July Thunder

by Rachel Lee

  And still there were injuries. Clint Stedman had broken an ankle when someone had forgotten to clamp a tow chain. The chain had snapped loose and whipsawed like a scythe toward a clump of men. The others had heard the pop as the chain broke free and jumped out of the way. But Clint’s back had been turned, and by the time he realized what was happening the chain had wrapped itself around his ankle and snatched him off his feet. His piercing scream had brought everyone running with an energy they’d thought was long since passed, but Sam knew the adrenaline rush would only be temporary.

  “I don’t know how much more we can do,” Louis told Sam, as Clint was bundled into the back of a pickup and taken to the hospital. “Between cutting, trimming and towing, it’s taking us half an hour to clear a tree now, as tired as the men are. We’re having to triple-check for safety, and still things happen.” Louis nodded toward the smoke hanging like a pall in the forest. “And the fire’s getting closer. I just…I don’t think we’re going to make it.”

  Sam nodded. “George Patton wrote that a man can only march and fight for sixty hours before he’s spent. We’re all pushing that now.”

  “And he was writing about trained, professional soldiers,” Louis said. “We’re all amateurs, and most of us are out of shape to boot. It’s reaching the point where we have to ask whether we’re risking more harm than good.”

  Sam put his hands on his hips and looked down at the ground. Parched ground. More dust than dirt now. “Get the hoses out,” he said finally. “Let’s make the church as wet as we can get it before an ember sets it off.”

  “Okay.”

  “And let’s have the freshest men keep cutting. Even if all we do is get the timber down, it might make the fire less threatening if it gets here.”

  A rising drone drowned him out as another fire-fighting plane swooped low overhead. Sam looked up and watched the mud drop. It wasn’t far away at all now.

  “Oh, and, Louis?” he said when he could again be heard.

  “Yeah?”

  “Make sure all the vehicles are gassed up and ready to go. We might have to bail out in a big hurry.”

  “I’ll get somebody to do that.”

  They were starting to have equipment breakdowns, too. A couple of chain saws had given up the ghost; a few shovels had broken. Work gloves were wearing out. And, of course, with each foot outward they expanded their cutting, the total area to clear went up. At sixty feet out from the church, he figured they’d cut only a third of the area they needed to sweep.

  Another plane roared overhead and dropped more mud. A garden hose had been hooked up at the faucet inside the church and run out a window. A man was using it to spray the building’s roof.

  Elijah, who had been staying far away from Sam most of the morning, now approached him.

  “Sam?” His voice sounded drained. “Sam, we can’t do any more. The equipment is breaking. The people are worn-out. They need to go home before someone gets killed.”

  Sam was inclined to agree with him. Much as he didn’t want to give up, he could see the signs of hopelessness all around him. And what was more, he could see the ash that was falling from the sky. Sooner or later some of it was going to be hot.

  “Just send everyone home,” Elijah said. “It’s in God’s hands now.”

  Looking at the moonscape they’d worked so hard to create, Sam wondered if even an eighty-foot clear-cut would be enough to save the church if the woods around it went up in flame. “I can’t make anyone leave, Dad. They’re volunteers.”

  “I know. But if you make the suggestion, they might heed you. No building is worth the price we might pay here if we keep going.”

  For once he and his father were in agreement. Sam hated to quit, but he knew from experience that his father hated it every bit as much as he did.

  Before he could act, however, another plane roared overhead. There was no mistaking that it was dumping the chemicals closer now. Too close.

  Sam picked up his whistle and blew it. No one seemed to hear. He walked closer to the edge of the clearing, nearer the workers, and blew it again, sharply. Slowly, as if in a daze, people turned to look at him. One by one, chain saws fell silent.

  “Listen up, people. The fire’s getting closer. And you’re all getting too tired. This would be a good time for everyone to head out. We don’t want to lose anybody.”

  Still no one moved. It was as if they were dazed and couldn’t quite comprehend what he said. Or as if they were reluctant to stop.

