by Lou Cadle
“Where?” asked Chad.
“We’ll get Joey someplace safe,” she said, giving Chad a meaningful look.
Whatever that meaning was, Chad couldn’t guess. “Sure,” he said. “Let’s get going.”
They each took an arm and helped the silent man from the apartment building. There was tension in the arm Chad had, but not like the man was fighting to pull away. His battle seemed to be all internal, the tension coming from him bracing against himself. It was slow going through the slick streets. A clear word floated out from the man’s babble from time to time: “Devil.” “Shut up.” “Mother.”
None of that reassured Chad much. They aimed their charge north and finally made it to a street empty of mud, where a med van was waiting for them. They got their crazy man into the back, and one of the EMTs started trying to coax a doctor’s name from him. The other was on a radio to a hospital, getting a doctor’s orders. Francie and Chad backed out of the rear doors, closed them, and watched the van speed away.
“We’re lucky he didn’t fight us more,” she said.
“What now?” Chad asked.
“Back to the firehouse,” she said. “Didn’t you hear the order on the radio?”
He hadn’t. “Okay. Let’s go.”
Though she must have been as tired as he, they strode quickly through the streets and back toward the firehouse. They had to wade back into the mud for two blocks to get there and, once more, it took careful balance to not fall in the slowly thickening mud. The water was taking its sweet time draining back into the river, but it was going.
When they arrived at the station, the place was chaotic. One fire truck was back, parked aslant in the driveway, mud splashed halfway up its sides. Firefighters congregated in small groups, murmuring together. Some rushed back and forth on errands. He and Francie wove their way back through the crowd. He nodded to some of the men he knew better. A.J. slapped him on the back as they passed each other. “Can tell you’ve been working hard by the mud on you!”
Francie said, “Can you take the first aid kit back to the supply room? Put it where we can grab it again quick if we need it.” The kit looked as bad as them now, the sides coated with mud. He picked at a thin place in the coating, but it didn’t flake off. Dried, it was like concrete.
Weaving through the communications center, he passed Kane standing behind one of the battalion leaders. As Chad opened the door to the storage room, Kane came up behind him.
“What do you think you’re doing?”
“Putting this down in here, for now.”
“That is the most inappropriate thing I’ve ever seen.”
Chad felt himself flushing, with anger more than embarrassment. He turned on Kane and wished, really wished, he were the kind of person who could drop his pants to make a point. He’d bend over and waggle his bare ass at the guy. How’s that for inappropriate, he’d say.
But he only said, “I’m sure you’ll recover from the trauma,” and brushed past the man. He didn’t know what Kane’s problem was with him, but whatever it was, Chad resolved he’d never make it his own problem again. Kane’s issues were no more Chad’s than the crazy guy’s had been. Let Kane slap at imaginary voices all he wanted, too. To heck with him.
Francie found him five minutes later in the kitchen, drinking his second bottle of root beer and tossing away food wrappers left behind by others.
“You don’t need to do that,” she said. “The chief’s talking. Come on down.”
He took his drink and followed her to the central bay of the station, where the fire chief stood on a pallet and addressed the men and women under his command. “They say it’s going to happen again.”
“What?” whispered Francie to another firefighter.
“Second lahar. On its way.”
The chief was saying “—going to be here in two hours. We’ll evacuate everyone from downtown.”
“Evacuate and do what with them?” asked a voice from the front of the crowd.
“That’s still being worked out. There’s one shelter set up but we’re working on two more.”
“What about elderly or disabled?”
“Those of you who know of such a person from this morning, we’re collecting those addresses. We’ll deploy teams to those known addresses first, with stretchers. If you find others, radio it in. Carry them out if you have to.”
Said, Chad thought, by someone who hadn’t been working in the slippery mess out on the streets. He had an image of his feet sliding out from under him and him dropping some frail old lady and breaking her hip. Or neck, likely as not. Wouldn’t it be best to leave her where she is?
But no one else was asking that. Maybe because it was a crisis, you took orders without question, even if you thought they weren’t the right orders.
But the chief could have been reading his mind. “Three reasons to try and evacuate.” He ticked them off on his fingers. “One, eruptions can last weeks. We may have continued flooding, waves of lahars from that. They could run out of food and drinking water in that time. Two, if the winds shift, we’ll be screwed worse by the ash. So evacuate them from the flooded area before that happens. Three, the water company is already shutting off water and sewage in and out of the inundated areas, isolating them, trying to protect the rest of the system.”
“What if there’s a fire?” asked someone at the far side of the crowd.
“Vancouver fire will respond to the dry parts of town,” he said. “Under the flood?” He shook his head. Chad supposed they’d let a house fire burn. The mud would put it out eventually. But still, letting a fire burn? He knew it went against every instinct the firefighters had. He looked around at their grim faces. No, they didn’t like that.
The chief cut his hand across the air in front of him. “Enough questions. We have only two hours to evacuate downtown and the streets along the rivers. Keep your hands free out there; travel light. Battalion chiefs, you have your assignments. Get going.”
