Parched

by Lou Cadle

But outside, the fire approached, and his family and friends needed him. He looked around for somewhere to lay the baby, but there wasn’t anywhere, except next to its dead mother, and that seemed wrong. So Dev walked the baby into the kitchen. There was a drawer of dishcloths, and he shifted the child until he could open the drawer. For a moment, he put the baby on the counter, far from its edge, used both hands to pop the drawer out, and put the drawer in the middle of the kitchen table. He pulled the baby back into his arms and put it gently into the kitchen drawer in a bed of towels. It’d have to do for now. He needed Becca to come in her and take over. Or Misha, if the grieving widow wasn’t ready.

  He coughed, realized the smoke was seeping in here, and did a quick check of the house to make sure every window was shut. He pulled down curtains in Zoe’s room, yanked one thin curtain off its rod, and used it to cover the body. He checked the baby once more before going out the back door.

  It was dark out here, despite the light the fire gave off, and smoky. He called Misha’s name.

  “Right here,” she said, from nearby. She was sitting on the steps of the porch.

  “Is Becca with you?”

  “Picnic table,” she said. “She said to give her a minute. Did the child make it?”

  “The baby is on the kitchen table, breathing. Seems fine to me, but Mom says it needs to eat soon. Either you or Becca has to deal with it. I need to fight the fire. It’s coming.”

  “I can tell that. It’s hard to breathe.”

  “It’s better inside.”

  “I need to go home. They’ll want me.”

  He didn’t disagree. “Well, go then.”

  “What about Becca?”

  “The baby is the priority, I’d think. I’ll tell Becca she needs to come in and take care of it.”

  “I don’t know that she’s ready.”

  “She needs to get ready. Mom told me about the breast milk thing.”

  “Poor kid. Poor Becca.”

  “Poor Janine. She’s the one who lost the most. I have to go,” Dev said, and though he wanted to check on his mother and make sure the baby was tended to and help convince Becca to do what was right, the fire was the priority. There was no time to waste on anything else.

  As he crossed back over the road, heading for the fire, it was all he could do to tamp down his panic. There was something about a wildfire, he was discovering. It made you want to run like a deer in its presence. The smell, the sight, the color reflecting off the clouds: everything about a fire turned you into a frightened animal. It was an effort to think rationally, and it was all he could do not to bolt.

  He couldn’t. He’d defend his home and food supply against the fire, as if it were an army of angry warriors.

  Chapter 24

  “Watch behind you!”

  Sierra could barely hear Curt’s voice. The noise of the fire was like a jet engine—or what she remembered of that sound from old movies. It roared and roared. It cracked and spit. The smoke choked her—choked all of them—and the sight of the flames sending fingers of red toward her turned her knees to jelly. But she battled on.

  She glanced behind herself and saw a thin pine had toppled. It was glowing with red coals, though blackened along its length. She turned and beat at it with her blanket, and then she had to stop and stamp her smoldering blanket to keep it from bursting into flames.

  One winter night, she was going to regret not having the blanket for warmth. But better to have a bed and a roof and no blanket than to have no house.

  She watched as a line of flame leapt out from the fallen tree and skittered across the lawn toward her hen house.

  “Oh no you don’t!” she said, as she chased it down and beat at it. The grass had been scythed so short here, she couldn’t imagine what was burning, but burning it was. She coughed and coughed and beat at the flames, using her fear and anger to make herself keep working.

  The flame died. She ran back to the fallen tree and kicked it with the toe of her boot, trying to roll it back into an already-burned area.

  “Be careful,” Curt shouted. He was pushing at the trunk of a flaming pine that he’d been whacking at with the ax. The top of the tall tree was engulfed in flame. If it fell back toward the house, it could easily take out the hens, the garden, and maybe more.

  “Let me help!” she yelled. Above them, the fire hissed. She leaned in, and a stream of steam spurted out of the tree trunk right at her face. “Goddamnit!” she snarled, turning her head away.

  “Push!” Curt said, and he threw himself against the tree.

