Wildfire

by Rodman Philbrick

  What I find looks at first like the stump of a giant tree surrounded by thick green ferns. But it turns out it’s actually an old spring. The low, circular sides are mossy bricks that look like wood in the dim light. The top is a big round cover made of thick, rough-sawn planks. Part of the brick siding has crumbled away, and that’s where the water is leaking out, feeding the ferns.

  By then I’m on my hands and knees, mouth jammed up against those mossy bricks, slurping down cool, clear water. Beautiful water. Blessed water. Best-tasting water that ever there was.

  I drink until my belly is full, tight as a drum, and I’m woozy with the thrill of it. So satisfied that I’m tempted to curl up next to the spring and go to sleep. Might have done it, too, if a thought didn’t bob to the surface and fight for attention.

  What’s a man-made spring doing in the middle of nowhere? The brick sides and thick wooden cover had been built for a purpose, to keep the water clean and contained. Shift that cover, and water could be drawn out by the bucketful. But why here, and for who?

  Only one answer makes sense. The spring was built for the same men who had cut this logging road into the woods. Lumbermen from the lumber camps. Which gets me back on my feet and hurrying along the trail with hope in my heart.

  The old lumber camp is nearly invisible in the fading light. Located not fifty yards from the spring, in a clearing overgrown with bushes, ferns, and skinny saplings that makes everything look blended together. Kind of a natural camouflage. I can barely make out a couple of long, low sheds slowly sinking into the ground. One of them has a caved-in roof. Nearby is a small, one-story cabin, roof intact.

  The little cabin is not much bigger than a garden shed, but it can be shelter for the night. A place to hide from bears. Did I mention bears? My dad said steer clear of bears, if possible. Mostly a black bear will leave you alone, he said, but not always. Especially a mama bear with cubs. Very dangerous. So bears have been on my mind ever since the sun started setting. And when you’re thinking about bears, every clump of bushes looks like one, ready to charge.

  I hurry across the clearing and get to the sagging front porch of the cabin just as darkness falls like a hot, steamy blanket. I can barely make out the front door, and expect to find it locked. Maybe I can skinny through a window? Or break in if necessary—this is an emergency, what with the wildfire coming to get me if the wind shifts. But when I thumb the latch, the door swings creakily inward.

  “Anybody home?” I call into the darkness, not really expecting a reply. The air inside is hot and stale and smells of wood and pinesap. Sweat trickles down my forehead and stings my eyes. Sweat from the heat, but also from being afraid, spooked by the dark, and terrified the fire will catch up.

  I feel along the wall beside the front door, hoping for a light switch. No luck. Doubtful the cabin has electricity. I sure didn’t see any power lines nearby. As I search for a light switch, something hard and solid bumps my wrist. It’s all I can do not to scream. Was that a bony hand?

  My heart is slamming so hard I can barely breathe.

  Don’t be a moron, Sam! Don’t panic. Keep it together. Use your brain. Find what bumped you and deal with it. Slowly I pass my fingers along the wall and touch the thing that nearly scared me to death.

  A flashlight hanging from a thin rope, just inside the door.

  I press the button, expecting the batteries to be long dead. But to my amazement, a beam of light nearly blinds me.

  I’ve never been so grateful for such a small thing. A simple flashlight. “Thank you,” I say, to whoever was thoughtful enough to leave it hanging by the door. “Thank you, thank you, thank you.”

  The warm beam of the flashlight lights up a small, tidy interior. A potbellied cast-iron woodstove with a tin chimney going up through the roof. A little square table with two spindly chairs. A narrow bunk. A stack of wooden crates piled up against the back wall. And dust, lots of dust.

  I check out the top crate. Plastic gallon jugs of supermarket water. The labels haven’t faded or peeled, so they can’t be that old. The lumber camp looks abandoned, like the logging is long over, but it seems like someone has visited this cabin recently. Which explains the flashlight, the fresh jugs of water.

  A supply of water is good—no, it’s great, it’s amazing—but I’m suddenly so exhausted I can barely keep my eyes open. I head for the narrow bunk. Thin mattress, no sheets, but I’m grateful to have a bed.

