Summer of Fire Part 8

Alone on another Sat.u.r.day night, while the park housing around him rang with familial laughter; rage surged like a specter through the drafty floorboards, seizing his throat.

How had he thought to live with Susan in her grave?

Going to the kitchen, he had reached beneath the sink and drawn forth a half-gallon of Old Crow.

As Steve entered the small living room dominated by Susan's black-lacquered grand piano, the hammering at his door grew louder. Half-full gla.s.ses and filthy dishes littered the tabletops. An empty half-gallon of Crow lay on the floor, fallen companion to one beside his bed. At some point, he'd shed his jeans and socks in a heap on the floor.

He did not remember doing that.

His caller was using his fist. "Steve? Are you there?" The male voice had a tinge of Oxford. The small square window in the front door revealed Moru Mzima's dark face, his high forehead edged in close-cropped black hair. The bars over the gla.s.s were the last vestiges of when the small building had been Fort Yellowstone's stockade.

With trembling hands, Steve turned the dead bolt and opened the door. Bright light stabbed and the old parade ground across the street blurred.

"Moru."

"I was about to break in."

Steve ran a hand through his hair and found it a greasy mess. "Ya know me," he tried at being casual. "I may be late on a Monday, but don't I always get there?"

Moru flinched. He glanced into the darkened depths of the living room. "May I come in?"

After standing in the fresh air, Steve noticed the musty, sick smell inside. Nevertheless, he waved his fellow ranger in.

Moru looked doubtful, but he came in and folded his long legs to sit on Steve's brown leather couch trimmed in pine. He removed his ranger's hat, the summer straw model. After looking at the dirty dishes and a half-empty bottle of Seagram's gin that Steve had opened when the Crow ran out, Moru settled for placing the hat on his knee.

Steve shifted his weight from one foot to another, like he always did when he was uncomfortable. Susan had called it his elephant dance.

Moru met his eyes. "Shad Dugan sent me."

Oh, boy. Dugan, who worked directly for the Chief Ranger, was reputed to be a fair man. He demanded exacting work and Steve tried to deliver, through his hangovers and the occasional late morning.

"Dugan said to tell you this can't go on," Moru said levelly. "He's considering referring you to a treatment center to dry out."

Steve gasped as though Dugan were here and had punched him. "Oh, yeah? I suppose he was too busy to come over here and tell me this to my f.u.c.king face. He lives three G.o.dd.a.m.n doors away." Maybe it was a good thing Dugan had sent Moru with this little bomb, because it effectively prevented Steve from jumping one of his bosses and ending his career.

Moru worried his hat, turning it.

Steve felt like hitting something, but there was nothing near except the mirror-like surface of Susan's piano. He put a fist on it, holding himself up.

At the sight of Moru's stricken face, the rage went out of Steve. Moru was Ndebele, from rural Zimbabwe. His good fortune in getting educated in England and making it to the United States tended to make him unfailingly cheerful. Today, he looked sick.

"Ah, Jesus," Steve moaned. His head felt too heavy to hold up, so he slumped until it rested on the piano. Light reflections in the deep shining surface and the sudden realization that he stank of stale sweat made him dizzy.

As Steve concentrated on not throwing up, a steadying hand touched his shoulder.

"I don't want to leave." His voice broke. He wanted to stay in Yellowstone where the land brought peace.

"I am told that you must accept treatment or nothing changes," Moru said in a compelling yet soft tone. "Dugan would have come, but he was advised to send someone you view as your friend."

Moru was his friend. Steve was grateful for his coming to the Lake Hotel's bar after the chopper crash. He'd told Steve he'd found him slouched asleep in a wicker chair, wasting the view of water. Without a censuring word, he'd settled the tab and supported Steve on their way out of the lobby.

Moru squared his shoulders. "They said you must check yourself into treatment."

Steve couldn't breathe, imagining himself in a straitjacket, screaming and beating his head against the walls of a padded room. Someone would sit in the corridor recording his tears and profanity with an impa.s.sive hand. He should have known this was coming, but there were a lot of walls inside him, one for lying about his drinking, another for his father's slow death from leukemia, and the big iron one he kept Susan and Christa behind.

Except when it rusted through.

"Why now, Moru? I've had these problems for years."

"You said you were running late for a Monday?" Moru kicked the empty bottle of Old Crow with a vicious swipe of his boot.

"Yeah."

"So, it's not Monday, Steve. It's Wednesday."

