A National Guardsman in camouflage came over to meet me. “We’re here to protect your property, ma’am,” he announced before I could say anything. “The wind is driving this thing south, but there’s no telling if it might jump over this way.” He looked past my shoulder, towards the mass of barn and arena huddled in the darkness beyond the flames. “You have horses in that barn?”
“More than two dozen,” I said grimly. “More than I have trailer-space for.”
He nodded. “Lawn sprinklers?”
“Along the tree lines.” I pointed to the watery barricade Margaret had set up. “North-side, and over to the east where I border the woods.”
“And the horses — you can let them loose if you have to, right?”
I swallowed. I felt that old fear rise up in my throat like a bad taste. My Sailor, running loose without me — there would be no reins dangling, this wasn’t the same thing. There was the county highway, though… I shook my head. “I can leave them loose, but I’d rather it not come to that. The paddocks?”
He shook his head. “If we tell you to get them out, get them out, shoo them down the driveway, and shut the doors behind them. At that point, confining them in a paddock is no better than inside the barn.”
I would not be sick. I would not be sick. I would not be sick. “You tell us if it comes to that.”
The Guardsman nodded. His face was dark against the firelight behind him, but I could see his jaw was strong and set. He looked ready to take on Mother Nature for me. I wanted to put my trust in him, so I did — what choice did I have? But I went back and called for Tom and Margaret, so we could get halters on the horses.
Just in case.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
“Ma’am?”
I snapped awake, and immediately started coughing. The smoke was thick in the tack room, drifting around the ceiling and swirling through the bottles on top of the highest shelves. I sat bolt upright on the folding chair, shocked I could’ve fallen asleep. The clock’s hands pointed to the three and the five. Three o’clock in the morning, and this was still going on. Christ. “What’s happening?”
The National Guardsman was leaning around the door frame, looking ready to bolt back down the barn aisle. “Ma’am I need you to get all the hoses in this barn and bring them out to the edge of the arena there.”
I jumped up, blood roaring in my brain, and swayed a little as my vision swam. “What — is the fire here —” I stammered, and the guardsman nodded tightly.
“It’s close. I have to get back out there. We sent in a team with chainsaws to make a bigger firebreak. I might have to call them back in, though. The wind is picking up.”
“The wind —” He was gone, and I was left talking to the four walls and the thousands and thousands of dollars in saddles and bridles lining them. I put an exhausted hand to my head, longing for just a moment of peace to take it all in, and then shook it off and ran out the door.
Probably, he’d said, the son of a bitch. He could shove his probably…
The barn was lit up like noontime, and the horses were all in various states of panic, pacing their stalls, kicking their doors, banging their water buckets together. Ivor slammed a fore-hoof against his door when he saw me and neighed shrilly, as if he was demanding answers. I didn’t have any for him.
In the arena, Margaret and Tom were throwing bales of hay into an untidy pile in the center of the ring. As I approached, they emptied the Gator and jumped back in, wheeling it around towards me. “What are you doing?” I called. “We need the hoses!”
“We’ll get ’em now,” Margaret said. “I wanted some hay stowed in case we lost the hay-shed.”
I opened my mouth and shut it again. The tractor was in the hay-shed, and the drag and the extra fence posts and a whole lot of flammable cans of paint and oil and varnish… at this point, the hay-shed was a very expensive bomb.
“Wouldn’t take much to lose the whole building,” Margaret continued, and I could only nod. “So now we got some hay to tide us over, just in case. Stay right here, we’ll start connecting the hoses.” She gave Tom a tap on the arm and he floored the gas pedal, roaring away in the Gator.
I turned then and saw the fire for the first time, roaring away in the slash pines that stood nearly a hundred feet tall, just beyond the covered arena’s red-shingled roof.
It seemed isolated, a trail of fire that had somehow wandered away from the rest of its party. The red glow of the wildfire’s main body had passed south while I had been sleeping, and I thought the light looked a bit paler. Maybe Margaret was right and we had needed to wait for the fellows from Forestry all along. They had taken their massive fire engines down the trail, their huge tires trampling down the black-ringed hoof prints Hope had left in the white sand, and the firemen were somewhere out there now, in the palmettos and the pines, doing their best to put out the fire and save not just my farm, but the hotels and houses further south. There was a big golf course just down the road that would probably help them out a lot in that quarter.
Right here, though, we had this little fire, this renegade broken lose of the mothership, and it was a problem for me to deal with. “You’re not getting my barn,” I announced to the flames, and I went marching forward to do battle. There was a sprinkler out there in the corner of the property, stuck in the little verge between the arena and the tree-line. I’d pick that up and spray it deeper into the woods, soak everything in sight. Wet things couldn’t burn, I knew that much. I’d get the whole damn place soaking wet.
“Is the wind changing?” Tom asked a few minutes later, dragging lengths of hose through the arena. They’d connected every hose in the barn, pilfering from the wash-stalls and the aisles, end-to-end. We had one giant super-hose now, but as I watched him train the water jet alongside my pathetic little sprinkler, and saw how much brush needed to be soaked and how little we had to do it with, I felt a wave of discouragement. Had they really needed to send all the fire engines into the woods? They couldn’t leave me one?
