Wild Inferno (22 page)

Friday, 2000 Hours

The evening I brought Delgado Gonzales back, Fire Camp transformed from a battle outpost to a festival of revelry. The Blue Bandana Band played rousing bluegrass tunes, the camp kitchen had rustled up steaks for the evening meal and buckets of chocolate ice cream for dessert, and the evening briefing indicated that the news from the fire front was all good. Division Alpha, manned by the Southern Ute wildland crew, had contained the western flank with minimal damage to the riparian area along the Piedra. In Division Bravo, most of the coyote crews were reporting good black with little chance of reburn—only the recently deployed helicrew was still battling for containment, and they hoped to make headway when the wind died down after sunset. Durango was dispatching an air tanker the next day that would begin slurry-bombing the slopes on the eastern flank at dawn. Division Charlie had pumped water from Devil's Creek and the pond on the Laughing Dog Ranch to an intricate system of hose lays that contained the fire in their sector without any structure loss on the ranch or in Camp Honor. Division Zulu had made progress, too: firefighters there were working successfully to keep the flames from the power lines. With any luck, the fire would be contained and in mop-up in twenty-four hours.

The best news of all was that ten more of the hotshots were to be released from the burn center in the morning, and all but one of the remaining eight had been upgraded in condition. One of the information officers made an announcement to this effect through the band's PA system, and a roar of applause and cheering rose up from the crowd like the smoke that had billowed all day from the Chimney Rock Fire.

My sat phone rang. Ron Crane began talking without any kind of greeting. “I've got Clara White Deer in custody. She won't talk, refuses to respond to questioning, she hasn't asked for a lawyer, didn't even want to make a phone call. She has motive and opportunity, and her story about that morning doesn't jive, but I can't hold her more than twenty-four hours without evidence. She's a real tough cookie. I did find out that she has been dating the owner of the service station in Ignacio. She might have enlisted his help or information in cutting your brake lines. We're trying to run him down to talk to him, but it's Friday night. His shop is closed and he's not at home. As for the gunshot through your windshield, I couldn't find the bullet anywhere in your car. If it went in through the window…”

“My driver's-side window was down. Maybe it went right through the car and out the other side.”

“Parting your bear partner's hair along the way,” he said. “I'll see if the Southern Ute Tribal Police can send someone to scope out the area where you were parked, look for casings or a slug.”

I was quiet after that, thinking.

Crane went on. “Remember how I told you it's almost always the spouse?”

“Yeah, but…”

“Well, Clara White Deer is the closest thing we have to one in this case. She and Ned had a kid, and she's the only one Ned acknowledged. There must be some kind of bond there.”

“What about your theory about the hotshot?”

“Yeah—oh, that reminds me: this is not for public dissemination, but the medical reports on that hotshot you found show that Louie Gonzales had severe bruising on the back of his head at the neckline, so possibly a closed head injury in addition to his burns. I think if Clara White Deer hit old Ned with the shovel, she probably took a whack at your hotshot, too.”

Later, I was standing to one side watching as Delgado held court seated in a folding chair with his crutches on the ground beside him—shaking hands, laughing, receiving good wishes from firefighters with moist eyes. He held his fists out in a wide V above his head, gesturing to show how he had held down the corners of his fire shelter against the savage winds of the firestorm that had ripped at the foil tent; then he stroked his throat as he spoke about inhaling the fiery hot gases and smoke. Each time he shared the war story of his entrapment, he told it with more and more gusto. As the story grew in detail and drama, something was healing in the storyteller, and Delgado began to look larger and stronger and more like a man with a purpose.

Someone tapped me on the shoulder, and I turned around to see Kerry grinning at me. His brown hair, which he kept short and neat, was dark with sweat and smoke, and spiked out from his head in places. He had a full-on beard in progress, and his skin was both red and brown from the sun. He had taken off his yellow shirt and was wearing a clean Forest Service T-shirt with his green Nomex pants and wildland boots, and I could see the muscles in his chest and shoulders through the soft cotton of his shirt.

“You have helmet head,” I said, enjoying every minute detail of what I was seeing.

