Smoke (3 page)

“Probably.”

We grin at each other. Then Kara’s eyes do a quick up and down, landing on my stomach. I cover it reflexively.

“I’m not . . .”

“No? I’m sorry to hear that.”

I turn toward the computer monitors. They’re showing the live feed from the cameras that were already set up in the area, as well as from the crew’s helmet cams.

“The helmet cams are new,” I say, after I figure out what the unfamiliar view must be.

“Something we’re trying out. I’m not sure about them yet.”

My eyes go from screen to screen. Black-and-white images of flames and smoke and crew. “It’s jumpy. Hard to follow.”

“Agreed.”

“What’s your take?”

“Why don’t you tell me?”

I look to the map of the area that’s been tacked to the wall above the monitors. There’s a red
X
marking the spot where the fire began, on the plain at the northeastern base of Nelson Peak where the Cooper Basin housing development is. Nelson Peak’s south side faces the town proper and contains the town ski hill. In the summer, there are trails to hike, run, and bike on. Tourists ride horses up the winding paths, and the town rec center sits at its base. My own house is on its western slope. Nelson Peak is literally the heart of this town, and from what I’m seeing, it’s a heart that’s going to need a triple bypass to survive.

“It’s going to spread quickly after the summer we’ve had,” I say. “And the terrain’s going to be tough when you push it into the hillside.”

“We’ve got to push it there, though.”

“Yes. Structures first.”

“Structures first.”

Kara goes to speak to the dispatcher, transmitting orders to the crews to start directing the fire away from the houses and up the backside of the mountain if it can’t be contained. Her next call will be to bring in additional crews, those better equipped to fight on hard terrain. The ultimate goal will be to build a line that can contain the fire so it can be suppressed, but a lot of fuel is going to be eaten up before that happens. And dollars too.

A squat woman enters the room holding a megaphone under her arm. She has a tweedy look about her, like she should be out calling the hounds before a hunt.

“Ms. Punjab,” she says through her teeth.

“It’s Panjabi,” I say. “Who are you?”

She doesn’t acknowledge me. “I have a school to run,” she says to Kara. “When will I be getting my office back?”

“Impossible to say, Ms. Fletcher. My best estimate at this point is a week.”

“A week! But the fire’s barely spread.”

Kara taps her finger on the top of one of the computer screens. It’s showing a weather map, which I can read like a book after so many years of practice—days and days of hot, dry, and windy weather are on the way.

“Bad fire weather coming.”

“What does that mean?”

Kara purses her lips. “Things are going to get a lot worse before they get better.”

COOPER BASIN FIRE

Local Resident Loses Everything in Minutes

POSTED: Tuesday, September 2, 8:02 AM

By: Joshua Wicks,
Nelson Daily

A fast-moving ground fire started on the western edge of the Cooper Basin housing development around 1:30 a.m. Tuesday morning. It is still burning. First responders were called to the scene after a resident smelled smoke and called 911.

An evacuation advisory is in effect for the Cooper Basin and the area of West Nelson bounded by Oxford and Stephen Streets. A map of the evacuation area can be found on the
Daily
’s website, www.nelsondaily.com.

Nelson County Emergency Services advise residents to collect their important papers and any portable valuables and be ready to evacuate. While the fire is spreading rapidly, the town of Nelson proper and residents who live outside the evacuation area “have nothing to worry about,” said Sheriff Dwayne Thompson. “We’ve got the best people working on getting the fire under control, and we have every confidence that it will be contained soon.”

Although firefighters arrived within minutes of the 911 call, it was too late to save the home of John Phillips, 67.

“I’ve lost everything,” Phillips said. “I didn’t even have time to take my clothes or photos or nothing.”

Phillips was unaware of the fire until woken by the smoke filling his house.

“My bedroom’s on the second floor,” Phillips said while being treated for minor smoke inhalation by an EMT. “I knew right away it was bad and lit out the window.”

