Summer of Fire

by Linda Jacobs

  Ever changing and ever the same.

  Out here at the edge of the park, without any homes or property threatened, she could relax and watch the spectacle of nature untrammeled. Deering had stood behind her, a light hand holding each of her elbows. Although she’d rolled the sleeves of her shirt down against the night wind, she was aware of his touch.

  Sitting alone in the tent, she suddenly thought that she was playing the fool. He probably wasn’t even thinking of her. She shrugged and unbuttoned her shirt, then wriggled out of her pants.

  “Look there.” Deering pulled back the flap.

  Clare dove into the sleeping bag. Once covered, she turned onto her stomach and peered out. The Mink Creek glowed along its front like a brilliant diadem. The wind had picked up, blowing down Turret Mountain.

  “The fires are supposed to lie down at night,” Deering observed. “This year they must have been behind the schoolhouse when the rulebooks were passed.” He sat to unlace his boots.

  Clare watched, aware that beneath the covers she wore only a lacy scrap of turquoise bra and panties.

  Without looking at her, Deering shimmied out of his flight suit and folded it efficiently at the head of his bag. He lay down wearing plaid boxers. The glow of a Coleman lantern outside was just bright enough to give an impression of his body, slender and high-strung with a sprinkling of dark chest hair.

  The camp sounds diminished, the day workers going to sleep while the night shift labored out on the lines.

  Placing his hands behind his head, Deering lay quietly, but there was taut tension in his stillness. The smooth wall of the tent angled down six inches from Clare’s face and she became conscious of her breathing. After a minute, the effort of inhaling and exhaling made her feel as though she were suffocating. With Deering lying virtually naked next to her, she rolled toward him to get her face into clearer air. She kept her eyes closed.

  “Clare?”

  “Hmm?”

  This was really too much, the two of them stripped to their underwear and pretending they didn’t know the game. Not since she was nineteen had she lain next to a new man and felt the way she’d thought was for the young.

  But she did remember.

  Deering rolled to face her and propped his head on his elbow. The orange light made his hair look as though it had red highlights.

  She shifted restlessly.

  “Your back hurt?”

  “I get muscle spasms.”

  “I give a mean backrub.”

  There it was. It was quiet in the tent.

  Then, faintly, “I’ll bet you do.”

  In the dimness, Deering’s eyes were hard to read, but she saw an unmistakable spark that said it wouldn’t stop at a backrub. Her heart pounded like a hammer.

  He waited, watching her.

  It had been too long since she’d met someone she would even consider, too many years without the feel of another body against hers. That was the worst part of being alone, losing the unspoken communication of touch.

  From outside came music and laughter, underlain by the constant voice of the Mink Creek.

  Damn Jay Chance, for making her draw back from men. She’d told herself she stayed free because the men weren’t up to standard, and because Devon needed her. Well, Jay certainly wasn’t taking notes, Devon wasn’t here, and the look in Deering’s eyes asked her to roll the dice.

  If she turned away, would she be able to sleep, lying close and thinking what if? When she went back to her solitary bed would she long for the hot dark grappling that seized her imagination even now?

  Deering’s hand lay on his stomach. She couldn’t see the skin cancer scar that made him vulnerable, but he and she were no more and no less at risk at any given time. She’d been thinking of fire as a particular threat because of Frank, but couldn’t Deering’s chopper crash? Hadn’t it already?

  Clare lifted her hand and touched the faint remnant of the bruise on his cheek. Deering’s fingers covered hers, pressing her against his sandpapery beard. Their eyes met and the nearest Coleman lantern sputtered out.

  Rolling onto her stomach in the sleeping bag, she rested her head on her arms. Bare shoulders, striped with turquoise straps, were offered.

  Deering reached for the zipper of her bag, drawing it down so slowly that she knew she could stop him anytime. The wall of the tent made a shushing sound as he brushed his head against it. He straddled her.

  His touch started out impersonal, like a professional masseur, but his fingers were knowing. He massaged lower, moving to the small of her back where the tightness was most acute. She jumped as his fingers found a knot and kneaded.

