by Linda Jacobs
Steve kissed her forehead gently. His body against hers bore the heavy lassitude of fatigue and she felt the same. After all the anticipation …
“I may have to wake you in the middle of the night,” he whispered. “Just so you know I’m holding you.”
A smile curved her lips. Comfort and the smooth lethargy of being in his embrace settled over her.
“I promise I’ll be here,” she murmured.
Without a thought to the nightmares that had been her torture, she settled into the summer’s first deep and dreamless sleep.
Steve awakened in darkness and did not know where he was. For a moment, he thought the past four years had been a colossal mistake; that Susan lay nestled against his side. As his eyes became accustomed to the glow from a light outside, he made out the distinct curve of Clare’s cheek. Somewhere inside, he’d expected to feel guilt over Susan, but all he knew was joy.
The years with his wife had been vivid, alive with her music and her voice’s melody. The Christmas after she died, he’d been at her mother’s house for dinner. Washing his hands before carving turkey, Steve had been attracted to a familiar crystal shape on the bathroom counter.
A perfume bottle identical to one Susan had kept on her dressing table.
He lifted the stopper. The marriage of citrus with the earthy scent of iris was the same that Susan had dabbed behind her ears and in the hollow of her elbows, so that it floated behind her like an aura. It nearly brought him to his knees.
He fought it until he folded down onto the rim of the tub. Chill from the porcelain seeped into the backs of his legs. The tile was cold, too, where he leaned his head against the wall and wept.
Lying with Clare, Steve finally said goodbye to Susan.
He marveled that he did it without pain, as if he were suddenly made light. He could no longer summon Susan’s music, because Clare’s husky voice haunted his dreams, no longer smell Susan’s perfume, for the faint spicy smell of Clare’s skin excited him beyond belief.
She shifted and burrowed her head more deeply into the hollow of his shoulder. He smoothed her bare thigh where the shirt had ridden up, but she did not awaken.
Tonight was a moment snatched in time, while the clock on his bookshelf ticked toward tomorrow. He wanted Clare with everything in him, to make a new life for himself with her in it. The hell of it was that she did not seem the type of woman to drop her plans and take up with an alcoholic whose job was in jeopardy. He’d bought two bottles of wine today, more than he needed for cooking, only partially because he thought Clare might like some.
He’d managed to stay out of it tonight, but what about another day? And what would happen when he struggled with the depression that was bound to descend after he put Clare on a plane to Houston?
From outside the house came an odd sound, not loud, like the crackling of Rice Krispies, or …
Fire!
Steve eased himself out from under Clare, trying not to disturb her and yet move quickly at the same time. When he got up, he found that the pain had settled back into his knees. On the front porch, the crackling was louder and the wind whipped his pant legs. Less than two miles away, the near shoulder of Bunsen Peak was ablaze.
Clare awoke alone on Steve’s couch. A current of moving air attracted her attention to the front door standing open. Beyond the checkered lattice, Steve was in the yard.
Down the single step, her bare feet found grass, cool and soft. She said Steve’s name softly and slid her arms around him, resting her cheek against his back. He put his hands over hers, pressing her palms against his bare chest.
They stood together for a long moment until he said, “Take a look at this.”
She loosed her grip and stepped from behind him. The red glow in the south suffused the sky. “Good God,” she breathed. Her heart set up a tripping as she gauged the wind and the distance between the town and the fire. She was glad that Garrett was here, for he would know when an evacuation should be called.
“It’s beautiful,” Steve said. Clare stared at the crimson underbelly of the clouds. “Part of the forest’s life, and yet it can be so deadly.”
How many times this summer had she both shuddered and thrilled to that splendor? When she and Deering had watched the Mink Creek come down Turret Mountain even the sky had seemed aflame. When the Hellroaring had crowned and chased them to earth in their shelters, she’d felt its elemental fury. Driving away from Old Faithful, they’d passed through the North Fork’s undulating scarlet drapery.
