Fire, The (2 page)

Joel took a sip from a can of cola.

"I agree. Do yourself a favor, though, Kevin."

"What's that?"

"If you take a tour of a mine, stay with the group."

Kevin cocked his head and looked at his instructor with puzzled eyes.

"OK. I'll do that."

"There's one more thing," Joel said.

"I'm listening."

"If you see strange blue lights in one of those mines, be sure to act accordingly."

"What do you mean by that?"

Joel leaned back in his chair and sighed.

"I mean turn around and run."

CHAPTER 2: KEVIN

Wallace, Idaho – Tuesday, June 18, 2013

"The building directly across the street has an even more colorful history. It operated as a brothel as recently as the eighties. That's the 1980s, folks, not 1880s."

Kevin looked at Walt of Walt's Walking Tours of Wallace to see if he was kidding and quickly saw that he was not.

"It's a museum now," Walt said. "If you walk inside, you'll find the rooms exactly as the last occupants left them when they took off in a rush in anticipation of a police raid. I highly recommend a tour if you have the time today."

Kevin studied the narrow brick building with the colorful awnings and then returned to Walt, a crusty, bearded man of sixty who looked like Grizzly Adams and spoke like a prairie poet. Kevin slowly raised a hand.

"Do you have a question, young man?" Walt asked.

"Did Wallace have a lot of whorehouses in the old days?"

Kevin turned red when his parents and sister threw glances his way.

"Oh, there were plenty," Walt said. "We're standing on the edge of a red-light district that thrived for decades. If you walk toward the river you'll see a warehouse that was once the biggest bordello in Idaho. Some of the richest and most prominent men in the area paid frequent visits. Maggie Ryan, the woman who ran the establishment at the turn of the century, was quite a character. She counted several politicians and judges among her clients. She was very generous, too, contributing to a number of local charities. Would you like to know more?"

Kevin shook his head and turned away when he saw his mother smile and needle him with a look he knew well by the tiny crinkles around her deep blue eyes. She was laughing inside at his impertinence. Satisfied that his education on prostitution in the Gem State was complete, Kevin retreated to the safety of the back of the pack.

"Let's continue," Walt said.

A few minutes later, the guide and his group turned onto Sixth Street and assembled in front of a coffee shop. All but a few had dressed in short-sleeved shirts and shorts, an opportunity made possible by unseasonably warm weather.

"I'll now take you on a little tour of Sixth Street, once the heart of Wallace's business district and home to some of the town's finest architecture. Thanks to the efforts of preservationists and local businessmen, many of these buildings have been restored and continue to serve useful purposes. But before I get started, does anyone have any questions?"

Irene Johnson lifted a hand.

"Yes, ma'am," Walt said.

"Didn't this town burn down once?"

"Twice, actually," Walt answered. "In 1890 a blaze took down pretty much the whole town. Most of the buildings then were made of wood, so it didn't take long for the flames to do their work. The citizens quickly rebuilt the city, however, and constructed more buildings of brick and stone. Most of what you see on this street is their handiwork."

"What about the other fire?"

Kevin smiled. Even on vacation, his sister, a journalism student at the University of Oregon, played the part of an investigative reporter.

"Well, that would be the one you probably read about in your motel brochures," Walt said. He looked at Irene and then the others in the group. "I want you all to look south, beyond the end of the street and tell me what you see."

"I see a mountain," said a middle-aged man in a Polo shirt and khaki slacks.

Several in the group laughed.

"What else do you see?"

"I see trees," the man said, "green trees."

The group laughed again.

"I see green trees too," Walt said. "But those trees weren't always green. They weren't always there. A hundred and three years ago that hill was a mountain of matchsticks. On the evening of August 20, 1910, one of the largest fires in history came roaring down that slope and took out a third of the city around you."

"Wasn't that the Big Burn?" Polo Man asked.

"Some call it that. Others call it the Big Blowup or the Great Fire. Whatever its name, it made its mark not only on this region but also the nation's consciousness."

"What do you mean?" Irene asked.

