July Thunder (18 page)

Sam, watching, didn't think it looked good at all for the church. With all the trouble they were having controlling the fires in the next valley, he didn't see
why they should have any better luck here, especially with no one to help but volunteers. And with radio contact so problematic, coordination was going to be nearly impossible.

“How are we going to coordinate?” he asked the chief.

“Hell. I guess we need runners.”

“Clancy,” Earl said, referring to one of his deputies. “I'll detail him to run messages.” Clancy was older, someone Sam was sure that Earl didn't want doing any heavy physical labor.

A raindrop spattered in the center of the map, darkening one oval. No help at all.

Sam looked up at the sky, thinking what a false promise this storm was. No rain, but a ceiling so low they couldn't even send up the planes to drop fire retardant. No radio contact. Just a sky crackling with dangerous lightning.

The chief started barking orders, sending equipment in two different directions along the road. The crews Sam had organized were also divided up and sent out to follow the heavy equipment.

Sam, ready to depart with one of the crews, was stopped by Earl, however.

“You stay here, Sam.”

“We need all the help we can get with the fire.”

Earl shook his head. “Stay here. Make sure your father and his people don't do something stupid if the fire gets close. I'm counting on you.”

Sam half wished Earl would count on someone
else, but another part of him was relieved. Very relieved. Because the bottom line was, he didn't trust anyone else to be able to deal with his father if the old man got stubborn. And regardless of the hard feelings between them, he didn't want to see Elijah die.

So he stayed behind, leaning against his car, near a pile of shovels and a chain saw that had been left behind so he could pass them out to new volunteers as they arrived.

Elijah and his deacon stayed on the other side of the parking lot, apparently still praying. Sam had never known anyone like Elijah for praying. That man could get into a prayer and totally forget to come out on the other side unless someone disturbed him. Maybe that was a good trait. All Sam knew was that as a child it had driven him crazy. At times he only seemed to get his father's attention when he'd done something wrong.

Elijah had always been busy. If not with his duties as a pastor, then with prayer and Bible study. That had been hard for a child to accept. It wasn't that Sam hadn't understood the importance of God. Hell, if there was one thing in his life he'd known from the cradle, it was that God was Numero Uno. Nor did that bother him. That was the way it was supposed to be.

But in his childhood he'd often felt there was God, there was Elijah, and there was the church—and nobody else existed, least of all little Sam. Even
his mother had been bound up in her duties as pastor's wife, but she at least had always made some time for Sam. Elijah, on the other hand, had seemed to look down from his elevated existence only when he was angry.

Sam looked up to the heavens with a sigh and asked himself a tough question: How much of that had been a little boy's perception, born of a child's natural self-centeredness, and how much of it had been real?

He didn't know. Maybe it hadn't been as bad as he remembered it being. Maybe he was remembering a child's emotional reaction, all out of proportion to the truth. If so, did it matter? It had certainly poisoned their relationship.

He
had poisoned their relationship. The thought jolted Sam, and he stared at it like a snake. Wait a minute. Wasn't that taking too much responsibility on a child's shoulders?

Maybe it was. But it remained that he unhappily recalled the times he had acted up out of anger and resentment, getting his father's attention no matter what it took. He'd become something of a wild child at times.

Maybe that had been a normal reaction, but he couldn't blame his father's harshness on his father alone. He had to accept some responsibility for it.

They'd been locking horns most of his life. It was hardly to be wondered at that they hardly spoke to each other anymore.

Well, if he ever had a child, he was going to make very sure that his son or daughter knew they were important to him.

And that thought jolted him, too. He'd banished all such thoughts since Beth's death. Where had that one come from?

But he knew. It had come from Mary. From his day with her. Thunder, quiet for so long now, rumbled again, and for an instant he felt he was back in her room, back in her bed with her.

The craving in his body was suddenly intense, but so was the craving in his heart. Oh, man, he couldn't do this again. He couldn't take this risk again.

