The Devil's Menagerie (3 page)

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I
T WAS DARK
when Jim Roget again pulled Dave Lindstrom from the line onto the ridge road. “Break time,” he said.

Dave saw a truck waiting, blackened faces piled in back. A friendly hand shoved him toward the vehicle.

“Where to next?” Dave mumbled. He swayed on his feet.

“You’re being relieved—you and your buddies. Get some grub and a few hours rest. You can bunk down at the camp or go home if you live close enough.”

“What? I don’t …”

“We’ve stopped it for now,” the Indian said. “Those damned banana planes are good. We don’t have the fire contained yet, but we can start giving the crews a break in shifts. Back here at midnight, okay?”

Dave climbed into the truck. Home, he thought numbly. Saw Glenda’s face, anxious, worried about him. Hadn’t seen her since early Thursday morning. What was it now—Friday? He had missed two days of classes. Out on the fire lines, where everything was reduced to fundamentals of survival, it was easy to lose track of days.

The truck lumbered down the twisting grade and the bedlam on the ridge vanished as if it had never existed. Only the smell of the smoke persisted, filling the interior of the truck, clinging to clothes and hair. No one spoke. Each was immersed in his own bone-deep weariness. Dave felt it like one of those lead blankets they throw over you when you have X-rays taken. But way down beneath the fatigue was something that he would remember longer … a flicker of satisfaction.

The emergency camp set up in San Carlos Regional Park was a sea of confusion that reminded Dave of an episode from the old television series Mash. There were lights strung from trees and poles, Jeeps and fire trucks rumbling along dirt roads, rows of tents, trailers that served as command and communication centers, a mess hall and an emergency medical center. Dave stumbled past tents to the parking area, where it took him five minutes to find his four-year-old Nissan Sentra. He could have grabbed an empty bunk in one of the sleeping tents but making his choice wasn’t much of a contest.

Minutes later, funneling down the last grade out of the San Carlos Mountains, he had no sense of rushing toward disaster. That lay behind him, marked by a black smudge of smoke ten miles long that slowly dissolved into the enveloping darkness of the night sky. Ahead of him a sprinkling of lights outlined the city of San Carlos, sparkling like luminous dust motes scattered across the valley floor. In the distance, rising above treetops, Dave glimpsed the lighted clock tower on the campus of San Carlos College, where he taught. The glowing lights marking the wide, safe, tree-shaded streets of the college town brought a comforting familiarity.

He was almost home.

“S
O HOW WAS
it?” Glenda asked.

“It could have been worse.”

“I didn’t expect to see you tonight—the fire news is still bad, in Laguna and up in Malibu and here.”

“We got some help from those big tanker planes, and the winds eased off. I have to report back at midnight,” Dave added apologetically.

Glenda tried to hide her concern. “You need more rest than that—that’s only a few hours.”

Dave shrugged. “I’m lucky to get this much of a break.”

“I worry about you, you know.”

“You don’t have to worry for the moment. You can even sit closer.”

They were on the black leather sofa in the den, where Dave had collapsed and Glenda had brought him microwave-warmed leftovers of pot roast and brown potatoes. Dave thought he’d never tasted anything as delicious. Glenda leaned against him with a smile and his arm fell around her shoulders. For a moment they stared idly at the television set across the room, where stark pictures from other parts of the Southland mirrored the disaster Dave had left behind in San Carlos Canyon. From upstairs in the large old house came other voices, sometimes rising sharply. Friday nights the two kids—ten-year-old Richie and five-year-old Elli—were allowed to stay up later than usual, Richie having no homework. To Dave’s surprise the boy was still working on a chemistry project. Maybe he had a calling.

“You smell all smoky, the way you used to when you still smoked those vile cigarettes.”

“Those weren’t vile cigarettes, they were manly Marlboros.”

“They smelled vile.”

“Well, they’re a distant memory now.”

“I still remember the way your shirts used to smell. I think you’d better change this one. Maybe the rest of those clothes too.”

