Isolation (28 page)

Chapter Thirty-four

Joe's voice cut through the wind and fire. Faye heard him say, “Dad!” and she heard fear.

He was behind her, somewhere between where she stood and the house. Still holding a wet towel, on the off-chance that it was the secret weapon that would save everybody and everything, she ran for Joe's voice.

She found him bending over a pile of broken wood. The biggest cistern on Joyeuse Island had stood since 1857, at least, but it wasn't standing anymore. Faye knew that Joe's father and his ax must lie somewhere beneath the wreckage.

Joe lifted a timber heavy enough to bow his back. He shoved it aside and reached a hand down into the pile. He had found his father.

Faye, who had never known a father before now, rushed to help Joe pull the debris off Sly. She could see him pushing up against the boards piled on top of him. Was the fire lighting Sly's face as it peeked through the wreckage or was the moon finally starting to rise?

“I'm fine, Son,” he said, lifting a beam that lay across his legs and handing it to Joe. “Daughter, I'm fine.”

When Joe had set that beam aside and turned back to finish uncovering his father, he found a big arm extending out of the debris, an ax in its hand. “You got four other cisterns, Son. You know what to do. I can get myself out of this mess.”

Joe started to help his father anyway, but Faye stayed his arm. “I can do this,” she said. “I can help him. Take the ax and go.”

She draped her wet towel around her husband's shoulders, knowing that he would shed it when he needed to swing the ax, but maybe that little bit of wetness would help him. Maybe a damp shirt would hold up better against the sparks that were starting to fly.

Red light reflected on her husband's face as he ran to the first of the four cisterns that stood near the house's four corners. The ax swung and swung again. In just a few blows, Joe brought the smaller cistern down, leaping free of the water that first shot out of its side and then gushed across the ground. He dodged the falling frame of the cistern, too, and ran for the second one.

The water was helping, at least a little. In two broad swathes of the woods surrounding her home, the flames on the ground were quenched. Faye could see that Sly and Joe had chosen their points of attack so that the water wouldn't spew straight out into the woods. It had flowed laterally, parallel to the nearest wall of the house. They were doing their best to make a watery buffer that circled the house.

Faye gave Sly a hand as he lifted himself out of the rubble of the cistern. “We need to find Gerry. If the three of us get out there with shovels and some towels, we may be able to finish digging that firebreak. Let's go.”

A cracking, splitting sound told them that Joe had finished wrecking the second cistern. As Faye ran for the last place she'd seen Gerry, she realized that she could see better, a lot better, but that there was still no moon. She needed to face the fact that the fire was bringing all the light. It was closing in, and they would soon need to run for the shore and let the Gulf of Mexico protect them as all of Joyeuse Island went up in flames.

But not yet. Faye wasn't ready to run yet.

They found Gerry and showed him where the water from the cisterns had opened up big holes in the encroaching fire. Starting from those openings, they worked with shovel and wet towels to complete the ring of protection around Faye's house. Around her home.

Faye wasn't stupid. She could look deeper into the woods and see that flames were working their way toward them through the tree canopy. They couldn't fight a fire that was twenty feet above their heads. Failing to run from a fire like that could kill them all, but Faye wasn't running yet.

She slung her towel so hard at a chunk of burning bark that she knocked it right off the tree. It lay there on the ground, still burning, so she had to flap her towel at it again. This wasted time she didn't have. She swatted the burning bark until it went black, like charcoal, then she moved on to the next burning thing.

The sound of an ax splitting wood told her that Joe had reached the third cistern. That left two more. When the cisterns were gone, there would be nothing left to fight the fire but four people, a shovel, and a bucket of wet towels. If something hadn't changed by then, it would be time to run.

Faye started trying to make her peace with the loss. Joe and Sly and Gerry shouldn't risk their lives for her house. It was a symbol of her hard work in preserving it and it was a symbol of all the people who had lived in it before her, all the way back to Cally and beyond, but it was just a symbol, just an object.

It was time to let her home go.

A percussive noise near the house told her that Joe was slinging the ax at the last cistern, unleashing its water to fight the fire that would never stop coming. She gestured to Gerry and Sly that it was time to leave. They drew back from the fire's edge, into the front yard of Joyeuse's big house.

Faye knew every square inch of it. She had patched the tabby walls of its basement. She had run wiring and ductwork to bring it up to twenty-first-century standards of comfort. She had painted its walls, restored its murals, hung vintage wallpaper to replace the antique paper destroyed by the hurricane. She and Joe, working together, had rebuilt the spiral staircase and both exterior staircases. They had made a new cupola to replace the one that had blown away. They had installed up-to-date roofing.

