Summer of Fire (50 page)

“In another ten minutes we should know if this firebreak holds,” said the head of the hotshot team. Clare recognized the tough, gray-haired woman who had sounded the alarm at the Mink Creek.

Clare nodded to her and bent to pluck a stem of grass. She bit down and released a sour flood in her mouth.

A deep rumble sounded. Dynamite, someone blasting trees in some firebreak. She wished she had a case of the stuff, to set off a spectacular concussion that would snuff the North Fork like a blown birthday candle. She imagined the long cascade resonating down the valley.

No, it was not her imagination. All around her, firefighters raised their heads. Some looked puzzled, others disbelieving.

“Thunder,” Steve said.

The wind’s passage could be seen through the trees, tossing and bending their trunks, loud enough to be heard over the crackling roar of flame. The long grass whipped and scrubby sage jerked as though a hand deep in the earth tugged its roots. The advancing wave swept down the hill toward the cemetery, kicking up clouds of grit and raising a miniature tornado in the parking lot.

It hit Clare and gave her a shove as though a damp towel had struck her across the back.

“Goddamn,” someone said.

The temperature dropped at least ten degrees within a minute, bringing moist relief to dry, cracked lips. Everyone climbed to their feet, took off their hard hats and looked skyward.

A fat drop stung Clare’s cheek. She closed her eyes.

The temperature continued to plummet, cooling her sweaty skin. More raindrops landed, making dark stains on weathered headstones and yellow shirts.

“Here it comes,” Steve said.

A long line of silver rain bore down from Sepulcher Mountain above the hot springs. Its shifting curtains replaced the smoke haze as the relentless advance obliterated the view of Jupiter Terrace. The front crossed the highway, drops bouncing high off the pavement.

The North Fork recoiled with an angry hiss. Clouds of steam roiled, an elemental struggle destined to end with the death of the dragon.

An hour later, Clare kept her arm tight around Steve’s chest, to keep from losing him in the crowd of reveling firefighters on the Mammoth Hotel lawn. It also didn’t hurt that he helped keep her warm after the cold front had swept in. Above, on Sepulcher Mountain and over behind the cemetery, other crews were still fighting to cool the leading edge of the North Fork.

The hotel had closed for the evacuation, but as soon as the danger passed, the bar had been opened to accommodate the celebration. Rows of TV trucks with satellite antennas lined the street, the press mingling with the soot-faced, filthy fire crews.

Carol Leeds of Billings Live Eye clutched her jacket close and passed a bottle of champagne. Clare drank a deep swallow of golden effervescence and the bubbles burned her nose. She didn’t know whether to give it to Steve.

He took it and sipped without tipping it far up. A man behind him said, “I heard on TV that there’ve been sixty-eight thousand wildfires in the U.S. this season.”

“Two million acres gone in Alaska,” someone else replied.

“Nearly a million just in Yellowstone,” Steve said to Clare. “Last month when I said I’d want to stay if a million acres burned, I never thought it could happen.” He drank champagne again.

“Damn, it’s cold,” said a woman whose nose had gone cherry red. She rubbed her hands together and stuck them under her arms.

“You think this is something?” a man in a woolen cap shouted. “Have you heard tomorrow’s forecast?” He twisted the dial of a portable radio and the tinny strains of “Let it Snow” encouraged another round of cheering.

Not far from the crowd, a group of elk lay blissfully undisturbed by the revelry.

Steve started to raise the bottle again. Someone took it from his hand. “Moru,” he said.

Moru passed the champagne without drinking. “I called Nyeri in Bozeman. They’re going to stay the night and drive back with Devon tomorrow.”

“Good idea,” Clare agreed. The night stretched before her, the time with Steve an impossible luxury.

He pulled her tighter against his side and murmured for her ears only. “This evening, madam, the chef will prepare his special spaghetti sauce, with fennel, basil, and plenty of garlic. Guaranteed to give Technicolor dreams.”

