After the Fire

by Daniel Robinson

  “Since when did you take up working?” With the urgency relieved, Barnes felt good enough to joke a little while he waited for his crew to show.

  “Barnes,” Powell said, clapping a hand on Barnes’s shoulder, “Shit-goddamn, I always put in a double day’s work. You know that.”

  “You down there on the line with my boys?”

  “And girls. You got some honeys on that crew of yours.”

  “Yes. Good people. How was their line?”

  “I wasn’t digging in with them. I was something of a line-locator-slash-line-scout but I couldn’t see enough to be a scout and just flagged the line.”

  “What are you up here for?” Barnes looked over Powell’s shoulder wanting to see Chandler and his crew come walking over the rise.

  Powell took off his hardhat and wiped his brow. He said, “I came up here where I might be able to see a little better. But even up here you can’t see the active part of the fire. I talked with Max about that this morning.”

  “Where’s Max and my crew?”

  “Along the line. That’s a helluva digging crew you got there.”

  “Along the line?”

  Barnes dialed his radio to crew net and called Chandler. He spoke calmly to Chandler, both from not wishing to alarm his squad boss as well as from an uncertainty as to whether his own fears were warranted.

  He could not see the breath of the wind a thousand feet in elevation above him, could not know that within moments the passing front would exhale a last and bitter blow, a fuming whorl of air that would suck the oxygen from him and the valley he stood above.

  Barnes did not know that. But he knew something was wrong. Over two hundred fires had left him with an inchoate sense that the tragic could rest perilously on the wings of the wind.

  He talked with Chandler and told Chandler to prepare his people to evacuate their line. He called Max Downey, who was then walking back along the jumpers’ unfinished scratch line toward Chandler’s position. Max said he could not feel the wind changing in direction or increasing in velocity, that the front wasn’t going to be much more than a lowering of the temperature. Barnes argued.

  “It’s my fire, Barnes,” Max said. He was breathing hard.

  “It’s my crew and I want them heading out now.”

  “You want this fire, Barnes? Damnit, do you think you can run this fire better than me? You want this fire?”

  “Yes. Now. Double it back up the line to H-2. We’ll finish our pissing match there.”

  “It’s still my fire,” Max said. “We can tie it off and line out and catch any spots. But if you or your crew can’t handle it, then I’ll call in some Type-II crew that will.”

  “Max, damnit, listen to me—”

  Downey said something in response but Barnes did not hear him. He drew a quick breath as though he could not believe what was beginning. He slowly exhaled, “God.”

  As in the instant of a knife stroke, the world turned over. The winds, increasing and swirling on the ridge where Barnes stood, became a whirlwind. For a second, the oak leaves and piñon needles suspended in a sudden absence of wind and then exploded with a rattling percussion.

  A rolling mass of air raced into the valley.

  The tops of the oaks twirled and bent like grass stubble.

  Flames stood out as flags from the trees.

  A whirlwind of flame and smoke spiraled a hundred yards above the valley.

  The fire spilled across the ridge like mercury.

  And up the slope where Chandler and Max Downey and a dozen others waited, the fire cannonaded as in the chimney of a cabin fireplace.

  The temperatures rose by thousands of degrees.

  A ragged flag of flame began its run.

  “Oh-Jesus-God-All-Mighty,” Powell said.

  The developing flame showed fire and nature in an essential character—beautiful, ominous, uncontrolled, fully unleashed in ferocity.

  Barnes shivered in the heat and did not know that his finger remained keyed on his radio’s microphone.

  Barnes looked around and saw Hunter walking back toward the helispot where they had landed. He began to yell at Hunter but turned back to see that the fire had spotted below the diamond. He stepped closer to the edge of the ridge and could feel the wind eddying, could feel the wind pushing the fire toward him.

  A white hardhat turned a corner, and Warner looked up the slope at Barnes. Barnes saw in slow progression as a handful of firefighters trudged up the fireline. They moved too slowly, weighed down by their packs and tools that they should have already discarded.

