The Big Burn (18 page)

Lizbeth gave her a quick hug. "Don't worry," she said. "You let yourself be taken care of, and I'll look after things here. I promise." Silently she added,
Somehow.

Mrs. Marston was struggling to say something, and Lizbeth leaned close to hear her. "Taking care of things is my job," the old woman whispered.

Lizbeth nodded. "I know."

She stayed with Mrs. Marston until the train started moving. Then she jumped off. Although she knew her dear friend couldn't see her, she waved until the train, with its three dozen patients and almost as many nurses and attendants, had disappeared between burning hills.

And now,
she thought,
to find Gelia...

Lizbeth joined a surge of people hurrying to reach a train station before fire completely blocked the streets. As she ran she got buffeted about and once spun completely around, so that she got a brief glimpse of the hospital again and of people on its roof wielding hoses.

She reached the Northern Pacific station as the last of the evacuation trains was boarding. Like the train at the hospital, this one was crammed with people, and still more were climbing on. She ran down the line of cars, looking for Celia. At one door she saw men being pulled aboard. Farther on she saw still other men being hauled off and told to stay and fight the fires.

She heard a man try to sell a ticket for a seat to Missoula, and she saw someone else knock him to the ground.

And then someone pulled her arm. "Where have you been?" Celia demanded. "I've looked all over for you. The train's about to leave."

"I'm not going," Lizbeth said. "I told Mrs. Marston I'd take care of things here. Besides, this is my home."

"And you think it's not home to all these women with sense enough to get out before they and their children burn up?"

"When this is over, they'll come back here, and be where their families belong," Lizbeth said. "If I went with you, you'd see we never returned."

A harried-looking conductor told them, "Ladies. Board now."

Celia said, "The only family you and I have is back East, and we better just hope they'll take us in until we can get on our feet."

"Mrs. Marston is family. Dora Crane is, and I bet the Cranes come back, despite everything. And we've got other friends. The Logans."

"Get on the train now," Celia ordered.

"No."

Celia raised her hand as though to give Lizbeth a shove or maybe, to slap her into moving.

Lizbeth grabbed it. "Don't," she said.

And then she pushed her way out of the crowd. A man tried to stop her. "Women and children have to leave," he said.

"Leave yourself," Lizbeth told him. "Take my place."

And then she began running toward the center of town, blinded by tears and smoke and confusion.

The conflagration raging through the gulch touched off a stand of snake grass a few feet from Jarrett's head.

Choking and struggling for breath, Jarrett willed himself to stay conscious and keep his wits about him. His heart hit against the inside of his chest, and his eyes and ears felt ready to fly from his head.
If only the noise would let up, the howl and roar.

Odd, half-formed ideas floated into his mind. Maybe the fire and the wind were the same thing? Or maybe it was hot light and loud noise that were the same?

He groped around enough to feel that cloth still shielded Henry's face. Then Jarrett realized his own shirt had slipped partly off, but he couldn't quite figure out what to do about it. Sometime later he felt it being replaced and patted down over his eyes.

And then, as a fresh wave of flame seemed to suck the air itself out of the canyon, Jarrett gave himself over to just trying to breathe.

***

Jarrett had no memory of the fire's leaving, but as he became aware that he was now cold instead of hot, he also realized the worst was over.

The night still was lighted by burning trees, but the solid walls of fire had gone on someplace else. As had most of the wind and the noise.

He sat up and tried to ask, "How's everyone?" but the words croaked weakly. He coughed, painfully cleared his smoke-scoured throat, and tried again. "Men?"

Rolling Joe answered first "Mr. Reese and I are okay."

Then Henry managed, "Me, too. I'm okay."

Wo checked with Angio before nodding. "Okay," he echoed. "Okay."

We've all come through,
Jarrett thought
Is it possible?

He and the others dragged themselves onto the creek bank, where they shivered in their wet clothes. As preposterous as it seemed to want a fire after the one they'd just been through, Jarrett knew that was what they needed. He and Rolling Joe spent some time finding enough unburned fuel to build one.

