Leave Her to Heaven

by Ben Ames Williams

  He turned to retrace their way, and she followed him; but at once he stopped. ‘I heard someone calling then,’ he declared, and listened, and cupped his hands and halloed and listened again. The distant cry was repeated, but the freshening wind shredded the sound and tossed it every way. He shouted once more, had this time no answer.

  ‘They can’t hear us,’ she suggested. ‘The wind’s from them to us.’

  He nodded and set out again, this time at a fast pace, but then he slowed. ‘I guess I’m excited,’ he confessed. ‘We’ll be a little careful, take a straight line.’ And as they went on, he explained how to do this. ‘Take two trees in line in front of you. Then when you come to the first one, get another in line beyond the second. I think the yelling was off this way.’

  But within two hundred yards, they came back to the brook again. He laughed. ‘That must have been an echo I heard,’ he decided. ‘But the brook will bring us back to the river.’

  She followed him easily, keeping far enough behind so that branches displaced by his passing would not hit her when they swung back. The brook meandered, and there were alders and cedars along its bank, but Harland would not leave it now. Once she thought she heard distant, shouting voices; but they could do no more than they were doing, so they did not speak.

  After a long time, fifteen or twenty minutes, the brook brought them to the river. They were both hot and panting from their haste, and from the dry and stifling air; but when they came into the open by the waterside, they stopped still, startled into silence by what they saw.

  For the sky to the south and east was all one pall of smoke; and against that dark mass, along the crest of the ridge that walled the river, not a mile away downstream, they saw the red flicker of hungry flames.

  Ruth, drawing near him, was the first to speak. ‘That’s bad, isn’t it, Dick?’ she said quietly.

  ‘Look!’ he cried. ‘The fire’s flowing down that hill like lava. It’s halfway down to the river already, just since we’ve been standing here.’

  ‘I can feel the heat of it,’ she agreed.

  He took her arm. ‘Come along,’ he said. ‘The boys are upstream, around that first bend.’

  They hurried that way, half-running, silent, side by side.

  – VIII –

  When Ruth and Harland came to the canoes, the men were not there; but they saw Sime a quarter-mile away up the shore and shouted, and he heard and called in turn to Tom and then came running. From the fire down river, smoke rolled swirling toward them, so thick it made them choke and cough; and Harland wetted his handkerchief and told Ruth to tie it across her mouth and nose.

  ‘Better wet your hat, too, and tuck your hair up into it,’ he advised. She wore an old soft felt, and she obeyed him; and then Sime reached them, and bade her get into the canoe.

  ‘We’ll start,’ he told Harland. ‘Fire’s coming fast! Tom’ll be right along. He’s in the woods, looking for you. We thought you was lost.’

  Ruth, wise enough to do as she was told without protest, stepped into the canoe, and Sime pushed off and began to pole upstream along the north bank, the canoe surging under his strong efforts. Ruth turned to look back to where Harland stood, watching for Tom Pickett to appear; and she saw that the fire down river had reached the stream side. The strong south wind, pouring over the ridges like a waterfall, created a tremendous pinwheel of racing drafts above the river itself, smoke and sparks and an occasional burning fragment flying high as though flung by an explosion; and she saw a tall tree on the north bank suddenly flare like a torch. The great fire had passed so easily the barrier of the river! Then thickening smoke, flowing up the deep channel among the hills where the river ran, hid the flames from her, and a moment later Harland’s figure too was obscured.

  She protested to Sime: ‘We can’t leave Mr. Harland. Something may have happened to Tom.’

  ‘Tom’s all right. Thev’ll catch up with us,’ he promised, and made the canoe bound with his strong poling.

  She was astonished that the fire could have come upon them so quickly, and said so; and Sime grunted, between thrusts with the pole: ‘Wind — came up — strong! — It’ll outrun — a horse!’

  She removed the handkerchief, bone-dry now from the hot air, and wetted it again, and secured it across her mouth and nose. Over the ridges south of the river and abeam of them heavy smoke came rolling down the slopes, and she saw that they were racing across the face of the fire. Escape down river, since the flames had bridged the stream, was cut off. She wondered how far they must go to get out of its path.