  Just then Mary, who was standing twenty feet away, a shovel in her hands, called out, “Sam!”

  At that instant Sam heard a loud crack, and felt a stunning blow to the back of his shoulders. He landed facedown in the dirt, wondering what the hell had hit him.

  “Oh, my God,” someone said. “Oh, my God!”

  Sam rolled over and sat up, then felt his heart stop. His father was lying on the ground nearby, a tree trunk across his legs.

  Mary was suddenly there, kneeling beside Sam. “He saved you, Sam. My God, that tree started to tip and he shoved you…. My God!”

  Sam scrambled on his hands and knees over to his father. Elijah was lying facedown, the tree across the backs of his legs. “Dad? Dad?”

  A groan answered him.

  Sam was galvanized. Leaping to his feet, he called out, “Come on, everybody. We’ve got to get this tree off him.”

  Hands were suddenly full of more energy than they had been in hours. Men and women gathered together around each side of the tree trunk and put their hands beneath it.

  “On the count of three,” Sam said, grabbing the trunk along with everyone else. “And don’t anybody let go. Back away down toward his feet until he’s clear. Got it?”

  A chorus of agreement answered him.

  “One, two…three!”

  They lifted all at once, thirty pairs of hands making the load lighter. It was still heavy enough, but they didn’t have too much trouble lifting the trunk and backing it away from Elijah.

  They set it down with equal care, making sure no one got a crushed foot. Then Sam hurried back to his father, kneeling in the dirt beside him.

  “Dad? Dad, are you awake?”

  “Yeah. Yeah. I think my leg is broken.”

  Sam wanted to swear, but he didn’t swear much around his father. Never had. He was worried sick, though. “We’ve got to get him to the hospital right away.”

  “I’ll take him,” Mary volunteered.

  “Not in your car,” Sam said. “We’ll have to lay him out flat in the back of my SUV.”

  Joe spoke. “But first we have to move him carefully. Anybody got a tarp or a blanket?”

  That turned out to be an easy request to fill. So was coming up with a couple of branches so they could splint Elijah’s legs. The whole time they worked on him, Mary held Elijah’s hand and talked soothingly to him. Sam felt an ugly little sting of jealousy, wondering why she seemed to like his father more than him.

  But it was an ugly thought, and he drove it away swiftly.

  With great care, they carried Elijah to the back of Sam’s car. He’d long ago removed the rear seat for more cargo space, and now it made a reasonably soft, protected bed for Elijah.

  “My truck,” Elijah said.

  “Don’t worry,” Joe said. “I’ll have Louis drive it to your house. How’s that?”

  Sam gave Mary his car keys. “I’ll be along as soon as I can.”

  “I know,” she said simply. “Don’t worry. I’ll take good care of him. Here are my keys.”

  Then, astonishing him, she squeezed his hand before climbing into his truck. He watched them drive off with a terrible sense of foreboding. It seemed the universe hadn’t finished playing dirty tricks yet.

  Some of the volunteers took off, but some remained, as if they were as reluctant as Sam to write off the church. The wind was picking up, indicating that the fire was coming closer and drawing air to its heart. Maybe, Sam thought, the wind would protect them from hot ash for
a while. But even as he had the thought, he knew better. The ash was rising on the updraft from the flames, but it would still drift on the upper air currents and eventually be sucked down by the steady draw of the fire. Some of it would wind up here.

  “We’ve got to get out of here,” Sam said to those who had stayed behind. “Those attack planes are dropping mud two, three hundred yards into the forest.”

  “Clint gave an ankle and your dad a leg for this church,” Billy Miller said. “If we quit now, what do we tell them? That what they did was wasted?”

  A few men nodded in agreement, but Sam put up a hand. “Look, guys, here’s the deal. We have three, maybe four, hours before the fire reaches that tree line. We’re down to what? Three chain saws that are still running? So we’d knock down another half-dozen trees. Maybe a dozen, tops. We won’t get enough more done to make any difference over what we’ve done already.”

  “So we just give up?” Billy asked. “Some of us grew up here. My kids were baptized in this church.”

