Summer of Fire (20 page)

Perhaps if he and Georgia hadn’t been estranged, he wouldn’t be thinking about what Clare’s taut body might feel like against his, but this summer nothing was as it should be.

He gestured toward the Huey. “Want to go for a ride?”

From the left seat, Clare watched Deering run the rotors up until the chopper lifted off the grass beside the Madison River. It hovered at three feet, then he pushed the cyclic stick forward and added power by pulling up the collective and rolling on throttle. The helicopter accelerated across the grassy meadow until it reached about twenty knots, and seemed to leap into the air.

Below, the forest was green as far as she could see, but as they went on, Yellowstone Lake came up with the burn around Grant Village. The blackened swath brought back her dread as she had scanned rough waters and wondered if all hands had gone down with Deering’s helicopter.

He landed at Flagg Ranch, the first private enterprise on the road south after leaving the TW Services empire. While he went to check on his cargo, Clare went into the gift shop. Idly, she fingered a cedar box painted with Old Faithful erupting against a green hill.

Maybe the box could hold Devon’s concert tickets or keepsakes. On the other hand, considering how her daughter’s tastes differed from her own, she wondered how she might please her. The girl was seventeen going on seventy, playing like a child one moment and disdainful of anything that smacked of youth the next.

Before Clare had selected anything, Deering came to get her.

Once airborne, they headed northeast for forty miles. Deering circled the chopper around Turret Mountain on the north side of Howell Creek, banking to give a view of the steep-sided peak. Then he dropped down between the valley walls.

“There it is.” He brought them in to land near a mismatched array of colorful tents and camping gear staggered along a meadow bisected by a mountain stream.

“How long will we be here?” Clare reached for the door handle.

Deering stripped off his headphones. “How long would you like?”

Several hours later, Clare saw him through the throng of yellow-shirts, his olive drab flight suit distinguishing him from the hundreds of firefighters in line for dinner. She waved from her volunteer position inside the medical tent and turned to lay another strip of moleskin on yet another blister. Beside her was a cardboard box filled with discarded, bloody socks left behind by Apache and Navajo firefighters.

Heading to meet Deering, she sidestepped a patch of grayish phlegm on the ground. After foot injuries, bronchitis from smoke inhalation ranked high on the list of ills. Not to mention back problems. Lifting the air pack had aggravated her recurring lower back pain.

Deering ducked beneath the tent flap. He carried an orange stuff sack and a pair of yellow sleeping bags. “I found a crack in the Jesus nut on the Huey.”

“Christ,” she quipped. “What does that mean?” In the moment when her words were out, she saw his face settle in serious lines.

“It holds the rotors onto the ship. It breaks, you go down.”

Clare looked at the sleeping bags. “How long will it take to get a part?”

When she looked back at Deering, his gaze did not meet hers. “They don’t have it at West Yellowstone. I’ll have something flown in tomorrow.”

“I’ll need to radio Garrett since I’m supposed to meet the troops at Madison.” Things had to be kept flexible when the fires did the unexpected.

“What time?” Deering asked.

“Noon.” The wind riffled the canvas walls of the tent.

He smiled. “No need to call in. I’m sure I’ll have you at Madison before noon.”

She decided to enjoy the evening. Except for, “Is that one tent I see in your hand?”

“Last one in camp. We’ll have to share like scouts.”

He made it sound simple, but near midnight, Clare sat in the tiny two-man tent. Deering had excused himself to visit what he called the ‘portable convenience.’

Her boots and socks already rested at the head of the zippered bags lying side by side. Together, she and Deering had watched the forest on Turret Mountain being consumed. A big fire at night was even more mesmerizing than staring into a fireplace, or at a single candle’s glow.

Ever changing and ever the same.

Out here at the edge of the park, without any homes or property threatened, she could relax and watch the spectacle of nature untrammeled. Deering had stood behind her, a light hand holding each of her elbows. Although she’d rolled the sleeves of her shirt down against the night wind, she was aware of his touch.