  Doesn’t matter that the cabin is stifling hot, and smells old and musty, but at least it doesn’t stink of smoke. A safe place to sleep seems like a treasure I couldn’t imagine when the flames were chasing me from tree to tree. As soon as the sun rises, I intend to keep running, putting distance between me and the fire. But tonight I need to get some rest.

  I lie in the dark, wishing I were home. My mom and I live in Wells, Maine. Not in the beachy, touristy part, but out in the woods by the sandpits. Which is fine. I like it out there. At night you can hear the coyotes yipping under the power lines. Yipping and howling and singing to each other. Kind of scary if you never heard it before, but once you know, it’s like listening to a family conversation. Dad, Mom, and the kids.

  I miss it, miss it, miss it.

  I fall asleep worrying about my mother. Did the people at the clinic tell her I was missing? Will she stay in the program? Or will she quit and try to find me on her own?

  I can hear myself begging her: Twenty-eight days, Mom, that’s all you have to do. Four weeks and then you’ll be free. No more pills. Your mind will be clear. I’ll go to summer camp, and you’ll go to rehab. They’ll help you, Mom, I promise. Stay in the program, please?

  No more pills, no more pills, no more pills. Pray for no more pills.

  I sleep like the dead.

  Where am I? That’s my first thought as I wake up. I take a deep breath of hot, stuffy air and look around. Oh yeah. The little cabin in the abandoned lumber camp. I sniff the air, but the smell of a distant fire hasn’t changed. My second thought is about my mother. I’m worried. Did I mention she’s in rehab?

  Maybe you think all drug addicts are losers. Not my mother. A loser would give up when her husband dies in some stupid road accident on the other side of the world. A few days after the funeral, she called me into the kitchen and sat me down. “I’m not sure what’s next for us, Sammy, but it will be something good, that’s a promise. Your dad is gone, and we’ll miss him every day, but that doesn’t mean we give up. No way, not ever. Not as long as we have each other.”

  Mom was sad about Dad, desperate sad, but she kept her job as a physical therapist, taking extra shifts to make ends meet. In her free time, which wasn’t much, she made sure I was okay, and worked in her garden, which she always said was better than medicine.

  Weeding, planting, helping things bloom, helping people heal. That’s my mother, or it was until she got rear-ended in a parking lot last year and injured her neck real bad, and started taking prescription meds for the pain. After a while she was taking more and more pills, and pretty soon it seemed like she wasn’t really there, like she couldn’t concentrate or pay attention. She started missing shifts and let the garden go to weeds.

  Mom kept apologizing, and blamed it on being tired, but it kept getting worse. Until one day I came home from school and found her passed out on the floor, barely breathing. I tried to wake her, and when that didn’t work, I dialed 911 and they took her to the hospital and pumped her stomach and tested her blood for opioids.

  Opioids. I hate that word. Sounds like some horrible kind of mind spider that takes over your brain. Anyhow, at the hospital, they assigned me a social worker, Mrs. Labrie, who talked to me about going into foster care while my mother went to rehab. When I freaked out, she came up with a plan for me to go to summer camp instead. Which was the perfect solution, until the fire wrecked everything.

  I swing my legs over the steel-frame bunk. Sitting there all sweaty with the stifling heat as I try to clear my head. Think smart, like my dad used to say.
Stop worrying about things I can’t change. Nothing I can do about Mom, not today. Today I need to keep clear of the fire and find my way back home. Concentrate on making that happen.

  I have no idea what time it is, but it must be early, not long after sunrise. I’m dizzy, or maybe light-headed is more like it. The constant heat is partly to blame, but mostly it’s because my belly is growling, Feed me, feed me. I head for the stack of crates, figuring to fill up on bottled water. But what I find in the second crate is way better than that. The crate is loaded with canned goods. B&M beans, Dinty Moore beef stew, canned franks and beans, canned brown bread, Spam, pears, tuna fish. Tons of stuff, enough to live for weeks or maybe months, and there’s even a can opener and a jackknife!

