The Big Burn

by Jeanette Ingold

  "Well, once you get some rest you better get word down. Meanwhile, I'll have a couple of my fellows take your friend into Wallace." He looked around. "Volunteers?" His gaze rested on Jarrett's friend, Elway. "How about it?" he said. "You know as much as anyone about caring for injuries."

  Elway nodded. "Sure, we'll go," he said. "Logan here, and me." He turned to Jarrett. "That is, if you're willing?"

  "Sure," Jarrett said. "Why not?"

  "Thanks, then," the crew boss said. "And you better check in at headquarters before returning. They may want to send you on someplace else."

  Jarrett rolled up his blanket, wrinkling his nose at a new, scorched, sweet stink that underlay the smoke. It reminded him of burned hair and meat dropped into a fire. And of how a boot smells when you get it too close to a campfire.

  "Smells like the fires trapped some animals," he said. Elway shot him a quick look, and one of the newcomers snorted.

  No, not the man, Jarrett thought But as soon as he thought it, he knew it was so.

  Fearfully, and unable to stop himself, Jarrett went over to look.

  Benny was a white man. Jarrett could tell that from some of the skin showing where his shirt had been torn away. But Benny's face—under its coat of soot, one side was bright red and blistered. And his chest was burned black as the base of a pine tree hit by fire time and again. That was the worst of him, worse than how his leg was swollen around the top of the boot that the crew boss was carefully cutting away.

  But not much worse than the soft keening coming from someplace deep inside him as he drifted in and out of consciousness.

  Elway came up, and Jarrett heard him catch his breath. "God," he said. "I wasn't expecting...Jarrett, I'm sorry."

  "Elway," the crew boss said, "you want to give me a hand cleaning out this ax cut?"

  Jarrett slipped off behind some bushes, where he vomited until it felt like his whole insides might rip out. Then he got water and rinsed his mouth and washed his hands.

  And then he went back to Elway and the crew boss and Benny. "What can I do to help?" he asked.

  ***

  With the injured man on a pole-and-blanket stretcher suspended between the back end of one mule and the front of another, Jarrett and Elway headed down the mountain to the tiny Graham Creek train station. A man detailed to return the animals to camp walked at the lead mule's head, while the two of them walked beside Benny, trying to protect him from branches and bad jolts.

  Long before the walk ended, Benny lost consciousness again, which seemed a blessing. And they reached the station just as one of the infrequent trains pulled in. A conductor helped them turn the stretcher blankets into a pallet at one end of the passenger car, and they settled back for the trip to Wallace.

  Almost at once Jarrett began trembling, and cold shakes racked his whole body.

  Elway pulled a whiskey flask from a pocket and held it out. "This will make you feel some better," he said. "Just go real easy. Benny's going to need us both."

  ***

  Sometime later, after they'd stanched fresh bleeding from Benny's foot and again changed the cloths covering his bums, Jarrett asked, "Elway, is he going to live?"

  "Maybe," Elway said. "There's not that much of him burned, bad as he looks, and the wound's not deep as it could have been."

  "But his face won't ever look right, will it?"

  "No. And I don't know how much eyesight he'll have."

  ***

  A lot later, watching Benny's chest go up and down, which seemed a miracle in itself, Jarrett said, "I didn't imagine this, when I set out to fight fires."

  "Course not," Elway said. "Anyway, why did you set out?"

  "Lots of reasons. The most immediate one being I got fired from the railroad." Jarrett went on to tell about the disaster of his one day working as a spotter.

  Elway chuckled. "Sounds like my first job," he said. "I'd just started sheep tending when I saw a coyote make off with a lamb. Tracked it all the way to its den and got rid of it and its pups, and then came back and found my two hundred ewes and lambs scattered halfway to creation. I got fired, too. Part of growing up, I guess.

  "Hey," he said. "It just dawned on me, we got us a night or two in Wallace. Not exactly the biggest place, but..."

  He eyed Jarrett uncertainly. "Though, maybe instead of carousing around, you'll want to look up your brother."

  "I should," Jarrett said. "I owe him an apology for acting like I knew a lot more than I did."

