“Did you just get here?” the man asked.
Lucas nodded.
“How?” the woman demanded. “They say the way is blocked by fire.”
“I guess we were dispatched with bad information. Now they’ve got photos showing the fire closed off the road out of here.”
“Did you drive through fire?” the man challenged.
“No.”
The man looked at the woman. “I say we go for it.”
She touched her hair.
“Whenever the fire department has told us fire was coming, it’s always come,” Olivia advised.
“And we already tried outrunning it in a vehicle,” Lucas added. “You can’t.”
The man and the woman stood and walked away. Lucas reached out and held Olivia’s hand, but not in a happy way. I wondered what I could do to provide comfort.
I did not know why we just sat there for so long. I did not know, if this place made my people so tense, why we didn’t just take a car ride and go back to where New Black Dog was probably being fed cheese.
I did register Mack and his friends returning after their long absence, but they were talking to other people and didn’t approach our table.
I glanced up sharply when a loud pounding noise emerged from out of the cloudy sky and drifted over us, eventually resolving itself into a large machine that was so noisy I looked to Lucas for reassurance.
Whatever it was, it dropped slowly toward the ground, swung back and forth a moment, and then touched down.
As it stopped making so much noise, Cloth-eye announced, “Okay. Time to go.”
Suddenly there was a lot of crying. Everybody wanted to hug the children but not the good dog who was right there in front of them. Then the children and some adults ran across the grass to the still-loud machine. A big door slid open and a man stepped out and waved at them and they began climbing into the big machine the way I sometimes jump into the back seat of Olivia’s car.
As the loud machine beat the air with its thumping noises and rose straight up and tilted and flew off into the haze, the few people who remained with us went to stand closer to Cloth-eye. Only adults surrounded me, now. I had not gotten to play with a single child.
“All right,” Cloth-eye said. “So we’re going to get the pump going and get some water. I want us to wet down sheets and blankets from the bunkhouse. Carry them all to the basketball court.”
Olivia raised her hand. “What’s the plan?”
Cloth-eye turned and gestured at something. “The basketball court is a firebreak. The cement can’t burn. We don’t have time to take down the trees near it but they’re very sparse. We’re gonna get under the wet cloths and the fire will do a burn-over.”
The man with turkey fingers stirred, looking worried. “I just thought of something. The basketball court is close to the propane tank.”
The man on the steps looked at Mack’s friends.
“On it,” one of them said.
“Count me in,” Mack added.
Lucas and Olivia and Mack and a few of the other people jogged with us across the field, stopping at a big, smooth metal object almost the size of a car.
Mack took a hard tool off his belt. “Let me disconnect the hose.” He wrenched at a metal pipe that snaked out of one end of the big object. He finally managed to pull it off.
“How full is it, do you suppose?” one of Mack’s friends asked Turkey-fingers.
He shook his head. “Not very. We called last week to have it refilled, but they haven’t been out yet.”
Lucas and Mack and the rest of them began pushing on the big metal object. Soon it was rocking, and with every rock back and forth, the motion increased. I jumped in surprise when the big thing toppled off of its perch and landed with a huge thump on the ground. It immediately began rolling downhill but did not go far before it ground to a halt against some trees.
Lucas reached out and touched Olivia’s arm. “You okay?”
Olivia nodded. “Somehow I’m not as afraid this time. I sort of know what to expect, you know?”
I lifted my nose. I could smell that the fire was coming back now. And I could hear it, hear the noise that had been filling my senses since the day after we saw the not-Big-Kitten in the room with the glass booths.
Mack came over to us. He was sweating and not smiling. “Wish we could have gotten that tank farther away.” He set down his pack and rummaged inside it. “For some reason when I saw Bella in Frisco, I decided to pull one of these and put it in my pack. It’s an air filter for dogs. Forgot I had it until just now. Sorry, Bella.”
I heard my name and heard the word dogs but did not sense that a treat would be forthcoming. Not only was I right about that, but, worse, Mack took what appeared to be a wide and deep plastic dog bowl and fit it over my face. I wagged because, though I did not know what he was doing, I knew that Mack loved me and would not harm me.
