Wildfire

by Rodman Philbrick

  I’m in control, more or less. I’m steering for the path, steering for my life. Because the fire behind me is louder than the engine in front of me.

  Drive, boy, drive! Go! Go! Go!

  I know this sounds crazy, but as me and that old Jeep tear through the clearing, I’m laughing out loud. The vehicle is bucking like a horse, fighting to go wild, and I’m howling in relief. Hanging on to that steering wheel like my life depends on it. Because guess what? It does!

  I sneak a look behind just in time to see the lumber camp explode into fire. The sheds are burning, dripping with flames. The birches are going up like skinny white candles, spreading from tree to tree. There are hot threads of red and orange glowing behind the smoke. It would look beautiful if it wasn’t so awful.

  When I get to the old logging trail, I have to choose which way to go. Right or left? Instinct tells me I need to head into the wind. So I steer to the left. The Jeep finds the ruts, and the steering wheel stops fighting me so much. Like it knows the way.

  Maybe it does. No, that’s crazy, it’s just a machine. Nuts and bolts and steel. It feels alive because the trail is so bumpy, and because my heart is beating hard enough for two. I’m super frightened and super excited at the same time. The fire scares me half to death, but driving the Jeep is the most fun I’ve ever had. The farther we get down the trail, the less smoke in the air. I’m feeling more confident.

  I’d like to turn around and check what’s happening behind me. Is the fire catching up? But I don’t dare take my eyes off the old logging trail. What would Dad say? Keep the wheels in the ruts! Don’t stop, because what if you can’t get it into gear again? That would be fatal. Got to keep moving.

  Yes, Dad, yes. Put as much distance as possible between the fire and me.

  I’m pedal to the metal in first gear. I could try for second gear and get more speed, but what if it stalls? And I’m bouncing so hard I’m not sure I can handle going faster. Every now and then we hit a root or rock that makes the steering wheel shudder, and the Jeep groans, like it feels pain.

  I decide not to change anything, just stick with it for now. Try not to worry about what’s happening behind me. My mission is to keep it on the path. Dad was always saying, Learn as you go, right? So now’s my chance. Stay focused, pay attention, and let the vehicle eat up the yards.

  Not sure how long it lasts, that first part of the journey. Half an hour? Maybe seven miles down the trail? I’m drenched in sweat, but we’re doing great, the Jeep and me. And we might have got clear of the fire for good, if it wasn’t for what happened next.

  The first screech sounds like a wounded bird. It calls again, closer and louder. Not a bird. It’s human. Definitely human.

  I put the Jeep in neutral and roll to a stop, listening.

  “Hey!” comes a faint voice. “Hey, you! Wait, please wait!”

  A girl. At first I can’t see her. Then she pushes her way through the tree branches, maybe fifty yards from the logging road. Limping along as fast as she can, leaning on a stick, with a small backpack slung over her shoulder. Face covered with soot, except for her eyes. Makes her look like a reverse raccoon.

  I leave the engine running and get out to help. She stumbles through the ferns, hurrying like she’s afraid I’ll leave her behind. I give her a shoulder to lean on. Not sure it helps, because she’s a head taller than me.

  Boy, does she stink of smoke and sweat.

  “It almost got me,” she says, panting. “The fire last night. I ran and I ran. No idea where I was going. Just trying to get away.”

  “You’re okay.”

  I guide her to the Jeep.

  She collapses into the passenger seat and starts to cry. Great, heaving sobs of relief. She wipes tears and soot from her face with the back of her hand. “Sorry. Sorry. I don’t cry. Well, hardly ever. But I thought I was dead. And then I heard that beautiful motor sound. I was so afraid it would pass by before I could find it. Ran as hard as I could, until I tripped and hurt my ankle.”

  “But you kept on running.”

  “I guess.” She focuses on me, as if seeing me for the first time. “Excuse me, but are you old enough to drive?”

  “I’m doing okay.”

  “You’re what, twelve?”

  “Almost thirteen. Do you want a ride or not?”

  That makes her laugh. “Ha! Sorry for asking. It’s not like there’s any cops around to give you a ticket.”

