The Fire (Northwest Passage Book 4)

by John A. Heldt

  "It must have been awful at the hospital."

  "It was."

  "Was anyone there besides you?"

  "The Marshalls were there. So were a neighbor and the doctor. Otherwise, it was just me."

  "Did you have a chance to notify her family?"

  "Can we talk about something else?"

  Sadie nodded.

  "We can. I'm sorry."

  "There's no need to apologize, Sadie. You're curious. That's natural. It's just that Sarah's still a sore subject. The only reason I might seem even remotely normal now is because you're here. You're just what I needed," he said. "You're just what I need, period."

  "Thank you."

  Kevin sipped his coffee.

  "Let's get back to your story. What happened after you heard the news?"

  "When I'd heard that Sarah had died, I wrote to Maude and asked her what had happened to you. She didn't know much because she had gone to Coeur d'Alene that weekend to visit friends. She knew only that you hadn't been injured in the fire and had apparently left town on August 22 – after Sarah's graveside ceremony. No one knew where you had gone, but I had a pretty good idea. I remembered what I had read in Mr. Johnson's book."

  "Did you tell anyone about the diary?"

  Sadie shook her head.

  "No. Not at first. I was afraid people would laugh at me if I told them what I thought. Then I finally spoke to Andy. I thought he would laugh, too, but he didn't. He knew I was right. He said you had once told him that you were a time traveler from 2013. He encouraged me to find you."

  "So what happened next?"

  Sadie met his eyes.

  "I got on a train. On September 18, the day of the full moon, I returned to Wallace. I went to the rock shed on Garnet Street and put your gold coins in front of it, just like I was supposed to."

  "You must have been scared," Kevin said.

  "I was terrified. I didn't know where that thing would send me. I knew only that I had to try to find you. I so wanted to find you."

  Kevin kissed her hand and smiled.

  "So how did you find me? I was long gone by then."

  "When I opened the drawer of your nightstand to look at the book, I saw a card from a man named Joel Smith. I didn't know then if the information on the card was important, but I wrote it down anyway and kept it. When I got to this time, I found a telephone I could use and called Mr. Smith."

  "You called him? Just like that?"

  Sadie nodded.

  "I got right through too. I didn't even have to speak to an operator."

  Kevin smiled.

  "What did you tell him?"

  "I told him that I was your friend and that I wanted to find you. He asked if I was a stalker, and I said I didn't think so."

  Kevin bit his lip as he tried to stifle a laugh. He had the only woman in the world completely untainted by the cynicism of the modern age. He knew right then that he would never let her go.

  "So he just gave you my home address?"

  Sadie nodded again.

  "He thought it over for a minute and finally gave it to me. He said he didn't usually give out the addresses of students but said he had to make an exception in your case."

  "Did he give you a reason?"

  "He did. He said Kevin Johnson is a guy who needs a lucky break."

  Sadie met Kevin's eyes.

  "I guess that's me."

  Kevin grabbed both of her hands and smiled as he thought about the twists and turns of fate. He leaned across the table and gave her a long, soft kiss.

  "Yeah, you are. You most certainly are."

  CHAPTER 80: KEVIN

  Wallace, Idaho – Sunday, August 20, 2017

  Kevin didn't even try to resist the siren song. The moment he drove over Lookout Pass, he glanced at Sadie and asked where she wanted to go first – not where she wanted to go but rather where she wanted to go first. He could see from her eyes that she, too, had already settled on the general destination.

  "Let's just go to the cemetery," she said.

  "Are you sure you don't want to stop for lunch?"

  "I'm sure. Let's pay our respects and leave. I don't want to stay long."

  "OK."

  Kevin wasn't particularly fond of the graveyard either, but he knew it was the one place they had to go. If you wanted to commune with ghosts, then you went to where they were plentiful.

  He knew as well as anyone, of course, that you didn't need to visit a cemetery to see ghosts in this part of the country. They haunted every town, tree, and trail from St. Regis, Montana, to St. Maries, Idaho, and many points beyond. They haunted the death sites of the eighty-seven people who had perished in the fire and the homes and businesses of those who had survived it.

  Kevin hadn't returned to Wallace since June 29, 2013, the day his parents had turned Roger Johnson's property over to a real estate agent. He had no interest in returning to a town that reminded him of a painful past, even if the town also reminded him of a pleasant present. Four years after laying Sarah and the fire to rest, he saw no good reason to dig them up.

  Kevin knew full well, however, that you couldn't solve a problem by avoiding it. You solved it by addressing it head on. If he could exorcise a few demons by visiting a cemetery in Wallace, then why not give it a whirl?