“I don't care,” he said, his smile intensifying. He raised his eyebrows at me, then took my forearm and pulled me toward the grassy area where other firefighters were dancing to the music. Kerry pulled me toward him, encircled my waist with one arm while clutching my fingers in his other hand, and started to move as deftly as a trained dancer. He looked down at me, still smiling. “I've missed you, babe,” he said.

“I've missed you, too,” I said. “You seem more…”

“Shhhhh,” he said, tightening his arm around my waist, “just listen to the music.”

But I listened instead to his heart beating, my cheek against his chest, his chin resting on my head as we moved. I felt the strength in his arms guiding me, and I forgot about where to put my feet or which way to step and I let my senses run with the moment. I smelled him—his clean shirt exuding a hint of soap, his skin and his sweat and the smoke that had permeated his clothes and his hair, and that scent of
man
that he always carried—that fusion of hormones and DNA imprint that was uniquely Kerry. He twirled me around on the grass, and I looked out beyond his biceps and saw a fluidity to the images around us—the firefighters, the tents, the lake beyond, the band—everything swirling and nicely smudged at the edges like an Impressionist painting with a bluegrass soundtrack.

“We should go somewhere,” he whispered, his voice soft and sensual.

I looked up at him and smiled. “Where?”

He glanced from one side to the other, still dancing. “Plans,” he said. “They're all out here partying.”

Inside the office that Plans had taken over, Kerry used a marker and a sheet of printer paper and made a sign that said
DO NOT DISTURB
and taped it to the outside of the door. He tipped the blinds upward at the windows so no one could see in, then turned off the lights and closed the door. He leaned with his back against it and looked at me. “Come here,” he said.

I went to him, straddled his boots, and stepped into the circle of his arms. “Someone might come in.”

“I'm right here,” he said. “They won't get through me.”

He tugged at my T-shirt and pulled it up over my head. I helped wriggle it off, then started pulling at his. The room was dim and dusky and the sound of the band outside and the firefighters talking noisily and laughing loudly was an intoxicating undercurrent. Our breathing was like another presence in the room—intense, passionate, rhythmic. I worked at Kerry's belt while he reached to unfasten my bra, his hands hot against my back, making short work of the fastener. He drew the bra around and down my arms and dropped it on the floor.

“You're excited,” he said.

“How'd ya know?” I grinned.

“Look.” He glanced at my nipples.

“You're excited, too,” I said, unzipping his pants.

“How'd ya know?” he teased.

Delgado Gonzales was not where I'd left him. The reveling, the laughter, and the band's volume had all escalated. The band had replaced their acoustic instruments with electric ones and had launched into a rockabilly version of “Peggy Sue.” It was almost impossible to hear my own voice when I shouted to a group near where the hotshot had been sitting. “Do you know where Delgado went?”

“Who?” one woman asked, straining to hear me.

“Delgado Gonzales, the hotshot with the crutches?”

“Oh, yeah,” a man with her shouted. “He said to tell you he found a ride to Chimney Rock.”

“Do you know who took him?”

“I think he left with that archaeologist.”

“Steve Morella?” I asked, but he and the girl beside him turned and moved off to dance.

The music had a driving beat, and the others in the group didn't hear me. They nodded their heads and tapped their toes, their eyes on the musicians as my words vanished into the howl of guitars.

Kerry checked a couple sleeping bags out of the cache and we met up, as agreed, by the shores of Navajo Lake, about two hundred yards from where my ripped tent was staked. We spread the bags out on the ground, stripped down to T-shirts and skivvies, and lay down to watch the stars. Within minutes, Kerry began to snore softly. Right before I fell asleep, I thought about the moon forming a cradle to carry the dawn into the light.

Kerry's radio sparked to life first. While he responded, I scrambled to pull on my pants, then stood up to search for my bra. Then my pack set sounded off.

The eastern flank had erupted again, this time at its northerly edge where the new heli-rappel team had been placed to close the gap. The fire had flashed in a narrow box canyon and quickly exploded up the slope. It was rapidly encroaching on Chimney Rock, and the Native Americans had to be evacuated immediately. A few hours after midnight, the winds had kicked up again unexpectedly. Sunset had closed down all flight operations for the night, so the chopper couldn't get in to pick up the crew. There would be no help from the air until dawn.

