Summer of Fire

by Linda Jacobs

  He didn’t tell her that sometimes he thought he would die for a drink. What had kept him going so far was waking each morning with a clear head and a load of unfamiliar energy. It was then that he realized he wasn’t getting old like he’d thought.

  “Has there been anyone else?” Clare picked at a loose thread on his bedspread.

  “No.” Steve eased back and propped himself on an elbow. He hadn’t felt this comfortable with somebody in years. “Living in Mammoth makes it tough. Few single women winter in and the summer staff are transients.” He felt her cool appraisal of his excuses. “And, of course, what you said. I’m shy of taking a risk again.”

  He focused on Clare. “And you?”

  “Since my divorce I’ve just tried getting Devon grown up. That hasn’t worked so well either.”

  They kept talking, words tumbling over each other. He shared confidences he would not have imagined telling anyone, a substitute for what he wanted … to take Clare in his arms.

  How many times on Mount Washburn had he caught himself spinning a scenario like this? Wondering how they might end up alone. Now he sat not three feet from her on his bed, for God’s sake.

  What stopped him was Susan’s loving gaze from the nightstand.

  The phone beside the photo rang, the sound jarring. Steve jumped. Rolling over and reaching for the receiver, he groused, “Yeah?” The bedside clock said two-fifteen.

  “Is Clare there?” a male voice inquired.

  Wordlessly, Steve handed her the receiver and walked out of his room.

  “You said you needed to get to Jackson Hole Airport tomorrow to pick up your daughter,” Deering said. “Sorry, I mean today.”

  Clare jumped to her feet beside Steve’s bed. “How did you know I’d be here?”

  “Lucky guess?”

  While she considered hanging up, he said, “How are you getting down south tomorrow?”

  “With Steve’s truck burned, he’ll requisition another, or I’ll hitch a ride with someone from the fire cache here at Mammoth. Get my car at Old Faithful.”

  “The south entrance is going to be closed all day,” Deering urged.

  That meant going over through Idaho, a hundred miles out of the way.

  “Come on. If Steve is going to drive you, I’m helping him out. It would be an all day job.”

  She didn’t care to listen to Deering pretend to be nice to Steve, but what she absolutely did not want to be was late picking up her daughter. Devon must be feeling rejected by Jay’s taking off to Greece with Elyssa.

  Clare decided. “Her plane gets in at two.”

  “I’ll be there first thing in the morning.”

  As she placed the phone back in the cradle, Steve called from down the hall, “I’ll bed down on the sofa.” The hard note in his voice said the evening was over.

  With a sigh, she picked up the picture of his wife. When Clare was ten, her mother had insisted on piano lessons. Although Miss Bryan had been diligent at teaching the perfect arch and placement of the hands, Clare had never really had any talent.

  Susan Sandlin Haywood’s sinewy fingers looked perfect.

  In the corner of the frame was a miniature of a newborn, the kind they took in hospitals. Christa’s tiny pink face crinkled, her mouth open in a yawn.

  Tears pricked Clare’s eyelids. Here she’d been thinking of going to Steve, when he wasn’t over the loss of his wife. Wasn’t that her damned luck this summer? Coming to Yellowstone had seemed a grand escape; fight the big fires that made the national news while clearing her head. Instead, she’d screwed up big time. Tried to lead the troops and ended up in a tiny silver shelter fighting for her life.

  She climbed into Steve’s bed and reluctantly admitted that had things been different she might have shared it with him.

  Tossing until three, she fell into a sleep tormented by crimson light, the strobe effect of the flapping shelter, and the charred smell of burnt flesh.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  September 5

  Clare awoke with the fear she’d already missed Devon’s plane. She dressed and hurried down the hall to find rose light coming in the window over Steve’s kitchen sink.

  He stood barefoot at the counter in a faded cotton shirt and jeans, putting coffee beans into a grinder. His sleep-tossed hair looked somehow intimate. He gave her a glance and bent to his task, pressing a button and sending up a delicious aroma of fresh ground. The high-pitched whine prevented her from speaking.

