by Sol Stein
“Try again,” Stanley said. “This is important.”
“Sure,” he said.
The moment he was back inside the sentry box, Stanley held a finger to his lips to keep Kathy from saying anything, opened the car door quietly, left it open, unhooked the chain across the Cliffhaven entrance, then hopped into the car, slammed the door, and was off. In the rearview mirror he caught the fellow waving at him and yelling something. Fuck him, Stanley thought.
He had to slow down when the road narrowed. He didn’t want to run off the winding road and break an axle on Jerry’s car.
“Wonder what they do when a car is going up at the same time one is coming down?” Kathy said.
“One of them lifts up in the air so the other can pass,” Stanley said. “There must be some bypasses on this road.”
“You’d think—”
“What?”
“The kind of place your parents would stop at—I mean they wouldn’t stay at an ordinary motel, would they?—would have a better road than this.”
“Maybe they figure people won’t run off without paying their bills. Too easy to catch on a road like this.”
“What’s the matter?” Kathy asked.
“Take a deep breath.”
She did. “Woodsmoke?”
Stanley nodded, moved forward slowly, went around another S-curve, stuck his head out of the side window, and looked up. That was definitely smoke drifting across the horizon.
Stanley drove a bit faster, as fast as he dared, then suddenly saw the man running down the road toward them.
“Look at that guy,” Stanley said.
The man was waving his arms across one another as if to warn Stanley to stop.
He did and got out of the car. “What’s up?” he shouted.
The man was terribly out of breath. “The woods are on fire. The whole place is going to burn down. Please turn around, get to a phone, call for help, firemen, police, everybody.”
“My mother and father might be up there,” Stanley said.
The man’s expression collapsed. “You’re Jewish?” he asked, then glanced over his shoulder.
“What’s that got to do with anything?”
“Get out of here fast. Sound the alarm.”
“But my parents—”
“Son, the best thing you can do for your parents if they’re up there is to get help quickly. Here he comes.”
“Who?”
They heard the clatter of feet running.
“Turn your car around. Quick!” the man yelled.
Stanley looked at the width of the road. This guy was a nut.
“I’ll go up and turn around at the top,” Stanley said.
“They’ll never let you. Please do as I say.”
They could hear the footsteps louder now.
“Let me come with you,” the man said, just as an orange-and-blue uniformed staff member came into view.
“Mr. Meyer,” the staff member yelled. “Where are you off to?”
“I’ve always obeyed,” Meyer said. “I don’t want to burn to death.”
“We’re going to have that fire under control,” the staff member said, puffing. “You come back with me.”
What kind of place is this? Stanley thought.
“Let’s get out of here,” Kathy said.
“Yeah.”
He got in, turned left as far as he could, then turned the wheel all the way round, then backed up, turned the wheel, repeated the process till the car was facing partly downhill.
“Get in,” he said to the man.
“He won’t let me,” the man said.
This is crazy, Stanley thought.
The staff member gestured to the man to come along. The man looked with longing at Stanley’s car. The staff member now stood right in front of him. The staff member shook his head. No. The man shook his head. No.
Stanley looked up at the sky, visible above the dense woods. He could see sparks as well as smoke.
He took off down the road, faster than he’d come up, tires squealing on the turns.
“Jesus,” Kathy said.
“That a comment on my driving?” Stanley said.
“No,” she said. Then repeated, “Jesus.”
*
As he neared the chain barrier, Stanley thought, what would he do about the creep in the sentry box who had tried to stop him? In the movies, he supposed, you’d just crash the car into the chain, hoping it would uproot one of the two-by-fours holding the chain. He couldn’t do that to Jerry’s car.
“Kathy,” he said, “I’m going to stop just this side of the chain, then I’ll get out and run to that gas station just down the road. You come there, too. Fast as you can, okay?”
She nodded.
“I can’t hear you,” he said, concentrating on the last part of the winding road.
“Yes,” she said.
