Black Helicopters (9 page)

Bo turns off the bus. It’s the middle of the night. We have come as far as we can without invitation. Now we wait.

Something is hitting on the bus door. It’s still dark. “Hey,” I say. “Hey, Bo.” But Bo is already reaching for the door lever with his good hand. He pushes it open.

All we can really see is the shotgun barrel.

“I’m Bo White, Dalton White’s boy,” says Bo. “He said we should come.”

“Dalton White is dead.”

“Yes, sir.”

“And you’re his boy?”

“I’m Dalton’s boy. And this is my sister, Valley,” Bo says. Then he adds, “We didn’t know. Not for sure. You know for sure he’s dead?”

“I’ll open the gate. You pull on in. We’ll talk, but yeah, he’s pretty for sure dead.”

Captain Nichols’s computer is big, like a TV in a motel. His house smells like dirt, and not the good kind. But it is warm, and he gives us cups of coffee before he calls us over to stand beside him while he sits in front of the screen. He types in “Willow Gulch fire” and then we can read.

Firefighters battled flames and smoke — as well as explosions — at a remote cabin on Willow Gulch Road. An area resident reported plumes of black smoke at 11:30 a.m. Arriving fire crews found a frame cabin fully engulfed. Shortly afterward, several explosions rocked the home.

Two firefighters near the structure were knocked to the ground by the blasts. They were treated for cuts and bruises but were not seriously injured.

Two water tender trucks shuttled water from nearby Little Willow Creek. Suppressive action kept the fire from spreading to other outbuildings or the surrounding forest. Deputies trained at the national fire academy remained on the scene Friday, continuing the investigation into the cause.

There was a picture. It didn’t show the hillside or trucks or Them in yellow slickers. It was like looking into the stove.

“You know computers?” asks Captain Nichols, looking at me.

“Yeah, we both know,” I say.

“But he ain’t much use. Can’t bang on the keyboard with that.” The Captain points at the blunt wad of bandage Bo is holding near his chest. I should change the gauze. It’s been a while since he had pills, and it must have hurt while he was driving.

“Sit you down here,” Captain Nichols says, and he pulls out the chair with wheels so I can sit down at the computer. The keys are dirty with the filth of the Captain’s fingers. When I touch it, the keyboard feels different than the laptop. It’s bigger, and I don’t know how to move the cursor. I don’t know how to click.

“Here,” says Captain Nichols. And he puts my hand on a lump beside the keyboard. “Use the mouse.” His hand swallows mine up. He pushes down and clicks, double-clicks. He moves the cursor. He moves my hand. His fingers are blunt. His thumb is wide and thick as a hammer handle.

“Like that,” says Captain Nichols. “You got it?”

I make the cursor arrow move across the page and turn into a pointing finger hand sitting right in the middle of the picture of the flames at the Willow Gulch cabin fire. The picture fills the screen and the video starts to play:

“Thanks for watching this evening. Leading our news, explosions complicated fighting a fire at a residence on Willow Gulch Road. Anna Frank files this report.”

“They knew the cabin was a complete loss immediately. . . .”

There are pictures of smoke from a distance, the way we saw it. Pictures of our home, still full of fire. Pictures of the back door resting sideways against a tree. Some guy in a white shirt is talking. “It was a complete loss. When the first unit arrived on the scene, the house was fully involved with fire and it partially collapsed while we were walking up there.”

The girl is talking again, she says:

“According to Chief Borglund, there were several loud explosions shortly after they arrived. The blasts blew this debris around the cabin.” The pictures of the back door against the tree are there while the girl says, “The explosions may have been caused by propane tanks inside the structure. There were no serious injuries to civilians or firefighters responding at the scene. Water from a nearby creek was pumped and used to extinguish the fire. Chief Borglund says the fire marshal is conducting an investigation, but at this time it’s being deemed accidental. He says that the cabin may have been occupied, but declined to give further details at this time. Back to you, Sonia.”

And the film freezes again, on the picture of the flames.

“Look here,” said Captain Nichols. “Click on this.” He points at another link on the page.

