Summer of Fire (21 page)

The Mink Creek spotted ahead as lone trees a hundred yards from the main body candled. In the meadow beside Howell Creek, members of the night shift mingled with the crews that had been rousted from their sleeping bags.

The bullhorn operator got it under control. “Abandon all gear, leave everything except your fire shelters. Proceed to the helipad for immediate evacuation.”

A lone chopper began its runup. Another machine added an urgent scream to the Mink Creek’s rising roar. Clare looked for Deering in the throng.

One chopper rose into the blood red sky, then another.

When Clare arrived at the helipad, she looked for the Huey Deering had flown, but it was not in the cleared space beside the creek. Word spread quickly that the game plan was to ferry all hands two miles downstream to the broad meadow at the confluence of Howell and Mountain Creeks.

“Plenty of time,” someone said, and another, deeper voice replied, “Bullshit, Monahan.”

A Bell 206 Jetranger landed in a wash of wind to take on another load without cutting power to the rotors. Seven people crowded aboard and the Bell was airborne within sixty seconds.

Clare tried not to count the number of persons ahead of her, but as the fire wailed to a screaming crescendo, she found herself murmuring, “Forty-one, forty-two . . . “

“The son-of-a-bitch is not supposed to run downhill.” Clare recognized the speaker as one of the sturdy Apaches she’d treated that afternoon. The white gauze bandage she’d taped high on his cheek was still in place.

She and everyone else knew that heat rises, therefore fire does not burn down a mountain. Unfortunately, this summer’s fires and their microclimates did not understand the laws of nature, or perhaps man’s understanding was faulty.

Clare touched the square pouch slung onto her webbed belt and was not reassured by the compact folds of her fire shelter. The flimsy material reminded her of the space blanket one of her friends had taken to carrying in her car when she moved to Denver. Clare had no more faith in the tissue-thin material keeping someone from freezing than she did in the fire shelter preventing her from roasting alive.

Another chopper came in low, hovered and landed on the flattened grass. With a start, she recognized the green Huey and Deering in the cockpit. He was flying with the cracked Jesus nut, risking the rotors flying off in mid-flight.

Was he ever afraid, Clare wondered? She’d learned in fire that while a healthy dose of fear kept you on your toes, too much was debilitating.

She had avoided watching the advancing fire front. Now, she turned and faced it, feeling the night grow warmer. The Mink Creek no longer looked beautiful. Up close, it bore a thousand brilliant teeth, snapping and biting at the darkness.

It was coming for her. Razor-sharp, it would slice through her flesh like a hot knife.

She looked for Deering, knowing that if he saw her at all, she was a mere face in the waiting crowd.

Coming in for a fourth landing at Howell Creek, Deering held tight to the controls. The Huey took a beating, slewing sideways toward rushing water while he tried to maintain a hover.

He scanned his instruments. Fuel okay, RPM steady, and if the goddamn wind held off. . . Below, the last of the firefighters turned their faces up towards him.

A sudden gust blew him past the LZ, almost into the creek.

Rolling on throttle, he gained airspeed and lifted off again, circling back until he was upwind of the helipad. Quickly, he rolled power to the off position, pushing right pedal to reduce the anti-torque produced by the tail rotor. As the RPM decayed, he increased pitch, lowering the collective so that the Huey sank.

The landing was hard.

Firefighters scrambled aboard.

Deering peered through the windshield at the spike camp.

Outhouse doors beat against their hinges. Loose papers blew along the ground. Above the rotor whine was a sound like a 747 screaming toward takeoff.

There was the tent he and Clare had shared so briefly.

The left side door slammed, followed by the rolling slide of the rear ones into place. Deering looked back to make sure the passengers were secure, then checked the person in the front seat.

Clare’s white face stared at him, her eyes stark. She said something he couldn’t hear and he gestured toward the headset.

She put it on as he performed instinctive motions with his feet and hands, the intricate dance that propelled the aircraft into the sky.

“Will this thing fly?” She gripped his forearm, creamy bone showing beneath the skin of her knuckles. He’d have a bruise.

Rolling turbulence in front of the fire lifted the helicopter and then let it fall four feet. He concentrated on keeping from crashing. Finally, he got it under control, lifted off and headed toward the drop-off. Clare did not let go.

Deering clenched his teeth at the mess he’d gotten himself into. He’d maneuvered Clare into that tent for the thrill of it, and for revenge on his wife for denying his love of flying.

He should be weak with relief that they’d been interrupted before anything more happened.

He wasn’t.

Clare’s touch reminded him how complicated this was. He should be ashamed of himself and he was, but when he’d held her, she’d changed from a cheap thrill or instrument of vengeance. He was suddenly, acutely aware of her as a human being, as though she’d been made of mist and had taken form.

As they flew along Howell Creek, into the gradually deepening darkness, he knew she deserved the truth. “There’s nothing wrong with the chopper,” he said grimly. “I lied.”

“It’s kind of you to let me wait,” Georgia Deering told Demetrios Karrabotsos as he handed her another Styrofoam cup of steaming coffee. At two-thirty a.m., it was dark and quiet in the control tower of West Yellowstone Airport.

“It’s no trouble,” the owner of Island Park Helicopters replied. “Are you sure you wouldn’t rather wait at my house? You could let Deering wake you when he gets in.”

“I’ve had too much coffee to sleep,” she lied.

She studied Karrabotsos’s scarred face and wondered how he had been burned. Deep lines around his eyes said he was maybe sixty, old enough to be a veteran of more than one war. He’d been gruff at first, but swiftly offered kindness. She couldn’t tell if he knew things were bad between her and Deering, or if he merely offered the chance to pretend.

