Sun House, page 94
“Let me join you,” TJ said, “but just a second, please.” TJ pulled a small rectangular device Kale didn’t recognize out of his Carhartts, punched at it, then slid it in the bib pocket of his overalls.
As they started down the veranda Tex at first looked frightened to see them. Then his fear blew up into anger. “You’re not needed, Broussard!” he shouted. “Your crew neither! We’ve got this under control!”
“Who’s we, and in what world is hellfire control?” Kale shouted back. “All I see is you doing nothing with brands burning all over your lodge roof and grounds. We’re here to fire up the generators, get the lights and sprinklers going, and douse the brands.”
Stomping toward them now, Tex hollered, “I’m just off the phone with our firefighters. Our truck is en route. Men I trust will deal with this the instant they get here.”
“The road in is on fire!” Kale roared. “They can’t get here! TJ just drove it. Tell him.”
“It was a nightmare!” TJ said, playing his part. “When a big fallen ponderosa blocked the road, my Land Cruiser got us through a gulch, dodging fallen trees and fire all the way. We barely made it back onto the road. No fire truck could make that detour.”
“My men put out the ponderosa and are removing it!” Tex shouted. “We’ve got this, I tell you! What you all can do is get down to the country club and ranchette sites and keep the big fields there from burning!”
In a sidelong whisper, TJ told Kale, “There is no fallen ponderosa.”
“This situation is a no-brainer, Tex,” Kale told him, “which gives me the feeling you’re trying to frame me. How could I justify leaving a multimillion-dollar lodge undefended to protect summer-dead grass and structures that only exist as blueprints? We’ll fire up your system, soak things till your men arrive, and then we’ll leave.”
Fury lifted Tex’s voice into his bizarre Concierge falsetto. “This is not a discussion group! Do the job I ordered you to do!”
With a calm born of knowing where his next words would lead, Kale said, “No way in hell can I obey an order that suicidal to this place.”
“Then here’s your very last order!” Tex yelled. “You’re fired, so’s your crew, and that changes things! As of now you own a right-of-way in to the crappy old house, barn, and schoolhouse you can fuck off and try to save if you want. But that’s all you own. If I see any of you wandering NorBanCo lands you’ll be arrested for trespass!”
“Good luck with that,” Kale told him. “You’re a weak and pitiful man, Tex.”
Back at the vehicles the crew encircled Kale and TJ.
“What did he say?” Hub asked.
“You heard,” Kale said. “We’re fired. All of us.”
“We heard that,” Buford said. “But did he say why?”
“No. But a decade under Tex leaves me sure of one thing. The Grand Lodge is his precious darling. I’m sure the son of a bitch is being forced by much meaner sons o’ bitches to let fire take the lodge so they can collect the insurance. They may also hope to frame me for abandoning the lodge, so thank God TJ heard our argument.”
“Sorry Kale,” TJ said, “but in a court of law anything I claim to have heard would just be my word against Schiller’s, with Tex backed by NorBanCo’s team of hotshot lawyers.”
As Kale’s face fell, TJ added, “But this should hold up in court.” And out of his Carhartt bib came the minicassette recorder he used for business affairs, which he turned on—and out came every word of Kale and Tex’s exchange. As the crew listened, sometimes roaring with laughter at how damning the evidence was, TJ glanced back at the lodge—and just inside the darkened main entrance stood Tex, motionless, his expression thoughtful, listening. Within weeks this odd moment would strike TJ as the most fortunate event of the night.
“Sorry we’re fired,” Kale told his men. “But these fires have taken out NorBanCo so our jobs were gone anyway. And I’d like to offer temp work at time-and-a-half wages to anyone willing to help me protect the old McKeig and Broussard acreage. It’s obvious that NorBanCo wants as much of their land to burn as possible so they can claim it as a giant operating loss. My aim is to fuck with that plan as much as possible, and no way will Tex try to arrest us for saving his land. That’d make NorBanCo’s villainy too obvious.”
“I’ll make that pay double,” TJ added, causing Buford to don a rare scowl.
“No can do, Squire,” he said, looking stern. Then he beamed and added, “But how ’bout this? Let’s all of us go save the whole shitaree an’ you two pay us nothin’!”
Another round of laughter and the Greater Good crew was all in.
