July Thunder

The fire slumbered. Hot coals, protected by the thick layer of ash, glowed, awaiting their moment. Only hours before a hungry conflagration, the fire bided its time, showing a patience that few imagined it capable of.

Throughout the night, the forest waited, knowing it was not yet safe. Then, at dawn, a breeze freshened. Blowing across the burned-out area, its strength undimmed by the leaves and needles of living trees and brush, it stirred the ash.

Little wisps of smoke began to rise again. The warmth buried in the protective coat of ash grew hotter. And as the blacked acres heated yet again, the rising air sucked the breeze more strongly into the heart of the sleeping fire.

At first only ash lifted on the breeze. Dead, lifeless, it sprinkled itself harmlessly among the still-green trees across the brook. But the fanning renewed the life in the small coals the ash had covered.

And before the sun had fully risen, sparks were swept up on the eddies of the growing wind.

Most fell harmlessly, burned out before they reached the fresh fuel across the water. But at last one made it, finding a welcoming spot among pine needles so dry they ignited instantly.

The fire spread, needle to needle, multiplying rapidly. Soon there was a large, charred circle ringed in flame. A gust of air lifted those burning needles in a shower of orange lights and deposited them among the needles of parched trees, where they grew hungrily.

A dozen trees ignited with a huge whoosh, the hungry fire drawing more wind to its heart.

And the conflagration once again began its inexorable march, this time toward the pass that led to Whisper Creek.

4

Sam smelled smoke again. It was carried on the clear morning air, again just a whiff, gone so quickly it was hard to be sure he’d smelled it. It unnerved him just the same.

Standing in his driveway, he searched the rooftops of the town and saw nothing untoward. Then he scanned the circle of mountains around the valley. Not a thing.

Nothing except, perhaps, the faintest darkening to the west. As if the sky was not quite true blue. He studied it but couldn’t be certain he was seeing anything. Sometimes the sky looked like that before clouds developed, and God knew they could sure use some rain.

He sniffed the air again but detected nothing. His imagination?

Maybe.

“Good morning, Sam!”

He turned and saw his next-door neighbor, Sheila Muñoz, coming out to get her paper. Sheila was an attractive divorcée who lately seemed to have developed the habit of getting her paper just about the time he left for work in the mornings. And lately, when she came out that door, she was still wearing her nightclothes. Nightclothes that were a little too…suggestive. Not indecent. Just suggestive.

“Morning, Sheila,” he called back and slipped quickly into his patrol car. There had been a time in his life when he might have been flattered, but no more. Now he just wanted to escape as quickly as he could.

Gunning his engine, he backed out of his driveway and turned away from Sheila, even though the route to work would be longer.

Coward, he thought almost wryly as he took his alternate route. But he wasn’t interested in Sheila and didn’t want to give her any idea that he might be. The best way for both of them to save face was to avoid any situation where someone might be embarrassed. Especially in a town this size.

But he kind of felt sorry for her, too. Her divorce was new, and loneliness was a miserable thing. Hector had walked out on her only six months ago, leaving her for another woman. Sam had no doubt that part of what Sheila needed was reassurance that she was still attractive. Well, he wasn’t up for that game. She was nice enough, as a neighbor, but there it ended.

“Dinner tonight,” Earl Sanders reminded him the minute he stepped into the office. Apparently he was the first arrival for the day shift.

“I remember.”

“Good. I don’t want you wiggling out again.”

“I won’t.” What was the point? Earl was going to keep on stalking him like a lion after prey.

The thought caught Sam like a hiccup, and suddenly he laughed. A genuine laugh. A feel-good laugh. God, was he really this morose? Or was it just an ugly habit?

“What’s so funny?” Earl demanded.

Sam was still grinning. And for once his face didn’t hurt from it. “Me, boss. Just me.”

Earl scanned him from head to foot. “I don’t see anything funny about you.”

“And that’s the whole problem, isn’t it?” Sam shook his head. “I think I’m getting bored with my own company.”

“It’s about time. Six o’clock. And bring a date if you want.”

“Who, me?”

“Yeah, you.” It was Earl’s turn to grin. “I figure you could have your pick of about half the single females in the county.”

