Through the Fire

by Shawn Grady

  Did he really think I had something to do with the arson fires?

  Directing suspicion toward me would be a convenient smoke screen for him, especially if he was involved with it all.

  Who could I trust anymore?

  I pounded the bag with gut-born aggression. Jab. Jab. Hook.

  Not my ex-fiancée.

  Jab. Jab. Hook.

  Not Blake.

  I stood back, chest heaving hard-blown breaths, clenched fists at my sides. My pores stank of secreted ethanol. And there, amid the ruins of what I’d known as my life and the state of things, a dust-settling clarity fell into place.

  Blake had been staying at the Cairo the day of the fire.

  Every one of the serial arson evidence boxes bore his name.

  He’d been passed over for promotion.

  And I saw him . . .

  In her car.

  I heard him . . .

  In her apartment.

  I turned away from the bag and stretched my neck, pushing open palmed against the ribbed surface of my fist.

  The ensuing thought, like a disturbing image, edged its way through the doorway of my mind.

  If Blake was tied to the current arsons, and if the current arsons were tied to my father’s fire . . .

  CHAPTER

  34

  I walked through the rest of the workday with the drugged calm of conviction. And with my empty-handed capitulation came solace.

  I stood in the kitchen and stared out the windows. The colors of the evening spilled across the sky like an overturned drink onto a tablecloth. Swirling dust devils danced in a vacant lot. A lingering expectation of a tempest hung in the air. And I knew the day’s moment lay at hand.

  I walked to the pole, slid to the floor, strolled to the engine, and took a last look at the transient tawny light suffusing the streets.

  Tones.

  The dispatcher delivered, monotone, methodical. Something big was going down. The string of rigs ran long.

  Brush fire.

  In the hills. Threatening structures.

  The wood thud of doors closing sounded from the pole holes above. One by one firefighters squeak-slid to the floor. I unzipped my brush bag and pulled the lighter weight yellow pants over my station blues. Kat appeared in the front seat. Battery on, ignition switch flipped, motor rumbling. Butcher swung on his brush shirt and climbed into the cab.

  Lowell stepped in holding a bowlful of boiled eggs. He dropped into his jumpseat. “I hate brush fires.”

  We shot westbound on I-80, the Pierce’s diesel motor more than apt on the incline. At the line where the eastern Sierra foothills meet with the sprawling home developments of the valley, a dark gray plume pitched skyward.

  Engine Five gave an initial report, “Rapid fire spread moving with two fronts—one toward the timber, the other toward the houses.”

  I tied a bandana around my neck and strapped on web gear holding water bottles and an emergency foil fire shelter. My heart charged with the rig, aching to approach, drawn to the destruction.

  Bring it.

  Lowell stuffed his mouth and pulled on his yellows. I double knotted the laces on my brush boots.

  “She’s running the draws,” Butcher said. “Let’s watch those downslope winds.”

  Kat took the off-ramp to McCarran Boulevard. “Good ol’ Washoe zephyrs.”

  Two other engines met us as we exited the freeway, and we traveled together, with us taking point. The sunlight dimmed as we neared the hilltop, gray glowing smoke hovering over the roadway, traffic at a standstill in both directions. Butcher grabbed the PA. “All right, people, let’s part the waters. Let’s do this.” He rested his elbow on the center console and held up the mic like Moses’ staff. A wave of motorists made for the sides of the road.

  Kat navigated the opening channel of pavement. The rigs behind followed in her wake. We wound through the intersection, turning west past the RPD patrol cars blocking the street, and crested a small hill leading to the subdivisions.

  A ghost-town air lingered in the abandoned streets. Kat maneuvered amid thick curtain waves of backlit smoke. Jagged ash strips whirled in the gutters.

  One hand in the map book, Butcher pointed south. “Head up this street here.”

  We throttled around until the flashing reds of Engine Five broke through the cloud. Operator Lent arced around the back of his rig, flipping a glance at our engine and pointing to two houses closer to us.

  I brought my goggles down and opened my door, the street slowing under the rig. I waited for it to stop and caught a glance of the fire between the stucco houses. A wall of flame stretched and flicked up the canyon side beyond the backyards.