Long ago, and this memory threatened to take her to her knees, her grandmother had taken a teenaged Faye up on that roof and taught her to patch the ancient tin that had covered it in those days.

She was losing it. She hadn't been sure she could walk away and let the fire come, but it was just a house. She had survived the loss of her baby daughter. She would survive this.

She heard Joe's ax strike again. Collected rainwater rushed out of the last cistern with such power that she could hear it, even over the roar of a fire that had nearly come. He had done everything in his power to save their home, and she loved him for it, but the fight was done. She went to him, held out her hand, and said, “It's time to go to the water.”

Joe's face was wet, and it wasn't cistern water shining on his cheeks. “Faye, I tried.”

“I know you did. We all did. Let's go.”

The fire had crept way too close to the path to the beach. They should have fled long ago. Gerry handed wet towels all around. They wrapped their heads and upper bodies in them. When a burning branch crashed to the ground ten feet away from the entrance to the path, they ran. By the time they had pushed down the path far enough to feel branches brush their arms on either side, the opening behind them was alight.

As they ran, more branches fell all around them, and some of them dropped coals onto the path ahead. Faye had only enough of her wits about her to think, “I'm barefoot,” as she ran across them.

Joe had an arm curled around her back. He wasn't pushing her and he wasn't carrying her, but she saw that he was prepared to do either. If she staggered, he would throw her over his shoulder, but that wasn't what she wanted. She wanted to leave her home for the last time under her own power.

The beach and its sand looked so soft and so cool. Her feet wanted her to get there, where the sand would soothe them and they could rest. They took her there but the dry grains of sand did no good at all. They did nothing but stick to her burned and bleeding feet.

Emma and Michael were waiting in the water. Her son was already wailing, but when he saw Faye and Joe, he held out both arms and shrieked.

They went to him. Their family was all together, almost. When Amande got home, everything would be right. Even if she came home to a family that was camping out on an island that had been burned black, everything would be right. Or close enough to right.

She heard another crack, much louder, as if Joe, Gerry, Sly, and Emma had all sunk axes into a wooden tank of water while Faye waited inside. Sly's ax had been left behind and no one but the dead Delia was left on the island to wield it, so she had to be hearing something else

Faye and all the others stood in the water, like penitents waiting for baptism, and looked ashore to see what was making all that noise.

A flash of light broke open the black sky. Less than a second passed before they heard another loud crack. Faye looked up and saw a great cloud gathering itself overhead. She saw pinpricks of stars on the sliver of sky just above the water to the south. Those stars hadn't been there a moment before. They had been covered by the cloud that had rolled off the water and spread itself over Joyeuse Island. Among those stars was a brightness that grayed the black night. The gray light looked like hope.

Sure enough, the clouds pulled further away from the horizon, revealing a moon that had been shining behind them for quite some time. Those clouds rushed in front of a strong wind that piled them up over Faye's head. Thunder pealed again, signaling the clouds to release the rain.

And it fell.

Water fell on them like a blessing. The water rinsed the smoke from Faye's hair. It ran off Joe's face in black streams of soot. It pattered on Michael's cheeks and Emma's curls and Sly's broad shoulders and Gerry's upturned face. It washed them all clean.

Chapter Thirty-five

Sheriff Rainey had been in his car within two minutes of answering Detective Steinberg's call. Steinberg had said he'd heard gunfire from somewhere near the Longchamp-Mantooth house, and that couldn't be a good thing. The sheriff hadn't been sure yet where he was going, to his office or to one of the department's boats, so he had used the drive time to call the dispatcher and try to get the whereabouts of all the officers out on the Gulf. While the dispatcher did his work, Rainey's phone had rung again. One of the officers out on the water looking for Tommy Barnes had called to give him the news that Joyeuse Island was burning.

Rainey had started barking questions. “Did you call Detective Steinberg? Is he still out there? And what about the people who live there?”

“Steinberg's not answering his phone. I can't tell you anything except I see a really big fire.” The young woman's voice was cracking under the strain of shouting over a boat motor, but she sounded calm and ready to do what needed doing.

“Tell me you already called the Coast Guard.”

“I'm not stupid.” There was a moment of dead air while she reconsidered her tone of voice. She amended her error by adding a belated “Sir.”

“No, you're not stupid. You're a good officer. Go help Steinberg. I'm on my way and, thanks to you, so is the Coast Guard.”

He had hardly hung up the phone when it rang again. Mike McKenzie's name was on the screen.

“You got the situation on Joyeuse Island under control?”