  Sierra turned so her shoulder was next to his and pushed for all she was worth. Slowly at first, the pine began to lean, and then it gained momentum.

  Curt snagged her around the waist and hauled her back just as the trunk of the tree snapped, flinging out shards of broken wood. With a crash that could be heard even over the fire, it fell outward, away from the houses.

  “Jesus H. Jumping Christ,” Curt said, letting go of her. “I don’t know how much more I can do.”

  “As much as we need to,” she said. But she gave his arm a squeeze too, gratitude for pulling her back, acknowledgement that he might be hurting more than she was—which was plenty—and encouragement, trying to convey it all in that one touch.

  “Where’d your father get to?” he shouted at her.

  Sierra looked around, felt a moment of panic, and then saw Pilar off to her right, toward the end of the property where it abutted Joan’s. He had a spade and was tossing scant shovelfuls of dirt over the fire. Pilar stopped, leaned over, and coughed, then spat.

  Sierra coughed twice and then forced herself to stop. She wanted to sit down and cough for an hour or two, sit in some nice place with green grass and clean air.

  Curt smacked her on the back of the head.

  “Ow,” she said, reaching back. The hat she’d been wearing was gone—she didn’t know where or when—and the heat at the back of her head suggested something had just been burning there. She pulled her hand away and a bunch of singed hair came with it. “Thanks,” she shouted at Curt.

  He was looking up now. “That one,” he said, and hefted the ax and went for another burning tree.

  She felt afraid for him as he went around to the hotter side, his back to the leading edge of the flames, and started wielding the ax, cutting a wedge from the tree. She feared one of these times one of the dead trees would crack and fall on him before he could move out of its way. But they had to take risks. The fire was here, and it had jumped the dry creek with no problem, and all along the edge of the property, the neighbors were fighting off the fire.

  Curt wasn’t at his place because he said it would take too much time and effort to save it. “I’m handing that decision over to fate,” he’d said when he appeared to help her and Pilar save their place, wearing a backpack loaded down with she knew not what. Stuff he couldn’t bear to lose, she imagined. Knowing Curt, that’d be tools or books, not food or clothing. His crossbow was strapped to the outside of it.

  At least he’d still be able to hunt. She wasn’t optimistic they could beat the wildfire. It was huge, and it was taking everything she had to raise the blanket again and again. She wanted to rest. She wanted simply to breathe, somewhere without smoke. But she couldn’t.

  Her mind went to her daughter, asleep the last time she checked on her. Let her sleep through the whole thing, right up until the minute they needed to run. That minute wasn’t upon her yet. And it would never come, not if she could help it.

  A burning branch that had fallen off a tree still had a couple feet that weren’t on fire. She grabbed it with a gloved hand and pushed it into the fire, as far as she could stand to walk.

  Then she skipped away and beat her blanket against the bottom of her jeans’ right leg. It was smoking. No, maybe not. Hard to tell what was on fire and what wasn’t.

  She bent over, rested her hands on her thighs, and took five seconds’ rest. And then she saw Curt moving around to the near side of the tree
, swinging the ax, trying to make a back cut.

  She settled for walking to him, though she wanted to trot. She was wearing out.

  He gave it two more blows and then dropped the ax and threw himself against the tree. Sierra helped as best she could, though her muscles were turning limp.

  The tree fell, caught on another tree, and stayed there. But it wouldn’t fall inward, toward her home now.

  “How long have we been at it?” she asked Curt.

  “A lifetime,” he said. “Dawn must be near.”

  “Is that good news or bad?” Her mind was so weary, she couldn’t work it out. Fire was easier to see at night. But the dawn might bring a broader view. She looked back at the house and said, “Oh shit.” And then she took off running.

  The fire had skipped around them. Beyond the house, there were flames. They were surrounded on two sides now. Three, probably, including the forest across the main road. Hell, maybe all four sides were on fire. She ran around her house, down the driveway, and looked across the road. There were only dots of fire, but to her right, up toward the Quinn place, there were more than a few. Of course, up there, they hadn’t done a good job of clearing the road yet.