  When he released the control, silence fell.

  “Morning already,” she ventured.

  He dumped the grounds into a glass pot without ceremony.

  After all that had happened between them, she’d been hoping he’d be over Deering’s middle-of-the-night call.

  The copper kettle on the stove whistled.

  Turning his back, Steve poured boiling water. The kettle went back on the stove with a clank. When he moved the coffee pot on the tile-topped counter, it clinked. She wondered if he’d cracked it.

  Last night his coughing from the smoke he’d inhaled had interrupted her fitful sleep. Knowing he was awake had made it worse, the two of them separated by fifteen feet and the infinite gulf that Susan’s picture and Deering’s call had created.

  Steve finally looked at her. Leaning back against the counter, he folded his arms across his chest. “What did he want?”

  Quick anger shot through her. She’d left Deering to come home with Steve. She’d gone to his bedroom, her heart beating hard … and found a dead woman with the power to keep them apart.

  Clare crossed her arms over her own yellow-shirted chest. “I told you I have to be in Jackson to meet Devon. The south entrance is closed, so he’s flying me down.”

  “I could have driven you through Idaho.” His voice rose.

  “I’m not sure we could make it on time,” Clare excused. “He’ll be here in a few minutes.” Now that she knew Steve was this upset, she wished she could change her mind and let him take her.

  He slammed his fist on the tiles. “Dammit, Clare, he’s a married man.”

  Her face went hot and the ancient linoleum seemed to tilt.

  What else have you lied to me about? Deering had not answered when she’d asked that at West Yellowstone Airport. “If he is … “

  “Count on it.”

  “I was going to ask … “ She controlled herself with an effort. “What business is it of yours? Last night you preferred to sleep with your memories.”

  He crossed to her in three swift steps and his hands came down hard on her shoulders. “What business of mine? Nothing, except that I was a damned fool … sitting on that mountain dreaming. And all the time that S.O.B. was on the make, married or not.”

  A faint ‘whump whump’ came through the open kitchen window.

  Steve let her go and busied himself pulling down a single mug. He pressed the filter plunger to hold the grounds in the pot and poured. He sipped, deliberately.

  She searched his face. If she left now, they’d probably never see each other again. That wasn’t what she wanted, but the set of his jaw and the rising sound of rotors said it was time to go.

  With the clothes on her back and her wallet that had survived the firestorm in her hip pocket, she turned and rushed across the living room. After a struggle with the turn bolt, she stepped into the yard and scanned the sky.

  With typical brashness, Deering ignored Mammoth’s helicopter pad down the road. The Huey came in low over the picnic tables across the street and hovered above the old Fort Yellowstone parade ground. Deering’s sunglasses shielded his face, the rising sun reflecting on the windshield.

  Clare looked back at Steve’s house. He stood on the porch watching her, his ire mixed with a look of longing that almost made her turn back.

  The Huey set down. When she looked again, Steve was gone.

  She ran, warmed by anger at both men. Wrestling open the chopper door, she stretched to get into the left seat.

  As soon as she
was in place and slammed the door, Deering lifted off. She fumbled for her harness and headphones, while the earth dropped away. Below, the highway from Mammoth to Tower Junction crossed Lava Creek on an impressive metal span, near its confluence with the Gardner.

  Over the engine’s roar and the steady whopping of rotors, Deering said dryly, “Good morning.” Dark eyes shot a sideways look. “I trust you passed a pleasant night.”

  “Fuck you,” Clare said. “Did you sleep with your wife?”

  Deering cut power and the Huey started to lose altitude.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Putting her down.”

  “What for?”

  “So we can talk.”

  “Talk all you want. I can’t hear you.” Clare tore off her headphones and dropped them.

  They were coming down onto a broad meadow of dry golden grass. She remembered the drive last night when she and Steve had looked out at the high country of the Blacktail Deer Plateau.

  Within a rising cloud of dust, the chopper hovered, then landed. A look out at the expanse of empty meadow made her reconsider getting out and walking away. Nothing was going to make her miss Devon’s plane.

