Summer of Fire

by Linda Jacobs

  “Not at all. I know the captain is always in charge.” Clare slid closer to the edge of her bed and leaned toward Steve. “I believe Deering does too.”

  “Could have fooled me.”

  This wasn’t working out like she’d hoped. She hadn’t intended Steve to think she was hearts and flowers for Deering’s tough luck.

  Steve went on, “You have to admit that trouble at home is an old excuse for roving.”

  Clare wondered if Jay had used that one, telling Elyssa his wife didn’t understand him.

  She faced Steve across the space between the beds. “Let’s not argue about Deering. When he flew me to Jackson, he told me he still loves his wife.”

  Steve’s shoulders looked tight. “So, where do you and he stand?”

  Clare shook her head. “I’m not in the picture. I told him he should go back and fight for his wife if that’s what he wants.” She’d been fighting for Steve and so far, he didn’t seem to get it.

  She put out her hand. His eyes went to it and his hands relaxed atop his legs.

  “Clare,” he said softly.

  She wondered how many times he’d said “Susan,” before his wife died, like breathing in and out. The way she’d said, “Jay.” “Steve,” she answered. Was she ready to feel that way about another man’s name?

  He moved across and slid his weight onto her sagging bed beside her. Her pulse tripped.

  From the corner of her eye, Clare caught a movement at the cabin door.

  Steve swore under his breath, not quietly enough, for Devon’s penciled dark eyebrows formed a vee. Clare scrambled to her feet along with him, aware of how this must look.

  “What have you been doing?” She went on the offensive. “I told you half an hour ago where the cabin was.” That was enough time to get into trouble; look at how close she’d just come with Steve.

  “What would I be doing?” Devon ducked her head and shrugged a sullen shoulder. “What were you doing?” She nodded toward the rumpled bedspread and snapped on a light, destroying the cozy twilight.

  “Devon,” Clare warned. “We’re talking about where you were.”

  “I was walking around, for chrissake.” She flung her backpack onto the bed opposite Clare’s. “If you think I’m lying, why don’t you just read my goddamn mind like you always think you can?”

  “I can read you,” Clare agreed. “When you dip your head and give that little shrug I can never believe a word you’re saying.”

  Devon made fists. “Yeah, well, Annalise MacIntyre was in Charter Hospital and they taught her in group that family should never use words like always and never.”

  “They said to never use them?”

  “Funny, Ma.”

  “Clare.” Steve put a hand on her arm. “I think I’m gonna take off.”

  She glanced at her daughter and back to him.

  “Don’t mind me.” Devon threw herself onto her bed and buried her face in crossed arms. “You two go on with your romance.” Her shorts hiked up to reveal a crescent slice of pale buttock above tanned thighs.

  Steve turned away, his face flushed at her and Devon’s squabbling. Or maybe he was too nice a guy to look at her daughter’s backside. Clare followed him to the door.

  He stopped and turned. “You take care of Devon.”

  Even if she did need some time for managing the temper tantrum, she didn’t want him to leave. “Steve …” She heard the urgency in her voice.

  He reached to cradle her cheek. “I’ll come back in a while. Maybe we can get that dinner.”

  Gravel crunched beneath his boots as he walked away. Reluctant to go back and argue with Devon, Clare watched Steve, with his sturdy shoulders and slightly awkward yet determined gait, until he was out of sight. Against the last light on the western horizon, the black silhouette of an ash fell to earth.

  In the confusion of her inopportune desire and Devon’s animosity, she’d almost forgotten about the fires.

  With a sigh, she turned back to the door. The scant glow of the bedside lamp illuminated tousled golden hair on the pillow. It reminded Clare of when Devon was little and she’d tuck her in at night.

  How could you know what was going on with your child? From the first moment of awareness, they began a tug of war with their parents that ultimately resulted in the fledgling flying from the nest.

  Clare leaned against the splintery wooden doorframe. “We need to talk.”

  “I’ll smoke if I please. I’m almost eighteen.” Devon spoke into the pillow gathered beneath her face.

