Take a Chance on Me(90)

Darek had always preferred to eat his meals in the open air, the heat and odors of too many ripe bodies conspiring to steal his appetite.

Along the rear of the trailer were maps duct-taped to the side, next to whiteboards with weather and incident updates, all protected by a long yellow tarp, propped at lengths with poles.

Darek parked in the grass, finding a space beside a beater pickup amid the forty or so other vehicles, and climbed out, adjusting his cap. He felt a bit naked without his orange hard hat, his yellow NFS shirt. And nothing of soot on his face.

He found Jed standing with a woman wearing a bandanna tied over her long, dark hair, a pair of aviator sunglasses protecting her eyes. They were staring at a map of the area as she ran her finger along a red line drawn in wax pencil.

Darek stepped up to the map, his breath catching at how the fire had grown, how close the red line came to the edge of his family’s property. He must have made a noise because Jed turned.

“Hey, Dare. Good to see you. I was hoping to stop by and thank your mom for all the cookies.”

“She made more. They’re in the Jeep.”

“God bless her. This is Katie Whipple—we call her Whip. She’s got a fire management degree, is working on one of the crews.” He turned back to the map.

“So as you can see, right now the fire’s only about 30 percent contained, with around ninety thousand acres gone. We hoped to steer it west, to Two Island Lake, figuring that was big enough to shut it down.” He pointed to a lake eight miles northwest of Evergreen. “We’ve spent quite a bit of energy to cut in line on this fire service road here, connecting Pine and Two Island.” Now he traced a green line about two miles from camp. “We started a back burn, managed to destroy most of the fuel to the east of this line. Unfortunately . . .” Jed took off his hat, wiped his arm across his brow. “Last night, the fire jumped the line right here.”

He pointed to a narrow lip of earth between the fire line and a tiny outlet of Two Island Lake. “The crews had some torching, and with the wind whipping up, we’re seeing significant growth just south of Two Island.”

South of Two Island. On the way to Evergreen.

Darek studied the map, tracing the path of the fire. “There’s a lot of blowdown debris still not cleaned up in there. And that’s getting awfully close to a few outlying cabins, not to mention the county group home, the Garden. They might need to evacuate.”

“We’ve alerted the Deep Haven sheriff’s office of that possibility. Meanwhile, we’re going to head south and see if we can’t reinforce the line, maybe start another back burn, turn the fire west toward Dick Lake.”

“That might work.” Darek debated, then added, “But with the winds out of the northeast, if we don’t turn the fire, it will continue to push south. It’ll burn all the way to Evergreen Lake.”

He left the rest unsaid but saw in the rise and fall of Jed’s chest that he’d connected the dots.

If it skirted the lake, nothing stood between the flames and the village of Deep Haven.

Except . . . “What about reinforcing the line here, between Evergreen and Thompson Lake?” Darek pointed to the lake just beyond Evergreen to the west, little more than a droplet, but not densely populated. “There’s a fire road, and if the fire turns south, we could pinch it west, toward Thompson. Eventually it would run into the Cascade River.”

Jed glanced at him, frowned. “That fire road is south of your place, Darek. A back burn might take out your property.”

“Not if I finish the dozer work around the property. We’ll start the back burn here, just north of Evergreen, and drive the fire west, to Junco. That way, if the fire jumps the river, it will have nothing to consume. It’ll starve.”

“You’ve dozed around your property?”

“I still have a couple miles left, but I can finish that, start cutting a line here. And if I got a crew down there, we could get a line cut in maybe forty-eight hours.” He picked up a green wax pencil and drew on the map. It seemed like such a tiny line of defense, but if they cut through Gibson’s old cattle pasture, then widened the fire road, started a back burn, and met the fire head-on . . .

“It could work,” Whip said. “But frankly, that’s a lot of what-ifs to apply to our limited manpower. We already have a natural fire line here, at Junco. I say we put our manpower here, starve the fire, and push it back toward Dick Lake.” She drew her own green line like a net around the fire.

“Not a bad plan if the wind is from the south, but—”

“Who are you again?” Whip asked, rounding on him. “I’m sorry, I’m not trying to be rude, but we’ve been working this fire for about ten days now. Unless you want to grab a hard hat and a Pulaski, you’re just a civilian looking over our shoulders. Let the NFS handle this. Trust me; we’ve got it.”