"What I mean, young lady, is that it changed the way America viewed its public lands and managed its forests. More than nine billion board feet of old growth went up in smoke in two days and three million acres of pristine forestland were destroyed. If you can imagine a fire the size of Connecticut moving at seventy miles an hour, then you can imagine the Big Burn."

"Did many people die?"

"Well, that depends on your definition of many. The blaze claimed eighty-seven lives, including two in Wallace. By comparison, the Peshtigo, Wisconsin, fire of 1871 killed more than fifteen hundred. The casualties here might have soared into the hundreds as well were it not for the actions and bravery of a handful of Forest Service officials and the men they managed."

"Do you mean men like Ed Pulaski?" Irene asked.

"I do, indeed. How do you know about Mr. Pulaski?"

"I ate a hamburger named after him yesterday."

Several people laughed.

"Well, good for you," Walt said. "I like that burger with pepper jack cheese."

Irene smiled.

"What you may not know is that there's quite a story behind that hamburger. Ed Pulaski is pretty much a household name in these parts. He was not the only hero of the fire, but he was the most famous. For those of you who do not recognize the name, Ed Pulaski was the Forest Service ranger who saved most of his crew by leading them into a mineshaft a few miles south of here. When things got a bit hot in the hole and some of the men got restless, Big Ed threatened to shoot anyone who left. In the end, only five of his forty men died."

Walt stopped and turned to face the group. He still had its attention.

"Mr. Pulaski is also credited with inventing a half-ax, half-mattock tool that is still in use in the Forest Service today. There's also a nearby mountain named for him."

Kevin watched Irene as she stepped away from the group, placed a hand on the corner of a building, and examined smoke-stained bricks that probably hadn't changed much since 1910. He could tell by her serious expression that she was trying to work out something in her mind.

Walt appeared ready to expound a bit more about Ed Pulaski when he, too, noticed that one of his sheep had left the flock.

"Do you have a question about that building?" he asked.

Irene turned to look at Walt and shook her head.

"No. I was just thinking about the fire. It must have been awful for the residents."

"It was," Walt said. "Many who witnessed the blaze, including some of the hundreds who escaped on trains, called the scene hell on earth. Thankfully, as a result of that fire, we've gotten much better at preventing and preparing for such calamities."

Kevin surveyed the town, or at least the part he could see from Cedar and Sixth, and tried to reconcile the sight of a sleepy mining town with the tour guide's dramatic narrative. It was hard to imagine a community on fire and surrounding hills ablaze.

He had known a few details about the disaster, including some passed down through the generations. His grandfather, Roger Johnson, had often told the story of an inferno that had wiped out virtually every house on Garnet Street, sparing only the Johnson residence. The fire had threatened the town's prosperous west side before suddenly moving in a different direction.

"It hopped o'er the hill on the wings of the wind and burned the east side instead," Roger had told him. "It took out the newspaper in minutes. Those inside barely escaped with their lives."

As Walt led the tour group down Sixth toward Bank Street, Kevin thought also of Professor Smith's warning about blue lights in mines. What was that all about? Was he just having fun at a student's expense? Was it his way of saying that curiosity killed the cat and that sometimes the unknown should be left alone? Kevin never asked the professor to elaborate. He figured it was just another of Joel Smith's throwaway lines. Now, he wasn't so sure.

Whatever the case, it wouldn't be an issue for at least a few days. The Johnsons had decided to do most of their work before most of their play. The family had an old house to clean and a buyer to attract. Kevin probably wouldn't see the inside of a local mine, or anything beyond the city limits, before Monday.

Kevin snapped out of his daze and mentally rejoined the tour. As a graduate student facing immediate academic and financial challenges, he had, frankly, more important matters to ponder than blue lights, mines, and cryptic references by wisecracking professors.

Of course, he could say the same about blazes, brothels, and pistol-packing rangers. They were no more important in the grand scheme of things and probably less relevant to his future. But they were interesting. Walt's tour was a nice way to start the summer.