  The rotors wound down. Deering sat with both hands draped over the cyclic stick until it was quiet, save for the hum of wind around the door seals. He took off his headphones and put them between the seats.

  She sat stiffly.

  When she failed to look at him, he said, “Clare.”

  She flicked her eyes to his. There was no cajoling, just an infinite sadness that reminded her of when he’d climbed out of the tent at the Mink Creek Camp.

  “You’re right,” he said evenly. “I am married.”

  “Then what …?”

  “When I ditched, she said she hoped they never brought up my chopper. She doesn’t understand my flying, like you seem to. I was torn up, looking for a way to get back at her.”

  Clare saw in him what felt like the first solid truth she’d seen. “You love her.”

  “Yeah.”

  Now that she knew … too late, that she cared for Steve and not Deering, it was easy to say, “Then, for God’s sake, what are you doing here?”

  Georgia Deering swam through molasses-thick darkness toward the light. She kicked and pulled until the brightness became a flood of morning sun on the bed. Through the open window, framed by gently blowing lace curtains, she heard the chatter of the Portneuf as it wended its way downstream from Lava Hot Springs.

  Gradually, Georgia came fully awake, realizing that she’d overslept for the third time in a week. Ten-thirty usually saw her breakfast of shredded wheat and strawberries finished, dishes on the drain board.

  She ran a hairbrush through her unruly reddish curls and put on her favorite white terry robe, well washed and softened.

  In the hallway, she paused to straighten the frame of the wedding ring quilt she’d made when she and Deering got married. It hung next to a shadow box of tiny porcelain dolls. When she got to the kitchen, she frowned, for she’d fallen asleep without putting away last night’s dishes.

  Although it was pushing noon, she didn’t yet feel like eating.

  “Maybe just a cup of tea,” she said, and shook her head.

  “Pretty soon you’ll be answering yourself and then what?”

  What indeed? She’d been putting off finding a lot of answers, even afraid to ask the questions. Surely, Deering had been curious about her showing up in West Yellowstone, waiting around with Karrabotsos, and then disappearing. Didn’t he even suspect she might have seen him with that Clare?

  When she’d come home, she hadn’t even told Anna. As if not speaking of it could erase Deering pulling another woman against him in the familiar way she’d thought was reserved for her alone.

  Moving woodenly to the pantry, Georgia reached for the canister of herbal tea that Deering had helped her make one day earlier this summer. When she popped the tin, the dank smell of chamomile, mixed with the almost sour essence of stale rose hips smote her. She gagged and lifted the trash lid, but it wasn’t enough to put it in the garbage.

  Barefoot, she crossed the soft grass she’d hand watered during the drought. Beside the river, she dumped the tea, expecting the flakes to float away. Instead, the mixture landed in a clump beside a rock.

  Georgia kicked at the pile. She lost her balance and almost fell into the stony streambed. “Damn you!” she cried, not sure if she meant Deering or that woman. To see the last trace of tea wash down the Portneuf, she knelt on the grassy bank and reached to stir the brew. The smell of tea mixed with tannic decaying leaves overwhelmed her.

  She leaned over the bank and gagged. Bright morning receded, her world reduced to the space between her hanging hair and the Portneuf. When the storm had passed, Georgia curled up, shivering. She hoped Widow Barcus wouldn’t see her lying in her bathrobe on the lawn.

  This crystal morning made her think how different it was where Deering worked, of the smoky hell above Yellowstone. Although she’d told herself she didn’t care to know what he was doing, she tuned in the news every evening like clockwork.

  Last night, Connie Chung had opened, “Tragic news this evening from Yellowstone National Park.”

  Georgia’s heart had begun to race.

  “Private William Harrison Jakes, nineteen, of McCall, Idaho, died when a firestorm overtook him and his fellow firefighters. The other members of the group of twenty-three survived beneath Mylar fire shelters, which miraculously shielded them from the fury of the Hellroaring Fire.”

  Hellroaring.

