As more men came down the trail they were referred to John, who stopped chopping long enough to set them to work. By nine in the morning they had met with other crews on each side, and went back over the ground they had cleared, this time more carefully, until they had a firebreak twenty feet wide cleared of nearly everything that would burn. All the larger trees near the edge had been cut to fall back away from the cleared ground.
“Now we got everything all ready,” Junior said, “where in hell’s the fire?”
The men came straggling back from their final inspection of the firebreak, dragging their tools, and flopped on the ground around John.
“Two bits it don’t come at all,” Slugger said.
John examined the broken blisters on the insides of his thumbs, and pulled off a piece of skin as big as a quarter. Howard Randolf lay on his stomach, breathing deeply, as if he were either asleep or sick. Bob Paquette still kept his distance. He hadn’t spoken to John at all, but had followed all his suggestions without objection. Now John looked straight at him and said, “You men sure did a job of work.”
He expected no answer, but regretted the remark as soon as he said it—they would think of the firehouse business, and the more glamorous job they might have had. But they were too tired to react to that. The only response was a series of sighs and groans as the men tried to get comfortable on the rooty ground.
“We ought to be relieved pretty soon now,” John said.
“Just tell ’em not to step on my body,” Howard said.
Billy Muldrow rolled over and grinned, his face black and tired. “I could do with some sleep myself,” he said.
They heard a loud crack from up the hill toward the fire, then more cracklings and scrapings, then the thud of hoofs. A small buck came floating into sight on the top of a long jump. The deer came bounding down the hill toward them. To the right, several more deer crashed by. The little buck cleared the firebreak easily and landed among the men, then continued down toward the brook in long arcs, his front legs cocked daintily as he soared above the ground.
“Jesus!” Billy Frisch yelled. The hoofs had missed him by a foot. “That dumb bastard damn’ near tromped on me!” He put his fingers in the triangular hoofmarks.
“You want to be careful,” Junior said. “Them deer are dangerous.” They all laughed.
“Fire must be gitting close,” Slugger said. “I seen a red fox earlier, going out straight for Leah.”
“I seen a wildcat, two bear and a elephant!” Junior said.
“Aw, shut up.” Slugger rolled over and groaned into the ground.
Smoke, now a little darker than before, veered over the top of the hill above them. They listened for the sounds of fire, but could hear nothing. Far over to the left another deer crashed down the hill. They saw one flash of its white flag, but heard it all the way down to the brook, where a stone clinked before the deer began to climb the hill on the other side.
“Here come the fresh troops, I do believe,” Junior said.
Sam Stevens led a column of men up to the firebreak. “I’d say you used good judgment, John, not to make a backfire. Wind’s too tricky. Anyways, they got some food for you boys back to the house. That’s a good job.” Sam surveyed the cleared ground, nodding.
The Riders got up, slapped dust from their uniforms and started back with the rest of the men who had arrived before dawn. John decided to go up to the top of the hill and see where the fire was. His knees were stiff and his shoulders ached as he stood up. Howard Randolf was in the process of raising his body from the ground, and John stopped to watch.
“One!” Howard said, and pulled up one knee. “Two!” He pulled up the other one. “Don’t cry, friends, don’t pity an old man.” He finally got to his feet and stood shakily. “Where in hell are you going, Captain?” he said to John, who had crossed the firebreak toward the fire.
“I’m going to look at the fire,” John said. “From the looks of you, you’d better head for the sack.”
“Legs, old legs,” Howard said, leaning over and gripping his legs above the knees, “function!”
“I’ll see you back at the house,” John said.
“No, no! I’ve got to see it. I’ve got to see it!”
They climbed over the felled trees and started up the hill toward the smoke, climbing over old stone walls and blowdown. Howard managed to keep up, although he frequently groaned and sometimes had to lift a leg over with both hands.
“I just realized that I was married in these pants,” Howard said, leaning against a poplar sapling. The pants were heavy tweed, torn at the knees. “I bought these pants in London in 1928. Damn’ good pants.” He took a few deep breaths. “I was married in these pants, but I don’t hope to die in them.”
“Think you’ll die with your pants on?” John said.