“Not much point … unless that’s some kind of excuse to get me with my clothes off.” He glanced at her sidelong, seeing mostly the top of her head where it nestled against his shoulder. Her hair was the same honey blond he had first seen bent over a peanut butter and jelly sandwich on a bench on the UCLA campus six summers ago. After more than six years and a second child, her figure was still as trim and sleek and given to sudden fullnesses as a small sailboat running before the wind. The humor, once tentative, had confirmed itself around her eyes and the corners of her mouth. She was now … What was it, exactly, that was different? More relaxed. Self-confident. Mature. A girl then, a woman now, and the woman improved on the girl—a feat he would once have believed impossible.

“I don’t need an excuse, and you’re too tired. You’re going upstairs for a couple hours sleep.”

“I’m not sure I can. I’m too wound up. Besides, there’s tired and there’s
too
tired. This is just tired.”

“Are you sure you’re not just trying to live up to those macho stories you told your fellow firefighters? I mean—”

A shattering crash from upstairs cut her off. Dave felt her body flinch, and even when the explosion was followed instantly by a youthful voice shrill with accusation, a faint tremor continued to pulse through Glenda’s body.

“I told you not to touch it!”

“I didn’t mean to!”

“They pick the damndest moments,” Dave muttered, rising from the couch.

“They don’t know about Daddy and his moments.”

“Well, they’re about to find out.”

Before he could reach the open doorway to the den footsteps pounded down the stairs to the front hallway. Elli, all legs and hair and wide, panicky eyes, burst into the den. From behind her came a furious shout. “I’ll kill you!”

Dave caught Richie as the boy flung himself headlong through the doorway. The impact of a sturdy ten-year-old in full flight knocked Dave back a step.

“Daddy, stop him! He’s gonna kill me!” Elli’s tone of panic became shriller in the safe presence of her parents.

“That’s enough!” Dave said sharply. “Nobody’s going to kill anybody.”

Richie twisted so violently in his struggle to reach his sister that Dave had to brace himself. He tried to push the boy back lightly, but at that instant Richie went limp. Without the expected resistance, Dave’s shove turned into something much more vigorous than he had intended. Richie flew backward. His head smacked audibly against the wooden door frame.

“Richie!” Dave heard Glenda’s gasp, saw the boy’s sudden tears. “I’m sorry, but you shouldn’t—”

“Go ahead!” Richie blurted, struggling against tears. “You always take her side.”

The words shouldn’t have meant anything important, they were nothing more than a normal childish complaint, but they hit Dave like a block of ice sliding down a chute and thudding into his stomach. “Only when you’re out to commit mayhem,” he said.

“It’s true! You’re always on her side just because—”

“Richie!” Glenda did not raise her voice, but a clear, sharp warning cut through the boy’s anger and silenced him. He glared across the room at his younger sister, who stood closer to her mother than necessary.

Dave Lindstrom glanced from one to the other of his children, feeling the perplexity their constant quarreling awakened in him. It was only a phase they were going through, Glenda said, probably because they were five years apart in age. If the disparity were greater, she said, they wouldn’t have the same kind of rivalry; and if they were closer in age, they would be able to share more things. This sounded to Dave as if she had been reading too many of the child psychology books that filled one whole shelf of the bookcase in the den.

On the face of it, the younger Elli, named after Glenda’s mother Ellen, was the troublemaker. A blue-eyed blonde like her mother, she was a skinny, long-legged girl with no waist or hips at all. Dave’s heart ached with parental joy whenever he looked at her. With no trace of malice in her makeup, but impulsive, thoughtless and irrepressible, she had a talent beyond her years for goading Richie into one of his temperamental outbursts. The boy was of a much stockier build, his hair a slightly darker shade, his eyes pale gray. Unlike his mother, who was quiet and restrained and kept things to herself, Richie had a very low boiling point. His was a case where popular psychology seemed to have it all wrong. Dave could hear his father, who was fond of adages, saying, “It’s no good to brood on things, Dave. Get ’em out in the open where you can take a good look at ’em and they shrink in size.” Not with Richie, Dave thought.

“All right, let’s have it. What happened up there?”

“He was gonna hit me,” Elli said quickly. “I was only—”

“She knocked over my experiment,” Richie retorted. “I
told
her not to touch it. I told her what she’d get.”

“Your chemistry experiment?”

“She ruined my cultures.”

Dave glanced at Elli, trying for a stern expression. “A lot of work went into that experiment,” he said quietly.

“I didn’t mean to break anything. He just didn’t want me to touch it, that’s all.”

“Was he wrong? You did knock it over, didn’t you?”