  Cold beef stew for breakfast, right out of the can? If you haven’t eaten for twenty-four hours, it tastes great, let me tell you. And better yet, the food goes right to my brain, and out pops an idea. Okay, maybe it’s not an original idea, but it just might work. Remember that movie where a guy gets stranded on an island and spells out “HELP” in the sand? What if I do the same thing in the clearing, except spell it out with trees? Not big trees, of course, but white birch saplings small enough for me to drag into place?

  I mean, they’ll be searching for me, right? Sending out helicopters and planes and search parties, whatever they do when a kid goes missing in the woods. Unless they think I burned up in the fire. Which is discouraging for about ten seconds, and then I decide to make a giant “HELP” and hope for the best. That somebody will see it and rescue me before the fire gets here. Before the old camp explodes in flames, and me with it.

  So my plan is to find an ax or a handsaw and get started. Doesn’t take long to search the little cabin and discover there’s nothing bigger than the jackknife I found. I decide to put it in my pocket and hope the owner won’t mind. Then I remember those falling-down sheds. It makes sense there might be old hand tools in a lumber camp, and if there are, they’d likely be stored in a shed.

  Feeling like the smartest twelve-year-old in the universe, I stride out of the hot cabin and into the overgrown clearing. I check out the skyline, looking for signs of fire. The horizon is dark with smoke, but it still looks a long way off. Shoving my way through low bushes and ferns, I head for the closest shed. The one where the roof is more or less intact.

  The big shed doors are heavy, but swing smoothly on recently oiled hinges. A blast of super-hot air hits me from inside, and a faint odor of something familiar. Gasoline and motor oil. In my mind, that means a chain saw, which would make my job a whole lot easier. If I can figure out how to start a chain saw. Can’t be that hard, right?

  As the doors swing all the way open, daylight spreads into the dim interior of the shed. And what I see there just about blows my mind.

  The thing is covered by a dust sheet, but I can sort of make out the shape. A vehicle. Could be an off-road four-wheeler, but I don’t think so. Too wide. Only one way to find out.

  I take a corner of the dust sheet and pull it away.

  “Whoa,” I say, amazed. “No way!”

  The thing under the sheet is a Jeep. An old Jeep, like from the wars in the last century. Dull green in color and as stocky as a bulldog, with thick tires and old leather seats and no doors, and a flat, tilt-down windshield. There’s a shovel and ax attached to the passenger side, and a couple of five-gallon fuel cans strapped to the back bumper. No ignition or key that I can see, just a simple lever marked Off/On, and a small compass mounted on the dash.

  You may be wondering, what’s the big deal about finding an old Jeep, instead of, say, a nice new four-wheeler? Because of my dad, that’s why. His favorite vehicle of all time was an Army Jeep! His grandfather drove one in World War II. In one story, the old man had gotten stuck behind enemy lines in the Battle of the Bulge, but he escaped because of his Jeep—rescuing four wounded soldiers along the way.

  I watched a lot of WWII movies with Dad, who wanted to pass along our family history. Plus, it was fun watching movies with him because he knew so much about it all.

  Once I asked him if he’d get me a Jeep when I turned sixteen. That made him laugh. “You’re only eight years old,” he said.

  “That makes me halfway there.”

  He laughed even harder.

  “Promise? Swear-on-your-heart promise?”

  “Tell you what, Scamp,” he said. “I promise that someday we’ll buy an old Jeep and fix it up, you and me.”

  “When?”

  “When we can afford it, and that’s the end of this conversation.”

  But it wasn’t the end, not by a long shot. Whenever I saw an old Army-style Jeep on the road or in a yard, we’d talk about how someday we’d get one of our own. I wish you could see this, Dad! You’d already have the hood up.

  What I find in the old Jeep’s little glove compartment makes it even better. There’s a neatly folded map that looks well used. A small gray plastic folder contains a vehicle registration in the name of Aldrich Brown, and a faded black-and-white photo of a tall, lean man in an Army uniform standing next to a Jeep. Maybe he owns the lumber camp property, or has permission to store a vehicle here. Maybe he’s the one who keeps the cabin stocked with provisions. Whatever, he has a big grin on his face. I turn the photo over and there, in neat handwriting, are the words U.S. Army, 40th Infantry, Korea 1952.