But it seemed he already had. And for his sake, and hers, he was going to have to figure out soon what he was going to do about it. All he knew for sure right now was that his insides, his heart and mind, felt as if a storm even bigger than the one above his head was ripping them apart.

Just then another vehicle pulled up. Louis and Joe. They stepped out of the car, glancing uncertainly in the direction of Elijah, then came over to Sam.

“We came to help,” Louis said. “We heard the church was in danger.”

“It may be soon,” Sam said. He explained the situation in quick, broad strokes.

“Then we'd better get started,” Joe said. “We need to clear-cut, don't we?”

Sam nodded. “The ground needs to be clear eighty feet around the building.”

Louis whistled and looked around at the way the forest crowded in on the old church. “That's a lot.”

“Then there's no time to waste,” Joe said. Ignoring the preacher and the deacon, he went to pick up the chain saw. “I'll cut. You move. Are we gonna get anymore help?”

“I imagine so,” Sam said. “I just don't know when.”

“Okay,” said Joe, “here's how we do it. I'll cut the trees. Do you have a chain so you can drag the trunks away? Or do I need to cut 'em up?”

“I have a tow chain that'll probably work. When we get some more help, we might need to cut them up. I don't know. But let's just worry about what we can do right now.” Sam paused. “You
do
know how to cut a tree down?”

“Hell yes,” said Joe. “Who do you think cleared the lot for our cabin? And cut all the timber we used to build it?”

Sam felt a smile crease his face. “My man,” he said.

Joe laughed and pulled the cord on the saw. It roared to life, and he headed for the first tree.

Sam was in the back of his SUV, pulling out the tow chains, when Elijah came up beside him. “What can we do?” he asked.

“Joe's going to have to cut the limbs off the trees so I can move the trunks. Load them into the back
of the deacon's pickup and dump them on the far side of the road.”

He doubted his dad was up to any such thing, but at least it would keep him busy.

Then it struck him: that had been the first time in his life Elijah had ever asked
him
what he should do.

The first tree went over with a crack. Joe started sawing off the limbs, the roar of the chain saw occasionally drowned by a roll of thunder. Sam and Louis helped his dad and the deacon load the limbs into the back of the truck.

While Joe went to work on the second tree, Sam and Louis were chaining the first to the back of his truck. Driving carefully, Sam hauled the cut timber to the far side of the road, more than a hundred feet from the church.

At this rate, Sam thought, they didn't have a chance in hell of finishing a clear-cut.

He drove back across the road and climbed out of his car as Joe started trimming the second tree. Elijah and Deacon Hasselmyer—Carl, that was his name—finished unloading and came back over, too.

“Dad?”

Elijah turned to him, his face tight with worry.

“We need more help, Dad. Is there any way you can get in touch with the folks from your church?”

Elijah turned to Carl Hasselmyer. “Carl?”

“Let me call my wife. She can start the phone tree.”

Sam spoke. “We need chain saws, trucks, shovels. Tow chains. Tillers of any kind. Brush cutters. Gasoline for equipment.”

Carl nodded. “I'll do what I can.”

“Thanks.”

The deacon trotted away, leaving Sam and his father to look at each other. Overhead, lightning forked and thunder rumbled. The chain saw whined as Joe cut another limb.

Elijah, for the first time in Sam's memory, looked almost humble. He spoke. “Will you join me in a prayer?”

It was surprisingly easy to say yes. “Sure.”

Elijah took his hand, and again Sam was jolted. He couldn't remember the last time his father had taken his hand, and the touch…well, the touch offered a kind of comfort he hadn't felt in a long, long time. Then Elijah shocked him even more. He turned to Louis.

“Will you join us, too?”

Louis's expression echoed Sam's surprise. “Are you sure I'm good enough?”

“The Lord reached out to the outcasts,” Elijah said. “It was to the poor, the lame, the sick and the unloved that he came.”

Louis reached out hesitantly with both hands and closed the prayer circle. Sam wondered if that had always been his father's viewpoint or if this was some kind of change in attitude. And for the first
time it occurred to him that he and his father might really need to talk.

