Summer of Fire (49 page)

In the mirror, Clare saw that her color was high. The events of the last two days had dulled her recall of the night with Steve, but now it surged like a flame to the bellows. Earlier he’d offered his bedroom to her and Devon, but the brief intense look he’d given her said he hoped she’d share his sofa.

If Devon had been listening in the hospital, she knew more about her mother and Steve then Clare would have wished. Her cheeks grew brighter pink as she recalled how freely she’d talked about their night in a motel. Yet, spitting toothpaste into the sink, she decided that in this afternoon’s talk, Devon had approved of Steve.

Clare wiped her face and borrowed a bit of his hand lotion for moisturizer. It smelled woodsy, like the forest when it wasn’t burning, a scent that increased the pull of this land. Her sweet ache intensified, for tomorrow when she and Devon evacuated it would be time to call the airlines.

Dressed in the grizzly T-shirt, she checked on Devon once more and gave her another pain pill. When she paused in the doorway to the living room, Steve indicated that she should close the extra door. “A little advance warning,” he suggested softly.

Clare’s breath caught in her throat. They couldn’t, not with Devon just down the hall.

Yet, as she moved into the room, she imagined wearing something sleek and shining like white silk, or better yet, red and lacy.

Steve waited in the light of a green-shaded reading lamp in gray drawstring sweat pants, barefoot and bare-chested. His knees were still on ice. “Can I get you an Ibuprofen?” the medic in her asked.

He shook his head, bent and shoved the melting packs under the coffee table. His gaze explored her bare legs and upward at leisure. “My very favorite shirt,” he chuckled. His voice, pitched low, set her pulse drumming. As though it was the most natural thing in the world, he slid over to make room and threw back the comforter.

She crossed to him, her bare feet whispering softly on the hardwood. The glow of the single bulb turned his hair to gold. When she settled beside him, her head fit against his shoulder and her legs entwined with his.

Steve spoke softly, “Part of me says it’s too bad your girl is in the other room, but I wouldn’t have it any other way.” He stretched to reach the lamp and turned it off. Faint streetlight shone in the barred window in the front door, striping the floor and silvering the gold in his hair.

Profound peace enveloped her. His arms went around her and he drew the comforter over them both. He was so warm and solid, yet that pulse inside whispered of what they’d shared at the Stagecoach.

God help her, she was falling in love with this man. She might be a fool, but there it was.

She listened to the steady beat of his heart and thought about telling him of Garrett’s offer. Of asking what he’d feel if she moved West.

Steve kissed her forehead gently. His body against hers bore the heavy lassitude of fatigue and she felt the same. After all the anticipation . . .

“I may have to wake you in the middle of the night,” he whispered. “Just so you know I’m holding you.”

A smile curved her lips. Comfort and the smooth lethargy of being in his embrace settled over her.

“I promise I’ll be here,” she murmured.

Without a thought to the nightmares that had been her torture, she settled into the summer’s first deep and dreamless sleep.

Steve awakened in darkness and did not know where he was. For a moment, he thought the past four years had been a colossal mistake; that Susan lay nestled against his side. As his eyes became accustomed to the glow from a light outside, he made out the distinct curve of Clare’s cheek. Somewhere inside, he’d expected to feel guilt over Susan, but all he knew was joy.

The years with his wife had been vivid, alive with her music and her voice’s melody. The Christmas after she died, he’d been at her mother’s house for dinner. Washing his hands before carving turkey, Steve had been attracted to a familiar crystal shape on the bathroom counter.

A perfume bottle identical to one Susan had kept on her dressing table.

He lifted the stopper. The marriage of citrus with the earthy scent of iris was the same that Susan had dabbed behind her ears and in the hollow of her elbows, so that it floated behind her like an aura. It nearly brought him to his knees.

He fought it until he folded down onto the rim of the tub. Chill from the porcelain seeped into the backs of his legs. The tile was cold, too, where he leaned his head against the wall and wept.

Lying with Clare, Steve finally said good-bye to Susan.

He marveled that he did it without pain, as if he were suddenly made light. He could no longer summon Susan’s music, because Clare’s husky voice haunted his dreams, no longer smell Susan’s perfume, for the faint spicy smell of Clare’s skin excited him beyond belief.

She shifted and burrowed her head more deeply into the hollow of his shoulder. He smoothed her bare thigh where the shirt had ridden up, but she did not awaken.

Tonight was a moment snatched in time, while the clock on his bookshelf ticked toward tomorrow. He wanted Clare with everything in him, to make a new life for himself with her in it. The hell of it was that she did not seem the type of woman to drop her plans and take up with an alcoholic whose job was in jeopardy. He’d bought two bottles of wine today, more than he needed for cooking, only partially because he thought Clare might like some.

He’d managed to stay out of it tonight, but what about another day? And what would happen when he struggled with the depression that was bound to descend after he put Clare on a plane to Houston?

From outside the house came an odd sound, not loud, like the crackling of Rice Krispies, or . . .

Fire!

Steve eased himself out from under Clare, trying not to disturb her and yet move quickly at the same time. When he got up, he found that the pain had settled back into his knees. On the front porch, the crackling was louder and the wind whipped his pant legs. Less than two miles away, the near shoulder of Bunsen Peak was ablaze.

Clare awoke alone on Steve’s couch. A current of moving air attracted her attention to the front door standing open. Beyond the checkered lattice, Steve was in the yard.

Down the single step, her bare feet found grass, cool and soft. She said Steve’s name softly and slid her arms around him, resting her cheek against his back. He put his hands over hers, pressing her palms against his bare chest.

They stood together for a long moment until he said, “Take a look at this.”

