Crucible of Fire Read online

  Cletus Brewman cackled with laughter at that, and Ernie gave him a big wink. Bearded, gray, and wrinkled, Cletus was in his sixties and had spent most of his life working for Lombard Lumber. He was thin and wiry, and he’d followed Ernie wherever he’d gone. The two old warhorses had seen a lot of action during their time together.

  Gary Baker held up a hand. “Me, boss. I’ve heard about fire lines on television, but I’ve never made one.” He was a high school English teacher in his early thirties struggling to make ends meet for his family. He was a nice guy, quiet, and a hard worker.

  Ernie nodded. “Anybody else?”

  “Me.” Jimmy held up a hand and didn’t look happy about it. He was good with a saw, and he could measure by eye almost as well as a ruler.

  “That’s fine, Jimbo. Get you some OJT tonight. A fire line is eighteen inches of bare earth.” Ernie held his hands apart to show the distance. “When you’re fighting a forest fire, you go one and a half times as tall as the blaze, so we got a lotta work ahead of us. We gotta chop an’ scrape that line through this forest. We do it right, we can stop the burn, turn it back on itself, starve it down to somethin’ the fire department boys can handle.” He nodded at Harvey. “Can you take one of these greenies?”

  Harvey nodded but looked distracted. “Yes, sir. No problem.”

  “Gary, you go with Harvey. He’ll get you straightened away. Angie?”

  She looked at her father.

  “You and Matt ride herd on the boy.”

  Jimmy bridled at boy, but he didn’t say anything.

  “All right.” Fear gleamed in Angie’s eyes, but Matt knew she was more concerned about her family than she was about herself.

  Ernie stood. “Then let’s get to it.” He pointed towards a large truck. “Equipment’s over there.”

  Matt reconfigured the backpack the forestry service had provided, putting his old ax in with the other gear.

  “You don’t need to carry that ax.” Angie stood beside him, gearing up as well. “That thing’s not going to be much use when making a fire line. You’ll need one of the Pulaskis.”

  The Pulaski fire ax was the backbone of a wilderness fire fighter. The head was a curious blend of ax and shovel. The ax blade was normal, but the shovel end was slightly curved. It was designed for chopping as well as shovel work. In Matt’s hands, the Pulaski felt heavy and slow, not like his ax.

  “That ax was my grandfather’s. It’s kind of become my good luck charm.” Matt shrugged into the backpack.

  “Tonight it’s going to be extra weight you’ll have to lug around.” Angie laced up her work boots, snugging them tight. “And it would be a shame if you have to jettison it later on and maybe lose it since it means so much.”

  Matt shook his head. “I won’t lose this ax.”

  “Can’t say I didn’t warn you.” Angie took a hard hat out of the truck and worked on the fit, cinching it tight over the hoodie she wore to keep embers off the back of her neck.

  In addition to the Pulaski, Matt buckled on a belt with large pockets that carried two gallons of water and a quart of Gatorade to replace expended electrolytes. The fire incident commander had also provided Nomex fire-resistant pants and shirts, leather gloves, goggles, headlamps with extra batteries, bandannas, and fire shelters. They also carried handie-talkies.

  It was a lot of gear, and it was heavy. They had to carry in containers of gasoline for the chainsaws, too, but that was lighter than the water.

  Once he was fully equipped, Matt walked over to Jimmy. “Let me have a look.”

  Jimmy shook his head belligerently. “I got this. You don’t gotta check me like I’m some first-grade nose picker or something.”

  “This is the buddy system, Jimmy. Everybody gets a second look. Once we get in there, there’s no coming back for something we might have forgotten. Checking you over makes me check myself over again, too.”

  With a sigh, Jimmy relented.

  Freddy jogged back along the trail he’d followed up from where he’d parked. With all the exploring he’d done over the past few months thinking about where the best places to set fires would be, he had the forest mapped in his mind. He could have walked through it blindfolded.

