Summer of Fire (19 page)

“After all, I owe you thanks,” he moved closer, “for saving my life.”

Clare flushed, remembering how she’d thrown his thanks in his face. “I was rude and I apologize.”

“You were right.”

Into the little silence, he rushed, “I get some guests up here, but not many I offer lunch.”

Ignoring the small visitor center, they climbed the stairs to the tower. He prepared canned tuna salad, expertly dicing celery and apple into the mix. “Sorry the bread’s a little dry,” he apologized, placing the sandwich before her.

Clare found the food a masterpiece, or perhaps she had a healthy appetite from her hike.

After eating, they walked the summit meadow where red Indian paintbrush, mountain bluebell, and bright pink Lewis Monkeyflower bloomed. Smoke boiled in all directions, but on the mountaintop, the air was clear. On a flattened boulder, Steve pointed out great grooves where glacial ice had carved its name into solid rock.

Clare smoothed the surface of a striation, her fingers close to Steve’s.

He wasn’t looking at her, but at the vista of green forests and golden valleys, patch-worked with black. “Lots of folks think we’re witnessing destruction instead of rebirth.” There was a deep chord in him when he spoke of the land. “When Shad Dugan put it to a choice, leave Yellowstone or get sober, it all came clear to me. If a million acres burned I’d still want to stay.”

Without thinking, she closed the few inches between their hands and touched his. Should she tell him she knew of his family’s death or let the afternoon wear on without a shadow?

Steve twined her fingers in his and lay back to study the sky. “You should see this place at night. Between the smoke plumes, a million stars shine.”

Clare let herself down beside Steve, her shoulders against sun-warmed rock. “On a clear night in Houston, you’re lucky to see Venus and Orion’s belt. If the clouds are in, the sky becomes such a hazy red that I’ve wondered if a big fire caused the glow.”

“Do you miss Houston?”

Above Mount Washburn, high clouds scudded. Their sharp white on blue was different from the washed out look of the Texas coastal sky. “I don’t know about living anywhere else.”

“I grew up in North Carolina. People can make a change when they have to.”

She wondered if he meant his moving to Yellowstone, or maybe coming to the mountain. He ducked his head a bit and she liked that shyness in him. Not shyness, exactly, for he’d been perfectly poised doing the ranger thing.

Minutes stretched into an hour. The quiet felt companionable, the only sound the wind stirring the stunted white pines.

To check her watch, Clare had to take her hand from Steve’s. A glance that she tried to hide said she’d stayed too long to make her date with Deering in West Yellowstone. Part of her was sorry, for Deering was the first man who’d made her aware of herself as a woman in a long while.

But today Steve made her feel special, too. Briefly, she considered telling him about Frank’s death. With his own history of loss, he might be a good man to talk with.

Even as she thought how to begin, she discarded it, as she’d decided not to speak of his family. Reluctance to share her shame ran deep.

Just as she didn’t care to tell she’d also been married . . . and lost a man she’d once loved.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

August 13

Georgia Deering looked at the silent telephone in the hallway of her house. She had not talked to her husband in three weeks.

She went out, down the high stairs of the Victorian, and walked the few blocks to Lava Hot Springs’s Main Street. Window boxes of petunias decorated the Wagon Wheel Restaurant. Proprietor Howard Silvernail waved from behind his antique glass case filled with gum and mints.

Georgia ducked to avoid some of the T-shirts rigged on a clothesline outside Hannah’s Souvenirs. The Portneuf Inn across would be her competition when she and Deering opened their B & B.

At a table of books outside the public library, she selected three Dr. Suess for her nephew’s three-year-old. It wasn’t too late for her and Deering, with her turning thirty-nine, but it felt that way with Deering’s older brother John being twice a grandfather.

