Wild Inferno (21 page)

Momma Anna came up the steps of the kiva and walked straight to the fire tower. “They build great fire here, right here.” She pointed at the fire tower. “Look south.” She pointed back in the opposite direction.

Across the rim of the sunken kiva I looked down the backbone of the Chimney Rock cuesta and south through the valley carved by the Piedra River as it flowed to the San Juan River and beyond. The waterways looked like twisting steel blue ribbons. Despite the smoke in the atmosphere, there, in the notch between the mountain ranges, I could see Huerfano Mesa in northern New Mexico.

“Star people send message with fire. Here.” She pointed again at the fire tower. “Use big rock send light, shiny black rock. Dark moon time.”

“These were your ancestors?”

She didn't answer, but went on. “First woman come here through hole in sky, bring man for seed.” She looked at me expectantly.

“Like the holes in the tops of the little pottery bears and seed pots that you make?”

“First one,” she said, emphatically.

“I was going to ask you about your little pottery bears…” I looked at the old woman and stopped.

Her face was earnest and her eyes were shining. There was something here that she desperately wanted me to know, but I wasn't putting it all together yet. She walked right up to me, looked up into my face, and struck me hard on the cheek with the flat of her hand. “Wake up!” she snapped.

I clutched my cheek, shocked that this gentle, patient woman had struck me. “I am awake!”

She shook her head back and forth, hard and fast with frustration.
“Tcheee, tcheee, tcheee,”
she muttered, and she clutched her forehead with her hand. “We tell you story, but you…” She waved a hand as if to dismiss the thought.

“I what?”

“You…Just bring that boy.”

“That boy?”

“Yes, that one coming now.”

“The hotshot? The one who's coming tonight to Fire Camp?”

“You bring him me.”

“I have something I have to do. I had a wreck…”

“You bring Talking Spider me. Here.”

“Who's Talking Spider?”

“What you call? Delgado? You bring him.”

“But the sheriff—”

“Leave wolf. He big part this story. You see soon enough.”

Friday, 1600 Hours

A man from Ground Support brought a rig for me to use and met me at the visitors' center. “They got a big mess on the highway over on the Pagosa Springs side,” he said. “The smoke has been blowing out of the west and I guess the visibility is down to nothing. A semi jackknifed, another one turned over on the shoulder, and they had a twelve-car pileup. Nothing's moving on Highway 160, not even on either side of the roadblocks for the fire. After you take me back to Fire Camp, you'll have to go through Ignacio and back up through Bayfield to Durango to pick up that hotshot. His flight's been delayed, so you'll probably end up sitting at the airport waiting anyway.”

I told him I had a couple of errands I could run to pass the time until Delgado Gonzales's plane arrived.

“Well, everyone in Fire Camp is excited about him coming. They're updating his flight status on the bulletin board every half hour. One more thing: here's some papers the IC asked to have dropped off at the Columbine Ranger District—their FMO is waiting on them. You have to go right by there when you swing through Bayfield, so I was thinking…”

I stopped by Division Bravo to see Kerry on the way to Ignacio. He hadn't shaved in three days, and his yellow shirt bore charcoal-colored stains. He was taking off his line pack at the back of a green Forest Service truck when I drove up. He didn't recognize the vehicle so he paid little attention to me until I got out and came up to him. “What's with the Ford?” His voice was hoarse from all the smoke he'd been breathing.

“I had a wreck in my Jeep. Someone cut my brake lines.”

“What?! Are you all right? Was anyone hurt?”

“I'm fine. Mountain got tossed around in the back a bunch, but he seems all right.”

He gritted his teeth. “Who did it?” His voice was barely a whisper.

“I'm not sure.”

“You have no idea?”

“I didn't say that. I have a couple ideas. I'm on my way to find out which one of them it was.”

He took hold of my arm. “You find me when you know. I want to be there. Don't try to confront this—whoever it is—by yourself. I'll back you. Just come get me.”

I nodded my head. “I will.” I looked at a line of twenty belly bags—gear bags used by helitack crews—each one paired with a flight helmet and a skein of rope, all stacked in uniform order on the side of the road. “What's up? You get a helicrew?”

“Yeah, finally got a rappel crew. The fire has worked its way into a dozen different drainages on this side. There's no way to fight it but to drop crews in right on top of it. It's too dangerous to have firefighters on either side of the ravines.”

“So, more chopper noise,” I said, watching for his reaction. “You okay with that?”

He tipped his head back and rubbed his neck. “Of course,” he said. “You know I used to rope down into action out of one of those birds.”

“In Somalia?” I asked.

“In the army.” His voice was soft.

I sensed an opening. “You're the perfect person to be running this division, then.”

He looked at me. “I've got some experience.”

I nodded. “I've got some experience, too.”

