July Thunder

by Rachel Lee

  The cub merely let out another of its low moans and nuzzled its bristly nose against his throat.

  “Yeah, I know. You’ll believe that when you see it.”

  As if the forest itself were also replying, a hot ember floated on hot updrafts like a cotton ball in a windstorm and settled on the back of his hand. Sam wanted to smother the ember against his leg, but he couldn’t yield the handhold. He gritted his teeth as the cherry-red ember sizzled against his skin, finally finding another grip and yanking his hand away. The burning fleck of bark came free as his hand moved, but the damage was already done. Sam groaned through clenched teeth, upsetting the cub, which began to struggle.

  Gasping a deep breath, he pulled the cub’s head to his shoulder and tried to offer a reassuring coo. But the cub’s adrenaline was up, its head turning this way and that as if it were looking for a way out.

  Or trying to identify the new danger, Sam realized.

  “Here, see?” he said, holding his hand in front of the bear’s face. “Just a little burn. That’s all.”

  The bear sniffed the burned flesh, then looked at him.

  “Yeah, it hurts like hell. Maybe that woman down there will kiss it and make it better. But first we gotta get down there within kissing range. Okay, kiddo?”

  Footholds grew firmer as he descended to the thicker, stronger branches. Trying as best he could to favor the burned hand, Sam felt the cub soften against him, its head on his shoulder, quieter now, and still.

  “Just a little more, kiddo. Just a couple more minutes and you can go find momma.”

  His shoulders and fingers ached from the strain of the descent. The cub wasn’t heavy, but it was awkward and forced him to keep his center of gravity farther from the tree. His good hand felt along below him for purchase as the toes of one foot found another sturdy branch to settle on. He lowered himself and repeated the process, again and again, until Mary’s voice broke his concentration.

  “Sam? Are you okay?”

  The cub looked around for the source of the new human sound, rocking Sam off balance.

  “I will be once I get out of this tree,” he called. “But if y’all would be quiet and not disturb junior here, that’d be a lot easier.”

  She didn’t reply, and he looked down to see if his words had stung. If they had, it didn’t show on her face. Instead her hands were clenched together at her mouth, as if she were shushing herself.

  “Get Barry over here. I need to lower this little guy down to him before I jump down. And he seems relaxed, but he’s also wide-awake now. So keep everyone away when he gets loose.”

  Mary nodded and backed away, then turned and ran to the church. In a moment she and Barry returned. Sam put a finger to his lips, but it was too late. The cub had seen them and moaned again, looking at Sam as if it had been sorely betrayed.

  “They’re friends, too,” he said. “I can’t jump out of this tree with you. We’ll both get hurt. So you need to trust me on this one, little guy.”

  The cub didn’t look convinced. Neither did it look disposed to fight the issue.

  “I don’t like this any more than you do. But that’s about the best I can offer, sport.”

  It flopped its head on his shoulder again and let out a huff of resignation. Sam pressed a quick kiss to its ear and worked his way the last few feet down to the lowest branch he could find.

  “He seems to like you,” Barry said from beneath him.

  Sam looked down and smiled sheepishly. “Yeah, well. Lemme find my balance here and I’ll let you have him.”

  Be careful, Mary mouthed silently.

  Wedging himself in as best he could, he shifted his arms out of the straps, drawing a groan of consternation from his charge.

  “I know, but it’s the only way.” Sam rubbed the bear’s scruff and ears. “I got you this far, didn’t I?”

  The cub’s response was to look down, then back up at him. Another rising groan.

  “That’s right, kiddo. I’m going to lower you down to Barry there. He’s a doctor. He’ll check you out to see if you’re okay, and then you can go find momma.”

  The cub looked down again, as if accepting the inevitable. Sam felt a surprising tightness in his chest as he eased the backpack away and down. He leaned down as far as he could, gripping the branch with his good hand as he lowered the bundle toward Barry.

  Mary’s voice cut the quiet. “Sam. Your hand.”

