Flash Fire

by Caroline B. Cooney

  They leaped out of their car only fifty feet away from a real house fire! This was what they’d flown all this way to see! This was great. Fire leaped out like bright-colored flowers. The houses had to be four or five times larger than any house back home. Every single house had at least a three-car garage.

  “Wood shingle roofs,” said her father in disgust. “These people are nuts. Who would live in a place where every time you turn around you got fire and earthquake and riots and queers and all kindsa people don’t speak English.” He shook his head. “Just to get a tan,” he said. “People that dumb, they deserve to have their houses burn down.”

  Wow, you could heat Campbell’s soup on the sidewalk, it was so hot.

  Swann looked for the television van, because she was wearing a really nice pair of shorts.

  On the wooden roof, a guy stood like he was standing on his patio, hosing down his roof, his bottle of beer in his other hand. “Man after my own heart,” said Mr. Gorman.

  The guy’s hedge burst into flames, and the firefighters aimed their hose at it and the fire went out right away. Swann was kind of disappointed. She had hoped the guy’s house would catch fire while he was trapped up there. That would have been exciting. Of course, you never said that kind of thing out loud, even though you knew every other person here was hoping for it too, and so instead they applauded the firefighters.

  “Hey,” said one firefighter, neon yellow jacket dripping with soot-blackened water. “Hey, don’t go past the trucks. You people go on home, huh? This isn’t a sideshow.”

  “Whole city’s a sideshow,” said Swann’s father, and the fire tourists laughed.

  The Brushfire

  3:42 P.M.

  HIDDEN BY SMOKE AS dense as wool blankets, the fire crossed a minor unnamed hill, and dipped into a minor unnamed gully. These were not worth naming on maps, but they were road enough for a fire. Down in the reaches and gullies was a carpet of sagebrush, sumac, and scrub oak. Every leaf crackled like a dead thing, and every blade of grass was brown and sere.

  The fire had miles of uninhabited acres to play with, where it could leap across bare spots and jump feet first into the fuel. It didn’t need roads. It could make its own highway.

  Ahead of the fire ran anything with legs: every wild and desperate creature trying to find sanctuary.

  Pacific Coast Highway

  3:43 P.M.

  MR. AND MRS. ASZLING LOVED the word everyone. Everyone is writing a script, they were always saying. Everyone is trading up for a better house. Everyone is in mutual funds now.

  Not everyone, thought Chiffon. Out of jealousy, she took Mrs. Aszling’s best sunglasses and some of Mr. Aszling’s spare dollars as well as the car keys.

  Chiffon had lied about her age to get the job. She knew the Aszlings knew, and even so, they didn’t care. Geoffrey didn’t matter that much to them. Chiffon was not quite eighteen, having skipped her senior year in high school in order to become a star in Hollywood. You had to do something while you were waiting to be cast, but one day of waitressing proved to Chiffon that she was no waitress. In Chiffon’s opinion, people should get their own silverware. So she took up child care.

  She and Geoffrey were a good fit. She didn’t pay any attention to him and he didn’t pay any attention to her. The Aszlings were never home. Chiffon didn’t think you could call it a home when you spent so little time there, but their absence had plusses. Whirlpool, sauna, media room, wet bar, and most of all, cars, might as well be hers.

  As for the little girl from Peru or Belize or wherever, Elony was a silent, smoking presence, always listening to her dumb radio station and eating her smelly food. Elony had one plus. She was there and nobody could accuse Chiffon of leaving Geoffrey alone.

  Chiffon had bailed out to go enjoy the fires. They weren’t going to get any action on Pinch Canyon, and Chiffon wanted to see stuff burning from up close. She didn’t like mountain roads. Who wanted a view of LA from high up? All you saw was this immense flat platter of housing — twenty million people, and not one cared what Chiffon did next. Well, she didn’t care what they did either, so there.

  Chiffon whipped out Pinch, down Grass, and toward the Pacific Coast Highway. That was such a cool road. Pacific Ocean blue and glittering on your one side, and leaping high hills and houses skidding off them during mud slides on your other side. But there was too much traffic and no fire. She swung a U-ie and headed back up Grass Canyon, following smoke like a hunting dog.