Suddenly he reached out and pulled me to him, hugging me tight to his chest. I smelled the sweat and smoke in his clothes, felt the rough stubble of his unshaven cheek against my forehead. He reached up with one hand and cupped the back of my head, then pulled his own face back and looked at me. “You be safe, babe.”

“You be safe, too,” I said.

When Clara White Deer wasn't at the school, I thought to look at the little café where we'd had lemonade two days before. She was there, in the same booth, writing in a notebook. I slid into the seat opposite her without waiting to be invited. She looked up. “Have a seat,” she said.

“What did you want Grampa Ned to give back that he took from you?” I asked.

She chuckled. “You still stuck on that one? I pegged you for a smarter girl than that.”

“Was it something of yours, or something he gave to you and then took back?”

She pressed her lips together in disapproval. “It was always mine. I never gave it to him. He stole it from me.”

“And we're talking about an object here, right? Not Nuni.”

She rolled her eyes. “Not Nuni. Of course not. People don't belong to anyone else. Nuni is not mine.”

“Did you know about any of Ned's other affairs?”

She closed her notebook and pushed the pen into the coil binding. “I knew about all of them. Everyone knew about them.”

“Did he take something from every woman he was involved with? A trophy?”

She shoved the notebook into her handbag, looking down into the seat beside her, where it sat. “He would have taken our very souls if he could have,” she said.

“The thing he took from you—how did he know what would be a trophy for you in particular?”

“That's easy,” she said. “He wanted to take my power. I'm guessing that was his pattern with all of them.”

“And Nuni?”

“I love my daughter. But she has always been wounded by the abandonment she felt not having a father growing up. He figured out this weakness when it came time he needed someone, and he used it to lure her to him.”

“Has he stolen something from Nuni?”

“He has stolen something from Life itself with Nuni.”

I took a moment to think about this. “I know you said you don't have any grandbabies, but have you
ever
been a grandmother?”

She gave me a harsh look. “You know what? None of this is any of your business. I'm tired of you asking me all these questions about my private life, about my family. I don't have to answer them. I don't have to talk to you at all. Now leave me alone!” As she spoke these last words, she scrambled out of her seat in the booth, threw a five-dollar bill on the table, and walked away.

At the tribal offices, I asked to speak with Edgar “Jimmy” Johns. He showed me to a small office and offered me a seat in the chair beside his desk. “You know I can't tell you anything Ned told me in confidence,” he said. “Professional ethics.”

“I want to know about the Southern Ute Growth Fund.”

“I can tell you some general things about that.”

“Who gets an allowance from that?”

“Members of the tribe.”

“And who qualifies as a member of the tribe?”

“Anyone one-quarter Southern Ute or more.”

“And how do you determine if someone is one-quarter Southern Ute?”

“Well, in most cases, we already know that. Their people have provided their lineage. But we do occasionally have someone come looking for a share of the tribal growth fund that we don't know, and whose people we don't know—and then we have to ask them to prove their lineage. It all has to be well documented, which isn't always easy to do. You know, even well into the twentieth century, they didn't do birth certificates for Indians, even death certificates sometimes. So sometimes people have a hard time tracing their ancestors.”

“Can you use DNA evidence?”

“We haven't had to do that yet. I suppose that could happen, but it hasn't happened yet.”

“That's all I had, then, thank you,” I said, and I got up from the chair to leave.

“There's a boy around who is just like his father,” Jimmy Johns said.

“A boy?” I stopped and turned in the doorway.

Johns leaned back in his office chair. “Well, he is a man now. But he is just like his father.”

“I guess I don't follow you. Why do you mention this, anyway?”

“I thought you were asking about lineage.”

I nodded my head. “Yes. But how does this relate?”

“His mother is a Navajo.”

“And?”

“And he found a way to get his share from the fund.”

I was starting to realize how like the Tanoah the Utes were. Instead of handing me direct information, I was being given a riddle to solve. Because of my many experiences with Momma Anna, I also knew it was pointless to try to get information that wasn't being freely offered. “I had one more question.” I didn't ask it, I made a statement—sometimes this worked. Not always. But it was worth a shot.

“Just one?” He grinned.

“What about grandchildren?”

“What about them?”

At least he didn't shut down!
“I wondered if Grampa Ned ever admitted to having any grandchildren.”

He rocked forward in his chair and stood up. “Not that I know of. Why?”

“I'm looking for a grandmother in this story somewhere.”

He made a wide sweep with both his hands. “Well, just look around. They're all around you.”

Friday, 1800 Hours

When I got to the Durango airport, there was still a wait for the incoming plane. I called Ron Crane on the phone. “Do you know anything about what Clara White Deer was doing the morning she reported Grampa Ned for going inside the fire lines?”

“I've already checked that out. She'd been to Pagosa Springs. She got gas there with a credit card and bought groceries about an hour before she reported seeing Ned.”