  He brushed cookie crumbs off a shirt he had bought on Friday in Glacier National Park and shifted down as he approached a town that looked smaller and quieter than the one he had left. Though Wallace was the "Center of the Universe," according to a manhole cover on Sixth and Bank, it wasn't the booming community it had been at the time of the fire.

  That didn't mean it wasn't important. It was important as hell to the people in the car, but it was now a part of their past – a past they had come to bury. Taking Sadie's words to heart, Kevin pulled off Interstate 90 at Exit 62 and drove directly to the cemetery on the north side of town. If they stopped for lunch in the next hour, it would be in Kellogg or Coeur d'Alene.

  The tour of graves began in the old part of the cemetery, a section reserved for residents who had died before 1925. Sadie had asked to go there first, not because it was convenient or shaded but rather because it seemed like an appropriate place to start. Given the significance of at least two graves in the section, he couldn't argue otherwise.

  Kevin stared at the markers embedded in the lawn and thought about the people buried beneath them. He wondered whether Henry and Claire Hawkins, nineteenth-century pioneers, would have liked the man who had married their daughter. He wondered whether he would have liked them. He decided he probably would have. If children were a reflection of their parents, then Mr. and Mrs. Hawkins would have probably been all right.

  Kevin had waited just two months to propose marriage, popping the question on October 31, 2013, at a costume party in Albuquerque. He had put off the matter until the time was right and finally decided that the right time was shortly after Sadie, dressed as a pint-sized Pocahontas, politely lectured a physics professor, a U.S. Navy veteran, on the dimensions and capabilities of pre-World War I battleships. Kevin had dropped to a knee in Superman attire and asked Sadie to be his wife before more than forty vampires, werewolves, zombies, and mummies.

  Sadie had responded with hugs, kisses, and an unqualified yes. She'd been more than ready to legitimize their "sinful arrangement," even if it meant getting married in a Las Vegas chapel in November and not in a Unionville church in June. She had told Kevin that she didn't want to answer questions about her past from guests at the kind of wedding the Johnsons had wanted.

  Kevin had supported not only that request but also her interest in continuing her education. He had encouraged her to get her GED at the first opportunity, test out in as many courses as possible, and enroll in an online college that she had found particularly appealing.

  Sadie had proved to be as proficient in digital-age accounting as she had been in abacus-era figuring. She had earned a bachelor's degree in three years and landed more than a dozen job offers before accep
ting one from a firm that had allowed her to work mostly from home.

  Sadie had considered that requirement non-negotiable. She had wanted to work, yes, but she had also wanted to manage the day-to-day affairs of her most important client: the now 32-month-old firecracker she called her daughter. She considered producing, nurturing, and educating the child her greatest achievement.

  Born on December 10, 2014, Sarah Louise Johnson looked like her mother and acted like her father, or at least the way her father had acted as a toddler. She had already discovered the joy of problem solving, whether pushing chairs toward counters to grab plates full of cookies or slapping pull-up diapers on Max, the family's year-old Dachshund.

  There was never a debate about what to name the girl. Sadie had insisted from the start that the first daughter be named after the woman who still held a place in Kevin's heart. She had wanted to honor her friend in a way that was both symbolic and substantive. She had told Kevin that she would not compete with the memory of a former rival but would instead embrace it.

  Kevin thought about that rival as he guided his family to a headstone he had purchased but never seen. The artisan who had created the marker had carved not only Sarah's "married" name in the marble but also a rose and an apple – enduring symbols of a beautiful educator who would never be forgotten, at least by those who had loved her and were still around to cherish her memory.

  The family stared at the grave for a moment and then did what they could to make the site more appealing. Kevin wiped the stone with a wet cloth and removed dirt and debris that had accumulated in the recesses. Sadie and Sarah cleared leaves that had gathered near the base.

  Then Sadie did something else. She handed Sarah to Kevin and walked about twenty yards to the car. When she returned, she carried a vase of fresh flowers that Kevin had purchased for her on a whim as they had left West Glacier and begun the twelve-hour drive home. She placed the vase in front of the stone, pulled out a single daisy, and returned to her family.

  Sadie gazed at the marker another moment before turning to face Sarah and dropping to a knee. She looked her pig-tailed daughter in the eyes, put the flower in her hands, and asked the toddler to gently place the daisy on the grave of her namesake.

  Sarah did as instructed and more. She walked to the three-foot-high stone, touched it with both hands, and gave it a hug and a kiss, drawing even more moisture from her parents' eyes.

  From the old graves the Johnsons moved to the new, or at least what qualified as new in a cemetery that had ceased accommodating the dead in 1982. Of particular interest were the resting places of Maude Parker Duvalier, Preston Pierce, Josephine White Remington, and her husband Thomas. All stood within a short stretch of each other in a section by the main cemetery road. Kevin knew the fates of all of them, thanks to research he had done in the fall of 2013.