Off the main drag, Georgia climbed up into residential streets, a mix of neat old brick and wooden houses. Most of the yards had that rich emerald lawn and burgeoning rainbow of summer flowers that seemed impossible during Idaho’s long winter. She turned in at the wrought iron gate in front of John and Anna Deering’s two-story. Lace curtains fluttered, welcoming. Stone steps led up to the porch.

It was hard to believe that twenty-one years had passed since eighteen-year-old Georgia had come to dinner at this house where her married friend Anna lived. She had squeezed in next to the wall beside John’s brother, who was on his way back to Vietnam for a second tour. He flew helicopters and said he planned to make a career of it. That scared her, but she had no doubt that if she fell for a pilot she could persuade him to stop flying.

Deering had passed her the potatoes and before the evening was over had driven her up into the dark, pine-smelling forest. He’d pulled off at a pocket-sized turnout, cut the engine and lights. It had been quiet while they savored the night.

They got out. He took her hand and helped her through a forest awash in silver moonlight. A winding swath of thinned grass climbed beside a gurgling stream. A little farther, a meadow surrounded a pool.

Georgia bent and found that it was a thermal spring. Deering’s spare frame hunkered down beside her. “Warm, like you,” he murmured. In a breathless instant, his lips brushed her neck and the world changed.

Anna Deering came to her screen door in jeans and a big denim shirt that hung to her knees. She and John had returned last night from Yellowstone, a vacation planned before the fires. The somber look in her normally bright blue eyes and the way she bit her bottom lip said she had talked to Deering.

Here it comes, Georgia thought. When it came to family, sides were taken when trouble was only a sniff on the wind.

Anna pushed open the door. The spring made the same aching sound it had for years. “Oh, honey,” she choked.

Georgia’s tears came; the ones that had eluded her when she lay dry-eyed and stared at the transom over the bedroom door. Wracking sobs shook her while Anna shush-shushed as though Georgia were a child. Finally, they sat on Anna’s flowered sofa that she’d gotten re-covered after her children were raised.

“He hasn’t called in three weeks,” Georgia gulped.

“He told us you hoped they’d never find his helicopter.”

“I didn’t mean that. I was upset.”

“Georgia,” Anna said flatly. “This last has brought it to a head, but you’ve been trying to manipulate him out of the sky for twenty years.”

“He risks his life to ferry buckets of water to fires that nobody can stop. What’s the use in that?”

Anna went to the rolltop desk and retrieved a folded newspaper. “I picked this up on our trip.”

Georgia took the
West Yellowstone News.
The photo took up half the front page.

He stood with his arm around a petite woman in shorts and a tank top. In jeans instead of his usual flight suit, his stance spoke of pride, as did the grin on his face. Behind him was an olive-drab helicopter, the kind he’d piloted in Vietnam.

Georgia unfolded the paper and revealed the inch-tall headline. Hero Rescues Injured Smokejumper.

Even with his own Bell out of commission, the man couldn’t stay grounded.

The paper said two tours in Vietnam had given Deering the jungle savvy to maneuver the Huey in the closest of clearings, getting the Smokejumper to medical care before he bled to death from a severed artery. The woman, Clare Chance, was a firefighter EMT who’d been on the flight. Georgia studied her casual top, one shoulder awry where Deering had his arm around her.

It was quiet, save for the ticking of Anna’s grandfather clock.

It had been a long time since Georgia had seen a smile like that on her husband’s face. He looked like a little boy posing for the camera with one hand propped on the chopper door like it was a teammate. What she didn’t like was that his embrace of the woman had the same look to it.

She smoothed her hand over the picture, careful not to let the sweat on her palms smear the newsprint.

“He’s in West Yellowstone working for Demetrios Karrabotsos,” Anna said from the kitchen doorway. “Island Park Helicopters.”

Where in hell was Georgia?
Deering listened to the twentieth ring and looked at the Huey where he’d left it beside the Madison River. It appeared to be a normal summer day with wading fly-fisherman casting lines, but a group of firefighters had taken over the campground amphitheater for a training exercise.