  “It’s not the smoking.” She came inside and stood between the beds. “It’s this business of you wanting to move out after your birthday. Elyssa said you might be seeing someone … older.”

  “Annalise’s grandma was eighteen and her grandpa thirty-eight when they got married.”

  “Times change.” Clare tried to sound reasonable. “Look at war years, when a lot of people get married because they don’t know if they will come back alive.”

  Devon rolled over and sat against the wall, drawing her knees against her chest. Her boots soiled the covers. Clare ignored it and focused on blue eyes. “When you go to work at the fire station,” Devon accused, “I don’t know if you’ll come back.”

  Clare felt as though she’d been struck. Devon had always presented a teen’s indifference when she left for her shift. Even when Frank had died, she’d kept her distance and Clare had resented the hell out of it. “Don’t change the subject. We’re talking about your life.”

  “You don’t want a daughter.” Devon swiped at a fat tear tracking through a smeared mess of powder and blush. “You and Dad would rather have a wind-up doll you can send back and forth when you get tired of it.”

  Clare went to the room’s wall sink. Carefully, she washed her heated face, appreciating how cold the water was here compared to Houston.

  “You’ve got something going with Steve,” Devon challenged. “What do you care about me?”

  In the small spotted mirror, Clare saw the flush rise to stain her already sunburned cheeks. The mirror also revealed the belligerent look on Devon’s tear and mascara-streaked face.

  Clare laid her washcloth on the rim and took hold of the cool porcelain of the sink. How useless counting to three was in practice.

  “From the way Steve looks at you,” Devon flung, “I’ll bet he knows what you look like naked.”

  Clare whirled and stabbed her finger at Devon. “That’s it. As long as you live with me …”

  “I’m old enough to take care of myself.”

  If Elyssa were right, Devon was about to make the same life-altering mistake that Clare had made at little more than her age. In perfect hindsight, she saw rushing into a relationship with Jay Chance as her poorest piece of judgment. Too angry not to, she moved forward until she stood over Devon. “You mean old enough to get some man to take care of you.”

  The impact of Clare’s words showed on Devon’s face as though she had thrown a handful of gravel. Her own shock made her mind go blank as the tiny cabin and the narrow space between the beds seemed to close in.

  Devon leaped up. “Fuck you!” she screamed. Both hands caught Clare in the chest, a solid blow that shoved her backward to land on the small of her back against the bed frame. Sharp agony narrowed her vision, but she was able to see Devon push through the cabin door and run away.

  Steve was surprised to see lights in the Visitor Center. More ash drifted down as he stepped up to the door.

  It was locked. Inside, he could see a meeting under way in the auditorium behind the interpretive exhibits. In the front row, Steve recognized Ranger Butler Myers, with a tired yet tense look on his horsy, bearded face.

  Steve tapped the glass.

  Butler unfolded his long frame from the chair and came to the door. “You got a nose for trouble, Haywood.”

  “How so?” Steve hoped Butler wasn’t referring to his drinking.

  “Come in. We’re gonna need all the help we can get.”
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  Duncan Rowland, the Incident Commander of the North Fork, held the floor. The slim, dark-haired man in a ball cap nodded to acknowledge Steve and went on with his briefing.

  He indicated a map that showed the North Fork looking like an octopus, with a rounded head to the northwest and arms that reached in all directions.

  Rowland pointed to a new tentacle. “This area has defeated all our efforts. Observers on the fire line are watching the wind in case we need to call an evacuation.”

  “Shutting down the complex would be unpopular with the traveling public,” Butler drawled. “They like to get up close and personal with these fires, take their pictures.”

  Rowland removed his cap and twisted it. “We’re not gonna know any more for a while,” he said. “I recommend everyone hit the sack early.”

  Steve had been thinking of driving home to Mammoth tonight after he bought Clare … and Devon, dinner. Now he must stay, even if it meant sleeping in his truck, for all hands would be needed tomorrow.