Together, she and Steve watched the advance of the North Fork, smelling and tasting its wind-borne tang. It seemed as though they could actually see its progress as it marched down the mountain, now less than a mile and a half from where they stood. Thankfully, the way the wind blew was driving it east rather than directly toward them.
Steve drew Clare back against him. He kissed her and their lips clung with a new intensity she had not imagined possible, something that came from inside both of them. She drew away and studied the clean lines of his face. His eyes met hers and she believed in their unspoken revelation.
“What’s done it for us so suddenly?” she wondered.
Steve nodded toward the approaching conflagration. “I suppose it’s the shadow of the sword.”
There was a battle to fight, but it would not come until sunrise.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
September 10
It’s time,” a man’s deep voice called through Steve’s front door. Clare realized she’d been half-aware of knocking for some time.
When Steve opened the door in his sweat pants Clare recognized Moru Mzima. She thought he took in the situation, but he didn’t look at the rumpled couch or at her until she joined Steve at the door.
“They’ve called the evacuation,” Moru said. The clock on Steve’s bookcase read five-forty.
The wind that blew in the door was cooler than it had been earlier, but still lacked the slightest trace of humidity. Through the open weave of the porch lattice, Clare saw that the North Fork had burned down Bunsen Peak to Golden Gate pass. The only remaining natural break between the fire and the town was the jumbled blocks of rock called the Hoodoos, the remains of an old landslide.
Moru looked at her. “I’m sending Nyeri and the kids to Bozeman now. Do you and your daughter want to ride along?”
“You’d better go,” Steve told Clare.
There wasn’t any doubt that she had to take Devon to safety, but the sight of the crimson fire front had Clare spoiling for a fight. Garrett had convinced her … no, she had decided to keep working wildfire.
“I’ll go with them, Mom.” Devon spoke from the hallway. “You stay.”
She turned to find her daughter barefoot and wearing the oversized T-shirt Steve had given her to sleep in. Her hair was mussed, but her blue eyes were clear and steady. “Really, I’ll be okay.” Her certainty said she understood her mother wanted to fight the fire.
Clare looked at the latest advance of the North Fork with growing certainty. After nearly two months of watching the fires’ dark shapes envelop the strategic maps, she wanted to be on the battlefield when the sons-of-bitches were vanquished.
When she and Frank had charged up the apartment house stairs they’d tasted fear, a hot bright edge that could cripple … or be forged into a weapon. The challenge was not to live without fear, but to carry on in spite of it.
Fight and fall back!
Clare sweated and struggled as firefighters’ lines were leapt, their backfires swallowed on the long retreat into Mammoth Valley. Her hope that the Hoodoos’ bare rock would stop the North Fork proved vain, as the fire circumvented the slope on the downhill side. By afternoon, she and the others on the line had been pushed below the last highway curve above town. In the hellish half-light, Jupiter Terrace’s glistening surface had taken on the hue of fresh blood.
As the battle was joined, Clare manned a drip torch, sidehilling it below the upper terrace of the hot springs. “This one will d
o it,” she said grimly. She kept moving ahead of the brisk crackle and heat. Burning sage was supposed to be a sacred Native American purifying rite and she hoped Mammoth would emerge unscathed from this day.
When she reached the road, the entire hillside above her was ablaze with only a three hundred yard gap to the main body of the North Fork. “Burn, baby, burn,” she entreated the backfire. The more thoroughly it consumed the vegetation before the main fire arrived, the more effective the firebreak.
Clare turned away and trotted down the shoulder of the highway. A short way down the hill, she saw Steve in his Park Service truck. He waved and pulled into the parking lot above the stables. The horses had been trailered away in early morning.
Steve climbed down stiffly. He wore Nomex fire clothes, along with his badge and the summer straw uniform hat that identified him as a ranger. “Would you believe that even after the park’s been closed two days, I’m still rousting campers that haven’t heard the news?”
“I’d believe just about anything right now.”