Sitting alone in the tent, she suddenly thought that she was playing the fool. He probably wasn’t even thinking of her. She shrugged and unbuttoned her shirt, then wriggled out of her pants.

“Look there.” Deering pulled back the flap.

Clare dove into the sleeping bag. Once covered, she turned onto her stomach and peered out. The Mink Creek glowed along its front like a brilliant diadem. The wind had picked up, blowing down Turret Mountain.

“The fires are supposed to lie down at night,” Deering observed. “This year they must have been behind the schoolhouse when the rulebooks were passed.” He sat to unlace his boots.

Clare watched, aware that beneath the covers she wore only a lacy scrap of turquoise bra and panties.

Without looking at her, Deering shimmied out of his flight suit and folded it efficiently at the head of his bag. He lay down wearing plaid boxers. The glow of a Coleman lantern outside was just bright enough to give an impression of his body, slender and high-strung with a sprinkling of dark chest hair.

The camp sounds diminished, the day workers going to sleep while the night shift labored out on the lines.

Placing his hands behind his head, Deering lay quietly, but there was taut tension in his stillness. The smooth wall of the tent angled down six inches from Clare’s face and she became conscious of her breathing. After a minute, the effort of inhaling and exhaling made her feel as though she were suffocating. With Deering lying virtually naked next to her, she rolled toward him to get her face into clearer air. She kept her eyes closed.

“Clare?”

“Hmm?”

This was really too much, the two of them stripped to their underwear and pretending they didn’t know the game. Not since she was nineteen had she lain next to a new man and felt the way she’d thought was for the young.

But she did remember.

Deering rolled to face her and propped his head on his elbow. The orange light made his hair look as though it had red highlights.

She shifted restlessly.

“Your back hurt?”

“I get muscle spasms.”

“I give a mean backrub.”

There it was. It was quiet in the tent.

Then, faintly, “I’ll bet you do.”

In the dimness, Deering’s eyes were hard to read, but she saw an unmistakable spark that said it wouldn’t stop at a backrub. Her heart pounded like a hammer.

He waited, watching her.

It had been too long since she’d met someone she would even consider, too many years without the feel of another body against hers. That was the worst part of being alone, losing the unspoken communication of touch.

From outside came music and laughter, underlain by the constant voice of the Mink Creek.

Damn Jay Chance, for making her draw back from men. She’d told herself she stayed free because the men weren’t up to standard, and because Devon needed her. Well, Jay certainly wasn’t taking notes, Devon wasn’t here, and the look in Deering’s eyes asked her to roll the dice.

If she turned away, would she be able to sleep, lying close and thinking what if? When she went back to her solitary bed would she long for the hot dark grappling that seized her imagination even now?

Deering’s hand lay on his stomach. She couldn’t see the skin cancer scar that made him vulnerable, but he and she were no more and no less at risk at any given time. She’d been thinking of fire as a particular threat because of Frank, but couldn’t Deering’s chopper crash? Hadn’t it already?

Clare lifted her hand and touched the faint remnant of the bruise on his cheek. Deering’s fingers covered hers, pressing her against his sandpapery beard. Their eyes met and the nearest Coleman lantern sputtered out.

Rolling onto her stomach in the sleeping bag, she rested her head on her arms. Bare shoulders, striped with turquoise straps, were offered.

Deering reached for the zipper of her bag, drawing it down so slowly that she knew she could stop him anytime. The wall of the tent made a shushing sound as he brushed his head against it. He straddled her.

His touch started out impersonal, like a professional masseur, but his fingers were knowing. He massaged lower, moving to the small of her back where the tightness was most acute. She jumped as his fingers found a knot and kneaded.

Minutes passed and his hands familiarized themselves while a creeping, bone-deep weakness spread through her. It wasn’t the raging heat from the early years with Jay, but she wasn’t nineteen anymore. Deering shifted his weight and pulled the sleeping bag down farther, placing himself astride her bare thighs.