She loosed her grip and stepped from behind him. The red glow in the south suffused the sky. “Good God,” she breathed. Her heart set up a tripping as she gauged the wind and the distance between the town and the fire. She was glad that Garrett was here, for he would know when an evacuation should be called.

“It’s beautiful,” Steve said. Clare stared at the crimson underbelly of the clouds. “Part of the forest’s life, and yet it can be so deadly.”

How many times this summer had she both shuddered and thrilled to that splendor? When she and Deering had watched the Mink Creek come down Turret Mountain even the sky had seemed aflame. When the Hellroaring had crowned and chased them to earth in their shelters, she’d felt its elemental fury. Driving away from Old Faithful, they’d passed through the North Fork’s undulating scarlet drapery.

Together, she and Steve watched the advance of the North Fork, smelling and tasting its wind-borne tang. It seemed as though they could actually see its progress as it marched down the mountain, now less than a mile and a half from where they stood. Thankfully, the way the wind blew was driving it east rather than directly toward them.

Steve drew Clare back against him. He kissed her and their lips clung with a new intensity she had not imagined possible, something that came from inside both of them. She drew away and studied the clean lines of his face. His eyes met hers and she believed in their unspoken revelation.

“What’s done it for us so suddenly?” she wondered.

Steve nodded toward the approaching conflagration. “I suppose it’s the shadow of the sword.”

There was a battle to fight, but it would not come until sunrise.

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

September 10

"It’s time,” a man’s deep voice called through Steve’s front door. Clare realized she’d been half-aware of knocking for some time.

When Steve opened the door in his sweat pants Clare recognized Moru Mzima. She thought he took in the situation, but he didn’t look at the rumpled couch or at her until she joined Steve at the door.

“They’ve called the evacuation,” Moru said. The clock on Steve’s bookcase read five-forty.

The wind that blew in the door was cooler than it had been earlier, but still lacked the slightest trace of humidity. Through the open weave of the porch lattice, Clare saw that the North Fork had burned down Bunsen Peak to Golden Gate pass. The only remaining natural break between the fire and the town was the jumbled blocks of rock called the Hoodoos, the remains of an old landslide.

Moru looked at her. “I’m sending Nyeri and the kids to Bozeman now. Do you and your daughter want to ride along?”

“You’d better go,” Steve told Clare.

There wasn’t any doubt that she had to take Devon to safety, but the sight of the crimson fire front had Clare spoiling for a fight. Garrett had convinced her . . . no, she had decided to keep working wildfire.

“I’ll go with them, Mom.” Devon spoke from the hallway. “You stay.”

She turned to find her daughter barefoot and wearing the oversized T-shirt Steve had given her to sleep in. Her hair was mussed, but her blue eyes were clear and steady. “Really, I’ll be okay.” Her certainty said she understood her mother wanted to fight the fire.

Clare looked at the latest advance of the North Fork with growing certainty. After nearly two months of watching the fires’ dark shapes envelop the strategic maps, she wanted to be on the battlefield when the sons-of-bitches were vanquished.

When she and Frank had charged up the apartment house stairs they’d tasted fear, a hot bright edge that could cripple . . . or be forged into a weapon. The challenge was not to live without fear, but to carry on in spite of it.

Fight and fall back!

Clare sweated and struggled as firefighters’ lines were leapt, their backfires swallowed on the long retreat into Mammoth Valley. Her hope that the Hoodoos’ bare rock would stop the North Fork proved vain, as the fire circumvented the slope on the downhill side. By afternoon, she and the others on the line had been pushed below the last highway curve above town. In the hellish half-light, Jupiter Terrace’s glistening surface had taken on the hue of fresh blood.

As the battle was joined, Clare manned a drip torch, side-hilling it below the upper terrace of the hot springs. “This one will do it,” she said grimly. She kept moving ahead of the brisk crackle and heat. Burning sage was supposed to be a sacred Native American purifying rite and she hoped Mammoth would emerge unscathed from this day.

When she reached the road, the entire hillside above her was ablaze with only a three hundred yard gap to the main body of the North Fork. “Burn, baby, burn,” she entreated the backfire. The more thoroughly it consumed the vegetation before the main fire arrived, the more effective the firebreak.

Clare turned away and trotted down the shoulder of the highway. A short way down the hill, she saw Steve in his Park Service truck. He waved and pulled into the parking lot above the stables. The horses had been trailered away in early morning.

Steve climbed down stiffly. He wore Nomex fire clothes, along with his badge and the summer straw uniform hat that identified him as a ranger. “Would you believe that even after the park’s been closed two days, I’m still rousting campers that haven’t heard the news?”

“I’d believe just about anything right now.”

Below the parking lot, the team of California hotshots from the Mink Creek rested in the area inside a metal rail fence. As she came closer, Clare realized that it was a cemetery, poorly tended, for the headstones barely cleared the high grass.

“Take a load off,” a man called. “If this break doesn’t hold, we’re to fall back and defend the housing.”

Clare looked where he pointed, maybe a quarter mile to the first enclave of park employees’ homes. She stepped across the fence and gave a hand to Steve.

He came across awkwardly and sat in the grass beside a headstone. Many were illegible, mainly those of marble. The granite and banded gneiss had held up better, their names and dates a history of the last years of the nineteenth century and the first of the twentieth. Next to Clare’s boot was a flat stone, flush with the ground.
Unknown Child,
it read simply.

Sitting down in the grass near Steve, Clare checked her watch and found it midafternoon. She was tired, the good honest fatigue that came from working with a purpose. Around her, sweaty faces showed determination. She removed her hard hat and scratched her head.