  Minutes passed and his hands familiarized themselves while a creeping, bone-deep weakness spread through her. It wasn’t the raging heat from the early years with Jay, but she wasn’t nineteen anymore. Deering shifted his weight and pulled the sleeping bag down farther, placing himself astride her bare thighs.

  Footsteps passed by outside. Deering stilled his hands.

  Clare held her breath.

  His lips beside her ear, he whispered, “We should have pitched the tent a bit farther from civilization.”

  She nodded. He bent and pressed his chest to her back. Skin on skin took her back, five years gone since anyone had touched her there. Tonight it seemed both yesterday and forever as she found her way. He drew her earlobe gently between his lips.

  She gasped.

  “If we’re going to do this,” Deering murmured, “we need to stay quiet.”

  He slipped his hands along the sides of her breasts. Boldly, he moved his body against hers.

  “If we’re going to do this,” Clare returned in a whisper, “we need … “

  He stretched to reach the zippered pocket of his flight suit and drew out a small sealed packet.

  Something went still inside her and she rolled onto her back. “Did you plan this?” she asked quietly.

  Deering raised his hands in a gesture of surrender. “A good scout is always prepared.”

  What did it matter if he had considered the option? Hadn’t she?

  Deftly, he unhooked the front clasp of her brassiere. “Admit it,” he entreated. “It would be hell to stop now.”

  From outside the tent came a shout. “Blowup!”

  “Goddammit!” Deering’s voice sounded vicious, like Clare’s own stab of anger. How dare fire interrupt what she’d so carefully committed to?

  She and Deering dressed rapidly without looking at each other. He opened the tent flap to put on his boots. In the Mink Creek’s eerie light, his sharp profile was set as he patted his pocket for a Marlboro. In the flare of the match, she was astonished to see what looked like pain in his eyes.

  Clare pulled on her boots without lacing them and scrambled out of the tent. Looking at Turret Mountain, she was shocked by the Mink Creek, driven downslope so rapidly that she could see the front moving through the treetops. Smoke mushroomed into the night sky, blotting out the peak. The back of her neck prickled beneath a brush of breeze blowing toward the fire. In minutes, she knew it would become a gale feeding the convection cell.

  A hundred yards away, on the opposite bank of Howell Creek, a group of night shift hotshots wearing helmet stickers that identified them as Californians, emerged from the woods. In brisk single file, they carried shovels or Pulaskis. Bringing up the rear, the sawyers carried chain saws.

  The middle-aged woman at the head of the column slogged into the creek, pulled off her hard hat, and dipped up water to pour over her short gray hair. She cupped her hands to her mouth and bellowed again, “It’s a blowup!”

  A dark-haired man of considerable girth appeared. Clare recognized Hebert Patout, the spike camp commander who had greeted her and Deering earlier in the dining tent. Hebert had patted his stomach and forked up another mouthful of ribeye. “This steak, now, she is not so good. When the fire season end, you come to me and ma frere Mousson’s restaurant in New Iberia, then we feast?”

  Now Hebert looked up
at the burning mountain. “Mon Dieu,” he muttered, tucking his shirt into his pants.

  The breeze freshened and became a steady wind, sucked toward the fire by convection. Hebert produced a small, handheld anemometer, the three cups atop the control box rotating rapidly. It reminded Clare of a toy, but the reading of thirty-five miles per hour was no child’s play. Although the Mink Creek was over half a mile away, Clare bet it could reach the camp in less than an hour.

  The woman who led the hotshots reported rapidly to Hebert. The laid-back gourmand with whom Clare and Deering had dined was transformed. “I’m calling an evacuation.” The big man clapped a hand onto Deering’s shoulder and ordered, “We need your chopper, now.”

  Clare waited for Deering to say the Huey was out of commission. Instead, he took off downhill at a run.