  “Not now,” he whispered as the cub twisted to look at her, pulling him off balance. Pain tore through his shoulder as he fought to regain his foothold. “We can worry about that once I’m out of this damn tree.”

  His feet once again set, he lowered the cub again.

  “I’ve got him,” Barry said. “Let go, Sam.”

  It was, Sam realized, easier said than done. He met the cub’s eyes. “I’ll be down right after you, kiddo. I promise.”

  And with that he released his charge into Barry’s hands. The tightening in his chest grew into a fist as the cub let out a single howl. Sam scrambled to lower himself the last few feet to the ground, then knelt beside the cub as it rolled in Barry’s arms.

  “Shhhhhhh…I’m here, little guy. You’re safe now.” He looked into the woods as a wind shift swept smoke over the clearing. “As safe as any of us are, in these woods,” he added grimly.

  “He seems okay,” Barry said as his practiced hands examined the cub. “But you need to get that hand looked at. It’s blistered, Sam.”

  “It’ll be fine,” Sam said. “We don’t have as much time as we thought. That fire’s closing in fast.”

  “You’ll get yourself to the doctor,” Elijah said, having come out of the church. “There’s plenty enough of us here to do the work. Get yourself to a doctor, son, and stop acting like a damn fool. You’re hurt!”

  Sam felt something snap inside, driving him to his feet. A distant part of him realized he was over-reacting. But pain and exhaustion numbed his self-control. He whirled and met his father’s eyes.

  “Everyone’s hurt out here. People are hurting all over this mountain, Dad. Sometimes God or the universe doesn’t give a damn whether we’re hurt. Sometimes we just have to suck it up and press on.” He paused to draw a breath, and his father began to respond, but Sam yelled over him. “That fire isn’t going to take a break because I’m hurt, or you’re hurt, or anyone else is hurt. There’s work to do and too little time to do it. So I’ll leave when the work’s done and not a minute sooner.”

  “I always said your sinful pride would be your undoing,” Elijah said.

  “You always said everything, Dad. But you never listened worth a damn. Well, I’m not an eight-year-old boy anymore, and you’re not the cock of the roost. Mom’s dead because you were too busy preaching and praying to notice when she started hurting.”

  “Your mother died of cancer,” Elijah thundered. “In my arms, Sam. In my arms!”

  “My mother died of loneliness, Dad. She died of being the pastor’s wife, always smiling, always willing, always taking care of everyone else and too afraid of you to speak up when she felt those first cramps inside. She died because everyone else’s pain was more important than your own family’s. If you’d taken her to a doctor—”

  Elijah cut him off with a stinging slap. “Don’t you ever talk to me like that, boy. If you hadn’t been so damn busy carving out your own life as far away as you could get, you’d have known we went to the doctor the first time she felt a lump. It was already too late, Sam. Don’t you dare blame me for your mother’s death. God just took her home, and it ripped my heart out.”

  “You never had a heart to rip out,” Sam said.

  “That’s enough!” Mary said. “Just shut up, both of you! Shut up. Shut up!”

  Both of them froze and looked at her. Her fury seemed to be shooting like sparks from her eyes. “You’re scaring the cub!”

  Sam immediately looked down to see the cub struggling against the backpack straps in which it had entangled. He squatted at onc
e and started talking in a soothing voice.

  “Don’t worry about it,” Barry said. “The more scared he is of people, the more likely he is to live to a ripe old age. Let’s just load him up in the cage in the back of my truck. I’ll let him go down south, away from the fire.”

  But Mary had another concern. “Is he old enough to make it on his own?”

  “I don’t know,” Barry admitted. “But he deserves the chance, and it’s clear his mother isn’t around. The alternative is life in a cage.”

  Mary nodded, though she didn’t look happy about it. “I guess you’re right.”

  “At this time of year,” Barry said reassuringly, “they depend mostly on vegetation. I’m sure he knows how to forage.”

  “Okay.”