“Before we take off for Schoolhouse Bluff,” Kale said, “let me call Regina for the latest intel. And while she and I chat let’s get Hub down to his Caterpillar.”
A few minutes later Hub was back on the D9 and Kale was fully informed: “It’s one a.m. and we’re tired,” he said. “But if we’re gonna get this done, the night is young. Schoolhouse Bluff is fire free thanks to Risa, Mu, and Rosalia, and Ida, Max Bowler, and The Commonweal have been dousing anything that glows from my barn all the way up to the schoolhouse. But somebody agile enough to walk my barn roof needs to spell Lou Roy. A sprinkler slid off the roof and I don’t want Lou trying to put it back up. Whoever goes, wet cedar shakes are damn slippery. Behind the tack room door is a pair of spiked rubber golf galoshes I wear up there. Use ’em.”
“I’m on it, Pope,” Buford said. “Anything else while I’m there?”
“Regina asked if Ida and Max can refuel my generators going forward. They can. Take my BlackBerry, and once you right that sprinkler, ask Regina where you should join us on the four thousand acres. It’s gonna be a David and Goliath show out there tonight. We need you.”
“I’ll bring my slingshot,” Buford said, and away his four-wheeler tore.
“Three E City volunteer fire trucks got the Downriver Road and NorBanCo high road fires out,” Kale said. “But we all know Tex was lying. There’s no NorBanCo fire engine or crew at all. Regina’s going to follow the volunteer trucks back to E City, evacuating a few kids en route so their parents can focus on defending their homes and barns. The kids will stay at Ida’s. How Regina also found time to leave us a pile of sandwiches in the schoolhouse I don’t know, but we need ’em. Risa’s our phone maven now. She says she hopes somebody, maybe you, TJ, can spell Rosalia and Mu in the schoolhouse cupola. They’ve been doing a bang-up job as lookouts for twenty hours straight.”
“Good God!” TJ said. “I’d be honored.”
“I asked Risa for advice given what she sees from the bluff. She read my mind. The hundred-percent ignition rate means we choose our battles, she said. It’s gonna hurt to watch places we love burn without a fight, but the former Broussard and McKeig lands are where we’ll make our stand. Those big alfalfa and hay fields are downright soggy from our good work all summer. Our job is dousing the brands and small brush fires before they torch the scattered stands of pines. And when stands torch, listen to me, boys, back the hell off! No heroics. We’ll protect Stella Creek, the two ponds and their trees, and as many beautiful places as we can. But we will not overreach and die. Anything I’m forgetting?”
“My Cat’s no help where you’re headed,” Hub said. “Let me scrape that swath of brush east of your barn down to bare dirt. Even wet, that shit could torch.”
“Good man, Hub,” Kale said. “Are we all on the same page then?”
A round of nods and they were off.
From the Elkmoon Mountain Journals of Grady Haynes:
September 1: At 9:30 a.m., twelve hours after I lay the drenched and unconscious woman down in Moondial, she opened her eyes. She remained motionless, simply gazing at the marble ceiling. Unspeakably relieved, but not wanting to startle her, I whispered, “Careful not to move your right leg. Your ankle’s very badly injured.”
She turned to me and stared, no doubt wondering who I was, but gave a small, careful nod. Comprehension! More relief.
I told her my name. She told me hers. Lorilee.
I said, “You’ve been out for twelve hours. I found you after you got hurt last night, and carried you here. Here is a rock shelter a quarter mile above Jade, in which you swam before the storm. Do you remember any of that?”
She whispered, “Swimming, trying to find shelter, yes. Then, nothing.”
I said, “Each time you speak I feel relief, Lorilee. You came so close to being lightning-struck, and stayed unconscious so long, I feared the bolt had hit you. But no way could you be this clearheaded if you’d been struck. May I tell you about your injuries so you can be careful of them?”
She gave a careful nod.
“Your ankle will need surgery. It’s in a SAM splint I shaped to fit you, then wrapped in an ACE bandage. You’ve got three deep bone bruises on your back that’ll hurt for days, but almost no bleeding, and no breakage that I could feel. But there’s a much deeper gouge and lump on the back of your head. I put Polysporin in the gouge but no bandage. Better to pillow it with towels. It was probably a concussion in addition to the wound, so please, take it very easy.”