  When he came out of the last turn into the little clearing where the high school kids liked to come sometimes to make out, he saw that the fire had crept in closer than he’d thought it would.

  The 1966 El Camino he’d rebuilt stood with its nose in the shrubbery. He knew every inch of the vehicle because he’d put it together himself, without any help from his old man. The engine and tranny held together fine. It wouldn’t set any records in the quarter mile, but it got him around town all right.

  Freddy walked to the back of the El Camino and took off the fire proximity suit’s hood. Despite the heat coming in from the nearby blaze, the air felt cool to him. Before he wore the suit again for an extended period of time, he was going to install a personal air conditioner like the astronauts had on their suits. He might have been protected from the flames, but he was melting down inside.

  Placing the hood in the bed of the El Camino, Freddy popped the top of the ice chest someone had thrown out because the lid had come off. Replacing the lid had been no big deal. Stupid people. The thing had massive all-terrain wheels on it like it was supposed to be dragged around like a fifth-wheel trailer. The thirty-pack he’d bought earlier was iced down.

  He took out a can, popped the top, and drank half of it. God, but it tasted good. There was something crazy fantastic about the lollipop flavor that remained in his mouth even though the candy was gone. He was going to have to try to find those suckers because they were the freaking bomb. He drank the rest of the can, letting the chilly goodness surge through him, cooling him down, and he reached for another.

  When he popped the top on that one, a sudden cra-ack! snapped his attention around to the front of the car. He watched in horror as a large, flaming oak tree spilled out of the forest trailing embers and fiery limbs. Then it landed on top of the El Camino, smashing the truck flat, caving in the cab, and busting out the glass in silvery pools that caught the firelight.

  “No!” Freddy yelled in disbelief. “Not my car!”

  But it was his car, and it had been returned to the scrap parts it had once been, scattering them across the clearing. Then tendrils of flame snaked in through the broken windows and ignited the interior.

  Freddy cursed and screamed and threw his newly opened beer at the flames. The beer didn’t even make a dent in the fire. If he hadn’t known better, he would have sworn the blaze was laughing at him, lying on top of the El Camino like the Tilvertons’ golden retriever had lain on Freddy’s kite in the park back in seventh grade. Everybody had made fun of Gorgon and his smashed kite.

  Back then, though, Freddy had gone over to the Tilverton house with a pound of hamburger meat salted with ground glass. Come the next morning, Buddy the golden retriever had a first-class ticket to doggie heaven.

  Freddy couldn’t do anything to the fire.

  “The fire is a jealous lover, Freddy. That’s something you should know.”

  Freddy stepped back and looked for Ranger Faron Hight. The clown was standing a short distance away, holding his hands out as if warming them.

  “That was my car, man.”

  “It was.”

  The flames gnawed through the two front tires and they deflated with sudden whooshes of air. The El Camino’s front end sagged even more, and black smoke poured up into the sky as the rubber caught fire and burned.

  “What am I supposed to do now?”

  The clown shrugged. “Time to get a better ride.” He nodded to the south. “You might try over there. Still got some houses that way. Not all of those people have left. I’ll bet you can find something over there.” He paused. “One thing’s for sure: Standing around here isn’t going to get you very far.”

  “I don’t want to get caught.”

  A confident smile oozed across the clown’s face. “
Nobody out here can catch you, Freddy. You rule the fire. This is your domain. You got a badge and everything.”

  “I don’t rule the fire very well. Otherwise my truck wouldn’t have got smashed.”

  “The fire didn’t smash your truck. That was the trees.”

  “The trees?”

  “Yeah. Do you think they like getting burned?”

  Freddy’s head spun and pulsed like he’d been dropping ’shrooms. He’d gotten that same feeling earlier when he’d been sucking on that lollipop. He wondered if the clown had laced them with PCP or something.

  He looked at the trees and realized then that they kinda reminded him of those Ents from the Lord of the Rings movies. Tight, angry faces showed in the bark, and some of them seemed on the verge of pulling themselves out of the ground on weird rooty legs.