  Sam scooped up the tangled cub and talked soothingly to him as he carried him over to Barry’s truck. “You’re going to be all right, kiddo. You’ll see. Barry will leave you someplace with lots of berries and stuff.”

  The cub made a mewling sound and struggled against the confinement of the straps and backpack. Whatever was left of the sedative was gone now, and strength was coming back into those limbs. Sam made quick work of putting the cub into the cage and disentangling him from the straps. Those two-inch claws were beginning to pose a real threat.

  A minute later, Barry drove off with the cub.

  Mary came up beside Sam. “Thanks for saving him.”

  “It was the right thing to do.”

  “Let me see your hand.”

  But he didn’t hold it out. “Just a small burn. It’s nothing.”

  “Sure.” Her eyes were sparking again as she looked at him. “I can’t believe the things you said to your father, Sam. You’re every bit as bad as he is.”

  Sam, suddenly feeling ashamed, agreed. But before he could answer her, she was marching toward his father and poking a finger at the old man. “As for you,” she said, “you’ve said some pretty unforgivable things to your son in the past. You two are as alike as peas in a pod.”

  Then she stormed off to the church hall, even as workers were beginning to reemerge to take up their tools.

  Sam, feeling more ashamed of himself than he could remember feeling in his entire life, would have apologized to Elijah, but the old man was already stalking stiffly away to pick up a shovel and start pouring dirt on a tree stump. A chain saw sprang to life with a roar, and the cub’s recent treehouse felt its bite.

  Later, Sam thought. He would apologize later. Right now they had a fire to worry about.

  18

  Night had fallen. The clouds to the west glowed a dull orange. Sam was so drunk with fatigue he didn’t dare handle anything more dangerous than a shovel. Someone else, a fresher volunteer, was driving his truck to pull the cut timber across the road. The stack was growing, but the clearing still wasn’t big enough.

  Sam paused, wiping his brow. Was the temperature rising? He didn’t want to think about it; there could be only one reason for it to rise at this time of night.

  They had a new group of volunteers. After the mine shift let out, people had begun arriving to replace their tired neighbors. Mary had gone home about six, trembling with fatigue. Elijah remained but was slumped on a pew in the church, incapable of doing another thing for a while.

  And Sam was getting there. He hadn’t had any sleep except for that hour-long doze at Mary’s last night. Every muscle in his body was shrieking a protest at every little move.

  He’d been trying to get Elijah to go home for a rest most of the day and hadn’t succeeded. And all of a sudden, as he stood there almost brain-dead from fatigue, he heard Mary’s voice saying, “You two are as alike as peas in a pod.”

  The thought stung him, but so did the realization that he was no good to anybody in his current state. He went looking for Joe and Louis. The two of them had returned a couple of hours ago, after taking a break most of the day to sleep. They had showed a lot more sense than he had, his numbed mind admitted.

  They didn’t exactly stand out in the dark, with everyone looking so strange between the dull orange glow of the sky and the harsh glow from headlights. The whole place looked like it had come from an alien planet. He came upon them at last and waited for Joe to finish cutting a tree down.

  “I’m taking my dad home,” he told them when he got their attention. Everybody knew about the relationship now. How could they not?

  “Good,” said Louis. “And get some sleep yourself. You’re no good to anybody now.”

  “Yeah. You two take over, okay? Here’s the whistle.” He pulled it from around his neck and passed it to Louis.

  Louis looked at it doubtfully. “Will they listen to us?”

  “If they’re not fools,” Sam said flatly.

  “Don’t worry, Sam,” Joe said. “We’ll take care of it.”

  He was sure they would. “Call me if you need anything.” He handed them a card with his pager number. Joe stuffed it into his pocket.

  “Now go, go,” Louis said, making “go away” motions with his hands. “Before you collapse.”

  Back in the church, Sam found his father slumped in a pew. He touched the old man’s shoulder, trying not to startle him awake, but Elijah wasn’t asleep. He looked up slowly and said, “I’m getting too old.”

  “You’re getting too tired, Dad. So am I. Let’s go home and get some sleep.”