*
Stanley ran right by Frank Fowler, who was pumping gas for a van, and into the house. Matilda Fowler put her newspaper down.
“Yes?”
“Where’s your phone?”
“What?”
“Please let me use your phone. There’s a big fire up there.”
Frank was standing in the doorway. “Up where?” he said.
“Up at the resort. Cliffhaven, whatever they call it.”
“They take care of their own problems,” Frank said.
“Not this. The woods are going up all around them.”
“Hey!” shouted the van driver. “Where’s my change?”
As Frank went to make change, his mother pointed to the phone. “Just tell the operator.”
Kathy came in.
“Yes, young lady?” Matilda asked.
“I’m with him,” she said, just as Stanley heard the operator answer.
“I want to report a fire in Cliffhaven. Big Sur.” He gave her the number he was calling from. In a moment he was talking to someone else. “Yeah, Big Sur, place called Cliffhaven. I didn’t get up to the buildings, just on the road. The woods are on fire. Yeah, all around. Please hurry.”
Stanley hung up. Kathy looked worried sick. He put his arm around her.
It was Kathy who saw, over his shoulder, Frank Fowler standing in the doorway with a shotgun.
“What did you do that for?” Frank said.
*
The oldest surviving resident of Cliffhaven, Moshe Perlman, was a man of sixty-eight, who, perhaps because of his full white beard, looked as if he were eighty. The sight of the conflagration had paralyzed him at first because he was certain it was an act of God. It was necessary to be grateful. He put on his skullcap, which he had not worn since his second day in Cliffhaven, and started rocking. Sh’ma yisroel adonoi elohenu adonoi echod…
Two residents, seeing the old man, went over to him and each took him gently under an arm.
“Come,” one said. “It is getting very hot here.”
Moshe Perlman, who had wanted to leave the second he was up in Cliffhaven because the place seemed too posh for a man with his plain tastes, was persuaded by his wife to live a little and to stay. She was twenty years younger than he, and he often acceded to her wishes. When she didn’t show up in the room the second day, his first thought was that she had taken up with a younger man. But he had seen her nowhere about that day or the following, and, frantic with worry, he had asked the goyim who kept him prisoner to tell him where his wife was, but all they did was laugh and say what did an old man need a wife for?
“Come,” the first resident said to Moshe Perlman. “It will be safer in the swimming pool.”
“I don’t swim,” Moshe Perlman said.
“We are just going to stand in the shallow end and stay wet,” the other man said. “See, others are already there.”
Perlman let them steer him to the pool. Perhaps God would let him drown. It didn’t matter any more.
*
Blaustein, the accountant, was not used to physical exertion. Henry had to keep urging him ah
ead. He had set his share of brushpiles on fire, and they were now skirting wide around the ones set by Margaret to avoid the heat as they hurried to their point of origin.
Just then he saw Margaret up ahead. “Hey,” he shouted.
She spotted them, Blaustein stumbling along behind Henry now.
“The heat,” puffed Blaustein. “It’s unbearable.”
“Good work,” Henry said to Margaret.
“What took you so long?”
Henry jabbed a thumb in Blaustein’s direction. “I should have left him tied to the tree.” He pointed across the open space to the flat-topped structure on whose roof he had taken refuge. “It’s the closest,” he said, as Margaret, as if on cue, lit the last brushpile and threw her torch into the pyre.
“All set?” Henry asked.
She nodded. “What about the others?”
“They’ll see us if we stay on this side of the building. All right, let’s go, all together.”
They ran to the building, Margaret hoping against hope they would not be seen by anyone from Cliffhaven. After this inferno, she was certain that if Henry were caught again, they wouldn’t bother playing cat-and-mouse with him. Their rage would mean his instant death.
*
Shamir, who had just touched off his last brushpile, could see the three figures moving unrhythmically across the open ground like a troika of uncoordinated dancers. Time to join them, he thought, and he started running back near the edge of the woods, warding off sizzling sparks as if they were bullets. It was too hot. He left the concealment of the woods and headed for his comrades at an angle across the open ground, hoping he wouldn’t be spotted.