With everyone blackened and soaked through and exhausted past coherence, it was hard for Jarrett to tell who'd been injured and how badly. Vito, moaning and cradling a crushed hand, and Angio, with burned eyes, seemed to be hurt the worst Mr. Reese had gone mute again, and Henry was already asleep.

That left Jarrett and Rolling Joe to keep their little fire going and watch for burning snags that might roll their way. They sat in silence, gazes roving.

Once, the warming fire flared up bright enough to show Jarrett a dead fish floating down the creek.

He might have cried, if his eyes hadn't been too dry to make tears.

In Wallace, hundreds of people attacked flames that engulfed building after building. They worked in firelight bright as day. Lizbeth heard that the iron foundry was gone and that one of the railroad depots was burning. That the Michigan Hotel was burning. She saw the new furniture store ablaze.

And houses. Flames consumed the homes hugging the canyon walls above the burning east end of Wallace.

Most of the firefighters were men, but not all, and when Lizbeth moved into a bucket line, the men on either side welcomed her with relief. The line snaked along Seventh Street, north-south through the heart of the city. To the east, all the town burned. High on the hills to the west, fires demolished the forests. But between Seventh Street and those hills, a good part of Wallace still lay untouched by fire.

Seventh Street was the line to hold.

Lizbeth handed along a filled bucket, trying not to stagger under its weight. Then she reached to catch the next one, which was being swung to her by the grip of fine-boned hands. She looked up and saw the soot-smudged face of her aunt.

Celia nodded. "You were right."

Lizbeth held in tears she knew had no place in the firefight. She wanted to throw her arms around her aunt, but that would have broken the rhythm of the line. "Thank you, Cel," she said as she grasped the bucket handle. "Your help's needed."

***

By midnight the worst of the weather front had passed through, leaving lessened winds that shifted and blew back on themselves. By then, her muscles throbbing, Lizbeth was struggling to hold her own on the line. Numbed to everything except passing along the filled buckets, she was slow to realize when there was no next bucket coming.

The line started breaking up, with calls of "We've got her stopped." Hardly daring to believe, Lizbeth looked around and saw for herself that the fire's spread appeared checked, at least on this front. And no fires appeared to be burning in the terraced residential section where Mrs. Marston's boardinghouse was.

Beside her, Celia sat on the ground and hugged her knees. Down the street a man leaned out of a restaurant door to shout, "Open for business!"

***

Half an hour later Lizbeth and Celia sat at a tiny café table, drinking hot tea and eating lemon custard pie. Outside, the streets glowed bright with light from the fires that continued to rage through the east end of the city, but in here, candles flickered and threw long shadows. Electricity was out—the poles burned down and the wires melted.

Lizbeth searched for the right way to ask what she needed to know. Not that the question was so hard, but she was afraid the answer might not be the one she hoped for. Finally she just came out with it "Cel, what did you mean when you said I was right?"

Celia rubbed her hands over her face and then studied her palms. "I'm just grinding in the soot, aren't I?"

"Cel?"

"I don't know. I guess I meant that you were right about my family being here, since you
are
my family, and you wouldn't leave."

"And that this is our home, too? Where we belong? You know that?"

"Don't push me, Lizbeth. I can't give more tonight," Celia answered. But she softened her words by touching Lizbeth's hand.

Seth waited in line to fill his canteen from the lister bag hanging on its tripod in the center of camp. Some men weren't so careful about what they drank, would rather down river water than wait in another line, but Seth liked having drinking water that wasn't going to make him sick.

Abel appeared by Seth's side. "Hey, buddy," he said, as if the bad feelings of the day before hadn't happened. "We got to talk."

"What about?" Seth asked. "And why'd you miss breakfast?"

"I had things to check. Come walk and I'll tell you."

"Soon as I fill my canteen, I will."

"There's twenty people ahead of you yet," Abel said. "Come
on.
"

With a sigh Seth stepped out of line.