“I can’t tell what the wind is doing,” I complained. “It’s all just smoke now.” Smoke burning my eyes and my nose, obscuring the night sky, wafting behind me to cling to the ceiling of the arena, as if it was already ablaze. Already — no, that was the wrong word. I wouldn’t use it, and the arena would never go. I spotted some embers glowing on a nearby turkey oak and set my sprinkler on it, feeling triumphant when the red sparks were extinguished immediately. Gotcha, bastards. I held the sprinkler by the stake that was meant to anchor it to the ground and it was spitting water all over me — I wouldn’t be catching fire tonight, either. I was drenched.
Thank goodness I was. I squinted up at the inferno above me, the flames soaring through the slash pine nearest the property line, just feet away from the shriveling green St. Augustine grass which lined the arena as neatly as any suburban lawn, and aimed my feeble water jet at the lowest branches, when a burst of light made me stagger backwards, flailing as a million hot pinpricks assailed my bare skin.
The tree had exploded, the hot sap coursing through its branches unable to take another moment of the ferocious heat. There was a starburst of white and gold that danced purple and red against my closed eyelids, and it seemed to match the thousand little burns biting at my skin. I rubbed at my arms and face frantically, shaking my head from the pinpricks of heat, but they were gone in an instant, extinguished by all the water I’d been pouring over myself in my effort to spray the trees. Then there was a hand on my shoulder, pulling me backwards, away from the fire and the fight at hand. I struggled against the pressure, trying to wriggle away. Didn’t they understand? “I have to fight this thing!”
“We have an engine coming.” The National Guardsman’s deep voice was in my ear, firm and commanding, comfortably in charge. “We need you out of the way to let it pass.”
I subsided, feeling a surge of relief that the professionals would be taking over, and let him pull me back, up the little slope and under the rail of the covered
arena. The smoke was billowing under the roof and the bright arena lights high above us, casting strange shadows on the clay footing. I blinked; between the slippery shadows and the glare of the blazing wildfire just outside the arena, it was hard for my burning eyes to focus. I wondered how bad it was in the barn, and thanked the heavens for the lofty ceilings. The worst of the smoke should stay high in the rafters.
Then I jumped; the National Guardsman was slapping my ass.
“What the hell?” I spun around and fixed him with a steely glare, or as steely a glare I could manage when my eyes were red and streaming from woodsmoke.
He almost smiled, the rigid corners of his mouth wobbling a little. “You had a little bit of a fire on your rear, ma’am. I took care of it for you, but you’ll need new blue jeans.”
I sighed. “The least of my concerns. Where the hell is the truck?”
He pointed.
Cautiously, rattling along the sloping verge between the arena and the forest, the big yellow and white fire engine was creeping towards the fire line. It looked like some hybrid between a water truck and a war tank, with fire truck tendencies just the same. The tires were massive, for crushing brush and debris under its treads on the way to the scene of some wildfire. But in this case, it was just demolishing my expensive sod.
I’d plant more, if it didn’t all burn down around my ears.
The National Guardsman left my side without a word, running back towards the fire engine and shouting commands as the firemen and guards jumped out. They were unreeling their hoses and winching this and hooking up that, yelling and pulling down masks and fixing gloves. They were preparing to go to battle, I realized, to do war against the massive fire that was threatening the farm. They were fighting for my farm at last.
The guardsman started to duck under the railing and I shouted. “Hey!”
He paused, half under the arena railing, and squinted at me. “What?”
“You save my barn, I’ll cook you dinner,” I shouted. “Right here at the farm.”
The stoic corners of his face gave way to a crinkling, sparkling grin. “You mean it?”
“I mean it.” I put my hands on my hips. “But you gotta keep this roof above my head first.”
He nodded, still smiling. “You got it, ma’am,” he called back, and gave me a sharp salute before he ducked the rest of the way under the railing. Then he was running down the slope, shouting commands and reaching into the engine’s cab for protective gear.
I just stood there a few minutes longer, dripping wet, clothes dotted with burns, a suspiciously breezy place in my posterior where I suspected my jeans had been more than just scorched. I watched the firemen dive into the woods, hoses out, axes glinting in the arena lights and the flames’ glow. I heard the roars of the chainsaws from somewhere deep in the woods, saw the trees to the south begin to fall, crashing to the ground. But the fire directly in front of us was still right at the edge of the property, its flames licking the air just yards from the arena roof. I thought of the hay-pile in the center of the arena and wished that Margaret had been slightly less efficient in bringing all that combustible material into the arena. If the flames made it over to the shingles…
Another tree fell, closer this time. Hot pine needles and flaming pine cones rolled across the wet grass behind the fire engine and glowed briefly before the dripping wet ground extinguished them. There would be more, I knew. I looked around and saw Tom standing still, his hose still in hand, watching the goings-on with wide eyes. “Tom!” I shouted. “We need to keep the hose on the grass! We’re not done yet!”