My first thought, whether honorable or not, was for Mountain.

Kerry and I were dressed in seconds. Before he started to go, just ahead of me, he turned and looked at me for an instant. “Mountain!” I said. Then I hastened to add, “Momma Anna.” He grabbed his radio harness and started running for his truck.

I tried to call Roy on my sat phone as I raced for the parking area, but I remembered that I had gone to sleep without plugging it in to recharge. I turned it off to preserve the battery and put my radio on scan. Traffic on the tactical channel was almost constant, so I dashed into the ICP and almost ran into Steve Morella in the lobby. “Oh, good,” I said. “You're here. I have to go up to Chimney Rock and help evacuate the Indians. Will you let Roy or Charlie Dorn know I'm on the way there? And I don't know what you did with Gonzales after you took him to Chimney Rock, but you'll have to babysit him for a while longer. I have to go.”

He gave me a puzzled look as I turned and hurried away.

Saturday, 0400 Hours

You couldn't have missed the entrance to Chimney Rock off of State Highway 151, no matter how hard you tried. Two sheriff's cruisers straddled either side of the road with their light bars whirling, a Colorado State Police car's LEDs danced in the entry drive, and a bevy of vans and SUVs queued up to load passengers.

Since I was driving a vehicle with no official identification, a sheriff's deputy challenged me as I pulled in. I reached into my radio harness and found my badge and flashed it at him. “I'm here to help evacuate the native Puebloans.”

He leaned in the window. “We already started up top,” he said. “Two of our deputies are helping bring the oldest ones down. The rest of the Indians are grabbing their stuff and getting ready to go. I'll radio ahead for my officers to hold traffic a few minutes and let you go on up, but after that, I'm shutting down all entries. We need to keep that road open for all those vehicles coming down. We need everyone out within the next half hour.” He waved me past.

I drove the three miles up the steep and curving gravel road with my hands choking the steering wheel. I wanted to hurry, but the visceral memory of the accident just hours earlier suddenly overcame me—and I felt as though I were living a bad dream in which I knew what was about to happen and could neither prevent it nor stop my own momentum as I raced toward it. As I came around a bend, my headlights illuminated the scar on the cliff face where the sanitary truck had jammed its wheel into the rock just inches shy of the side of my Jeep. In my peripheral vision, I saw the wolf rolling past behind me, heard the thump as his body slammed into the side of the rear cargo compartment, felt the vertigo as my head and upper torso flopped forward and back and then side to side. My right ribs suddenly hurt and I felt my vehicle swerving off the road. I forced myself to breathe slowly, loosen my grip, and concentrate on the winding track in front of me.
You're all right,
I told myself,
you're all right.
But I was swimming through time, and now my thoughts raced ahead of me to Mountain and Momma Anna and the native Puebloans.

When I arrived at the parking lot on top, a sheriff's cruiser blocked the road. I pulled to the side, tucked into the soft gravel shoulder, and parked. I pulled the radio harness on over my head, put my arms through the loops, and snapped the strap that went around my back. I twisted my long hair into a rope and tucked it under my fire helmet, then strapped on my line pack and donned my gloves. I got Charlie Dorn on the radio and gave him my location. “Help the S.O. get everybody off that mountain!” he snapped. “And then you get down from there, too!”

A small group of Indians crossed the asphalt carrying bundles wrapped in blankets. I ran to them. “Do you know where Anna Santana is?” I asked.

They eyed me with suspicion, their eyes squinting at me in my helmet and yellow shirt in the darkness.

“She is keeping my wolf,” I thought to add, realizing they'd never seen me in full firefighter attire.

A round of nods erupted as they figured out who I was. One old man poked an arthritic finger toward the edge of the parking lot where I usually parked my Jeep. “Going out,” he said.

“She's leaving? Do you know who she came with?”

They looked at me with blank faces.

“She doesn't drive. Did you see her leaving?”