  Rowland completed his warning. “There aren’t any decent breaks in topography or fuel between here and the North Fork. Without a change in the weather, all hell is going to break loose.”

  Clare lay curled on the bed in her cabin. The nausea that had gripped her when her backbone slid down the metal bed frame had passed, but she didn’t feel like moving. Nothing … nothing like that had ever happened between her and her daughter.

  Why couldn’t she have mustered the self-control she used in training? Elyssa had never liked Devon and she was the source of this rumor about the older guy.

  “Clare?” Steve stood in the doorway.

  She wanted to jump up and throw her arms around him, but it seemed too difficult.

  “What happened?” He came and knelt beside her.

  “Devon and I had a difference of opinion.”

  “A bit more than that, I’d say.” His mouth twisted. “I shouldn’t have left.”

  “You couldn’t have known.” How could he have known?

  Steve pulled her to her feet and against him. She pressed her cheek against the softness of his faded red shirt, smelling a hint of male sweat and feeling safe.

  “Has anything like this happened before?” His hands felt sure on her back.

  Clare blinked back tears. “Never.”

  “I guess she doesn’t much care for me.”

  “It’s not you,” she protested against his chest. “That’s just how it started.”

  He folded her closer and his heart beat against her ear. “We’re going to get you some dinner,” he said.

  “I couldn’t eat.”

  “You need something,” he urged. She did indeed need something. It wasn’t food.

  She shook her head again to dinner. “I need to wait for Devon.”

  “I’ll go, then.” He started to move away. Her hands tightened on his shoulders in a way she hoped he could not mistake.

  The flash in his eyes happened suddenly, yet she felt she’d been waiting for it a long time. He dragged her back against him and they found their fit, her head tipped up against his shoulder. She felt as though her body was defined by its contrast with his, more compact and softer where her breasts were crushed against him.

  Their mouths met and melded. A great relief went through her and she let out the breath she’d been holding. They felt good together, a scary thing in the midst of the maelstrom surrounding them.

  Her focus shifted from her own response to his. Running her palm up the back of his neck, she slid it into his hair. He gave a sharp gasp and she moved to press her lips to the hollow at the base of his throat. Until this moment, she’d been competing with a memory. Now she was the one in his arms.

  She laughed in soft victory, flushed with the power to give him pleasure. This wasn’t a thing like the amorphous hunger that had seized her with Deering. This made her feel both exhilarated and secure, despite her conflict with her daughter.

  Steve deepened their kiss and his hands became more urgent. She wanted this with him, because of the chords of need he touched in her.

  In the same moment that she realized Devon could come back at any time, Steve pulled back gently. “I hate to say this,” he said in a voice thick with regret, “but after what happened with Devon, you don’t want her to find me here tonight. Especially, since I can’t trust myself to keep hands off.”

  He was right, much as she hated it. There was no doubt that if he stayed they were going to end up on one of the beds in a most compromising position.

  “There’s more,” he went on. “I just crashed a meeting at the Visitor Center where they’re considering an evacuation.”

  “Oh, God. What if Devon doesn’t come back?” Clare almost hoped she had hooked up with some guy who’d feed her and drive her away from here, rather than have her wandering cold and alone in the dark. Her backpack lay abandoned on the bed, so she had no money or ID.

  “There’s nothing we can do tonight,” Steve said. “I’ll sleep in my truck and check back in the morning. If she doesn’t show by then we’ll put out a missing persons report through the Park Service.”

  She stood at the cabin door and hugged herself while he walked away. A car passed, its headlights illuminating his back as he headed purposefully up the narrow lane between the cabins.

  In case Devon came, Clare left the door unlocked. For hours, she strained to hear approaching footsteps or the creak of the latch. Outside, the wind rose to a moan.

  Devon was out there somewhere while the octopus continued to spread its arms through the night. Punching her pillow, Clare tried to tell herself that she could take the front line against the beast, though Billy Jakes’s death made her want to give up the fight.

  A branch scratched the cabin window like fingernails on a chalkboard.

