Yellowstone Memories (39 page)

Heat blasted Alicia so strongly she could hardly think, and her skin sweated fiercely under her shirt and pants. The material clung to her, hot and sticky, sweltering. Alicia clawed at her collar, gasping, trying to let in a bit of air.

In a blinding flash she saw herself in Thomas’s truck, leaning toward him ever so slightly, her pulse beating in her throat.

What if he’d kissed her? What if she’d kissed him back, and then …?

How would she feel standing alone at the tarmac for the trip home, ashamed and abandoned, left by yet another selfish man? The last in a long, long line.

Another second, and anything could have happened. Maybe Thomas wasn’t so foolish after all.

“The wind’s spreading everything!” Thomas shouted as darkness thickened, so heavy and greaselike that Alicia barely saw the sky. He tugged her to her feet as another blast nearly knocked them to the ground, and she clutched the dusty bandanna to her mouth.

“Come on, Alicia! I’ll carry you if I have to.” Thomas pushed her ahead.

“Wait.” She tugged him to a stop, choking as a fresh cloud of ash rose up from the fire. “You go ahead. I’m holding you back. I’ll catch up.”

“Don’t be ridiculous.” Thomas glared. “We’re going together. What kind of friend leaves his teammate?”

“Go, Thomas!” She angrily jerked her arm free. “I’m not pulling you down with me. I’ve done that long enough. Don’t you get it?”

“I’m not leaving!” Thomas shouted over the roar of snapping limbs, yanking her toward him and putting his face close to hers. “I’m choosing to stay. You’re my friend, Alicia. And I never leave friends.”

The land sloped slightly downward, and he yanked her with him, coming through a thick tangle of pine limbs that scratched at her face. “This way,” he panted as wind tore at his hair. “Fire runs uphill. Let’s hope it’s passed through here already.”

“I feel it behind me.” Alicia gave a spasm of coughs. “There’s got to be a break in here somewhere.”

“The wind’s too strong.” Thomas strained to see his compass in the gloom, flipping on a feeble flashlight. “I can’t tell which direction it’s coming from anymore. Can you?”

Alicia didn’t reply. As if in slow motion, she watched as a huge pine tree to her right suddenly ignited in a burst of orange flame. The fire spread to a cluster of vines, which hissed and popped, and breathed a fiery wall across a patch of dried leaves. To the left, a burning branch sizzled and snapped, crashing to the ground and igniting a puddle of flame.

“We’re too late,” Alicia whispered, taking a step backward.

“No we’re not,” Thomas shouted in her ear, pushing her forward to a more sheltered spot. “You’re going to go on from here, you hear me?” He shook her, knocking her teeth together. “You’re going to turn your life around and marry a man who loves you. A man who loves God. You’re going to be okay.”

“What? Are you crazy?” Alicia shouted, twisting around to see him there in the gloom, and froze, unable to tear her eyes from the searing, golden spots of flame. Like watching stars appear in the evening sky, one glimmer after another, the woods around her seemed to glow. A branch here, a leaf there, until everything swam with ghostly flickering light. Heat rippled, waterlike, merging into shimmering walls.

A burning branch fell on Thomas’s arm, and she screamed, knocking it off with her sleeve. Glowing bits of ash cascaded around her like falling stars.

She felt her knees buckle. Her lungs and skin burned with heat and smoke.

Falling, falling—burning limbs and leaves streaked like comets as the limbs overhead burst into flame. When she closed her burning eyes, she saw glowing spots and lines, like after seeing fireworks.

“Thomas?” Alicia cried out, groping for his arm in the darkness.

“I’m here!” Thomas called back. “Hold still, will you?”

She spun around, and Thomas slapped something blanketlike around her. Something silver. She swung at him, trying to tear it off.

“Don’t you dare!” Alicia screamed, pummeling him with all her might. “Get your fire blanket off me!” Tears leaked from her eyes from the ash and smoke, and she tried to rip his fingers away through burning smears of light.

“Alicia!” Thomas shouted. “Watch out!”

