Summer of Fire (12 page)

Clare had looked up from slicing onions, her eyes watery.

Frank pointed with the knife he was using to cut sirloin. The laugh lines around his eyes crinkled. “Don’t let the boys catch you being a crybaby.”

Sage advice, even from a dream, and now upon waking, she planned to follow it. Especially with Sergeant Ron Travis, whose cocky manner said he was always alert for weakness.

In another midnight excursion, she and Frank had been showing a group of Special Olympian kids around the fire-house. As usual, one of the tour heights was sliding down the pole.

Frank waited at the bottom, ready to catch a slip of a girl around eight. Clare demonstrated wrapping legs and arms around the pole and supervised getting the girl in position. “Ready?”

A tight and wordless little nod stirred the child’s strawberry blond bangs.

“Set . . . go.” Clare let her slide.

A joyful trill echoed in the cavernous garage.

When Frank caught the girl, she metamorphosed into a boy of around two with hair like black silk. “He’s with me now,” Frank called, suddenly wearing full turnouts, air pack and mask. The apparatus bay began to fill with drifting smoke.

Every instinct said to slide and rescue Frank and the little boy. From somewhere in the haze, a woman’s voice cried, “My baby! Please help my baby.”

Clare hesitated. In that bare second, smoke blotted out everything. From below, Frank sounded far away. “Once you start down you can’t come back.”

In her bed at Old Faithful, gooseflesh pricked Clare’s arms. With an exclamation of disgust, she threw back the covers and put her feet to the chilly boards. Morning could be frigid, especially with this coldness inside her.

She tried to conjure up Frank’s face. There was his sturdy frame, his tough hands with thick fingers. His head, set atop shoulders strong from weightlifting, was a blur. It was too soon to lose her picture of him. Her Timex’s date indicated August already, just over a month, and if she couldn’t see him now . . .

With pounding heart and a dry mouth, she tried to call up bits and pieces. Frank’s ruddy cheeks bore spider veins from years of subjecting his fair complexion to the outdoors. There was the scar above his left brow, where he’d scoped himself with his Winchester while whitetail hunting with his Dad. All of sixteen, he’d refused to leave the field to get stitches.

No matter how she tried, Clare couldn’t see Frank’s eyes. In her nightmares, they bore the opaque sheen of death.

She’d talked to people whose dreams of the deceased comforted. Her mother Constance had told of awakening in bed with the palpable sensation of her father’s arms around her. Frank had watched cancer waste a friend to emaciation, yet in his sleep, his friend came and shook his hand, restored to former health and vigor.

How much Clare would give for a sign from Frank, that he did not blame her.

Since the night she’d seen Steve Haywood drunk, she’d thought a bit about how people handled things they didn’t want to face. Too bad he thought a bottle could solve his problems, whatever they were.

Steve woke to a pounding that matched the throbbing in his head.

He’d done it again.

Some folks stopped drinking by taking it one day at a time, but he simply kept on, one day and one drink at a time. Today brought yet another defeat.

The pounding continued.

Someone at the door, he realized through a fog. Whoever it was seemed damned determined.

The small, dark bedroom of his house in Mammoth Hot Springs spun. The bottom of this hangover was out there, waiting to give him the shakes and the sickness. It would seize him maybe twelve hours after he’d found himself playing inarticulate, discordant chords at Susan’s piano, with tears pouring down his stubbled face.

How could he have let himself come to this? After Susan and Christa died, he’d thrown himself into his work back in Washington. A few months later, he’d discovered that only when he drank could he imagine what life would be like if they hadn’t died.

Getting unsteadily to his feet, he pulled on a pair of shorts and a dirty T-shirt from the floor. The clock beside his picture of Susan said eleven-thirty. Ancient venetian blinds leaked light around the edges.

Jesus, he’d missed half the day.

He tried to think. Determined to take on Clare Chance’s challenge to get sober, his resolve had remained in place until Saturday when he’d driven to Old Faithful. He had intended to present himself, sober, and thank her for saving him, no matter how worthless he felt. Returning without finding Clare, the four walls stared him down. He paced and wondered why he’d gone.

Alone on another Saturday night, while the park housing around him rang with familial laughter; rage surged like a specter through the drafty floorboards, seizing his throat.

How had he thought to live with Susan in her grave?

Going to the kitchen, he had reached beneath the sink and drawn forth a half-gallon of Old Crow.

As Steve entered the small living room dominated by Susan’s black-lacquered grand piano, the hammering at his door grew louder. Half-full glasses and filthy dishes littered the tabletops. An empty half-gallon of Crow lay on the floor, fallen companion to one beside his bed. At some point, he’d shed his jeans and socks in a heap on the floor.

He did not remember doing that.

His caller was using his fist. “Steve? Are you there?” The male voice had a tinge of Oxford. The small square window in the front door revealed Moru Mzima’s dark face, his high forehead edged in close-cropped black hair. The bars over the glass were the last vestiges of when the small building had been Fort Yellowstone’s stockade.

With trembling hands, Steve turned the dead bolt and opened the door. Bright light stabbed and the old parade ground across the street blurred.

“Moru.”

“I was about to break in.”

Steve ran a hand through his hair and found it a greasy mess. “Ya know me,” he tried at being casual. “I may be late on a Monday, but don’t I always get there?”

Moru flinched. He glanced into the darkened depths of the living room. “May I come in?”

After standing in the fresh air, Steve noticed the musty, sick smell inside. Nevertheless, he waved his fellow ranger in.

Moru looked doubtful, but he came in and folded his long legs to sit on Steve’s brown leather couch trimmed in pine. He removed his ranger’s hat, the summer straw model. After looking at the dirty dishes and a half-empty bottle of Seagram’s gin that Steve had opened when the Crow ran out, Moru settled for placing the hat on his knee.