  “Fire’s coming this way. We best keep moving.” I get behind the wheel, put the Jeep in gear. “Um, there’s a jug of water in the back seat. Help yourself.”

  Up until three minutes ago, I was on my own, the only human in the woods, or that’s how it felt. I kind of liked it that way. Then this girl appears out of nowhere. Delphy Pappas. She’s from Camp Calusa, down the lake from Camp Wabanaski. Two years older than me, broad-shouldered and way taller, with a long dark ponytail. She’s big. Strong and solid. The kind of girl you’d want on your sports team. As we bounce along the ruts, keeping a steady pace, she raises her voice above the noise of the engine and thanks me for stopping.

  “No problem.”

  “Is this your Jeep?” she asks. “What are you doing out here?”

  I tell her about going back for my phone and missing the bus and stumbling into the lumber camp. “That’s where I found the Jeep. It saved my life. And I guess I saved it, too, because the lumber camp went up in flames. What about you?”

  She looks away. “I was, ah, out in the woods the night before the fire.”

  “Yeah?”

  “I was, um, texting someone. Then it was really late and I got totally lost in the dark. Had to drink water from this disgusting mucky pool. Next morning—yesterday, right?—I could see the camp through the trees when the sun came up. Almost made it.”

  “The fire. It came wicked fast.”

  She nods quickly. “All I could do was run. Never been so scared in my life.”

  “Calusa, that’s a survival camp, right?”

  “Fitness. Mostly sports. For me, it was track and volleyball. Which I guess probably saved my life. The running part. So where are we heading?”

  “I don’t know, exactly. I’m hoping this trail connects with a main road, and we get there before the fire does.”

  “Okay,” says the girl with the raccoon eyes. “Hope is good.”

  We rumble along for at least an hour, making good progress—the smoke has thinned from the sky and the smell is fainter by the minute. I’m getting more relaxed and confident behind the wheel. I’ve got this thing beat. I can do it. Hands at ten and two, like Dad showed me, and keep your eyes on the road. In this case the rutted trail. On the lookout for any fallen trees or rocks, because if we break an axle, the Jeep is all done.

  When the trail straightens out, I ask Delphy where she’s from.

  “Westbrook. We have a Greek restaurant. It’s on 302. Delphy’s. And no, the restaurant isn’t named after me. It’s named for my grandmother, Adelphia, who started it.”

  “Cool.”

  “It is, mostly. The whole family works there—my mom and dad, aunts and uncles, cousins.”

  “Sounds like a big place.”

  She nods. “Started small, but now we seat a hundred and fifty on Saturday nights. And that’s the night I have to scrub pots. Ug!”

  I wonder what it must be like, being part of a big family. She makes it sound like fun, even if it does mean scrubbing pots.

  We settle in, putting miles between us and the fire.

  My passenger gets so relaxed she almost falls asleep, even though the ride is bumpy. With her head lolling and her eyelids drooping, and her faced cleaned of soot, Delphy looks younger. A little girl in a big, tall body. Must be exhausted from her night in the woods. She hasn’t really explained what she was doing out there, but she did say she ran her battery down texting someone.

  I wonder about that. Why go out in the woods to text? Didn’t her camp counselors tell her it’s dangerous to be wandering the fore
sts of Maine at night? Didn’t they warn about bears and coyotes and bobcats? Or how easy it is to get lost?

  After a while, she startles herself awake and goes, “Sorry, sorry. Where are we, Sam?”

  “See that little glove compartment? There’s a map that might help. Are you good with maps?”

  She looks uncertain. “I’ve got a GPS app. Like that?”

  “Never mind. I’ll check it out when we stop. Right now, all I know, we’re heading mostly west.”

  “How do you know that?”

  I point to the compass on the dash.

  “Oh. I was wondering, maybe we can charge my phone from the car battery?”

  “I don’t think so. It’s not like you can just plug in.”

  She exhales and leans back into her seat, disappointed. “I really, really need my phone. I need to let my parents know what happened. They’ll be worried sick. How far before we get to a real road?”

  “Don’t know. Could be around the next corner. Could be miles.”