“Pants on and fly buttoned,” Howard said. He grinned painfully, exposing his long yellow teeth.
“You sure you want to try this hill?”
“In spite of anything I may have said, I haven’t given up yet,” Howard said.
They stood below a ten-foot cliff of stone, a huge boulder set into the side of the hill. Beneath the boulder the ground was slightly damp, and faded water weeds showed that a spring had once run there. As John examined the hole beneath the stone a little green frog looked out at him, then backed inside again.
“Find a hole and crawl in,” John said.
“What? I’m not that far gone,” Howard said.
“The little frog.” John pointed into the damp hole.
“Oh! Sure, Captain. Sure. Draw your own conclusions,” Howard said, smiling. “Now let’s go see our approaching fate.”
They rested again before they reached the vantage point, a rock platform they could see above them, cutting the smoke like the prow of a ship. For the first time they could hear the distant crackling of the fire.
“One minute,” Howard said. “Give an old man a minute.” He half-fell to the pine needles and rolled over on his back. “I could sleep for a week. Right here.”
“You’d be nicely broiled.”
“That doesn’t appeal. But listen, Captain…”
“Why the ‘Captain’ business?”
“I admired—I really did—the way you took over that….” He waved a slack hand down the hill. “Indeed I did. The circumstances were difficult, but you made no mistakes. You’re a leader.”
“Like hell.”
“No, you are. When something has to be done, you do it.”
“Come on, let’s go.”
“Old Sam Stevens knows,” Howard said. “‘That’s a good job,’ the old patriarch said. You heard him. That old man knows. He’s got blight eyes.”
“We’d better be moving along,” John said. “The fire’s just over the hill. We may have to run back down, Howard. Do you think you ought to try it?”
“I try anything.”
Howard got up, groaning, and followed John up the last hundred yards. They climbed on hands and knees over the last ledge onto the stone promontory, into the driving stream of thin smoke.
The fire was there.
“Jesus God,” Howard said softly. They stood on the edge of a volcano, seared by the rising heat from a valley of oily flame. The coals of trees blinked behind the advancing wall that was white-orange at its base, growing into red, weaving into a dirty black shot with dull red before it rose above the trees with a whoosh, throwing large twigs, leaves and small branches straight up, burning them into nothing before they fell back to the ground. Just below, a green balsam, a perfect fifty-foot Christmas tree, turned brown all at once and in the next second burst into light, each branch, each needle afire at once. They both crouched back, arms in front of their faces.
“Captain, I suggest we retreat!” Howard yelled over the roar of the burning tree. “In fact, I suggest we run like hell!”
They turned and ran, jumping, sliding down the ledge, pushing through the wiry brush that was a fuse leading the fire up and ove
r the hill. Howard shot by on a slide of needles, scrabbling to get hold of something, and rolled over before he came to rest on his back against a stump. He lay there hugging himself, his face grayish with pain, breathing in deliberately short gasps. “Unh, unh!” he said. “I…broke…some…thing.”
“Can you walk?” John climbed down to him and put his hand on Howard’s chest. Howard moved his arm to push John’s hand away.
“Hurts…to…breathe.”
“Move your legs.” Howard moved his legs, his bony knees showing through the torn pants. “Good,” John said. He looked up and saw wisps of fire flowing through the smoke above the ledge. “O.K., you’ve most likely broken a rib or two. Let’s go.”
“No…Don’t…have…energy…anyway.”
“Get up!”
“All done…been…fun.”
“You’d rather die than stand a little pain?” John felt anger begin to rise in him.
Howard’s eyes were pleading. “Go…on. Don’t…give a…damn.”
“I do, so get the hell up!” He reached out and pulled Howard’s arms loose. Howard opened his mouth, his tongue protruding, his lips pulled away from his long teeth, and screamed. The fire crackled and the wind pushed over the hill; a hot, eating wind that took John’s breath. He pulled Howard out from his niche beside the stump, grabbed his rigid arms and sledded him down the hill. Flame poured through the brush where they had been, and the green blackberries hissed and dropped. Howard’s arms went limp, and John had to get a new hold on him. He took one arm and bent it at the elbow, put his own arm through the crook and pulled. This worked until they reached a small depression in the ground. Howard slid into it and stayed. John couldn’t pull him out.