  "And weren't you telling me something about a young lady?"

  "Lizbeth. I doubt I'll get to see her. She and her aunt live on a homestead pretty far out."

  "They may be in town," Elway said. "It wouldn't surprise me if a number of homestead families didn't evacuate the backcountry till the fire danger's past."

  "You don't know Lizbeth and her aunt."

  "And you know 'em pretty well?"

  "No. I just met them once, but Lizbeth told me all about how things are with them. She got me thinking about how different people want different things from this country."

  Elway shook his head. "Girls do that, talk everything to death and then expect you to think about what they said. That's the reason I ain't never married. All that thinking females require makes my head ache."

  They shared a quiet laugh at that, and then Benny groaned and their laughter drained away. Elway opened a canteen and dribbled a little water in Benny's mouth. "I don't want him to choke," Elway said, "but he's got to be thirsty."

  Jarrett said, "I keep wondering if Benny would be alive if I'd been the one with him when he fell in that fire. I don't know if I would have gone in after him. And even if I had, I don't know if I'd have figured how to bring him out of the woods the way those men did."

  "I think you would have," Elway said. "Look how you've handled all you had to today. You've seen what was needed and done it, and can't nobody do more than that"

  ***

  The Wallace stationmaster called for an ambulance, and Elway and Jarrett helped a hospital attendant transfer Benny to the horse-drawn conveyance. "No need for you to ride along," the attendant said. "Looks like you got him here as good as could be expected."

  "That's it?" Jarrett asked Elway once the ambulance had driven away. "What do we do next? Let headquarters know he's here?"

  "I reckon," Elway said. "And then I'm planning to look me up some folks and put in a night to remember." Again he eyed Jarrett uncertainly. "You're welcome to come along..."

  "Thanks anyway," Jarrett said. "I can keep busy. And I'll make the headquarters report I'll say you'll stop by tomorrow."

  "Not too early tomorrow!" Elway said.

  "Not too early," Jarrett agreed.

  Wallace

  August 14, Night

  The downtown stores were dark except for two-storied buildings where people lived in upstairs rooms. An electric light shone in the Forest Service office, though. Inside, Jarrett found a dispatcher working the telephone switchboard and Mr. Polson going through papers at his desk.

  Jarrett made his report, doing his best to answer Mr. Polson's concerns. "Elway, the guy I was with, thinks Benny will be all right."

  "I hope so," Mr. Polson said. "I'm afraid that if this fire season doesn't end soon, we're going to see more and more men hurt because they're too tired to take care of themselves." He rubbed his face. "And you? You ready to go out again?"

  "Any time," Jarrett answered, though it was a lie. He just knew he'd go, whether he was ready or not. "But I'd like to wait and go with Elway, if that would be okay. He'll be coming by tomorrow, and we've kind of partnered up."

  "That's Elway Jorgenson?" Mr. Polson asked. He chuckled. "A good firefighter," he said. "And a hard drinker. Well, we'll see. Why don't you check in here around midmorning?" He started to return to his paperwork but then looked up again when Jarrett didn't leave. "Anything else?"

  "I was just thinking that if you could give me till noon or so, I'd have time to hike down to the Cool Spring Station and
see my brother."

  "Samuel's not there," Mr. Polson said. "We've been sending him straight from one job to another, and the current one's likely to keep him away for a couple more days. You can leave a message here for him, if you want Which reminds me..." He pulled papers off a spindle until he got down to a folded sheet with Jarrett's name on it "He left one for you."

  Jarrett read, Mrs. Whitcomb and her niece asked us to a church picnic in the town park Sunday, August 14. I doubt I'll make it, but if you want, go on.

  That was today, Jarrett thought He'd missed it by just hours.

  Mr. Polson, who apparently knew what was in the note, looked sympathetic. "It probably got canceled, anyway," he said. "With so many of Wallace's men out fighting the hill fires, not much social's been going on."

  ***

  Jarrett, once he was outside, considered where to go next. Mr. Polson hadn't mentioned putting him up for the night, and it was too late to hike to the ranger station—and no reason to go there anyway, with Samuel away.