Below the parking lot, the team of California hotshots from the Mink Creek rested in the area inside a metal rail fence. As she came closer, Clare realized that it was a cemetery, poorly tended, for the headstones barely cleared the high grass.
“Take a load off,” a man called. “If this break doesn’t hold, we’re to fall back and defend the housing.”
Clare looked where he pointed, maybe a quarter mile to the first enclave of park employees’ homes. She stepped across the fence and gave a hand to Steve.
He came across awkwardly and sat in the grass beside a headstone. Many were illegible, mainly those of marble. The granite and banded gneiss had held up better, their names and dates a history of the last years of the nineteenth century and the first of the twentieth. Next to Clare’s boot was a flat stone, flush with the ground. Unknown Child, it read simply.
Sitting down in the grass near Steve, Clare checked her watch and found it midafternoon. She was tired, the good honest fatigue that came from working with a purpose. Around her, sweaty faces showed determination. She removed her hard hat and scratched her head.
“In another ten minutes we should know if this firebreak holds,” said the head of the hotshot team. Clare recognized the tough, gray-haired woman who had sounded the alarm at the Mink Creek.
Clare nodded to her and bent to pluck a stem of grass. She bit down and released a sour flood in her mouth.
A deep rumble sounded. Dynamite, someone blasting trees in some firebreak. She wished she had a case of the stuff, to set off a spectacular concussion that would snuff the North Fork like a blown birthday candle. She imagined the long cascade resonating down the valley.
No, it was not her imagination. All around her, firefighters raised their heads. Some looked puzzled, others disbelieving.
“Thunder,” Steve said.
The wind’s passage could be seen through the trees, tossing and bending their trunks, loud enough to be heard over the crackling roar of flame. The long grass whipped and scrubby sage jerked as though a hand deep in the earth tugged its roots. The advancing wave swept down the hill toward the cemetery, kicking up clouds of grit and raising a miniature tornado in the parking lot.
It hit Clare and gave her a shove as though a damp towel had struck her across the back.
“Goddamn,” someone said.
The temperature dropped at least ten degrees within a minute, bringing moist relief to dry, cracked lips. Everyone climbed to their feet, took off their hard hats and looked skyward.
A fat drop stung Clare’s cheek. She closed her eyes.
The temperature continued to plummet, cooling her sweaty skin. More raindrops landed, making dark stains on weathered headstones and yellow shirts.
“Here it comes,” Steve said.
A long line of silver rain bore down from Sepulcher Mountain above the hot springs. Its shifting curtains replaced the smoke haze as the relentless advance obliterated the view of Jupiter Terrace. The front crossed the highway, drops bouncing high off the pavement.
The North Fork recoiled with an angry hiss. Clouds of steam roiled, an elemental struggle destined to end with the death of the dragon.
An hour later, Clare kept her arm tight around Steve’s chest, to keep from losing him in the crowd of reveling firefighters on the Mammoth Hotel lawn. It also didn’t hurt that he helped keep her warm after the cold front had swept in. Above, on Sepulcher Mountain and over behind the cemetery, other crews were still fighting to cool the leading edge of the North Fork.
The hotel had closed for the evacuation, but as soon as the danger passed, the bar had been opened to accommodate the celebration. Rows of TV trucks with satellite antennas lined the street, the press mingling with the soot-faced, filthy fire crews.
Carol Leeds of Billings Live Eye clutched her jacket close and passed a bottle of champagne. Clare drank a deep swallow of golden effervescence and the bubbles burned her nose. She didn’t know whether to give it to Steve.
He took it and sipped without tipping it far up. A man behind him said, “I heard on TV that there’ve been sixty-eight thousand wildfires in the U.S. this season.”
“Two million acres gone in Alaska,” someone else replied.
“Nearly a million just in Yellowstone,” Steve said to Clare. “Last month when I said I’d want to stay if a million acres burned, I never thought it could happen.” He drank champagne again.
“Damn, it’s cold,” said a woman whose nose had gone cherry red. She rubbed her hands together and stuck them under her arms.