  “Hey!” Freddy took a step back from the trees. “Hey! The trees are alive!”

  “Of course they are. But there’s no reason to be afraid of them. You can show them who to fear. Give ’em a squirt. They’re all deadwood. You’re here to clear out the deadwood.”

  Freddy picked up the flamethrower wand and unleashed a torrent of flames. When he stopped, the trees were on fire. He heard them screaming and the sound was music to his ears.

  “See?” the clown said. “That’ll teach them to crush your car.”

  “Yeah.” Freddy was grinning. “Yeah, it will.” He darted towards the burning truck long enough to open the back end and haul out the ice chest. It bounced when it hit the ground and some of the ice and water splashed over the ground, but the beers stayed inside. He took out the extra fuel tank he had for the flamethrower and put it inside the ice chest as well. It stuck out and the lid remained open, but that was cool.

  Freddy picked up his protective hood and pulled it on, tilting it back so he could reach his mouth with a fresh beer. He looked at the clown. “Want a beer?”

  “Sure.”

  Freddy dug out a can and tossed it to the clown.

  The clown caught the beer, then held it over his head. He cracked it open with one hand, speared his tongue—at least eight inches long and would have shamed Gene Simmons! Any other day, Freddy would have been amazed. He just took it in stride now.—through the bottom, and shotgunned the entire beer in one long gulp. He shook his head and grinned. “Man, now, that hits the spot!”

  “I know, right? Hey, you got any more of them lollipops?”

  “I do.” The clown reached under his uniform jacket and brought out a fistful of lollipops that looked like they were wriggling under the wrappers—but that had to be a trick of the light.

  Freddy took the lollipops and put them in the ice chest, too. Then he picked up the ice chest’s handle. He pointed south. “That way to the cars?”

  “Yep. You can’t miss it. Just remember your job, Ranger Grogan. Burn the deadwood. Burn the man with the ax.”

  “Take that, you freakin’ trees!” Freddy roared as he hosed the nearby trees and started a new blaze. Then he unwrapped one of the lollipops, shoved it into his mouth, took a swig of beer, and headed south. The ice chest jerked and popped as it followed him.

  4

  For twenty minutes, Matt and the rest of the Lombard Lumber team walked towards the fire. His thighs and back ached from the steep incline. The incident commander monitored them by GPS from the command center. Matt would have sworn he felt the heat rising with every step, but he knew some of that feeling was just his imagination.

  The fire towered over them, clinging to trees a hundred and more feet tall. He kept watching for Mr. Dark, feeling that he was getting closer to his foe the deeper they went into the forest.

  “Get spaced out,” Ernie ordered, unlimbering the big chainsaw he’d carried in. “Harvey an’ me are gonna cut the fire line. Matt, Jimmy, an’ Angie are gonna clear behind us. Mort, Stanley, an’ Gary will dig. Scott an’ Cletus will swamp the fire line out behind them. We’ll swap out as we go.”

  Without another word, Ernie fired up that chainsaw and Harvey fired his up as well. They set to work with grim determination, limbing trees in the path of the fire line and taking them down, clearing the way. The powerful engines roared, wood chips flew white in the light provided by the headlamps, and trees fell in pieces.

  Matt gestured to Jimmy and spoke loud enough to be heard. “We’re clearing. Everything in the fire line gets pulled back out of the path. Trees, limbs, and brush. All of it goes. Especially the dead stuff and the dry stuff. That will catch on fire in a heartbeat when the fire reaches here. We’re here to starve it out.” He leaned down and caught hold of a dead tree trunk, wrapping one leather-gloved hand around it and pulling it into motion.

  Jimmy gazed up at the fire, no longer as cocky as he had been. “How long do you think it will be before the fire gets here?”

  “I don’t know, but I know if things turn against us, that fire can get here god-awful fast. So work like it’s right on top of us, ’cause if things turn bad, likely it will be.”