  She turned around and looked at her own house. Perfectly safe for now. A flame was reflected in a front window. The car wasn’t there. Where was it? Oh right, up at the Quinn house. Okay, so that was their responsibility now, to get it out on the road if needed and keep it from harm. She looked back up her driveway, across to the spot fires in the scrubby area, and tried to decide. Which should she fight first?

  Or maybe she shouldn’t fight at all. Maybe it was time to wake up Zoe and get out of here. Then she thought of the hens, and the rooster, who had been crowing all night, agitated, aware of the wildfire out there, wanting to protect his flock, but trapped behind the fence. She thought of the turbines and the cabling. Her bed and clothes and the kitchen supplies. All the tomatoes they’d canned last month, exploding, glass jar by glass jar as fire consumed the house.

  No. No matter how tired she was, she had to keep fighting. She wadded up her blanket, strode across the dirt road and began banging at flames, screaming in frustration for a second. But she didn’t have the breath to keep that up. Just pound at the flames, get them out, move along, slap at some more, repeat, repeat, repeat.

  She was making some progress and moving toward the Quinn property when she saw the car back out of the driveway. The trunk was open. It stopped and a figure got out. Arch. Sierra ran for him.

  “Time to leave?” she said.

  “I thought I’d move it out to the road,” he said back. They didn’t have to shout quite as loudly as a person needed to right at the edge of the fire. “Where’s my granddaughter?”

  “Asleep, believe it or not.”

  “Good. I don’t want her seeing this.”

  “Are you holding your own?”

  “Barely. You?”

  “Came down here to work at this,” she said, pointing to the spot fires across the road.

  “Damn, how’d it get down here anyway?”

  She looked up, saw a floating orange ember, and pointed. “It’s so dry, anything sets it off.”

  “I should spray down my roof again. Then I’ll take care of these spot fires by us.”

  “Good luck,” she said and turned back up the road. The heat from the fire sucked all the moisture out of her body. She was parched, and she didn’t have time to grab a drink. If she sprayed their house, she could drink from the hose while she did. No, okay, stop for ten seconds to think. Arch had the car taken care of. He was driving it out onto the main road now, the cages of rabbits visible in the open trunk.

  Zoe would be taken care of, even if Sierra couldn’t do it herself. Arch or Kelly or Pilar or Dev definitely would come for her and evacuate her.

  She realized hosing down the house would probably wake Zoe, and she didn’t want her awake yet. Let the poor kid sleep. But the barn could use a dousing. A new patch of fire had popped up straight across from the house, so she took care of it first, and then plodded back up the driveway, to the hose, which was sloppily coiled near the spigot by the barn, and she turned it on low, slurped water from the stream, sprayed her face for good measure, and her hair, drank again, and then turned up the water pressure all the way until she could hit the roof of the barn.

  She sprayed three sides of the building as well, drank again, and turned off the water. The hose stretched to beyond the hen house, and she could unhook it and move it all the way out to the wellhead, but they’d agreed to not fight fire with water unless the houses or animals were threatened. If they fought the fire successfully, only to deplete the water beyond where the wells were dug, they’d hardly be in a better position than before.

  Wells could be dug deeper, but what a hard project that would be. It made clearing a new grain field seem easy in comparison.

  Sierra was starting to think that fighting a fire fell somewhere in between those awful jobs. She picked up her blanket—she’d dropped it by the faucet—and carried it back to where Curt stood leaning on the ax.

  “Are you okay?” she said.

  “Fine,” he said, but he didn’t straighten up. “At least it’s not making any headway against me.”

  “There’s fire across our road,” she said, in case he hadn’t seen it. “I got most of it, but I’ll need to go down again in ten minutes and check again. Tell me what to do next.”

  “Make sure your father doesn’t need help,” Curt said. “I’m moving off to the left to get the next tree.” He still didn’t move.

  “Are we crazy?” she said. “Doing this? Should we just let it burn?”

  “No and no,” he said. “Keep going. I know you can.”