The former sheriff's spies knew all, so he knew all, but he usually pretended he didn't. McKenzie's power in Micco County would linger for the rest of his life, but he had never rubbed it in Rainey's face before tonight. Rainey had known why McKenzie was being suddenly upfront about the scope of his web of insider informants. Faye Longchamp-Mantooth and Joe Wolf Mantooth were among his closest friends.

“I've got people on the way. The Coast Guard has been called. I'm in my car now.”

“I knew you'd be doing things right. It's just that my wife is about to lose her damn mind. I may have to sit on her to keep her from going out to that island and fetching those people home herself. And we don't own a boat.”

“I've got boats, and I've got good people to pilot them. We'll get your friends home.”

“See that you do. And Sheriff?”

“Yes?”

“You have our gratitude. Nobody knows more than me and Magda how hard your job is.”

Shortly after ending his call with Mike McKenzie, Sheriff Rainey had seen fat drops of water spatter across his windshield. He had never been so glad to see an ordinary rainstorm in his life.

***

Faye lay sprawled on a gurney being pushed into the emergency room of Micco County General Hospital. Joe was in the gurney next to hers. Emma, Sly, and Gerry had been wheeled in right behind them. Even Michael had a special little-boy gurney to get him into the hospital. Part of Faye thought it was dumb for the sheriff to insist that they all be thoroughly checked out, since they were all just fine, but the other part of her knew that their bodies were pumped so full of adrenaline that they had no idea whether they were fine or not.

For example, she could see that her burned feet were all shades of red, black, and white. Some of the cuts on her soles looked pretty deep, but they were only now starting to hurt. Joe didn't look like he was feeling the awful burn that slashed across his throat yet, but he would soon.

Now somebody was spraying something wonderful on her feet, but she still didn't want to be here. She wanted to go home. She wanted to see if she had a home left.

Joe knew what she thinking. He always knew what she was thinking. The person who had just sprayed something wonderful on her feet was spraying it on his throat now, and she knew he had to be glad about that.

Instead of enjoying the wonderfulness, he turned his green eyes on hers and said something so reasonable that she wanted to hate him for it. “There's no point in going back out there tonight. It's too dark. We need to make sure the fire's really out before we go traipsing across the island, trying to see if the house is still standing.”

Faye had found things to occupy her during that long night. Michael had needed tending. She and Joe had needed to get Amande on the phone and tell her they were okay, before somebody on the Internet sent her a picture of Joyeuse Island aflame. She had needed to keep an eye on the Internet herself, hoping that some enterprising reporter had flown a helicopter out there and taken some kind of fancy night-vision video that would tell her whether her home was still there.

No luck. She was going to have to wait for sunup.

***

The hour was early and the department boat was full. Sheriff Rainey had not argued when Sheriff Mike and his wife showed up, presuming there was room on the boat for them. It wasn't strictly necessary for Emma and Gerry to be part of the expedition, but they had survived the inferno. They deserved to see what it had left behind. Sly was family, so there was no question that he was where he needed to be.

When they left shore, Faye was seated between Joe and Magda, holding tight to both their hands. Emma sat with Sly, facing them. Rainey noticed that the man left a deferential inch of space between them, because that's how gentlemen of his generation treated ladies, but Emma looked glad to have him next to her.

No one said a word until they reached the dock. Even then, they were quiet, speaking only as they went about the business of moving from boat to dock. Faye took the lead. She walked perhaps three steps before breaking into a run. Long-legged Joe was able to keep up with her, but the rest of them held back. There was a sense that the couple might need some privacy when they saw what was at the other end of the path.

***

Faye knew Joe was behind her, so she didn't look back. She got the information she needed in little dribs and drabs. Even from the dock, she could see the white painted walls of the house, so she knew that it hadn't burned to the ground. Running along the fire-blackened path, she could see green lawn in the front yard, so she knew that the fire hadn't roared through and destroyed everything. But that didn't mean that she wouldn't get to the clearing and see a white painted shell surrounding a burnt-out heart. It didn't mean that a burning tree hadn't fallen onto the roof and taken it down to the ground.

In one heartstopping moment, the line-of-sight between Faye and her home opened up before it should have. The undergrowth that should have blocked her view was burned away and the forest floor was littered with fallen trees. The remaining trees around Faye were sooty twenty, thirty, maybe forty feet in the air, but the house was unchanged.

She stepped across a hard line that divided blackened grass from green grass. The fire, quenched by water from a cistern and from the sky, had been stopped here. The line ran roughly from north to south. Almost everything east of it was torched, but everything west of it was spared.

