The waving palmetto fronds, the distant long-leaf pines tall skinny sentinels in a sea of pale green, the white-sand road snaking through the foliage, the empty flatness of the horizon — when I was here I could pretend nothing had ever changed, that this corner of central Florida was still a rural place, where cattle and horses outnumbered humans, and a swimming hole was more common than a swimming pool. There had been a bubbling spring out there once, where we had occasionally ridden the ponies, in those first few years before I became a Serious Show Rider — we had packed lunches for the ride, which took a couple of hours in all, and rode out with our bathing suits under our jeans and t-shirts. The ponies swam, too, and a few rolled. It hadn’t been so long ago, really. Change had been slow to come to our little piece of paradise. But when it had come, it had come with a vengeance. That spring was long gone… or was it? It was probably the centerpiece of some McMansion golfing community, if it hadn’t dried up when canals had been dredged to drain the cypress swamps.
Still, old Florida was here, on the land I had to hold tight. I looked left and right, across my domain. Mine and old Wilcox’s. But no — I remembered — Wilcox had sold out. Moved off to the Nature Coast, given up on the land he’d said he’d never give up on. I remembered when he decided to decamp to the house boat where he’d spent longer and longer vacations. “Too many people here these days,” he’d said, and that was ten years ago. He was older than me, an adult when I was still riding ponies — he’d be in his seventies now. He’d had a gator hunting license, and we’d all wanted to go with him in his skiff, out on the big lake up the road, hunting killer lizards. A bunch of bloodthirsty kids. I smiled to think of it, then looked out past the cypress dome in the distance. It had been a place of safety, a shelter for Wilcox-branded cattle on hot days and during chilly rains, a shady spot to rest during long summer rides.
Now it belonged to developers.
My toes curled in my boots. That cypress dome was hundreds of years old. It rose up, smokey and ethereal against the brilliant sky, the green-feathered branches still ghostly with winter’s pale gray as they reached spindly fingers towards the midday sun. In another month they would be brilliant green, shimmering with life. The bald eagles who roosted there would have youngsters to teach to hunt and to fly. Were bald eagles even endangered anymore? Could they save the cypress? Even if the government stopped the cypress from being destroyed, wouldn’t they just clear out the land around the dome, letting the pesticides from the inevitable golf course run into the dark waters and do their dirty work for them?
Hope sidestepped, reaching for another mouthful of dusty grass, and I turned back quickly to steady him before he slipped on the sandy embankment and sent us both tumbling down the side of the mound. Then I saw it, not to the south and the east where I had been gazing, nor to the west where the farm lay, but back to the north, in the pine savannah.
Smoke.
My heart caught in my chest, surely stopping for one reflexive moment, and my vision swam a little. I shook away the dizziness and the panic and turned around in the saddle, squinting through the half-broken live oak behind me. Through the tangles of kudzu vine and browning oak leaves, I could see it — a smudge of black idly tracing heavenwards. I looked up above the tree and the faintest blur of gray, like a half-formed cloud, was forming in the flawless sky.
“Oh, shit, shit, shit,” I told Hope, who picked up his head, grass poking from his lips, and looked back at me, catching the icy fear in my voice. He straightened and turned around so quickly he nearly tumbled right over, and I snatched up the reins quickly, before he could do something stupid and leave me out here in the woods with a wildfire on my hands.
If that’s what this was.
Maybe it wasn’t, I thought, nudging Hope along to a spot further down the trail where I could see north. Maybe it was a camper. A hobo. The Rainbow People looking for less crowded stomping grounds south of the Ocala National Forest. Anything less threatening than a wildfire in a very, very dry season.
I thought of the rock-hard ground, of Ivor’s lameness, tho dry damn winter, when had it rained last? I couldn’t remember. Spring had been a succession of sunlit, golden days.
We moved past the last stand of trees, just before the path started to wind down to the palmettos again, and then I could see it through Hope’s black-tipped ears: the dark smudge of smoke, rushing much more quickly heavenwards now that I could see it clearly. That was no campfire. That wasn’t even the Rainbow People. That was a wildfire, blazing away in the pine savannah to the north.
