Wildfire

by Rodman Philbrick

  Delphy wipes her glistening face with the back of her hand. “You’re okay for a boy, you know that?”

  On my walk back to the Jeep, I remember something Dad once did with a snowmobile, to make sure it didn’t get stolen. He pulled the main spark plug wire and took it with him. “No spark, no steal,” he said with a smile.

  Doubtful there’s anyone around to steal the Jeep, but I can’t risk it, not with our lives at stake.

  I lift the hood and follow his example.

  Thanks, Dad.

  When I return with canned goods for supper, Delphy is perched on an old porch rocker, looking very pleased with herself. The door to the cottage is open. “You broke in?”

  “Nope.” She holds up a key. “Found it under the mat.”

  The sun is already low in the sky, and the shuttered windows make the inside of the cottage dim. “What’s in there?”

  Delphy shrugs. “I was waiting for you.”

  I ease down into a chair. “We’re probably breaking the law just being here. Trespassing, right?”

  “Said the boy who stole a Jeep.”

  “Borrowed,” I respond quickly.

  “Whatever. This is what they call a special circumstance. We’re two kids lost in the woods, running from a forest fire, okay? I don’t think they’ll send us to prison for seeing if there’s anything inside that can help us survive.”

  That makes sense, but it still feels wrong. The pond, the empty dock, the comfortable old porch furniture, it all looks private. Like we’re intruding on a family. But Delphy is right—what if there’s a phone in there? Or food and water like at the logging camp? “Okay. Let’s take a look.”

  It takes a moment for my eyes to adjust to the deep shadows inside the cabin. Our footsteps echo in a way that makes me think the place is hollow somehow. Then I realize: not hollow, but empty. It even smells empty. There’s nothing inside but hot, stale air and an old broom, leaning against a bare wall. No furniture, no pictures on the walls, no wood for the stone fireplace. The cupboard doors are open, and the shelves are bare. No food, water, or supplies. No candles, lanterns, or flashlights. Nothing.

  “Whoever they were, the owners, they’re gone.”

  Delphy sighs. “Gone for a long time. Years probably. Look at the dust.”

  “Sorry.”

  “It’s not your fault.” She’s being polite, but sounds heartbroken. Delphy pulls open a kitchen drawer, looking for silverware. At first glance, it seems to be as empty as the cupboards, until she reaches to the very back. Then her eyes get bigger.

  “I’ve got something!” she exclaims. “A phone! It’s a phone!”

  But her excitement doesn’t last long. The object from the drawer is about the same size and shape as an old flip phone, but it’s not. It’s a small, self-powered emergency radio, with a crank on the side. Turn the crank fast for a couple of minutes and the radio will play for a little while.

  I take it from her and check it out. “This is really cool, Delphy. My dad had one of these. He used it for the weather reports, when we were hiking. So we’d get warnings of thunderstorms or flash floods. Like that. With the hand crank, you don’t have to worry about batteries. Maybe we can find out where the fire is headed!”

  Delphy isn’t listening. She hobbles out to the porch, keeping her back turned. I know better than to say anything. Plenty of times I’ve wanted to cry myself, from frustration and fear and not knowing what happens next. Out here in the blazing heat, running from a fire, all you have to do is take a wrong turn, make a bad decision, and you turn into a crispy critter. No second chances once the flames catch up. I can’t imagine a worse way to die, but I can’t help thinking about it, even though I’m pretty sure we’re way ahead of the fire. Anyhow, if Delphy wants to shed a few tears, I’m not going to say a word about it, no way.

  I go to the opposite end of the porch and fiddle with the radio, turning the hand crank as fast as I can. After thirty cranks, I switch it on. Static. I rotate the dial. More static.

  Behind me, Delphy goes, “Try pulling out the antenna.”

  Extending the antenna seems to help, but mostly the static is just louder. I give the thing a few more cranks, then fiddle with the dial again, and this time a faint but familiar voice weaves through the static. I turn slowly, aiming the antenna until the voice sharpens. The voice that did our wake-up call, followed by golden oldies. Phat Freddy Bell. Usually he’s joking around, but not this time. This time he’s dead serious.