“Well, I … I didn’t do it on purpose!” Elli wailed. Her defiance dissolving in sobs, she stumbled into her mother’s arms.

Dave waited a moment before turning back to Richie. “Was it an accident, Richie?”

“Well, yeah … I suppose. I guess it was. But she shouldn’t have been messing around.”

“Point taken,” Dave said. “Suppose you let it go at that … as soon as Elli apologizes.”

“That’s not fair,” Elli protested, her sobs miraculously under control. “It wasn’t on purpose!”

“You heard what I said. You aren’t
glad
you knocked it over, are you?”

“No ….” Suddenly the girl became sheepish and the crisis was over. She lowered her huge eyes, then raised them shyly, so perfectly mimicking the coquettish manner of a silent movie heroine that Dave nearly burst out laughing in admiration. Instead he watched gravely as Elli shuffled her feet and whispered to Richie, “I’m sorry.”

It wasn’t much, but in keeping with the peculiar code of childhood it seemed to be enough. Richie appeared mollified.

“Okay, suppose you both go see how much of the damage you can repair. And if there’s any more fighting …” Dave smiled. “We’ll all put on gloves.”

He caught Richie’s quick grin, followed by a ripple across the square face that might have been embarrassment. Dave squeezed his shoulder and pushed him gently toward the doorway. Elli looked up at Richie as she followed him to the stairway. In a moment their voices could be heard murmuring amiably.

Dave sighed wearily. “I don’t exactly feel like Solomon.”

“You stayed on your feet.”

He dropped onto the leather sofa beside her. During the quarrel Glenda had touched the mute button on the remote control, silencing the TV reporter who was now standing at the foot of a street in Laguna below the blackened hulks of burned-out houses. For a moment they watched the silent tableau.

“Is it me?” Dave wondered aloud. “Or do all brothers and sisters fight so much?”

Glenda pulled his head around, not gently. She stared hard into his eyes, then kissed him firmly on the mouth. “If you’re worrying about what Richie was going to say, I’ll smack you with the coffeepot.”

“Is that what they call the carrot and the stick?”

“Call it whatever you want.”

She knelt on the sofa close to him, her knees pressing into his thigh, the wide curve of her mouth an invitation that was only half jocular. He swung an arm around her waist and pulled her onto his lap. “This is the Ramon Navarro technique. Sometimes it breaks her back, but if she survives …”

“You’ve been watching too many old movies.”

He smothered her mirth with his lips. After a few seconds she stopped giggling. Her mouth opened to his and their tongues probed. The muscles of her thigh tightened where his hand rested.

A low whistle broke them apart. Richie grinned at them from the doorway.

“Don’t you ever bother to knock?” Dave growled.

“You oughta sell tickets.”

“I’m surprised you and Elli haven’t thought of it.” Dave felt a twinge of regret as Glenda slipped off his lap and smoothed her slacks with a show of nonchalance.

“We did, but we decided to keep the show to ourselves.”

“Fresh kid,” his mother said. “I don’t know why we put up with you. Why aren’t you putting your cultures back together, or whatever they are?”

“There was only one slide broke.” Richie wandered into the room, in no hurry to leave. “It sounded worse than it was.”

“As long as everything’s all right, you’d better start getting ready for bed. Both of you.”

“Hey. I’m older,” Richie protested. “I should be able to stay up later.”

“One hour, that’s all. Tell Elli she’s to start getting ready for her bath. I’ll be there in a minute.”

“Okay. Hey, Elli, you have to go to bed!”

As Richie started down the hall the phone rang. It was on the oak secretary in a corner of the den by the doorway, an antique Dave and Glenda had found in Santa Barbara on their honeymoon. Richie said, “I’ll get it,” and picked up the phone.

Dave fell back on the couch, wondering if he should have stayed at the fire camp after all.

“Yes, this is the Lindstrom house. I’m Richie,” the boy added, as if answering a question. “Sure. Mom’s here. Who’s calling?”

For a moment Richie listened. Dave could faintly hear the sound of the voice on the phone. Richie’s cheerful expression segued into a series of emotional masks, surprise and consternation and something like grief, like changing images superimposed over each other in a movie from the thirties, Spencer Tracy’s Jekyll turning into Hyde, or a boy’s face becoming that of an adult and then an old man.