The Fire (Northwest Passage Book 4)

by John A. Heldt

  Andy laughed again.

  "I believe you would too," he said. "I'm not laughing at you, Kevin. I'm laughing with you. I'd give a month's pay to be in your shoes."

  "I don't think so."

  "Why do you say that?"

  "I say it because it's true," Kevin said. "You wouldn't want to hurt either Sarah or Sadie any more than I do. These love triangles never turn out well. That's why I have to draw some clear boundaries today."

  "I guess I see your point."

  Andy tapped the ashes of a cigar over the edge of the porch.

  "Can I ask you a question?"

  "Sure. Why not? Everyone else will at some point."

  "If you knew that spending time with Sadie last night would make you miserable today, then why did you do it? I advised you to apologize, not kiss her bloody head off."

  Kevin took a breath and looked away.

  "I know. I wish I had a good explanation, but I don't. I'd like to say I was driven solely by guilt, but I wasn't. I wanted to be with her last night," he said. "I wanted to spend the whole night out here."

  Andy chuckled.

  "That doesn't make you a bad person. It makes you human."

  "What it makes me is a two-timing bastard. I'm no better than Pierce."

  "Now you're talking like a crazy man."

  Kevin brought his hands to his forehead as he sat on the porch swing.

  "I don't know. Maybe you're right. I just know I can't handle seeing two women. Sarah is my girl. Sadie is a friend. It has to stay that way."

  "Don't be too hard on yourself. So you have two girls. I wish I had one who doted on me like those two dote on you. There are worse things in life, Kevin. Believe me."

  "Yeah, I know. I just feel like a skunk. Sarah deserves better."

  "She's got the best right now."

  Kevin looked at Andy and wondered whether he took cheerleading at Boston College or just a lot of psychology classes. The pep talk was working.

  He started to say something when he saw the screen door open and Sadie walk out onto the porch. She wore a yellow and white summer dress, her birthday present from Maude.

  "I've just made some fresh coffee. Would either of you like a cup?"

  "No, thank you. I've had plenty," Andy said.

  "Kevin?"

  "I might have some later, Sadie. Thanks for asking."

  Andy gave Kevin a knowing smile and then pulled a pocket watch from a vest in a gesture that was clearly meant for show. He looked at the watch and then at Sadie.

  "I should probably run along. I imagine a few of my colleagues at the Standard will want to know why my name is in a police report. I'll see you two at supper."

  "Goodbye, Andy."

  Kevin watched the dapper journalist tip his hat, walk down the steps, and join the traffic on King Street, which included five or six pedestrians and nearly as many children on bikes. When Andy disappeared around a corner, Kevin turned to face one of the two women he had thought about all night.

  "We should talk, Sadie. Is this a good time for a walk?"

  She nodded.

  "Let me tell Maude I'm leaving."

  Five minutes later, Sadie walked out with a shawl on her shoulders and a worried expression on her face. When she joined Kevin at the bottom of the stairs, she managed a slight smile.

  "Where would you like to go?" she asked.

  "Let's walk along the creek."

  Kevin offered an arm and led her south on King Street to a trail they knew well. They had covered the same ground on more than a dozen walks since that first memorable stroll in the middle of March.

  "I owe you an apology," Sadie said when they finally reached Placer Creek. "It was unfair of me to ask for a kiss. I know you're seeing Sarah."

  "Don't apologize, Sadie. No one forced me to stick around last night."

  "Why did you stay then?"

  Kevin winced when he heard the question and the edge in her voice. He could see that Sadie had not come solely to play defense.

  "It's complicated."

  "I have time, Kevin, lots of time. Maude gave me the morning."

  Kevin looked more closely at Sadie and noticed a difference. She seemed less flirtatious and more thoughtful than on earlier walks and certainly more direct. The maturing process he had first noticed in May had continued. The girl was becoming a woman.

  "I stayed in part because I felt awful about forgetting your birthday," Kevin said. "I can't tell you how awful I felt when I saw you on the porch. I knew I owed you more than an apology and a kiss on the cheek."