  At exactly that moment, the engine sputters and dies.

  The Jeep slows to a stop, dead as a doornail.

  After about a hundred years of totally insane panic—okay, maybe ten seconds—I realize what’s wrong and start chuckling. Delphy has this look—like What have I gotten myself into?—until I explain that we’ve run out of gas.

  “And why is that funny?”

  “Because I can fix it.”

  I go around to the back, where the two five-gallon fuel cans are strapped to the bumper.

  Delphy offers to help. “My ankle hurts but there’s nothing wrong with my arms.” She grins and makes a muscle.

  Turns out she’s way stronger than me. Good thing, because the cans are really heavy, and the last thing I want to do is waste gas by spilling it. I unscrew the cap, and we both hold the can as we slowly tip it up, carefully pouring every drop of gas into the empty tank. And then we do it all again with the second can.

  “Ten gallons. That should be good for a hundred miles at least.”

  Delphy’s face falls. “You think it’s that far, a real road?”

  “Hope not. Let’s look at the map, see if we can figure it out.”

  I take the old map out of the glove box and unfold it on the hood. The air is hot and heavy, and although there’s no strong smell of smoke, the air is still bad, so breathing is a chore. Sweat is running into my eyes, and I have to blink it away before I can see the map clearly. I’m disappointed it isn’t like the trail maps Dad taught me how to read at Baxter State Park. At first it just looks like a bunch of squiggly green lines. The faded printing identifies it as a topographical survey, but I’m not sure what that means, exactly.

  Delphy leans over the map, squinting her thoughtful brown eyes, and announces that the lines are marked for elevation.

  “Elevation?” I ask.

  “How high above sea level, see?”

  As soon as she says that, the map suddenly makes sense, like one of those trick puzzles that snap into place once you know the secret. The squiggly green lines trace the shape of land and lakes and mountains. The lines are close together where the mountains are steep, and far apart where the ground is flat, or where there’s water.

  I lean over the map. “Wabanaski Lake. My camp and your camp are on the same lake, right? If we can find it on the map, at least we’ll know where we started.”

  The printing is tiny, and faded, but we eventually identify the long, skinny shape of the lake. There are no markings for the summer camps located along the shoreline. But the map is old and maybe the camps are more recent, or maybe they just didn’t bother marking them down.

  Delphy must have really sharp eyes, because she’s the one who spots the faint pencil lines. “Could this be the logging road?” she asks.

  The pencil markings run east and west across the map, following the lower elevations. The flat land. At one end there’s a smudged X, and the other end continues to the far edge of the map.

  “Yeah, I think you’re right. It makes sense if X is the lumber camp. So we’d be somewhere in here.” I place my finger on the smudged pencil line.

  “So where does this connect to a main road?”

  “It doesn’t. Not on this map.”

  Delphy sighs, her round face concerned. “We’re really in trouble, aren’t we?”

  “Yes. But if we stay ahead of the fire, we’ll be okay. That’s the main thing: Keep ahead of the fire. It’s summer, so we’re not going to die of exposure, as long as we have water. And we have food for at least five or six days, if we don’t pig out.”

  Delphy’s eyes get even bigger. “For real? You have food?”

  I show her the crates in the back seat. Beans, beef stew, franks and beans, Spam, tuna fish. She picks up a can, makes a quirky face. “Are you serious? Bread in a can?”

  I nod. “Brown bread. Almost like cake. It’s really good, especially with butter. Not that we have any butter.”

  “Huh.” She looks over the collection. “Lots of beans.”

  “Beans are nutritious. Besides, this is Maine. We practically invented baked beans.”

  For some reason, that makes Delphy laugh. Then she gets serious. “Could you, um, like open a can? I’m starving.”

  “You choose. I recommend the beef stew.”

  We don’t have spoons, so she sips beef stew right from the can as we drive along the logging trail, keeping a safe distance between us and the fire.

  At least for now.

  Turns out my passenger is pretty funny when she wants to be. We’re bumping along, going maybe ten miles an hour, and suddenly she shades her eyes with her hand and goes, “Slow down! I see the Golden Arches! Big Macs dead ahead!”