Clare didn’t plan on dreams anymore, unless they were the good kind. She pressed closer to Steve. “On the other hand, we may not get much sleep.”

EPILOGUE

September 11

Steve had always thought the section of the Grand Loop Road between Canyon and Norris to be the park’s most monotonous corridor of pine.

Today, it was transformed, as broad vistas heretofore unseen opened before his eyes. At the high point of the Solfatera Plateau, he could see out over the long burned slope to Nez Perce Creek.

“We need to talk,” he told Clare, who rode beside him in the Park Service truck.

“I know.” She spoke so softly that Steve silenced the radio playing “Frosty the Snowman.”

It was chilly in the cab, but although his fingers hovered close to the lever, Steve did not put on the heat. After suffering through the summer, he was quite willing to taste the bracing bite of cooler air. “I’m not sure where to begin,” he said.

All at once, he couldn’t stand that he had to hold the wheel and keep his eyes on the road. Not while Clare was beside him and there were things he desperately needed to tell her.

“I know Moru said Nyeri will be bringing Devon down this afternoon, but they should be a while on the road.” He slowed and pulled into an overlook on the left. Here the Wolf Lake arm of the North Fork had wreaked havoc. In an area where a rare tornado-like wind had created a blowdown years ago, fire had swept through the deadwood and left a veritable moonscape.

This was one of the worst looking burns, right beside a major road. The news had featured a reporter on this spot telling the nation in grave tones, “Tonight, this is all that is left of Yellowstone National Park.”

What colossal bullshit! Even inside the outlines of the burns, there were broad areas where damage had not been severe.

As Steve drew the truck to a halt, Clare put her hand over his. He killed the engine and turned into her arms. He wanted to drag her into the woods, but only flattened tree trunks surrounded them. With an effort, he broke the embrace and said hoarsely, “We’re not talking.” He was determined to ask her, against all odds, if she would come and live with him in Yellowstone.

Outside, a huge snowflake drifted down and landed on the windshield. It slid sideways as it melted into a great water drop that sluiced down the glass. Another flake whirled past, and another.

Clare opened the door and jumped down with childlike alacrity. “They weren’t kidding about the forecast!”

Steve followed her into what rapidly became a fast-falling whirl. She leaped tree trunks in the downed forest, hurrying to the top of a rise and spreading her arms wide. By the time he caught up with her, her sweetly ragged hair was starred with white.

“This will go a long way toward bringing the dragon to its knees,” Steve said.

“Look at that.” She pointed.

Embers still smouldered in the heart of a log nearly three feet in diameter, while a sugary dusting frosted the exterior. “It’s not over by a long shot,” she said. “These fires will burn on and the mopping up will take months.”

Steve nodded. “Twenty years from now people will still be questioning whether ‘let-burn’ was a disaster, or if a hundred years of playing Smoky Bear set the stage for an inferno.”

Clare shivered in the swirling white wind. Steve must have noticed, for he reached his arm around her and drew her under the shelter of his jacket. The way he wordlessly knew what she wanted gave her chest an aching feeling.

They had made love, but neither had spoken of the future.

How many times had she been set in her ways, only to have change upset her delicate balance? For a time Jay Chance had been solid earth. His leaving had produced a pattern of shattered fault lines. Walled alone behind defenses, she’d guarded her heart until the man beside her had broken through.

Clare swallowed her fears and leaned on Steve. “I don’t want to leave.”

“It gets to you, doesn’t it?” He waved his free hand at the slopes and mountains out there somewhere in the driving snow. “Even burned, I wouldn’t trade this place for blue water and white sand.”

She knew how he felt even as she planned her own return. The barren expanse of ash-covered earth was not without its own ethereal sort of beauty. “It casts a spell. You want to come back, and you haven’t left yet, but . . . “ she tightened her arm around him, “I wasn’t talking about missing a place.”