“What’s wrong with the other half?”

“Beats me. Maybe not smart enough?”

Sam laughed again, much to his own surprise. “Or maybe just too smart.”

“Nah. So, are you going to bring a date, or do you want me to invite some nice lady?”

That sure sounded like an ultimatum, Sam thought, and he didn’t like ultimatums. His inclination was to become more stubborn than a Missouri mule when he felt pushed or cornered. But this time, just as his contrariness was rising, he found himself thinking of Mary McKinney. Thinking how comfortable it had been last night to share dinner with her. “Yeah,” he heard himself say. “I’ll ask someone.”

“Great.”

As he was walking back out to his car after the morning briefing, he started shaking his head and grinning to himself. Earl was like every other happily married man: he wanted everyone else to be happily married, too. Until last year, when he’d married Meg, Earl had been content to let Sam work out his problems in his own way and time, ready to lend an ear when necessary, but essentially hands-off.

Not anymore. Since his marriage, Earl had been persistently nudging Sam to rejoin the human race.

Well, maybe it was time, Sam thought as he slid behind the wheel. Not to date or anything, but to get over himself. Grieving was one thing, but clinging to it was something else.

And he supposed he’d better ask Mary if she wanted to come with him to the Sanders’s house tonight before it got much later. He wasn’t so rusty he didn’t remember that last-minute invitations could be construed as insulting.

He drove over to her house—it was along his patrol route anyway—and found her in her front garden. Wearing shorts, a halter top and a bandanna over her gorgeous hair, she was kneeling before a bed of marigolds, weeding industriously.

Nice view, Sam thought as he pulled up. Probably giving his father a heart attack, if Elijah was home across the street. It wasn’t giving Sam a heart attack, though; it was giving him an equally strong but very different reaction.

He turned off the ignition and sat a moment, indulging himself. Mary had a nice bottom, with little left to the imagination as the shorts stretched tightly over it. Nice legs, too, slender but not skinny.

Just then she straightened and twisted to see who had stopped, giving him a great view of her breasts in their sheath of stretchy red cotton. Yup, Elijah would have a heart attack.

Suddenly feeling guilty, Sam climbed out of his car. Mary smiled and waved, as unself-conscious as a child who had been playing in a sandbox. She clearly had no idea that one of her neighbors would consider her to be indecently dressed. Nor was Sam going to advise her. Elijah had always needed to loosen up a bit.

“Hi,” she said. She dropped her trowel and weeding fork and pushed herself to her feet. For an instant Sam could almost see down the neck of her top. Down, boy.

Her knees were grungy with dirt, but she didn’t seem aware of it. He smiled to himself. “Morning,” he said. “Sorry to bother you but…” It suddenly struck him that he didn’t know how to ask.

“But?” She waited with a pleasantly expectant look on her face. “Did you forget something last night?”

“Uh…no. It’s… Well, I was wondering. Would you like to go to the Sanders’s house with me for dinner tonight?”

Something almost fearful flickered across her face, making him wonder what he’d said. Reviewing his words, he couldn’t see anything frightening in them. But they certainly weren’t clear enough. “Not a date or anything,” he blurted.

He winced inwardly, realizing how that sounded. Man, his social skills had not only atrophied, they’d died. Now she would be offended, and rightly so.

But she surprised him by looking relieved. “Great. Sure, I’d like that. As long as it’s not a date.”

She looked relieved because it wasn’t a date. Sam was taken aback by the disappointment he felt, even though he’d laid the ground rule himself. But no, he must be mistaking a little ego bash for something else. He wasn’t capable of getting involved again.

“Good,” he said, forcing a smile. “It’ll be fun.”

“I’m sure it will.”

A few moments of awkward silence, as if neither of them knew what to say next. Get back to work, Sam told himself, but that seemed too abrupt right after asking a woman to dinner—even if it wasn’t a date. But he wasn’t much of a talker, never had been. Although this was even worse than usual.

Mary gave him a sidelong look, as if she were a little uncertain herself. Then she shocked him. “Your father?”