  That was rich. It wasn’t enough that fire warriors challenge the gates of hell. No, they had to call the fire the Hellroaring, like kicking sand in the face of Beelzebub.

  Georgia’s rage made her forget being chilled and sick. She sat up, wiping cold sweat from her face with her terry sleeve.

  A faint ‘whop whop’ came to her.

  Deering often came home by chopper, landing at the local heliport near the high school across the road.

  She remained on the ground, feeling dew seep though her robe. The helipad was also used for medical emergencies and by other businesses.

  The chopper’s sound grew louder.

  Reluctantly, she pushed to her feet and walked around the side of the house. Once she got past the area where she’d watered, the dry grass felt sharp on her bare soles.

  The helicopter came in low across the football field, olive drab with that same military look as the one in the newspaper photo. There was something else as well; some indefinable nuance in the approach angle that said her husband had come home.

  Deering started shutting down. Karrabotsos had sounded surprised when he had radioed for permission to fly to Lava Hot Springs, but had let him go, muttering something about taking better care of that little red-haired gal.

  That made no sense for Karrabotsos had never met Georgia.

  How simple it had seemed when Clare challenged him. She’d managed to cut through all the bullshit. He did love his wife, had always loved her. No matter how he pretended nonchalance, crashing his helicopter had shaken him to the core. When Georgia hadn’t been there for him, he’d turned to the first available woman, the same kind of daredevil behavior he exhibited in the air.

  As the rotors wound down, Deering felt the reluctance that had kept him from calling home these past weeks. Before he stepped down, he reached to the left seat and gathered up a florist’s box. In the breast pocket of his flight suit rested a velvet jewel case. This morning when he’d dropped Clare off he’d hitched a ride into the town of Jackson.

  With a slam of the Huey’s door, he started across the grass. Before he’d gone ten steps, he saw Georgia at the edge of their yard, inside the low, wrought iron fence. Her white terry bathrobe was belted around her, that glorious copper hair curling over her shoulders.

  Taking a breath of the wonderfully clear air, Deering waved.

  Usually she jumped the knee-high gate, rushed across the street to the la
nding field, and launched herself at his neck. This morning, she stood still at his approach.

  Deering came through the gate and proffered the box. He encircled Georgia with his other arm and aimed a kiss. She turned her head and his lips brushed her cheek.

  “Flowers?” she asked flatly.

  “Yeah, I know how much you like ‘em in the garden … “

  Her bright head was down and she busied herself with the satin ribbon. The florist had said that long-stemmed red roses were the most romantic statement a man could make. He wished with all his might that he could come home clean instead of with this dirty feeling.

  “I’ll put these in water.” Georgia headed for the house and he had no choice but to follow.

  “Hon,” he tried. She was already inside the kitchen, rummaging beneath the counter for the vase he’d sent her roses in twenty years ago. Cheap florist’s stock, no blown glass, she’d kept it all these years. He realized, shamefaced, that he’d never repeated the gesture.

  Georgia filled the vase, wiped it with a dishtowel and set it on the wooden table. It rocked, reminding him that he’d promised to fix that shaky leg.

  She arranged the roses, cutting them to different lengths with a crosswise knife cut. This time of year, she usually had that vase full of blooms from her garden. Her task complete, she said, “I was just going to make myself some tea.” She sounded as though he were a guest in his own kitchen.

  “Tea sounds good.”

  Georgia brought out orange pekoe. Deering wondered what had happened to the herb blend she usually liked. With her back to him, she put on the kettle and looked out the window.

  He reached to his pocket for the jewel box. Georgia was October born, the opal birthstone, and he’d found a simple gold band set with a glowing bluish-purple cabochon.

  He held out the velvet case. Georgia took it.

  The teakettle whistled.

  She set the case on the counter and removed the pot from the burner. Steam rose from the tea, wafting a sharp aroma. Georgia reached for a cup, stirred and pulled the tea bag onto a saucer. He wondered where his cup was.

  “Aren’t you going to …?”

  She rediscovered the jewel box and slowly opened the lid.