  It seemed a long time — it may have been half an hour, a mile or more of distance — before she heard behind them the clack of paddle against gunwale and looked back and saw the other canoe almost upon them, Harland paddling, Tom using the pole. She reached back in the canoe and took her own paddle and tried to use it; but she was awkward at it and Sime after a moment said shortly — for he was short of breath:

  ‘Leave be! I’ll handle her.’

  So Ruth put the paddle down, feeling the haste in him, trembling with excitement but unafraid. The other canoe kept its place just behind them, but Harland was no longer paddling now, and she saw that he too had something tied across his face. Then Sime began to cough uncontrollably, and he poled the nose of the canoe ashore while he fashioned a mask to protect his mouth and nose, and Tom held his canoe beside them and Harland asked her quietly:

  ‘All right?’

  ‘Fine. But I’m no help.’

  ‘We’ll be out of this soon,’ he promised.

  But the smoke was thicker, and her eyes were smarting, and her hands were parched by the heat. She dipped them in the water; and Sime took his pole and they raced upstream for another mile or so, till Ruth began to think — as though of a safe refuge — that they were nearing camp. The campground, she remembered, was close against a spruce wood where the fire might run; nevertheless instinctively she felt they would find safety there.

  Then they rounded a bend in the river and saw flames atop the ridge that flanked the stream. The ridge was well back from the water, but already the fire began to flow down the slope toward them, the wind casting brands like scouts ahead. Sime after a moment once more nosed the canoe ashore.

  ‘We’ll go overboard, soak our clothes,’ he directed. ‘Wrap a sweater or something around your head, ma’am. It’s going to be hot, the next half mile, till we pass the front of it; but then the river swings north again and we’ll have it behind us.’

  She obeyed him, as did Harland; and then they went on, racing past that nearing mass of fire. Before they were clear of its path, embers that hissed as they were extinguished began to drop in the water all around them; and once a small red spark fell into the canoe itself and was lost in the water which, draining from ber wet garments, lay half an inch deep under Ruth’s feet.

  They rounded the point and put the fire behind them and for a few minutes followed this northward reach of the river, till in a wide easy curve it began to swing westerly again. They could see no great distance now, for smoke was everywhere; and the roar of the fire was in the air like the rumble of an earthquake, shaking them. West and then southwest the river swung, and so did they; and Ruth recognized this great bend and knew the camp site was not half a mile ahead. Soon, even through the smoke, they would be able to see the dingy white of the tents.

  But when they came nearer, she saw where the tents had stood the hot licking glare of flames; and a moment later she uttered a low cry. For ahead of them the fire had crossed the river, its skirmishers seizing a bridgehead on the north bank, from which the forces of destruction spread up and down stream and went racing on through the forest to the north.

  Without a word and without hesitation, Sime turned the canoe. Ruth asked no questions. Back in the wide bend, a gravel bar well away from either shore divided the channel. Sime poled toward this, and Tom followed him. They landed on the bar. The hot and smothering air seemed to sear her lungs, and — holding her breath �
� Ruth wetted Harland’s handkerchief again and replaced it.

  Sime said hoarsely: ‘We’ve got to stay here. We’ll keep mostly under water, wait it out.’ He stepped overside in the shallows. ‘Out you come, ma’am. We’ll sink the canoes, keep ’em wet, so we’ll have ’em when we can travel again.’

  The water around her legs was deliciously cool. Ruth waded deeper and sat down on the bottom, only her head above the surface. She soaked her sweater and made of it a sort of turban that was also like a tent, covering her head completely. After a moment, relieved by breathing the cool, filtered air, she looked to see what the others were doing. The three men scooped rocks and gravel into the canoes, then waded to waist depth and filled the canoes and sank them, and Sime said to her:

  ‘Now you come sit in this one, ma’am. Help hold it down.’ He shifted the canoe into deeper water till, seated on the thwart, she had only her head above the surface.

  ‘There,’ he said with a dry humor. ‘Well, we’ve got grandstand seats for whatever’s coming, anyway.’

