Blame: A Novel (11 page)

They drove to a new street, where the burning hill was on one side of them, the new homes on the other. As always, the driver turned the buggy around lest they needed to escape.

The county engines were already there, as were the Malibu volunteer trucks, the hand crew of a local private contractor, and a Forest Service vehicle. Men conferred in a huddle. The private crew was getting out drip torches, presumably to burn out the scrub up to the fire. Patsy’s crew waited in the buggy, but no orders were forthcoming.

What we have here, their crew boss Mary said, is a genuine cluster-fuck. Then she walked over to join them.

They probably can’t decide who’s IC, said another woman.

Incident commander being the one who called the shots.

The land around them was low-growing coastal scrub, with small, bushy oaks, a few sycamores and toyons. On the same side of the road as the fire, slim wooden survey stakes with orange plastic ribbons marked out the lots of a future development.

That little fucker’s fast, Antonia muttered. They should burn it out now.

Up on the hill, the fire’s orange, smoke-frilled V had widened
almost into a straight line. The smell of smoke filled the cab. But even if nobody did anything, the road itself would stop most of the fire.

Mary stuck her head into the buggy with the order. Out, everyone, she called. We’re going to hold this road. Out! Hold the road! Hold the road!

Women shouldered their gear toward the door of the small bus and began leaping down onto the asphalt. Look now, Antonia told Patsy as they were jostled forward, pushed from the women behind. Patsy hunched down to see out of a window. The fire was fully horizontal now, and the flames suddenly much taller, a wall, and sliding down the slope like water.

Then Mary started screaming. RTO! RTO! Reverse the order. Back in the buggy. Now.
Now.
Everyone!

Inside the buggy, they scrambled backward to make room again. Antonia shoved Patsy into the woman behind her as those from outside crammed themselves and their gear in. Fucker’s jumping the road! someone yelled.

Embers swarmed and hit the windows like fat, radiant insects. Really, the flames were unbelievably close, a towering mass of shiny red fire that billowed and rippled like wind-whipped silk and bellied out at them as the buggy finally started moving. Then came a blast of dry, hot heat and a loud snapping and crackling, as from a huge campfire. A strange green light filled the vehicle. Softball-sized balls of white flame flew off a blazing tree like an explosion of phosphorus.

The next moment, they were in the clear, under blue sky. The buggy stopped, and the women leaped out. But it was too soon, too close, a mistake, and the instant Patsy landed, before she got her bearings, there was a
whoosh!
and the fire’s back wind sucked her off balance, the air so hot and dry and smoky her eyes and nose instantaneously streamed liquid and her lungs filled up.

She staggered and collided with two men hauling a hose. All around, people were cursing and throwing up. Patsy stuck her nose under her shirt.

This
is when we die, she thought with unnatural calm, here are the superheated fumes that melt lungs. She was curiously unafraid and very interested. Death by fire, she’d heard, was not like drowning or asthma. With fused lungs, there was no convulsive struggle and not
much pain. You could think to the end. She found Antonia, grabbed her, and held on.

The wind was already easing off. Formation! Mary yelled as the smoke cleared, and the new world revealed itself—a blackened ground, consumed to the dirt, the trees now charred, leafless snags, some still burning at their crowns.

Where the fire had jumped the road, dozens of spots burned—many as small as a single sagebrush, a few the size of big, vigorous bonfires. The hose crew went first with water, and the convicts followed, hacking apart the fuel, smothering flare-ups, chasing scampering flames. They were a little delirious.

Oh no you don’t.

Take that, you little pizzle sucker.

Soon they were covered in white ash. In fifteen minutes the spot fires were out and the con crew was ordered to go flank the fire. Same old same old, grunt work well away from any non-con crews. They rode up behind the hill and dug line, sweating in their Nomex, their packs chafing. Their tools arced in unison, sliced through the dry duff, four swings every ten feet. They worked their way to the top of the hill and saw, below, that the new houses were safe. The head of the fire, now burning scrubland off to the south, was only a puff of smoke.