Elijah bowed his head. For a moment it seemed as if he were at a loss for words. He stood there, holding Sam's hand in his right hand, Louis's in his left. They were, Sam thought, two of the people he seemed least likely to pray with, and it was as if his father was reluctant to launch into one of his patented shake-the-rafters-and-yank-the-tears prayers. Instead, after a long pause, he spoke almost too quietly to hear.

“Our Father, who art in heaven…”

 

Mary watched as Sam tried to bring the spoon of soup to his lips. His hand shook, and soup spilled over the side, splashing back into the bowl and onto the tablecloth. He seemed about to clench his jaw until she reached out and took his hand in hers.

“Nervous?” she asked.

He shook his head. “I've been running a chain saw for hours. I can't stop shaking.” He let out a grim chuckle. “I wonder how loggers do this every night.”

“I shouldn't have served soup.”

His eyes rose to meet hers. “No, Mary. The soup is fine. It's delicious. Really.”

He'd shown up at her door an hour earlier, just after ten, covered in dirt and soot, his hair thick with wood chips and sawdust. He'd apologized for his appearance and the unexpected visit, but she'd
shushed him and dispatched him to the shower. Looking through the pantry while she listened to the water rushing through the pipes, she'd settled on a family-size can of chicken noodle soup as the fastest hot meal she could prepare. When he'd returned, looking more like a human being and less like a barroom floor, the soup had reached a thorough boil and cooled to serving temperature.

Now, it seemed, she'd prepared exactly the wrong thing. He drew the few drops of soup that were left in the spoon into his mouth, then tried to get another spoonful. Once again, muscles that had spent hours adapting to mechanical vibrations continued to quiver. It was, she realized, much like a sailor who comes ashore and, having grown used to accommodating the roll of a ship's deck, was wobbly on solid ground.

“Don't starve because of manners,” she said quietly. “Just drink it from the bowl.”

“Duh,” he said with an embarrassed smile. “I guess that chain saw shook my brains around, too.”

“You're just tired, Sam,” she said as he lifted the bowl to his lips. “Will you be able to save the church?”

“I hope so. It's an incredible amount of work to clear an eighty-foot firebreak around a building. When I left, we were maybe a quarter done. The next crew of volunteers left their headlights on so they could work all night.”

“Are you sure that's safe? I mean, working with power equipment is hard enough in full sunlight.”

He shrugged and took another sip of his soup, sucking a noodle between his lips. “I don't see as how we have a lot of choice. Not unless God wants to dump a pile of rain on us to put that fire out, and He seems to be letting us handle this on our own.”

Mary nodded, stirring her own soup absently. “Well, you're not going back tonight. I won't let you.”

His eyes fixed on hers. “I have to, Mary. They need every hand we can get out there. We finally got through to the spotters at about six, and they said the lightning had sparked off three other fires. If they get together and start pulling draft before we finish that firebreak, the fire will sweep right down this valley.”

“Sam, you're exhausted. You can barely feed yourself. If you go out there, all you'll do is get hurt.” She bit off the word again.

“I'll be careful,” he said, lifting the bowl to his lips again. As he went to return it to the table, however, his quivering hands betrayed him, and it dropped with a
thud,
splashing the hot liquid onto the tablecloth and into his lap. “Damn!”

Mary was up and moving even before his curse crossed his lips, grabbing a dish towel and running it under cold water. “Here,” she said, handing it to him and returning to the sink for another towel to
clean off the table. “Use this to wipe yourself off before you burn.”

“It's not that hot,” he said, dabbing at his trousers.

Mary whirled on him, her eyes flaring. “Damn it, Sam Canfield, stop fighting me when I'm trying to look after you! You may think you have to prove your manhood to your father, but you don't have to prove it to me!”

She regretted the words as soon as she'd said them, knowing they'd cut too close to the quick. And knowing even more that they weren't deserved, not over this incident. Her eyes fell. “I'm sorry, Sam. That was cruel.”