Phillips, whose wife died two years ago, said he was lucky his window was open and that “it gives out above the front porch. I kind of hung off the trellis and let go. Never been so scared in all my life.”

It’s too early to say what started the fire, Sheriff Thompson said, but there was no lightning in the area last night so a human cause is likely.

“We’ve handed over responsibility for the fire to the county services, and we’ll be conducting our own investigation as well to determine whether it was arson or human carelessness,” he said. “Due to the dry conditions we experienced this summer, well-publicized fire warnings have been in place for months. If anyone is found to have committed a violation, they will be prosecuted to the full extent of the law.”

Authorities are encouraging residents to sign up for emergency service alerts via text or e-mail if they have not done so already. More information can be found at www.nelsoncountyemergencyservices.com.

CHAPTER 3

Rise and Shine

Mindy

Living on the far east side of town,
Mindy Mitchell didn’t hear about the fire until pretty late in the day, all things considered.

It wasn’t her fault, wasn’t that she didn’t care about such things (of course she did), but she was finding it harder and harder to keep up with the world these days. The world outside her family, that is.

It was almost funny, really. She always thought that when her kids were older (Angus was sixteen now, and as tall as his father; Carrie fourteen, with the graceful poise of a dancer, the only trace of her traumatic, hole-in-the-heart beginning being a thin scar along her breastbone), she’d have time for herself again. For her interests, whatever those were these days. But instead, her kids’ lives seemed to take up more space now than when they were helpless infants.

Writing club, ballet class, the annual food drive—all of that was on today’s list of things Mindy was supposed to help make happen. Time to put her feet up, or to read a book, or for anything else, for that matter, never seemed to make it onto the list.

Her husband, Peter, didn’t seem to have this problem. There he was, sitting across from her at the breakfast table, popping fruit into his mouth while he flicked through the
New York Times
on his iPad. Of course, he
was
an involved father. At least compared with some of her friends’ husbands, who referred to looking after their own children as “babysitting” and who called in their mothers the moment their wives were out of the house. Peter knew the names of their kids’ friends. He made it to at least half of their various sports activities. When they were sick, he was sometimes the one who stayed home with them (back when he and Mindy were both working). But he’d been made a manager at the bank, and she’d lost her job at the high school science lab when its budget got slashed, and so, now, her domain was entirely domestic.

She never thought she’d end up like this, one of those women who stayed home, who fretted over the caloric content of her kids’ meals, who planned menus weeks in advance.
Not that there was anything wrong with that.
(Mindy was always quick to amend her thoughts, as if the women who were perfectly content doing these things might hear them and feel judged.) She’d just had other plans. She spent eight years studying cell biology in what felt like another lifetime. She was supposed to be curing cancer by now.

Instead, she found herself helicoptering over her kids, as if her constant attention could keep them safe, although she already knew it couldn’t.

Mornings were spent making sure Angus and Carrie ate something, put their plates in the dishwasher, were wearing acceptable clothing, had their homework and the right sports equipment, and got into Peter’s SUV so he could drop them at school on time. That morning, like too many lately, had also involved prying Angus out of bed and almost physically pushing him into the shower. She didn’t like to think about what the lingering smell in his room meant, telling herself that she too had experimented in high school.

And so, it was almost nine when she opened her e-mail and saw the alert from the county’s emergency services unit.

Seeing it there in her inbox, nestled innocently between an e-mail from her sister and some spam that had gotten past her junk mail settings, made her heart speed up until rationality kicked in. Surely if there were any
real
danger, the town would have done more than send an e-mail.

And yes, the home page of the local paper, the
Nelson Daily
, confirmed it; the fire was spreading up the north side of the Peak, eating through the timber like it was firewood, but the town itself was safe. For now. Residents should, however, remain on “high alert.”

Mindy felt as if she’d spent the last fourteen years on high alert, ever since Carrie had suddenly turned blue at eight weeks, and it was only because they lived next door to an EMT that she’d come through it without permanent brain damage, or at all. Mindy hated this feeling, but she’d also gotten used to it. Most of the time, it simply felt like a part of her, one she didn’t know how to amend or remove.