  The first fire she came upon, heading northeast on Grass Canyon Road, was small and cozy. It reminded Chiffon of camping: a cute little fire, all tucked into the stones, eager to toast a few marshmallows.

  Cute guys, with their face masks off and their bandannas on, were shoveling at the edge of fires. You’d think they were making beds, they were so relaxed. They shoveled a little dirt, hacked at a few shrubs, laughed, sipped from canteens. The fire was around their knees and sometimes they’d even stick their shovels right into it, and not act like there was any danger at all. It was obvious that everybody was having a great time.

  It must be a working requirement for firemen to be cute. Chiffon checked them out carefully. Of course, she was going to marry a producer, an agent, or a scriptwriter. But a fireman would be cute and muscular and for now, who cared about anything else?

  This was a great spot. It was really busy here. Long trailer vans from the sheriff’s department, fire department, and hospitals were surrounded by smaller vehicles like ducklings around their mother. There seemed to be a hundred fire engines, from all kinds of towns. There were hundreds of evacuated residents and their cars, repair trucks from the utility companies and phone company, television crews interviewing anybody, and snack trucks trying to make a dollar selling tacos or hot dogs.

  Chiffon bought a Coke through the car window and spotted a really cute one.

  She annoyed all the Mercedes, Land Rovers, and Volvos by cutting through them and parking right there. In traffic. She was pretty sure the really cute fireman would ask her to move the Corvette. If she couldn’t get a date out of that, her name wasn’t Chiffon.

  The Aszling House

  3:44 P.M.

  ELONY SIGHED AND TRUDGED back up the hill to be with the baby. You’ll get your reward in heaven, she told herself.

  But who wanted rewards in heaven? Elony was already half Californian. She wanted her reward right now.

  She managed to smile at that, had another cigarette, and then went in to check on Geoffrey. Both of them loved popcorn. Maybe she’d pop some corn and lie on the rug with him and see if she could coax him to change channels. He clung to the remote like a pacifier so as to remain in control of the television, at least.

  The outside light was reflecting annoyingly on the TV screen when she joined Geoffrey. She yanked the drapes shut so they wouldn’t have to look at that spooky wine-glow sky, sat down beside him, and combed his hair for a while. Geoffrey loved to have his hair combed. Chiffon didn’t know that. His parents didn’t know. Only Elony knew.

  Geoffrey refused to surrender the remote control and Elony didn’t wrestle with him, but drifted into a nap.

  The Severyn House

  3:45 P.M.

  THE AIR SETTLED LIKE grease and Beau’s white shirt began to turn gray. He couldn’t find Elisabeth and he couldn’t settle down. He was having some weird primitive response to distant smoke. If he were in touch with nature, he would know what it was saying to him. But he knew nothing. He could only pace, and feel anxious, and avoid the living room with the box on the mantel.

  Beau circled from one deck to another, peering toward the dead end of Pinch Canyon. Usually he liked how he sort of had his own personal continent here: his hills on three sides and his own road to the ocean. Today…

  Where’s Elisabeth? he thought irritably. “Lizzie!” he shouted. His anxiety became a queasy pre-flu feeling in his gut.

  In the last few months — since the box, as a matter of fact — Beau had become ridiculously protective
of his little sister. What if Mom and Dad turned on Elisabeth, the way Dad had turned on Michael? After all, she wasn’t up to standard either.

  Elisabeth and Beau’s father had been married before. Dad was much older than Mom. Mom was his trophy wife. Everybody laughed about this (except, presumably, the first wife). Beau wouldn’t know, because he had never met the first Mrs. Severyn. There had been a son by this marriage: Michael. Beau had had a half brother. They had never met either. Dad’s divorce had been so ugly that there was total separation between the first and second families.

  Michael died.

  AIDS.