  “… reporting that more than fifteen thousand acres of dry timberland have been engulfed by wind-driven flames in the last forty-eight hours. In some areas, a wall of flame has spread a mile in less than an hour, leaving nothing but smoldering ash behind. Firefighters are working hard, but they haven’t been able to stop it. What started this fire is as yet undetermined. Could be a careless camper, or what they call ‘dry lightning.’ But whatever started it, officials fear this may be worse than the great fire of 1947 that burned from the mountains to the sea, destroying town after town. Unless we get some rain. Boy, do we need rain. So we’re praying for rain! We’re dancing for rain! That’s right, your host Phat Freddy Bell is dancin’ right now in the ’RPZ studio, making a fool of himself. Come on, come on! Let’s all get up and dance! Old and young! Everybody! Dance until it rains!”

  The voice blends into music, wild rocking music about the land of a thousand dances, but it quickly fades to static.

  Delphy tucks the radio into her backpack, then looks at me with worried eyes. “We’re in bad trouble.”

  We’re sitting on the screen porch in the dark, both of us groaning because our stomachs are so full. Cold beans and franks may not sound appetizing, but it is if you’re starving. And the beans weren’t really cold, not in this heat. Must be ninety degrees with the sun down. To top it off, we each ate a can of brown bread, and even without butter it was delicious.

  Delphy, contented, says, “This is the fullest I’ve been since before Camp Fatness, and all those so-called healthy meals. It feels good not to be hungry.”

  “I don’t know about the other campers, but you’re not, you know, fat or anything. You’re tall for a girl, that’s all. Tall and big and strong. But definitely not, um, overweight.”

  “Ha. Tall and big and strong. Just what every girl wants to hear.”

  “I’m serious.”

  “Let’s talk about something else.” She leans back in her porch rocker and massages her sore ankle.

  It’s so dark the world outside the porch might as well be a pool of black ink. No stars, and the smell of smoke remains faint and distant, which means we don’t have to worry about the fire. Not right this minute, anyhow.

  Delphy clears her throat. “Know what I want more than anything? A hot shower to wash my hair. I smell like a dirtball and everything feels gross, like I’ve been dipped in grease, then rolled around in the dirt. Ugh!”

  “No plumbing in this cabin, but tomorrow morning, first light, we can wash up in the pond.”

  “That would be cool. So what do you want more than anything?”

  No need to think about it. “Call my mom.”

  Her expression softens. “What would you tell her?”

  “That I’m okay and not to worry.”

  Delphy nods. “I wish it was true, that there’s nothing to worry about. How far away are we from the fire?”

  “Miles. I hope.”

  “That DJ on the radio said it was spreading a mile an hour. So every time we stop moving, it might be catching up. Right?”

  I shake my head, because I know what’s she’s about to ask. “No way. We can’t drive at night. Not on that trail. We’d wreck the Jeep and then we’d be toast.”

  “No, no. Totally. I get it.”

  “Unless you think you can drive at night, on a trail we don’t know.”

  “Hey, Sam? I can’t drive at all, okay? No clue. I’m not, like, being critical or anything. I’m just worried.” She sighs. “So if the fire does catch up, can’t
we just jump in the pond?”

  I think about it. “Maybe. If that’s our only option. It’s risky. Our camp counselor told us it’s better to find another way out, if possible. Even in a pond, if you’re not far enough away from the burning shoreline, the smoke from a big fire might make it too hard to breathe. It depends on if we want to burn to death, or die from smoke inhalation.”

  “Great choice.”

  “Don’t worry, Delphy. The fire can’t catch us, not as long as we have the Jeep.”

  “Thanks, Sam. What do we do next?”

  “Before the lumber camp burned, I had a plan. I was going to chop down some birch saplings and make a big ‘HELP’ sign that could be seen from the air.”

  She perks up. “That’s a great idea. Except I haven’t heard any search planes overhead, have you? Or helicopters?”

  “No. But somebody has to be looking for us. Right?”

  “Unless they think we’re dead.”