On Wednesday afternoon, Clare wiped sweat from her face with the standard issue bandanna. Thankfully, daylight and hours of toil had driven away the spirits of Frank and little Pham Nguyen. Behind her, a column of troops on their second training day marched through still heat toward West Yellowstone.

Things had gone well with the soldiers, despite their youthful armor of invincibility that reminded her of her daughter. Devon could be counted on to downplay danger, no matter whether it was inhaling cigarette smoke with the glamorous air of a fifties movie star, driving too fast even with Clare in the car, or diving into the shallow end of the Springwood Pool. The day Frank died, Devon had taken one look at Clare's face and hid out in her room. It had stung, as if her daughter hadn't cared or taken it seriously.

Ahead in the pines, Clare caught sight of something colorful and veered left.

"This way." Sergeant Travis pointed.

"I know." She tried to keep an edge out of her voice. "I merely wanted to see what was there." Around fifty yards away, a bright drape fluttered from a tree.

Without waiting for Travis's reply, she struck out walking toward the banner. As she drew nearer, the cloth became a faded housedress, drying in the wind. Several tents that might once have been yellow were pitched around the ashes of a campfire. A woman with braided black hair sat on the ground mending a pair of trousers.

Clare stopped and Sergeant Travis stepped on her heel. With a m.u.f.fled oath, she held out a warning hand. "Migrant camp." This sheltered oasis seemed fragile.

Travis frowned.

"They come to work the summer season," Clare explained. "There's not enough housing in town so they live in squatters' camps. When the Forest Service finds them, they move until they're rousted again."

The woman scrambled to her feet, still clutching the pants. Even at a distance, Clare saw that her eyes were wide.

"Let's tell her to go, then," Travis said loudly.

"Leave her alone," Clare returned.

Travis's eyes were on a level with hers, a fact that obviously added to his Napoleon complex. He seemed to be evaluating whether she regarded her statement as an order.

"I'm heading to town." She turned and walked away, pa.s.sing the curious group of soldiers. In fifteen minutes, she came out of the trees onto pavement at the west end of Yellowstone Avenue and heard the tramp of boots behind her.

West Yellowstone had the spare look of many a northern community. Trailer homes and small, weathered houses sported bare yards growing nothing but stacks of firewood and parked snowmobiles. Clare suspected the place would look better beneath the softening blanket of winter.

In front of Fire Command, she arranged to meet Travis and the soldiers inside the park the following morning, when they would dig line on their first real fire.

Instead of leaving, Travis followed her toward the building. "I thought I'd report those migrants to somebody in the Forest Service."

Perhaps because she was from Texas and used to workers from south of the border, Clare was dead set against Travis. "Sergeant," she began. "Those poor folks mind their own business. They need the work and the town needs them during the summer season." The worn, yet freshly washed dress, and the way the woman mended the pants rather than let her husband or son wear them out . . .

Travis's chin came up, but before he could reply, she rushed on. "Second, and most importantly, the Forest Service and Park people have more than enough on their platter. My G.o.d, do you think you . . . the Army . . . would be here if the fires weren't out of control?"

The latch clanged as Travis pushed past into the building. "I'll let the authorities decide."

Clare followed him into the command center.

Gathered around the maps, at least thirty men were meeting. Fire behavior expert Ken Roberts had the floor, holding up his Texas Instruments calculator containing the program he had developed, appropriately named PREDICT.

Garrett, seated in the front row, had told Clare about the program. The three main factors used in predicting were fuels, weather and topography. It sounded simple, but fuels could be anything from gra.s.s to four hundred-year-old trees.

"Back in July," Roberts lectured, "the thousand-hour fuels had dropped to twelve percent moisture content. I refer to the practice of using four-foot lengths of lodgepole pine that would take at least a thousand hours to dry as an index. To give you an idea of how low that moisture content is, it's the same as kiln-dried lumber."

Clare imagined the forest as one huge stack of kindling.

"This week the numbers have dropped to below ten percent."

A new plastic overlay had been added to the fire map with a dashed red outline that encompa.s.sed a large area that had not yet burned. "According to our estimates," Roberts said, "the hundred-fifty thousand acres already consumed could potentially double before the season is out."

Clare felt as though she'd been punched. If Roberts were right, she might be another three weeks getting home to Devon.

"Okay, everybody." Garrett held up a hand. "There'll be a press conference in an hour. We'll release the predictions hammered out here."

Sergeant Travis clumped over to the maps.

Clare went to the kitchen refrigerator. She downed a sixteen-ounce bottle of cold spring water and opened another.

