Flash Fire

by Caroline B. Cooney

  “Elisabeth!” he bellowed. He felt a terrible anger with his sister for being in the wrong place when everything else was also wrong. He tried to stifle this. If she heard the anger in his voice, she would never come out.

  At the circle on the end of Pinch Canyon Road, a homeowner had years ago planted a row of. palms. A single palm tree crown had caught fire. The fire burned merrily at the top of the long thin trunk, like a match-lit brandy dish that a waiter was bringing to the table. It sat on the tray of the tree and burned quite prettily, nice colors, nice size.

  All houses on Pinch were on the north side of the road. On the south, a single thread of fire, like an unrolling ribbon, was laying itself out on the narrow verge between pavement and canyon wall.

  It could not accomplish much until it reached a wider place in the canyon.

  The wider place was across from the Severyn driveway.

  The Press House

  4:01 P.M.

  DANNA WAS CERTAINLY GLAD that she had made kitten contingency plans. “You keep an eye on the fire, Hall,” she said. “Wet the house with the garden hose. I’ll get the kittens.”

  Danna chose the red plastic laundry basket that had fake basketweave through which the kittens could breathe. I’ll cut cardboard to fit the top, she told herself, and tape it down so the kittens can’t climb out. “Here, kitty, kitty, kitty,” she called in a high soprano. One kitten came.

  She rummaged around miscellaneous kitchen drawers hunting up scissors and tape. “Here, kitty, kitty, kitty.” The laundry basket was bigger than she had expected and finding a lid was going to be a problem. The only cardboard box she turned up had once held a computer monitor. She’d poke breathing holes in the box and stuff the kittens in. But would seven kittens fit in such a small box? And why was she even bothering with the kittens?

  She and Hall were not going to abandon the house, the house was far too important for that. Besides, it was pretty neat that Mom and Dad weren’t here, she and Hall would have to rise to the occasion, and handle it themselves, and save everything.

  She got out a can of stinky cat food and opened it noisily. “Here, kitty, kitty, kitty. We don’t have all day, you know.”

  But Danna thought that they did have all day. On television nobody seemed to be in that big of a rush. The fire was always at the edges of things, and never in the center of things, and it did not occur to Danna that this was because the cameraman did not want to get burned.

  Danna had watched the fires on television for many hours over the last nine days, not to mention last year and the year before. The fire-fighting crews — men and women who flew in from various states as well as various towns — were equipped with shovels and a Pulaski — with which they attacked the edges of fires. They were very relaxed about it, as if the fire was nothing but a weed growing around their boots. They acted as if they really expected to kill the fire with a shovel of dirt here and a shovel of dirt there.

  On television you saw people sitting on their decks and in their yards, watching the fires that threatened their homes. They might pack their cars just in case, but they stayed with the house, because somebody had to be there in case a wind carried a burning ember onto the roof and it had to be put out.

  Danna discovered that six kittens strapped inside a cardboard box could scream as loud as varsity cheerleaders. “Sssshhhh,” she told them. “People will think I’m torturing you.” She carried the box, which bulged erratically as the kittens hurled themselves against their prison, into the front hallway just in case she really did have to take them somewhere. Then she decided to put a six pack of cold Cokes on top of the box just in case.

  She assumed she would have as much time as she needed.

  She had no sense that the fire was making the schedule, and they would have to stick to the fire’s schedule or die.

  The Severyn House

  4:02 P.M.

  BEAU WAS UP AT the house, sounding like a madman, shrieking every possible variation on her name: Elisabeth — Lizzie — Liz — Elisabeth Severyn! If he didn’t keep quiet, he’d scare the bunnies.

  Elisabeth not only had deer in her hidey hole, but she had been joined by real bunnies, sitting at her feet. Little noses working like little engines, little floppy ears twisting and turning as if on strings that Elisabeth herself were pulling.

  Elisabeth didn’t answer Beau. Probably Mother or Daddy had phoned with instructions for how they were to spend the remainder of the day. Usefully. Elisabeth didn’t want to spend her time usefully. She didn’t want to improve her mind or her athletic or musical or social skills. She wanted to sit in the quiet green glade with suddenly tame rabbits and deer.