A minute later he collapsed on the ground beside them, panting.
“Got all mine,” he said. “Yours?”
Henry nodded.
“Where’s Jake?”
They all looked far off to the right. Most of Jake’s brushpiles must have been ignited because that part of the woods was roaring away, but at the farthest end, nothing.
“He didn’t finish,” Henry said.
“I wish he’d get here,” Margaret said, and in that moment realized that if Jake had not made it to all of his brushpiles, something might be very wrong.
“Could he have fallen, broken a leg, be unable to move?” she said.
Across the part of the semicircle entrusted to Jake, the nearest areas were completely ablaze. The dry brush had flared like kindling, the smaller branches had smoldered and caught, and now the trees themselves were burning.
“He probably took off,” Blaustein mumbled.
“Just a kid,” Henry said, standing. “Stanley’s age. I’m going to find him.”
“In that blaze?” Shamir said.
Margaret felt the crow of panic fluttering its wings in her chest.
Henry was off, running toward the part of the woods where Jake must have lit his last bonfire.
“Come back,” Shamir yelled. “Don’t be crazy!”
He’s not crazy, Margaret thought. It’s his nature.
*
Margaret, Shamir, and Blaustein watched Henry, the tiny form of a running man, disappear just at the edge of the blaze.
Margaret thought I am praying to both our Gods, Henry. I can’t trust the one who’s been looking after Jews.
“Come out,” Shamir said, as if to himself.
Time froze. Then, suddenly, they saw the tiny figure burst out of the woods, running toward them. Margaret stood. When Henry was halfway to them, they saw the streaks of charcoal on his face.
Shamir got up. As Henry approached them, Shamir yelled, “Are you all right?”
Henry waved his hand as if to say never mind me.
He was drawing in deep breaths like a long-distance runner. Margaret put her arms around him. “Are you hurt?” she asked.
“I’m okay,” Henry puffed. “Winded. Couldn’t find Jake. I hope he’s not in there.”
Blaustein ventured, “Like I said, he probably took off.”
He probably didn’t, Henry thought. He slid down against the wall of the building, then rested his arms and head on his knees.
*
When Henry’s wind returned, he looked up to see what the others were watching. What they were witnessing was the phenomenon of spontaneous combustion, the forest on an uphill grade, the heat rising in billows, brush higher up smoldering and flaring even before the fire reached it. Margaret could understand the fascination that pyromaniacs had for the grandeur of flames shooting upward as from a mammoth oven, turning dry solid wood into crackling limbs that in moments broke, falling into the inferno.
It was then that Henry kissed her, unmindful of their companions, of their breaths, of where they were. A kiss of life.
When their faces parted, Margaret saw Blaustein staring at the ground between his knees, a man embarrassed by the emotions of other people. Shamir was pointing.
Henry rolled over and, shielding his eyes, looked in the direction of Shamir’s finger. At a great distance he could see a group of Cliffhaven staff members linking up sections of hose, ants trying the impossible. There was no way mere water from a hose could smother the roaring forest now. He looked at his companions with an expression of wry triumph. They had succeeded in ringing at least three-quarters of Cliffhaven.
He let his head rest against the softness of her breast, as he used to do under the trees in Central Park when they were courting. Had all those years passed? Ruth, Stanley, a lifetime spent like a brass shell. After this they would savor the minutes.
It would have been easy to let himself slip into sleep, but he felt Margaret’s body tense. He opened his eyes to see, as she had, three trusties come around the corner of the building. They came within ten feet of where the four of them were sheltering.
They recognized Henry as he recognized them. They were among the ones who had stood in front of the chain, blocking the way to Highway 1.
