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“Mel can’t leave and I have her nursing baby right here,” Brie said. “She’s been treating minor injuries with paramedics and has to be on hand for more.”
“The air here isn’t the best for these kids. I have someone I can call to help. You should get the little ones out of here.”
“Well…Let me ask her.”
Brie took the general’s suggestion to Mel and she thought about it for less than a minute, then nodded. “The kids will be safer there. Can you, Paige and Nikki load them up?”
“Sure. But I hate to take them away from you.”
“They should go, he’s right. You can set up a nursery there, with Vanni. We’ll be fine here with Walt’s help.”
Mel watched from the first-aid station while the women carried the children to Preacher’s and Jack’s trucks with Walt’s help, moving car seats around and tucking them in. Into the back went a playpen, port-a-crib, infant seats and baby swing, diaper bags and paraphernalia. Little Davie and Emma, Christopher and Dana Marie. Then they pulled slowly out of town.
Mel hoped it would occur to Paige or Vanni to nurse little Emma; Emma needed the breast. She was young and vulnerable and Mel wouldn’t hesitate to nurse a friend’s baby at a time like this. Mel felt a tear run down her cheek as they went. She wiped at it impatiently. This was an emergency; they’d have to make do. Vanni, Brie, Nikki and Paige would keep the babies and Christopher all safe. That was the most important thing.
Then Jack will be home and we’ll go get them, she told herself.
The morning flew by with trucks full of firefighters passing through, stopping for first aid or food and water. They’d be driven out and another crew would pass through. Sometimes the firefighters were new and wearing clean gear, sometimes they were dirty, exhausted, parched and hungry men. Most of them were inmates, felons trained in firefighting with plenty of law enforcement on hand, backing up Cal Fire. Mel had often wondered how many of them tried to run away while on this duty. But then, this program would likely come to an end if many did.
She took a break to walk into the bar. To her surprise, behind the bar she found the general and Muriel. The woman gave her a bright smile.
“Hey, girl,” Walt said. “What can I get you?”
“Ice water, thanks, if you still have ice. I’m so dry. I think it’s the smoke in the air. It’s not exactly thick, but it works on the nose and throat.”
“How are you, Mel?” Muriel asked.
“A little tense today. Thanks for coming to help.”
“It’s nothing,” she said with a shrug. “I’m glad to. You have quite the circus out there.”
Mel gratefully drank down half her water. “We do, at that,” she said.
“I’m going back to the kitchen. I’ve been making sandwiches, the only cooking I’m capable of. I just about have a big tray ready to bring out. Cal Fire has rations, but they’re running low and we can pitch in. How about if we set up on the porch, along with water?”
“Perfect,” Mel said. “Hang on to the bottled water till the well runs low—we might need it later. I’m going to call the ranch, see how the kids are doing.”
She went to the phone. While Vanni assured her everyone was fine, she could hear Emma crying in the background. Amazing, she thought, how you knew your baby’s cry. It almost made her cry. Worse than that, it made her milk let down and she had to make a dash for the bathroom, open her shirt and lean over the sink. Women’s bodies, she found herself thinking. It was a miracle, the way they worked. Come back, Jack, she thought. We have to get back to our children!
“Mel,” Muriel was calling, tapping at the door. “Are you all right?”
“Fine,” she answered. “I’ll be right out.” When she opened the door, she found the older woman standing there, waiting, a concerned frown on her face.
“I saw you run for the bathroom, and I thought maybe you were sick. All this smoke in the air…”
Mel chuckled. “I called Walt’s house to check on the kids and heard Emma crying. It’s been too long since I nursed her. In seconds, I was dripping,” she said, pulling aside the white coat to show a large round wet spot on her breast. “I hope they get this fire under control before I explode.”
Muriel smiled. “I didn’t have children. And I guess you need to get back to yours.”
“I’m sure it won’t be much longer. Really, this has to be resolved soon. Don’t you think?” Mel asked.
“I don’t know, Mel,” she said, shaking her head. “There’s a lot of wood out there. It’s scary.”
“Yeah,” Mel said weakly. “Yeah it sure is.”
Walt was making sandwiches with Muriel. “You know, I’ve been hanging around your place, riding with you, throwing the stick for your dogs, and I never asked you about the husbands. Like, how many? And why you think it didn’t work out?”
“What makes you think I feel like telling you?” she asked.
“Aw, you’ll tell me,” he said. “You’re just that kinda gal. And I told you about my wife.”
“Okay,” she said, still slapping sandwiches together. “The synopsis. The first one was fifteen years older than me, my agent. He’s still my agent—he married the talent, not the person I was. He was very ambitious for me, for us both. He still thinks I divorced him because of his age, but I divorced him because all he cared about was my career. I don’t think he could tell you my favorite color…”
“Yellow,” Walt said.
Her head snapped around and she stared at him. “Yellow,” she said.
“That was easy,” he said. “It’s all around and you wear it a lot. Red’s important, too.”
“Right,” she said, shocked. She shook herself. “Okay, number two hit, number three cheated, number four had a child he failed to mention, number five—”
“All right, wait,” Walt said. “Is this going to go on for a real long time?”
