Summer of Fire - Linda Jacobs [85]
Somehow, she did not believe that would be enough.
They hadn’t let her see Frank’s body. He’d been brought out of the apartment house in the same type bag they’d closed Billy in; the one that served as equalizer for kings and paupers. Frank’s casket had been closed.
Seeing Billy’s disfigurement made it real. Clare slid down the fiberglass shower wall and hugged herself beneath the spray. Great gulping sobs wracked her and she hoped Rose Chee didn’t hear. Without success, she called on her resource of coolness, the one that permitted her to package the dead.
This happened to the best of them. Some firefighters called it processing, an impartial cover-up for the tears, the rage, the obsessive washing that failed to remove the taint of smoke and burnt flesh. Everybody handled it her or his own way and Clare had congratulated herself at partitioning it when the victims were unknown.
Even after Frank, she’d been in denial. Despite her few bouts of crying, she’d set her backbone in a straight line and run to Wyoming. Now, she let the cleansing water mingle with her tears. Frank was not waiting back at the station the way she sometimes imagined. The good knife he’d brought to chop onions and spices had gone home with his widow. Someone else’s clothes hung in his locker.
When she finally emerged from the shower stall, two women were talking excitedly about the prospect of the thousand people in the Storm Creek Camp being evacuated before morning. The fire that had threatened Silver Gate and Cooke City at the east entrance had backed around and was heading for them.
At this latest proof that there was no haven, Clare wondered if what she, and everyone on the lines had gone through today wasn’t enough.
Now she faced the prospect of phoning Garrett. Sergeant Travis had probably bent his ear an hour ago, before the transport carrying the troops back to their base had left. Billy Jakes’s comrades had been excused from the fire line.
Clare had decided to stay overnight at the camp, rather than ride to West Yellowstone under Travis’s baleful eye. His farewell had been to succinctly turn his back and walk away. Not a word to suggest she might give a shit about what happened to Billy.
With a shock, she remembered that Devon’s plane arrived tomorrow afternoon. For the past few hours, it had been wiped from her mind. Now that she knew the fire was coming, she wished she’d hitched a ride to pick up her rental parked at Old Faithful. If the camp was evacuated to Mammoth on the north end of the park, she might have trouble getting to the airport on time.
Near the dining tent, she queued for a pay phone. It would be more private than talking to Garrett over one of the radios.
His deep voice was unchanged and reassuring. “Anderson.”
She bit her lip against the horror of Billy’s screams.
“Yo, talk to me.”
“It’s Clare.”
“Gal.” His voice said he knew. “You okay?”
She sucked in her breath. Did trembling inside qualify as okay? Even though she’d bathed, the scorched stench had permeated her head and she could not shake it.
Garrett spoke into her silence. “These things happen,” he said in an uncanny echo of what the folks at the station had told her about Frank.
“Yeah,” she managed.
“With your daughter coming, you take some time. Show her the sights,” he offered.
“Yeah.” She discovered how hard she’d been gripping the receiver only when her fingers relaxed.
“I’ve been briefed on what happened, but I’ll need your story. Are you up to it now while the memory is fresh?” His voice was steady.
“Okay,” she agreed. Around her was a throng of yellow-shirts. From eager students to men and women with graying hair, they all risked themselves, as she did.
She just didn’t know if she wanted the job anymore.
The Storm Creek Camp’s dining tent bustled at ten p.m. Hundreds of firefighters, pilots, and support personnel grabbed a meal before too little sleep and a too-early call.
Despite her aversion to the thought of food, Clare joined the line. A loudspeaker garbled a country