“Get upl Get up!” he yelled into Howard’s face. Howard’s lips bubbled as he breathed, and a little spray of spit hissed up each time he exhaled. “Wake up! You son of a bitch, wake up!” Howard breathed on, and now he was taking long breaths—slow, irregular breaths, but long ones. It convinced John that he was legitimately unconscious. By squatting down and partly burrowing underneath Howard, he managed to get a fireman’s carry on him, but just barely staggered to his feet with the limp body over his shoulders, took three steps and tripped over a ground juniper branch. He fell heavily into the junipers with Howard on top of him. His mouth pressed against the needles and the stink of the juniper berries rose sharp as gin in his nose. He felt as if he were drowning in the dark bush, and scrambled out from under, only to fall again. Above, the fire’s approach seemed vicious and personal, and a long salient of the red flame reached down toward him. He stood up, and his knees were weak and shaky. “Wait a minute,” he said. “Wait one minute, John. Damn it, Howard, why do you weigh so much? O.K. now. O.K.” He rolled Howard over and pulled off Howard’s belt, then looped it around the limp wrists and drew it tight, forced the tongue of the buckle through the leather, then rolled Howard over onto his belly again. “It better work, John,” he said out loud. He squatted down and got the arms over his head, held the belt down on his chest and got up, Howard draped over his back. “Damn it all, now, Howard,” he said, “why did you have to grow so long?” Howard’s knees rested on the ground, but this way John could move shakily forward, providing he picked his way carefully. He knew that if he had to duck very low to go beneath blowdown, he would fall again.
He managed to drag Howard a hundred yards this way, until he came to a long, rotten white birch fallen across the way. He didn’t think he had enough strength to push Howard through the branches, or even to lift him over the trunk, so he stood gasping, then sank unwillingly to his knees. His knees would not hold, no matter how he commanded them. Sweat nearly blinded him; his hands on the belt were numb and cramped into claws. For the first time, as he sat staring at his boots, Howard’s long-breathing body relaxed beside him, he wondered if he would make it. In his exhaustion—and he knew it was because of exhaustion—the matter didn’t seem very important. But the fire kept coming. A spark settled beside him, another landed on Howard’s cheek and must have burned the flesh before John made himself brush it off. Howard was still unconscious. Another spark burned John’s head like a bee sting, and he smelled burning hair. “God damn you, Howard;” he said weakly. He didn’t want to turn around to look at the fire, and he knew that this, too, was partly due to exhaustion. It hardly seemed worth the effort. He could hear it singing up through the trees, could feel its heat against the back of his head.
“Got to!” he said, and as he got to his feet he was surprised that the short rest had done so much for him. He draped Howard over his shoulder again and moved on. The birch was rotten, and he walked right through it, only having to kick the bark away. The little black branches were as unsubstantial as spider webs.
His breath came out of his mouth in little groans, and he listened to the absurd sounds with, he thought, a great deal of disinterested speculation. Had his vocal cords sprung or something? At one point he was quite sure that Howard had bitten him on the shoulder-blade. He clearly felt the long teeth, and stopped to look at Howard’s lolling head, his slack jaw and protruding tongue. To his right, through sweat, surrounded by little rainbows, the advance feelers of the fire passed him, and real fear gave him sudden energy. He ran, a heavy, stabbing run that quickly nauseated him. He retched and kept on, bounded from a slim sapling and would have fallen except that another sapling supported him and pushed him on again. He fell several times, once kicked a pretty shower of sparks from a burning bush, tried while running to spit on a spark that seared his hand. He had no spit. He seemed to have been running for days, and Howard’s weight became a part of the fire, or the dream of escaping through molasses.
When he saw the first man across the firebreak he thought it was a bear, a fellow victim, and didn’t shout for help until he started to fall, and kept on falling, turning and turning over in the air. Below him was a pretty little lake, blue and cool, and as he fell he wondered why he didn’t enter the water—he fell toward the lake and yet never hit. And then his own shouting came into his ears, “HELP HELP HELP!” and they were dragging him, Howard still attached, through the branches and across the rooty ground.
