Summer of Fire (28 page)

Steve looked at her and the night wind ruffled her hair. The errant gust traveled through the tent, making the sides sway and firefighters grab for their napkins.

Clare met his eyes, remembering that afternoon, his weight on hers in a way that couldn’t help but make a man and woman consider. She told herself it was the adrenaline and the danger. Death had been on the wind, passing so close that the shelter’s flapping might well have been the Harpy’s wings.

Billy Jakes had worn a wedding ring. Had someone called or was his wife still passing a pleasant evening? When the phone rang, she’d answer in a breezy familiar way thinking it must be him . . .

A mouthful of pork resisted Clare’s attempt to swallow.

As if he read her thoughts, Steve reached for her hand. He forced her stiff fingers straight. “Don’t beat yourself up over Billy Jakes, Clare.”

His touch did what a hot shower and Garrett’s kindness could not. She found herself able to take a full breath and at least attempt to relax. Her shoulders and back stayed tight.

Steve circled his thumb on the inside of her wrist near her pulse. “There’s nothing you could have done,” he soothed.

“Done about what?”

Clare looked up to find Deering. His smile said he saw she’d abandoned her bra. He appeared not to notice that Steve held her hand, or that she was close to tears.

She pulled back and faced the remembered intensity in Deering’s eyes.

A beat late, he said,
“Doctor
Haywood.” Without an invitation, he sat across from them. Evidently, he had been to the showers, too, his hair leaving a damp trail on the collar of a khaki shirt. He wore his aviator sunglasses on top of his head.

After what had happened today, Clare was torn between being glad to see him and plain not caring. She cut a slice of pork and failed to convey it to her mouth.

“I can safely tell you that West Yellowstone is secure this evening,” Deering said.

She was too exhausted to celebrate, but glad for the townspeople.

“I must have dropped a hundred buckets of water on the edge of town.” Deering acted as though she had not walked out on him. “The downdrafts were so bad I had to tell myself I was going in for a closer look when I was putting on throttle and dropping like a rock.” He forked up a mouthful of mashed potatoes.

The last thing she needed tonight was braggadocio.

Next to Clare, Steve shrugged at the hero talk. “I’d have expected you’d be trucking that useless chopper out of town.”

“That’s a million dollar machine.” Deering cut his eyes to Clare as though he hoped to impress her.

“Did your claim get settled?” she asked.

“Or did the salvage folks take your Bell?” The taunting vehemence in Steve’s voice shocked her. “You didn’t hear about that?” he said. “The salvage company gets it if flyboy here doesn’t come up with the money.”

Deering slammed a fist on the folding table, making it shudder for ten feet. Curious glances were directed their way. “Okay.” His voice carried. “I tried to cover up what really happened . . . for you.”

“For me?” Steve glared.

“Guys.” Clare held up a hand.

Deering ignored her. “I know your job’s on shaky grounds, Haywood. You don’t need for anybody to know you fucked up.”

“I fucked up?” Clare saw Steve’s muscles bunch as though he were about to rise.

“But since you want to play hardball,” Deering seemed oblivious to people staring, “I’ll have to tell First Assurance I had a passenger who wrapped the bucket cable around the skid. Screwed the pooch.”

Clare put her hand on Steve’s arm. She didn’t know whether she meant to support or restrain him.

“Everybody knows about you, Haywood,” Deering taunted. “It’s already around how you fucked up again today and lost your truck. How you’re scared to fly after that crash with your wife and kid and trying to drink yourself to death.”

The music and talk in the tent seemed far away. Clare felt Steve’s arm tighten and realized that he clenched his steak knife’s handle beneath the table.

Without thinking, she slid her hand down and put a hard grip on his fingers, heedless of his burns. “Don’t let him do this to you,” she murmured.

The knife fell to the earthen tent floor.

Steve sat back, cradling the hand she’d grabbed with his other. She moved her hand back to his arm and thankfully, he failed to leap across the table for Deering’s throat as she half-expected.

