Summer of Fire Part 15

Firefighters scrambled aboard.

Deering peered through the windshield at the spike camp.

Outhouse doors beat against their hinges. Loose papers blew along the ground. Above the rotor whine was a sound like a 747 screaming toward takeoff.

There was the tent he and Clare had shared so briefly.

The left side door slammed, followed by the rolling slide of the rear ones into place. Deering looked back to make sure the pa.s.sengers were secure, then checked the person in the front seat.

Clare's white face stared at him, her eyes stark. She said something he couldn't hear and he gestured toward the headset.

She put it on as he performed instinctive motions with his feet and hands, the intricate dance that propelled the aircraft into the sky.

"Will this thing fly?" She gripped his forearm, creamy bone showing beneath the skin of her knuckles. He'd have a bruise.

Rolling turbulence in front of the fire lifted the helicopter and then let it fall four feet. He concentrated on keeping from crashing. Finally, he got it under control, lifted off and headed toward the drop-off. Clare did not let go.

Deering clenched his teeth at the mess he'd gotten himself into. He'd maneuvered Clare into that tent for the thrill of it, and for revenge on his wife for denying his love of flying.

He should be weak with relief that they'd been interrupted before anything more happened.

He wasn't.

Clare's touch reminded him how complicated this was. He should be ashamed of himself and he was, but when he'd held her, she'd changed from a cheap thrill or instrument of vengeance. He was suddenly, acutely aware of her as a human being, as though she'd been made of mist and had taken form.

As they flew along Howell Creek, into the gradually deepening darkness, he knew she deserved the truth. "There's nothing wrong with the chopper," he said grimly. "I lied."

"It's kind of you to let me wait," Georgia Deering told Demetrios Karrabotsos as he handed her another Styrofoam cup of steaming coffee. At two-thirty a.m., it was dark and quiet in the control tower of West Yellowstone Airport.

"It's no trouble," the owner of Island Park Helicopters replied. "Are you sure you wouldn't rather wait at my house? You could let Deering wake you when he gets in."

"I've had too much coffee to sleep," she lied.

She studied Karrabotsos's scarred face and wondered how he had been burned. Deep lines around his eyes said he was maybe sixty, old enough to be a veteran of more than one war. He'd been gruff at first, but swiftly offered kindness. She couldn't tell if he knew things were bad between her and Deering, or if he merely offered the chance to pretend.

Likely, he didn't know anything. He hadn't even seemed to recognize her name when she'd shown up at the Island Park Trailer around eight, just in time to find out Deering was overdue. It had given her a chill she was still vainly trying to shake.

One thing she could tell was that Karrabotsos was worried, too, the lateral grooves in his broad forehead deepening as the hours pa.s.sed.

Georgia tried not to think about that cute EMT that Deering had his arm around in the newspaper photo. She'd always considered flying to be his mistress. Did she have to worry now about other women?

Controller Jack Owen was pulling night duty, occasionally speaking in rea.s.suring tones to one of the pilots still flying on instruments. Outside the control tower, the north-south runway was a sparkling bracelet of diamonds, surrounded by the sapphire lights of the taxiways.

"I can't imagine what's got Deering off the air unless his radio is out." Karrabotsos repeated the litany he'd chanted for hours. "He flew to the Mink Creek spike camp this afternoon with their dinners. The winds must have kicked up bad to make him stay over."

Georgia smiled. She'd only met Karrabotsos this evening, but she already believed him a solid man that independent Deering would be okay working for if he couldn't operate his own machine.

The thought of flying brought her up against what she'd been trying to avoid all evening. Chatting with Karrabotsos had almost kept her mind off it, but it was getting so late and Deering had been off the air so many hours. If she were alone, she wouldn't be able to beat back tears.

Jack Owen sat up straight and listened intently. He ran a hand through his brown hair, aggravating his already prominent cowlick. "I'll pa.s.s it along. You're cleared to land."

Georgia clutched her coffee cup too hard. Hot liquid slopped over and burned the soft skin between her thumb and forefinger.

"Mink Creek Camp had to evacuate all hands," Jack told Karrabotsos. "Deering's coming in now with your Huey."

Clare gripped the armrest as Deering set the helicopter down at West Yellowstone.

Bursting with the desire to blurt exactly what she thought of him, she kept silent while a stout middle-aged woman with one of the catering companies waved thanks and headed toward the terminal.

With his head down, Deering gave complete attention to the aircraft.

Clare pitched her headphones into the floorboards and climbed down, stretching her legs to reach the ground. She waited, fists planted on her hips.