  For one tiny millisecond I almost fall for it.

  “Gotcha!” She grins at me.

  “No way.”

  “Way. You totally believed me.”

  “You’re good,” I admit. “Good enough for ice cream. I’ve been saving the last pint of chocolate chip. In that cooler in the back.”

  Her eyes dart to the back and I burst out laughing.

  She slumps in her seat. “Great. I got away from fatness camp, but I can’t get away from imaginary food.”

  “Fatness camp?”

  “They call it fitness because it sounds better. But at least half the girls are there to lose weight.”

  “Can I ask you a question? Why were you out in the woods at night?”

  “No comment.” And she won’t say any more on the subject.

  But here’s the thing. After making each other laugh, we’re no longer strangers. We’re not a team yet, me and Delphy Pappas, but we’re getting there.

  Late in the day, with light fading through the green leaves, and the smell of smoke ever more distant, we come upon a faded hand-painted sign, nailed to a tree:

  PINEY POND COTTAGE

  WALK FROM HERE

  Delphy says, “If somebody’s home, maybe they’ve got a phone. I really, really want to talk to my mom.”

  “It’s a footpath,” I point out. “Too narrow for a vehicle.”

  But Delphy leverages herself out of the seat, grabs the stick she’s using for a crutch, and hobbles past the sign. I’m nervous about leaving the Jeep alone. It saved my life, and my guts tell me to stick with it until we’re clear of the forest, clear of the fire. I can’t outrun a fire, and for sure Delphy can’t. But I need a phone as much as she does, to make sure my mom is okay, and to get us rescued. So I carefully park the Jeep in a cleared space near the sign—this must be where the owners leave their car or truck—and follow her down the footpath.

  The path looks like it hasn’t been used lately. The undergrowth is so thick with ferns that it’s like a wall of soft green waves on either side. Delphy is limping along so fast I can hardly keep up, and I worry she’ll trip and make her ankle worse.

  “Wait up! Take it easy!” But she’s real determined, crashing through the ferns and slashing her stick to clear the path, and then suddenl
y we’re in the clear.

  A meadow slopes down to a white cottage on the edge of a small pond. There’s a small rickety dock but no boat, and the shutters on the cottage windows are closed.

  Nobody home is my guess. But Delphy is determined to find out for sure. A screened-in porch wraps around two sides of the cottage, and she’s up the steps and into the porch before I get there. Darting around the old wicker furniture and peering through the glass on the front door, into the dim interior.

  She rattles the doorknob. Locked.

  “I don’t think there’s anyone here,” I say. “There’d be a car or truck in that spot, right?”

  Sounding irritated, she turns to me. “Okay, Sherlock, I get that. Nobody’s home! Duh. But what if there’s a phone charger in there, or a landline?”

  I take a step back. She’s taller than me, and holding a big stick. She notices my reaction and her face falls. “Oh, hey. Hey, I’m sorry. I’m just, like, hot and miserable and obsessed about calling my parents, okay?”

  “Delphy, I’m pretty sure there aren’t any chargers in there.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “Look around. There are no power lines attached to the house. No telephone lines. No lines of any kind.”

  She hobbles down the steps, looks up at the roofline of the porch and cottage. Her shoulders slump. “This is so messed up.”

  “There are a lot of places like this in the backwoods. Hunting cabins and getaway cottages that are too remote for power.”

  “That’s stupid.”

  I shrug, not so sure about that. “It’s sort of like camping out, except with a real roof over your head. Summer only, I’m guessing. Unless they come in by snowmobile. That lumber camp? It didn’t have power, either.”

  “I hate this!” Delphy says, frustrated. “Hate it, hate it, hate it!”

  “No, no, this is good!” I insist. “This is a great find, even without a phone. We’re far enough ahead of the fire that we can hardly smell it. And besides, we don’t dare drive a logging trail after dark—too easy to go off the road. So we need a place to stay for the night. The porch is good. The bugs won’t be able to chomp on us. Plus, we have chairs and couches and cushions. See? It’s way better than sleeping in the Jeep. I’ll go back for some food and we’ll have a nice supper right here on the porch. How about that?”