  Dad had been sent the box of ashes that had once been Michael. It was all that existed of Michael now. Literally. When Dad had found out that Michael was gay, years ago, he’d destroyed every photograph, every old report card, art project, and outgrown baseball uniform. He had never seen that son again.

  Dad had set the box of his son’s ashes on the mantel, as if planning to do something momentarily, but it had been there for months. Dad could neither bury the box nor move it.

  Mom said nothing about it, and as for Michael’s mother, Beau did not even know her name, nor why she hadn’t kept the ashes herself, or even if she was alive.

  Throughout his teens, Beau had been aware of his father watching for “signs” that this son, too, might be gay. Beau knew perfectly well he was not, and yet to tell his father this, to give him peace of mind on the subject, would in some way betray Michael.

  Sometimes Beau conversed with this dead brother he knew only by box. So Michael, were you a nice guy or what? Would you have spoken to me if your mom and our dad hadn’t hated each other? Would you and I have been real brothers, maybe even friends, if my mom hadn’t ruined your mom’s marriage?

  “Elisabeth!” called Beau one more time.

  The sky changed dramatically. One minute it had been wine red, with layers of pink and gold and yellow, and now it was blackening. Wow, thought Beau. That’s great. We’re going to have rain. That’ll help the fires.

  He coughed. The air was so hot. It was burning his throat to breathe. He ought to stay in the air-conditioning. But when he was in a mood like this, Beau hated to be alone in the house with those ashes. Those betrayed, unloved, unwanted parts of Michael.

  Beau knew a cheerleader who lived the opposite side of this story. Katie was the first-time-around child, and her father never so much as remembered her birthday. But the two little babies of his second marriage, he loved lavishly, spending time and money and energy and adoration on his second family.

  Beau didn’t think there were explanations for men who did that. If Beau cornered him and said, Dad, are you going to abandon us some day too?, Dad would be astonished. Dad would say, What are you talking about? Beau would say, Michael, I’m talking about Michael. And Dad would glare at him for mentioning the forbidden name and shout, What does he have to do with anything?

  What does he have to do with anything? thought Beau. Get a grip on yourself.

  His parents despised people who lacked self-discipline. So the thing was to discipline Michael out of his thoughts.

  The thundercloud gathered itself strangely behind the bulk of Pinch Mountain. It looked as if a prairie tornado was snaking around back there, half hidden by the hills. Do we have tornadoes in California? thought Beau. We have everything else.

  The Severyn House

  3:46 P.M.

  IN HER HIDEY HOLE, Elisabeth thought about the ghost.

  Ghosts belonged in East Coast sea captains’ houses, where spirits of murdered brides could not rest. A ghost in the bright laughing sun of southern California? Dumb casting.

  But Los Angeles had a ghost. Not on Pinch Canyon, for which she was very thankful. But pretty close. Next door to the riding stable she went to.

  It hadn’t been that bad a fire, only eight houses, and they saved the barn. The man had gotten safely out of his house. He was not burned. He was not overcome by smoke. He was among fire trucks and firefighters, protected by fat hoses spraying blessed water.

  And then he ran back into the burning house, shouting that he had to get something.

  He never came out.

  He had lived alone, that man. There were no people inside who needed to be rescued. He had no pets. No cocker spaniel, no beloved cats to save. So what had he needed so much? What could it have been? Photographs? Silver? A souvenir from some old vacation?

  Nobody ever knew.

  They knew only that it was more important than life. That man had chosen to die in the most awful way there was. He had not died by breathing in the smoke first. He had died by burning up.

  Some well-to-do couple purchased the property without a shudder and rebuilt the house, making it finer, wider, and broader. Elisabeth knew he was in there still, that ghost. Cold and shadowy, still reaching for whatever it was he could not live without. She half-saw him every time she went riding at the stable, his fingers burning black before they could rescue the sacred object.

  There was nothing in Elisabeth’s house she could not live without. Tucked under the deep glossy leaves, crouched in hot shadow, Elisabeth let her real worry form.

  What would her parents rescue, if their house burned? Would they put Elisabeth first? They never had.