  With a sigh, Clare turned on the light, found her great-grandmother’s journal, and opened it at random. The entry was dated after the flood in 1927, but Laura was recounting a story about fleeing a forest fire that burned in Yellowstone around the turn of the century.

  That steep west slope on Nez Perce Peak must be unchanged by years, still the Devil’s own playground of sharp and treacherous boulders that shifted beneath our feet. In the suffocating dark, I thought that each step might be my last before falling away in a slide of serrate lava rock.

  Even Cord’s arms failed to warm me through our night on the rock face. Sleep eluded and the pungent smell of burning wood came to us on the wind.

  In the morning, we achieved the ridge top. Our place was marked by an ancient, twisted pine, reaching gnarled limbs into the smoky morning sky. The tree seemed to grow from a cairn of boulders that men might have made. I wonder now if perhaps the Nez Perce piled the stones about the old tree’s base as some kind of sign.

  The sight that greeted us on the east side of the divide was astounding. Like the raging heart of a furnace, fire swept toward us through the tops of the trees, leaping from one to the next in the space of a single heartbeat. I know not how far we ran along the knife-edge to the north before we dropped down onto the steep slope. Trees exploded as though hit by cannon fire. Sound poured over us like nothing I have ever heard, a full-throated yet hollow roar that struck terror.

  Clare knew that predatory call. She’d heard the voice of the Shoshone when she and Steve had cowered in the lake with shards of wood showering from exploding tree trunks. At the spike camp, she’d waited for the chopper with a desperate effort at calm, all the time believing the Mink Creek screamed her name. The Hellroaring had spared her, but taken its offering when Billy Jakes had panicked.

  She continued to read.

  I wish I could say we were saved through action on our part, some clever sleuthing of cold cavern air, but we fell into our refuge without seeing it. In a dank lava tunnel with a cone of dirty snow unmelted from last season, smoke nearly suffocated us.

  We lived, yet are guaranteed no more and no less than anyone who takes their hold on life for granted. I don’t want to rem
ember, but these awful days after the flood take me back to when darkness nearly overtook me. A dreadful time when I believed that despite our love, Cord and I would never find a place to be together.

  Clare shivered and closed the book. She’d lived alone for years, but this summer had blasted her complacency like a tree exploding from wildfire’s heat. First Deering had awakened long dormant physical needs, but it was more than that. Now her soul craved the kind of tenderness that Laura must have found with her Cord. How incredible that a single kiss from Steve could create this monstrous hunger for all that they could be to each other. The temptation to try and find him was almost overpowering.

  The thought arose that they could have been together all this time. The branch tapped again and she started, conjuring ideas that he knocked … and an image of him leaning lazily against the doorframe, looking down at her.

  She would lift her hand and beckon him inside. How his eyes would light as he came to her.

  Clare lay in the lamp’s shaded glow and imagined stoking the sparks he had kindled.

  Old Faithful’s parking lots were nearly empty. Thousands of day visitors had moved on, leaving seven hundred hotel guests and a few hundred employees who lived at the complex.

  Steve got out of the truck’s cab. Favoring his right knee, he climbed into the bed of the pickup. From beside the shovel and axe that rangers carried year-round for fighting fires and digging out of snow, he pulled an olive drab down sleeping bag, sealed in plastic to protect it from weather. The truck bed was not exactly soft, but the front seat was too cramped for his bad knees.

  Thinking of Clare, warm in bed in her cabin, Steve unrolled his bedroll and got into it. Toward morning, it would get down in the low forties or high thirties.

  He lay on his back and looked at the sky. Clouds skidded past, or were they clouds? The whiffs of fresh smoke he’d been catching all evening now came with annoying frequency.

  The North Fork was on its way, loaded for bear.

  Steve hoped Clare would find Devon before trouble got here. Despite her animosity toward him, he’d seen the charm as well as the conflict in the child-woman. With her parents divorced and her father’s remarriage one that obviously excluded her, it was no wonder she had lashed out at her mother over him. Despite Clare’s concern, he figured she’d probably show up back at the cabin when it got cold enough.