  Probably Mr. Polson had expected Jarrett would get a bed in a Wallace hotel, but Jarrett hadn't been paid yet for his Graham Creek work and didn't have money for more than a day or two's food. He ended up wandering until he reached the town park, where he spread his bedroll under a tree and stretched out. If the deserted park held any hint of an earlier picnic, he didn't see it.

  He was almost asleep when it occurred to him that if Lizbeth and Celia had come to town, they might have chosen to sleep over rather than drive back to their place at night. Probably they'd stay at that boardinghouse Lizbeth had mentioned, in one of the steep hillside neighborhoods directly above the downtown's southern edge. He wished he knew an address or at least which street it was on.

  Maybe, come morning, he'd just go walk around up there, on the off chance...

  ***

  He woke up at dawn to the sounds of many feet passing by, and the creaks of freight wagons, and shouted orders. A sheriff's deputy was looking down at him. "Gonna have to ask you to move, son," he said. "The army's taking over the park."

  Wallace

  August 15, Morning

  As Lizbeth walked to the Forest Service office, she heard fire stories being told all around her. People talked about narrow escapes and burned timber. About how Wallace was threatened or how it wasn't. Of how, if Wallace was to burn, the fire would probably come from Placer Creek. Or it wouldn't.

  Some said that things would be okay now that the soldiers had come to help. Others maintained that two companies of men was a spit in the bucket, and who was the government trying to fool?

  Across the street from Lizbeth, blackened tatters of fabric flapped above a store window. An ash-coated stick fell from the sky and landed at her feet. Probably one like it, only still glowing from whatever forest fire it had floated in from, had turned the store's awning to burned ribbons.

  Periodically, loud booms reverberated from nearby hills, and men close by her were arguing about whether the city was wasting its money paying for the blasting. "Dynamite ain't gonna shake rain loose where there ain't no clouds to shake it from," one said.

  "The dynamiter gave his guarantee," another argued. "Anyway, you got a better idea?"

  Lizbeth bit her lips. She, for one, didn't, although she thought the whole idea of exploding rain was silly.

  She was about to enter the Forest Service office when she heard her name called. Spinning around, she saw Jarrett.

  "What are you doing here?" she asked. "I looked for you yesterday. The picnic got canceled, but Mrs. Marston—that's my landlady at the boardinghouse where Cel and I stay in the winter—said I might invite you back there."

  "I didn't get in until late last evening," Jarrett said. "Look, I've got to check in here, but then..."

  ***

  Inside, there was enough going on that no one had time for them for several minutes. Then, finally, a man that Jarrett introduced as Mr. Polson came over. "So," he said to Jarrett, with a quick smile, "you found her."

  Lizbeth darted a glance Jarrett's way. So he was looking for me, too!

  "You can take the rest of today off," Mr. Polson told Jarrett, "but be back here first thing in the morning. I'm going to send you down to the St. Joe with some equipment we're getting repaired."

  "I'm not going back on a fireline?" Jarrett asked.

  "Oh, there's enough burning down there—they'll need you one place or another. I wouldn't be sending you out by yourself except we're so short handed, and Elway told me you can find your way through a forest good as anybody."

  "Elway was here already?" Jarrett asked. Lizbeth thought he sounded surprised.

  "I tracked him down," Mr. Polson answered. "We had a crew put together but no one to guide it, so I sent him along."

  "Elway and I were kind of a team."

  "So he said," Mr. Polson replied. "He said to tell you good luck and to remember what he told you. Guess you know what it was?" When Jarrett didn't offer an explanation, he continued, "Well, I guess that's that. You've got until tomorrow morning, seven A.M., to report back here." He nodded at Lizbeth—"Nice to meet you, young lady"—and started to turn away.

  "Excuse me," Lizbeth said, "but I'd like to know about the fire situation in the Placer Creek area. My aunt and I have a homestead up one of the smaller gulches."

  "I don't know what to tell you," Mr. Polson said. "Several fires are burning in there, but at the moment we've got the upper hand on most. And one of those companies of soldiers that just got here is likely to be sent in to help."