I turned Hope so fast he stumbled and kicked him into a trot, regardless of the careful riding I usually treated his unspoiled little brain to, and we went skidding and sliding down the sandy path, emerging into the hot sun at the bottom and bolting into a hard gallop for home.
Almost immediately I reined back, hard, Hope half-rearing from the hold on his mouth.
At the bottom of the shell mound, a merry little fire was blazing away, looking for all the world like the site of a summer camp singalong. There should have been children dancing around it, waving marshmallows on the ends of sticks. It was that perfect, that round, that precise.
I heard a rustle and rattle in the underbrush to my right and whipped around, pulling Hope in a prancing circle, knocking my hard hat against the dangling fingers of the oak trees, just as a tiny flame peeked up over the rim of the shell mound, its orange flames licking at the base of the trees that clung to the sandy hillside. And beyond, barely visible through the thick trees, down in the palmettos — a figure running, a metal can glinting in the sunlight as it clanked against the person’s legs.
The strip of fire left burning in his wake ran perfectly straight. An alarm bell went off in my head.
I’d been set up.
I shook my head, trying to pin down the rising tide of panic in my chest, and leaned over Hope’s neck, peering through the branches as he pranced and sidestepped. “Be still,” I hissed. “Stand up!” I had to see —
The silver canister at the running person’s side, the spout of flame pouring down into the dry palmettos, the trail of fire rising up behind him.
I saw, I saw.
I pulled Hope around to the left again, facing him towards home, and stuck my heels into his sides. Beside us, the little flame burst up the side of a turkey oak, ringing the lowest branches of the tree in a shining orange halo, and my urging became quite unnecessary. Hope was more than ready to get the hell out of there. Jaw set, hands taut on the reins, I sat back against the saddle’s cantle and let him slither and slide down the sandy hillside, wondering just what he’d do when he saw the fire waiting for him at the bottom of the trail.
But Hope was a jumper, and he probably thought his whole life had been leading up to this moment. At last, everything made sense to him! Before we reached the bottom of the trail he was gathering himself up, and I leaned forward and caught up with his motion just as he launched himself over the rising flames. I glanced down as we soared over the fire, which was rapidly evolving from its harmless little campfire origins to a blazing brushfire, and saw that dry tree branches, fallen from some forgotten storm and rattling with dead brown leaves, had been pulled across the trail. We were jumping a fire that had been intentionally set to trap us out here.
I processed this horror in the half-a-breath it took Hope to clear the flames, and then we were galloping flat-out through the twisty trail just outside of the shell mound, his breath coming hard and fast with every hoofbeat. I leaned with him around the turns, holding him up with my inside leg to help him avoid a stumble, a fall, and then when we hit the straightaway I really let go. Hope went soaring across the palmetto scrub like a racehorse, his hooves drumming on the hard white sand, and I pressed my knuckles into his withers like a gallop girl at the racetrack and hoped like hell he didn’t hurt himself as Ivor had done, or worse, that he didn’t stumble in his panic and send me flying, to lie and wait for rescue as the wildfire roared after me.
We w
ere nearly home before I had the courage to turn around and look, and when I did, I nearly fell right over his shoulder from the shock. Distant now, the low hump of the shell mound had become a tower of flames, black smoke pumping into the air as the orange inferno devoured the oak trees where we had been gazing at the winter scenery not ten minutes before. The inferno was spreading in a long line north, following the direction that the figure with the metal can had been running, livid fire red-gold against the faded green of the prairie.
It had barely rained in months.
This was going to be a fire for the record books. I realized, with a twist in my gut, I had no idea which way the wind was blowing. If the sea breeze from the Atlantic had anything to say about it, the fire would be knocking on our doorstep in a matter of hours.
Margaret and Tom were standing in the barn aisle, looking out at the smoke rolling into the blue sky. The pine trees towering along the property line stopped them from seeing the flames. When I reined back Hope to walk across the parking lot, they took one look at the sweat and foam rolling off him and came running.
