Summer of Fire Part 21

With another scathing look at both her and Deering, Steve rose. "Thanks, Miguel, I'd like to get home tonight."

"How could you?" Clare threw at Deering. Her voice carried and people were still swiveling their heads to look at them. He shook his head, a play to the crowd that said he thought both she and Steve were the ones in error.

Clare shoved back her plate. A murmur of voices trailed her departure.

She looked for Steve, her steps speeding when she realized there were too many men in yellow s.h.i.+rts. Away from the dining canopy and bright lights, she knew she'd lost him. Standing in the parking lot, she tasted smoke, a pervasive foul taint on every wind.

On a nearby Army tent, a hand-lettered sign proclaimed 'Valley Forge West,' referring to a shortage of boots in the military ranks. The Army boot soles were not nearly as heat resistant as the heavy White's brand boots worn by the firefighters. Clare's own feet felt hot inside hers, as though they had not cooled from the roasting they'd gotten during the h.e.l.lroaring's blowup.

Rapid footsteps sounded on gravel. She stopped, hoping it was Steve.

"Wait," said Deering.

She set her teeth. Tonight when he'd first arrived, his smile had still had the power to make her feel that extra awareness of him. She had sat there next to Steve and across from Deering and been torn by feelings for both of them, until he had attacked Steve.

Deering touched her shoulders.

She went tense. "Look," she said, "we had to go into shelters this afternoon and I'm completely wired. My daughter is flying in to Jackson Hole Airport tomorrow."

He moved his fingers, ma.s.saging. "I can make it better . . . "

"Dammit!" Her voice went shrill. "A man died."

He lifted his hands. From the dining tent, the wail of Crystal Gayle entreated her man. The camp generators droned.

Clare turned on him. "How could you?" she challenged. "What you said about Steve's wife and child . . . "

Deering's eyes showed his own pain. "He's been nothing but trouble for me, ever since he got on board my Georgia back in July. Now I'm stuck flying military surplus." Deering pointed to Karrabotsos's helicopter behind the fence erected to deter buffalo and elk from damaging aircraft. "I asked Garrett where you were tonight because I wanted, no, needed to see you. After a full day in the c.o.c.kpit, I fly over here and find you holding hands and making moon eyes. "

The heavy growl of a diesel roared toward them on the bulldozed track leading out to Highway 212. The headlights of the big machine swept over them. When the glare subsided, Clare saw Steve in the pa.s.senger seat.

There was nothing to stay for. She couldn't stand that Steve thought she was on Deering's side. And another midnight evacuation would put her G.o.d knows where when Devon's plane landed.

She ran toward the truck, waving her arms.

The door opened and Steve pulled her into the cab. When they reached Mammoth, she could get a room at the hotel. In the morning, she would figure out how to get to the airport.

The miles unfolded hypnotically, as the truck made the ten-mile descent down Soda b.u.t.te Creek to the Lamar River valley. Traffic was light, for the hotel guests, campers, and soldiers of the fire war had settled for the night.

Clare straddled the seat between Steve and Miguel. She saw little of the country, just the stabbing beams of headlights on the two-lane asphalt and the colorless specters of trees rus.h.i.+ng past. To the north, the crimson glow of the Storm Creek and h.e.l.lroaring fires lighted the sky.

Down and down, twenty miles until the truck launched onto a span over dark s.p.a.ce. A sign identified the chasm as the Yellowstone River. After Tower Junction, they began the climb up the divide that led to Mammoth.

Deering had put his hands on Clare tonight, but the thrill that had first run through her at his touch had vanished. h.e.l.l, nothing was the same as it had been four hours ago when she and Steve had crawled into a dugout hole in the ground and listened to Billy Jakes's fiery death.

On the rising slope, moonlight silvered the Blacktail Deer Plateau. A pair of reddish-gold orbs flashed in the headlights, animals abroad in the night.

Past the summit, the road to Mammoth joined Lava Creek Canyon, spiraling down. The center of the gorge was an ominous gash.

How dark was it where Billy Jakes was tonight? He had a wife, maybe even children, she didn't know, but Sergeant Ron Travis had been clear. Clare had led Billy on his final march.

The truck rushed down a roller coaster that carried her stomach. Tomorrow Devon would arrive, coming into the midst of another death investigation involving her mother. She'd shrugged off Clare's feelings of guilt over Frank, just like all the other firefighters. Get back on that horse and ride, they'd all said. Right into the maw of the h.e.l.lroaring.