  She held out her hand, but her guests didn’t notice. They were panting, their little flanks heaving. “Come see me,” she crooned. “Come let’s be friends.”

  The Fire

  4:02 P.M.

  WAY ABOVE THE STACK of houses, a little bent tree clung to the canyon rim. It burned quietly. It didn’t flame, it didn’t turn orange and yellow, it didn’t scream for attention.

  The fire burned through its skinny little rock-squeezed trunk, and it became a five-foot torch. The smoke tornado threw the little tree downhill like a human sacrifice in some terrible ancient religion.

  It tumbled against rock and gravel and dust, and came to rest on a ledge just below the Severyn house.

  And there, on the underside of the deck, it prepared for human sacrifice.

  Grass Canyon Road

  4:03 P.M.

  THE HOUSE WITH THE blazing roof was being abandoned. Swann could tell because the owner was sobbing as she scuttled in and out her front door with armloads of stuff that she threw into a magnificent car. Swann didn’t even know what kind of car it was, but it was old, really old, museum old; and so was the woman. Elegant and thin, the way they were out here till they died, no gravy on biscuits for them. Her hair ought to be white but, of course, was still golden.

  Swann put on her most understanding smile, her gentlest expression. She hurried over to the elderly woman. “May I help? I’d be happy to get this stuff packed better. You’re wasting space. Here. I’ll put this box on the floor and then we’ll have more room on the seat. Quick, you go back and get some more.”

  “Oh, thank you!” said the woman, rushing away.

  It was a jewelry box. Grinning, Swann carried her trophy back to her parents. Pop had already turned the car around. Swann and her family wisely moved on.

  Of course the highway patrol kept trying to stop people from going north on Grass Canyon Road, and of course people kept ignoring them, because they wanted to be where the action was. It was cool. Cherokees and Blazers and Mercedes were streaming down toward the Pacific Coast Highway. Some had not had time to get anything, and their shocked faces stared blindly out of their car windows, as if they had forgotten how to drive. People whose loss was so great they really had forgotten how to drive stood on the side of the road, sobbing.

  “This is so neat,” said Swann. She was pretty sure the jewelry was real. “I’m glad we came to California.”

  They stared for a while at a woman who seemed to have been burned. Her clothing was certainly charred, and her hands looked awfully weird. She moved toward them, confused and frightened, as if she needed help, so Swann’s father quickly accelerated around her.

  Swann’s mother put on the pearls that had filled an entire drawer of the jewelry box, and they laughed at the effect of those generous strands against her obscene T-shirt.

  A few blocks up, a firetruck barricaded the road. Annoyed, they left their car and walked past the barricades. The fires were very close here and you could really watch houses burn. A dozen houses into a cul-de-sac was a mansion with an eight-car garage.

  The firefighters were making a save, or trying to, on the opposite side of the street. Mr. Eight Cars was going crazy, trying to save them. “Garage has an asphalt roof, looks like vinyl siding, definitely cement floors,” said Swann’s father. “What’s the guy worried ab
out? That’s not gonna burn.”

  “If the fire gets hot enough, it’ll melt them,” pointed out Swann’s mother.

  They were pleased at the thought that these people would lose everything they owned.

  The Press House

  4:04 P.M.

  HALL DID NOT TOUCH the garden hose. He stared at the distant path where the bicycles had been. There was no sign of them. Actually there was no sign of the path either, because smoke had taken over the mountain. Sometimes you could see flame and sometimes you couldn’t. Hall couldn’t figure out where the fire went when there was no flame.

  It was even hotter. He had not thought the world could get this hot. He remembered hearing on television that the interior of a fire whirl could reach two thousand degrees. He tried to imagine what happened to riders of bikes in two-thousand-degree heat and then tried not to imagine it.

  Were those cyclists just out for exercise, having forgotten that half the county was ablaze? Did they think it would be cool to get up close and personal to a fire wall? Or like Hall, had they counted on the fire to stay where it had been earlier in the day?