Once the dog bowl was over my snout, I noticed something new: the awful smoke that had been in my nose for so long was suddenly much less intense. Instead, while I could still smell fire, I could also detect the taste of cleaner air. I inhaled deeply, noticing as I did so that some people were bringing wet, dripping blankets and dropping them in a pile in the middle of a large, flat area that looked like a piece of road. They were moving quickly, twisting away from one another to cough. Smoke was curling around us. I expected that at any moment Scott and his friends would arrive.
“We’re going to be okay,” Lucas said to Olivia. They clutched at each other desperately. I did not wag.
“Let’s go! Let’s go!” someone yelled.
“Everyone to the middle of the basketball court!” someone else called.
All the people shuffled quickly onto the flat cement area. A lone metal pole poked up toward the sky at one end. I could smell that a male dog had recently marked at the base of the pole and wanted to investigate, but Lucas snapped his fingers at me. “Bella, come!”
We were in the center of the flat space.
“Get down low,” Cloth-eye instructed.
Mack and his friends began picking up large wet blankets. Lucas and Olivia knelt down on their hands and knees next to each other, but not to play with me. Soon Mack and his friends were the only ones standing.
“Okay, folks, I’m not gonna lie,” Cloth-eye announced. “This is going to be scary. The fire will be in the tops of the trees, and it will be hotter than anything you can imagine. But there’s nothing on the basketball court to catch fire. Hopefully, the embers won’t ignite these wet blankets. If they do, yell out and we’ll try to stomp out the flames.”
“Hold the cloth to your face and breathe through your nose,” one of Mack’s friends said as he handed people more wet blankets.
“How long before the fire gets here?” Olivia asked.
Mack turned to look at her as she huddled next to Lucas. Lucas put his arm around me and I lay down next to him.
“Now,” Mack said. “It’s here now.”
Seventeen
“Hands and knees, everybody!” Cloth-eye yelled. “Firefighters, flashlights on!”
“Huddle as close together as you can and stay low,” Mack urged. “That will stop the hot air from getting in between you. Picture the wet sheets like they’re the roof of a tent—we want to keep us all in the same space, inside the tent!”
He and his friends pulled out short metal objects and waved them, and beams of light illuminated the people’s sweaty, panicky faces.
I felt terror and dread pouring off everyone as they shuffled close to each other. I did not understand this and wanted to flee from it, but humans decide where dogs go. None of them were running, so I wouldn’t run either. There was scarcely room for me, but Lucas, coughing, pulled me between himself and Olivia and held me tightly there.
With his arm around me I felt protected. I wanted to give his face a lick, but I was still wearing Mack’s dog bowl. I panted with apprehension, but my boy and Olivia needed me. Their faces were contorted with fear an
d I could feel their galloping heartbeats, even above the wind. I also heard the whimpering and sobbing of the others.
“Get ready!” Mack shouted hoarsely.
“Oh, Lucas, I don’t want to die,” Olivia moaned.
“You are not going to die!” Lucas whispered fiercely. “Olivia, look at me.”
She focused on his face, her eyes wild.
“We’ve been through worse. Remember what you saw from the roof? We’re going to make it, I promise.”
Weeping silently, Olivia nodded.
The wind brought with it the now-familiar shriek, the one I associated with unbearable smoke and heat. It was mere moments before the sound totally engulfed us, sucking the very breath from my lungs. I felt the blanket above me getting warmer, getting hot. Everything was too hot! Several people starting talking, crying. I could tell they were in distress, but this was not a time for a good dog to go comfort other people because Olivia and Lucas were stiff with dread.
“Oh God. Oh God. Oh God. Oh God. Oh God,” one woman cried loudly.
A man turned and threw up.
“No!” someone howled. “Please!”
The scorching wind blew hard over us and some of the blankets whipped off and were gone. We were battered by a roar more terrible than any thunder. Lucas’s grip tightened even further. A woman screamed and kept on screaming, screaming even more loudly than the wind.