She didn't know if she could go back on the line. Garrett had given her a few days off to show Devon the sights and after that, maybe she'd go home.

As they drove, she felt Steve's thigh and shoulder against her side. A few more miles and he looped an arm around her, drawing her head onto his chest. She rested against him, hearing his steady heartbeat. Deering had said he was a worthless alcoholic and she'd seen him drunk, but that couldn't erase the way Steve had looked at her just before he'd thrown off the fire shelter.

Clare looked through the winds.h.i.+eld and watched night rush at them.

CHAPTER TWENTY.

September 4 By a freak of atmospheric currents, Mammoth Valley was clear tonight. Leafy cottonwoods underlined to Clare the contrast between this refuge and the stark skeletons of trees all over the park. A herd of perhaps thirty elk posed on the lawn in front of Park Headquarters.

They were more fortunate than the ones Steve had found on Black Sat.u.r.day. For that matter, through mere luck, Clare and Steve had not been dealt the card Billy Jakes had received.

She climbed down from the truck after Steve. In the street, he said, "You can bunk at my place." She saw how he looked at her rather than at the Mammoth Hotel across the way.

She considered. Still shaking inside at how close they'd come to the edge, she wasn't ready to be alone.

He pointed along the street lined with stately old houses. "I'm down that way."

She checked herself for reluctance. "Your place is fine."

Steve played tour guide. "There used to be a much grander hotel. The National was an enormous wood-frame place, built in 1886." A little nervousness edged in his voice.

"What happened to it?" she asked, still aware of how good it had felt to be snugged against him in the truck.

"It burned."

They pa.s.sed four two-story duplexes with tall brick chimneys. "Park service employees live here now instead of Fort Yellowstone's officers," Steve said. The next low frame building they pa.s.sed was fronted by a porch holding an armada of bicycles. "This place used to be park headquarters at the turn of the century. Moru Mzima, a naturalist from Zimbabwe, and his wife, Nyeri, live there now."

Clare looked across the lawn. "And kids."

"Three." Steve smiled. "I sit for them sometimes." He pointed to a smaller building at the end of the row. "My place is next."

"What did the Army do with it?"

"It was the first building in Fort Yellowstone. A guard house to hold ten prisoners." The innocuous one-story building, its wide porch a dark perimeter, did not look like a jail.

Clare stared. "What were the prisoners in for? Picking flowers? Collecting minerals?"

"Poaching. Selling alcohol to the soldiers."

Silence fell.

"So what's it like, living in the stockade?" Clare tried.

Steve cleared his throat. After a little while he said, "Walt Leighton says I treat my home as a prison, especially when I have a bout of . . . bad times."

Deering's words about Steve's wife and child hung between them. A pink tricycle lay abandoned on the lawn. "You have kids?" he asked.

Clare sighed. "Actually, I'm picking my daughter up at the Jackson airport tomorrow. At least I'm supposed to."

"I can try and requisition another truck and drive you . . . but it may not be easy."

"Or I can hitch a ride to Old Faithful for my rental car." Despite the peaceful atmosphere, the night seemed to be at a distance. Because she'd felt safe in the curve of Steve's arm, she went on, "Devon thinks she's coming on vacation, while you and I are watching people die."

He slowed his steps. "What will you do with a little girl here?"

She stopped. "Devon is seventeen."

"No way." Steve whistled softly. "You got pregnant when you were twelve?"

"Thanks," she said. "I don't know what I'm going to do with her. My ex thinks she's seeing an older man and won't deal with it. He and wife number two have plane tickets to Greece."

"That's tough." Steve stepped onto the porch. "I often wonder what would have happened to us if Susan and Christa had lived."

As Steve reached for his keys, Clare watched the patterned silver light that s.h.i.+ned through the porch lattice from the streetlamps and a quarter moon. The stench of death was still in her head. Based on experience, it would be there for days, but she sniffed and tried to replace it with the scent of fresh-cut gra.s.s and summer flowerbeds.

She needed this sense of normality tonight.

Steve opened his door and flicked a switch that spilled a pool of brighter light.

Moving past him to the focus of the crowded room, she slid a hand onto the black-lacquered finish of a grand piano. Beneath a layer of dust, it felt smooth as silk. She raised the cover and picked out a chord with her right thumb on middle C.