  Harland drew near, squatting beside her, his face hidden under the heavy flannel shirt he had stripped off to wrap around his head. ‘Real adventure,’ he said cheerfully.

  ‘I wonder where Ellen is.’

  ‘Leick will take care of her.’

  ‘They’re probably worried about us.’

  ‘We’re all right, and so are they,’ he insisted.

  She said frankly: ‘I’m scared to death. I guess I’m not a great big outdoors girl.’

  He touched her arm, his hand groping under water to find hers. ‘You don’t sound scared!’

  ‘Probably I’m not, really. But I will be tomorrow after it’s all over.’

  He laughed. ‘You can be as scared as you damned please, tomorrow,’ he agreed.

  Thus began for them long hours of passive endurance. They were in a backwater by the bar, where no current flowed at all; and the water was their fortress. With only their heads above the surface, they crouched like animals, warily watching their enemy.

  The fire, as though sure now of its prey, approached them with a certain deliberation. Ruth opened a slit in the folds of her sweater so that she could see. The wide bend of the river where they had elected to stay drew a half circle around a bold hill which rose steeply three or four hundred feet above the water. Its bulk acted for a while as a shield in that quarter, and just here the river was too wide for the fire to cross. But downstream and upstream the barrier had been passed, and on the north bank, working across the wind, these flanking fires crept nearer. Presently too the main conflagration topped the hill on the south bank and rolled down toward them. Smoke, whirling and eddying, at one moment black as night, at the next shot through with the red glare of the flames, walled them in; and by the increasing heat they knew the fire drew close on either side. More and more often they dipped completely under water to wet their headcoverings, thus winning brief respites from discomfort.

  The smoke was so heavy that except for the red glare of the flames, day was already almost as dark as night and they did not know when dusk came down. By that time the two fires on the northern bank had met, and on the other side the trees along the water were ablaze. The fire fed hungrily on the heavy stand of second growth spruce and hemlock. Once when the swirling, scorching wind for a moment swept the smoke aside, Ruth saw that the whole face of the hill on the south bank was a towering wall of flames up which swept serpent torches roaring to the sky; a wall so steep it seemed about to topple down on them. Then the smoke shut in again, sucking and shuttling in the terrific drafts generated by this blast furnace all around.

  Even through the soaked sweater which covered her head, the heat was almost unbearable; and when she dipped under water and lifted her head again, the water in the sweater began at once to turn to steam. The river itself, here in the shallows where no current ran, was milk warm, and she wondered if it would grow hotter and hotter till they were boiled alive like so many lobsters. The notion made her laugh, near hysteria, and Harland asked what the matter was and she told him her thought and he said sternly:

  ‘Stop it! Don’t think about anything! Just keep down, keep wet, be passive. It can’t last long as bad as this.’

  Yet time went on, and the thundering, crackling roar of the fire seemed to fill the world; and the swirling fumes came chokingly. Only by bringing her nostrils close down to the surface of the water, could she breathe clear, sweet, smoke-free air. The fire was like a great herd of cattle stampeding, in whose path they lay while the heavy hooves went pounding by their ears. When now and then she parted the sweater’s folds to peer out, the murky darkness all around them was shot with falling sparks and brands; and sometimes these burning branches were large enough so that even after they struck the water, upward-thrusting twigs and stubs which had not been submerged continued to wear small flames, like candle-torches dotting the surface of the stream. Some of these floating brands were astonishingly large, giving her a measure of the powerful suction of the updraft from the fire, which had lifted them into the tornado of the upper air.

  Eventually it seemed to Ruth there came a lull, as though the fires were dying; but when she spoke of this, Harland said: ‘Fires always quiet down at night. This will start up again in the morning.’

  ‘Must we stay here all night?’

  ‘Yes, and half tomorrow probably, till it burns down.’