  “There are a bunch of camps on Lake Wabanaski. Your camp and my camp, and the YMCA on the far side of the lake. Plus lots of summer cottages. What I mean is, the fire came up so fast we can’t be the only ones missing.”

  “True. I’ll help you make the sign if you think it might work.”

  “Awesome.”

  We sit there in the dark for a while, not saying anything. At first it feels awkward, and then I kind of relax into the silence. People don’t have to talk every second. They can just be quiet together. Not perfectly quiet, though, because my stomach is rumbling, which is embarrassing. Not that Delphy says anything about it.

  To cover up the rumble, I ask if she has any brothers or sisters.

  She nods. “Angie and Calista. Five years younger. They’re twins. Not identical, but they might as well be. They had their own language until they were like six years old. They still call me the BFG, or Geegee for short.”

  “BFG?”

  “Big Friendly Giant.” She laughs. “They love that book so much I guess I should be flattered. What about you?”

  “It’s just me and Mom.” I leave it at that. “Did your parents make you go to camp? Is that why you wanted to run away?”

  She jerks back, offended. “Who says I was running away? I got lost in the woods, that’s all.”

  “Okay. Sorry.”

  Not something she wants to discuss, obviously.

  “It was my dad’s idea, to try a fitness camp,” she continues. “Especially the volleyball program. He wants me to ‘use my tall.’ Turns out I like track better, but volleyball is okay.”

  “Use your tall?”

  “Like embrace it. Dad is six foot five. He thinks it’s cool, having a tall daughter. Says he wants me to have altitude instead of attitude.”

  “Sounds like a cool guy.”

  “My dad? He wouldn’t know cool if it bit him on the butt.”

  That makes me chuckle. “You’re pretty funny, you know that?”

  “So now I’m big and tall and funny. That’s just great.”

  I sigh. “I’m never going to beat you, am I?”

  “Never, ever, ever. Accept that, little man.”

  “Hey!”

  “Accept that, average-heighted-boy-for-his-age.”

  Even in the dark I can tell she’s grinning. She likes it, us bouncing stuff off each other, making wisecracks. I never had a big sister, but maybe this is what it’s like.

  “I’ve got a plan,” she says. “You know what my plan is? My plan is, tomorrow we get rescued.”

  “Great. That’s my plan, too.”

  And then it happens. Without warning, or any way to stop it, I let one rip. I mean really rip. It sounds like an out-of-control whoopee cushion, venting loud and long. Like a not-so-distant artillery barrage. Like—oh, never mind, you know what it sounds like.

  When at long last it’s over, I gasp and say the first thing that comes to mind. “Beans.”

  That does it. Delphy goes bonkers, and then I’m laughing, too, and it’s like contagious or something. We can’t stop, we keep laughing and giggling until we’re out of breath. And then Delphy snickers and shouts, “Beans!” and we start laughing all over again. Laughing until my stomach hurts so bad I have to jam my fist in my mouth to stop the giggles.

  “Beans, beans, the musical fruit,” she chants.

  “Stop!” I beg her. “Don’t.”

  “The more you eat, the more you toot!”

  I never knew that you can laugh yourself to sleep, but you can, under the right circumstances.

  In my dream an angry wasp is buzzing around my head, but for some reason my hands don’t work, they’re too heavy to lift, so I can’t stop the wasp. What if it gets in my ear? What if it stings my brain?

  That’s what wakes me up, fear of a stung brain. I’m lying on the porch with a cushion for a pillow. There’s some light in the sky, but not much. A little after dawn, is my guess. The air feels super hot and syrup thick. Gusts of wind rattle the trees.

  I sit up, feeling sore from the hard porch floor, and look around. Delphy is slumped in the rocker, still sound asleep. I stand up carefully, not wanting to wake her, and search for the wasp buzzing against the screens. Because I didn’t dream that part, there really is an insect noise.

  No, wait, not an insect. A distant engine, like a chain saw, or maybe a dirt bike. It fades in and out with the wind, but there is more than one engine. Two at least.