Steve shifted his weight from one foot to another, like he always did when he was uncomfortable. Susan had called it his elephant dance.

Moru met his eyes. “Shad Dugan sent me.”

Oh, boy.
Dugan, who worked directly for the Chief Ranger, was reputed to be a fair man. He demanded exacting work and Steve tried to deliver, through his hangovers and the occasional late morning.

“Dugan said to tell you this can’t go on,” Moru said levelly. “He’s considering referring you to a treatment center to dry out.”

Steve gasped as though Dugan were here and had punched him. “Oh, yeah? I suppose he was too busy to come over here and tell me this to my fucking face. He lives three goddamn doors away.” Maybe it was a good thing Dugan had sent Moru with this little bomb, because it effectively prevented Steve from jumping one of his bosses and ending his career.

Moru worried his hat, turning it.

Steve felt like hitting something, but there was nothing near except the mirror-like surface of Susan’s piano. He put a fist on it, holding himself up.

At the sight of Moru’s stricken face, the rage went out of Steve. Moru was Ndebele, from rural Zimbabwe. His good fortune in getting educated in England and making it to the United States tended to make him unfailingly cheerful. Today, he looked sick.

“Ah, Jesus,” Steve moaned. His head felt too heavy to hold up, so he slumped until it rested on the piano. Light reflections in the deep shining surface and the sudden realization that he stank of stale sweat made him dizzy.

As Steve concentrated on not throwing up, a steadying hand touched his shoulder.

“I don’t want to leave.” His voice broke. He wanted to stay in Yellowstone where the land brought peace.

“I am told that you must accept treatment or nothing changes,” Moru said in a compelling yet soft tone. “Dugan would have come, but he was advised to send someone you view as your friend.”

Moru
was
his friend. Steve was grateful for his coming to the Lake Hotel’s bar after the chopper crash. He’d told Steve he’d found him slouched asleep in a wicker chair, wasting the view of water. Without a censuring word, he’d settled the tab and supported Steve on their way out of the lobby.

Moru squared his shoulders. “They said you must check yourself into treatment.”

Steve couldn’t breathe, imagining himself in a straitjacket, screaming and beating his head against the walls of a padded room. Someone would sit in the corridor recording his tears and profanity with an impassive hand. He should have known this was coming, but there were a lot of walls inside him, one for lying about his drinking, another for his father’s slow death from leukemia, and the big iron one he kept Susan and Christa behind.

Except when it rusted through.

“Why now, Moru? I’ve had these problems for years.”

“You said you were running late for a Monday?” Moru kicked the empty bottle of Old Crow with a vicious swipe of his boot.

“Yeah.”

“So, it’s not Monday, Steve. It’s Wednesday.”

On Wednesday afternoon, Clare wiped sweat from her face with the standard issue bandanna. Thankfully, daylight and hours of toil had driven away the spirits of Frank and little Pham Nguyen. Behind her, a column of troops on their second training day marched through still heat toward West Yellowstone.

Things had gone well with the soldiers, despite their youthful armor of invincibility that reminded her of her daughter. Devon could be counted on to downplay danger, no matter whether it was inhaling cigarette smoke with the glamorous air of a fifties movie star, driving too fast even with Clare in the car, or diving into the shallow end of the Springwood Pool. The day Frank died, Devon had taken one look at Clare’s face and hid out in her room. It had stung, as if her daughter hadn’t cared or taken it seriously.

Ahead in the pines, Clare caught sight of something colorful and veered left.

“This way.” Sergeant Travis pointed.

“I know.” She tried to keep an edge out of her voice. “I merely wanted to see what was there.” Around fifty yards away, a bright drape fluttered from a tree.

Without waiting for Travis’s reply, she struck out walking toward the banner. As she drew nearer, the cloth became a faded housedress, drying in the wind. Several tents that might once have been yellow were pitched around the ashes of a campfire. A woman with braided black hair sat on the ground mending a pair of trousers.

Clare stopped and Sergeant Travis stepped on her heel. With a muffled oath, she held out a warning hand. “Migrant camp.” This sheltered oasis seemed fragile.

Travis frowned.

“They come to work the summer season,” Clare explained. “There’s not enough housing in town so they live in squatters’ camps. When the Forest Service finds them, they move until they’re rousted again.”

The woman scrambled to her feet, still clutching the pants. Even at a distance, Clare saw that her eyes were wide.

“Let’s tell her to go, then,” Travis said loudly.

“Leave her alone,” Clare returned.

Travis’s eyes were on a level with hers, a fact that obviously added to his Napoleon complex. He seemed to be evaluating whether she regarded her statement as an order.

“I’m heading to town.” She turned and walked away, passing the curious group of soldiers. In fifteen minutes, she came out of the trees onto pavement at the west end of Yellowstone Avenue and heard the tramp of boots behind her.

West Yellowstone had the spare look of many a northern community. Trailer homes and small, weathered houses sported bare yards growing nothing but stacks of firewood and parked snowmobiles. Clare suspected the place would look better beneath the softening blanket of winter.

In front of Fire Command, she arranged to meet Travis and the soldiers inside the park the following morning, when they would dig line on their first real fire.

Instead of leaving, Travis followed her toward the building. “I thought I’d report those migrants to somebody in the Forest Service.”

Perhaps because she was from Texas and used to workers from south of the border, Clare was dead set against Travis. “Sergeant,” she began. “Those poor folks mind their own business. They need the work and the town needs them during the summer season.” The worn, yet freshly washed dress, and the way the woman mended the pants rather than let her husband or son wear them out . . .

Travis’s chin came up, but before he could reply, she rushed on. “Second, and most importantly, the Forest Service and Park people have more than enough on their platter. My God, do you think you . . . the Army . . . would be here if the fires weren’t out of control?”