“You say she bought groceries
before
she made the report?”

“Yes, I checked her credit card charges. Why?”

“She told me she was on her way to Pagosa Springs when she saw Ned.”

“Well, that can't be. The incident report shows that she reported Ned's trespass at 1030 hours. And she was at the supermarket in Pagosa at 0930.”

“No, I remember her saying she was
on the way
to Pagosa when she saw him. It was the first time we met. We went to a café and had lemonade.”

Crane was silent a moment. “You're sure?”

“I'm sure.”

“Well, if that were true, why would she wait until after she'd driven all the way to Pagosa Springs, done her shopping, and gassed up her car to report Ned being in danger?”

“I can think of only one reason,” I said.

“Okay, bye,” Crane said, and clicked off the line.

Delgado Gonzales sported a white bandage on his foot, and he used crutches to keep from stepping on the injured appendage. Fortunately, he was in peak fitness, so the crutches did not seem to slow him down. In fact, his strong upper body flexed, his arm muscles bulged, and he looked as if he were enjoying using his strength in new ways.

The Durango airport was so small that I was able to drive right up in front of the building with the Ford I'd gotten from Ground Support. I tried to help Gonzales with his bag, but he insisted on slinging it on his back and crutching out to the car with it. He moved lightly, quickly, as if he'd been on crutches all his life.

“They've got a big party planned for you at Fire Camp,” I said. “They even got a band. Everyone's so excited to see you.”

“I wish my buddies from the crew could be here with me,” he said. He wore a T-shirt with the same embroidered Three-Pueblos Hot Shots logo that I'd seen on the patches on the crew's Nomex shirts during Rescue Command.

“Well, we all wish the whole crew could be here, too, believe me. The whole camp has been worried about all of you. They've been sending you guys all their good thoughts and wishes, and plenty of prayers, too.”

“Whatever they did, it's working, so tell them to keep it up.” He was quiet a moment, then said, “I wonder if you could take me someplace after the party.”

“Well, I'll try. Where did you want to go?”

“There's an elder from my pueblo at Chimney Rock. I want to see her.”

I sighed. “You're from Tanoah Pueblo?”

He turned and looked across the seat at me. “That's right.”

“And you want to see Anna Santana, right?”

“You know her?” There was excitement in his voice.

“Boy, do I.” I shook my head.

He grinned. “I see—she's teaching you.” He reached across and shoved my shoulder.

I smiled back at him. “How'd you guess?”

“She told me she had a white slave!” He laughed at this. This was a common joke among the Tanoah when one of them befriended an Anglo.

I nodded my head, smiling. “Yup. I have to do all the white girl chores just for the chance to pick up a little Indun Way.”

He laughed out loud, hearing me refer to another common expression among the elders of Tanoah. Momma Anna and her brothers and sisters often referred to their culture as “Indun Way.”

“You know, you're all right,” he said to me, and he reached into his bag for some chewing gum, took out a pack, and offered me a stick. I declined, but handed him a bottle of water from my own stash behind the seat.

After he'd unwrapped his gum and was smacking away on it, I tendered a question. Sometimes the younger Tanoah did not object to questions the same way the elders did. “Can you tell me why your brother Louie left your crew during the fire?”

Delgado Gonzales stopped chewing and grew quiet. Finally he said, “No, ma'am, I cannot.”

We rode the rest of the way from Durango to Bayfield in silence.

At the Columbine Ranger District, I learned that the fire management officer—or FMO—was in the building next door to the main office. Both structures were former houses that had been rehabbed into offices and painted the familiar Forest Service green. In a small compound behind the two buildings was a fenced motor pool, and behind that was a corral with a horse grazing on the lawn. Seeing the animal, my heart suddenly ached for my former life as a range rider for the BLM. Alone in the remote backcountry, often on horseback, I patrolled literally thousands of acres of public land, riding the fence lines. It was a quiet, magic-filled life, a wild life, a lonely life. But it had also proven to be a dangerous one when I stumbled into a story that ended in several deaths, including my horse. My mind wanted to linger only on the idyllic days in scenic wilderness, alone with the forces of nature and the birds and the beasts. But the truth was another story.

I recognized Frank McDaniel's salt-and-pepper hair from behind. He was sitting at his desk, shoved up against a wall in a dark and crowded little front room, absorbed in some paperwork. He barely looked up when I came in. I stood over him for a moment, and then he recognized me. “Oh, sorry”—he stood up, a smile causing his mustache to curve upward—“I thought you were…never mind, I thought you were someone who works in this office. That's why I didn't pay any attention when you came in.”

“They asked me to bring you these papers from the ICP,” I said.

“Oh, right. Yes. Thanks. Saved me a trip over there. You know the highway's all bottled up.”

“Yeah. Well, I just needed to drop these off. I have someone waiting so I better go. It was nice to see you again.”