Having finally worked up his nerve to call, he needed to hear Georgia’s voice. As the phone kept ringing, his heart thudded. For a guy who liked excitement, this wasn’t any fun. After thirty rings, he slammed the pay phone back on the hook. One of three yellow-shirts waiting nodded and stepped up to the open kiosk.

Deering crossed the road and leaned against a picnic table. He had always called Georgia at least once a day, even four years ago in Alaska when he’d had to stand in line for the only phone in a hundred miles. He’d gotten to bed at three and thought about being home warm with her in bed, while the glow on the horizon said the sun had barely dipped beneath it. Then back in the cockpit at four-thirty, where he’d do his preflight, drinking a cup of harsh black coffee and longing for Georgia’s freshly ground Kenya AA with a touch of cardamom.

He wondered what he would have said if she had answered. She should apologize, for what she’d said about his helicopter was damned near inexcusable. He’d flown other peoples’ equipment for years, scraping and saving for a down payment on his own machine. When his Bell had finally come in, he’d bought Dom Perignon because it was the most expensive and dusty bottle at the liquor store. Georgia had been all smiles until she realized he was serious about her breaking it on the skid.

Just thinking about his wife hoping he’d lost his most prized possession jolted him back to outrage. His
Georgie
wasn’t a business, but an extension of him. If he didn’t get the insurance check soon Georgia might get her wish.

In the dull sheen of afternoon, the Madison looked like molten metal. Only a few miles south, the Madison-to-Old Faithful Road was closed because the North Fork had spotted across the Firehole River. Word had it that the campground would be threatened within days.

That North Fork was getting to be one ugly fire, started by a thrown cigarette, which reminded Deering that he badly needed a smoke. He reached into his flight suit pocket and drew out a Marlboro.

The haze now produced the daily effect of a partial solar eclipse. The surreal half-light disoriented every bit as much as the celestial event. As Deering smoked, a reddish disc of sun appeared, the color of Georgia’s hair.

He ground the butt beneath his boot heel.

Slowly, he drifted toward the amphitheater of split log benches where a wiry boy in the ubiquitous yellow shirt and olive trousers lectured to about forty people dressed the same. With a smooth motion, the instructor swung an air pack over his shoulder, the tank hanging upside down. Reaching behind, he cracked the valve and demonstrated breathing the air under positive pressure.

After a moment, the full facemask raised and Deering recognized Clare.

“On the fire lines these won’t be available,” she said, “but in case you’re around the villages and need to go into a burning building we want you to know what you’re doing. Remember that fire doesn’t have to touch you to kill you. Most people in house fires die when superheated air and gases start at the ceiling and work down. They breathe in thousand degree air and sear their lungs.”

She paused to acknowledge a raised hand. “Yes?”

“Will we be safe on the fire line?”

Deering watched her consider.

“Firefighting is a dangerous business,” she admitted. “Some folks think that those of us who choose it are crazy. Now, you didn’t make that choice yourself, but you did join the volunteer Army, so I can only assume that you’re willing to do what your country sets you to . . . in this case, fighting fire.” She looked around. “Any questions?”

There were none.

“Now it’s your turn.” The barrel-chested soldier she passed the pack to followed directions, swinging it high over his head and bringing it down onto his back.

Deering watched until she had helped each man and woman, adjusting a strap here and there. When the lesson broke up, he waved.

“What are you doing here?” She came toward him between the rows of rustic benches.

“What pilots do best.” Deering liked the way her long-lashed eyes widened with her smile. “Waiting.”

“For what?”

“This afternoon I’m supposed to fly hot meals to the Mink Creek spike camp.” He took a deep drag on a fresh cigarette, thinking she looked good in trousers, even oversize ones drawn in with a belt. “You stood me up the other night.”

“I got held up on a mountain.” She brushed her hair off her bronzed forehead and offered no other explanation. Watching her manhandle the air pack had brought out the contrast between her compact yet strong frame and Georgia’s softness.