Kevin walked up to the front of the group and paid closer attention to its leader. Following the crusty old guy around town was an adventure. What Kevin didn't know is that his adventure in Wallace, Idaho, was just beginning.

CHAPTER 3: KEVIN

Thursday, June 20, 2013

If there was one thing that could be said about houses on the edge of small towns, it was that they were quiet – eerily quiet. Kevin could actually hear nature outside the window of his bedroom on the second floor of his grandfather's house on Garnet Street.

He couldn't hear
birds
in Seattle, at least not over the din of cars, stereos, sirens, horns, dogs, and human voices that assaulted the ears with annoying regularity. Not so in Wallace. Over the past few days he had heard everything from songbirds, owls, and crickets to foxes and even wolves. He understood now why his ancestors had kept this magnificent home through the years. It was a retreat for the mind and the senses, a perfect place to unwind for two weeks.

Wearing a T-shirt and shorts, he leaned back against the brass headboard of his surprisingly small double bed and stretched out his feet. They extended to the edge of the mattress.

At six-foot-one, two hundred pounds, Kevin wasn't Arnold Schwarzenegger, but he wasn't Danny DeVito either. He had gotten his size from his father, Brian, who had been tall and thin as a boy but had filled out in the Army and had maintained that bulk. His mother was just the opposite. At five-four, one hundred ten pounds, Shelly Preston Johnson looked every bit like the gymnast she had been in high school. She had passed her physique onto her daughter.

Unable to sleep at ten after ten, Kevin turned on a small lamp and stared at two books lying atop a nightstand. He had already read most of the first, a comprehensive account of the Big Burn, so he reached for the second: a spiral-bound document his grandfather had compiled for a family reunion in 2005.

When he flipped through the pages, he could see that Grandpa Roger had done a thorough job. Everything Kevin had ever wanted to know about the Johnson family of Idaho, Oregon, and points beyond could be found in ample detail in the illustrated fifty-page work.

Kevin knew much of his family's history but still found the stories interesting. The Johnsons had been a clan of surprising achievers, from Asa Johnson, a London trader who had emigrated to the U.S. in 1894 and made a bundle in mining, to Brian and Shelly Johnson themselves. Though born into middle-class families, Brian, a real estate broker, and Shelly, an author of children's books, had invested wisely as young adults and managed to become financially independent before their children were out of grade school.

When he had compiled the family history, Grandpa Roger had understandably focused less on living relatives than on the rascals and characters who were no longer around to defend themselves. He had written a lot about Asa. The family patriarch had come to America to work on Wall Street but had found his calling as a mining broker in the West and, according to rumor, a trader in illicit diamonds. By the time he died of a heart attack at the age of forty-one on July 22, 1910, he had amassed a fortune of three hundred thousand dollars.

Asa's oldest son, Randolph, had also succeeded as an entrepreneur. He had become a bootlegger straight out of high school and socked away thousands before being shot and killed in a dispute over a woman at the age of twenty-eight in 1933.

Lloyd Johnson, the youngest son, had gone in a different direction. He had attended college, married, and sired three children before his thirtieth birthday. After serving in the Army in World War II, he had moved his family to his wife's hometown of Unionville, Oregon, and started an auto dealership that had thrived long after his death in 1985.

Kevin had not known Asa, Randolph, and Lloyd personally. They had died long before he had arrived on the scene in 1991. They existed only in stories that had been passed down to him from Grandpa Roger, who had run the dealership store following Lloyd's retirement, and his great aunts, Beatrice and Janet, who had also settled in Unionville and jointly managed what had become known as the family vacation house in Wallace until their deaths in 2006 and 2008. So it was with great interest that he read a document he had mostly ignored at the reunion, when he was fourteen and obsessed more with girls, school, and sports than dead relatives.

Kevin lowered the reunion book to his lap and reached for a glass of iced tea on the nightstand. He knew it wasn't wise to drink a caffeinated beverage at this hour. He didn't look forward to stumbling down a dark stairway at two o'clock to find the house's only bathroom. But iced tea was just what he needed on a night when the temperature clung stubbornly to the high seventies and the air conditioner didn't work.