Summer of Fire - Linda Jacobs [68]
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
August 20
Saturday dawned with a still heat that Clare felt inside the Smokejumpers’ dorm. Through the open window was the ubiquitous pine forest that surrounded West Yellowstone. In the lower bunk, Sherry snored softly.
In this night’s dream, Clare and Frank had been together on the North Fork. In her teaching mode, she’d shown him the proper use of Pulaski and shovel to make an effective fire break. The dry scent of duff rose as she struck, turned sod, and moved on.
“Like this?” The tool in his hand became his crash axe.
Frank looked at it and laughed, stocky and strong in his yellow shirt. The smile did not touch his empty-looking eyes. “Pretty easy duty.”
“Wait until you’ve done it for sixteen hours,” she came back at him like she always did.
“Ha!” He was weightless, floating magically and leaving a perfectly executed fire line. “I get done here, we’ll have us a weenie roast over what’s left of the North Fork.”
He drifted up a ridge. She followed. “Hold on, you don’t know these fires . . .”
Floating through the trees, Frank lifted like a helium-filled balloon Clare had accidentally released at her third birthday party. As the distance between them widened, acrid tears stung her lids.
Scrambling, she fought her way uphill in awful slow motion. There was no sound in the forest save Frank’s fading laughter and the warning cry of a Clark’s Nuthatch. It cocked its intelligent gray head at Clare. “Run away,” the bird said clearly.
She struggled after Frank, cresting the ridge just as flames surged over the top. They roared liked an open blast furnace, living fire, with long fingers that plucked at her retardant clothing. Red and yellow, kill a fellow, but how smooth and seductive the hands . . .
Born of man, Frank transformed into fire. “Come on, Clare.” He beckoned, his eyes blank as coal. “I’m waiting for you.”
Clare crossed the wide expanse of Yellowstone Avenue and slung her pack into the troop transport outside Fire Command. She was tired before the day had begun.
The troops milled on the sidewalk, some inhaling a last cigarette before the drive. Sergeant Travis stood by the passenger door, his booted feet planted. “Little late this morning, Chance?”
After lying awake for an hour, she’d fallen back into a deep and torpid sleep. Waking with a start, she’d found Sherry gone and sunlight filtering through pine needles.
She ignored Travis and started to climb aboard, but he jerked his head toward the building. “Garrett Anderson wanted a word with you.”
She stared across the lawn. A sleek raven reminded her of the bird that had spoken in her dream. “Any idea why?”
Travis shrugged. “He thought maybe you’d want to cancel today. Something about the weather kicking up.” He managed to make it sound like she was chicken.
Fear was a part of fighting fire, the pale underbelly no one cared to expose. From the training field to the midnight call, mum was the word. Call it a belief in bad luck, or maybe it didn’t go with the macho image, but the last thing anyone talked about was the ever-present specter of fate.
Anger had been eating at Clare since she awakened from her latest dream of fire. Now came determination that she would not let fear alter her schedule, or her life. With a look at the clear sky and reasonable if a bit lively wind, she said, “If it kicks up later, we can always back out. The guys in the air and on lookout will give advance warning.”
“I’m sending a chopper to pull you off there,” Shad Dugan radioed Steve Haywood on the Mount Washburn lookout.
Steve’s stomach knotted. He wished Dugan had let him drive up the mountain, but his boss had insisted he be dropped off. “I can hike down to the parking lot and you can send a truck.”
“That’ll take too long. We’ve had a tourist report of a massive elk kill. I want you there within the hour.” Dugan’s tone was final.
It was nine-fifteen a.m., with a brisk dry wind out of the north. The airwaves were alive with exchanges that bore out Garrett Anderson’s dawn