Fire officials said the blaze at a Willow Gulch cabin was “suspicious” but did not identify a cause. Human remains believed to be those of the owner-occupant were recovered. Authorities did not release his name because they had not been able to contact his relatives. Pending investigation, the area is cordoned, but a neighbor reported the structure was “leveled to the ground.” Another resident who had been on the scene said, “Black as that smoke was, you could tell some bad stuff was burning. It smelled bad,
chemical
bad, there’s no question about that. Maybe that place was built of railroad ties or something. Never been in there. He lived there alone. He never bothered us, and we never bothered him.”

Authorities have tentatively identified the body recovered at a fire in the Willow Gulch as cabin owner Dalton J. White, 42. Darryl Barbrady, chief forensic investigator at the medical examiner’s office speculated White died of smoke inhalation. The body remains at the state crime lab in Missoula. Barbrady said that the structure’s complete destruction might make it difficult to pinpoint a cause of death. Barbrady added that whatever sparked the blast might never be determined either, but fire officials are investigating.

“Da’s dead.” I say.

“That’s what Those People say,” says Captain Nichols. “But yeah, that’s what you got to go on. If he ain’t dead, he might as well be. They got him, and they want everybody to think he’s dead. Sorry, kids. That’s the way it is.”

After a couple of minutes, Captain Nichols says, “He was a level dealer, your daddy. He coulda used a tinfoil hat maybe, but he was fighting the good fight. And I promised him I’d help you out if you needed it, so that’s going to happen. We can talk about that in the morning. We can talk about all of it.”

“You ever read books?” I twist sideways so I can see the little boy in the back seat.

“I read books,” says Corbin. “That’s how I learned about Helicoprion. That’s how I learned how all this used to be under the sea. All the way to Wyoming. All the way to Kansas.”

“Was that back in the dinosaur times?”

“
Before
the dinosaurs. There were lots of things before dinosaurs.”

“And lots of things after.”

“Maybe not.”

“Well, we’re here. And that’s after the dinosaurs.”

“Not after. Dinosaurs are still around. They’re just being birds now.”

“Birds?”

Two ravens cross our path, their shadows are a moment on the hood of the car, and then they are gliding into the past behind us. And we are in their past, too, from their perspective. “Turn left at the next road,” I tell Eric. I don’t say, Turn because of the ravens, the gliding, guiding ravens.

I turn back to Corbin in the back seat and say, “I don’t think I’d want to meet any dinosaur bird big as a tree so it could just peck me up like a bug. But you don’t believe that, do you? You don’t believe in dinosaur birds.”

“Not like that. That’s stupid. They turned
into
birds. They laid eggs. That’s a thing they’re alike. And there’s other things. Things about their bones and feet.”

“Did they caw like ravens? Did they sing? Like meadowlarks?”

“We don’t know that. Songs don’t leave fossils. There’s no bones in noise. Why don’t you know that? What kind of books do you read? Did you read any
useful
books?”

“I didn’t have any books about dinosaurs. I like books with stories in them. Like
Tarzan.
I read
Tarzan
lots of times.”

“I saw a cartoon movie about Tarzan. It wasn’t very scientific.”

“Hey, Bro, stop bugging her. Check in the pocket of my sweatshirt back there. My game’s in there — and some headphones. Why don’t you plug in and play? You can even play on my files — I’m totally cool with it. You can see levels you never saw before.”

“Sweet!” Corbin starts pawing around in the pile of clothes on the seat. “Got it.”

“You can do me a solid sometime,” says Eric, but Corbin is already connected to the machine, already gone; his body is already a husk in the backseat; all that’s left behind are his twitching thumbs and eyes.

“So, what’s your plan now you come down from the mountains? Where you gonna live?” Captain Nichols asks the questions while he pours us coffee. He feeds us eggs too, real eggs, but they are burnt crisp and crinkly around the edges and don’t taste so good as I remember.

“We need a place to park the bus where we aren’t snowed in all winter. That’s what we need.”

“How you heat that thing?”

“There’s a little barrel stove. We put the pipe out the window. And the kerosene lamp throws a lot of heat. We use that nights.”

“Even a little stove needs a lot of wood to make it through the winter.”