Ignoring Steve, Deering turned to her as though nothing had happened. “If the wind doesn’t shift, the Storm Creek’s coming right through camp. You ought to let me fly you out of here.” His tone was proprietary as he reached across to brush her bangs out of her eyes.

She jerked away before she even thought.

And felt Steve’s shocked eyes on her. Of course, he couldn’t have known she’d been seeing Deering.

“Mister Haywood? “ A slight Hispanic man in TW Services coveralls stood behind Steve’s shoulder. “I go to the terminal at Gardiner for supplies. Do you need a ride home?”

With another scathing look at both her and Deering, Steve rose. “Thanks, Miguel, I’d like to get home tonight.”

“How could you?” Clare threw at Deering. Her voice carried and people were still swiveling their heads to look at them. He shook his head, a play to the crowd that said he thought both she and Steve were the ones in error.

Clare shoved back her plate. A murmur of voices trailed her departure.

She looked for Steve, her steps speeding when she realized there were too many men in yellow shirts. Away from the dining canopy and bright lights, she knew she’d lost him. Standing in the parking lot, she tasted smoke, a pervasive foul taint on every wind.

On a nearby Army tent, a hand-lettered sign proclaimed ‘Valley Forge West,’ referring to a shortage of boots in the military ranks. The Army boot soles were not nearly as heat resistant as the heavy White’s brand boots worn by the firefighters. Clare’s own feet felt hot inside hers, as though they had not cooled from the roasting they’d gotten during the Hellroaring’s blowup.

Rapid footsteps sounded on gravel. She stopped, hoping it was Steve.

“Wait,” said Deering.

She set her teeth. Tonight when he’d first arrived, his smile had still had the power to make her feel that extra awareness of him. She had sat there next to Steve and across from Deering and been torn by feelings for both of them, until he had attacked Steve.

Deering touched her shoulders.

She went tense. “Look,” she said, “we had to go into shelters this afternoon and I’m completely wired. My daughter is flying in to Jackson Hole Airport tomorrow.”

He moved his fingers, massaging. “I can make it better . . . “

“Dammit!” Her voice went shrill. “A man died.”

He lifted his hands. From the dining tent, the wail of Crystal Gayle entreated her man. The camp generators droned.

Clare turned on him. “How could you?” she challenged. “What you said about Steve’s wife and child . . . “

Deering’s eyes showed his own pain. “He’s been nothing but trouble for me, ever since he got on board my
Georgia
back in July. Now I’m stuck flying military surplus.” Deering pointed to Karrabotsos’s helicopter behind the fence erected to deter buffalo and elk from damaging aircraft. “I asked Garrett where you were tonight because I wanted, no, needed to see you. After a full day in the cockpit, I fly over here and find you holding hands and making moon eyes. “

The heavy growl of a diesel roared toward them on the bulldozed track leading out to Highway 212. The headlights of the big machine swept over them. When the glare subsided, Clare saw Steve in the passenger seat.

There was nothing to stay for. She couldn’t stand that Steve thought she was on Deering’s side. And another midnight evacuation would put her God knows where when Devon’s plane landed.

She ran toward the truck, waving her arms.

The door opened and Steve pulled her into the cab. When they reached Mammoth, she could get a room at the hotel. In the morning, she would figure out how to get to the airport.

The miles unfolded hypnotically, as the truck made the ten-mile descent down Soda Butte Creek to the Lamar River valley. Traffic was light, for the hotel guests, campers, and soldiers of the fire war had settled for the night.

Clare straddled the seat between Steve and Miguel. She saw little of the country, just the stabbing beams of headlights on the two-lane asphalt and the colorless specters of trees rushing past. To the north, the crimson glow of the Storm Creek and Hellroaring fires lighted the sky.

Down and down, twenty miles until the truck launched onto a span over dark space. A sign identified the chasm as the Yellowstone River. After Tower Junction, they began the climb up the divide that led to Mammoth.