  Elisabeth saw little of her mother or father even when they weren’t at work. They were both very concerned with their bodies, and belonged to an important and prestigious health club. Their fitness regimes took a great deal of time, and Mom’s class where she worked on her inner child could never be skipped.

  It was pretty easy to skip the real children, however.

  Elisabeth ate both cupcakes. She wanted to belong to a family where they had purple and yellow and aqua colored sugar cereal around. When she grew up, fresh fruit would never cross her threshold, and as for foreign vegetables, she would pay the supermarket not to carry them. She would eat Twinkies and Sno Balls and lots and lots of salty greasy potato chips.

  Overweight made Mom tremble. She liked best the people who stopped eating after one bite of dessert and sat quietly through the rest of the conversation without ever touching that chocolate again. These people had discipline.

  Elisabeth didn’t want discipline. She wanted a pet. Specifically, one of Danna Press’s kittens. She’d asked her mother, but as far as Elisabeth’s mother was concerned, pets were just hair on your couch and fleas on your ankles.

  Elisabeth Severyn slid into a nightmare where her parents rescued the things that count, and she was not one.

  A deer joined her in the thicket and woke her from the dream.

  It was scary and spooky and perfect.

  The deer was small and blond. Its eyes were immense. Its flanks heaved. Elisabeth sat entirely still. She could not believe her good fortune.

  Perhaps my real skill will be with wild animals, she thought. Perhaps I’ll make great films in Africa, or soothe gentle beasts, or learn how dolphins talk.

  The deer saw her and was not afraid.

  Ohhhhhh, thought Elisabeth, loving the deer.

  It did not occur to Elisabeth that the deer had far greater things to be afraid of.

  The Press House

  3:46 P.M.

  HALL PADDLED OCCASIONALLY, GETTING new angles on Pinch Mountain. Its fuzzy watercolory look never changed. Hall never saw an animal on the mountainside. He always looked, thinking that surely a deer or coyote must appear. But they never did. Of course, maybe from here, what, a half mile away, or something, they blended invisibly.

  Today was different.

  Somebody had thrown a basketball up there. Or something orange. Hall couldn’t imagine how they’d done it. Or from where.

  The swimming pool was practically boiling. Plus he was turning pruny from being in the water for so long. If he had to run from a fire right now, he’d be so waterlogged it wouldn’t even singe his eyebrows. This was not turning out to be a restful afternoon. The whole world was hotting up. California was letting him down.

  Letting h
im down. He was always hearing that phrase. Just the other night, Dad had used it about Matt Marsh.

  Matt Marsh had been one of the spectaculars: good in sports and school, popular with kids and parents, clever at technology and music, and, of course, handsome and cool. And what happened? After a few semesters in college, Matt dropped out for a job in one of the more boring suburbs down in the Valley — a flat omelette of a place where people with personality didn’t go, and if they went, after a few months they had no personality left.

  Matt Marsh not only moved to this pathetic part of LA, he became a firefighter, washing his little truck, folding his little hose, memorizing his little manual. Once you were a firefighter, that was what you were: a firefighter. You couldn’t rise like a meteor to splendid success on another level, become a vice president or a producer.

  It was okay to do clerical work before the casting session that would make you a star. It was okay to bus dishes between auditions. But it was not okay to choose something forever that went no place.

  Matt Marsh, of all people. Nobody even talked about him anymore. He might as well have been dead, and his parents were embarrassed.

  “They gave that kid everything,” Hall’s father had said sadly just the other night, “and look at how he turned out.”

  It was scary, hearing about guys that let their fathers down. Hall was desperately afraid of not pleasing his father. How was he supposed to tell Dad he wanted to help little guys like Geoffrey turn into people? “Maybe Matt’ll save lives,” Hall had pointed out.

  “If you or Danna did something like that, I’d be frantic,” said Mom bluntly. “I expect great things of you.”

  So it was not just Dad. It was Mom, too, expecting great things of Hall.

  Hall swam one slow-motion lap, floated on his back, and in rolling over caught a glimpse of the rusty orange basketball again.