Garrett followed her. "What do you think of their predictions?"

"It's frightening to think we're going to face that much more." She removed her hard hat, set it on the counter, and riffled her sweat-damp hair.

"It's going to get a whole lot worse than anybody imagines. Roberts's program is designed for surface fires, not crown fires. When you get winds like we're having and the fire leaps up into the treetops, all bets are off."

She gripped the plastic water bottle. Garrett had seen a lot and if he thought it was bad, she believed.

"How's it going with the Army?" He shot a glance at Travis.

"Okay."

"That fellow giving you a hard time?"

"What makes you think so?"

"A hunch."

Clare smiled both at Garrett and the sight of Travis retreating from the center without speaking to anyone about the migrants. "How'd you guess?"

"You forget I'm in the minority, too."

She drank deeply of chilled water and looked up at Garrett's dark face. "You're right, I do forget."

He poured coffee and stretched to pluck a pack of Fig Newtons from a high shelf. She surmised from the way he cached his sweets that it was an honor when he offered one. She took a cookie and ate it while Garrett downed five. Scanning the room, she confirmed that he was the only black and she one of the few women present. "Speaking of minorities," she ventured, "my family tree is supposed to trace back to the Nez Perce."

Garrett studied her. "Most folks like you don't acknowledge red or black ancestors."

Clare flushed. "The local bookstores have only a few books about the Nez Perce."

"Try the archives," Garrett suggested. "At Park Headquarters in Mammoth."

Steve's hands shook as he placed a stack of yellowed papers into a manila folder.

"Right in here." Walt Leighton's voice sounded in the outer room as he ushered someone into the bas.e.m.e.nt archives.

Steve checked his watch and found it nearly five. The time reminded him that the sun was over the yardarm.

What in G.o.d's name was he going to do? He longed for the years when he'd been a man who appreciated a good red wine, for the time before his life had been shredded in a falling, flaming instant. Drink was impossible to kick on your own. He'd stopped hundreds of mornings, only to start again the same night. The h.e.l.l of it was that if he wanted to stay in Yellowstone, he had no choice but to take the cure.

On the other hand, fire's a.s.sault on the land he loved made him determined to stay until the crisis ended.

Steve opened a new folder and considered a reprint of Jarred Ayad's article, "An Alternate Route for the Nez Perce through Yellowstone." He knew the Nez Perce story well, how in the summer of 1877 Chiefs Joseph, White Bird, and Looking Gla.s.s had refused to go onto the reservation outlined by the U.S. government. After hotheaded young men of the tribe avenged several murdered Nez Perce by killing white settlers, about seven hundred people set out on a freedom flight to Canada. The Army had pursued them through Yellowstone.

"Back here we have our library of books and videotapes." Walt's footsteps sounded loud in the narrow aisle between floor-to-ceiling shelves. The person who followed did not walk as heavily as he. "It's time to close, but since you drove all the way here, I can stay open a while."

"Where would I find information about an old homestead?" The husky voice might belong to a man or a woman. "Someplace close to the Tetons around 1900?"

"Not here, I'm afraid," Walt said. "You might ask at Grand Teton National Park, or at the Historical Society in Jackson. In the meantime, feel free to look around."

Walt retreated toward his office while the other late visitor to the archives shuffled along on the opposite side of a shelf of geology books. A moment later, Steve looked up to find Clare Chance frowning at him, her brows startling wings. Her face had darkened from the sun since he saw her last week.

"Dr. Haywood," she said, "you look like h.e.l.l."

Clare did think Steve looked terrible, but she immediately regretted saying it. The paper he'd been studying wavered as he laid it down. Pale stubble on his chin outlined where he'd missed a patch shaving.

"You don't look bad yourself." Steve smiled. Despite the puffy bags around them, his gray eyes lighted. If he stayed off the sauce, he might turn out to be a decent looking fellow, with that blond hair and solid looking build.

"Thank you," she said.

He tilted the straight wooden chair on two legs against the bas.e.m.e.nt wall. This was the first time she'd seen him in his ranger's uniform. Above his head, afternoon light shone through the window where he'd placed his summer straw hat on the sill.

"How's the fray?" he asked.

"Almost a hundred-fifty thousand acres." Because misery loved company, she went on, "The fire experts are predicting twice that."

Steve's dry-looking lips pursed into a whistle.

Clare looked at the stack of journals and books on the desk before him. "History?"

"The Nez Perce War of 1877."