  “Come on,” Barnes yelled, even though he knew they could not hear him.

  Warner looked at him. The fire’s roar deadened the valley and the ridge. The entire world was composed at that moment of the valley where the fire was and the ridge where a possibility lay.

  Warner turned and in that action saw the fire and began to run for the ridgetop. Each person below him also turned and saw and turned uphill again to run for safety. They discarded their tools and some pulled off their packs and threw them and some took their fire shelters from their waist belts and some opened their shelters and began to lie inside them.

  Barnes knew the helispot he stood on would not work for a safety zone. Not for a dozen people in their shelters. The helispot was little more than a wide spot on the ridge and the eddying wind would pull the shelters off them in a quick rush of flame.

  “Run,” Barnes yelled to Powell. “H-1.” He pointed along the ridge and both men began running.

  Barnes waved and yelled at Hunter as he ran toward them, “Back down H-1.”

  He came to George, who stood gaping at the blaze racing up toward them. “Run,” Barnes yelled, and he grabbed George by the shoulders, almost knocking him down in the process of pushing him forward along the ridge. “Come on.”

  “Oh God,” George said and stumbled a step before Barnes could grab him again and push him upright and toward the helispot.

  “Shut up. Stay with me. Run.”

  The wind blowing on Barnes kept increasing in swells and eddies as he ran. The original blast of wind had subsided but what might have been a gentler gust had increased greatly by the fire’s added wind. An increased heat in the fire fed the wind which fed the fire and the fire and the wind fed each other until the fire raced with its own wind across and along and up the ridge. The great mass of heated air pushed the ridge into one flame, tossing branches and ash and dust and burning pieces of wood and leaves high into the air and onto Barnes as he ran and over the ridge’s leeward side to start other spot fires which began to burn and race from that side of the ridge up toward the ridgeline where they ran, trapping them between two fires in a match to see which would kill them. The wind swirled and tossed the world as though hit by a tornado and an even deeper roar sent everything in the fire into an absolute silence of sound.

  Ahead of him, Barnes could see Powell reach Monterey and both disappeared into a ghost of smoke that shrouded the trail. Barnes swatted an ember that fell on the back of his neck but did not stop running even as he pushed George ahead of him.

  They coughed from the smoke, which then lay across the land with a tangible weight. His legs hurt and his lungs fought against him. His eyes teared. And they ran.

  Smoke shut the daylight down to a flicker.

  Light had turned to darkness which turned amber.

  As he ran, Barnes pulled the rolled Nomex shroud inside his hardhat down to protect the back of his neck.

  From the brands and sparks and embers falling around him as he ran, Barnes knew the fire had closed on him.

  He could not see the fire, only an amber smoke that swirled and shrouded the world into a Pandemonium.

  Barnes knew his world would be decided soon. Everything came to that ridgeline and the fire and a helispot he hoped would emerge quickly within the swirling amber.

  He ran on, keeping George running also, through the smoke too thick to see through, hoping that he stayed on the rid
getop and had not accidentally run off the side and led himself and George to death.

  The ridge opened and Barnes came upon Hunter and the others deploying their fire shelters in the helispot. It looked small, too small, but there was no other choice. They would get hot. They might die. But they had no alternative. Both sides of the ridge were on fire.

  Barnes blinked hard, trying to open his eyes through the smoke and ash. Embers burned his face. His heart pounded in his ears, and his thighs began to cramp. He coughed and yelled as he and the others opened their shelters, “Stay in them. Stay in them until we tell you to come out. Don’t run. Stay in them.”

  He tore open the plastic liner to his shelter, pulled out the shelter, shook it open, stepped inside the foot straps, bent and arched his body, and fell to the hot ground, pulling the shelter down on top of him. He scraped a divot in the sand in hopes that some oxygen might pool there. He lay inside the heat of his shelter and listened and panted and coughed. The fire sounded like a waterfall, and then it sounded like he was inside the waterfall.