He didn’t want to talk about Elijah. He wanted to pretend the man didn’t exist, even if he was right across the street. But Mary’s mention had been so tentative. And what if something was wrong? “What about him?” he asked roughly.

“He’s standing in his window watching us.”

Sam swung around and saw Elijah standing in the picture window across the street. The man didn’t acknowledge him with so much as a wave. “Nosy old coot,” Sam said, his gut twisting.

“Maybe…maybe he’s hoping you’ll come talk to him.” She offered it almost as a question, hesitantly.

“Not a chance in hell.” Sam turned his back on the old man. “He probably figures you’re in trouble with the law. That’s the way his mind runs.” And he needed to get out of there before the old anger managed to burn through the glacier that encased his heart.

“Well,” said Mary, an impish smile coming to her mouth, while a strange shadow remained in her eyes, “I’m sure he thinks I’m a scarlet woman after our conversation about books yesterday.”

Sam gave a bark of laughter. “Maybe. I’ll see you tonight, Mary. Gotta get back to work.”

He felt her eyes on him as he drove away.

When Sam’s car disappeared around the corner, Mary looked again at the house across the street. Elijah Canfield had disappeared from his window.

She didn’t want to believe Sam was right about his father. She didn’t want to believe any parent was capable of such meanness. But she was also an experienced teacher and she knew better. She’d certainly seen her share of it.

Troubled, she went back to her weeding, trying to ignore a prickling at the back of her neck that seemed to say she was being watched. There was no reason on earth why Elijah Canfield would want to watch her grubbing around in the dirt.

But surely there had to be some way for Sam and Elijah to reconcile?

“Hello.”

The deep voice, so like Sam’s, caused Mary to start. Twisting, she found Elijah Canfield standing in her driveway. He was wearing dark slacks and a white shirt with the collar open and the sleeves rolled up.

“Hi,” she answered, feeling wary.

“I wanted to apologize for the way we got off on the wrong foot yesterday,” he said, giving her a pleasant smile. He was a handsome man, she thought irrelevantly. Almost as handsome as his son.

Mary sat back on her heels, still holding her weeding fork, and looked up at him. “We had a significant disagreement of opinion,” she said, keeping her voice gentle. “Nothing wrong with that.”

He nodded briefly, an acknowledgment that didn’t quite make it to agreement. “But we’re neighbors,” he said.

“That’s right.” Mary waited, a trick she’d learned with difficult adolescents. Let the silence hang until the other person felt compelled to speak. She certainly wasn’t prepared to go out on a limb with this man; she didn’t know him. But from what Sam had said, she wasn’t inclined to trust him.

“The Lord says we should love our neighbors.”

Mary, who was quite religious herself, wondered if she was going to be treated to a sermon every time she saw this man. “That’s right. But sometimes it’s easier to love them from afar.”

Despite the beard, she could see the corners of his mouth tip up slightly. “I’ve noticed that.”

Mary smiled, prepared to be as noncommitally friendly as he allowed. “Is there something I can do for you?”

He didn’t answer immediately, and she had the sense that he was struggling with something. After a minute or so, she decided to take the bull by the horns.

“Sam is your son, isn’t he?”

Elijah’s intense eyes jumped back to her. “Yes.”

“He’s a fine man.”

Again Elijah said nothing, but this time Mary refused to speak, either. If something was troubling him, he needed to tell her or take it back home with him. Their gazes locked and held while time ticked by.

Finally Elijah spoke. “He carries a gun.”

“Yes.” She wasn’t about to say anything regarding that, either. Offering opinions to this man might be dangerous, unless she wanted lectures.

“A man who lives by the sword dies by the sword.”

Mary bit her lower lip, wanting to defend the necessity of police officers but realizing that Elijah’s real problem was something else. Something she wasn’t ready to wade into.

His gaze seemed to bore into her; then he nodded and walked back to his house.

What a strange man, she thought, staring after him. Then a thought struck her: maybe he was genuinely worried about Sam’s safety. Maybe his objection was something more than that Sam hadn’t become a minister.

And maybe she was being too generous to him. She certainly had a tendency to see the best in everyone other than herself.

In herself she saw only the worst. It was a pain she lived with, one so old it was comfortable.