  This time Elijah didn’t argue. Maybe because Sam was going, too. Or maybe because the fatigue and helplessness had crushed him. Sam hoped not. Lions weren’t supposed to get laid low.

  They took Elijah’s truck so Sam’s could still be used to pull timber. Sam drove, and his father slumped beside him, saying nothing.

  And the farther they got from the fire, the better Sam could see it. As they rounded one bend, he caught sight of it in the rearview mirror and swore out loud. It looked like the gates of hell had opened.

  “What?” Elijah said, rousing himself.

  “Look behind you.”

  Elijah pushed himself around and looked through the rear window. “Oh, my God!”

  Sam tried to keep his attention on the road, but all he could see in his mind’s eye was the raging wall of fire behind him.

  When he’d been at the church, the fire had been hidden by the tall trees, but now that he saw what it really looked like, all he could imagine was the puniness of that building and the puniness of all those people working to save it against the out-of-control monster that was devouring the woods.

  And then, at last, it started to rain.

  It was still raining by the time he pulled into Elijah’s driveway. A steady drizzle. Not enough to put the fire out, not even enough to slow its spread, for the heat of its breath would be enough to keep drying out the fuel it needed to advance. But if the rain got harder, if it kept coming, it might begin to slow the fire down a bit.

  Elijah could barely move as he climbed out of the truck and limped toward his front door. Without saying anything, Sam followed him inside.

  “Go take a shower, Dad. I’m going to make you something to eat, then you get to bed.”

  The old man didn’t even argue with him, just shuffled down the hall. Sam dragged himself into the kitchen to check out the refrigerator and the cupboards. Apparently Elijah wasn’t much of a cook. Finally he settled on a couple of cans of New England clam chowder and started heating them on the stove. He found a box of crackers to go with the soup.

  It wasn’t much, but it was nourishment. His thoughts kept straying to Mary, just across the street, and he wondered if she would even speak to him again after today. He’d acted like a real ass. Fatigue and pain were poor excuses for what he’d said. She was right. He’d been every bit as cruel as his father had been when Beth died.

  It didn’t make him feel good at all.

  What had he been after? Revenge? A desire to make Elijah feel the same pain Elijah had made him feel? Or maybe—and this was the worst thing—maybe somewhere inside himself he’d really believed those things he’
d said.

  If so, he was appalled at himself. Because Elijah was right, he hadn’t been there when his mother sickened and died. He’d been long gone from home and unwelcome to return. Or so he’d thought.

  God, memory was a tricky thing. Looking back now, he didn’t know how much of what he remembered was true and how much of it was things he’d imagined to be the case at the time. How much of it was colored by bad feelings and pain.

  And if you couldn’t trust your memory, how could you know what was true?

  Elijah returned just as the soup was beginning to bubble a bit. He’d put on pajamas and looked a lot cleaner, if not less tired.

  “Take a seat, Dad. The soup’s almost ready.”

  “Thanks.” Elijah sat at the old dinette, the same dinette Sam had eaten at as a boy. Preachers like Elijah didn’t make a lot of money. They learned instead to make everything last as long as it possibly could. Sam had sometimes been embarrassed by the hand-me-downs he’d had to wear or the clothes that had been purchased way too large so that he could grow into them, but he’d eventually learned to wear that thriftiness with pride.

  He and Beth had furnished their own house with secondhand furniture and had done a pretty good job of it, too. It was amazing how many people discarded items that were barely worn.

  And all of this was nothing but sidetracking as he tried not to think of all the times he had sat at this self-same dinette with his mother and father. The vinyl on the chairs was a lot older now, cracking in places, but it was still the same bright white-and-yellow flower pattern that his mother had loved. And the white laminate tabletop was scratched and scarred. He even remembered where some of those scars had come from: the first time he had tried to whittle his knife had slipped, leaving that tiny, deep scar near the edge. And over there was the time he’d gotten impatient and sliced a loaf of his mother’s homemade bread without using a cutting board.