•

Mark Parnham visited Patsy again in November, when the season was over and she was back to weeding campgrounds, shoring up trails. He brought photographs of his son, a round-faced, round-eyed seven-year-old with his father’s small features, his mother’s dark hair. Mark said, Here, he sent you this.

She unfolded a crayon drawing of a spidery yellow sun above a grove of black trees whose branches balanced red and orange scribbles of fire. A stick figure aimed a hose that spewed blue dots at the burning trees. Across the bottom of the page, in ungainly crayoned letters:
To Patsy from Martin.

•

She was in the shower when a CO stuck her head in the door. MacLemoore? Director wants you.

She turned off the water. Coming.

You can finish. Take your time.

She had never met with such courtesy in prison.
Take your time
—it was the first latitude granted. She turned the water back on. When she stepped out in her towel, CO Kessler, the homely one also called Pig Eyes, waited by the door.

I didn’t know you were still here, or I would’ve hurried.

No problem.

The guard’s eyes were indeed close together, reminding Patsy not of a pig but a flounder. Hard to imagine how Kessler coped here among the merciless.

Patsy dressed and walked with Kessler in the winter twilight down to administration. Kessler opened a door for her, followed her into the director’s office. The director was a former fire chief who had lectured them in training. Patsy? he said. He wore an ironed, clean khaki uniform. Please, sit down.

She sat in an oak captain’s chair across from him. A Christmas wreath festooned with toyon berries hung on the wall behind his head. Perhaps he would ask her to teach English or history, as the warden at Bertrin had.

I’m afraid I have some very bad news for you, Patsy.

She saw Burt shot. Her father collapsed on the golf course. Another stranger dead, and she had caused it. The director, she saw, awaited her signal to go on. What? she said.

I’m sorry to tell you, Patsy. Your mother passed away this morning.

She wanted the words to spool back into his mouth. She turned sideways, glanced around the office with its stucco walls, hung certificates, holiday berries. Kessler’s small, ugly eyes had reddened.

I’m sorry, the director said again. Of course you may attend the funeral.

•

At Our Holy Redeemer, Father Paul eulogized her mother. She wished that Father Gaspar or the monsignor was doing the service instead, not that she respected either of them after the dairy wars—Father Gaspar used liquid Coffee-mate, the monsignor skim milk—but because Father Paul wore his guitar. Her mother probably wouldn’t have cared
who preached; her devotion to the Church had been elsewhere. She’d worked with the nuns at the Samantha Home for Girls and hadn’t attended mass for months on end.

Patsy’s father sat beside her, tears sliding down his cheeks. She knew she should clasp his hand, but she could not. She could not. Burt, on her other side, wore dark aviator glasses. Bonnie and the kids filled the rest of the pew.

Now Father Paul was singing in his reedy tenor. The Lord is my shepherd. Beside him, an elaborate, three-quarters-sized crèche crowded the altar space, the Holy Family, animals, and kings all absorbed in another story. Everything—the singing priest, the plaster figures, the full church—seemed to exist behind a yellow membrane, an inch-thick sheet of Plexiglas. Patsy jiggled her foot, jammed her hands under her knees.

Burt had picked her up at nine in the morning. We were counting on Mom to last out your sentence, he told her. We figured you had enough on your plate.

Didn’t it occur to anybody that I might want to say goodbye? Or make amends? What were you thinking?

Burt had clammed up at her tone. They barely spoke all the way down the hill. Then there was an accident on Pacific Coast Highway and an hour’s delay. In Bakersfield they had to drive directly to the church.

And how badly people behaved out in the free world. They stood and talked right in the entrance to the sanctuary while other people were trying to get inside. They blocked the aisle, called out to each other. They shuffled into pews in no particular order, squeezing past people, making others squeeze past them. They shoved. In prison, you’d get cited.

The service ended, and she filed out with the family. Brice saluted her from a few rows back, they made motions to meet outside. In a rear pew sat a man in a black suit who looked like Mark Parnham, only smaller, milder, even more nondescript. As she came closer, he stood.

I have to see someone, she told Burt, and went over.

I’m so sorry, he said, about your mother.

Oh my god. She reached out her hand, and he clasped it. To Burt she mouthed, A minute.