Not by a long shot. I went for my abandoned sprinkler and started hosing down the ground around the arena, and Tom did the same, working his way towards me. We hosed like a pair of old ladies in their garden on a Saturday morning, while the sounds grew louder and fiercer: the crashing of trees, the wailing of chainsaws, the ever-present roar, snap, and crackle of the flames, the shouting of the firemen. This is the longest night of my life, I thought, brushing water from my eyes as the sprinkler spat back at me, the plastic housings starting to separate from so much unorthodox usage. I need it to end.
It all just needed to end — this battle, this fight to the death, this war with nature. The dry pine trees and palmettos were just doing the work they had been put on this earth to do: to grow lean and brittle in the dry months, to go up in flames in a burst of light, the fire cleaning the undergrowth for new trees, the rock-hard pine cones splitting open with heat to release their seeds. Fire and water were always dancing in Florida, and the scrub lands needed both for life. It was my farm, and the golf courses, and the hotels, and the houses, that wanted the good without the bad.
I couldn’t help that. I loved Florida, but I had to win this one.
Florida, I can’t protect you if you destroy me.
I whispered the words to the angry flames, to the glowing embers floating on the air currents, to the roiling smoke bubbling over my head, to the trees and palmettos that trembled and waited for their turn to explode into a burst of orange light.
Nothing changed.
I retreated for a few minutes to the arena rail, to lean against the PVC and take the strain off my feet and my back, and also to survey what was happening over at the fire engine. Most of the firefighters had disappeared into the woods, trailing hoses behind them like fat pythons escaping into the underbrush. I looked up at the trees and noticed that for the first time, the pines closest to the arena were dark and dripping, the flames extinguished. Further into the woods, just a few more trees were left standing and still afire. The rest, for as far as I could see over the turkey oaks before my view was blocked, were either still burning, or broken-off and smoldering. Smoldering, but no longer blazing towards the heavens.
I felt a cool breeze at my back, fluttering the hairs of my messy ponytail around my neck, and then I wondered…
A figure emerged from the small tangle of men near the front of the engine and came up the hill towards me. My heart beat a little faster when I saw that it was the National Guardsman from before, coveralls pulled over his camouflage. He pulled off his helmet and wiped at the sweat on his face, leaving dark streaks of soot and black sand. “It’s turning,” he called. “The wind is changing. They’ll keep pushing it back, but Mother Nature is going to help us from here on out.”
Maybe Florida was listening.
Florida and the ranks of firefighters who knew the state’s messy secrets. Good-looking guys, some of these firefighters… especially this one.
Fully aware that I was one-hundred-percent emotionally unhinged, I stood a bit straighter and ran a hand through my half-singed hair, almost certainly making it worse. Hey, how good could a girl look when she’d been fighting a forest fire for the better part of a night? “You guys are amazing,” I told him earnestly. “I can’t thank you enough. Maybe I’ll have to invite you all to dinner,” I added teasingly.
“Oh, ma’am,” he said, his voice full of dismay and his eyes full of laughter. “You wouldn’t.”
I grinned. He started to smile in return, then his gaze flicked away, fixing somewhere over my shoulder. “What? Not more fire?” My heart sank to my shoes.
“No —” he took my arm and gently turned me. “Look through the arena, out to the west —” He pointed at the dark night sky, visible through the open walls of the arena. I followed the direction of his finger, narrowing my eyes to see what he saw.
A flash of light, a curtain of electric-blue that extended north and south from beneath a ragged-edged rolling cloud. A wall cloud. A thunderstorm. My heart began to race and goosebumps rose on my arms, just in time for the next puffing breath of cold air to race through the arena and flutter my hair.
“Oh, thank God.” I closed my eyes for a moment, fingers tightly wrapped around the wet railing. “We’re saved.”
The guardsman nodded, the skin on his face seeming to loosen a little, as if a long-held tension was dropping away. But his words were still guarded. “It co
uld just bring wind and lighting. Rain isn’t guaranteed.” There was a second flash, and a growl of thunder, to punctuate his dour lack of enthusiasm.
“But the wind is going the right way now,” I pointed out. “It’s turning the fire back.” The breeze fluttered the wet grass at our feet, growing stronger with every second. The storm was really flying at us now, the way that Florida storms tend to do when they are big and bad and full of danger. The weather radio was probably wailing, the weather service bot itching to tell us about hail, high winds, deadly lightning, possible tornadoes. Just another spring cold front. “And there’s nothing to the southeast of the woods but a golf course, so it’s not as if it’s going to endanger houses.”
Once that golf course had been pastures, a ranch house, and barns, but that wasn’t worth thinking about now.
The guardsman nodded, still watching the storm. “Maybe you’re right. It’s not my policy to put much stock in anything until I know for sure, though, and with weather you can’t never know for sure.”
He had a country way of speaking, though he never struck me as uneducated. I liked that balance. I liked him, a lot, although I was willing to grant it just might be the damsel in distress talking at the moment. “What’s your name?” I asked suddenly. If he was called away to work suddenly, how would I find him again? Have him over for that dinner? I was conveniently forgetting I wasn’t much of a cook.
“Luke,” he replied, turning towards me with another one of those rare smiles. “Luke Fowler.”
“Grace Carter,” I said formally. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Luke Fowler.” It was a country-sounding name, too.
Show Barn Blues Page 27