She grinned at him. “Didn’t you look it up on the Internet?”
“I did not,” he said, almost insulted.
“We’re stopping at five. He had a substance-abuse problem. I didn’t know about it beforehand, obviously. I tried to help, but I was in the way—he needed to be on his own. That’s when I decided that, really, I should quit doing that. Marrying. But please understand, it’s not all my fault—Hollywood doesn’t exactly have a reputation for long, sturdy relationships. I did the best I could.”
“I have no doubt,” he said.
“Do you say that because you have no doubt? Or are you being a sarcastic ass to a poor woman who had to go through five miserable husbands?”
He chuckled. Then he slipped an arm around her waist and kissed her cheek. It was the first time he’d been that bold. He’d been riding with her, showing up at her house to drink wine while they sat on lawn chairs in front of the bunkhouse, even talking to her almost daily on the phone, but he hadn’t gotten physical. “The Army was rough on families, too. I was lucky.”
“Hmm,” she said. “Maybe you’re just better at it than me.”
“I suppose that’s possible, too,” he said. Then he smiled at her.
The men fighting the fire grew dry and tired. They’d worked their way into the forest along a line that had grown wide and deep. Jack leaned against his shovel as Mike Valenzuela passed by with a chain saw, headed up the line to cut boughs from more felled trees. He paused for a drink and took a few deep breaths before bending to his job of turning earth, tossing dirt onto a growing pile that formed a small dike against the forest. Mike moved down the line of men, out of sight. Jack wiped his forehead and put the shovel back to the ground.
Then something subtle happened. The slight breeze that Jack had been feeling on the back of his neck changed to a hot wind that hit him full in the face. Frowning, he began to walk up the line and around the curve in the direction Valenzuela had gone, looking for the source of that sudden heat. As the logging road went deeper into the trees, the volunteers thinned out and the professionals were the ones moving closer to the fire.
A murmur went up among the men and sparks filled the air. The line of men that had been winding around the hill to his left began to move toward him, then past him. Jack didn’t see Mike anywhere, so he walked a little farther. He quickly saw that there was no one back there. Behind him, from where he had been, he heard, “Move out, move out, move out!”
Firefighters who had been behind him were beginning to jog down the road. He heard a roar, sparks filling the air. The fire that they’d been chasing was coming toward them, hard and fast. In front of him was dense smoke, behind him—the logging road from whence he’d come, and to his left, a deep ravine. He turned to move out down the road when there was a blast—an ignited tree that had been burning exploded about ten feet into the forest and sent a shower of sparks and debris over the road in a huge flash. A two-hundred-foot sequoia was on fire not five feet away from where he stood. He took a dive in the direction of the ravine and began to crawl madly toward it as a burning tree came down and flames shot over his head.
At the command to move out, the firefighters and volunteers were being quickly herded back down the hill to the road, where trucks were waiting to evacuate them. Paul was craning his neck, looking for Jack. He’d seen him move into the trees, but he wasn’t back yet. Then sparks began to fly and a roaring sound could be heard. Mike Valenzuela jumped up on the truck beside some of his boys. “Where’s Jack?” Paul asked him.
“Haven’t seen him.” He looked around. “One of the other trucks?”
Paul jumped out of the truck and started back up the road, but he was grabbed by the crew chief and pushed toward the truck.
“One of our boys is in there,” he said.
“There’s no one in there,” the chief said. “Everyone was cleared out.”
“I saw him go in that direction!”
“There’s no one back there, buddy.”
“I saw him!”
“If there’s anyone there, they’ll get him,” he said, pointing to a long line of firefighters making fast tracks out of the burning forest. Right at the back of their column was an explosion, sending debris and sparks flying over their heads. Paul found himself shoved into the truck, landing in a heap, while their captain yelled, “Let’s go! Move out!” And the truck jerked into motion.
Paul sat up in the bed of the truck and watched as all these yellow-clad, hard-hatted men scrambled into the next truck, and then a third, and as each one filled up, they drove pell-mell down the logging road to the asphalt. He had to be in one of those other trucks, Paul thought. He had to be.
Two planes flew in low, dumping retardant on the fire, a bright red powder. Flames leaped toward the aircraft as they disappeared over the forest.
When they got to the safety zone, the marines began looking for Jack, going to every truck, but he was nowhere. Paul told the captain what he’d seen, that Jack might still be back there.
“Buddy, if he didn’t get out with that last crew, he might not’ve gotten out.”
Panicked, Paul said to Joe, “We have to find him, man.”
“Where are we going to look, huh? It’s coming this way.”
“He’s got to be around here somewhere.” Paul grabbed the firefighter’s arm. “Was there any other way out?”
He just shook his head. “I’m sorry, buddy.”
“There has to be another way out. He wouldn’t do that—he wouldn’t go in there if it was too hot. He’s too smart for that!”
“Pal, the wind shifted and ate up acres in minutes. We’re just going to have to wait it out, see if he turns up. He’s not the only one unaccounted for. Search and Rescue is on it.”