“I’ve no choice, believe me,” she whispered.
“Our only plan for today and tomorrow is rest. Any needs at all, ask me. I’m going to get you back to civilization, Lorilee. And you’re going to heal, ankle included. It’s going to be a process, but it will happen. We start now with total rest.”
“First, a question,” she said. “I’m wearing your long johns and lying in your sleeping bag. What happened to my pack?”
“To carry you here I had to abandon it. My zero-degree bag is the only bag we’ve got till I can fetch yours. When we arrived, you were seriously hypothermic, which is deadly. Your clothes are drying on the line above you. I dried you with towels, warmed you with friction, dressed you in my long johns since they’re big enough to slide over the SAM splint. Even then you stayed so cold I had to share the bag to warm you. Sorry if that seems overly familiar, but letting you die was not an option.”
She gazed at me so long I feared she was finding what I’d done creepy. Instead, she melted me with a smile. “The situation demanded intimacy. I’d be dead without you. Once in the night, in a cold painful fog, I felt warmth begin to envelop me, and dreamed a friendly animal was sharing its body heat. I realize now I was right. If I could move, I’d give that animal a thank-you hug.”
Undone by her grace under duress, I said, “I’m completely at your service.”
“That’s good,” she murmured, “because I require service right now.”
“Name it,” I said.
“My bladder is bursting.”
“I’ve thought on that.”
I hopped up, sat on one of my little slate benches, set a five-gallon bucket on the floor between my legs, patted my thighs, and said, “I’ll work out a way to give you privacy tomorrow, but for now, welcome to Moondial’s handicap-accessible flush toilet. My thighs are the toilet seat. I’ll carry you here, help you stand on one leg, ease you down, look the other way as you use the bucket, then put you back to bed. The flush is a pleasant stroll to a ravine sixty yards from Moondial. May I?”
When she nodded permission, I picked her up in my arms with extreme caution, and had no difficulty positioning her and holding her steady. But nothing in my life prepared me for the joy I felt at the sound of a woman whose life I’d feared lost throughout the night simply piddling and sighing with relief.
Elkmoon Valley Floor
Lou Roy Skinner was bone-weary, but uneasy. When Buford had met him at Kale’s barn and said the Grand Lodge power was off and no one was protecting it from fire, all Lou could think about was the irrigation canal NorBanCo shared with Kale’s inholdings. Known as Six Mile Ditch, its headgate was three miles upriver of the Grand Lodge, its outflow three miles downriver from Kale’s barn, and its entire length was lined with sun-seared grass. For close to a mile that grass lay directly across river from the South Whitetail holocaust. While winds from the west were still blowing burning debris east, the wind was weakening. If it died down completely the burning debris would change direction, making Six Mile Ditch’s dried-grass banks a fuse leading to every building, horse, and person Lou cared about most.
Unwilling to pull anyone off the threats Kale and crew were facing, but knowing he wouldn’t sleep till he rode the ditch watching for flare-ups, Lou Roy ratcheted over to Kale’s sleeping porch and opened a cupboard entirely filled with U-Haul moving blankets. Built thick to pad furniture, the blankets could hold a lot of water. Kale and his dad had quelled small flare-ups with similar blankets years ago. Lou Roy took three out of the cupboards, went to the barn, saddled Grey, strapped two blankets behind his cantle and lay a third across his lap. Nosing Grey around the barn and up onto the backhoe-built banks of the ditch, Lou Roy set out upstream in the direction of the Grand Lodge.
His uneasiness proved out in no time: as the wind dropped to a breeze it grew swirly, making the direction of airborne brands unpredictable. In the first five hundred yards he came upon six small spot fires. He doused them all with a sopped blanket, preventing his fears from coming true. But half a mile farther he reached a burning brush clump too big for even two soaked blankets. He had to ride from ditch to fire and back five or six more times to put the clump out. The soaked blankets weighed twenty-five pounds apiece, making fifty-pound loads, but Grey gave excellent help. He’d step down into the ditch and wait as Lou saturated the blankets without having to dismount, then stand steady though the blankets drenched Grey as they drained to a weight Lou Roy could manage. Lou would then dismount, walk alone to the flames, and hurl the blankets where they’d do the most good.
