emma’s baby pictures and the photo albums and some other stuff. She dragged it all down into the cellar with her. That’s where I found her.”

  I swallow hard, feeling a hot lump in my throat.

  “Mom, everything else is gone. There’s nothing left. It’s a total loss.”

  There’s a long pause, then she speaks, her tone low and soothing.

  “Well son, you’re safe. Grace is safe. The rest of it was just buildings and things. Your father always said that either a fire or flood was going to take out the whole spread one day, so we always maintained good insurance. You haven’t dropped the coverage, have you?”

  I smile. “No ma’am. We’re insured to the hilt.”

  “Well then, we’ll rebuild. Bigger and better than ever.”

  That’s my mom, always seeing the upside.

  “I’ll see you in an hour or so,” she says. “I’m going to call Amanda and see if she can watch Emma.”

  I end the call just in time to see a young woman in colorful scrubs approaching, a clipboard in one hand, a pen in the other.

  “Sir, I need you to complete this information for the young woman you came in with. Can you tell me how you know her?”

  “She’s my wife,” I say, looking down at the paperwork.

  She nods. “Complete this and bring it back to me at the desk at
the end of the hall.”

  I decide not to go overboard with my lie. I don’t take the liberty of giving Grace my last name. I do list myself as her next of kin, with ‘husband’ scrawled illegibly above the ‘relationship’ description. I remember her birthday is in October. She just had it a week or so before coming out to stay after the interview. I think it was October twenty-first. I write that, hoping I’m close.

  Ten minutes after I’m finished with the paperwork, another woman in scrubs appears, her expression tinged with apprehension.

  “Are you Mr. Davis?” she asks, regarding me cautiously. “Grace Bradley’s husband?”

  I nod, feeling my heart race, anxiety peaking. “How is she? Is she alright?”

  The woman nods, “I’m Dr. Walsh, the ER attending. We think she’s going to be just fine. She’s stabilized. She’s in and out, a little confused, which is normal with hypoxia. It should pass. She’s asking for you.”

  That surprises me. The doctor motions for me to follow her.

  “And she keeps asking about horses. Does that mean anything to you?”

  “Yeah,” I say. “We ranch. Breed horses. She was there during the wildfire, trying to turn the horses out.”

  “I see,” she says, her face drawing with concern. “Did she succeed?”

  “I don’t know yet,” I say as we turn a corner into a busy open room with lots of patients in beds separated only by thin curtains. “I think so, but, I don’t know.”

  “Well, tell her they’re okay,” the doctor says. “She needs to stay calm. She’s been through a serious event that’s put substantial strain on her heart and lungs, as well as her psyche. Her recovery isn’t going to happen overnight, but it’ll be improved by keeping her stress level low.”

  She shows me to Grace’s bed. She looks like shit. She’s in a hospital gown with wires attached everywhere and a full mask over her mouth and nose, with an IV drip in her arm.

  She’s still covered in grime from the fire, particularly at her hands and neck, as well as matted into her hair.

  “We’ve given her a mild sedative just to calm her anxiety and help her rest. It shouldn’t make her too drowsy. She nods in and out. She should start to become more lucid over the next few hours and days. Right now, she’s not coherent. We’re admitting her to the ICU shortly.”