Francie ran back to the supply room and came back with the muddy first aid kit, putting it on the floor against a wall and flinging it open. “Grab a roll of gauze, tube of antibiotic cream, alcohol wipes, gloves. Two of the water bottles. Stick it all in your pockets.” They scrabbled through the contents, filled their pockets, and were ready to go in thirty seconds.
22
South Flank. Afternoon.
The roof of the trailer creaked again.
“What will we do?” asked his mother.
“We need to brush it off,” said Jim. “With a broom, as big a broom as you can find.”
“I will do it,” said his father.
“No,” said Jim. “I will. I’ve already been out in the ash for a long time. If it’s bad for us to breathe that stuff, better me go up than you.”
“If it is bad for you, don’t go at all,” said his mother.
“Would you please look for a broom? Or maybe a—whatdoyoucall it, the thing you sweep stuff into, little scooper thing with a handle.” He mimed using one. “Dustpan, that’s it. That might work better.”
“You find. I will do it,” said his father.
Jim was exasperated. “No, I’ll do it. You tell me to act like a grown man, and when I do, you argue. Make up your mind.”
His father studied him while his mother began rooting in closets, his thoughts indecipherable from his expression. Father finally said, “Be careful. Don’t fall. It was slippery like ice on the road. Maybe same on the roof.”
“Yes, Father.” His mother came back with a broom and the dustpan. “Find me a handkerchief or something for my face, please, and while I’m out there more clothes for when I come in. These will be ruined, too.”
When he had his face covered, he grabbed his shoes and went outside.
The ashfall was like a rainstorm, like warm, soft, slow rain. Flat flakes of ash swirled around him among tinier suspended bits that were more like fog particles. It must not be far past noon, but it was as dark as sundown on a city street. He ste
pped around the trailer, looking for some way onto the roof. He skidded once, falling to his ass, and reminded himself that the roof would be slippery too. And a fall up there much, much worse. So watch your effing feet.
At the rear of the trailer was a ladder to the roof, built right into the exterior wall, extending down to only waist-level. Each rung held a tiny mountain range of ash. He scraped off the lowest two rungs with his hand. A large step up got him onto the ladder. He wrapped his left arm around the upright leg of the ladder and grasped the broom in that hand while continuing to clean off the rungs, one at a time, using his right hand. The gritty, wet ash chafed his fingers and spilled down onto his mask. He wished he had gloves, a hat, goggles. Next time he’d look through the trailer for those. He knew there’d be a next time, with the ash falling this steadily. A step from the top he was able to push the broom onto the roof and toss the dustpan up after it. The extra grip on the ladder from two hands reassured him. He skidded onto the roof on his belly then carefully stood.
He was ankle-deep in ash. He wondered what it weighed. At a guess? Maybe equal to a layer of bricks sitting on top of the roof. It couldn’t be good. He took the broom and tried to sweep the area around his feet, but the ash barely moved. It was too sticky, heavy and wet. He was glad he’d asked his mother for the dustpan. He dropped to hands and knees and crawled around the edge of the roof, digging in with it and flipping off pan after pan of dust. He finished one trip around the outer edge of the roof.
He knelt in the patch he’d cleaned and shoveled more dust from inside and tossed it over the side of the roof. The next pass around, he moved further in still, and this circuit he had to carry each panful over to the edge to dump. In a spiral he worked toward the center of the roof, where a big piece of equipment—maybe air conditioner?—jutted up eight inches.
Finally, he was able to take the broom and brush off the thin remaining layer. The footing was treacherous now, and near the edges he took tiny sidling steps, trying to stay balanced.
At the front edge of the trailer, where the roof sloped a bit, his left foot slipped. His heart leapt into his throat. He leaned back, hoping he wouldn’t go shooting off the edge. His heart pounding hard, he felt himself still sliding very slowly down the slope. He turned his feet into a snowplow stop, and just like with skiing or ice skating, it stopped his momentum. Carefully, he inched back to the flatter section, got onto hands and knees, and went back to his sweeping in that safer posture.
The process of getting the whole roof clean took a long time—an hour, he guessed. His family must be able to hear him up here, or else they surely would have come out looking for him, worried after all this time.
He went to toss the broom and dustpan over the edge, but just in time he realized that since he was probably going to have to come up again later, it’d be better to leave them up here. That way, he’d be able to use two hands getting down and back up the ladder. He tucked the tools under the edge of the air conditioner.
Going down the ladder, he felt his left foot slide across the ash. Before he could stop it, it slipped off the rung, and his heart leapt into his throat as he clung to the uprights. The ladder had gotten coated with ash while he was up on the roof, and there was no way to brush it off before descending. He got his foot back under him, twisted it back and forth until he felt his shoe tread grip the step, and continued down. If it wasn’t so dirty, he’d have kissed the ground once he was standing on its reliable surface.
When he got inside, he kicked off his shoes again, opened the door for a moment to pound them against the exterior wall of the trailer, pulled his shoes back inside and locked the door. He stripped off the sweatshirt and mask and let it fall where he stood. Before anyone could ask him anything, he said, “Remind me, I want a hat and gloves the next time I go out.”
His mother said, “Next time?”
“The way it’s coming down, I’ll have to go out every couple of hours. If we stay all night, I’ll have to wake up to do it a couple times.”