  "So you pitied me?"

  "No. I didn't. How could I possibly pity you? You're one of the most desirable women in Wallace. You just don't know it."

  Sadie stared at Kevin doubtfully. She looked away when her eyes began to water.

  Sensing that he had once again stepped in it, Kevin came to a stop. He turned to face Sadie and put his hands on her shoulders.

  "I did feel bad last night – very bad. I felt bad for you, but I did not pity you. I stayed on the porch mostly because I wanted to stay. I wanted to kiss you. I had wanted to kiss you since we had climbed on that rock. Sometimes you make me gaga."

  Sadie laughed through fresh tears.

  "I don't know what that means, but it sounds good."

  "It is good. It's very good," Kevin said. "The problem is that I'm seeing someone else. I'm in love with someone else, and I don't want to lose her. Can you understand that?"

  "Yes," Sadie said in a soft voice.

  Kevin dropped his hands from her shoulders and grabbed one of her hands. He studied Sadie for a long, awkward moment before offering advice he had offered at least once before.

  "I think you should consider dating other men."

  "There's no one else in this town. You know that."

  "Then maybe it's time you looked around in another town, a college town. You could go to Moscow or Pullman or Missoula or Spokane. Have you given more thought to going to school?"

  Sadie nodded.

  "Maude has started a fund for me. I'm putting most of my earnings in it."

  "There you go. If I helped out a little, then you could enroll somewhere in the fall."

  "I don't want your money, Kevin. I want you."

  "You can't have me, Sadie. That's the thing. I care for you. I care for you more than I should probably admit, but I can't date you. I can't divide my affection between two women. I won't."

  Sadie gave him a hard stare.

  "You did last night."

  "Yeah, I did. But I can't divide it anymore. From now on, we can't kiss on the front porch or anywhere else. We can't go on anything that resembles a romantic date. We have to be friends and only friends or we can't be friends at all."

  Kevin grabbed both of her hands.

  "Can you agree to that?"

  Sadie looked at the creek, which flowed a few feet away, and then at the overcast sky. When she returned to Kevin, she sighed, and nodded.

  "I suppose."

  CHAPTER 57: KEVIN

  Friday, June 17, 1910

  "I'm coming around to your point of view," Kevin said. "People are not taking the threat seriously. It's like they don't remember the fire in ninety."

  "They remember," Andy said. "They just think someone will ride to the rescue if things get bad. That's where they're wrong. The foresters are spread thin. They can barely put out the fires caused by sparks from the trains, much less the ones started by idiots burning their garbage."

  The two walked south on Sixth Street away from a Chamber of Commerce luncheon, where Kevin had been the invited guest of a reporter who thought he should become more active in civic affairs. The gathering had left him cold, even though it had taken place in a stuffy restaurant where the temperature had climbed to eighty degrees.

  "Then the Forest Service should add rangers," Kevin said.

  "It should, but it can't."

  "Why?"

  "It doesn't have the money," Andy said.

  "Then it
should ask for the money."

  "It has, many times."

  "I don't get it. Doesn't anyone in government think the forests are worth saving?"

  "Some do. TR did. Gifford Pinchot did too before he was sacked. Others don't. They think the forests exist to make rich men richer. Right now those who want to profit from all you see around us have the ear of Congress. It's all a bloody shame, if you ask me."

  Andy and Kevin stepped aside to allow four nuns to pass and then resumed their spirited sidewalk dialogue.

  "At least we have two on our side," Kevin said.

  "You mean Bill and Ed?"

  "I mean Bill and Ed."

  Kevin's respect for Coeur d'Alene National Forest supervisor William G. Weigle and ranger Edward C. Pulaski had grown over the weeks. The two had done much to raise awareness and would continue to do so. The problem was that people weren't listening to their message.

  "I about spit out my lunch when Ed let them have it," Andy said.

  Kevin laughed.

  "I did too. He made my day."