A huge pine, alive with leaping ripples of fire, suddenly splintered. It swayed, and Alicia saw a blinding wall of flame teetering toward them. “Get your blanket off me!” she screamed, trying to free herself. “Or I’ll hit you! I swear!”

Alicia screamed as a heavy weight hit her hard, knocking her to the ground. She felt something wrap over her, thick and heavy. Covering her face from the blinding blast.

She tried to turn, roll, push it off her, but her arms and legs were pinned there, motionless.

Then the woods exploded, blinding light leaking under the edges of her consciousness. The world rained fire. Heat blinded her, hot enough to melt her clothes.

Alicia imagined herself glowing white, searing her shape into the scorched earth.

A rumble of earth and stones raining onto her face, and smoke so thick and scalding it hurt to breathe.

And Alicia saw no more.

A
licia. Oh
mio
Dios.” Someone sobbed.
“Mio Jésus.”

Alicia opened one groggy eye, wincing at the blue-white light. She scrunched her eyes closed, her head throbbing. A plastic tube wrenched the inside of her nose, and it hurt to breathe. Everything hurt. She lay back against the clean sheets in exhaustion, trying to summon the courage to breathe again.

“Thomas?” Alicia slowly raised her head, fumbling for his arm. “Thomas, where are you?”

A dark shape materialized beside her bed, and Alicia blinked. One eye felt stuck shut, swollen. “Carlita?”

“Oh
mio Pastor
,” Carlita moaned through her sobs, gripping Alicia’s hand so tight it smarted. Alicia grunted and tried to pull her hand away.

“You’re alive. I could kiss you. I will kiss you.” Carlita brushed Alicia’s hair back from her cheek and planted it with a tender smooch. “I thought you were dead. I’ve been in agony for hours.” She blinked swollen, red eyes. “They couldn’t find you. Nobody could find you. Thank God you’re okay.”

Carlita wept aloud, openmouthed, hugging her middle with her free hand.

Alicia’s head felt groggy, smoke-filled. The rustle of sheets against her skin sounded like snapping flames.

“What happened?” Alicia tugged urgently on Carlita’s hand. “Where am I?”

“We don’t know what happened.” Carlita sponged her streaming face and nose. “You’ll have to put the pieces together for us, but by the time they found you, you’d inhaled so much smoke they thought you wouldn’t make it. But a few hours ago you began to come around. I prayed for you.” Carlita pointed at her chest. “I prayed for you, Alicia—nonstop. My lips hurt. I never prayed before. Not really.”

Carlita looked haggard, her hair hanging around her face in dampened streaks.

“The soles of your boots melted. They had to hack limbs and brush for an hour to get that tree off you.” Her voice broke, and she let out a gasp. “Trisha’s called here twenty times. She’s inconsolable.”

“Tree? What tree?” Alicia ran a hand over her face, remembering the burst of brilliance. The thud of her body against the hot ground.

Alicia reached for her fire pack by instinct and couldn’t move her arm. Tubes pulled at her skin.

“Carlita.” Alicia jerked upright in bed with a groan. “Where’s Thomas?”

Carlita didn’t answer, sponging her nose again. Head turned down.

“Carlita?” Alicia screamed, jerking her legs over and trying to get up. “Where is he?”

Monitors beeped and alarms went off, but Alicia didn’t stop. She jerked the silver pole with her, tubes and all, and tried to force her way out of bed.

Carlita rushed at her, wrestling her back to the bed and shouting for help. Two nurses pulled Alicia back to the bed, trying to calm her with gentle words. She swung at one, and Carlita gripped her face in both hands, speaking sharply in Spanish.

Something burned in her IV tube—cool and calming—and her veins rushed with softness. Light as cotton. Floating, like smoke clouds rolling across the pines. Alicia’s muscles relaxed against the starched white sheets, and she felt the ceiling shimmer and ripple. Transparent, light as air.

Carlita’s tear-streaked face hovered near her, patting her cheek.

“Where’s Thomas?” Alicia’s lips felt rubbery, and she couldn’t make them work right.

Carlita didn’t answer. She took a deep breath and slowly, sadly, shook her head no. Back and forth. Tears shining on her face like sunlight on a stream. She bowed her head and crossed herself.