When he reached the house he was staggering, and his feet seemed prepared to meet the ground before the ground was there. He stood swaying, watching while Howard was inserted into the police car. Then, when the car sirened off down the road, he turned toward the kitchen. Two men took his arms and helped him up the steps. “Boy, am I pooped,” he remembered saying over and over, and when he sat at the kitchen table, with a cup of hot chocolate in his black hands, he couldn’t remember who the men were who had helped him up the hill. The crew he had come with had all gone back to Leah.
“Why, Jane!” he said, “are you still up?” A silly question—she sat across the table from him, her tired eyes looking intently into his.
“You’re the one who shouldn’t still be up,” she said softly. “I called your father and told him you were all right. I told him you’d stay here.”
“Good.” He looked around the big room. “Now there’s a spot would be perfect,” he said, pointing to a far corner. “Just let me sack out over there.” He could feel his bones crumpling wonderfully into the corner. It seemed the nicest and most comfortable corner he had ever seen.
“No corner,” Jane said. “You need some sleep. You need a bath.”
“Too pooped,” he said. His eyes closed and he let his head float off—a lovely, weightless feeling—and then Jane had a firm hold on his arm and he was walking.
“Up the stairs,” she ordered.
“O.K., O.K.,” he kept saying. All the way up the stairs he couldn’t feel his legs at all, but they did keep working. Finally he leaned against the bathroom doorframe thinking how wonderful the running water sounded.
“I guess we can spare a few gallons of water,” Jane said. She bent over the big tub and swirled the water around, then got him a towel from the cupboard. “Here.” She pushed the towel into his hands. “Get some of tha
t soot off and then you can sleep. I’ve got a bed made up for you.” She went out and shut the door.
The next horrible interruption of his lovely weightlessness was a knocking on the door. “Come in,” he said, and Jane came in, strangely angry.
“Look at you, sitting there!” she said, “Why don’t you take a bath and get it over with? You don’t want to sit there all day!” He thought he had taken a bath—remembered very well taking his clothes off and sliding into the nice water. But there he was, still in the torn, cruddy clothes, sitting on the toilet seat.
“I’ll be damned, Janie,” he said. “I’ll be damned!” Suddenly he thought the whole situation was terribly funny, and he began to laugh. Jane began to unlace his boots, and suddenly it was very sad. “Janie, Janie,” he said sadly, “don’t do that. Let me do that.”
“You don’t seem to be able to do it,” she said. After the boots came the streaked, wet socks, then his shirt. “You’re the dirtiest man I ever saw,” she said, and it was still sad to him.
“Yes, you know,” he said, “I’m the filthiest man there is. Oh, that’s so true. I’m a dirty son of a bitch, Janie.”
“Don’t get maudlin,” she said, put her arm around him, lifted him up and slipped off his pants. She helped him into the bathtub and he lay in the warm water, one leg twitching, the spasm traveling up and down his thigh like a wave.
“I’ve still got my shorts on,” he said. “Crazy damn’ thing take a bath with shorts on. Feels like a little kid wet his pants or something, you know? Doesn’t seem right, somehow.”
“It’s my Puritan modesty,” she said.
“My shorts. My Puritan modesty,” and the blue waves of nothing closed in again, happily, happily….
CHAPTER 21
He was asleep in the shallow water, his knees up in the air, and she scrubbed him clean. There were raw places on his head where hair and all had been burned away, and he didn’t wake up even when she scrubbed the raw spots, just slept quietly, breathing deeply, an expression of calm happiness on his face she had never seen there before. His dark face had smoothed, looked terribly young and pure. When he was reasonably clean and the water black, she took off his shorts and washed him there, and then let the water out and rinsed him off with clean water. He slept on, but somehow even in his sleep cooperated when she raised him up and walked him into the small bedroom under the eaves. He sighed at the touch of the cool sheets, and lay relaxed on the old, sloping hammock of a bed. Before she covered him she stood and admired the smooth body, the graceful curve of muscle on his thighs—now no longer in spasm—the silky black hair curling from his armpits and over his chest, the muscular ridges of his belly. Then she pulled the sheet over him and lay down beside him. Just for a moment, she told herself, and then back to clean up the bathroom.
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