Abel led the way to a place behind the tents where they'd be out of everyone's earshot. "Okay," he said, "I got this worked out."

"Got what worked out?" Seth asked.

"My plan for getting us free of the army. You know what's happening? This town is filling with people afraid they're gonna burn up. And you know what else? I heard the lieutenant say there's gonna be evacuation trains made up to take everybody away from here."

"You mean we're leaving?" Seth asked.

"You and me!"

"I mean, is G Company moving out?"

"Nope. Them trains will be for civilians only." Abel glanced sideways at Seth, like he was about to share a good joke. "And my plan is, two of those civilians is gonna be us."

Seth stared at him. "Now I know you're crazy."

"Like a fox."

A corporal came around the tent line. "You two! Out front! New assignments!"

"That's another thing," Abel said. "Our job's gonna be to keep order in town today. Like lettin' the fox in the chicken house, Seth, buddy."

***

"What did I tell you?" Abel said once the formation broke up. "You hear how we're supposed to patrol town to see people don't lose their heads 'cause they're scared? See bad people don't go rob good people's houses after the good people leave town?" Abel whacked Seth's arm. "Like lettin' the fox in the chicken house!"

He paused, looking pleased with himself. "Only these two foxes ain't going in to
eat
the chickens. Just borrow some feathers. What you think, buddy? Find us some nonarmy feathers?"

"What I think is you ain't said one thing I can understand," Seth said. "Now you either talk sense or stop bothering me." He hadn't meant to speak so sharp, but it just came out.

And Abel, instead of getting mad back, said, "You're right. I'm sorry. Now here's my plan."

Lizbeth woke up disoriented, and then realized she was in Mrs. Marston's parlor. The carved wood settee with its maroon brocade upholstery was as far as she and Celia had gotten when they'd finally come in.

Lizbeth rubbed her neck, wondering if its stiffness came from her sleeping upright or slinging water buckets.

If the water buckets were the cause, she wouldn't complain. This house was standing because the Seventh Street fireline had held.

Quietly Lizbeth slipped outside and around to the back of the house. Below and to her right the whole eastern end of Wallace stretched out as one blackened, smoking ruin. Here and there brick walls poked upright, roofless and incomplete. Here and there flames still burned. And way over there, on that far hillside where dozens of houses had been—nothing was left.

And nothing was left of the trees on the surrounding mountains either. This time yesterday Wallace had sat in the bottom of a lovely green bowl. Now what was left of the town sat in a basin with bleak, black sides.

All our work
, Lizbeth thought,
and there's still so much gone.

At least the center and western part of Wallace appeared unhurt, as did whole neighborhoods like this one.

She felt anxious, seeing so much lost and, at the same time, so much saved. Anxious and empty, as though she was looking at a spectacle too overwhelming to take in.

"There's the river," Jarrett said, thinking it was about the most welcome sight he'd ever seen. He and Rolling Joe, with Henry's help, had managed to walk everybody down the gulch and out of the forest, but it had been hard. Smoking tree trunks crisscrossed the creek bottom, all smoldering traps—he didn't know how they'd done it.

But it was a good thing they had. The wind was strengthening again, and there was no telling what might happen next in those hills. It seemed safer down here, even if the still-green mountainsides just might be fires laid ready and waiting.

Jarrett and the others climbed a low embankment onto the railroad bed and started the hike east to Avery. Henry led his father. Vito, his hurt hand in a sling, guided Angio. Jarrett fell into step beside Rolling Joe.

Soon he began seeing other bands of firefighters also straggling along the river toward town. Some appeared a lot more beat-up than his group.

The worst was a man who latched on to Jarrett and Rolling Joe for a while. He looked half dead, crazy eyes staring out from a face black with burns, eyelashes gone, brittle hair breaking off when he touched it.

"All piled up," he kept saying. "All piled up." And at first Jarrett thought the man was talking about downed trees. Then the man said, "I told 'em not to pack so close. I told 'em if the timber bracing in that mine caught, they'd all die."