Likely, he didn’t know anything. He hadn’t even seemed to recognize her name when she’d shown up at the Island Park Trailer around eight, just in time to find out Deering was overdue. It had given her a chill she was still vainly trying to shake.

One thing she could tell was that Karrabotsos was worried, too, the lateral grooves in his broad forehead deepening as the hours passed.

Georgia tried not to think about that cute EMT that Deering had his arm around in the newspaper photo. She’d always considered flying to be his mistress. Did she have to worry now about other women?

Controller Jack Owen was pulling night duty, occasionally speaking in reassuring tones to one of the pilots still flying on instruments. Outside the control tower, the north-south runway was a sparkling bracelet of diamonds, surrounded by the sapphire lights of the taxiways.

“I can’t imagine what’s got Deering off the air unless his radio is out.” Karrabotsos repeated the litany he’d chanted for hours. “He flew to the Mink Creek spike camp this afternoon with their dinners. The winds must have kicked up bad to make him stay over.”

Georgia smiled. She’d only met Karrabotsos this evening, but she already believed him a solid man that independent Deering would be okay working for if he couldn’t operate his own machine.

The thought of flying brought her up against what she’d been trying to avoid all evening. Chatting with Karrabotsos had almost kept her mind off it, but it was getting so late and Deering had been off the air so many hours. If she were alone, she wouldn’t be able to beat back tears.

Jack Owen sat up straight and listened intently. He ran a hand through his brown hair, aggravating his already prominent cowlick. “I’ll pass it along. You’re cleared to land.”

Georgia clutched her coffee cup too hard. Hot liquid slopped over and burned the soft skin between her thumb and forefinger.

“Mink Creek Camp had to evacuate all hands,” Jack told Karrabotsos. “Deering’s coming in now with your Huey.”

Clare gripped the armrest as Deering set the helicopter down at West Yellowstone.

Bursting with the desire to blurt exactly what she thought of him, she kept silent while a stout middle-aged woman with one of the catering companies waved thanks and headed toward the terminal.

With his head down, Deering gave complete attention to the aircraft.

Clare pitched her headphones into the floorboards and climbed down, stretching her legs to reach the ground. She waited, fists planted on her hips.

He seemed to take an interminable time turning off switches, reading gauges and writing on a clipboard. Finally, he removed his helmet and got out, brushing back his hair from his forehead. He reached to the breast pocket of his flight suit for a Marlboro and walked away from the helicopter. A match flared, a small glow against the floodlights illuminating the ramp.

Clare stomped after him. “You lied about the chopper, to spend the night with me.”

“That’s right.” His dark eyes were steady.

Suspicion dawned. “I suppose that wasn’t really the last tent in camp.”

“No.”

Clare started away from him with a hard ache in the back of her throat.

Deering grabbed her arm and turned her. “Clare, wait.” He pulled her against him, so tightly she could feel his flight suit zipper against her stomach. “It’s not that simple . . .”

“What else have you lied to me about?” It shocked her, how the fires and the danger seemed to have heightened everything from desire to despair. She wanted to slap him, but she didn’t. She’d never raised a hand to Jay, either, not even at the end.

Instead, she turned and ran. Near the terminal, she passed a small woman with red-gold hair, who also seemed to be in flight away from the tarmac.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

August 15

Above the North Fork’s burned out wake Deering flew the Huey toward the red rim of the world. He was dragging from another fifteen hour day and ready to set down in West Yellowstone. It would be nice to tuck into a juicy steak at the Red Wolf and swap some lies with Karrabotsos.

Upon reflection, tonight he didn’t think it would satisfy.

It had only been two days since he’d seen Clare, but his life was divided inexorably into the time before . . . and the time after. Her flesh had been as he’d imagined, lean and needy when he slid his body over hers. It was only a technicality that they hadn’t actually . . .

For over twenty years, he’d never considered being unfaithful. Not when other guys sampled the delights of Southeast Asia’s fine-boned women. Not when he’d flown fire in Southern California where every woman looked like a movie star. And not on a hot night in an Oregon fire camp, when an attractive brunette named Helen had made it clear she was available if Deering said the word.

He had headed for his solitary sleeping bag without saying it.

As he flew toward West Yellowstone, the first star hung above the North Fork’s smoke. It was magical how that always happened, the way he could be staring right there and not see it, as though it waited until he blinked. This lone bright jewel against a deepening azure field made him remember when his Dad would hold him on his hip and point to the sky. “Make a wish on that one, son, the first star you see.”

Part of Deering wished he could press Clare beneath him and find relief for the urgency she’d awakened.

In the western sky, another star joined the first.

Part of him wanted to be home with Georgia.

Clare stared at the hazy sky from Madison Campground and tried not to rustle her sleeping bag. Beside her, one of the women soldiers slept heavily, breathing through her mouth. Her sinuses were probably as screwed up as everyone else’s from the smoke.

After a long day on the North Fork, Clare had decided against hitchhiking to Old Faithful. She did not care to have Sergeant Travis think she had abandoned her trainees.

They’d mopped up all day; turning ashes with their Pulaskis and putting out hot spots with the backpack tanks known as piss pumps. Grueling and demanding, but not dangerous. At the end of it, the press had been on hand while she provided first aid for minor burns and the usual foot maintenance.

Two days since she’d done the same at the Mink Creek spike camp and gone to bed in the same turquoise pants and bra, washed out last night in her cabin’s small sink.

She wanted to despise Deering, but it was like he’d said. Not that simple.

It wasn’t like her to jump into . . . a sleeping bag with a man she knew no better than she did him. At the time, though, it had seemed an inevitable, impulsive part of summer. It was as though she’d left behind her sense of stability, the self who wanted to keep things set for her daughter.