  The immensity of that prospect stunned her. She lost all sense of the reality of this experience. The lightness of her body, almost completely submerged and upborne by the water, made her seem to float, and she clung to the sunken canoe in which she sat, grateful for this firm grip on the substantial world. Once Harland suggested that in shallower water she might lie down with only her face exposed; but Ruth said she was all right as she was. Yet a sort of stupor crept through her, and the warm water made her sleepy, so that sometimes she nodded. He stayed beside her, and after a while he gripped and held her hand, and it was good to know she was not alone. Time stood still — yet somehow the long night passed.

  – IX –

  They knew the coming of day by a quickening of the fire, by a new tempo in its song; and Ruth slowly roused from the half-consciousness which had helped her endure the night. Long since, the water which seemed so warm had chilled her through and through, so that more than once she had stood erect, Harland’s hand steadying her while the hot blast set her clothes to steaming and warmed at least the surface of her body before the heat drove her to take cover in the water again. The coming of day found her not so much tired as drained of strength by long immersion; she felt the skin on her fingers puckered and wrinkled, felt herself emptied and flaccid; and she confessed this to Harland, and he moved to sit on the gunwale behind her, his arm around her, holding her body against his. If he had not done so, she might have toppled drowsily forward. To sleep would have been blissful; to sink lower in the water and accept oblivion was easy and inviting.

  They had talked little through the night. Sometimes she remembered Ellen, but remotely. Leick would see Ellen safe; and if he did not, there was nothing, for the present, they could do. Ellen was no longer reality; she was no more than a faint memory far away. Ruth knew Ellen must be concerned for them, and must be wishing Harland was with her; and she sympathized with this longing which Ellen must be feeling. Yet she was glad Harland was here with her, keeping her company, enduring with her this long ordeal, supporting her with his arm around her waist, receiving her sagging weight against his strong body. Once she remembered how pleasant it had been to explore with him that woodland tract downstream, remembered how youthful and eager he had seemed; but the fire had now swept all that beauty away, leaving only a waste of embers behind, and a crushing sense of intolerable loss made her shoulders sag.

  The fire, rejuvenated by the new day, burned fiercely for hours that drifted slowly by. Ruth was so near insensibility that she recognized no change in its fierce roar and crackling, knew no thinning of the smoke, no slackenin
g of the heat. But the time came when she heard Sime, standing in the water beside her, speak to Harland, and she tried to hear his words but could fit no sense to them. Then he and Harland were helping her to her feet, their hands under her arms, making her stand erect; and her knees refused to lock, threatening to give way under her, while the two men led her carefully into shoaling water, making her walk between them.

  When she could go no farther and collapsed at last, Harland sat down in the shallows and cradled her head and shoulders across his knees and in his arms. He parted the sweater still bound around her head, and she opened her eyes and saw through gray-blue smoke a rift of clear sky overhead.

  ‘It’s burning out,’ Harland told her. ‘North shore’s still pretty hot, but we’ve moved farther out on the bar, away from it. On the south bank it’s beginning to cool off a little.’ And he asked: ‘How are you?’

  ‘Awfully tired and weak,’ she confessed. ‘I’m sorry.’ And after a moment she said: ‘Being in the water seems to take it out of you.’

  ‘We’ll move up on the bar pretty soon,’ he promised. ‘As soon as things ease up.’

  Sime and Tom loomed through the smoke, towing between them one of the still submerged canoes, returning afterward to bring the other. Then, as their garments dried and the heat became oppressive, they all lay down to soak their clothes again.

  An hour later they made another move, nearer mid-river, nearer the cooling southern bank; but the gravel on the bar was still so hot that water thrown on it quickly began to steam, so they stayed in five or six inches of water, and Harland now and then splashed Ruth, scooping up water with his hands to moisten her drying clothes.

  She asked once what time it was. He did not know, for his watch, long submerged, had stopped; but Sime guessed it was mid-afternoon. ‘Hungry?’ Harland suggested, and she nodded, and Sime went to investigate the canoes and reported that there was a can of beans, and some tea in another can, and sugar in a jar, and condensed milk. Everything else was wet and spoiled. He found a few embers and bits of charcoal and started a small fire to boil the kettle and warm the beans. The strong tea brought back some strength and life to her, the beans were life itself. By that time the bar was cool enough so that they could stand on it. Sime said they might as well stay the night there.