  My heart starts slamming. People! They’re finally coming to rescue us, cutting a path through the woods.

  I shake Delphy. She lurches awake, and not happily. “Hey, what are you doing? Leave me alone.”

  “Listen! Can you hear that?”

  She grabs her stick and gets to her feet, wincing from the pain in her swollen ankle. I help her down from the porch and we make our way through the meadow, down toward the pond. Toward the sound of gunning engines.

  As we get closer to the pond, we see flashes on the opposite shore. Not a light, but fast-moving shapes.

  Then I notice what we missed last evening in the fading sunset. Part of a roof and chimney, visible through the trees swaying in the wind. There’s a good-sized summer house on the opposite shore, and the shapes that are moving fast are a couple of dirt bikes zooming around the property. Above the noise of the revving engines, we can hear the riders whooping it up, shouting, “Away! Away!” or something like it. Hard to tell, exactly.

  “We should yell back.” Delphy drops her stick and waves her arms.

  “Wait. Not yet.”

  I’ve got a bad feeling about the wild riders. Why are they circling the house and whooping it up? What are they celebrating? Are they having a party?

  Delphy, ignoring my cautions, shouts, “Hey! Hey! Over here! Across the pond! Help! Help! Help!”

  The bikes keep zooming around the house, vanishing into the trees and then reappearing. Maybe they can’t hear her above the scream of their engines.

  What happens next makes my blood run cold. An orange light comes on inside the house, making a window glint. The light grows quickly, filling the house, getting brighter and brighter, and then it bursts through the roof as orange flames, leaping into the sky, lighting up the tall pine trees.

  Fire, exploding from the house and spreading fast, driven by the wind.

  “Delphy! We have to get out of here! They saw us for sure!”

  She’s staring at the fire, as if she can’t believe it. Her hope of rescue going up in flames.

  Across the pond, one of the dirt-bike riders comes to the edge of the water, looking directly at us. He raises his arm and points wildly. The other rider suddenly roars up beside him. Then they zoom off, vanishing into the woods ahead of the fire.

  Do they know about the Jeep? Maybe spotted it from the logging trail as they zoomed around the pond to have their fun? No time to think about it. Concentrate on getting away from the fire.

  The fire. The fire.

  The fire grows like a thing alive, doubling every few seconds, getting hotter and brighte
r, until the whole pond glows orange and red, like there’s a fire inside the pond. A wave of intense heat scorches the air. Black smoke spreads across the pond like night fog, but way more deadly. Fog you can breathe, but not hot smoke.

  The weird thing is, it’s so beautiful you can’t stop watching it.

  “Delphy!”

  She turns to me, blinking her eyes as if she’s just woken up from a dream.

  “We have to go! They might be trying to find us! They might have seen the Jeep!”

  “They’re the ones,” she says. “They started the whole thing.”

  “Probably. Come on!”

  She grabs hold of my shoulder and uses her stick for balance. We limp-run up the meadow, away from the pond, away from the fire. Delphy insists on retrieving her backpack, and I keep urging her to hurry.

  We have to get to the Jeep before the dirt-bike riders find us.

  I don’t know how I know they’re coming for us, but I do.

  By the time we get to the Jeep, the searing hot wind has thickened with smoke. Our eyes are watering from a crummy combination of sweat, smoke, and tears. I help Delphy into the passenger seat, toss her backpack into the rear seat, and then leap behind the wheel. Hoping with all my heart that the engine will start when I flip the lever and depress the starting pedal.

  It turns over but doesn’t catch. My heart sinks. And then I remember the secret to making it start is in my pocket.

  “What’s wrong?” Delphy asks.

  No time to explain. I race to the front, lift the hood, and plug the wire into the distributor cap.

  Back behind the wheel, I close my eyes and flip the starter switch.

  Vrrrrooom. What a beautiful sound!

  “Hang on!” I shout, and let out the clutch.

  A moment later, we’re barreling along the old logging trail with the hot wind at our backs. Which isn’t good, because it means the wind is pushing the fire and smoke in our direction. But going the other way would have taken us back into the fire, so this is our only option.