“Is it that close?” Tom asked, clutching at Hope’s reins as if he was a racehorse coming in from a hard-fought win. “You had to run?”
“It’s at the shell mound,” I panted, kicking my feet from the stirrups. I jumped down while Hope was still walking, landing on the balls of my feet to protect my heels and toes from the hard pavement. “We were there enjoying ourselves one minute, and then there was fire boiling up everywhere the next.” I pulled the reins over Hope’s head and handed them in a big cluster to Tom. “It was set intentionally,” I said evenly, meeting his shocked eyes. “And professionally.”
“Professionally — what do you mean?”
“You know those cans that firefighters use to set controlled burns?” Wildlife refuges and nature preserves in the scrub and pine savannas were routinely set afire — the habitats had developed with lightning-sparked fires as part of their life cycle. The drought had prevented any burns this winter, though. “He had one of those. And he set it around the shell mound, while we were on it.”
“That’s attempted murder,” Margaret drawled. “You tellin’ me someone wants you dead?”
I shook my head. “That seems really extreme.” But at the same time, I wondered. How badly did those developers want that land? Or if it wasn’t them — an investor?
This was Florida, after all. Anything was possible, no matter how macabre or bizarre the crime. A horse trainer fried out in the middle of the wilderness while on a pleasure ride? Not the craziest headline of the week, let alone the day, probably.
“Let’s just call the fire department and see what’s going on,” I said hastily, to change the subject. I’d have plenty of time to worry if some Floridian mobster was trying to kill me once the barn and horses were safe.
“They’re on their way,” Tom said, leading Hope into the barn and towards the wash-stalls. “We called already.”
There was a whine of a siren down the road.
“That’ll be them.” I turned and headed for the Gator. They’d need the gate opened up if they wanted to get in here and protect the farm.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
We were waiting for a rescue that wasn’t going to come.
I sat on the Gator and and watched the fire trucks go past, wailing away, north towards the subdivision sitting beyond the neighboring property. The old Wilcox property. The one that couldn’t be turned into million-dollar houses until I sold my land and my rights to a Native American road that had become the only hope my farm had for survival.
I sighed and put my chin on my fist, waiting. Surely there would be a fire truck left for me. Surely they weren’t all going to sit up there by the tennis courts and the pool cabanas and the clubhouse, while rich people who had never been in the woods just outside their doorsteps drank iced tea and watched the smoke with a tourist’s detached curiosity. Surely not.
Finally, I saw a bright red pick-up truck with red and white lights heading up the road. Bold lettering informed me that this was the fire chief. I hopped down from the Gator and ran down to the roadside, holding up a hand. The truck slowed and pulled over. A window glided down and a round-faced man in a ball-cap blinked at me. He rubbed at his goatee and regarded me for a moment. “You okay, ma’am?” he asked eventually, as if he couldn’t work out if I was crazy or not.
“There’s a fire just east of my property here,” I explained, trying to keep the angry edge from my voice. “None of the fire trucks have stopped here?”
“That’s right, they’re heading towards Eagle Preserve to protect the houses now, ma’am.”
“What about my farm? I have a barn, I have thirty-some horses, I have a house, I have outbuildings —”
He heard the panic starting to creep into my voice and held up a hand. “You got horses?”
“Yes, yes, I have horses!” I waved a hand at the farm sign, which featured a jumping horse right there on it. Could he not see? “Millions of dollars in horses!”
The fire chief shook his head. “I didn’t even know there was still horses out here. All right, listen. I’ll send a forestry engine your way. They can get into the woods with chainsaws, cut you a firebreak. But the prevailing wind is southerly, so unless the fire cuts into the woods due north of you, you oughta be fine.”
“The houses are north of the fire, so in that case they’re not even in any danger,” I argued.
“Lady, I gotta be sure nothing breaks out near the houses. I’m sorry. If you are in any danger we will be here. You have my word on that.”
I clutched the frame of the window, not willing to let him go. His radio squawked urgently and he looked at me with tired eyes. “Lady, please. Let me shut down this homeowner’s association and I’ll send some guys down here.”
