by Keir Graff
The first thing I saw was Santi’s round face pressed up against the kitchen window as he waved at me. He wasn’t barfing. In fact, he looked happy, like he was on a school bus headed to a tour of a candy factory.
The second thing I saw was flames on the roof of the house.
“Helen Wheels is on fire!” I gasped.
“How bad is it?” asked Trent, checking his mirrors.
“So far, it’s just on the roof,” I told him.
All the work we had done to soak the house hadn’t protected it for long. The fire was just so hot it dried everything out in minutes.
“I’ll stop,” said Trent, lifting his foot off the gas.
“Don’t stop,” said Vladimir, reaching over and pushing down on Trent’s right knee, bringing the truck dangerously close to the cows.
“But we have to put that fire out!” said Trent, struggling to resist the pressure applied by the hand of the massive Exurbistanian.
“Fire is closing in,” said Vladimir. “If you stop now, I think all our geese is cooked.”
“But what about everyone inside Helen Wheels?” asked Trent desperately.
“What is Hell on Wheels?” asked Vladimir.
“That’s the house’s name,” I told him.
Vladimir, puzzled, let go of Trent’s leg. “Why do you name house?”
“Because . . . I’ll tell you later. It’s not important!” shouted Trent. “What is important is that we put that fire out.”
“I agree with Vladimir,” said Blake. “And not because he used to work for my dad or anything. If we stop on this road, we’re going to bake like flatbread.”
“That’s a terrible analogy,” I told him.
He shrugged. “I can’t help it. Ever since that whole business about the wood-fired oven, when I thought we were getting flatbread for lunch, I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it. I just hope I haven’t eaten my last one ever.”
While everyone was talking, the fire had been growing on the roof of Helen Wheels. Santi was still smiling and waving, the little dope, so he obviously had no idea. But even if we couldn’t stop, we had to do something.
I slid open the little window at the back of the truck’s cab. It was about the size of a microwave oven door, so I had no idea if I could make it, but putting my arms together like a diver, I wriggled my arms, head, and shoulders through before Trent realized what I was doing.
“Dagmar, don’t!” he said, his voice barely audible because my body was blocking the opening.
I kept wiggling until my hands touched the bed of the truck and my hips were almost out of the window. The bottom edge was digging into my stomach, and I wasn’t sure I could go any farther. But when my heels touched the roof of the cab, I pushed against it and tried to slide the rest of the way out.
It wasn’t working. And the metal truck bed was so hot it hurt my hands. Even worse, I was in such an awkward position that I didn’t think I could reverse direction and make it back into the truck.
Then I felt Blake’s hands under my shins, lifting and pushing until I popped out of the window and slid onto my stomach in the back of the pickup.
Crouching, I looked around. The containers we’d filled were sloshing with water, although the bucket had fallen over and spilled when Trent hit the brakes.
I grabbed the empty bucket and dipped it into the cooler, filling it halfway. Balancing carefully, I inched back to the tailgate and threw the water up toward the flames. The water fanned out into ten thousand drops, and I could hear the fire sizzle. But I’d only scored a partial hit. Worse, most of the fire was high up and out of sight. I could throw all the water I wanted, and I wouldn’t know if I was putting the fire out.
In front of me, the tiny window on the side of the tiny house slid open, and Santi’s face was replaced by Leya’s.
“Dagmar, what are you doing?” she asked.
“The roof’s on fire. I’m putting it out,” I told her.
“Tell your father to stop the truck, and we’ll help you,” she said.
I looked at the fire raging on either side of the road and shook my head. “We have to keep going. But I think I can do it.”
“How on earth can you put the fire out from there?” she asked. Her voice sounded shaky, so I knew she was afraid, but I had no idea if she was more worried about me or about everyone inside.
“I’m not going to put it out from here,” I said. “I’m coming over there. Now hold on.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Clean Air at Last
Standing in the back of a rolling pickup truck in the middle of a rapidly spreading forest fire behind a slowly clopping herd of cows is a place you would only expect to find yourself in a bad dream. But I was really there, and it was really happening. The fact that I also had to battle a tiny house fire only made the situation more surreal. The one thing that could have made it even worse was if it was like one of those dreams where you’re in school and you’re only wearing underwear. I was definitely wearing all my clothes—I just hoped they wouldn’t catch fire.
I grabbed the ladder I had thrown into the back of the truck, extended it halfway, and put one end on the roof of Helen Wheels. The other end kept sliding around the truck bed, so I was relieved when Blake tumbled out of the cab window and said, “I’ll hold it for you.”
Now all I had to do was climb the ladder carrying enough buckets of water to put out the fire. Easy, right?
I filled the bucket two-thirds full this time, meaning it was even heavier than before. Then I carefully started climbing the ladder, feeling it shift with every bump and crack in the road. If the high end slipped off Helen Wheels’ little peaked roof, I was going to hit the road as hard as a sack of beans dropped from a second-story window. It wouldn’t kill me, but I definitely wouldn’t be doing any more firefighting after that.