The last thing Alicia remembered was the sound of her own screams. Her body racked with sobs.

“They found him on top of you, holding you under that fire blanket.” Carlita wept. “He saved you, Alicia. That fire blanket was his. It had his name on it. They found yours about half a mile away, under a pile of ash.”

Alicia turned her face away.
Please, God. Let me die
.

She couldn’t speak, only shudder with sobs.

“He left all of his effects in your name. His gear, everything.” Carlita gasped into a Kleenex. “His note said you lose all your stuff anyway, so you’d have some extras.”

Alicia laughed and sobbed, rocking back and forth.

“One thing on his person survived,” whispered Carlita. “In his vest pocket, and nobody knows how. It’s for you. It’s got … his name on the cover.”

She held out a cardboard box, and Alicia tried to see through tear-swollen lashes.

Cover? The cover of what?

Before she reached hesitantly into the box, Alicia knew what it was. “His New Testament,” she whispered, her voice gravelly from too much smoke.

She lifted it carefully, cradling the fragile pages. The cover had singed, blackened on one corner.

“And one other thing.” Carlita sniffled, scrubbing at her nose with a tissue. “Do you have any idea why this stuff was in his truck?”

She lifted it out.

Alicia stared, her vision tear-smeared.

A box of Velvet Gold graham crackers and a container of butter.

Thomas’s last meal.

“Whatever would make you smile like you meant it,”
he’d said
.

And he got his wish.

Alicia snatched the graham cracker box from Carlita and hugged it to her chest, bawling like a wounded deer.

S
o you’re gonna stay in Santa Fe for good?” Carlita walked through the boarding gate a protective few inches away, both thumbs looped through the straps of her JanSport backpack. Two pins glittered from the back pocket: “It’s always a Manic Monday,” read one, and “Firefighters Take the Heat,” boasted the other.

Three weeks had passed, and Alicia was due another haircut. She smoothed her ragged ponytail, more grateful than words that Carlita stayed near her, coming back in three trips. The news of Thomas’s funeral, the agony and skin grafts, the stitches and empty hospital walls. Without Carlita, she didn’t know how she’d have made it.

The park lost nearly eight hundred thousand acres to fire before rains and cool autumn weather finally put out the fire. It would take years to recover. Decades.

Alicia could blink now, clear-eyed, but if she thought about it long enough she’d burst into tears.

“Nah. I’ll go back home just long enough to pack up my stuff.” Alicia looped her headphones over her shoulders. The Cure crooned a British-flavored song about heaven on the overhead system, right on the heels of Belinda Carlisle and the Pet Shop Boys. A TV advertisement for California Raisins glimmered side by side with a rerun of
The Cosby Show
.

“You’re not going back to Santa Fe?” Carlita crossed her arms, popping watermelon Bubblicious over the TV laugh track. “Why, what are you gonna do?” She leaned closer. “No more death wishes, right?”

“No.” Alicia looked numbly away, watching through the large glass window as a small Embraer jet eased into the gate. Her heart still felt ruined, shattered forever, but reading the pages of Thomas’s Bible in her hospital bed eased the pain into a dull ache. In her sleep she heard the verses whispering, calling to her, in a voice she imagined Jesus might have.

The Cure’s melancholy guitar chords died, and Starship belted out a peppy tune with too-happy lyrics, and for a moment Alicia hated Starship. The hum of crowds in the terminal around her, the laughter. How dare anyone laugh when Thomas’s work boots lay empty and silent, never to be worn again?

She’d tucked his battered hard hat into her checked suitcase, still lettered with his name in sloppy, faded black Sharpie marker. But it might be awhile before she found the courage to pull open the suitcase zipper. If she ever did.

“Well, what are you going to do then?” Uneasiness creased Carlita’s gently lined forehead. She’d curled her bangs to a pretty fluff, and geometric earrings clinked. “You know they’re not going to hold Miguel for long. Impersonating a federal employee is one thing. But you can’t prove he jumped or threatened you because it’s just your word against his. You’ve got no other witnesses.”

Of course not. Because Thomas was dead.