“Hey, you're the liaison officer, right?”

“Yes.”

“I've gotten at least a dozen calls for you.”

“You have?” This puzzled me.

“Yes, I couldn't figure out why they kept asking to talk to Miss Wild. It happened so many times that I finally checked the incident action plan—they've got our numbers and names reversed. Your number is listed for me, and mine is listed for you.”

“Oh,” I said, remembering the calls I'd received with no one on the other end of the line. “This is the first I've heard of it.”

“Well, unless you actually gave someone your number, they didn't have it. They called me instead. I didn't know what to do with that at first, but I finally figured it out, and started telling callers your correct number.”

“Oh. Well, thanks very much.” I started to leave, then turned. “By any chance, did anyone just hang up on you?”

“No. Why? You mean callers simply hung up on you when you answered?”

“Yeah. They did. Someone did. Several times.”

“Well, I'm glad we got it figured out. They're supposed to correct it in the printout for tonight's briefing.”

I walked out to the car where Delgado Gonzales was waiting, determined to draw him back into conversation. Apparently while I'd been inside talking to Frank McDaniel, he'd had the same idea. I'd barely put the key in the ignition when he said, “I'm sorry about earlier. I can't talk about it, though. But I did want to thank you for saving my brother. I pray that he makes it through this.”

I turned and looked at him, and realized how afraid and desperate he must have been feeling throughout this ordeal. “I pray that he makes it, too. Momma Anna was just making offerings to the seven directions a little while ago. I'm sure she was praying for you and your brother, and for all the members of your crew.”

He made a tight-lipped smile and gave a slight nod.

“It must have been hotter than hell in those fire shelters,” I said as I put the car in gear and pulled out onto the road. “I start to roast in them when we're just doing a deployment for training, and that's only for a few minutes, without any live fire present.”

“You can't even imagine,” he said. “You can't breathe. You just want to bury your face in the earth and try to breathe the dirt, because it's cooler than the air. And the fire pushes such a wind ahead of it. You can't believe how fierce that wind is. It nearly took me up like a balloon, and I'm a pretty big guy.”

“Of course, I wasn't as far inside the fire line as you were, but I got caught in the blowup myself. What I couldn't believe was the noise.”

“Yeah, I don't think I'll ever forget that. That was the loudest sound I've ever heard in my life. It was like being inside a jet engine, maybe even louder.”

This time it was my turn to smile and nod.

Delgado Gonzales talked nearly all the way back to Chimney Rock. I even managed to put a few questions to him and get a response. This might have served as our first real critical stress debriefing, for both of us.

“What were you thinking about, trapped in that fire shelter for so long?” I asked toward the end of our conversation.

“Well, we had a few breaks when a wave of fire would blow through and then we could hear ourselves talk for a few minutes before the next wave hit us. The first wave was terrible. Like I said, I could hardly breathe, and I nearly got blown over. I just knew we were all going to die. But after we made it through the first wave, I thought it was going to be all right. We counted off in crew order—just the way we always do when we line up at training—and we scooted ourselves and our shelters in closer together for more protection. But then, wave after wave hit. And when we counted off, each time we'd lose a guy or two who wouldn't respond when we called for him to count off. And I started to think,
This is it, this is the end
.” His voice broke and his lip quivered.

“That must have been terrible.”

“The worst thing was knowing there were guys right there who probably needed medical attention, needed to be carried out, whatever. And I couldn't get out of my fire shelter.”

I thought to ask if he was worried about his brother then, too, but I knew better than to say anything.

“When you train as hard as we do,” Delgado said, clearing his throat and gathering composure, “when you work as hard as we do together, day in and day out…we start the season in early March with such rigorous training, you can't even imagine. We learn to carry more than our weight, we learn to take risks together, calculated risks, but risks just the same. We learn to face death when we walk into a fire, and we aren't afraid. We're family, we're that close, all of us. But in that shelter, I was afraid.” He lowered his head and clamped his lips together.

I drove in silence, afraid to speak for fear I would say the wrong thing. Finally, after a minute, I said, “Are you married? Or do you have a sweetheart?”

It took him a few seconds to answer. He just kept slowly nodding his head up and down, his eyes unfocused. He had gone within. “My wife is pregnant with our first child. All my life I wanted to be a dad. We had a great dad, he taught us everything, and he loved us with all his heart. When my brother and I first joined the Three-Pebs, he was so proud of us. But he had a heart attack right before last Christmas and died. A few months later, when I learned my wife was pregnant, the first thing I thought of was how I was going to try to be as good a father as my dad was to us, so I could carry on his legacy in that way.” He winced and closed his eyes, and once again lowered his head, unable to control his emotions.

Finally, he went on: “I think the worst thing about the time I spent in that fire shelter was knowing I was going to die, which meant I wasn't ever going to be a father to my own child. That was the worst thing of all.”