  I was tired of being taunted. Fatigued with the inexplicable. I wasn’t about to sit and let harrowing images of Hades overtake me. I’d call it out. I’d meet it in the streets. Let it consume me.

  What do I care, anyway?

  Butcher looked to the back. “Deploy the progressive hose packs.”

  The air was heavy with burnt sage and juniper oils. I snagged a Pulaski axe and sheathed it through my web gear, the flat grubbing end hanging on the belt. Lowell tossed down two bulging green canvas hose bags. I shouldered one and turned so he could loosen the top flap. He yanked the coupling out and connected it to a discharge port.

  He patted my shoulder. “You’re good. Go.”

  I charged across a driveway, hose threading to the ground.

  A cedar-paneled fence door blocked my way to the backyard. I pushed on the latch.

  Locked.

  I dropped the pack and pulled out the Pulaski. I rammed it against the one-by-six edge. Two blows busted the bolt free.

  Smoke eddied over and around a low black metal fence on the far side of the yard. I bent to pick up the pack when the oven door flapped open.

  I felt a sudden searing on my cheeks as the fire mounted the fence and rose on its haunches, a half block of burning bearlike aggression. It stretched and grew, twisting in a vortex. Back on the lawn Lowell pulled on his face shroud, twirling his finger in the air. “Water comin’!”

  I fastened my shroud around my mouth and nose. The flames folded over and down toward the house. I dropped to my belly, gripping the nozzle, sucking air between grass blades.

  The flush of water shot up behind me and under with squirt gun streams spurting from the couplings. I twisted the nozzle.

  Left for life.

  Air escaped and flitted past my helmet. I took a quick breath before the rush of water came. I fanned it into a fog stream shaped like an umbrella. Lowell crouched behind and lifted the hose. We duck-walked forward.

  Come get me, beast.

  A shower of droplets covered my goggles, colors blurring through the water fan. The fire shook, flipping back and straightening. Surprised by the onslaught, angered by the imposition, it rolled inward and then unfurled out along the ground. I narrowed the stream and dug in my heels, sweeping from side to side. Flame fingers hissed, vanished, leaving blackened smoky wisps. It regrouped and rose back by the fence.

  I moved in, the soles of my boots burning beneath. “Get back to Gehenna!”

  Lowell leaned in. “What?”

  I kept my helmet tilted, shielding my face from the heat, peeking out just enough to see my water stream evaporate into the air, confused spastic smoke shaking and coughing like a car motor searching for the right flammable mixture.

  I had it off balance. I wanted to knock it over the edge, force it to scurry back down to the pit from where it came.

  Kat transmitted over the radio, “We’re at quarter of a tank.”

  I closed the bale halfway and held our ground. The engine only carried seven hundred fifty gallons. Seven hundred fifty separating the fire from the house. Seven-fifty keeping the fire from us.

  A minute later, Butcher announced, “Kat’s got the hydrant. Show no quarter.”

  I opened the bale and pushed us forward. Lowell stretched a second hose line connected to a gated valve from th
e hose pack. We flanked with two fronts. The fire retreated to the opposite side of the fence, sneaking glances in and under the bars. It tried to slither through, wicking in every way possible, fighting to keep its fingertip grip on the ground it had gained.

  But it relented. We had it. The smoke lightened to gray. The last remaining fire disappeared into the draw, swallowed by a blackened smoky moonscape dotted with flickering sagebrush torches.

  Lowell coughed and spit. I doused white root ash to the sound of bubbling bellows.

  Butcher strolled through the waning fog, radio held close to his ear. He staked his shovel handle in the smoldering grass. “Don’t get too comfy, boys. Sounds like the other side is losing it.”

  CHAPTER

  35

  T alk about snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.

  The fire had taken two wood-shingled houses and was well on its way with a third and fourth by the time we redeployed. We got there quickly, but Butcher had been ordered by an overzealous staging manager not to move until they sorted out incoming rigs.

