Endangered Species (7 page)

symbolized the island's heyday, a time when it glittered with wealthy

holidaymakers escaping the confines of the cities.

Vehicle access was less nostalgic.  Roads had been hacked into the

relatively dependable floor of the forest, but egress over the dunes was

always chancy.  Anna braced herself as Rick gunned the engine, building

momentum to carry the heavy truck up through soft and sliding sand.

Speed increased, the truck shuddered and screamed.  Near the crest of

the dune, when Anna thought surely Rick was going to roll the top-heavy

pumper, he forced another few horses into the carburetor and they plowed

through the peak of the shifting mountain.

"Well done!" Anna yelled as they fishtailed down the far side .

Rick had his shortcomings but timidity was not among them.  More than

once Anna had gotten hopelessly stuck by chickening out and letting off

the gas too soon.

From the vantage point provided by forty-five feet of altitude, she

concentrated on the smoke, the tag end of road protruding from the

greenery, the sun.  Once the trees swallowed them, all sense of

direction would be gone.  Until they were right on top of the fire they

would be unable to see-or probably even smell-the smoke.

judging from the size of the gray smudge, the fire was still small,

probably less than a tenth of an acre.  The pumper truck carried two

hundred gallons of water and a hundred feet of hard hose line .

There was virtually no wind.  Barring unforeseen circumstances, she and

Rick should be able to at least contain the blaze until the others

arrived.

Cushioning her chin with her finger lest Rick score another point, Anna

raised the King and put in a call to Guy Marshall.  He was on the

western edge of the island, six miles from the burn .

Though he was careful not to say, Anna guessed he was at Lynette's .

The interpreter had a cozy little cabin in the woods near the salt

marshes that she shared with the fattest dog Anna had ever seen .

Lynette insisted the beast was a weimaraner, but Anna had never seen one

wider than it was long.  Personally, she suspected the dog's mother of

mating with one of the island's feral pigs.

Oak leaves closed overhead, forming a tunnel of plant material .

What light penetrated had a green and dusty hue as if viewed through old

bottle glass.  Unlike in the northern forests Anna had known on Isle

Royale, the colored light didn't lend a watery feel.  On Cumberland,

shade provided no respite from heat, crushing humidity no relief from

drought.

Fifty yards ahead the white tongue of sandy soil marking the lane forked

." Stay left," Anna ordered.  Rick wrestled the truck over the berm

between the tracks without slowing.  If there was any oncoming traffic

Anna hoped it weighed significantly less than they did.

Dividing her attention between the odoineter and the ceiling of trees,

she counted off the seconds.  Forest canopy refused even a glimpse of

the sky.  Only hope and habit kept her looking.  When she estimated they

had traveled about two and a half miles, she told Rick to stop.  With no

asphalt to screech his tires on, he made do with skidding on the

washboarded road till the truck shuddered to a halt in a cloud of dust.

Anna started to say something rude but she could tell he was expecting

it, so she forbore comment ." This is my best guess," she said as

residual quivers from the wild ride left her entrails ." To the east of

this road and a half-mile in either direction."

" Not much to go on," Rick said.

She couldn't argue with him.  There was an illusion that fire was easy

to find.  Smoke, flames, crackling, popping, Bambi and Thumper fleeing

in its path.  This wasn't true with smaller fires burning in deep or

heavy fuels.  At Mesa Verde more than one fire crew had wandered around

lost within fifty yards of a fire until the helicopter came and planted

itself over the burn, hovering till they got there.

"I don't suppose that drug plane could help us out?" Anna wondered

aloud.

" No ground-to-air," Rick said, tapping the radio.

She knew that.  She was just wishing.  She radioed Guy to say they'd

arrived somewhere in the vicinity of the fire; then, with less than

their former enthusiasm, they climbed from the truck.

Anna rummaged behind the seat until she laid hands on a can of insect

repellent.  The stuff was almost pure DEET, guaranteed to rot the

central nervous system if one was exposed to it over long periods of

time.  A primitive loathing of all bloodsucking creatures squelched

environmental and health concerns, and she doused her boots and trouser

cuffs.  Rick took the can and repeated the exercise .

When they were both thoroughly toxic they stood absolutely still, heads

tilted back, nostrils flaring like stallions scenting for danger.

Dust, DEET, and sweat were the only odors Anna could discern .

Rustling stirred the duff somewhere beneath the tangle of brush but

there was no way of knowing whether it was fire, rattlesnake, or

raccoon.

Both sides of the lane were shoulder-deep in undergrowth .

Without air to tickle their fancies, the bladelike palmetto leaves hung

limp.  Above them, pine and oak mixed to form a gray-green dome.  The

graceful twisting branches of the live oaks were furred with what looked

to be dead brown plants.  Resurrection fern, Anna had been told.  With

the first rains these apparently dead ferns would unfurl and turn green

overnight.

" Walk the road a ways?" Rick suggested.