Mindy shook these thoughts away and leaned toward her screen. She wasn’t wearing those new glasses her doctor had prescribed, the ones whose very name made her feel old, and the images were blurry. She moved forward and back until the words came into focus. The picture above the feature was of a man in his late sixties sitting on the lip of an ambulance, a red blanket around his shoulders, gazing at the smoking ruins of his house.

“Local Resident Loses Everything in Minutes,” read the headline.

And already an idea was forming in Mindy’s mind.

As Mindy struggled through her spin class an hour later, her thoughts were fixed on that image. John Phillips, the paper said his name was. Wife dead two years ago. Lost everything he had.

“And up!” screamed the instructor, Lindsay, who taught the class as if she was training the thirty- to fortysomething women who attended it for armed combat.

Forty-four-year-old Mindy raised her butt from the saddle. Rivers of sweat were running down her face, which she knew was the point, but she always wished she didn’t look as if she were about to have a heart attack every time she exercised.

She was pretty sure she’d never seen John Phillips before, despite living in Nelson for over a decade. She was always surprised by how, in a place that had fewer than twenty-five thousand people in it, she would come across folks she’d never even heard of all the time. And not only people who’d just moved there. No, people like John, who’d lived in Nelson all their lives. How could he not at least look somewhat familiar?

But that was probably because there were so many towns nestled into Nelson, like those Russian dolls that lived one inside the other. On the outside were the “real” Nelsoners, who could trace their families back two generations at least. Then came the rich, both old money and new—though that created divides too. And then the Sportiva Crowd, as her friend Kate called them—young men and women who were attracted to the place because of the great outdoors, and who all looked like they’d stepped out of some Nike+ ad—tall, taut, and clear-eyed.

There was a middle class too of course; she and Peter were part of it. But it always felt to Mindy like they were rubbing up against something, as if the two halves of their doll hadn’t been machined properly and could never quite match up.

“Sit two minutes!” Lindsay screamed.

She didn’t seem to be sweating, Mindy noticed, which really wasn’t fair.

“Did you read about that guy who lost his house in the fire?” Kate Bourne asked Mindy, talking out of the side of her mouth so Lindsay wouldn’t see.

Talking was strictly forbidden in class, and even Kate was a little scared of Lindsay, who’d actually tossed a few offenders from the class permanently a few weeks back.

“I was just thinking about that,” Mindy panted back as she pushed the strands of dirty-blonde hair that had escaped her ponytail away from her eyes.

She had been coming to this class for a year now, when Kate first invited her, but it never seemed to get any easier. Nor had she experienced the benefits Kate had promised (toned thighs, a butt that didn’t sag so much, losing the fifteen pounds she never lost after Angus, and the other ten she never lost after Carrie). But Mindy knew better than to complain about that to Kate. “If you really worked at it, you’d see the benefits,” she’d say, and Mindy would feel worse about herself than she already did.

“It’s so sad,” Kate said, pedaling smoothly to the beat of the salsa music Lindsay played to motivate them.

Kate didn’t seem to be sweating much either, Mindy noted. But, then again, Kate was one of those women who always seemed to look put together, no matter what the circumstances.

“It is,” Mindy said. “I was thinking—”

“How many times do I have to say it? NO TALKING!” Lindsay’s voice sounded as if it had been amplified by a megaphone.

Mindy looked at the ground, wondering if it was possible for her face to get any redder. Or whether there was any way she could quit spinning class without it causing a crisis with Kate. After coming to the conclusion that neither was possible, she spent the rest of the hour focusing on her pale legs as they pushed the pedals up and down.

Her feet kept spinning, but she couldn’t get John out of her mind.

“So what were you saying in there?” Kate asked as they peeled their wet clothes from their bodies. Kate’s black hair was pulled back in a perfect ponytail, the ends perfectly even, and the slight redness in her cheeks made her green eyes glow bright like a cat’s.