  He was shivering. His feet felt pretty comfortable where they were. His stomach didn’t feel so great where it was. His eyes burned, from ash and smoke and tears.

  He was weeping for the cyclists.

  They could not be alive.

  Of course, they’re alive, he said to himself.

  He remembered nine-one-one. He had to phone. Let emergency people know that several people were hurt on Pinch Mountain. But you couldn’t drive up Pinch in an ambulance. You couldn’t land a helicopter on the vertical sides of it. You couldn’t walk in, carrying stretchers and first aid kits, because there was fire between you and the bike path.

  Hall’s mind slowed down, like a bike coasting to a stop.

  In the distance, a huge spinning ember of fire got caught in the whirlwind. The ember was as large as a bonfire, as large as a couch, and it spun as if it were only a feather. It landed in the driveway of the farthest-in house on the canyon: Matt Marsh’s house.

  The road sign read PINCH CYN. CYN never quite looked like the right abbreviation for Canyon. But you couldn’t write CAN, either, as if you lived in a jar.

  But we do live in a jar, thought Hall, and the lid is about to close.

  “I’ve got all the kittens,” said Danna. He was startled to have her next to him again. How long had he stood there accomplishing nothing?

  “Now,” said his sister, sounding exactly like Mom. It was that list voice: chores, groceries, errands, orders. “We’ve got to get Egypt and Spice,” said Danna. “Then we’ll start defending the house.”

  The fire had two personalities. There was the sheet fire personality: a wall advancing down Pinch, still a considerable distance away. But closer were little fires, as if many careless campers were getting ready to make S’Mores.

  Hall’s hands were extremely cold. There was absolutely no sign on the mountain that there was, or ever had been, a row of bicycles. “I’m not sure we can defend the house,” said Hall. They were on the grass — thick, lush, damp grass where sprinklers were going. Their legs and shoes were soaked while their hair and faces baked from the approaching fire. Usually the sprinklers ran at night. Hall wondered whether he had been the sensible person to turn the sprinklers on, and if so, what other actions he had taken.

  “Of course we can,” said Danna impatiently. “We’ve been watching people on TV all week stay with their houses.”

  The wall of fire was throwing baby fires out in front of itself, like an automatic baseball pitching machine.

  “What a photo op!” said Danna.

  The kittens were crazed by their enclosure. Their little claws and jaws attacked the cardboard and tape. It was a matter of seconds before Kumquat and Lemon ripped their way to freedom.

  “We should call nine-one-one,” said Hall.

  A small plane flew over, and behind it, some distance away, a pair of helicopters. “They know, Hall,” said Danna, with the exaggerated patience of sisters. “They’ll be here in a minute. It’s up to us to keep the roof wet and the horses safe until they arrive. Now. I’m bringing Egypt and Spice here.”

  Hall’s head ached ferociously. A smoke ache. He wasn’t pleased with how he was reacting to pressure. Dannie was full of plans. He didn’t have any plans, just a sickening vision of horses and kittens on fire. No trace of them as there was no trace of the cyclists. Had those people burned to nothing? Was there just black ash where their hearts and lungs had been a minute ago? He tried to wet his lips, but the astonishing wind was like a clothes dryer, a tongue dryer.

  The fire settled hungrily on the Marsh house. Usually you couldn’t see the Marsh house from here, since it was the only house built on the true canyon bottom, and hidden by its trees. What you could see now, in fact, was not a house either — only the flames of its death. Mr. and Mrs. Marsh worked downtown. Their children were long grown up and gone, so there was no person there to worry about. Only the possessions of lifetimes.

  “Dannie, I think maybe we’d better just leave.”

  “And abandon the house?” His sister was outraged. “What kind of wimp are you? Mom and Dad wouldn’t want us to do that. Anyway, you and I are going to get great footage. Where is that camera?”

  What if I am a wimp? thought Halstead Press.

  But whatever else might have been a wimp, the fire wasn’t. It found a propane tank. The tank exploded like mortar fire. Blue-white flames shot vertically toward the rim of the canyon. The Marshes’s house incinerated as Hall and Danna watched. It didn’t simply burn. It and its trees were there and then they weren’t there.