Shaking her head, she went back to her weeding.

Sam continued to be troubled by the occasional whiffs of smoke he detected and the haziness to the west. Finally he called dispatch and asked if anyone had reported a fire.

Nary a whisper about one. But he couldn’t escape the feeling that something was wrong, so he told the dispatcher that he was going to drive up Reservoir Road and take a look.

The reservoir had been built to provide water to Denver and in return had provided a great recreational area for visitors and the residents of Whisper Creek. The road looped around the entire perimeter of the reservoir, a man-made lake that looked as if it had been there forever. Campsites and picnic sites abounded, and the fishing was pretty good. Branching off the loop was a rutted dirt road that headed up to the pass between the two highest peaks visible from town. From there he could see the valley beyond.

As his car ascended, bumping all the way, the air grew cooler and thinner, taking on just the suggestion of a chill. Pines shadowed his way, hinting of ancient mysteries in their depths.

Every time he got out in the woods like this, he found himself thinking of what it must have been like a hundred years ago for the first settlers. They’d come looking for gold but had found silver. When silver prices crashed, they’d suffered until the next big boom. Right now they were getting by on jobs at a molybdenum mine and the surrounding resorts. It had been a while since times had really boomed.

But the first settlers must have thought that a bright future lay here. And certainly in the summertime the place was hospitable. Plenty of water, plenty of sun and shade, but cool enough for a person to work hard. Of course, at this altitude there wasn’t a whole lot you could grow in the way of crops, but there had always been plenty of deer and elk.

It was easy to imagine setting up camp away from everything and just getting by on the land, maybe trapping beavers for their pelts. He could see why people had come and stayed.

Hell, people still came and stayed. People who wanted to live apart in small houses in the woods. People who were more interested in privacy and freedom than neighbors. People looking for a place where they could be unconventional, or a place where they could walk out their own back doors and ski in the winter. And so many of them came with dreams, just like the first settlers.

His car jolted in a deep rut, shaking him out of his reverie. Better pay attention. The pass was up ahead, but the higher he went, the worse the road grew, because it was so rarely traveled. The only things up here were a couple of microwave repeaters and the kind of woods he always thought of when he read that Robert Frost poem.

The smell of smoke was getting a little more noticeable, too. When his car bottomed out in another rut, he turned it around carefully and parked it to one side on a bed of pine needles. Better to hoof it the rest of the way.

He’d come up another two thousand feet, and he could feel the difference as he hiked up the road. He was well above ten thousand feet now, at a place where even his altitude-adapted lungs labored more than usual.

Most summers, the sky would have been overcast by now, heralding a thunderstorm so regular you could set your watch by it. Not this year. This year the sky stayed perfectly blue from sunrise to sunset, unmarred by so much as even one little puff of cloud.

He was approaching the tree line now, and after climbing another fifty feet he had an unobstructed view of the valley and lake behind him. Another fifty feet upward and he reached the pass.

His puffing lungs forgot to breathe as he saw the smoke filling the valley on the other side of the mountains. Ignoring his fatigue, he trotted forward along the vanishing road until he could look downward.

There was a fire at the north end of the valley. Not too big yet, but a definite threat to the woods down there. A definite threat to Whisper Creek by way of the Edgerton Pass to the north, lower and well-enclosed by trees. Maybe a hundred acres were burning right now, and the valley stretched south of the flames like a smorgasbord.

Sam reached for his radio. With nothing between him and Whisper Creek, the connection was as clear as a bell.

“We’ve got a forest fire on the west side of Meacher Peak, about two miles north of Edgerton Pass.”

“How much involvement?”

Sam looked again to double-check his earlier impression. “Maybe a hundred acres.”

The dispatcher said he would take care of it. Sam stood there for a few minutes longer, looking at one of nature’s most ferocious beasts. And for some reason it made him think of his dad.

Although “dad” seemed like too familiar a name for the man who had sired him. In fact, he couldn’t remember a time when dad or daddy had seemed appropriate for Elijah. Sam’s tender years had been filled with terrors of the devil, nightmares about burning lakes and the endless screams of the damned. Countless nights, horrific visions of the end of the world had kept him from sleeping after he’d listened to his father preach.