Rung by rung I went up until I reached the top of the house. The fire up there was about six feet in diameter and growing fast.
Leaning over the roof as far I could without falling, I slung the bucket, directing the water toward the lowest part of the fire. Direct hit! The part I’d soaked hissed and smoked before flaring up again. But at least it was weaker than before.
“Be careful!” scolded Leya as I scrambled back down.
Why do parents always say stuff like that? Who wouldn’t be careful going down a ladder into the back of a moving vehicle?
“I’ll think about it,” I told her.
“How does it look?” asked Blake.
“Better,” I said as I scooped more water from the cooler, which was now almost empty.
I went up the ladder again. The second bucket did more good than the first. I figured that, after three or four more direct hits, the little fire might stay out long enough for us to get away from the big fire.
This time I poured what was left in the cooler into the bucket, then topped it off with the contents of the plastic watering can. Unfortunately, just as I got to the top of the ladder again, the trailer hit a pothole, and the whole house swayed to one side, forcing me to drop the bucket and hold on to the roof for dear life with both hands.
For a long ten seconds, I thought the ladder was going to disappear from under me, leaving me dangling from the top of Helen Wheels, but at last it stabilized and I climbed back down to the truck.
“Are you okay?” asked Blake. “I thought you were going to fall!”
“I’m fine, but I wish I hadn’t dropped the bucket,” I told him.
“It’s not like you have three hands,” he said.
Coming from him, it sounded like a compliment.
Not having the bucket was a big problem. Now the only thing with a handle was the watering can, and a light sprinkle of water wasn’t going to put out the fire. If I carried one of our remaining tubs in both hands, I wouldn’t be able to hold on to the ladder.
That’s when I realized the passenger door was open and Vladimir wasn’t in his seat.
I heard his big feet slapping the asphalt and looked up to see him running alongside the truck, holding the bucket out to me.
“I accidentally kick bucket,” he said, panting, “but then I pick it up.”
I took it from him and watched in amazement as he grabbed the side of the truck and vaulted into the back, moving more gracefully than I would have expected from a man who looked about as fast as a refrigerator.
“Hurry!” he said, helping Blake hold the ladder steady.
Refilling the bucket from a big jar we usually used to make sun tea, I raced up the ladder, took careful aim, and hit the fire dead-on. There was nothing we could do about the forest burning around us, but this fire was going down.
After four more trips up and down the ladder, I was out of water—and the roof fire was out, too. Even better, we were finally ahead of the forest fire. We had come out of the woods into brown, grassy hills, and the wind was now blowing toward us, pushing the fire back while we moved forward.
Over the next mile, the air went from black to brown to clear and breathable, and we could even see blue sky again. Behind us, the flames continued to swirl and rage, and a plume of smoke rose thousands of feet in the air, but we had escaped.
We could finally fill our lungs again. When we weren’t coughing.
The first thing we saw was a Cal Fire truck with its lights flashing parked sideways across the road. It was obviously there to keep people from driving into the danger area. But the woman leaning against the truck and facing the other way wasn’t expecting anyone to be coming out of the danger area. When she heard the first MOO, she jumped, and as she spun around, the look on her face as cows trotted past was one of pure astonishment.
She lifted her radio and started to speak into it, then dropped it and scrambled inside her truck when Trent laid on his horn.
“OUT OF THE WAY!” he bellowed.
As quickly as she could, the firefighter backed her truck out of the road, and we rolled past, the kids all waving and Russell barking out a window. Trent wasn’t going to stop until we were totally safe.
The next thing we saw was a TV news truck with a reporter facing a camera and talking into a microphone. His back was to us, so he didn’t see us coming, but the camera operator did—she pointed and said something, and he spun around and his mouth fell open like his jaw muscles had suddenly stopped working. Then the camera operator shoved him out of the way and aimed her camera at us, catching the cows, the dogs, the pickup truck, and the tiny house with the charred roof and faces filling the windows.
Recovering from his shock, the reporter started trotting alongside the truck, shouting questions as he held the microphone up to record our answers.
“Did you just come out of the fire?”
“I think that’s pretty obvious,” said Blake, back to his usual charming self.
“How does it look in there?”
“Everything is either flaming or smoking,” I said.
“Are those your cows? Are you ranchers?”
“We picked them up along the way,” I said. “We don’t know who they belong to.”
“She is good cow puncher,” added Vladimir.
Trent still hadn’t slowed down, and the reporter was having a hard time keeping up.
“Are any of you hurt?” he shouted, panting, just before Helen Wheels passed him.
It took me a minute to realize that, aside from Lyndon’s twisted knee, nobody was. Eleven humans, seven pets, and a couple dozen livestock had escaped from a raging wildfire without serious injury. Yes, we were probably going to cough up crud for a week, and the heat from the fire had left my skin feeling toasted, like I’d spent a day at the beach without sunscreen, but I’d live. We’d all live. Literally.
“We’re all okay!” I shouted to the reporter, adding, “Watch out for that—”
He didn’t see it.