  He said, “GOD.” He said it low but he said it in large letters and the single word echoed inside the fire’s roar.

  He hoped that none of the others in the helispot would panic and run.

  Aggie shouted, “We’re all right. All right. I’m all right.”

  Someone answered, “Hang in there.”

  Someone else, “How long?”

  “Hang in there.”

  “You okay?”

  “Yes.”

  “How long?”

  “Just hold tight.”

  “It’s getting hot.”

  “Hold tight.”

  “Hang in there.”

  “Buck up.”

  “Hail Mary, full of grace—”

  Barnes heard an explosion and knew it was a Dolmar and hoped that it lay far enough away that it would not throw fuel onto anyone in the helispot.

  Barnes could not think of much but he thought of Lopez and the others whom he knew had died.

  He thought of the feel of her body breathing into his as they slept.

  His shelter pulled and slapped, and Barnes held tight to the control straps. He hugged the ground. He tried to swallow but could not, and his lips had cracked from the dry heat.

  The fire’s roar subsided but was replaced by a long hiss, and then the fire roared again.

  Barnes lifted the edge of his shelter during a lull and saw smoke and fire brands but no sustained flame. He hoped that the fire had passed them but heard another roar and hugged his shelter back to the ground.

  His lungs ached from the smoke and his temples pounded.

  A few times its noise lessened, and Barnes thought of raising his shelter but the fire would erupt again as if it were teasing him.

  Lying under his shelter, hugging the ground, breathing smoke and dirt, he did not know when it was over. He might have passed out from a lack of oxygen but he was not certain of that either.

  He raised the side of his shelter and saw mostly smoke. What remained on fire was now remnant.

  He breathed into the ground as though he had held his breath for the time he had spent under the shelter. Suddenly he felt tired, a weariness both palpable and painful.

  He lifted his fire shelter and sat up. The wind had begun to clear the fire’s smoke and he looked around the helispot at the other fire shelters, all of them covered in dust and cooled embers and looking like insect pods.

  A sudden gust of wind blew smoke back down on him.

  He pulled his bandanna up to cover his mouth and nose and filter much of the remaining and still thick and suddenly acrid smoke. He coughed, and when the smoke cleared he removed his bandanna and spat. As the smoke cleared around him, he could see and breathe again.

  One nightmare had ended and one had just begun.

  He tried to speak but could not, so he opened a water bottle, gargled a mouthful, and then drank.

  Standing, he felt the weariness again extending along his body. From up the ridgeline, he could still hear the fire’s roar, now moving away from them.

  “Hunter?” he called. “Powell? Aggie? George? Come on out.”

  Slowly, each person lifted his shelter and crawled from beneath it. They tested their eyes and stretched and looked at each other with something like embarrassment.

  “Everyone okay?” Barnes asked.

  Hunter counted. “We’re all here.” He spat a mouthful of water on the ground.

  Barnes looked up at the amber, smoke-stained sun. He said, “Everyone stay put. I’ll check on the others.”

  “I’m going too,” said Powell, the jumper. He stepped closer to Barnes.

  “It’s best if just one person goes down. If I need help, I’ll call.”

  “There’s another group of jumpers that were following me up the back side. I’ll check on them while you go down the fireline.”

  Barnes agreed. He turned to Hunter. “Keep everybody here.” He pointed at the helispot as in emphasis. Then he coughed and added, “Make sure they get watered and nobody has shock. Then clear this helispot for the helicopters coming in. They should begin to fly over pretty soon. Eat if you can.”

  “Okay,” Hunter said. His eyes, dark and circular, looked bruised. He said after swallowing, “You sure? You sure you don’t want me to go along with you? Aggie can take care of this.”

  “No. Stay with these guys.”

  “You’re heading for some bad stuff. You sure now?”

  “We don’t all need to see this.”