Her fingers protested when she flexed them and she became more aware of her burns. "Do you have any aloe?"

"I could use some myself." He went down the side hall.

Clare played random chords until Steve came back barefoot in khaki shorts and a tourist T-s.h.i.+rt with a moose on it. He offered bottles of green gel and hydrogen peroxide.

She urged him toward the worn, brown leather couch that clashed with the ornate piano. "Let me look at your burn first." When she unwrapped the layers of gauze, blistered skin made her wince.

That wasn't like her. As a teacher and mom, she knew how to minimize life's little hurts. When she worked wrecks, fires, or medical emergencies, she called on a calm facade that sometimes kept victims from going into shock. This evening she was so fragile that this reminder of Steve's vulnerability made her eyes sting.

Keeping her head down, she cleaned the seeping wound and applied a fresh bandage. "Okay." She put the brisk grip-and-release move of a coach on each of his legs.

It was his turn to wince.

She bent to explore first one knee and then the other. Her fingers traced the length of the three-inch scars, matched pairs along the inside and outside of each kneecap. "Sports?" This explained why she had occasionally noticed Steve limping.

"An accident."

She suspected the air tragedy that had taken his family, but he did not volunteer. He made a move to go and she backed away.

In his kitchen, copper pots hung from a wrought-iron rack. Repeated scrubbing had worn the linoleum until the red and gray squares were blurred into a muddy continuum. The dining area, with a pine table between corner windows, overlooked another row of staff housing.

Steve opened the icebox to reveal a rotting cuc.u.mber, three cans of Olympia beer and some Calistoga mineral water. "This is the first I've been home in a while. Stick around until I get to a store and I'll make you coq au vin."

Clare's opinion of him continued to change. First the piano and now he professed to be a chef. Of course, the tuna salad he'd whipped up on Mount Washburn had been tasty.

She took the beer he offered and drank, the carbonation stinging her raw throat. Uncapping the Calistoga, Steve drank off half of the quart in three gulps.

Clare lifted her Oly and raised an inquiring brow.

"I'm off the sauce." He toasted with his water.

Something inside her lifted at his commitment to stay sober. Being on a mountain was one thing, handing your guest a beer and not having one yourself must be tougher.

She bent to take off her heavy-soled boots. In sock feet, she carried her can into the living room. "Do you know Moonlight Sonata?" She sank onto the sofa.

"I know the piece. I don't play."

That was odd. Everything else here fit her expectation. A set of packed bookshelves held technical books on biology and geology, along with a well-worn collection of popular paperbacks. Bleached animal skulls sat alongside specimens of turquoise, amethyst, and other rocks she couldn't identify.

She set her drink on the pine coffee table and lifted an irregular black stone. It was heavy and smooth, but the concoidal shape tapered to sharp edges.

"Obsidian," Steve said. "The Nez Perce believed it had healing powers."

Holding the rock, she asked, "Do you think it could help me forget today?"

"Only you can answer that."

She stared into the stone's gla.s.sy depths. Inside was a vortex, somehow dizzying. Glancing toward the darkness outside the door, she noted the bars on its small window.

Steve took the obsidian from her. "You've been through a lot." He set the rock down. "But there were a few things about today I wouldn't change." His steady eyes suggested he was as aware of her as she was of him.

Clare looked for a distraction. "Your work?" She nodded toward a black-and-white photo of a snowshoe hare huddled at the base of an aspen. On the same wall hung a view of the Grand Teton emerging from morning fog, alongside a baby elk with spindly legs threatening collapse.

"I put in a darkroom beside my study," Steve said.

Something about the process of capturing a wilderness image and putting it into a frame underlined Clare's ephemeral a.s.sociation with the Yellowstone country. Her family had once lived on this land, while she merely visited, welcome to take snapshots, leave footprints, and go home.

Although she ran out of small talk, she felt more was required. "Long day," she began and then realized that she was taking them back to the h.e.l.lroaring.

"Very long." He s.h.i.+fted his weight from one foot to the other. The caring in his eyes, overlain by something deeper, decided her.

Curling her feet beneath her on the couch, she confessed, "Today isn't the first time I've had somebody die in a fire with me."

Steve came to sit beside her.

"Frank inspired me every day. He kept the station meals on par with a chichi restaurant. He shorted-sheeted our bunks." She gave a giggle that surprised her.