  "Where are the rest of the soldiers going?" Jarrett asked.

  "Probably Avery. The situation down there is getting more serious by the day." Mr. Polson paused. "Didn't you say that's your home?"

  "My father lives there," Jarrett answered, "but I don't, anymore."

  ***

  "That's something I meant to ask you about," Lizbeth said, once they were outside again. "Just where do you live?"

  "Wherever the Forest Service sends me," Jarrett said.

  "And when the fire season is over?"

  "I don't know. Right now, it doesn't feel like it ever will be." He kicked a rock so hard it spun across the street. "Once, just once, I'd like to see a fire stopped in its tracks." He broke off. "You don't need to hear that. What have you been doing?"

  "Besides worrying about fires?" she asked.

  They wandered slowly, turning down one side street and then another. She told him about visiting the ranger station and about how Samuel and her aunt had gotten along so well. "It was your brother's scrapbooks that did it," Lizbeth said. "All those lovely drawings, and Cel..."

  Lizbeth realized Jarrett wasn't listening. His attention had focused on a trio of men slouching in the open doorway of a warehouse. When one of them turned and looked toward them, Lizbeth felt Jarrett tense. He took her elbow and said, "Let's go another way."

  Wallace

  August 15, Afternoon

  "You got two hours," Sarge told Seth and Abel. "Get going."

  Their outfit had pulled into Wallace about 5 A.M., after spending the better part of three days and nights riding trains. They'd marched to a park, made camp there, and now the men were being given time to see the city they'd come to protect.

  "Ain't Atlanta," Abel said as he and Seth investigated the downtown.

  "That where you from?" Seth asked. "You never said."

  "Near enough. You?"

  "Mississippi. A small place."

  Abel asked, "How come you didn't live where your father was stationed?"

  "Never worked out to, I guess," Seth answered. "He was out of the country some. Besides, there was a lot of us kids, and where we lived, Mama had my two grandmamas to help rear us up."

  "That why you join the army, to get out from three women bossing you?"

  "No. I just wanted to," Seth said. "How come you did?"

  "Better than jail," Abel answered, in a tone that gave no hint whether he was joking. "Hey, ain't that Sarge and his buddies heading th
is way? Let's go, before they see us and think of some reason to send us back to camp."

  He and Seth turned up a street with vacant lots and then warehouses farther on. Smoke made everything look blurry the same way fog would have.

  Seth didn't like the smoke. It made him feel uneasy.

  Back at American Lake, once he'd got over being angry about the latrine ditch, he'd almost eagerly latched on to the idea of fighting fires. He'd thought it would be the kind of hard, stick-to-it battle he could shine at, and it wouldn't be a practice battle either.

  But he hadn't expected things to start out like this, with an enemy he could feel and smell but not see.

  "Abel," he said, "you scared at all? Of the fires?"

  "Scared!" Abel said. "I can hardly wait! I saw a big fire once, city blocks burning, people going crazy."

  "You liked that?" Seth thought he must be misunderstanding. "Why?" he asked as Abel hushed him.

  Nodding toward three threatening-looking men moving in on a young couple down the street, Abel said, "Look yonder. I'd guess that white boy's about to meet trouble."

  Wallace

  August 15, Afternoon

  "Why are we turning back?" Lizbeth asked.

  Jarrett answered, "I think we ought to go where there's more people."

  From behind them came the shout, "Hey! Ain't that the ranger's little brother?"

  Lizbeth felt Jarrett's grip tighten as he hurried her along.

  Running footsteps closed in and the same voice, right behind them now, called, "It is him!"

  Lizbeth glanced over her shoulder and saw that all three men had come within a few feet. The nearest, a man with a scar and one crossed eye, sidled close to Jarrett. "You hear Tully and me spent a night in jail because of your brother? That weren't nice of him, sending us to jail over nothing."

  Jarrett's face went taut with anger, but he glanced at Lizbeth and didn't say anything.

  "No, it made Tully right mad," the man went on, matching his walk to theirs. "Say, you seen your brother's place lately?"Cause Tully was saying how pretty a ranger station would look all done up in orange."