  Barnes turned and walked slowly from the helispot along the trail they had run. He thought they had run a long distance, but they had not. In a fraction of the time it had taken him to run between the two helispots, he walked the distance.

  Powell walked behind him and when they reached H-2, they stopped before splitting up. The ground was hot on their boots. Neither man spoke. Each searched the slope first with quick, darting eyes, then a slow concentration to assemble an image of the day’s events. They both saw the first body on the slope below them.

  “We can check on this line later,” Powell said. “Why don’t we check on the other jumpers over the hump here?” He pointed in the direction Barnes had seen Powell walk from an hour earlier.

  “No. Only one of us needs to go down here. You get the others to the helispot with Hunter.”

  Powell started to walk off, and Barnes added without looking, “But thanks, man.”

  “You be careful.” And Powell disappeared over the hump in the ridge which had earlier been covered in oak brush but was then a rise of charred and ashen stubble.

  The world had turned over and he felt for a moment that he stood above someplace different, that he stood above some landscape he had never before seen and that he stood there without any compass to provide direction.

  For an age, he stared like an idiot at the first body not even a hundred feet from where he stood. Then he stepped cautiously from the ridgetop toward the lost people lying like blackened and unstrung pearls on the slope below him.

  Barnes had never experienced feelings so cold and controlling and absolute before, nothing before like this frozen stab of truth. Not when his father had died in a hospital bed in front of him nor when his mother had died from a cancer a thousand miles away. His stomach tightened as he walked, and then his neck constricted and he could not swallow the bilious taste in his mouth.

  Warner looked to Barnes as though he had knelt in prayer. He faced uphill, both of his feet were on the ground, as were his knees and hands, his forehead was touching the ground as though he had been caught in the act of prayer, a water bottle lay unmelted and with the water still in it within reach of his body, an empty bottle was six feet below him, his hardhat had been thrown by the fire’s wind a dozen feet away and had only partially melted, the painted red feather on the hardhat had drained in color across the white plastic, his aramid shirt and pants had burned off except around his waist and torso where they were covered by his daypack, charred str
ips of his crew T-shirt poked out in a ragged line from the sides of his fire shirt, the laces of his boots had burned but the boots remained essentially okay, frayed strands from his socks ringed the tops of his boots, and he lay with his feet and hands and knees and forehead touching the ground and facing uphill and Barnes remembered him looking up the slope and turning to see the fire begin its run and turning back to begin his own run to where Barnes stood watching.

  The bottom of his daypack had burned open and Barnes could see the polyethylene liner surrounding Warner’s fire shelter. Where it had been exposed to the passing heat and flames, the liner had only partially melted, but the shelter would never have been of any use, not tucked into the bottom of his daypack like that. He could never had retrieved the shelter in time. Maybe if it were on his waist belt but not from the bottom of his daypack.

  One of Warner’s hands, his left hand, was still inside its glove. Both had shrunk to half their size. His watch had melted into the charred skin of his left wrist and the surrounding ground.

  Barnes looked again at the unmelted water bottle and the scattered tufts of unburned grass and leaves around the body. He knew that Warner might have lived had he used his shelter, had Barnes checked his shelter that morning.

  Warner was twenty-four years old, a good man who had died violently at a very young age. This was to be his last fire season before entering law school and eventually joining his father and uncles and cousins in a practice in Denver. A last song of youth before growing up and taking on the responsibilities of a real job.

  Warner was a Republican who hated most Republicans but he had grown up Republican and had always voted Republican and knew he would eventually marry a Republican girl, even though he dated mostly girls who were Democrats because, as he had told Barnes one Friday afternoon over his third marg down at the Rio, “I want to have a little fun first.” He had come to fire by accident, filling out the application on a whim and then, because he had broken up with his first Republican girlfriend when she could not accept his interest in girls who were Democrats and because Barnes called the next day expressing an interest in a marathon runner with advanced first-aid training and offered him a job, he became a hot shot firefighter.