They glanced at one another and shook their heads, then moved off toward a pickup in a nearby parking space.

The lot was full of people packing their things into their cars and hastily saying good-bye to one another. A deputy sheriff wearing a chartreuse neon vest and carrying a flashlight with an orange cone on the tip prepared to do traffic control. Another deputy was helping an Indian woman put her things in the trunk of her car. I checked in with him. “I think we got everybody. We're just trying to get them into their cars and keep them calm, and get them down the mountain in an orderly fashion,” he said. “See what you can do to help.”

I noticed Bearfat standing on the curb beside the comfort station and I spoke to him. “Has everybody gotten the news that they have to evacuate?”

He hesitated a moment, not recognizing me in the darkness in my helmet. “Oh, it's you, Jamaica Wild. Yes, I already told them. The sheriff talked to me about a half hour ago down at the visitors' center and I came up and told everyone. A deputy took two of the old Hopi men first. Everyone else is loading their stuff and getting ready to drive out. The officers told us to wait and they'd direct traffic so everybody didn't try to leave at once and end up in an accident. I think they're about ready to start.”

“Is anyone resisting the evac?”

“Come with me,” he said, and he walked a few yards toward the western cliff edge. Bearfat pointed down the slopes to the west just half a mile. A torrent of fiery orange tongues probed upward into the darkness while the burning belly beneath digested the forest and spat smoke so black that it was visible even in the night sky. “A bunch of them saw that and started leaving even before the sheriff got here.”

“Are you taking a count or anything?” I asked as we started back to the parking lot.

“No. I didn't think…”

“Can you look around the perimeter and see if anyone is left?”

“Sure.” He started to jog away.

“Wait!” I said. “Do you know where Anna Santana is?”

Bearfat gave me a sympathetic look as he shook his head.

As I hurried through the parking lot, I scanned for Mountain and Momma Anna. I helped a man put a large drum in the back of his car. Another man asked me to speak to his mother because she was afraid. I stood beside the car door and leaned down to look in the open window. “It's going to be fine, Grandmother,” I said, addressing her in this way to show respect for an elder, as was the custom of Pueblo people. “There is plenty of time. We're going to get everyone down safely. You just stay in the car, and they'll let you know when it's time to go.”

She reached a bony hand out the window and grasped the sleeve of my Nomex shirt, tugging my arm toward her. “I pray,” she said.

“That's right,” I said. “You pray.”

“I pray for you,” she said, and she squeezed my arm before releasing it.

As I moved on, I tried to be reassuring and helpful. I saw a clutch of women I'd seen with Momma Anna the first day of the ceremonies. “Is Anna Santana with you?” I asked, pulling off my helmet so they would recognize my long yellow hair.

They shook their heads no.

“Do you know who drove her here?”

One woman looked sideways at the others, then spoke: “Nephew bring.”

“Her nephew?” I asked, my mind scanning the relatives of Anna's that I knew. “Is he here?”

The woman shook her head no.

“He didn't stay?”

She shook her head again.

“How was she going to get back home, do you know?”

“Nephew.”

“The nephew was coming back?”

This time she nodded. “Come back after.”

“He was going to come back to pick her up after the ceremonies here?”

She nodded again, this time more enthusiastically, as if encouraged that she was getting through. The other women nodded, too.

“So do you know where Anna is now? Where my wolf is?” I scanned the group hopefully.

They all shook their heads no.

“Well, thank you. You get ready to go, okay?” I said as I stuffed my hair back up in my helmet. “Go ahead and get in your cars, it will only be a few minutes now.”

I dashed to the piñon tree where I'd seen Momma Anna's makeshift camp. It was dark in this little grove of trees, so I flipped on the LED headlamp on my helmet and took the Mini Mag out of my radio harness and shined it on the ground. The familiar multicolored Pendleton blanket still stretched across the dry earth with stones at the corners to hold it down. All her things lay in order beneath the tree. I knelt down and searched for Mountain's bridle and lead, but I didn't see them. It was then that I spied the drum that Momma Anna's father, Nazario, had made for her. I knew she would not have left without it—she was still here at Chimney Rock.