  Wind bent the blue fire toward the next house. That had an orange tile roof, which wouldn’t go quite so easily. But the yard, the gardens, the trees, and the sheds went in a finger snap.

  Hall never thought of Pinch Canyon in horizontal terms. He didn’t have a sense of how many houses were between him and the fire. When he thought of Pinch, he thought upward. Now he thought across. Only nine houses stood between the shared driveway and that inferno.

  Shared driveway.

  His mind clicked into gear. The shocked stupidity was gone. He was already running uphill. “I’m getting Geoffrey,” he shouted over his shoulder, thinking that Chiffon drove, Chiffon would take one of the Aszlings’ cars, and —

  “I’ll bring Egypt and Spice down here and tie them up to the front steps,” said his sister. “There’s enough pavement around they’ll be fine there. Our grass is wet and we don’t have propane, and we’ll — ”

  “No, Danna! We’ve got to get out of the canyon. Chiffon will drive down and — ”

  His sister was a true Californian. “And forget it, Hall. We’re staying with the house.”

  The Severyn House

  4:05 P.M.

  BEAU REMEMBERED ELISABETH’S TARZAN and Jane corner, where she tucked herself when Mom was being hardest on her. He ran down the driveway, following the paved switchbacks because he had to. The dusty gravelly canyon slopes were far too steep to climb, or even crawl.

  “Elisabeth,” he said rather than screamed, said in the voice of an adult who has had enough, who is going to turn you into the shape of a Lego block if you don’t behave.

  “I’m here,” she said nervously, and he yanked her out of hiding with hands still so full of adrenaline it was like taking the door off its hinges again; he was afraid of his own hands and the roughness inside them.

  “Ssshhhhhh, Beau.” Elisabeth pointed toward the deer and the rabbit. They could have been garden sculptures, except that their flanks heaved for air. Nothing could have spooked Beau more than seeing wild animals too afraid of fire to be afraid of humans.

  He couldn’t wait for her to run; he picked her up to carry her, which made Lizzie giggle in delight. She was rarely cuddled, and for her, this was a hug, not a rescue. She really was little, this eight-year-old. How could Mom possibly think of Elisabeth as chunky? He was aware of his sister
’s fragility and helplessness; she could have been the rabbit or the deer.

  Beau ran up the hill. Fear of fire and lack of phone entered his legs and pumped them and he went up the hill as fast as he’d gone down, as if it were flat, as if his sister were weightless.

  Beau set his sister down at the front door and they both giggled, as if he, too, were an eight-year-old girl. “Whew!”

  “First, we’ve got to get sensible clothes on.” Beau wore his favorite sneakers: plain high-top Converse, dark hunter green with white laces, except he hadn’t laced them. He wore his favorite shorts, long and baggy as a gang member’s trousers. A plain white T-shirt. Elisabeth had on white short shorts, a white tank top, and flimsy white sneakers. She was more bare than covered.

  Beau had spent a good deal of his life caring for his skin: sunblock, lotion, oil, tanning to the special bronze so honored among men. He was proud of being physically impressive, had worked to get there, expected to work all his life to stay there. Beau was not willing to think of his skin charred.

  “Put jeans on,” he ordered, “and your heavy sneakers.” Even as he said that he knew that they couldn’t run up or down slickery hillsides in sneakers: they’d skid. They needed hobnailed boots. Beau did not happen to have a pair in his wardrobe. He thought briefly of his old baseball shoes, but he didn’t know where they were, and they probably didn’t fit anymore.

  But they weren’t going to run anywhere, anyway. Rescue trucks would be here momentarily, and meanwhile he and Lizzie just needed to keep wetting things down. If they did have to evacuate, they’d go by car, not on foot.

  Grass Canyon Road

  4:06 P.M.

  THE IDEA HERE WAS to drop a wet line.

  Helicopters fitted with huge buckets made trips to the ocean, filling them with salt water. The buckets swung from chains like little kids in swings, way below the copters.