  Maude had died on September 2, 1945 – the day World War II had come to an end on the deck of the USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay. She had never remarried but had remained active in local affairs, serving on several public boards and once running for mayor. She had also become a philanthropist of the first order, funding scholarships for girls and donating Marcus Duvalier's books, maps, and periodicals to a Carnegie library that had opened in Wallace in 1911.

  To Kevin's knowledge, Maude had never again associated with Andrew O'Connell, who had left Spokane in 1914 for the greener pastures of Portland, Oregon. He had risen to managing editor of the city's largest daily newspaper and won more than a dozen awards for excellence in journalism before dying on the job in 1950. He had left behind a wife and three children.

  Preston Pierce had lived a less exemplary life. After getting married and divorced three times in fifteen years, he had become embroiled in a 1929 banking scandal and served four years in prison for fraud and embezzlement. He had died wifeless, childless, and nearly broke in 1947.

  Kevin paid closest attention to one of the last headstones workers had erected before the county had closed the cemetery to future interments. The woman under the stone had done more than exceed his expectations. Josie White had lived a life worthy of emulation in any age.

  After graduating first in the Shoshone County High School Class of 1913, Josie had matriculated to the University of Idaho and then to the University of California at Berkeley, where she became one of the first American women to earn a doctorate in chemistry. She went on to teach at four universities, write more than a hundred academic papers, and assist in the development of sulfa drugs in the 1930s.

  Throughout her illustrious career, however, she had never forgotten her roots. According to her obituary, she had returned to Wallace nearly every year for commencements, parades, and civic ceremonies before retiring to her hometown in 1960. Four children, ten grandchildren, three great-grandchildren, and scores of friends and colleagues had attended her funeral in 1980.

  One man who hadn't was a time traveler who hadn't yet been born. Kevin hadn't learned about Josie's success until reading about her in the microfilm room of the university library in Albuquerque. He had taken special note of a commencement speech in 1948, where Josie had singled out a science teacher named Kevin Johnson as her greatest academic influence.

  Realizing that his true calling was not higher education but public education, Kevin had dropped out of graduate school at the end of his first semester, entered an alternative teacher certification program, and eventually found a job as a science instructor at a high school in Bend, Oregon. He planned to begin his third full year at the school on Monday.

  When he was done reminiscing among the dead, Kevin escorted his family to a shiny black Volkswagen Beetle that had held up surprisingly well over the years. He had come to value the vehicle as much as anything he might find in a Fourth of July parade.

  Kevin buckled his smiling daughter in her safety seat, handed her a small teddy bear, and rubbed noses with her until she broke into giggles. He returned to the driver's seat, gave his dispirited wife two much-needed kisses, and turned on the ignition.

  A few minutes later, he found the on-ramp, rejoined America's longest freeway, and started toward Kellogg, Spokane, and home. He took a moment to look at the sky and the distant hills and noticed that they were blue and green – not black, not gray, but blue and green, the colors of renewal.

  Kevin smiled. He knew that even if the sky were gray tomorrow, it would remain blue in his mind. His last mental snapshot of Wallace, Idaho, would not be of fire, smoke, and death but rather of sunshine, giggles, and kisses. That, he concluded, was progress.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  If there is one thing I've learned in producing four novels, it's that you can't do it alone and shouldn't do it alone. Authors can make even a great work better by seeking the insights and opinions of those who know and love literature. I am deeply indebted to several such people, including Cheryl Heldt, Esther Johnson, and Christine Stinson for reading the early drafts; Bobbi de Montigny, Mary Heldt, Becky Skelton, and Diana Zimmerman for reading the later drafts; and Aaron Yost for bringing the process to a close with the skill of a professional editor.

  I am also grateful to Laura Wright LaRoche for producing the striking cover and to several others for providing subject expertise and reference assistance. They include Jon Johnson, Leslie Teske Mills, Craig Stoess, and staff from the Boston Public Library, Idaho State Historical Society, Library of Congress, National Park Service, Newseum, and Northern Pacific Depot Railroad Museum. I offer my thanks to all.

  In preparing this novel, I consulted several authoritative sources. They include The Big Burn by Timothy Egan, Year of the Fires by Stephen J. Pyne, Northwest Disaster: Avalanche and Fire by Ruby El Hult, Mining Town by Patricia Hart and Ivar Nelson, and newspaper articles from the Idaho Press, New York Times, Portland Oregonian, Spokane Spokesman-Review, Wallace Miner, and Wallace Times. I strongly recommend the first three books to those wishing to learn more about the Great Fire of 1910, one of the most interesting and underappreciated events in the history of the United
States.