  Sam nodded. “Look, I hate to quit as much as anyone. But we gave it our best shot, and we came up short. The fire’s winning here at the church. Now we have to start thinking about saving our homes. And we can’t do that if I lose half of you to the hospital with injuries, smoke inhalation, heatstroke and everything else we’re risking by staying here. We’ve done what we can here. It’s time to pack it up and get out while we can.”

  “He’s right, Billy,” another man said. “How many of us are we gonna lose out here? My house is on the edge of town. This church is a landmark, and we’d all hate to lose her. But dying out here, when our wives and kids need us back in town…I don’t think that’s what God would want.”

  Billy finally shucked off his work gloves. He and the others gathered up their tools and loaded them into the remaining vehicles. Sam was the last to leave. As they drove off, he stepped inside the church one more time and knelt at the altar.

  “I haven’t done a lot of talking to you lately, so I don’t have room to ask for much. But if you could help the doctors take care of my dad, and if you could save his church…well, I’d really like a second chance with him.” Not knowing how else to end the prayer, he said simply, “Thank you.” Then he climbed into his dad’s truck and headed back to town.

  “He’s in surgery right now,” Mary said as Sam walked into the E.R. “Compound fracture of the tibia, they said.”

  “How long before…?” His question trailed away as he sank into a chair, resting his forehead in his hands. He hated feeling helpless, and right now he was as helpless as he’d ever been. The fire. His dad. Mary.

  “Probably a couple of hours.” Mary sat beside him and touched his hand. “Sam, I know how hard this is.”

  “We had to quit out at the church, Mary. All that work. Clint got hurt. My dad. For nothing.”

  “Not for nothing, Sam.”

  He looked up at her. “What, then? Why were we out there? To save one building?”

  “You were out there to save a dream. And a lot of memories. Your father’s dream. And the memories of a whole lot of people in Whisper Creek.”

  “Maybe if we hadn’t stopped everyone while I climbed up that tree to get the bear cub… Maybe if I’d kept working at night, the way some of them did…”

  Mary shook her head. “Don’t, Sam. That fire is a force of nature. It’s bigger than all of us. We can build this hospital and pack it full of high-tech gizmos, but in the end we’re just human beings. And that fire…nature…that’s bigger than we are. Don’t go beating yourself up over things you couldn’t control. Take it from an expert, Sam. There’s no percentage in it.”

  That was one of the most revealing things she had ever said to him. Forgetting his own concerns, he looked over at her, and her eyes fell. “What happened, Mary? What are you beating yourself up over?”

  She tried to force a smile. “Oh, we all do it, Sam. That’s all I meant.”

  “No,” he said, lifting her chin until their eyes met. “No, that isn’t all you meant. You’ve got such a ball and chain attached to your heart, I can hear it clank. I look at you and I see…an angel. Kind. Tender. Thoughtful. Loving. So beautiful. You look in a mirror and see…I don’t know what you see, but it isn’t beautiful. What do you see that you won’t let me see? What could be that bad?”

  Her face whitened, but she shook her head. “Nothing.”

  “Nothing? Is that why you’re so afraid of me? Afraid I might talk to you the way I talked to my father yesterday? Afraid that you can’t trust me?”

  Her lips tightened even more. “Sam…”

  “Look,” he said, “if you’re going to ditch me, I at least deserve to know why. You said something about not being able to trust men. I want to know why. I think I’m entitled to know exactly why I frighten you.”

  She looked away from him, and he could see that she was beginning to tremble. He wanted to reach out and tell her that everything would be okay, but he couldn’t do that until he knew what the problem was. And she wouldn’t believe him, anyway. She’d made that perfectly clear to him.

  For a long time she didn’t say anything. She seemed lost in some anguished memory that he couldn’t help her with until she shared it with him. Then he wondered if he could help her anyway. He was such a mess himself. Maybe he wasn’t in any state to help another living soul.

  She turned to him slowly, but her eyes wouldn’t meet his. “I had a son,” she said.