At 2:30 a.m. he made the turn at Elbow Bend and saw that the South Whitetail fires across the river had devoured the forest so completely they were dying down for lack of fuel. He covered the mile of ditch that had worried him most, dousing a scatter of small spot fires without much difficulty. But not far from the lodge, he came upon a burning stump so full of pitch it destroyed his first blanket and burned large holes in the second. Lou then stood too long on ash-concealed embers near the stump, burning a hole in his right boot sole and singeing his foot.
Down to one blanket, knowing his judgment was going, Lou checked his pocket watch: 3:10. Past time to leave Grey at Kale’s then check in at the schoolhouse. But he was just two hundred yards from the Grand Lodge and had never seen it dark and silent. Falling into a trance, he sat Grey motionless, staring at the ponderosa palace—when the lights came on in Tex Schiller’s big corner office. Curious, Lou nudged Grey into the dense cottonwood saplings covering the back side of the ditch and rode as close as he dared. Two hours later, back on Schoolhouse Bluff, he told Kale and Risa what he then saw:
“As you know, Tex’s office has south- and east-facin’ windows that give him views of his entire development that’s never to be. I almost felt for him, seein’ him alone like that, with the world’s finest view of his an’ NorBanCo’s total failure.”
“How come he still had lights?” Risa asked.
“The lodge is high-end,” Kale said. “In a power outage banks of batteries keep lights and phones on, freezers full of food frozen, and generators can keep it up for days if repairs are slow to come. Sorry to interrupt, Lou. Go ahead.”
“For a good while Tex paces his office like a caged animal. Then he picks up his phone, makes a call, an’ is soon red-faced, wavin’ his arms, yellin’ so loud I can faintly hear him. When he hangs up he steps out of his office onto the south-facing deck to watch the blaze across the river throw embers, lots of ’em landin’ on the lodge’s roof. But when he reenters his office I see his expression has changed, like he’s come to some sorta decision. He looks serious and determined as he sets a small piece of equipment on the desk by his phone, fiddles with it a while, then makes another call. Another shoutin’ match fires up, this one even longer. Yet when he hangs up his phone he smiles as he pockets the gizmo he’d set beside the phone!
“Tex disappears in the lodge for five minutes or so. When he reappears in his office he’s luggin’ an eight-gallon white bucket that must be full, the way he’s strainin’. He carries it out his door onto the wraparound veranda an’ pours water onto the lower walls of the lodge, splashing out onto the veranda decking, goes back inside, reappears with another full bucket, walks past the wall he wet and does the same farther along. He keeps this up, using the main entrance too, till he’s splashed the whole south-side veranda, then disappears round the corner to the east. I considered leavin’ then, but felt uneasy not knowin’ where Tex was.
“At 4 a.m. it spooks me to see him round the corner from the west side of the veranda, still pourin’ water though there’s no brands in his path, an’ I realize he’s wet down the whole wraparound, but only up against the Lodge walls. He then enters the main entrance doors, leaves ’em wide open, reappears in his office, an’ I can’t believe what I see. In he staggers luggin’ another full white bucket, which he pours all over his desk, papers, phone an’ shit. I then glimpse him a few times in the dark of the lodge, a little flashlight in his mouth, pouring more bucketfuls over furniture and fancy rugs an’ all kinds of valuables.
“Finally he steps outside, still carryin’ his damn bucket, though it’s empty, an’ kneels on the veranda by his office door, I think maybe to pray. But right in front of his knees a flame flares, the breeze shifts, an’ my gut flip-flops as I smell it: diesel. Tex hasn’t poured an ounce o’ water all night! The flame flares up kind of leisure like, the way diesel does, then takes off in three directions: around the veranda to the north, around it to the south, an’ straight back inside the lodge. It wasn’t a full minute before there’s a Johnny Cash ring o’ fire enclosin’ the whole place an’ indoor flames risin’ in every ground-floor window. Carryin’ the empty bucket down to his Escalade, Tex stops, turns, takes in his arson like a man’s done a good night’s work, opens the back hatch, lifts out a ten-gallon oil-waste can, sets the white bucket inside, snaps on the lid, shuts the hatch, an’ gets in. As he drives off it hits me: His bucket was all he took. Everything he owned was still in the lodge. Orders from corporate, I figure. Gotta make it hurt to seem it’s wildfire burned you down.