This is where they had held the line with towels and shovels and an ax. This was where the fire had been when the rain came.

Disbelieving, she turned to Joe. This time, he was the one running, urging her on.

She ran headlong up the grand staircase to the front porch, her feet clad in boots borrowed from Magda. Papery ashes of tree leaves littered the old boards under her feet. When she crushed them, they didn't so much crackle as whisper.

The rocking chairs and porch swing were dusted in soot, but they were still there. The cavernous rooms of the main floor were empty of everything but smoke. The vintage wallpaper was darkened by it, but this was nothing that couldn't be fixed with a bucket of soapy water and some time.

She clattered down the sneak staircase into the basement that she and Joe had made into a comfortable home. This was her nest, and it was unchanged. She might have expected at least a little water damage on the floor, left behind when the Mantooth men and their ax loosed thousands of gallons of water. Nope. The people who had contoured the ground around the house all those years before Faye was born had known what they were doing. The water had all flowed outward, toward the fire it was fighting.

The crib Michael had outgrown, the bed where Joe kept the sheet untucked so he could hang his big feet off the end, the family room and its groaning bookshelves—everything was where it was supposed to be. She had imagined everything charred and dead, and she had been wrong.

“Let's go look,” Joe said.

Faye was confused, because she
was
looking. She was looking at everything she owned as if she'd never seen it before. She wanted to go into the kitchen and fondle her grandmother's cast iron skillets. In the night, when she'd lived with the idea that her home was gone, she had hung on to the fact that no fire was going to destroy those skillets.

“Let's go up top and look at everything.” Joe gestured over his head, in the general direction of the cupola.

So they did. They walked together up the reconstructed spiral staircase. It was still standing! They stood together on the landing while Joe fetched the tool that opened the cupola's trap door and lowered the ladder. Here was a reminder of how close they had come to disaster.

Joe had left the cupola's windows open when he rushed out to meet Delia, so the fire had been able to leave its mark here. Every visible surface—floor, walls, and ceiling—was dotted with burnt spots where cinders had blown in and tried to set their lives on fire.

The rain had blown through the same windows, drowning those fires before they took hold. Only the scars, black and starlike, remained. Faye thought she would resist the urge to sand and stain and paint them away. She would never be the same after losing her baby girl, but she would find a way to be whole again. Maybe if she let her house keep its scars, they would remind her that it was possible to heal.

Joe pulled her to him and she leaned against his side. Together, they looked out at their island.

To the east, blackened ground, dotted with tenacious green trees, stretched out to the horizon. The burnt acreage covered way more than half the island. To the west, nothing had changed. Greenness covered everything. She could see the old tree shading Gerry's environmental cleanup site, and she was glad it still stood. Surrounding it all, the Gulf of Mexico moved under the early morning sun as it always had and always would.

“Fire's good for the trees,” Joe said. “Longleaf pines like it. Cleans out the competition. Gives 'em space and sunlight. They'll grow better now. They'll take their time about it—we won't live to see everything this fire does for 'em—but they'll grow.”

Faye wanted to bury her face in his chest, but she wanted to look at her reconfigured island more.

“The fire uncovered a lot of new places for you to dig, Faye. You'll probably be spending all the day out there, looking for stuff. I might never see you.”

“You're not really worried about that? You'll see me. You'll always see me.”

When he didn't answer her, she said what she knew he'd been waiting a month to hear. “Joe, I'm going to be okay. We're going to be okay.”

“When you talked to Amande last night, did you tell her about the baby?”

She nodded.

“What did she say?”

“She cried. She wants to come home, so I bought a ticket and e-mailed it to her. Her plane lands late tomorrow. We need to be together. And I want her to have as much time as possible with her grandfather.”

Faye felt a tightness in Joe's back ease. He laughed and said, “The old man was pretty awesome last night, wasn't he?”

“Like father, like son.”

Wrapping both arms around her husband, but keeping her face pointed at the miracle spread below them, Faye said, “He saved it. He saved the house. Without your dad and his ax, this house would have been gone before the rain came.”

“We would've been okay. We would've had each other and the kids. Not the baby. Not Jessica. But the rest of us would have been together. I love this place, but it's just a house.”

Faye felt the tightness in her own neck ease. It had happened. She had heard the name they'd planned to give their daughter, and she hadn't broken. She would never stop wishing that there was a Jessica Eagle Longchamp-Mantooth in the world, but she was going to be herself again.

“Aren't we enough to make you happy, Faye? Michael, Amande, me? Am I enough?”

She pulled on his shoulders in the way she always did when she wanted him to lean way down and kiss her. “Always. You're everything, Joe.”