Elijah’s brand of religion was all about fear and punishment. For some people that was great and exactly what they needed. For Sam, however, it had driven a wedge between him and his father. To a young boy, Elijah had seemed the embodiment of threat and punitive love. A tall man, a very large man to a small boy, whose face twisted in rage when he spoke of sin, whose voice thundered judgment over every peccadillo. For a sensitive child, it wasn’t the right brand of religion.

Sam shook his head and tried to banish thoughts of his father as he drove back down to Whisper Creek. Maybe it was time to consider taking a job elsewhere, because there was no way in a town this size that he wasn’t going to run into Elijah around nearly every corner.

He wasn’t sure he could deal with that; there was just too much bitterness.

5

The Whisper Creek airport, a small private landing strip, had become a beehive of activity. Fire-fighting planes lined the runway, loading the chemicals they would drop from the air. Smoke jumpers were beginning to arrive in their planes, as well.

Up near Edgerton Pass, a command post had been established. Volunteer firefighters were being gathered there to truck into the valley below and cut firebreaks. Up north, at the far end of the valley, similar crews were gathering to try to prevent the fire from spreading in that direction toward the ski resort towns.

The forest service had taken charge, but Sam was assigned as liaison with the local authorities. There were homes in the valley below, scattered miles apart, homes that would be threatened if the fire couldn’t be halted. It would be his job to ensure that any necessary evacuations were made.

At the moment, though, the threat was small and might be contained. Night was fast approaching, though, and the darkness would hinder their efforts.

The first chemical-bearing planes flew overhead as he stood there, then seemed to vanish into the thickening haze of smoke. Lack of wind hampered visibility by allowing the pall to hang thickly, even as it prevented the fire from spreading too swiftly to contain.

“That won’t last,” Sam remarked as one of the foresters commented that the wind was with them.

The guy—Sam remembered his name was George Griffin—smiled. “You some kind of pessimist?” George was a short, compact guy in his late forties or so, with steely hair and eyes that perpetually squinted.

“I’m a realist. That sun goes behind that mountain over there, we’re going to see some stiffening breezes.”

“Yeah.” George knew it as well as he did. “We always do. But right now, conditions are on our side. I’ll take every break I can get.”

Another dumper flew overhead with a loud drone. The first one was already on its way back for another load.

George spoke again. “We can’t send the jumpers in until morning. Not enough time before darkfall.”

Sam nodded. His mind strayed a moment, wondering what Mary was going to think when he didn’t show up to take her to dinner. Maybe he should have dispatch call her. Nah. Right now they were too busy fielding calls about the fire. It wasn’t a date, anyway. She would understand.

Just then the breeze kicked up. Not much, just enough to make him feel a chill through his light jacket. George looked at him. The sun was hanging heavy over the western peaks, a baleful red orb blurred by the smoke in the air.

George spoke. “I hope our luck isn’t running out.”

The trucks full of volunteers pulled out, heading down the narrow, winding road. Their job was to build a firebreak to protect the pass. The guys leaned out, hooting and hollering as they passed. Too high on excitement to realize what they were facing. Too macho to admit it.

The breeze suddenly gusted, carrying away the thickest smoke, leaving the fire visible. It had spread. An angry orange beast devouring the valley’s north end.

“Shit,” George swore under his breath.

Sam didn’t say anything. Even at this safe distance, he was suddenly a kid again, looking into the maw of hell. And even as he watched, hunching against the chilly bite of the wind, he saw another tree go up in a burst of hungry flames. Only it was a tree some distance from the fire. The gust had carried a spark hundreds of yards, starting yet another fire.

“Damn,” George said. “Damn.”

The beast had leaped its own perimeter, running free. George picked up his radio and began to bark rapid orders. They couldn’t wait for dawn. Not now.

Mary dressed for dinner with rather more care than was her custom in a town where casual dress reigned. She chose a green polished cotton dress and a pair of two-inch heels. Her hair, usually allowed to fall in waves below her shoulders, she decided to put up in a loose knot with a few long curls hanging free.