Olivia shook her head. Lucas entered the next cage and lifted a bigger house and half carried, half dragged it through the house of barking dogs, then out the front door and down the hill and back into the woods.
Soon one of Scott’s friends was helping us, and he and Lucas carried the bigger houses as a team while Olivia focused on the smaller ones.
After more water, we returned to the big outdoor cat box. Olivia found a bucket, which she filled with shovelfuls of sand. Then, grunting a little, she carried the bucket to the front, where Mack had placed a ladder. She cautiously ascended, getting a firm grip with each rung, hauling the sand up to the roof, where she dumped it. Soon Mack joined her, carrying buckets of his own, up and down, up and down, upending them on top of the house of barking dogs.
I decided there must be a lot of cats up there.
“Lucas! Come up and clean out these gutters!” Mack called down.
I watched anxiously as my boy ascended the ladder. I put my front paws on it, but these were not stairs and I didn’t understand how to follow him. The smoke was getting stronger and Lucas and Olivia and Mack were away from me and I couldn’t get to them. I did a good Sit and whined anxiously.
They must have heard me because all three people came back down. I wagged, shoving my nose at each one of them in turn, though they did not appreciate what a good dog I had been. They must not have seen my Sit.
They stood close together. Lucas was wheezing. Olivia put a concerned hand on his shoulder and he shook his head at her. “No, it’s okay. Just a little winded.” He looked at his wrist, then up at Mack. “Don’t you need to get going?”
Mack rubbed his face. “I’m feeling cautiously optimistic about our odds.”
“Our odds?” Lucas repeated.
Mack grinned fiercely. “You think I’m going to let the two of you have all the fun without me?”
“Mack…”
Mack clapped his hands together. “You get on the LP tank. I’m going to help these boys here move the remaining trees. Olivia…”
“More sand?” she guessed.
“You guessed it. I promise it’s going to make a huge difference.”
I followed Lucas around to the cement area next to the cat box. He lifted the lid on a delicious smelling metal box. Old cooked meat reached out from inside and tantalized my nose. Lucas wasn’t there to cook, though. He pulled a big white metal ball out from underneath it. Then we went for a walk, but this time we marched way, way down the road, to a place where I could no longer see or smell Olivia or any of the men, though I could still hear their angry machines slashing at the trees. Lucas carefully set the tank down on a sandy area on the other side of the road, away from any trees. Then he and I headed briskly back. He was wheezing more loudly, now. It was hotter and darker than ever. He kept putting a hand to his mouth and hacking into it, and I watched him with concern.
When we arrived back at the building, the men from the trucks were using shovels to dig in the front yard. I was intrigued by this, especially when they would pull a shrub out by its roots, carry it down and, of course, toss it in the woods.
Soon the woman named Diane was passing out big plastic bottles full of water. The men were all panting and coughing. They took deep, long drinks.
“I’ll get started on digging the trench in the back next,” Lucas said.
“How are the animals doing?” the man named Dave asked Diane.
“They’re panicking,” she replied.
Mack’s phone made a noise and he pulled it from his belt. “Fletcher,” he told it.
Everyone paused to listen.
“Fletcher, go to channel five.”
I heard the odd noise and looked at Lucas; he looked back at me.
“Fletcher,” Mack said again.
I sat and scratched my ear.
“Mack, have you lost your mind? This whole area is going up. We’re evacuating now. Get down here.”
“People need me, Captain.”
Were we going to stay here? I let my legs fold into nap position.
“Our ETD is twenty minutes. Hear me? Do what you gotta do, but be here in twenty or you will be left behind. Copy? We cannot wait for you.”
“Copy. Captain?”
“Yeah, Mack?”
“Good luck to you, sir. It’s been … I’ve been honored to work for you. You gave me a chance when I don’t think very many others would have.”
“God, Mack. I don’t know what to say.”
“This is my choice, sir.”
“Just … take care of yourself, son.”