He seemed to take an interminable time turning off switches, reading gauges and writing on a clipboard. Finally, he removed his helmet and got out, brushing back his hair from his forehead. He reached to the breast pocket of his flight suit for a Marlboro and walked away from the helicopter. A match flared, a small glow against the floodlights illuminating the ramp.

Clare stomped after him. "You lied about the chopper, to spend the night with me."

"That's right." His dark eyes were steady.

Suspicion dawned. "I suppose that wasn't really the last tent in camp."

"No."

Clare started away from him with a hard ache in the back of her throat.

Deering grabbed her arm and turned her. "Clare, wait." He pulled her against him, so tightly she could feel his flight suit zipper against her stomach. "It's not that simple . . ."

"What else have you lied to me about?" It shocked her, how the fires and the danger seemed to have heightened everything from desire to despair. She wanted to slap him, but she didn't. She'd never raised a hand to Jay, either, not even at the end.

Instead, she turned and ran. Near the terminal, she pa.s.sed a small woman with red-gold hair, who also seemed to be in flight away from the tarmac.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN.

August 15 Above the North Fork's burned out wake Deering flew the Huey toward the red rim of the world. He was dragging from another fifteen hour day and ready to set down in West Yellowstone. It would be nice to tuck into a juicy steak at the Red Wolf and swap some lies with Karrabotsos.

Upon reflection, tonight he didn't think it would satisfy.

It had only been two days since he'd seen Clare, but his life was divided inexorably into the time before . . . and the time after. Her flesh had been as he'd imagined, lean and needy when he slid his body over hers. It was only a technicality that they hadn't actually . . .

For over twenty years, he'd never considered being unfaithful. Not when other guys sampled the delights of Southeast Asia's fine-boned women. Not when he'd flown fire in Southern California where every woman looked like a movie star. And not on a hot night in an Oregon fire camp, when an attractive brunette named Helen had made it clear she was available if Deering said the word.

He had headed for his solitary sleeping bag without saying it.

As he flew toward West Yellowstone, the first star hung above the North Fork's smoke. It was magical how that always happened, the way he could be staring right there and not see it, as though it waited until he blinked. This lone bright jewel against a deepening azure field made him remember when his Dad would hold him on his hip and point to the sky. "Make a wish on that one, son, the first star you see."

Part of Deering wished he could press Clare beneath him and find relief for the urgency she'd awakened.

In the western sky, another star joined the first.

Part of him wanted to be home with Georgia.

Clare stared at the hazy sky from Madison Campground and tried not to rustle her sleeping bag. Beside her, one of the women soldiers slept heavily, breathing through her mouth. Her sinuses were probably as screwed up as everyone else's from the smoke.

After a long day on the North Fork, Clare had decided against hitchhiking to Old Faithful. She did not care to have Sergeant Travis think she had abandoned her trainees.

They'd mopped up all day; turning ashes with their Pulaskis and putting out hot spots with the backpack tanks known as p.i.s.s pumps. Grueling and demanding, but not dangerous. At the end of it, the press had been on hand while she provided first aid for minor burns and the usual foot maintenance.

Two days since she'd done the same at the Mink Creek spike camp and gone to bed in the same turquoise pants and bra, washed out last night in her cabin's small sink.

She wanted to despise Deering, but it was like he'd said. Not that simple.

It wasn't like her to jump into . . . a sleeping bag with a man she knew no better than she did him. At the time, though, it had seemed an inevitable, impulsive part of summer. It was as though she'd left behind her sense of stability, the self who wanted to keep things set for her daughter.

If Devon moved out when she turned eighteen, what would Clare have to focus on? Not two months ago, she'd have answered without hesitation that the Houston Fire Department would receive her undivided attention. Now she wasn't sure about anything.

What would she do when she saw Deering again? Cut him dead, or let his eyes entreat her? Just thinking of his long torso sliding over her back started heat coursing in her. If not for the blowup, she would have turned over beneath him.

If only Deering hadn't lied.

Looking at the filtered stars, she remembered Steve Haywood's love for the night sky over Yellowstone. In a way, the simple touch of his hand had been more moving than Deering's sensual overtures. In Steve, she felt the same deep and lonely melancholy that often overtook her late at night.

Clare took a deliberate breath and closed her eyes. Against the backdrop of her eyelids, she saw the endless undulation of flames.

Atop the Washburn lookout, Steve turned the pages of an interview with a Nez Perce warrior. The man related seeing his mother trampled to death by a white man driving a wagon through her property. The interloper had been cutting wood for fence posts when she challenged him.

Steve knew about seeing your loved ones die. With Susan and Christa gone, he was a man without an anchor. He lifted his mug and grimaced at the acrid bite of cold decaf.