  Within a minute, someone was banging a spoon against a metal coffeepot, the universal camp signal for 4:30 reveille. By Clare’s watch, it was one-fifteen. The nylon walls flapped as if the tent were panting. Three short blasts on an airhorn sounded an alarm that could mean anything from a grizzly in camp to the approaching fire. A bullhorn added to confusion. Cutting in and out, the shrill feedback made the message sound like, “Fire … “ followed by at least ten garbled words, and then, “ … all hands … vacuate.”

  The Mink Creek spotted ahead as lone trees a hundred yards from the main body candled. In the meadow beside Howell Creek, members of the night shift mingled with the crews that had been rousted from their sleeping bags.

  The bullhorn operator got it under control. “Abandon all gear, leave everything except your fire shelters. Proceed to the helipad for immediate evacuation.”

  A lone chopper began its runup. Another machine added an urgent scream to the Mink Creek’s rising roar. Clare looked for Deering in the throng.

  One chopper rose into the blood red sky, then another.

  When Clare arrived at the helipad, she looked for the Huey Deering had flown, but it was not in the cleared space beside the creek. Word spread quickly that the game plan was to ferry all hands two miles downstream to the broad meadow at the confluence of Howell and Mountain Creeks.

  “Plenty of time,” someone said, and another, deeper voice replied, “Bullshit, Monahan.”

  A Bell 206 Jetranger landed in a wash of wind to take on another load without cutting power to the rotors. Seven people crowded aboard and the Bell was airborne within sixty seconds.

  Clare tried not to count the number of persons ahead of her, but as the fire wailed to a screaming crescendo, she found herself murmuring, “Forty-one, forty-two … “

  “The son-of-a-bitch is not supposed to run downhill.” Clare recognized the speaker as one of the sturdy Apaches she’d treated that afternoon. The white gauze bandage she’d taped high on his cheek was still in place.

  She and everyone else knew that heat rises, therefore fire does not burn down a mountain. Unfortunately, this summer’s fires and their microclimates did not understand the laws of nature, or perhaps man’s understanding was faulty.

  Clare touched the square pouch slung onto her webbed belt and was not reassured by the compact folds of her fire shelter. The flimsy material reminded her of the space blanket one of her friends had taken to carrying in her car when she moved to Denver. Clare had no more faith in the tissue-thin material keeping someone from freezing than she did in the fire shelter preventing her from roasting alive.

  Another chopper came in low, hovered and landed on the flattened grass. With a start, she recognized the green Huey and Deering in the cockpit. He was flying with the cracked Jesus nut, risking the rotors flying off in mid-flight.

  Was he ever afraid, Clare wondered? She’d learned in fire that while a healthy dose of fear kept you on your toes, too much was debilitating.

  She had avoided watching the advancing fire front. Now, she turned and faced it, feeling the night grow warmer. The Mink Creek no longer looked beautiful. Up close, it bore a thousand brilliant teeth, snapping and biting at the darkness.

  It was coming for her. Razor-sharp, it would slice through her flesh like a hot knife.

  She looked for Deering, knowing that if he saw her at all, she was a mere face in the waiting crowd.

  Coming in for a fourth landing at Howell Creek, Deering held tight to the controls. The Huey took a beating, slewing sideways toward rushing water while he tried to maintain a hover.

  He scanned his instruments. Fuel okay, RPM steady, and if the goddamn wind held off… Below, the last of the firefighters turned their faces up towards him.

  A sudden gust blew him past the LZ, almost into the creek.

  Rolling on throttle, he gained airspeed and lifted off again, circling back until he was upwind of the helipad. Quickly, he rolled power to the off position, pushing right pedal to reduce the anti-torque produced by the tail rotor. As the RPM decayed, he increased pitch, lowering the collective so that the Huey sank.

  The landing was hard.

  Firefighters scrambled aboard.

  Deering peered through the windshield at the spike camp.

  Outhouse doors beat against their hinges. Loose papers blew along the ground. Above the rotor whine was a sound like a 747 screaming toward takeoff.

  There was the tent he and Clare had shared so briefly.

  The left side door slammed, followed by the rolling slide of the rear ones into place. Deering looked back to make sure the passengers were secure, then checked the person in the front seat.