Olivia’s face was tight with terror. “Lucas! I love you, Lucas!”
“I love you, Olivia!” Lucas and Olivia reached for each other’s hands, their arms still wrapped around me.
“Hold on!” Cloth-eye cried, his voice stolen by the blast of searing air.
“It’s on top of us!” Mack bellowed.
Now, almost all the people were screaming. No words, just tortured sounds.
It was impossibly hot. I blinked, blinded. My breathing hurt my throat.
Then, just as the noise was growing so oppressively deafening that I thought there could be nothing louder, a huge bang filled the air and concussed us with a powerful force. It was like being kicked and I flinched in pain, but Lucas and Olivia held me fast.
“That’s the LP tank!” Mack yelled.
The light in his hand criss-crossed its beams with the lights that his friends held, cutting through the black smoke that was moving so quickly past us it was whistling. My eyes were stinging and I was choking and I felt myself losing control. Every instinct told me to run.
I struggled to my feet, straining against the hot blanket covering us, but my boy yanked me down. “Stay, Bella!” he snapped.
“Is anyone hurt?” one of Mack’s friends yelled. “Anyone get hit by any metal from the LP tank?”
“We’re all going to die!” a voice wailed. The man who’d spoken threw off his blanket, leapt to his feet, and began struggling to run away. “We can’t stay here! We’re going to burn to death!”
Several people answered this with harsh shouts and screams.
“No!” Mack jumped up and struggled past people and tackled the man, and they crashed down onto the pavement. “Get down! You can’t outrun the fire! You will die!” Mack climbed atop the man and pinned his arms.
People were gagging and choking now. Lucas and Olivia were pressing their blankets to their faces. I retched inside my dog bowl, drooling uncontrollably. I shook my head, trying to free myself from the dog bowl. I needed air!
“The worst is past us!” Cloth-eye bellowed. “It’s already blown by … hang on, hang on! Not much longer!”
I could not imagine a worse moment.
And then I felt something. A small lessening. With every choking, smoke-filled breath, the heavy blast of heat and ear-piercing wind diminished.
Mack focused on the man he still had pinned. “You okay, now? You won’t try to run?”
The man shook his head.
Mack patted him on the arm. “Good man.” He began crawling under the blankets from one person to another. He had a plastic dog bowl on a tube and he began handing it to people as they coughed. “Three breaths!” he shouted above the noise. “Take three breaths!”
The fury was fleeing now, heading away from us. The wind decreased and the smoke began clearing. It was a subtle change, but I could sense the fire had done what it could and was moving on to terrorize people somewhere else.
The cement was hot, almost too hot, beneath my feet. I hoped that whatever we were doing, we were not going to be doing it much longer. I felt like a bad dog for not wanting to do Stay.
Mack crawled under the remaining blankets to Turkey-fingers and handed the dog bowl to him. “Here, Henry.”
The man nodded gratefully and put it on his face. He breathed and when he pulled the dog bowl away, he wasn’t coughing. “How come you have an oxygen tank and the other firefighters don’t?” Turkey-fingers wheezed.
Mack shook his head. “It’s not oxygen. It’s compressed air. Smoke jumpers don’t wear them, but I’m regular fire department. You’re going to be okay, sir.”
Turkey-fingers handed the dog bowl back. “I hope so. But for a moment there, I didn’t believe it.”
“I hear ya, brother.”
“I think we can get out from underneath these blankets,” one of Mack’s friends said. “It’s like a sauna under here.”
Cloth-eye climbed to his feet. “Agreed, we’re good. Let’s ditch the blankets.”
Everyone stood up and pushed away the blankets. Now I could see much more clearly.
Mack picked his way to each person in turn and let them put the dog bowl on their faces. When he made his way to Olivia and Lucas, his light flashed across my eyes briefly. Mack offered the dog bowl to Olivia, who wearily shook her head and pressed the dog bowl to my boy’s face. “He’s coughing worse,” she explained.