Footsteps passed by outside. Deering stilled his hands.

Clare held her breath.

His lips beside her ear, he whispered, “We should have pitched the tent a bit farther from civilization.”

She nodded. He bent and pressed his chest to her back. Skin on skin took her back, five years gone since anyone had touched her there. Tonight it seemed both yesterday and forever as she found her way. He drew her earlobe gently between his lips.

She gasped.

“If we’re going to do this,” Deering murmured, “we need to stay quiet.”

He slipped his hands along the sides of her breasts. Boldly, he moved his body against hers.

“If we’re going to do this,” Clare returned in a whisper, “we need . . . “

He stretched to reach the zippered pocket of his flight suit and drew out a small sealed packet.

Something went still inside her and she rolled onto her back. “Did you plan this?” she asked quietly.

Deering raised his hands in a gesture of surrender. “A good scout is always prepared.”

What did it matter if he had considered the option? Hadn’t she?

Deftly, he unhooked the front clasp of her brassiere. “Admit it,” he entreated. “It would be hell to stop now.”

From outside the tent came a shout. “Blowup!”

“Goddammit!” Deering’s voice sounded vicious, like Clare’s own stab of anger. How dare fire interrupt what she’d so carefully committed to?

She and Deering dressed rapidly without looking at each other. He opened the tent flap to put on his boots. In the Mink Creek’s eerie light, his sharp profile was set as he patted his pocket for a Marlboro. In the flare of the match, she was astonished to see what looked like pain in his eyes.

Clare pulled on her boots without lacing them and scrambled out of the tent. Looking at Turret Mountain, she was shocked by the Mink Creek, driven downslope so rapidly that she could see the front moving through the treetops. Smoke mushroomed into the night sky, blotting out the peak. The back of her neck prickled beneath a brush of breeze blowing toward the fire. In minutes, she knew it would become a gale feeding the convection cell.

A hundred yards away, on the opposite bank of Howell Creek, a group of night shift hotshots wearing helmet stickers that identified them as Californians, emerged from the woods. In brisk single file, they carried shovels or Pulaskis. Bringing up the rear, the sawyers carried chain saws.

The middle-aged woman at the head of the column slogged into the creek, pulled off her hard hat, and dipped up water to pour over her short gray hair. She cupped her hands to her mouth and bellowed again, “It’s a blowup!”

A dark-haired man of considerable girth appeared. Clare recognized Hebert Patout, the spike camp commander who had greeted her and Deering earlier in the dining tent. Hebert had patted his stomach and forked up another mouthful of ribeye. “This steak, now, she is not so good. When the fire season end, you come to me and
ma frere
Mousson’s restaurant in New Iberia, then we feast?”

Now Hebert looked up at the burning mountain.
“Mon Dieu,”
he muttered, tucking his shirt into his pants.

The breeze freshened and became a steady wind, sucked toward the fire by convection. Hebert produced a small, hand-held anemometer, the three cups atop the control box rotating rapidly. It reminded Clare of a toy, but the reading of thirty-five miles per hour was no child’s play. Although the Mink Creek was over half a mile away, Clare bet it could reach the camp in less than an hour.

The woman who led the hotshots reported rapidly to Hebert. The laid-back gourmand with whom Clare and Deering had dined was transformed. “I’m calling an evacuation.” The big man clapped a hand onto Deering’s shoulder and ordered, “We need your chopper, now.”

Clare waited for Deering to say the Huey was out of commission. Instead, he took off downhill at a run.

Within a minute, someone was banging a spoon against a metal coffeepot, the universal camp signal for 4:30 reveille. By Clare’s watch, it was one-fifteen. The nylon walls flapped as if the tent were panting. Three short blasts on an airhorn sounded an alarm that could mean anything from a grizzly in camp to the approaching fire. A bullhorn added to confusion. Cutting in and out, the shrill feedback made the message sound like, “Fire . . . “ followed by at least ten garbled words, and then, “ . . . all hands . . . vacuate.”