For a long moment no one spoke. They all stared at one another, and I felt their fear rising from their skin. Then Scott set his paper cup down. “Okay, that’s all the time we can afford, here. Now we’re going to go down and try to save as many structures as we can.”
“You did good,” Mack told him. “It’s just grass now, and the tree stumps.”
“Thank you all so much,” Olivia added.
Soon the men were loading their metal machines into the truck, generating loud clanks.
“Scott, hold up for just a sec, all right?” Lucas called. Scott looked over and nodded, waiting by his truck.
Lucas moved closer to Mack. “Mack, talk to you?”
They took a few steps. I followed. “You know,” Lucas advised Mack in low tones, “you can still get out of this hellhole. Ride down with Scott, get on one of the last trucks. You’ve got twenty minutes, right?”
“Maybe,” Mack grunted. He was quiet for a moment. He was staring off at something. Then he gave Lucas a searching look. “I guess I never really told you all of what happened over in Afghanistan, did I? And this is no time to do it now. But the bottom line is, I wasn’t there when the worst of it happened. I had been sent off the line. By the time I got back, it was over. I wasn’t there with my buddies when it all went down. That’s what still gets to me, if I let it. That’s what I couldn’t stop thinking about at the VA. I can’t live through something like that again. Understand?”
Lucas nodded. “All right, Mack.”
Scott had come back up the driveway. The rest of the men were climbing into their trucks. “You staying here, Dave?” he asked.
“Yeah. My sister,” Dave replied.
“Okay. We’ll come back every once in a while,” Scott assured him. “As much as we can, anyway.”
I watched the two trucks drive off, their lights diffused by the haze. I wondered if it meant we would soon be leaving as well.
Dave and Lucas and Mack returned to the backyard and took turns digging a long, narrow hole. Olivia came out and periodically used one of the shovels herself. They were all sweating, which made it easier to smell them, but my eyes were watering in the smoke, making it hard to pick them out as night fell.
“Do we need to dig a trench on the south side?” Lucas asked Mack with a cough.
“Don’t think so. The volleyball court and patio should be good enough.”
“What about the north side, where the firewood was stacked?”
“Yep, ’fraid so. Just beyond where the logs killed the grass.”
“Is it my imagination,” Lucas asked, “or has the wind died down a little? That’s good, right? The wind is as much the problem as anything.”
“The fire brings its own wind. It sucks the oxygen to it, strong enough to blow a man over.”
“How much time do we have, do you think?”
“Hard to say. But last we heard, it was close, and it’s coming from this end of town. We’ll get hit here before Paraiso does.”
Steadily, like a storm, I could hear a loud roar growing ever more powerful. I kept looking to Lucas to see what we should do and he just kept digging. I dug a little myself but had no real interest in doing so.
Olivia was still going up and down to the roof, building her cat box up there. Mack and Lucas dug and dug, both of them coughing out their exhaustion.
Diane came running out of the back door and up to us. I smelled her bef
ore I saw her. She was crying and coughing. “There are these big orange explosions up in the sky!”
We dashed around to the front and down the grassy slope to the road. The woods on the other side of the pavement were filled with a swirling darkness. Occasionally, though, a smear of bright light would flash and I would feel a shock of heat pass over my body.
“We just ran out of time,” Mack said.
Thirteen
For a moment, the humans stood facing the road as the approaching roar grew louder. From all of them I sensed fear, though Diane was suffering most terribly, gasping through her tears. Olivia reached over and held my boy’s hand. A bright glow penetrated the smoke, and the wind stirred and came alive, whistling down the lawn and into the fire, then blowing hard back out, like an animal breathing. I blinked at the unexpected blast of grit, and Lucas turned away, coughing.
“This is it!” Mack shouted.
Then everyone ran. Flaming sticks and pieces of wood rained down out of the night sky. Dave raced up to the building, picked up a hose, and sprayed the bigger chunks, which sizzled. Mack darted forward with his shovel, burying the flaming debris in dirt. Burning leaves chased each other like squirrels out of the trees, across the road and up into the grass, and Lucas jumped on these and stomped them. Olivia scaled the ladder and dashed around up there, tossing sand while glowing particles fell from the clouds of smoke shrieking by overhead.