“You promise it’s not going to affect me,” I said urgently.
“I can’t promise you that.” He sighed. “But I can tell you it probably won’t.”
Probably. His radio squawked again, voices calling out coordinates and unit numbers, and he sighed again and picked up the microphone from its dock on the dashboard. I backed away, hands up to concede defeat, and looked back at the smoke rising above the trees as the truck pulled out, scattering gravel in its wake. Probably.
Tom was putting a clean and dripping-wet Hope back in his stall when I walked back into the barn. “Where’s the fire truck?” he asked, sliding the stall door shut. I chose to ignore the fact that he hadn’t properly dried the horse, in light of larger events.
“We’re not getting one yet. Not until the homeowner’s association at Eagle Preserve is satisfied their mansions aren’t going to get singed.” I sighed and sat down on one of the folding chairs outside the tack room. Through the eastern barn door, I could see the endless plumes of smoke, roiling into the blue sky. “We just have to wait. He said it probably won’t affect us.”
“He? Probably?” Margaret came out of the tack room with a coiled hose in her hand. “Who said that? And where are the sprinklers for the indoor?”
“In the storage bin by the arena. And it was the county fire chief.”
“You want someone from Forestry out here anyway,” Margaret grumbled. “Those city boys don’t know nuthin’ about forest fires. Now I need to find the sprinklers. You gotta keep everything wet as you can get it. I’m gonna set up all the sprinklers around the tree-lines and then I’m lettin’ ’em rip.”
I nodded and Margaret went marching off, looking important and satisfied with herself with the prospect of an emergency she felt she alone could handle. Margaret the wild woodswoman, I thought, following her old boss through the wilds, riding a narrow little Arab over mountains and through rivers. She could deal with natural disasters like a wildfire with the same grim-faced determination as she attacked flipping the compost pile or stacking the hay delivery.
Tom came over to stand before me, coiling and uncoiling a lead shank and looking pale beneath his dark tan. “We haven’
t had big fires around here in years. I didn’t think there was enough woods left anymore.”
“I guess you don’t need much. And besides, there’s a good thousand acres out there. That’s enough to burn for a few days, probably.”
He shook his head, looking out at the smoke. “I’m sure it will pass. When we had those big fires in ’98, hardly anyone got burned out.”
“I’m sure you’re right,” I said quietly, willing him to go away. Hardly anyone got burned out, sure, but some folks had.
The fire lit up the night, an orange glow that burned our eyes when we looked directly east, as if one of the fireworks displays from the nearby theme parks was just exploding, and exploding, and exploding without ceasing — and doing it all in near-silence. We were too far away to hear the crackling and popping of the flames, to hear the groans of trees as they snapped and succumbed, sinking to the earth in a shower of lethal embers. Ash floated down gently on the breeze and landed on our faces and in our hair, little flakes swirling and settling like dirty snow, and here and there rested the ghostly shapes of fully-formed palmetto and oak tree leaves, spirits of lost trees which dissolved into nothingness if you touched them.
The smoke spread out in a pall over the farm, flattening beneath the starry sky above and creeping over the gables of the barn and arena. We closed the barn doors and the north-facing stall windows to keep out the ash and smoke as best we could. The south-facing stalls looked out on the peace and quiet of the paddocks, empty tonight as we tried to keep everyone’s lungs clean and clear, but the orange firelight gleamed against the dark tree trunks and the black-board fencing with an unrelenting reminder of the danger approaching. The horses paced their stalls and snorted, shaking their heads and striking at their doors. No one wanted to be so close to fire.
At midnight we heard the wailing of fire trucks grow closer than they had been all night, and then there was a terrible racket as the trucks blew their horns at the front gate. Tom got up and raced for the Gator, driving it at top speed down the driveway, and minutes later a massive convoy of heavy-duty fire engines and a few National Guard jeeps were lining up in the parking lot, their hoses aimed towards the smoky palmettos to the east. I got up from my folding chair, where I’d been leaning against the barn wall in uneasy observation of the glowing wilderness, and went over to find out what was happening to my farm.
Show Barn Blues Page 26