"May as well.  Maybe we'll get lucky." Anna took a shovel and a

Pulaski-the Janus-faced firefighting tool, axe on one side and hoe on

the other-from the back of the truck.  By virtue of his broad back, Rick

inherited the piss pump, a five-gallon rubber water bladder rigged to be

worn as a backpack with a hand-operated pump.

"No lightning," Rick said ." What do you figure started it?"

"Kids?" Anna offered.

"Dirtbags."

Rick's dirtbag category covered so many suspects, Anna chose not to

reply and they trudged back the way they'd come, both too engrossed to

waste energy on words.  Being cut off from the sky demoralized Anna.

Being closed in under the greenery like a flea on a Saint Bernard's back

made her cranky ." A good burn would do this place a world of good," she

grumbled ." Open it up some."

Rick said nothing.  He'd stopped in the middle of the road, his head

back, his eyes wide and unseeing as if he heard voices, the kind that

tell people to walk into a McDonald's and open fire .

"Smell it?" he asked.

Anna joined him in concentrated catatonia.  After a moment she shook her

head.

"Out there.  It's gotta be." Rick turned abruptly and pushed eastward

through the underbrush.  Ten inches shorter than he, Anna flinched as

the fronds slashed back against her face.  She dropped back a pace and

pulled the plastic goggles down from her hard hat to protect her eyes.

Within twenty feet the thicket petered out.  Well-spaced trees formed

the pillars of a cathedral-sized clearing.  Underfoot, leaves and

needles smothered lesser growth, carpeting the ground in redgold.  Along

the short side of the rough rectangle, where the organ might stand were

this indeed a church, was an old hog pen from the days when all-out

attempts to rid the island of pigs had been in force.  Around the pen

the ground had been dug up in a belt ten feet wide and twice that long

where modern-day pigs rooted their contempt of the old order.  Of the

many exotic species let loose on park lands, one could argue that pigs

were the most destructive.  Maybe because, like people, they were smart

and adapted well.

In the center of the clearing Rick and Anna reenacted their idiot/savant

tableau ."smell it now," Anna said, breathing in the unmistakable scent

of smoke ." But I can't tell from where."

Rick snuffled in a professional manner; a connoisseur sipping the air.

Evidently he hit on something, because he strode purposefully toward the

pigsty.  On faith, Anna followed.

Palmetto took them in its claustrophobic embrace, wrapping them in dust

and webs.  One of Cumberland's celebrated residents was the Golden Orb

spider, renowned for its enormous webs, some large enough and strong

enough to ensnare small birds.  The lady herself was famous not only for

her ability to mend this impressive net but for her size.  Tip to tail

she could measure up to two inches, her long and many legs tufted with

fur.

Anna repressed a shudder.  All the really hellacious spiders would be

scraped off by Rick's bulky frame.  At least that's what she told

herself.

Again the underbrush thinned, bushes growing far enough apart that she

and Rick could walk between them.  Anna pulled her goggles down around

her neck and squeegeed the sweat from her forehead with the flat of her

hand.  A scrap of turquoise caught her eye .

Cumberland's forest, unlike Michigan's and Walt Disney's, was not filled

with flowers.  At least not in August.  Nature exploited a palette of

grays, tans, and greens, saving blue for sky and sea.

Mentally, Anna chalked the bit of color up to garbage.  Though

beautiful, Cumberland was not pristine.  People had used her for their

own ends since before the Spanish had landed in the 1500s.

Rick was pushing on.  Anna ran to catch up.  A second scrap of blue

wedged head-high in the trunk of a pine tree jarred her brain from its

single-minded pursuit of the fire.  Above the blue material was a gash

so fresh that sap oozed down, marking the tree with dark tracks on the

bark.

"Rick!" Anna hollered.

He stopped and looked back, impatience clear on his face.

"What color was that drug interdiction plane that was buzzing around?"

Impatience hardened into annoyance ." How the hell should I know?"

Anna pointed to the damaged tree, the bit of painted metal.

"Shit," Rick said ." That would do it."

Understanding pulled the scales from Anna's eyes and suddenly she saw

the myriad clues her busy brain had overlooked.  The tops of the bushes

were broken in places.  A section of cable her mind had written off as

litter, a scar in the tree beyond where the blue flagged the path.  As

these pieces fell into place she became aware of a faint roaring, a hum

like that of a vacuum cleaner in another room: palmetto burning hot.

Twenty yards further on, heat hit them in a shimmering curtain .

With it came the muted crackle of fire snapping the bones of the

undergrowth.  A wall of bushes six feet high and alive with flame

blocked their way.  Beyond the burning thicket, Anna could see the top

of a small pine beginning to sprout blossoms of fire.  Except for that,

the trees had not yet caught.

She trotted parallel to the burn.  Customarily she and Rick would have

made a quick assessment and begun scraping line in the duff, clearing

away the combustible fuels to stop the fire spreading, at least along

the ground.  With the plane crash, human life was factored in and the

saving of property became secondary.