His father spoke up. “I should help.”
“No, Father. Only one of us should do this.” He looked around himself at puffs of the tiny ash particles drifting away. “Look at the ash I dragged in with me.” He coughed and tasted metal. “And leave the sweatshirt right there, please. I’ll put on the same clothes from now on when I go out. I need indoor clothes and outdoor clothes.” With that, he went back to the shower and washed off all over again, his cuts and burns stinging, bandages falling off.
When he was finished with his shower, he dressed himself in strangers’ clothes his mother had left stacked outside the bathroom door. He paused at the end of the central room. The roof wasn’t creaking and popping any more. Lida was standing and staring out a window, still holding her book. Watching her, he thought of little kids with stuffed animals—she was clinging to that book in that same way.
He beckoned his father to the hallway and led him back to the bedroom. “I’m worried about the water,” he said.
“Water? To drink?”
“I can’t be taking a shower like this every time I go out. How much water do you think there is in here?”
“There is gauge by the pump switch. It read half.”
“Half of what?”
His father shrugged.
“Couldn’t be much, could it?”
“No. But I do not know how to find out how much.”
“If I cover myself better next time, I’ll need less to clean myself up. But if we are here one day, two days—either the roof will collapse onto us or I won’t be able to clean myself up at all. If keep showering, we’ll run out of water to drink.”
“There is water in campground, I think.”
“Then I’ll have to figure out how to get some in here, if we run out. Do you know where it is?”
“No,” his father said.
They both stood there, frowning. Jim usually relied on his father to know solutions to problems, to make good decisions. Now they were both in the same boat, a leaky, sinking boat of ignorance. Jim realized he probably knew a little more than his father, with school teaching him about volcanoes. Who would have guessed that some science-class video, which he thought his teacher put on only because he was too tired to teach that day, would have helped his family now?
“I think,” Jim began cautiously, not wanting to infringe on his father’s place as head of the family, “that tomorrow morning, we should try and leave. What do you think?”
Slowly, his father nodded. “I understand why. But the roads are slick. I think I will crash the car.” He sounded frightened.
Jim felt the same but didn’t let it show. He was used to hiding fear at school, where any show of weakness could get you beaten up. “We need chains. Like for snow,” Jim said. “I wonder if they have any.”
“Maybe,” his father said, hope creeping into his voice. “There are outside storage places on the trailer. We need the key, maybe, to open.”
“Good. Let’s tear this place apart looking for a key. Or for anything else that might help us. And next time I go out to clear the roof, I’ll get into every one of those storage places and see what’s inside them. If not tire chains, maybe something else to help.”
They were the only ones in the campground. The ash made them impossible to spot from the air or the road. Their supplies were limited. They needed all the help they could get, Jim thought, but it wasn’t coming. They’d have to find a way to help themselves.
23
3:30. Northwest flank.
The road was washed out. Trees had slid down the slope, blocking their way.
Norio said, “Can we set down the stretcher?” His back was aching, his legs were aching, and the backpack full of gas testing equipment seemed to grow heavier with each mile.
The woman gave a count to lower the stretcher, and they all set the pilot down. Norio went to the edge of the intact road and looked upslope and down. “What has happened,” he said, “is that the ash is melting the glaciers, and the
re are streams of muddy water coming down. That’s what took out the trees.” He said it loudly enough to communicate with Akroyd. He had to talk loudly to the man; his hearing was damaged by the blast. It seemed curious that Akroyd had hearing problems but Norio and the pilot did not. Akroyd must have had his head turned just the wrong way. Or had his mouth tightly shut, perhaps, creating a pressure seal.
“You think this morning’s big lahar will mean the post-eruption lahars are less dangerous?” Akroyd said.
“No. Maybe 10% less on this side of the mountain, because some of the ice has already melted, but not enough less to matter. It only means there was one extra this morning.”
“Stupid volcano,” said the woman.
“I like this volcano,” Norio said, feeling offended.
“I’d like it plenty on television news and from half a world away,” she snapped.
Ty broke in, “How’s the water, everyone?” Their first rest stop, he had shown them how much water the two hikers had. They shared out bottles to Norio and Akroyd. It came out to twenty ounces each. The woman gave the pilot a sip from hers. They all eyed their water bottles, comparing the level of water to the progress they had made. Norio suspected everyone else knew, too, that water was going to be a problem before the end of the day. Carrying the stretcher was a sweaty chore. He decided he could live without a drink right now. Next stop, maybe, he’d take a sip.
“We could run into a house soon,” the woman said.
“Only if we keep to the road,” Ty said.
“What?” said Akroyd. “Speak up.”
“There’s not an option of sticking to the road,” said Norio in a louder voice. “We have to skirt around this. And sooner, not later.”
They all stretched first, working out kinks in their muscles, and then each took his corner of the stretcher and heaved the pilot up. They turned right, into the trees.
Their pace went from slow to snail. The footing was bad, the ground damp. A thick patch of wild blackberry bushes blocked their way once, and they had to back up and detour around it. They made perhaps a fifth of the distance in this hour that they had made in the first hour. The pilot’s face went white with strain as he was jostled around more.