  Fortunately for the neighborhood, a favorable wind shift drove the fire up the mountain and away from the houses. It spread into the timber and into high, rocky, and inaccessible-by-engine topography.

  I sat back in the hose bed with Lowell and watched the Army Guard Chinooks hover like upended phone receivers, twin rotors fore and aft beating the air above the head of the fire, dropping thousand-gallon bucket loads of water. Single-engine air tankers played chase with smaller lead planes, following them in low and banking descents to blanket the hillsides with scarlet slurry lines in the sand to retard the fire’s forward progress.

  “That was old Captain Peterson’s house right there,” Lowell said.

  I stared at the empty ash piles off-gassing, angled pipes protruding through a steamy and littered foundation. A simple fireplace and chimney stood surrounded by rubble. “That house right there?”

  He nodded.

  Then, in the most twisted and fitting way, I found myself entirely unsurprised to see Blake’s gray-suited form scuffling and searching through the silt of the foundation. He wore rubber turnout boots and a white Prevention helmet, his leather gloves sorting and separating charred debris.

  A sense of reckless empowerment came over me. And crazy in the way that abandonment comes, I climbed right off the rig with a beeline trajectory for Inspector Blake Williams.

  Lowell shifted. “Where you going?”

  I didn’t look back. I stepped into the cinders and the temperature lifted.

  Man’s floor, hell’s roof.

  Blake bent over by the chimney, staring into the fireplace. I stopped a few feet away, unnoticed.

  I wondered what was going through his head. Did he find and dispose of the incriminating evidence? Did anyone have the slightest suspicion? He probably thought he was home free. He was Irish Spring, clean as a whistle. Nonchalant. Unassuming.

  Not an arsonist . . .

  Cheater . . .

  Murderer.

  He scraped in the back corner of the firebox.

  I spoke louder than normal. “Looking for evidence?”

  He jerked his head up, striking his helmet on the upper hearthstone. “Ow. Hey, Aidan. How’s it going?”

  “How does it look like it’s going, Blake?”

  His expression flicked like the pixilation of an image. He grinned. “Right. I guess sometimes they get away from us.”

  I took off my helmet and scratched my head. “It can only get away if someone lets it loose in the first place.”

  He stared, his expression traversing from confusion to suspicion. He shifted his focus to the charred scraps at his feet. He knelt and started picking them up. “So. Were you guys on these ones here?”

  I stared at him. I wanted to see him sweat, to see his pores open on his cheeks and brow. How long had he been sneaking behind my back? How long had he been at all of it? Did his deeds date back . . . to a warehouse, and a brick wall, and to me compressing my father’s chest in that mad midnight ambulance ride?

  “Why’d you do it, Blake?”

  He shuffled the debris between hands, still looking down. “I’m sorry?”

  I crouched to his eye level, adjusted my helmet. “I know you did it. I know all about it.”

  He froze in profile. He swallowed, took a deep breath, and straightened. “Do you, now?”

  I stood, arms just out from my sides. “Is it for the rush? You like seeing all the pretty lights and sirens? You like watching people’s stuff burn?”

  He stepped closer. “Aidan, lower your—”

  I shoved him, both hands into his chest, knocking him backward against the chimney. “You don’t get to speak.”

  “What is your—”

  “You don’t!” I shoved him again. “How long?” I brought my helmet rim to his. “Let me be even more specific. Where do I start, Blake?”

  “Aidan, I do not know what you’re talking about.”

  I gripped tight the lapels of his suit beneath his open fire coat, his silk Armani lapels. Always so proud of his image, his status, his look. “Christine tell you to buy this one? Is that it? She your personal fashion consultant, Blake?”

  “Aidan!” He brought his arms against my chest and tried to push me away. “Get. Off. Me.” But I had him off-balance, my weight leaning into him like a steel strut. He grunted and relaxed.

  I pinned him against the brick, my elbows over his shoulders. “How long? How long have you been cheating with her when I was at work?”

  Hearing myself say it pulled the drain plug on my indignation. Swirling despair sank in my chest. I loosened my grip and stepped back. “Why’d you do it, Blake?”