  Nine-year-old Penny Carver cowered in the closet with her five-year-old brother, Avery. They hugged each other because they were both afraid, but she was his big sister and she was supposed to take care of him. Smoke filled the closet, burning her nose and eyes, and her parents’ angry voices ripped into her ears.

  She looked down at him as he whimpered and wrapped his arms fiercely around her thin waist. “Shhhh, Avery,” she whispered. “Everything’s going to be okay.”

  Penny knew she was lying, though. For the last year, at least since her last birthday, nothing had been good at home. Not since her dad had lost his job. Before then, things had been bad enough because her parents had both been too busy to really pay much attention to her or Avery. She’d been raising her little brother for as long as she could remember. She’d changed his dirty diapers when she was six, and that hadn’t been anything like taking care of a baby doll. Real “bad” diapers were messy.

  But she’d changed those diapers and bottle-fed her little brother because he was the only person who truly kept her from being alone. She couldn’t really remember what it had been like before Avery had been born because she’d only been four, but she guessed that it had been awfully lonely.

  “Do you think I like working my ass off every day, Howard?” Her mommy, Vernice, was using her mad voice. The one that Penny worked really hard to never hear again.

  When Mommy used her mad voice, she liked to hit and throw things. She would grab hold of anything—silverware, plates, canned food, anything—and throw it. She wasn’t any good at aiming, but she kept at it until whoever she was throwing at left the room or she ran out of things to throw.

  Back when Avery had been small, it had been hard to get him out of the way in time. Penny had gotten hit pretty hard sometimes when she’d tried to carry her baby brother from the room. Now he was five and could move pretty quick. Thankfully, Mommy’s aim hadn’t gotten any better. She and her brother stayed within sight of each other and had their safe zones marked out. The closet. Under the beds. Outside was best because there were lots of safe places out there. And Mommy couldn’t throw very far, either.

  “You’re not working!” Daddy roared back. He was fat and he smoked a lot. Penny tried to tell him one day that smoking wasn’t good for him. She’d seen it on television. Secondhand smoke was bad, too, and that affected her and Avery. Daddy hadn’t cared. “You’re up there sleeping with your boss.”

  Penny didn’t see how taking a nap at work would be such a bad thing, but evidently Daddy must have thought that was pretty lazy of her. Penny didn’t see how Daddy had anything to complain about. All he did was watch television Westerns, drink beer, and pass out on the couch. Usually Mommy’s arrival back home woke him. Then he’d hurry and try to get rid of all the beer cans before she walked through the door.

  Tonight he hadn’t made it, though.

  And Mommy was home later than she ever had been. Penny had been really worried that her mommy had had a wreck on her way home. It was a l
ong drive. Then she got worried that Mommy had gotten caught in the wildfire they were talking about on television.

  Their neighbors had already left. They’d come over and told Daddy he needed to leave. He said he would when he got good and ready, that no fire was going to scare him, and that they were pissants if they were going to let a little fire scare them. Then he’d drunk another six-pack and passed out.

  And then Mommy had come home, yelling at Daddy because he hadn’t answered the phone and there was a wildfire coming.

  Penny held on to Avery and whispered to him that everything was going to be okay. But she knew she was lying.

  Digging a fire line was hard, backbreaking labor. Usually a crew consisted of twenty people, give or take a couple, who worked like a chain gang down a row, chopping and clearing as they went. The incident commander fighting this fire was stretching his people thin because the wildfire had multiple points of origin and he didn’t have enough fire fighters to handle it all. If it was possible, the teams were going to shape the fire, turn it back into something more controllable.

  Matt grabbed one of the small trees that Ernie had felled so easily and managed to haul it away from the fire line. Angie and Jimmy dragged over more limbs and brush. The rest of the team chopped the earth and raked away the debris, leaving eighteen inches of bare ground the fire could not easily cross.

  Nobody spoke. Nobody had the wind or the energy. And nobody was working on a full night’s sleep. The previous day had been long and hard, too.