“I was hoping you’d say that.” He pulled her to the nearest snow-dusted log and sat down facing her, both her hands in his. “I don’t want this to be the end.”

She met his eyes and took a steadying breath. “I don’t either.” The loving look in his eyes made it easy to tell him. “I’m planning on either moving to Boise to work with Garrett, or applying to take over the Fire Cache at Mammoth when Ben Mallory retires this winter.”

Her cold hands felt him grip harder. She marveled that his were warm. “God, Clare, I do want you with me. That’s what I stopped here to tell you . . . “ A shadow crossed his face. “But there’s something else. When you leave, I’m afraid I might start drinking again.”

Her heart sank as she grappled with his words. His problem was very real, but as she gazed into his gray eyes, she knew she’d love him in bad times, too.

“I’ve decided to tell Shad Dugan that I’ll go for treatment. I never used to drink before Susan and Christa died. I’m serious about staying off the booze. “

They were both getting soaked by the early season snow, but she dared not move for fear of breaking the surreal isolation created by opaque light. In this private world, she could believe that Steve’s determination could defeat any adversary.

“You can do it,” she told him.

“I will do it . . . for me.” He bent and pressed a warm kiss to her chilled cheek. “And for us.”

Not since she was young and Jay had declared himself had she known a surge of joy like this one. In the lost and lonely years between, she’d begun to believe that promise was for others.

“I’ve got a confession to make,” Steve went on. “When you asked if there was anyone in my life and I said no, I didn’t exactly tell the truth.”

She waited.

“Ever since the crash in July when I fought my way through that freezing lake . . . realizing with every stroke that even though I’d been dead inside for years . . . I did want to live . . . ever since I dragged myself onto that shore . . . from the moment I opened my eyes, there’s been you.”

The snow that was ending the summer of fire blurred through her tears, as Clare permitted herself to imagine. Over the years, the burns would fill in, first with brilliant pink fireweed and later with seedling pine. Colorful aspen that had not had a niche in the mature forest would bring gold to autumn. Elk would browse the burned land and carry on the cycle of life.

Clare had planned to grow old with Jay, but along the way, they’d let the distractions of daily life overshadow their belief in each other. Steve and Susan had charted their future in the stars, but their flight had fallen to earth.

They were no different from all the rest . . . those who dared to dream as though they didn’t realize that only this moment is given. Frank, Billy Jakes, all of them, riding a knife-thin edge of present. Only this instant, when the sun shining through a snowstorm stabbed at Clare’s eyes and the cold, cutting wind told her that her tears were real. She blinked to clear the blurred image of a world gone charred black and whirling white.

Letting go her hands, Steve bent and brushed away granules of snow blown into the hollow at the base of a log. “Look,” he said softly.

Together, they knelt to discover a single, pale-green shoot, pushing through the layer of ash.

YELLOWSTONE FIRES

September 26, 8:00 a.m.

Here is a list of the fires and approximate perimeter acreages. To date, over 1.1 million acres in Yellowstone National Park (includes NF portions of Clover-Mist and North Fork Fires) and approximately 1.6 million acres in the Greater Yellowstone Area have been affected by fire. However, only about half of the vegetation has burned within many fire perimeters. Throughout the summer, 52 different fires have been started by lightning. Of those 52, eight are still burning inside the park. Fire fighters are working to control them. Any new fires will be suppressed as quickly as possible.

* * * * *

Clover-Mist Fire:
412,550 acres. Mist Fire started July 9. Clover started July 11. They joined on July 22. Shallow Fire started July 31. Fern Fire started August 5. These two fires joined Clover-Mist August 13. Lovely Fire started July 11 and burned into Clover-Mist on August 21. Estimated 83% contained. The fire crossed the Montana border near Kersey Lake. Growth was about 1,050 acres over the weekend. Acreage reduction is due to remapping. 1120 firefighters, 31 engines, 2 bulldozers, and 9 helicopters.