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I didn’t see Jake.
“Oh, Livi,” Kit cried, bursting into a fresh bout of tears. “The crew, the calves out there, the firetrucks pulled through, and I just can’t believe how fast it caught. It was so fast,” she rambled.
My hand was on her arm, but my eyes were on the crowd. “Where’s Jake?”
“He went with them. All those calves …” She dissolved into tears.
I took off running for the truck.
Kit called after me as I sped in the direction of the smoke, leaning over to open the glove box, digging blindly for a bandana I kept there for when I wanted the windows down. When I reached the pasture, I slammed the brakes hard enough to drift.
I couldn’t get to the huddle of trucks fast enough. A dozen farmhands were herding the young cows, trying to keep them calm. Their eyes were ringed white as they stamped and stomped and ran in every direction, and the crew all stood in loose lines on either side with shirts and bandanas tied around their mouths and noses, yelling H’ya! and Get on! and whooping with their arms out. Thank God none of the cattle were fully grown—it would have been expoentially more dangerous.
When my bandana was tied, I sprinted for Mack, who stood next to the firetrucks, as spooked as the calves.
“Mack!” I screamed, panting. I took him by the shoulders, met his eyes, waited for recognition.
“Livi, you can’t be here.”
“Neither can you. Go to the truck. Where’s Jake?”
Mack’s chest heaved. He glanced to the fire. “Some of the calves were penned in. He went to get ’em.”
“No,” I breathed.
“He got three out, but there are a couple more.”
I stared at the wall of smoke and flames. “Go get in the truck, Mack.”
“What’s that?” he yelled, cupping his ears.
My gaze snapped to him. “Go get in the truck! Take it back to the big house,” I yelled back.
A nod, and he was gone.
For a moment, I stood there, frozen by indecision. With the cattle in a stampede, I’d only endanger the farmhands and myself if I ran in. And the fire … there was no knowing, no seeing, no finding him.
There was nothing to do. So I stood there, dragging labored breaths, staring at the fire while I prayed to every god I knew that he’d appear.
“Miss, you’ve got to get back.” A firefighter took me by the arm.
“He’s in there.”
“I know,” she yelled back. “Your man doesn’t listen for shit.”
A laugh surprised me, tears rushing to my eyes too fast to notice until I felt them hot on my cheeks. My smile faded instantly.
“You’ve got to get him,” I yelled.
She shook her head. “It’s not safe.”
“I fucking know it’s not safe—that’s why you need to go get him!”
“He’d only go back in.” She tried to step me back, but I shook loose.
“I’m not going anywhere,” I said with such ferocity, she conceded.
She glanced over her shoulder at the fire. “The grass is short here, and we got to it before it got out of hand. It’s gonna burn out quick. Stubborn as he is, he’ll get out.”
“Millie! Grab a shovel and go with the guys!” someone called from the fray.
With an understanding nod to me, she ran off.
I didn’t know how long I stood there, poised to run into the mayhem. Looking back, I thought it was only a few seconds. It felt like a year.
He was a shadow first, emerging from the smoke like a ghost. Smudged with soot from top to toe with a shirt tied around the bottom half of his face, he charged out of the fire as fast as he could with a bucking calf in his arms.
I ran for him, meeting him just as he set the calf down at the mouth of the chute funneling the animals into the next pasture, and she ran off, screaming bloody terror toward the barns.
I flung myself at him like a rag doll, boneless and crying.
He caught me, squeezing me so hard, my ribs ached. His breath was labored, his trembling so intense, my teeth rattled.
He didn’t let me go for a long, long time.
When he did, it was on the heels of a yelling firefighter, shooing us toward the fence like the cattle. Jake took my hand and towed me to the fence, lifted me over, climbed over himself, and we edged back, turning to stare at the carnage.
Neither of us could breathe. We just watched the pasture burn.
“How did this happen?” I asked after a long while.
“It started with a bale in the hayfield, and the whole field went up in a handful of minutes. It crossed the fence so fast, we didn’t even get here in time. Not until the herd was nearly surrounded. Bunch of us ran in, scared them out. Jimmy got knocked over. I think he broke his arm.” They’d become flat, distant sentences as he stared at the fire. “It coulda been worse. We hosed down before we got here, second we saw the fire. But a couple of the little ones wouldn’t go. They just … stopped. I brought two of them out, but the third …”