  He felt his chest tighten, but he refrained from saying anything. She’d told him she had had a son, but now he sensed there was more to the story. He didn’t want her to stop talking.

  “He was…he’d just turned six. A cute little boy with red hair and freckles and an adventurous nature. We were out in the yard one day. I’ll never forget what a beautiful day it was. Not a cloud in the sky, not too warm… I was gardening. He was playing with our cat.

  “It was a funny cat, Sam. It liked to play ball, almost as if it was a dog. And Chuckie would roll it for him, and the cat would chase it and bat it around a little bit, then wait for Chuckie to throw it again.”

  Sam made a soft sound, just enough to let her know she had his attention. Already he was gearing up for the story to come, his entire body tensing in preparation.

  “Anyway, I don’t know exactly what happened. It was all so fast. One second Chuckie was giggling and tossing the ball, and I couldn’t have looked away for more than two seconds…. I mean, I was kneeling so I could keep an eye on them. I looked down for… I don’t know. The next thing I heard was the shriek of brakes.”

  Sam closed his eyes. Then he reached out for her hand. She shook his touch off.

  “The woman who hit him said the cat darted into the street right in front of her and Chuckie was right behind him. He died the next day. He never…he never even woke up again.”

  “Mary…”

  She shook her head. “Don’t say anything. I was a rotten mother. I wasn’t watching closely enough. I know that. Chuckie’s dead because I didn’t do my job right. And Chet left me because I killed our son.”

  “Mary…”

  She shook her head again, more vehemently. “So that’s why I don’t trust you. You’ll say all the right things right now. Everybody says all the right things. But later…” She sniffled and blinked away tears. “Forget it, Sam. Just look after your father. You might not get another chance.”

  He racked his brains trying to find something soothing or kind to say. But he needed time to absorb this. Needed time to think it through and figure out if he could help Mary carry her burden, or if he was such a mess himself that he would be no good to her.

  God! Words just wouldn’t come. “We…need to talk about this some more,” he said finally. “I…don’t know what to say.”

  “Of course not.” Suddenly brisk, she rose. “See you around, Sam.”

  Then she left the hospital before he could summon another word to say.

  Sam was good at kicking his own butt. He
kicked it pretty thoroughly over the next couple of hours until they let him in to see his father. He should have had some words to offer her. Some compassion. Something. But it was as if his brain had just stuttered to a halt. Mary had as big a wound in her heart as he had in his. And he sure hadn’t dealt with his own very well. How in the hell could he help with hers? Maybe it would be better for both of them if he just stayed away.

  Elijah was groggy, but alert enough to recognize Sam. “Both legs,” he said to his son. “Both legs.”

  Sam looked at the casts and the weights and felt like hell. “You should’ve let that damn tree fall on me.”

  Elijah gave him a weak grin. “Better my legs than your head.”

  “I’m not so sure about that. Are you hurting?”

  “Not too bad. They got me so full of drugs I don’t know which end is up.”

  “Did they tell you how bad it is?”

  “Not too bad. One’s a clean break. The other one they had to put a pin in. I’ll be up and around in a couple months.”

  “I’m sorry, Dad.”

  Elijah reached out a hand and Sam took it carefully, making sure he didn’t bump the IV line. “We need to talk, son.”

  “Yeah.”

  But before they could do so, Elijah drifted back to sleep. Sam sat by his bed, waiting, as afternoon turned into night.

  Mary thought about packing. She could just pack up everything she owned in a rental truck and be out of this town tomorrow. Call the school, say she had an emergency and couldn’t complete her contract.

  The urge almost overwhelmed her. Sam’s reaction to her story had told her all she needed to know. He needed to think about it. What was there to think about? Either he accepted her as she was, as a negligent mother, or he wasn’t going to accept her at all.

  God, she wanted to get out of this town. The same way she had fled Denver. Just run away and start anew somewhere else, a place where no one would know her story. Where she would be smarter and not let anyone at all get close to her, not even a wounded charmer like Sam Canfield.