Summer of Fire - Linda Jacobs [156]
Steve climbed down stiffly. He wore Nomex fire clothes, along with his badge and the summer straw uniform hat that identified him as a ranger. “Would you believe that even after the park’s been closed two days, I’m still rousting campers that haven’t heard the news?”
“I’d believe just about anything right now.”
Below the parking lot, the team of California hotshots from the Mink Creek rested in the area inside a metal rail fence. As she came closer, Clare realized that it was a cemetery, poorly tended, for the headstones barely cleared the high grass.
“Take a load off,” a man called. “If this break doesn’t hold, we’re to fall back and defend the housing.”
Clare looked where he pointed, maybe a quarter mile to the first enclave of park employees’ homes. She stepped across the fence and gave a hand to Steve.
He came across awkwardly and sat in the grass beside a headstone. Many were illegible, mainly those of marble. The granite and banded gneiss had held up better, their names and dates a history of the last years of the nineteenth century and the first of the twentieth. Next to Clare’s boot was a flat stone, flush with the ground. Unknown Child, it read simply.
Sitting down in the grass near Steve, Clare checked her watch and found it midafternoon. She was tired, the good honest fatigue that came from working with a purpose. Around her, sweaty faces showed determination. She removed her hard hat and scratched her head.
“In another ten minutes we should know if this firebreak holds,” said the head of the hotshot team. Clare recognized the tough, gray-haired woman who had sounded the alarm at the Mink Creek.
Clare nodded to her and bent to pluck a stem of grass. She bit down and released a sour flood in her mouth.
A deep rumble sounded. Dynamite, someone blasting trees in some firebreak. She wished she had a case of the stuff, to set off a spectacular concussion that would snuff the North Fork like a blown birthday candle. She imagined the long cascade resonating down the valley.
No, it was not her imagination. All around her, firefighters raised their heads. Some looked puzzled, others disbelieving.
“Thunder,” Steve said.
The wind’s passage could be seen through the trees, tossing and bending their trunks, loud enough to be heard over the crackling roar of flame. The long grass whipped and scrubby sage jerked as though a hand deep in the earth tugged its roots. The advancing wave swept down the hill toward the cemetery, kicking up clouds of grit and raising a miniature tornado in the parking lot.
It hit Clare and gave her a shove as though a damp towel had struck her across the back.
“Goddamn,” someone said.
The temperature dropped at least ten degrees within a minute, bringing moist relief to dry, cracked lips. Everyone climbed to their feet, took off their hard hats and looked skyward.
A fat drop stung Clare’s cheek. She closed her eyes.
The temperature continued to plummet, cooling her sweaty skin. More raindrops landed, making dark stains on weathered headstones and yellow shirts.
“Here it comes,” Steve said.
A long line of silver rain bore down from Sepulcher Mountain above the hot springs. Its shifting curtains replaced the smoke haze as the relentless advance obliterated the view of Jupiter Terrace. The front crossed the highway, drops bouncing high off the pavement.
The North Fork recoiled with an angry hiss. Clouds of steam roiled, an elemental struggle destined to end with the death of the dragon.
An hour later, Clare kept her arm tight around Steve’s chest, to keep from losing him in the crowd of reveling firefighters on the Mammoth Hotel lawn. It also didn’t hurt that he helped keep her warm after the cold front had swept in. Above, on Sepulcher Mountain and over behind the cemetery, other crews were still fighting to cool the leading edge of the North Fork.
The hotel had closed for the evacuation, but as soon as the danger passed, the bar had been opened to accommodate the celebration. Rows of TV trucks with satellite antennas lined