I stuck close to my boy’s side as he stomped and trampled the embers.
I was afraid. Lucas was panting and coughing. Sweat poured off of him and then a new odor rose from his feet, which were smoking. I knew the smoldering pieces of wood and flaming leaves were bad because he was kicking at them so viciously, but there were so many. I turned and snapped at my haunches when one stung me near my tail.
“Lucas!” Olivia screamed from the roof. “Stop stomping on fires, you’re melting your boots!”
Lucas stared at her and then peered at his feet.
“Here!” Dave yelled. He lunged toward us and sprayed water on my boy’s shoes. I crinkled my nose at the chemical smell. “There’s a snow shovel in the hall closet!”
I fled with Lucas into the house. I could sense that Diane was in the back with all the barking dogs. My boy grabbed a wide, flat shovel, the kind he used in the winter. He dashed back outside and began beating burning leaves with this shovel.
“We just lost water pressure!” Dave yelled and tossed his hose aside.
I cringed and felt like a bad dog because he was bellowing so angrily.
There was a crack and a tall tree, flaming fiercely at the top, fell across the road, the blazing branches flaring in the grass on our side of the pavement.
“Chainsaws!” Mack hollered.
Instantly, Mack and Dave were on the fallen tree with snarling machines. As they hacked out sparking chunks, Lucas pushed and shoved at the burning pieces with his flat shovel, eventually corralling them across the road where the fire was fiercest.
“Lucas! Don’t get too close!” Mack warned.
“We should have cut down the trees closest to the road on the other side. If one of them gets to the grasses on our side, we’ll lose the shelter!” Lucas yelled back. Now he sounded angry.
“There are embers everywhere up here!” Olivia called frantically. The wind stole her voice and whipped it away.
“Do your best!” Lucas shouted back, then crumpled into a cough. I pressed against him in concern.
A piece of flaring branch flew out of the air, landing right next to me, and I flinched. I was scared but Lucas covered it with dirt. “It’s okay, Bella,” he wheezed.
I felt like a bad dog because I wanted to run, to put this awful place behind me. But I would never leave Lucas.
“There goes another one!” Mack yelled as a flaming tree crashed across the road.
Lucas threw dirt as Mack and Dave cut at it with their machines. I backed away, my tail and ears low. Lucas did not seem to hear me whining.
I tracked my boy back and forth and watched the bewildering, frantic activity, wishing we were doing something else. Occasionally I was conscious of the dogs in the building behind me barking in terror, but mostly I stayed focused on Lucas and Mack and Dave running around, cutting wood and pushing the pieces back across the road. They were all panting and coughing now, and the sharp tang of their sweat mingled with the heavy, oppressive smell of smoke and fire.
Small fires were flaring up in the grass, and my boy was pounding them with his flat shovel. “We’re losing ground!” he shouted desperately.
Dave stayed with a felled tree while Mack ran up and helped Lucas fling soil at the pockets of flame.
I could feel their terror, but we didn’t get in a car and leave. We stayed in the burning yard.
I heard the sound of a truck before the humans did. I peered into the smoke and saw two lights bouncing their way toward us. Mack and Dave and Lucas straightened and I knew they had heard it, too. The truck roared right up to us and pulled over on the side of the road that wasn’t burning. It was Scott and one of his friends. They jumped out and started up their snarling machines and went after trees that were burning and falling across the road.
“We lost the whole Mountain View neighborhood!” Scott yelled over the wind. “But the other guys are still in our cul-de-sac and we’re keeping the fire at bay. None of the houses there are on fire yet.”
I eventually did Sit because it was the only thing I could think to do. My eyes stung as I watched the humans continue their attack on flaming pieces of wood. They were all stumbling a little now, looking exhausted. But they did not stop.
