Summer of Fire - Linda Jacobs [149]
Garrett leaned his bulk on the fence rail. It creaked and he stood straight again. “Getting back in action is always the best thing.”
“Now you, too.” Clare let go of the rail and crossed her arms over her chest. “I’ve been hearing that from everybody all summer.”
“Because it’s a fact.”
Hadn’t she thought that, herself, back in July when she scanned Lake Yellowstone and wanted to help the anonymous victims of a helicopter ditching?
Garrett went on, “Before you get away from us, I want to ask what you think about wildfire work.”
Clare weighed the hours spent in the fire station in Houston against the mountain vistas the Smokejumpers enjoyed in West Yellowstone. The siren’s wail as the engine negotiated eight lanes of traffic on Westheimer Road, versus the sunlight strobing in an avenue of trees. Going into an apartment to pull down the ceiling with a pike pole, or digging line in the pine smelling forest, with the ever-changing flames crackling a few yards away.
Both were honest hard work.
Billy Jakes had met a terrible end on the Hellroaring, but it was God’s own truth that she saw more death in the city from wrecks and coronaries than she could ever find in the forest. For the first time since she’d made her decision, she hesitated. “What about wildfire?”
“I want you with me at the Interagency Center in Boise.”
Clare glanced over her shoulder toward the small frame building Steve called home. Boise was a lot closer to Yellowstone than Houston. “Talk to me,” she said.
Garrett smiled. “Before you commit yourself to Boise there’s one more thing you might want to know. Ben Mallory is retiring here at the Fire Cache early next year. They’ll be needing somebody too.”
Are you moving to Yellowstone? Clare heard Devon’s voice in her head, as clearly as when her daughter had asked the question earlier in the summer. She looked again at Steve’s place, where the light from the lamp she’d left on in the living room glowed. “I’ll think about it.”
Black smoke billowed from behind the high smooth shoulder of Bunsen Peak.
Steve left the administration building and limped across the lawn toward Park Headquarters. Maybe he should have brought along those crutches.
With an angry look at the smoke haze, he found it difficult to believe it had only been seventy-two hours since the North Fork’s Incident Commander had pronounced that fire would sweep through Old Faithful. Now the Chief Ranger was weighing the wisdom of evacuating Mammoth. In contrast to the seasonal ebb and flow, headquarters was the year-round community that directed people and goods to the rest of the park, like a heart pumping blood.
Steve passed Carol Leeds from Billings Live Eye and the ponytailed cameraman who’d heckled him at Roaring Mountain. They were filming the collection of fire trucks and apparatus in the yard.
The outside basement door of headquarters gave its usual protest at opening, but finally let Steve into the hall outside the archives. To his surprise, the lights were off behind the wire glass windows. Walt Leighton and Harriet must have closed early to pack for the evacuation.
Pale illumination from the above ground basement windows gave Steve a view into the familiar room lined with filing cabinets. To him, these records were so much more than yellowed paper and fading ink. They were people’s lives, transcribed with loving care, so that future generations might know their legacy. He thought of Clare’s ancestral diary that they’d found in Grand Teton Park. He needed to look at that and make sure a copy was made for posterity.
An approaching fire engine rumbled. Ranger Shad Dugan had said that by morning there would be at least forty units onsite. Steve glanced at the sprinkler head on the ceiling. Beneath the stone building, the archives were largely insulated, but what of the historic wooden buildings of old Fort Yellowstone? By this time tomorrow, the place Steve called home might be ashes.
His knees protested as he exited the building and headed toward his house.
Next door, Moru Mzima came out and set a loaded cardboard box on the