You came all the way up here? she said.

Not so far. Ninety minutes.

Where’s Martin?

At his grandmother’s.

And he’s okay?

Terrific, thanks. He looked at her frankly, with an interest and tenderness that made her straighten up.

It’s weird how good it is to see you, she said.

This seemed like the sort of thing we could do for each other, he said.

Patsy turned her back to the mourners so nobody would approach them.

I saw your mom in court, he said. Both times. She held your hand.

She was sick then, Patsy said. But nobody told me.

So it was a shock.

I suspected something when she didn’t come to Malibu. But yes, a shock.

Burt came up alongside her. Oh hello, he said, and shook Mark’s hand. Dad wants you, Pats, he whispered.

I’m leaving now, said Mark Parnham.

You don’t have to, said Patsy. You can . . .

I just wanted to tell you how sorry I am. And I’m thinking of you.

He left through a side door.

Outside, Brice handed her a letter.

Dear Patsy,

Brice told me about your mother. I am very sorry. I never met your mom, but knowing you I would guess that she was friendly and very smart, not to mention beautiful. As you know, my mother died over two years ago, so I can guess how you feel. I’m sure you miss your mom as much as I miss mine. Maybe wherever they are they will meet and become good friends.

Your friend, Joey H.

•

Benny came in March with good news: You’ll be out June first.

Two months earlier than expected. This brought a jolt of happiness. Are you kidding? She grabbed his arm. Are you sure? How’d you swing it?

I just kept talking to people, asking what could be done. You got points for good work, and Parnham wrote a letter.

You’re kidding! Did you ask him to?

He got in touch with Ricky Barrett and me. Asked what, if anything, he could do. Ricky did some looking into it. And your brother Burt. I guess there’s a whole law enforcement network.

Those guys, said Patsy, and you, Benny. You’ve all been so much nicer to me than I deserve.

•

Burt came to talk to her about her plans. Patsy examined her brother’s friendly, handsome face. Why didn’t the women go all noisy over him as they did for Brice? When Brice came to Malibu, a whole new set of women insisted he was a game-show host or on some soap opera. Burt, she thought, was better-looking, his thick graying hair in curls, his eyes always lit with warmth and humor. Burt, unlike Brice, truly loved women, too many in fact. But Patsy’s fellow prisoners sooner rallied to Brice’s aloofness and indifference. She’d been that way too. Show her a man who didn’t love her and she’d do her damnedest to change his mind.

Burt grinned. Can you believe it? You’re getting the hell out. When can you get your house back?

The lease runs till next February. I’ll have to rent a place.

You’ll need a job. That’s the stipulation.

I could get on a fire crew for the summer.

Won’t the college have something?

They don’t have summer school. But I could probably teach ESL at Pasadena City College like I did before. That would work. And I could live at the Lyster. It’s only five or six blocks away.

Brice’s place? Is that a good idea?

Oh god, she said. Don’t worry about
that
. The scales have fallen from my eyes! He’s been a good friend, but that’s it! I’d rent my own apartment.

I was hoping you’d come near to us. Dad was thinking a halfway house—

Is he out of his mind? Another institution? Why don’t I just stay here?

Maybe your friend Sarah knows a place.

Maybe.

•

Two weeks later, this postcard came:

Dear Patsy,

There’s a 2 bedroom on 2, north-facing (cool), high ceilings, claw tub, mountain view. Could be ready June 1. Shall I furnish? If so, what’s your budget (so I can overrun it ASAP)?

Brice

Did you hear the one about the two women cellies released on the same day after twenty-five years? They stood outside the gate and talked for an hour.

June 1983

Patsy had imagined the moment of her release as a big gust of wind lifting her up and over the hurricane fence and toppling her into a new life. In fact, when Sweeney drove her down to the gate, nobody was waiting. The sky above was a pure, clear blue, but at their feet, a fog-bank stretched to the horizon, its surface white and dimpled like a mattress or a frozen, wind-chopped ocean. It was easy to imagine that the world below was gone.

Patsy unloaded her gym bag from the camp pickup.