Deering had put his hands on Clare tonight, but the thrill that had first run through her at his touch had vanished. Hell, nothing was the same as it had been four hours ago when she and Steve had crawled into a dugout hole in the ground and listened to Billy Jakes’s fiery death.

On the rising slope, moonlight silvered the Blacktail Deer Plateau. A pair of reddish-gold orbs flashed in the headlights, animals abroad in the night.

Past the summit, the road to Mammoth joined Lava Creek Canyon, spiraling down. The center of the gorge was an ominous gash.

How dark was it where Billy Jakes was tonight? He had a wife, maybe even children, she didn’t know, but Sergeant Ron Travis had been clear. Clare had led Billy on his final march.

The truck rushed down a roller coaster that carried her stomach. Tomorrow Devon would arrive, coming into the midst of another death investigation involving her mother. She’d shrugged off Clare’s feelings of guilt over Frank, just like all the other firefighters. Get back on that horse and ride, they’d all said. Right into the maw of the Hellroaring.

She didn’t know if she could go back on the line. Garrett had given her a few days off to show Devon the sights and after that, maybe she’d go home.

As they drove, she felt Steve’s thigh and shoulder against her side. A few more miles and he looped an arm around her, drawing her head onto his chest. She rested against him, hearing his steady heartbeat. Deering had said he was a worthless alcoholic and she’d seen him drunk, but that couldn’t erase the way Steve had looked at her just before he’d thrown off the fire shelter.

Clare looked through the windshield and watched night rush at them.

CHAPTER TWENTY

September 4

By a freak of atmospheric currents, Mammoth Valley was clear tonight. Leafy cottonwoods underlined to Clare the contrast between this refuge and the stark skeletons of trees all over the park. A herd of perhaps thirty elk posed on the lawn in front of Park Headquarters.

They were more fortunate than the ones Steve had found on Black Saturday. For that matter, through mere luck, Clare and Steve had not been dealt the card Billy Jakes had received.

She climbed down from the truck after Steve. In the street, he said, “You can bunk at my place.” She saw how he looked at her rather than at the Mammoth Hotel across the way.

She considered. Still shaking inside at how close they’d come to the edge, she wasn’t ready to be alone.

He pointed along the street lined with stately old houses. “I’m down that way.”

She checked herself for reluctance. “Your place is fine.”

Steve played tour guide. “There used to be a much grander hotel. The National was an enormous wood-frame place, built in 1886.” A little nervousness edged in his voice.

“What happened to it?” she asked, still aware of how good it had felt to be snugged against him in the truck.

“It burned.”

They passed four two-story duplexes with tall brick chimneys. “Park service employees live here now instead of Fort Yellowstone’s officers,” Steve said. The next low frame building they passed was fronted by a porch holding an armada of bicycles. “This place used to be park headquarters at the turn of the century. Moru Mzima, a naturalist from Zimbabwe, and his wife, Nyeri, live there now.”

Clare looked across the lawn. “And kids.”

“Three.” Steve smiled. “I sit for them sometimes.” He pointed to a smaller building at the end of the row. “My place is next.”

“What did the Army do with it?”

“It was the first building in Fort Yellowstone. A guard house to hold ten prisoners.” The innocuous one-story building, its wide porch a dark perimeter, did not look like a jail.

Clare stared. “What were the prisoners in for? Picking flowers? Collecting minerals?”

“Poaching. Selling alcohol to the soldiers.”

Silence fell.

“So what’s it like, living in the stockade?” Clare tried.

Steve cleared his throat. After a little while he said, “Walt Leighton says I treat my home as a prison, especially when I have a bout of . . . bad times.”

Deering’s words about Steve’s wife and child hung between them. A pink tricycle lay abandoned on the lawn. “You have kids?” he asked.

Clare sighed. “Actually, I’m picking my daughter up at the Jackson airport tomorrow. At least I’m supposed to.”