  The ranger had stunned many at the luncheon with a refreshingly blunt observation. When some businessmen raised concerns that careless visitors might set the increasingly combustible woods ablaze, Pulaski had said: "The residents of this city have less respect for the forest fire laws and are more trouble than any tourists."

  Kevin had wanted to offer thoughts of his own. On more than one occasion, he had wanted to stand up, introduce himself as a distinguished time traveler from 2013, and tell the merchants and saloon owners that their fair little town was about to turn into a barbecue pit.

  He had wanted to tell them to insure their businesses, move their valuables, and certainly move their families to safer ground while they still could, but after listening to some of them speak he decided to keep to himself. He didn't feel an obligation to save those who refused to listen to logic and reason.

  Kevin did feel an obligation to save Sadie, Andy, and Maude. He knew he couldn't leave without giving them some sort of warning. They had been the best of friends, people who had shown him nothing but kindness, respect, and in Sadie's case, a whole lot more. If altering their fates blew a hole in the universe, then that was too damn bad. They were worth it.

  When they reached the intersection with Bank Street three minutes later, Andy stopped and waited for two horse-drawn wagons and an Austin touring car to go by. Though automobiles were a rarity on the streets of Wallace, they were becoming more common.

  "I'll see you later," Andy said.

  He tipped his hat and took his first step toward the street, the industrial east end of town, and the editorial offices of the Wallace Standard.

  "Do you really have to work now?" Kevin asked.

  Andy stopped at the curb and looked back.

  "I don't have to do anything. I want to work. Despite what you might think, my friend, I actually enjoy what I do. It's some of the people I have to cover that I don't enjoy."

  "I didn't mean to imply that you didn't. It's just that most people would rather spend a June afternoon in the sun than in a cramped newspaper office."

  "I would too, but it's not a choice. I'm not about to haul my typewriter to the park. I should be finished by three thirty," Andy said. He grinned. "Then we can meet for a drink or flirt with the fillies on Cedar."

  Kevin laughed. He knew that Andy wanted the same things he did, including a wife and a family, but he also knew that the journalist was in no hurry to settle down. He would say, "I do," to Maggie Ryan's girls until he said, "I do," to someone else.

  "I'll think about the drink," Kevin said with a smile.

  "Suit yourself."

  Kevin watched Andy run across the street and navigate his way through a crowd that spilled out of the general mercantile. When the reporter finally disappeared from sight, Kevin scanned the rest of the intersection and pondered his options. He could go south to Sarah's, east to Maude's, or simply wander around Wallace.

  After a moment of thought, he decided that what he really wanted to do was walk and think. So he walked two more blocks to Pearl and turned east. If he was going to see the town and get his thoughts in order, he might as well see it from end to end.

  Before he crossed Sixth, Kevin took a moment to take a squinting peek at the sun. Old Sol loomed high and mighty in the southwest sky, warming northern Idaho to a degree that was uncommon even on the cusp of summer. He liked the sun. He liked how it made him feel, particularly after a gloomy winter and spring that, according to his 2013 calendar, should have been his summer and fall.

  As he proceeded slowly down Pearl, however, Kevin thought less about the hot ball in the sky than the cooler one that would show its face in five hours and its full face in five days. On Wednesday night, he would have another opportunity to return his world.

  He took a moment to think about several people, including the woman he wanted to make his wife. He thought about Sarah frequently but never more than he had in the past few weeks. He obsessed about their future, the difficult sales pitch ahead, and the running clock.

  Kevin wanted badly to propose to Sarah now. He couldn't imagine anything more satisfying than grabbing her hand and running through the portal on June 22, but he continued to question whether the time was right.

  He knew he might have just one shot to sell her on 2013 and didn't want to blow it. By giving their relationship another month, he would surely increase the odds that she would follow him into the next century. Another four weeks together might make all the difference.

  Kevin thought about Sadie as well. For days he had tried to justify his actions on her birthday. Why had he kissed her that night when he could have exercised a dozen other options? Was he really ready to let her go? If not, then what was he doing with Sarah?