“—sign!”
I probably shouldn’t have laughed just because a nicely dressed TV reporter with blow-dried hair ran straight into a road sign and dropped his microphone, but I couldn’t help it. Neither could anybody else. After the day we’d had, it was a relief, and the truck and the house shook with laughter.
CHAPTER THIRTY
A Complete Write-Off
The fire had burned through the roof of Helen Wheels, leaving the sleeping loft a charred mess that stank of smoke. All of us, even the Bertholds, spent the first night in a middle-school gym that had been converted into an emergency shelter. Reynold complained the whole time about “the poor quality of the accommodations,” from the sleeping cots to the bathrooms to the boxed meals provided by local volunteers, but there was nothing he could really do about it. He’d left without even his wallet, and had dropped his phone somewhere along the way, and it wasn’t until the next day that he was able to reach his lawyer, who couriered some money that allowed them to escape to a four-star hotel. Until then, he had to live like the rest of us, and he didn’t like it.
I thought maybe he would be changed by his near-death experience, or the fact that he and his siblings had all lost their houses at the same time, but if anything, he seemed more entitled and crabby than ever. I guess some people never change.
Blake, however, seemed to have fun at the shelter. He explored the school with me, played basketball on the playground, and even joined a cleanup crew organized by Trent and Leya. He was still kind of a jerk sometimes, but I had a feeling he wasn’t going to turn out all bad.
The dogs, the cat, the coati, the parrot, and the squirrel weren’t allowed into the gym, but people were nice about it and found places for them to stay overnight. The science lab had some old cages for Totoro, Carl, Yma, and Farrell, and the bike-storage area of the playground was turned into a temporary kennel where the dogs didn’t seem too unhappy, judging from the sound of their barking.
A local rancher had taken the cows until their owner could be found. I never saw them again, although it’s entirely possible I encountered them in the form of a delicious carne asada burrito.
When it came time for lights-out that first night, Reynold and Anjali chose cots in one corner of the gym while Penelope and Lyndon went to another. Vladimir and Summery picked a third corner, proving their resignations had been real. Even more interesting, the former bodyguard and cook put their cots right next to each other and held hands when they thought nobody was looking.
I decided to go say hi but called out to them on my way over so I wouldn’t interrupt anything embarrassing.
“I just wanted to say thanks for all your help, Vladimir,” I said. “And it was great meeting you, Summery, even if we were running for our lives.”
Vladimir stood up, towering over me, and shook my hand. It felt like I was putting on a concrete boxing glove.
“You are welcome, Dagmar,” he said. “You did very good job. I think you would be excellent bodyguard.”
That was pretty great to hear. After all, Vladimir was one of the few grown-ups I knew who really had his act together.
“Where are you guys going after this?” I asked.
“Somewhere cool and wet,” said Summery. “Maybe Alaska. Both of us can work anywhere. Restaurants are always hiring, and Vee is thinking about starting his own security firm.”
I liked the way she called him Vee for short. It made me wonder whether they’d been going out for a long time, or if they’d always liked each other and just decided to go for it. Not that it was any of my business.
“Maybe you will work for me when you are older,” said Vladimir.
“Maybe you’ll work for me,” I told him, just kidding around.
He smiled, which was new. “I would like that.”
I gave them both hugs and said good night. When I woke up in the morning, they were gone.
* * *
■ ■ ■
BLAKE LEFT AFTER breakfast. A big, black SUV pulled up in front of the school while we were shooting baskets on the playground, and suddenly Reynold and Anjali were there, telling Blake it was time to go. I expected him to just turn around and walk away, but he didn’t. He stared at the ball while he dribbled it with both hands.
I didn’t know what to say, either, so I just said, “See you around, I guess.”
“See you around,” he said.
Where, exactly, I would see Blake Berthold, I had no idea.
He tossed me the ball before he jogged over to his parents.
“No, really!” he yelled over his shoulder. “I’ll text you!”
I nodded, smiled, and shot the ball, making a perfect swish. Three points.
Then I felt my phone vibrate. Was Blake texting already?
It was Kristen. And she was calling.
“I saw it on the news, Dagmar—the news!” she said the moment I picked up. “Why didn’t you call me?”
“It would have been the middle of the night for you,” I said, feeling guilty that, with everything going on, I hadn’t even thought about it.
“There’s a viral video from the local news station that shows all of you going down the highway. And where did you get those cows?”
“They’re not ours. We were just rescuing them.”
“Well, my lawyer says this is proof your father is an unfit parent. You’re coming to live with me in Zurich, Switzerland.”
She was so mad and so loud I had to hold the phone away from my ear.
“Why Zurich?” I asked.
“I have to go there for work,” she said, like it was the most obvious thing in the world. “And hold the phone closer. I can hardly hear you.”
“But I don’t want to go,” I told her.
“We’ll have a beautiful townhouse and a nice company car! You can’t stay in the forest, anyway—according to the news, it burned down.”
“I don’t know anyone in Zurich.”