The sun had long ago left the sky, but it made no difference—plenty of light came from the brightly burning forest across the road. All the sound came from the roar of the fire. All the darkness came from smoke.
I could smell, when Scott wiped his face and held out a palm to me, that his fingers had been singed. I did not lick them, but I did sniff and wag to let him know I was sorry he had hurt his hand.
Everyone was still frantic, wielding shovels and tree-biting machines, dashing from one hot stop to another.
After a long time, Scott, panting, approached Lucas and put a hand on his shoulder. “We’d better get back. Good luck, guys.”
Scott and his friend drove away again. Olivia climbed down off the roof and Diane brought buckets of water to pass around. I drank greedily when a dog bowl was placed in front of me. Everyone stopped for a moment, their breath coming slower, their coughing not as frequent. The wind seemed to have lessened, the crackling roar of the fire quieting.
“It’s 6 AM,” Lucas rasped, holding up his wrist.
“What day?” Olivia replied. She and Lucas laughed—an odd, croaking sound.
Then everyone went silent. I approached Lucas and did Sit to let him know his good dog was right there with him.
“I think we’re doing it,” Mack observed finally. “Fire across the street was so intense it’s already mostly burned itself out.”
“I haven’t seen any flaming branches or embers on the roof in about forty-five minutes or so,” Olivia agreed.
Mack nodded tiredly at this.
Lucas reached for Olivia and pulled her in for a hug. “Man, I’m proud of you for handling the roof all by yourself. That had to be really hard.”
Olivia smiled up at him. “Are you kidding? From up there I could see you guys running flat out. I don’t know how you did it.”
“Could you see the back? Everything okay there?” Mack wanted to know.
“I had a great view. The flames were all directly in front of us. You were right, Mack, the road was a firebreak.”
“Well, we got lucky there.”
“Glad Scott showed up when he did,” Lucas observed.
“That was sort of the hardest time,” Olivia agreed.
“Great.…,” Mack grunted.
“What is it?” Olivia asked.
“Lost my radio somewhere.”
Quite some
time later, there was another change as the sun climbed higher in the sky. This time, it was able to cut through the smoke, which was drifting in big curtains. An eerie silence had descended, though I could still smell and hear fires thundering not far away.
Lucas sat down after drinking some more water and I eased my head onto his lap. He placed a hand on my fur … a hand that instantly fell still as he slipped into a deep sleep.
We lay like that for some time and then Olivia came and shook Lucas. “Lucas! Mack needs you right away. Now!”
Lucas staggered to his feet. He limped to the place where much earlier he had been picking up the thick sticks and running them all the way down the hill and into the woods on the other side. Mack was there and his shovel was frantically biting into the dirt, making a pile.
Lucas wiped his face. “What’s happening?”
“The wind is shifting,” Mack explained. “Fire’s coming back from this side, now. We got to reinforce this trench before the whole lawn goes up.”
I could smell that Dave had gone into the house. Lucas picked up Dave’s shovel and Mack and Lucas began digging agitatedly. Olivia used her bucket and clawed out sand from the cat box and poured it on top of a long thin pile of soil next to the trench. The earth smelled cool and delicious and wonderful as it was exposed to the air. Part of me wanted to just climb into the hole they were making and lie down for a nap, but Lucas and Mack and Olivia were so afraid that I stayed with them while they toiled.
Mack wiped his face. “The trees are thinner, and aspens don’t burn all that well anyway, so it’s just these long grasses we got to worry about. It’s gonna blow at us fast, but with enough dirt, it won’t get to the wood siding.”
There was blood smearing Lucas’s hands now, and blood on the handle of the shovel that he held. I smelled the acrid bite of smoke implausibly growing closer. Was this going to keep happening again and again? Lucas and Mack kept digging and Olivia kept piling sand, even as my senses told me fire was coming straight toward us. Soon it jumped out of the sparse, flaming trees and marched quickly across the grass, right to our feet. Coughing, everyone backed away.
A Dog's Courage--A Dog's Way Home Novel Page 10