  In the end, the answers didn't matter. Sadie had finally taken his advice and started to circulate. She reconnected with a childhood friend named Roy Phillips at a church picnic and went roller-skating with him on Monday. When she returned from the date and greeted her housemates with bright eyes and a wide smile, Kevin felt something he hadn't felt in several months: a pang of jealousy.

  Kevin thought also of Andy, Maude, and his relatives on Garnet Street. He knew that Andy and Maude might face a difficult transition in the weeks to come and that Celia, Randolph, and Lloyd would certainly face one. He vowed to do what he could to make their lives better before he left 1910 for good.

  When Kevin reached the city limits at the intersection of Residence and Ninth, he walked to a dilapidated bench and sat. He stretched his legs and stared at a mining supplies warehouse that loomed across the street.

  The building was impressive, as utilitarian structures go. It was large, for one thing. With a concrete foundation, sturdy cedar sides, and an extension that shot out the back, it took up nearly an entire city block. Unfortunately for those who worked in the building six days a week, it sat on the wrong side of town. Kevin didn't remember everything from Walt's Walking Tour, but he did remember one thing: nearly everything east of Seventh Street had burned to a crisp.

  As he drifted off and gazed at the dense forests to the north, he thought again about those who lived in town and about his obligations. Though he knew he couldn't stop the coming conflagration, he knew he had the power to warn and save.

  Kevin thought of his wise, compassionate, all-knowing mother, who always seemed to have the right answer. What would she do in a situation like this? Would she ride through Wallace like a turn-of-the-century Paul Revere and warn residents that the fires were coming? Or would she let history run its course and let people die?

  He remembered as well a conversation between his parents that he had overheard when he was eight. His mother had tried to persuade his father to visit Mount St. Helens, where a mutual friend had died during the May 1980 eruption. The friend, Michelle Preston Richardson, the original Shelly Preston, had supposedly traveled back in time thirty-one years and saved several people from unpleasant fates before fate unpleasantl
y took her. Did Kevin have a similar obligation to save others? He didn't know and wasn't sure he'd ever know.

  Kevin returned his attention to the warehouse and saw two workers walk out the front door. They slapped each other on the shoulders, laughed, and moved quickly down Residence toward the center of town, where saloons, restaurants, and assorted amusements, including the ones between Cedar and the river, awaited.

  He envied their blissful ignorance. They had only their next beer and next girl to consider, not the fates of many lives. They would make the most of each day, even if that day offered no more than the one before, and repeat their routines until someone or something took those routines away.

  When the laughing men vanished around a corner, Kevin got up from the bench, turned to the west, and began the walk to Maude's. He inhaled and detected the fragrant smell of lilac, a flowering shrub that his mother grew in Unionville. Then he took another breath and detected something else: the faint smell of smoke.

  He knew the fire that produced it wasn't the inferno that would char three million acres, but he knew it was significant. It was a sign that the driest woods in memory had started to burn. Change was coming. It was coming soon. The question now was what he should do about it.

  CHAPTER 58: SADIE

  Sunday, June 26, 1910

  Sadie balanced a twelve-foot pole in her hands with the care of a high-wire artist as Kevin Johnson and Roy Phillips, pants rolled up, stepped out of a canoe and waded their way through a marshy inlet to the south bank of the Coeur d'Alene River. She knew the odds of tipping over in two feet of stagnant water were small, but she didn't want to take any chances.

  "Do you want me to pull you in?" Kevin asked.

  Sadie glanced at Sarah, who faced her in the middle of the boat, and saw her shake her head.

  "I think we're OK where we are," Sadie said.

  "Are you sure?" Kevin asked with a grin. "You don't want to drift off. There are strange and dangerous men in these parts, bankers even."

  Sarah looked over her shoulder.

  "We'll take our chances, Mr. Johnson," she said. "You boys run along and do your hunting and gathering while Sadie and I visit."