I ran back to the parking lot and began going from car to car, peering inside, asking for Momma Anna, for my wolf. I interrupted conversations without concern for how rude I must have seemed, and I seldom stayed to wait for an answer, having seen for myself before they even understood my question, if they did. My search yielded only a repeating chorus of surprised faces and heads shaking no.

By the time I'd reached the front of the parking lot, the viridescent-vested deputy was waving the first cars through to begin their caravan down the winding road to the bottom. As I came up to one side of him, he almost struck me with the cone-tipped flashlight, which he was waving like a conductor's baton, urging the traffic to move in a slow, steady rhythm. “Easy, there!” he said to me. “I didn't see you coming up.”

“Officer, have you seen an old woman with a wolf?”

He stopped waving the flashlight and stared at me. “A what?”

“Has anyone come through with a big wolf?”

He frowned at me, the soft glow of the light through the cone making his face look like a jack-o'-lantern. “Is this a joke? I don't have time for jokes, miss.”

“Never mind.” I started to turn away. But I had to try again. “There's an old Indian woman here with a wolf,” I said. “If you see her, will you let me know? I'm on the evac channel with the sheriff's office.”

By now, he was back to business, the traffic rolling slowly by to his direction. “If I see a wolf, I'll be sure to give you a holler,” he said.

As the cars wheeled slowly past me, I saw smoke whorls dance in the yellow pools of light from the headlamps. I felt a gust of hot wind, and smelled the Chimney Rock Fire coming closer, its signature the scent of incinerating brush and heavy timber, the plants surrendering the last essence of their life into the clouds of hot gas as a wild and forlorn fragrance.

I ran to the comfort station and checked the restroom for Momma Anna. The concave metal door still dangled in the door frame, unable to fully open or close.

I took the trail down toward the stone basin, where I had first talked to the native Puebloans. The path looped past the Stone Basin site, around a pit house site, and past the Great Kiva. On the smooth flat of bedrock with the stone basin in its center, I paused to look through the junipers and down the hillside toward the fire. Along the jagged southwestern slopes of the mountain, the fire raged in a handful of narrow ravines that funneled the flames upward. From the shoulders of these flumes, curtains of smoke illuminated by red heat opened with the wind and closed again, and with another gust, I saw the leading edge of the blaze boiling out of a box canyon just a quarter mile below me. I turned to take to the trail again, shouting, “Mountain! Momma Anna!”

I jogged to the Great Kiva and shined my light around the edges. “Mountain!” I called. “Momma Anna?”

On the way back up the half-mile loop, I ran into Bearfat. “I think we got everybody,” he said. “The last cars are rolling out now.”

“My wolf!” I said. “Momma Anna. Did you find them?”

He paused a moment. “Well, I wasn't looking for them in particular…”

“Damn it, Bearfat! Did you see them?”

“Hey, calm down. I didn't see them, but that doesn't mean they didn't go down with some of the first ones. I told you a few people left even before the law got here.”

“They're still here,” I said, and I started to push past him. But I thought better, and turned. “But you're sure you got everyone else?”

“Pretty sure,” he said.

“Thank you, Bearfat.”

“No problem.”

“You better go now, too.”

“I will.”

By the time I got back to the parking lot, there were only a few cars left in the line leading out and down the mountain. I skirted across the lower half of the lot, then up the few steps and across the upper section to the Parking Lot site. My radio crackled: “Chimney Rock evacuation is now complete, all personnel please leave the Chimney Rock mesa at once. Check in with Command when you reach the entrance gate.”

I thumbed the mic. “Evac, this is Liaison Wild. I'm still looking for a missing party.”

“Negative, we have everyone. Evacuate the mesa immediately. You are in danger.”

“A-firm,” I said. “I just have one more place to check and then I'll head right down.”

“Negative. You will evacuate the mesa immediately. Request echo.”

I closed my eyes and thought for a moment. “Echoing your command, I will evacuate the mesa immediately.”

“A-firm.”

I reached down and turned the radio off. “I didn't say I would obey,” I muttered. “I just said I was echoing the command.”