Lucas nodded, taking breaths and barking them back out, his chest contracting. Then he reached up and pulled the dog bowl away and handed it to Olivia. “I’m okay,” he croaked.
A woman was crying, the same woman who had been saying, “Oh God. Oh God. Oh God.” People were wiping their eyes and coughing and looking around.
I shook. It felt as if dirt were falling from the sky. I looked at Lucas, who was hugging Olivia. He held out a hand, palm up. “Watch for the embers, some will be hot!” he warned loudly.
“Here.” Cloth-eye and his friends produced knives and began shredding blankets, passing the rags to people. “If you feel something on your head or shoulder, brush it off with these.”
Things had changed. The trees were gone—now there were just blackened, mostly fallen trunks. Here and there, a few remained on fire, still standing. Across the field, every building was burning, billowing black smoke into the air that was less intense with the dog bowl over my muzzle. Everyone was hugging everyone else so I wagged. I understood little, but the relief flowing over people was pushing the fear away, and I knew it meant that the danger brought by the fire had passed.
Lucas began moving from person to person, reaching out a hand. “Are you okay?” he asked each one. They were all coughing and spitting. One man was wheezing so badly he couldn’t answer.
“Mack, air tank, please?” Lucas called.
Mack handed my boy the dog bowl, and he pressed it to the man’s face.
“We’ll get you looked at, but I think it’s just smoke inhalation. You don’t have any lung condition you know about, do you? Asthma?” Lucas prodded.
The man pulled the dog bowl away, shaking his head. “Nope.”
“Are you a smoker?” Lucas pressed.
The man shook his head again. “But I smoked for twenty years.”
Lucas nodded. “That’s it then. Just breathe.”
Gradually, the hot surface under my pads released its heat. When gusts of wind came at us, they brought less smoke, not more.
“Let’s all just catch our breath here for a minute,” Cloth-eye suggested.
Turkey-fingers turned and smiled sadly at Lucas and Olivia. “Those cabins down there, my dad and I buil
t one summer, just the two of us. I’ve always been able to remember him, anytime I went into one of them. And now they’re burning. I can rebuild, but I won’t be able to look at the window frames he hammered into place or the center beam and think of him putting them there.”
Lucas nodded sympathetically.
“Sorry for your loss,” Olivia murmured.
Eventually we all sat on the ground. Lucas reached out and unstrapped the dog bowl on my face and I licked his cheeks gratefully. He and Olivia were no longer frightened, even with fires audibly burning nearby and smoke still wafting in the air.
Lucas raised a fist to his mouth and coughed. Olivia touched his shoulder. He nodded at her. “I’m okay,” he rasped. He wiped his face.
What I picked up from the people around me was a dismal sort of exhaustion. Some of them lay down, bunched blankets under their heads, and slept. One man snored. I put my head in my boy’s lap.
I awoke with a start when I heard something: a big loud engine. Then there was a crashing sound like two heavy things coming together, metal things, that reminded me of when we went for a car ride in the Jeep to the lake. The impacts were so loud I could feel them. Olivia seemed to understand that I was uneasy and reached down and stroked my head.
All the people looked in the direction of the loud noise. I yawned anxiously. There was another huge bang, and another.
“I think that’s going to be the truck,” Mack told the group.
Then I saw what was making the noise—the big, long truck that Mack liked to ride around in. While I watched, it slammed a parked car aside with another crashing boom, clearing the road so it could move forward. Some people began to run to it.
“Stop!” Cloth-eye yelled. “It’ll come to us. We don’t want to walk on the ground just yet.”
With smoke swirling behind it, the truck rumbled over and parked right on the cement where we were all still standing.
A man climbed down off the truck and went to Mack and Mack’s friends; they hugged and hit each other on the back, all grinning.
I noticed that the face of the man from the truck was sweaty and black with smears. “What do you want to do?” he asked Cloth-eye.
A Dog's Courage--A Dog's Way Home Novel Page 13