21
Dan Pitz, wishing he had never answered the advertisement, viewed the fire not with the fanaticism of a convert but like an outsider appraising the chances objectively. The roadway down might act as a firebreak, but a conflagration of that magnitude could easily send a flaming piece of debris across the road and they would all be trapped, not only the residents, who were now milling about near or in the swimming pool, trying to keep as much distance between themselves and the heat as possible, but the staff also. This fire could incinerate them all. Mr. Clifford might prefer wiping out all traces of the project, but he’d be damned if, after burning three people to get where he did in life, he was going to end up a roasted chestnut.
Dan was glad to see Oliver Robinson and Allen Trask running to join him. They didn’t need to exchange many words. “It won’t work,” Robinson said, pointing at Clete and the others in their pathetic attempt to fight the fire.
Dan Pitz said, “We could get the staff down the road and leave two or three guys rear-guarding it with guns to keep the residents from following.”
Robinson had wanted George Whittaker’s job. Now he was glad he didn’t get it.
“You think Mr. Clifford will give me a reference for one day’s work?” Dan asked.
Robinson laughed. Trask said, “I suppose we better get the old man out of here.”
Just then they all heard the helicopter and turned their faces skyward.
*
Buzz Ballard, piloting the Bell Ranger and in charge of its Helitac crew, was forty-six. His strongest memory of childhood was the whah-whah-whah sound of the siren that would get his father, a volunteer fire fighter, into his clothes in the middle of the night, giving his mother a peck on the cheek just in case, and then the sound of the car starting up, and young Buzz was always at the window of his room, watching the blue light on his father’s car rotating like a disappearing beacon in the night.
Once, over Thanksgiving dinner—turkey, cranberry sauce, mashed potatoes, gravy, and pumpkin pie—Mr. Ballard was asked by Mrs. Ballard why he did it, meaning all those volun
teer hours, and his father had answered not so much to her but to Buzz by saying, “Doctors cure most of their patients, but not all of them. Lawyers get some of their clients off, but some go to jail. We never lose to a fire. We get it sooner or later.”
Buzz, at eighteen, had been trained as a Marine pilot just in time to catch the tail end of the Korean War. And when he was given his certificate of honorable service and went into the reserves, the idea of fighting fires by hanging on to a truck and then holding a hose seemed slow for the speed he was accustomed to, letting the nose of his jet down just a bit to bring its airspeed to five hundred and sometimes five fifty.
And so Buzz found his place in the air arm of the U.S. Forest Service, where the slowness of a bomber was made up for by the excitement of unleashing a massive torrent of chemical from the air. Later, as Buzz worked his way into choppers, he found renewed excitement in being, as was often the case, the first man to survey a virgin fire of great dimensions. He liked the chill of recognizing its extent and seriousness, and being the first voice to report back in, the go signal for what he saw as a war against flames that if unchecked could consume part of the world.
Taking the Bell Ranger down to three hundred feet, he got Ed Ballantine back on the radio.
“Here are the coordinates, Ed.”
Then Buzz said, “Fire is in an incomplete ring around nine or ten large buildings in a compound, all part of some resort. My estimate’s one fifty to one-seven-five people visible outside rooms and buildings. Don’t see anyone heading down the road by foot or car. What’s that?”
Buzz listened for a moment, then switched back so he could talk. “No buildings burning yet. Pattern of the blaze indicates origin in multiple locations. Wouldn’t rule out arson.”
Ed, who fought fires from a desk, was cynical. “The insurance companies sure make it easy for motel owners who can’t cut the mustard.”
“Ed, this is no motel. It’s a big place. I’d hate to see more of Ventana go up so soon after that last one. Recommend putting bombers with ammonium nitrate on standby. This’ll take one thousand men for starters. You’ll need dozers airlifted. If we can keep the road clear, ground tankers could get up. If the fire jumps the road, we’ll never get the tankers through. You’ll have to use air tankers period. Ed, I think you’d better get the Indians in off the reservations the way this is going. There could be poison oak down there burning. The area north of the buildings looks very rough for pack mules. Hey, wait a minute.”