  Pretty funny coming from a man who looked about to drop from exhaustion. “Don’t hurt yourself. Call me if you need me.” And she plodded away from him, aiming at her father’s position.

  Had she ever lived through such a long night?

  Chapter 25

  Dawn came, and with it a shift of wind. It blew the fire back toward already-burned areas and, at least on their front, the threat abated. By mid-morning, they were all able to take a break. The fire had burned up to their lawns, but not beyond.

  All except for Curt’s. His cabin had been engulfed. Joan apologized a half-dozen times for not seeing it in time to stop the fire before he finally asked her to please shut up about it. “I left the cabin. I knew it was possible.”

  “I’m so sorry. You lost everything?”

  “I have my crossbow. That’s a start.”

  Pilar said, “And we have a house because you helped us. You stay with us, just as long as you like.”

  “Maybe,” Curt said. Then he laid his head on the picnic table—they were at the Quinn house—and fell promptly asleep.

  “Me too,” Sierra said. “I could sleep for three days. But we have to keep watch I guess. Make sure the wind doesn’t shift or any spot fires break out.”

  “I can do that,” Zoe said.

  “Oh, hon,” Sierra began.

  Dev said, “That’s a good idea.”

  “You sure?” Sierra said.

  “I’ll help her. She and I can take the first watch. We’ll walk the perimeter of the neighborhood. And then she and Dad can take the second. Everybody else should sleep.”

  Becca was there, holding on to the baby, her face a mask of grief. “Can someone take me back to my family? I don’t even know yet if they survived.”

  Sierra wanted nothing more than to crawl into bed. No, a shower first, then bed. But she said, “I will.” She stood and shook her head, trying to clear it. “Key?”

  Arch jolted, as if he’d been about to nod off. “I have it. Take the animal cages out and set them at the end of our road. I’ll get to them in a minute.”

  Kelly said to Becca, “If you need to come back, you’re welcome here.”

  Sierra realized what she was saying was, if your family didn’t make it. She hoped that wasn’t t
he case. Their own neighborhood hadn’t lost anyone last night, and except for a hundred small burns, a bunch of people still coughing and spitting out gray phlegm, and the loss of Curt’s cabin and garden, they’d come out of it okay. The hens were alive, the rabbits, and the other gardens except Curt’s were all intact. The grain seed was still in the barn, available to be planted.

  As Kelly was helping load Becca and the baby into the car, Sierra slapped herself in the face a few times to try and wake up. She was exhausted and was sure that the motion of the car would make her want to close her eyes and nap.

  The baby fussed at first when Becca carried it to the car, and then it settled down as the car traveled down the relatively smooth surface of the main road. On both sides, the fire had swept through. Strange patches of untouched trees still stood, and other pines seemed to be only scorched partway up their trunks. The more miles that passed, the worse the fire damage was, and Becca begun to mutter the words, “Please, please,” over and over.

  Sierra couldn’t begin to imagine what it would be like for her if she lost her wife last night and her whole family as well. When she came around a bend and saw their wagon parked sideways in the middle of the road, she felt some hope. “That looks like a good sign,” she said.

  Becca said nothing. The baby began to cry. When Sierra pulled into the road, Becca said, “Stop!” and, surprised into obeying, Sierra did. Becca opened the door, dumped the baby onto the seat, and took off running.

  The baby really was crying now. Sierra reached over and picked him up and made soothing noises to him. Then she opened her own door and carried the baby outside. The smell of burned wood was everywhere, and ash still floated where the car had disturbed it, settling back down like charcoal-colored snow.

  Sierra saw, before she saw anything else, that the grain fields were gone, burned down to nothing at all. She said to the baby, “So lucky we have a barn full of grain.” The grain they had would be enough to replant. Come to think of it, for all the damage the fire had done, and all the loss Curt had suffered, one good thing was it had cleared out some of the area where they wanted to plan the grain. They could probably find a patch to plant in without much more land-clearing effort at all. As she looked around, she realized the fire had burned away a lot of the easy fuel. A second wildfire this season wouldn’t be as dangerous, and whatever had burned downhill of them would create a nice wide firebreak.