“You think this is something?” a man in a woolen cap shouted. “Have you heard tomorrow’s forecast?” He twisted the dial of a portable radio and the tinny strains of “Let it Snow” encouraged another round of cheering.
Not far from the crowd, a group of elk lay blissfully undisturbed by the revelry.
Steve started to raise the bottle again. Someone took it from his hand. “Moru,” he said.
Moru passed the champagne without drinking. “I called Nyeri in Bozeman. They’re going to stay the night and drive back with Devon tomorrow.”
“Good idea,” Clare agreed. The night stretched before her, the time with Steve an impossible luxury.
He pulled her tighter against his side and murmured for her ears only. “This evening, madam, the chef will prepare his special spaghetti sauce, with fennel, basil, and plenty of garlic. Guaranteed to give Technicolor dreams.”
Clare didn’t plan on dreams anymore, unless they were the good kind. She pressed closer to Steve. “On the other hand, we may not get much sleep.”
EPILOGUE
September 11
Steve had always thought the section of the Grand Loop Road between Canyon and Norris to be the park’s most monotonous corridor of pine.
Today, it was transformed, as broad vistas heretofore unseen opened before his eyes. At the high point of the Solfatera Plateau, he could see out over the long burned slope to Nez Perce Creek.
“We need to talk,” he told Clare, who rode beside him in the Park Service truck.
“I know.” She spoke so softly that Steve silenced the radio playing “Frosty the Snowman.”
It was chilly in the cab, but although his fingers hovered close to the lever, Steve did not put on the heat. After suffering through the summer, he was quite willing to taste the bracing bite of cooler air. “I’m not sure where to begin,” he said.
All at once, he couldn’t stand that he had to hold the wheel and keep his eyes on the road. Not while Clare was beside him and there were things he desperately needed to tell her.
“I know Moru said Nyeri will be bringing Devon down this afternoon, but they should be a while on the road.” He slowed and pulled into an overlook on the left. Here the Wolf Lake arm of the North Fork had wreaked havoc. In an area where a rare tornado-like wind had created a blowdown years ago, fire had swept through the deadwood and left a veritable moonscape.
This was one of the worst looking bur
ns, right beside a major road. The news had featured a reporter on this spot telling the nation in grave tones, “Tonight, this is all that is left of Yellowstone National Park.”
What colossal bullshit! Even inside the outlines of the burns, there were broad areas where damage had not been severe.
As Steve drew the truck to a halt, Clare put her hand over his. He killed the engine and turned into her arms. He wanted to drag her into the woods, but only flattened tree trunks surrounded them. With an effort, he broke the embrace and said hoarsely, “We’re not talking.” He was determined to ask her, against all odds, if she would come and live with him in Yellowstone.
Outside, a huge snowflake drifted down and landed on the windshield. It slid sideways as it melted into a great water drop that sluiced down the glass. Another flake whirled past, and another.
Clare opened the door and jumped down with childlike alacrity. “They weren’t kidding about the forecast!”
Steve followed her into what rapidly became a fast-falling whirl. She leaped tree trunks in the downed forest, hurrying to the top of a rise and spreading her arms wide. By the time he caught up with her, her sweetly ragged hair was starred with white.
“This will go a long way toward bringing the dragon to its knees,” Steve said.
“Look at that.” She pointed.
Embers still smouldered in the heart of a log nearly three feet in diameter, while a sugary dusting frosted the exterior. “It’s not over by a long shot,” she said. “These fires will burn on and the mopping up will take months.”
Steve nodded. “Twenty years from now people will still be questioning whether ‘let-burn’ was a disaster, or if a hundred years of playing Smoky Bear set the stage for an inferno.”
Clare shivered in the swirling white wind. Steve must have noticed, for he reached his arm around her and drew her under the shelter of his jacket. The way he wordlessly knew what she wanted gave her chest an aching feeling.
They had made love, but neither had spoken of the future.
