Smoke, Page 2

  In the second week of June, I hiked through the woods with enough supplies on my back to keep me fed until a food delivery arrived two weeks later. I took up residence in a tower that gave a breathtaking 360-degree view of the most beautiful forest I’d ever been in. I stayed there for sixty-five days (take that, Kerouac), and I watched. I waited. I cried and I read and I laughed, and when the summer was over, I felt whole again. I signed up for another summer and, though I’d met Ben by then, another after that. At the end of my third summer, I realized I wanted to be closer to the action—not just spot the trail of smoke from a distance but get to know it, feel its heat, fight it, conquer it.

  So I trained and studied and got strong. When I was ready, I went where the fires were. I spent a lot of time away from Ben. Eventually, it felt as if I’d spent most of my life waiting. Waiting to get back to him. Waiting to start the family we’d always wanted, to have a job I loved and a marriage. Waiting till the air warmed up and the snowmelt ran into the creek beds. Waiting for that first bolt of lightning or careless cigarette to set off a telltale white plume above the horizon.

  Waiting for a fire to spark.

  I was so sick of waiting.

  But now all I can do is wait for morning to come.

  I slip out of bed quietly at daybreak. I put on a pair of jeans and a warm fleece as armor against the morning chill. It’s only September 2, the day after Labor Day, and it feels like winter is going to show up early, a welcome relief from our kiln-baked summer.

  In the bathroom, I run a brush through the tangles of my shoulder-length red hair, noticing the dark smudges a sleepless night always leaves under my pale-green eyes. The makeup lights around the mirror glint off the gray hairs I haven’t bothered to cover up yet.

  Back in the bedroom, I write Ben a quick note on a piece of paper I find on his desk and leave it on the indentation my head made in my pillow. He’s breathing easy as I close the door gently behind me.

  I leave by a side door, careful to unman the alarm first, and then I’m behind the wheel of my car, a beat-up blue Subaru Outback, driving toward what anyone in their right mind would drive away from.

  As I bump along the dirt road, I run into the smoke that’s already started to spread out and settle into the valley. The acrid tang stings my nose, making it itch.

  In town, there’s a ghostly quiet along Main Street that I haven’t seen in the longest time, maybe ever. Certainly not in the summer, when the tourists stomp along the wood-plank sidewalks and linger in the overpriced art stores and T-shirt shops. The town’s pretty without all the people in it. I used to know that. How could I forget?

  I take the ring road around the base of Nelson Peak, and a mile north of town, I’m stopped as I approach the perimeter that’s been set up by the fire crews. It’s made up of fire trucks, utility vehicles, and the first of what I know will be an eventual forest of white trailers if they don’t get this thing under control soon.

  I flash my badge at one of the patrollers from the sheriff’s office. I should’ve given it back when I retired, but I held on to it. One of many things I should’ve let go, but couldn’t quite bring myself to.

  “Just want to get a look and do an assessment,” I say to the uniform. He nods and pulls the tape aside.

  As I drive past him, the hairs on the back of my neck stand up in protest. Coming out here was a bad idea. In fact, keeping any ties with the life I was trying to leave behind was a mistake. If I’d cut the cord entirely, maybe I wouldn’t be here, two years later, no baby, almost no marriage, driving backward in time.

  A cliché. A fucking cliché. Maybe that’s everyone’s life; I can’t tell. But I’m starting to feel as if my old life followed me here, like it missed me and couldn’t stay away.

  I park my car with its nose pointed toward the fire and watch the beehive of activity. The yellow hoses heavy with water and fire retardant. The flash of axes and the whirring chain saws. A hand crew is working to keep the fire that’s still licking at the husk of what was once a house from spreading to its neighbors. The crew boss is barking orders into his radio. I can almost hear what he’s saying through the helmet I’m not wearing.

  Someone taps the glass next to me. I unwind my window, letting the past roll in.

  “Hey, Beth,” Andy says, his face crinkling with pleasure despite the circumstances. “You here to work the fire?”

  Nelson Elementary is where we would’ve sent our kids.

  I try not to think about that as I pull into the school’s half-full parking lot an hour later. Thinking like that is beating myself up. And though I feel like I deserve a beating sometimes—a metaphorical one, anyway—I need to stop administering them to myself.

  I’ve never been inside the building before, but it feels like my own elementary school did, only smaller. As if I’m Alice in Wonderland and I’ve taken the pill that makes you grow larger. Even my feet feel too big as they slap against the tiled floor.

  I follow the hastily made paper signs to the principal’s office, where the incident commander has set up the command center. Like an air traffic controller, the IC’s the hub through which commands and information flow to the field operations. Doesn’t matter how good your crews are or whether you have the latest equipment, if your IC doesn’t cut it, the fire isn’t going to be contained.

  Her right-hand man, the operations center dispatcher, is sitting in front of a bank of computer screens. I don’t recognize the OCD, but the IC’s an old friend.

  Kara Panjabi gave me my first crew job, and she’s been watching out for me ever since. Fifty-five, her perpetual smiles have creased deep lines into her light-brown face. She might seem soft on the outside, but she can out-bench-press many of the men on her crews, a feat she’s often asked to demonstrate at camp events, in the down moments.

  We may have had some words when I told her I was leaving, but that doesn’t mean she isn’t happy to see me now.

  “Elizabeth! I wondered when you would arrive.”

  We hug. She smells like balsa wood and citronella and, always underneath that, smoke. It’s a fragrance that works its way into your skin, your hair, and even now, two years away from it, I still catch its scent clinging to me every once in a while, like a lover who doesn’t want to let go.

  She releases me. “You do not call, you do not write.”

  “I’ve been . . . busy,” I say, ducking away.

  “You’ve been out to the site?”

  “Before I came here.”

  “Andy is there, yes?”

  Andy’s the one who told me where to find Kara.

  “Stop it.”

  “Stop what, exactly?”

  “Using your creepy ESP skills on me.”

  Kara comes from a long line of fortune-telling mystics. She claims not to believe in “all that nonsense,” but that doesn’t mean she isn’t above using the keen powers of observation she learned at her dadi’s knee.

  “You say that because you are envious.”

  “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 Basi
n 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 no
rth 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?