  Cool! I’m so focused on the Jeep, and on memories of my dad, that at first I don’t notice the smell. The terrible smell. The awful, terrifying smell. Then it hits me, and I run out of the shed and look to the sky, which is suddenly boiling dark clouds and flashing orange along the tree line.

  The fire is suddenly close and getting closer. The wind has shifted, and it carries the heat and stink of fire.

  My heart sinks. The wildfire is back with a vengeance, driving the hot sparky wind, and there’s no time to make a plan. I thought the worst was over, but obviously not. All I can do is get moving as quickly as possible, and try and keep ahead of the flames behind the boiling smoke. Smoke that’s already burning my throat.

  Water. I’m going to need water. Best I can do is grab a few jugs for the road. Go. Make it fast. Don’t mess it up like you did going back for the stupid phone.

  I’m sprinting for the little cabin, when animals suddenly explode from the surrounding forest. Birds are first, hundreds of them, streaking across the clearing. Big black crows, tiny bright songbirds, and eerie-looking owls, silent but for the swoop of their wings. I raise my arms to cover my head, afraid they’ll peck my eyes out, but the birds avoid me and rush up into the smoke-darkening sky.

  Next come squirrels, tails flattened as they skitter through the underbrush, chittering with fear. Then groundhogs waddling along, and raccoon families screeching, and other close-to-the-ground creatures running so fast they’re blurred. Weasels, maybe.

  Last is a young deer with a rack of mossy antlers. He enters the clearing in one mighty leap, freezing for a split second, as if posing for an amazing nature picture, and then vanishes into a stand of pines on the opposite side of the camp.

  The message couldn’t be clearer. Run. If you want to live, run.

  I kick open the cabin door and grab crates of cans and jugs of water. I race back to the shed, fear choking my throat. Because I can hear the fire now, roaring close behind the thick wall of smoke. The crackle of burning branches. The whoosh of leaves igniting into flames. It can only mean one thing: Fire is eating the forest. Fire is coming so fast I can’t possibly outrun it. Not without help. Not without the Jeep.

  Doesn’t matter that I don’t know how to drive, it’s my only chance.

  I toss the crates into the back of the Jeep and slip behind the wheel, hands shaking. Trying to remember what little I know about driving a standard transmission. I know the clutch is important. That’s how you shift gears. But which one is the clutch pedal and which is the brake?

  Take a guess. I press down on the left pedal. It goes all the way to the floor. Okay, that must be the clutch. I
turn the lever on the dash to On.

  Nothing. Total silence. I jiggle the lever. Still nothing.

  Forget the Jeep. Run for your life.

  No, wait. Starter pedal? Yes! Remember? Dad said really old Jeeps had a starter pedal. Something you had to press down with your foot. To make the engine turn over.

  Find it, boy. Find it or die.

  I look down and spot a small, knobby rubber pedal. I press on it with my foot. The most amazing thing happens: The engine turns over and catches!

  Nothing ever sounded so good as that engine purring. Like it woke up happy from a deep sleep and is ready to get to work.

  That running engine gives me hope, but the smoke is getting thicker, filling the shed. My eyes sting.

  What do I do next? How do I make it go?

  My brain screams, “JUST DO SOMETHING, YOU IDIOT! Put this beast in gear and get moving!”

  Yes! But how? There are two stick shifts! One big and one small! One for regular and one for four-wheel drive? The bigger stick must be for regular transmission, right? But how do I get it into first gear?

  Then I see it. A diagram on the dashboard. First gear is to the left and down.

  Quick! Do it or get burned to a crisp!

  I grab the stick, pull it left and down. It clicks into place. Okay. Now put your right foot on the gas pedal and lift the clutch pedal with your left. Careful! Don’t stall the engine!

  My left foot accidently slips off the clutch pedal and WHAM! there’s an awful grinding noise as the Jeep lurches into gear. Suddenly we’re out of the shed, me and the Jeep. Bouncing through the clearing, knocking down bushes and skinny saplings with fire raging behind us.

  I’m fighting to get control. The steering wheel bucks in my sweaty hands like a thing alive. I manage to grab hard enough so it stops slipping through my fingers.