  Clare’s white face stared at him, her eyes stark. She said something he couldn’t hear and he gestured toward the headset.

  She put it on as he performed instinctive motions with his feet and hands, the intricate dance that propelled the aircraft into the sky.

  “Will this thing fly?” She gripped his forearm, creamy bone showing beneath the skin of her knuckles. He’d have a bruise.

  Rolling turbulence in front of the fire lifted the helicopter and then let it fall four feet. He concentrated on keeping from crashing. Finally, he got it under control, lifted off and headed toward the drop-off. Clare did not let go.

  Deering clenched his teeth at the mess he’d gotten himself into. He’d maneuvered Clare into that tent for the thrill of it, and for revenge on his wife for denying his love of flying.

  He should be weak with relief that they’d been interrupted before anything more happened.

  He wasn’t.

  Clare’s touch reminded him how complicated this was. He should be ashamed of himself and he was, but when he’d held her, she’d changed from a cheap thrill or instrument of vengeance. He was suddenly, acutely aware of her as a human being, as though she’d been made of mist and had taken form.

  As they flew along Howell Creek, into the gradually deepening darkness, he knew she deserved the truth. “There’s nothing wrong with the chopper,” he said grimly. “I lied.”

  “It’s kind of you to let me wait,” Georgia Deering told Demetrios Karrabotsos as he handed her another Styrofoam cup of steaming coffee. At two-thirty a.m., it was dark and quiet in the control tower of West Yellowstone Airport.

  “It’s no trouble,” the owner of Island Park Helicopters replied. “Are you sure you wouldn’t rather wait at my house? You could let Deering wake you when he gets in.”

  “I’ve had too much coffee to sleep,” she lied.

  She studied Karrabotsos’s scarred face and wondered how he had been burned. Deep lines around his eyes said he was maybe sixty, old enough to be a veteran of more than one war. He’d been gruff at first, but swiftly offered kindness. She couldn’t tell if he knew things were bad between her and Deering, or if he merely offered the chance to pretend.

  Likely, he didn’t know anything. He hadn’t even seemed to recognize her name when she’d shown up at the Island Park Trailer around eight, just in time to find out Deering was overdue. It had given her a chill she was still vainly trying to shake.

  One thing she could tell was that Karrabotsos was worried, too, the lateral g
rooves in his broad forehead deepening as the hours passed.

  Georgia tried not to think about that cute EMT that Deering had his arm around in the newspaper photo. She’d always considered flying to be his mistress. Did she have to worry now about other women?

  Controller Jack Owen was pulling night duty, occasionally speaking in reassuring tones to one of the pilots still flying on instruments. Outside the control tower, the north-south runway was a sparkling bracelet of diamonds, surrounded by the sapphire lights of the taxiways.

  “I can’t imagine what’s got Deering off the air unless his radio is out.” Karrabotsos repeated the litany he’d chanted for hours. “He flew to the Mink Creek spike camp this afternoon with their dinners. The winds must have kicked up bad to make him stay over.”

  Georgia smiled. She’d only met Karrabotsos this evening, but she already believed him a solid man that independent Deering would be okay working for if he couldn’t operate his own machine.

  The thought of flying brought her up against what she’d been trying to avoid all evening. Chatting with Karrabotsos had almost kept her mind off it, but it was getting so late and Deering had been off the air so many hours. If she were alone, she wouldn’t be able to beat back tears.

  Jack Owen sat up straight and listened intently. He ran a hand through his brown hair, aggravating his already prominent cowlick. “I’ll pass it along. You’re cleared to land.”

  Georgia clutched her coffee cup too hard. Hot liquid slopped over and burned the soft skin between her thumb and forefinger.

  “Mink Creek Camp had to evacuate all hands,” Jack told Karrabotsos. “Deering’s coming in now with your Huey.”

  Clare gripped the armrest as Deering set the helicopter down at West Yellowstone.

  Bursting with the desire to blurt exactly what she thought of him, she kept silent while a stout middle-aged woman with one of the catering companies waved thanks and headed toward the terminal.

  With his head down, Deering gave complete attention to the aircraft.