  His right hook surprised me, landing on my cheek and sending me reeling. A second strike knocked me flat on my back. My helmet tumbled off. I shifted to my feet and drove a solid fist into his gut. He let loose a sound like a balloon deflating.

  I rose over his bent body. My jaw numb and hot. “You did it, didn’t you? Couldn’t get what you wanted from the department, could you?”

  He turned to look at me, and I struck his face, knocking him down.

  “Get up!”

  He placed his gloved hands in push-up position.

  “Get. Up.”

  Thick crimson ropes dangled from his nose. He spit into the ashes. “You’ve got it wrong, Aidan.”

  “Get up!” I wanted to hit him again. I wanted to pound into him and out of him every anger and boiling hate inside of me. “You think you can take whatever you want, Blake? If they don’t give it to you, you burn it. Is that how it works, Blake?” I used his name like an invective. “So what is it? Was it good for you, Blake? What gave you more pleasure? The fires? My fiancée? Or my father’s funeral?”

  He pushed to his knees, shaking his head. “You’re wrong, Aidan.”

  “Shut up!”

  “You’re wrong.”

  I kicked him in the side. It sounded like branches snapping. He buckled.

  My legs trembled; my torso shook.

  Blake gritted his teeth, pushed himself up on one knee, and with an arm around his abdomen rose to his feet.

  I shook my head, my lips quivering. The gray powder beneath us lifted with a strong gust. It spiraled up and over our heads. I shut my eyes as dirt pelted my face, filling my hair. I blinked through specks and eyelash grime to see Blake squinting, a hand shielding his forehead.

  The wind settled. Salt streams cut the dusty chap on my lips. My voice found little volume, only simple conviction in a straightforward sentence. “You’re setting these fires and sleeping with my fiancée.”

  Blake shook his head and pulled the fingers of his gloves. “You’re wrong, Aidan.” He wiped blood from his mouth with the back of his hand. “You’re wrong about the fires.”

  CHAPTER

  36

  A voice echoed from a distant corridor. “Hey, buddy. Hey, you can’t sleep here. Hey.”

  My eyelids opened to a blur of blue sh
irts, haloed streetlights, and Gerald Montegue’s unmistakable stare, his deep Basque eyes like sheltered caves.

  “Aidan?” He bent at the waist and put a hand on my shoulder.

  Why did I have to be woken by A-shift?

  “Aidan, what the—”

  I struggled upright. “It’s all right.” My words slurred as I spoke. I wove a hand in the air and then brought it to my numb face, feeling with my fingertips the diamond pattern of the bus stop bench I’d passed out on.

  Other guys on the crew laughed and shuffled. I felt humiliated. How many drunk patients had I run on like this? What day was it anyway? How’d I get there? I stared at my clothes for clues. “You guys seen my car?”

  “No way.”

  “I think he’s gone from Guinness to McCormick.”

  Gerald straightened me with arms on my shoulders. “Come on now, buddy. This isn’t you. What’re you doing down here?”

  I opened wide my eyes and blinked. Memories slinked in like late-arriving guests. “I . . . I think I was walking home from Patty’s?”

  Montie said something to a fireman behind him. A captain with a clipboard nodded. With the streetlamp backlight I couldn’t make out his face. The fireman Montie spoke with came into focus.

  Timothy Clark.

  “Hey, Timoshee,” I said. “Working overtime?”

  He came beside me and put my arm over his shoulder. “Just a straight trade, bud.”

  Montie lifted my other arm. “Let’s get you a bed inside.” They stood. I tried but felt myself slipping between them. “Come on now, bro. There you go.”

  I don’t remember getting into the back of the engine, or how I ended up in my cube on the third floor of the station. I woke a couple times to the sounds of alarms but quickly faded into sleep, unable to make sense or understand my place in it all.

  The sound of diesel engines jostled me from a dream, something about skeletons selling suits on a beach. I was an empty-pocketed traveler. The brightness of the day inhabited the dorms, a clear reminder that the earth kept turning regardless of my schedule. I couldn’t stand up straight without a kettle ball knocking inside of my head, so I hunch-walked to the showers to cleanse the sweat and stench from me.