He pushed aside the kerosene lamp he preferred over harsher battery-operated lights and stepped out onto the walkway surrounding the lookout. Over the rail went the last of his coffee and he set the mug down. When the long summer twilight of the Northern Rockies gave way to velvet darkness, he found that subst.i.tuting decaf or sipping at water did not satisfy his habit of having a gla.s.s in his hand. He still wanted a drink.

A check of his watch said he had read long into the night. Three o'clock and all seemed well, but to the northeast, the Clover-Mist illuminated the underside of smoke clouds. Overhead were the stars, but even with a new moon, the Milky Way's trail was muted. He remembered it that way from when he was stationed at Interior in D.C.

There, his future had been laid out like Washington's street system, wide smooth thoroughfares to success. A house with a green lawn that sloped to the Potomac, the start of Christa's college fund, a recent promotion that came with a government car.

Life was narrower now and rough as a wilderness trail.

The reddish sky reminded him how Clare said the Houston lights also washed out the stars.

Where was she tonight? When she'd come to the mountain, the sight of her had set off a bubbling simmer of well-being that he hadn't felt in a long time. She'd touched his hand.

At the rate things were going, she'd go back to Texas and he'd never see her again. That was probably just as well, but the prospect left a little aching void in his chest.

Due north, a light flickered in the sky as though a switch had been thrown and quickly extinguished. A gust hit the tower and the window gla.s.s shuddered. Steve's cup leaped off the rail to shatter against the deck.

He sniffed the air. There was no hint of humidity, but maybe this storm would be the one to bring the blessing of rain. With the dry wind in his face, he hoped.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN.

August 20 Sat.u.r.day dawned with a still heat that Clare felt inside the Smokejumpers' dorm. Through the open window was the ubiquitous pine forest that surrounded West Yellowstone. In the lower bunk, Sherry snored softly.

In this night's dream, Clare and Frank had been together on the North Fork. In her teaching mode, she'd shown him the proper use of Pulaski and shovel to make an effective fire break. The dry scent of duff rose as she struck, turned sod, and moved on.

"Like this?" The tool in his hand became his crash axe.

Frank looked at it and laughed, stocky and strong in his yellow shirt. The smile did not touch his empty-looking eyes. "Pretty easy duty."

"Wait until you've done it for sixteen hours," she came back at him like she always did.

"Ha!" He was weightless, floating magically and leaving a perfectly executed fire line. "I get done here, we'll have us a weenie roast over what's left of the North Fork."

He drifted up a ridge. She followed. "Hold on, you don't know these fires . . ."

Floating through the trees, Frank lifted like a helium-filled balloon Clare had accidentally released at her third birthday party. As the distance between them widened, acrid tears stung her lids.

Scrambling, she fought her way uphill in awful slow motion. There was no sound in the forest save Frank's fading laughter and the warning cry of a Clark's Nuthatch. It c.o.c.ked its intelligent gray head at Clare. "Run away," the bird said clearly.

She struggled after Frank, cresting the ridge just as flames surged over the top. They roared liked an open blast furnace, living fire, with long fingers that plucked at her r.e.t.a.r.dant clothing. Red and yellow, kill a fellow, but how smooth and seductive the hands . . .

Born of man, Frank transformed into fire. "Come on, Clare." He beckoned, his eyes blank as coal. "I'm waiting for you."

Clare crossed the wide expanse of Yellowstone Avenue and slung her pack into the troop transport outside Fire Command. She was tired before the day had begun.

The troops milled on the sidewalk, some inhaling a last cigarette before the drive. Sergeant Travis stood by the pa.s.senger door, his booted feet planted. "Little late this morning, Chance?"

After lying awake for an hour, she'd fallen back into a deep and torpid sleep. Waking with a start, she'd found Sherry gone and sunlight filtering through pine needles.

She ignored Travis and started to climb aboard, but he jerked his head toward the building. "Garrett Anderson wanted a word with you."

She stared across the lawn. A sleek raven reminded her of the bird that had spoken in her dream. "Any idea why?"

Travis shrugged. "He thought maybe you'd want to cancel today. Something about the weather kicking up." He managed to make it sound like she was chicken.

Fear was a part of fighting fire, the pale underbelly no one cared to expose. From the training field to the midnight call, mum was the word. Call it a belief in bad luck, or maybe it didn't go with the macho image, but the last thing anyone talked about was the ever-present specter of fate.

Anger had been eating at Clare since she awakened from her latest dream of fire. Now came determination that she would not let fear alter her schedule, or her life. With a look at the clear sky and reasonable if a bit lively wind, she said, "If it kicks up later, we can always back out. The guys in the air and on lookout will give advance warning."

"I'm sending a chopper to pull you off there," Shad Dugan radioed Steve Haywood on the Mount Washburn lookout.