Lake of FIre Read online

  Wood and—

  Skull?

  Twenty feet from he stood, the skull lay resting on its back.

  Staring up.

  Devo waited a moment, studied the ground he was about to step over and then crossed the steps as if seconds mattered.

  They didn’t.

  The skull was burned. No hair, no eyes. Mouth open, teeth exposed. The smell of meat mixed with burned guts and the copper-sulfur pungent stew from blood and hair.

  In his first three years living in the woods, death was a daily issue. Rabbits, squirrels, deer and elk. There wasn’t a species of bird he hadn’t tasted.

  But a still-smoldering human carried a heavier definition of death.

  Why? Really, why?

  He already wanted to find a way to report that the fire wasn’t caused by lightning. He already wanted to report he’d found the spot where it started. He already knew he’d have to find a way to communicate to the big civilized world out there. And he knew the implication for his brothers and sisters in camp.

  In the homestead.

  Cinnamon. He would have to secure her approval. They were a group now.

  And groups meant one thing he hated more anything else.

  Politics.

  “What the hell?” he asked the charred skull. “What the hell? Tell me what happened, would you?”

  Chapter 3

  Wednesday Evening

  “As far as I’m concerned, pre-evacuation alerts or pre-evacuation orders or whatever they want to call it are a bunch of government bullshit. What the hell does it even mean? Get ready, you might lose it all so start packing the animals? Load the ark? Like they know what the hell direction the fire is going to go and they want to get the whole valley scared out of their gourds?”

  Earl McKee didn’t comment. He held court. He relished an audience. In this moment, he had a big one. Three sons—Daniel, Garrett, and Colin.

  Allison had fallen for the runt of the litter. Colin was the McKee most her size, below average in height and weight. She always found herself sitting up straight at the McKee’s dinner table. Dan and Garrett were twin towers of the family, an inch or two taller than Earl. You might not notice Colin at first, but when you watched his sure movements and started to make a list of all the things he could do—and do well—size didn’t matter.

  Along with the male offspring were Daniel’s wife, Gabriella, and Garrett’s girlfriend, Jayne. Jayne was the newest face. Allison met her for the first time this afternoon. Garrett hadn’t been super lucky in the girlfriend department and even now, Allison didn’t like his odds based on how Jayne had paid him any scant attention over the past couple of hours. The fourth female was Earl’s wife, the quiet force behind the McKee Empire, Charlotte. Char. Nobody’s fool. A Beagle puppy, Rex, was passed around for ear scratches and cuddles. He was twelve weeks old and his brown ears were the soft like velvet.

  In these gatherings, Allison tended to sit back and sip margaritas. Or straight tequila. She kept her head down in the swirling stew of McKee testosterone. The topic of the day generally involved some government screw-up. Earl’s prodding quizzes about her operation carried the not-so-gentle implication that this phase of her life was exactly that.

  They were gathered on the McKee’s back deck, a sprawling cedar beauty that served as the McKee exterior living room for three months of the year. It came with a gas grill the size of a small car. Plunked next to the grill, a well-stocked wet bar with one flavor of beer—Coors. Daniel McKee had opened his laptop on the long table. He was switching back and forth between Grand Junction and Denver stations. The news was all fire all the time, from the foothills west of Golden to a “monster” blaze near Paonia. On the size-of-fire scale, no doubt “monster” spoke of both sheer acreage consumed and its willingness to be tamed. News anchors must take a special class in learning when to assign such meaningless shorthand monikers. The beleaguered incident commanders stuck to droll facts-are-facts briefings. The wildfire she encountered wasn’t big enough to have joined the revolving news recaps.

  But it wouldn’t be long.

  The “pre-evacuation” order had come via recorded message on a reverse-911 call a half-hour earlier as the elk tenderloins were coming off the grill.

  “They let the Big Fish Fire burn in ’02 at first,” said Earl. “That whole wilderness, let-nature-do-its-thing approach didn’t quite work and when it threatened to come off federal land they stepped up and knocked it down.” Earl took a swallow from his glass of golden beer. “It’s mostly luck every time.”

  One positive about these visits was the welcome reminder that she had hooked the one offspring in the brood, Colin, who believed there were more questions than answers.

  Earl overstated to make his points, but had raised his sons to believe that all you needed was a firm grip on the reins to get what you wanted out of all people, animals and opportunities.

  “Well, finally,” said Daniel, punching up the volume on the laptop. Well-gnawed corn cobs were strewn on the table. Char produced a fresh pitcher of margaritas, made with fresh lime juice and triple sec. The pitcher was jammed with ice, but none of it would last long. Jayne helped herself to a fresh topper.

  Daniel flipped the laptop around for all to see and punched up the volume. The news anchor from Grand Junction held a grim stare: “…a new fire near Trapper’s Lake in the Flat Tops Wilderness is the latest threat, although the area is lightly populated. Roadblocks are being set up to limit access to the scenic by-way that runs across the north of the wilderness from Meeker to Yampa.”

  The McKee gathering grew church-like, except for Jayne. “Holy smokes, here we go. What’s gonna happen? Holy smokes. I knew it. I’ve been afraid of this all summer long. Oh my gawd.”

  Jayne’s flashy makeup was overdone for a simple backyard barbecue. She wore tight blue jeans and wedge shoes made of cork that jacked her up a couple inches. The blue jeans quit in time to reveal matching barb-wire tattoos circling each ankle. She hadn’t looked Garrett’s way in about an hour, but fiddled with a stone necklace draped where her purple top opened up. She was skinny in an unhealthy way and not one thing about her suggested what she might be good at, other than the obvious. Earl never missed a chance for an eyeful.

  “They are calling this the Rat Mountain Fire and winds in the area are making this situation unpredictable.” The news anchor was chatting, not reading from a script. He was weary. This was all so familiar. “There aren’t a lot of houses in the area, as we saw with the 600 hundred homes destroyed on the Front Range last week, but another fire there could discourage hunters from booking trips and hikers and campers, too. So to the folks who are trying to decide how best to prioritize all the battles around the state, you’ve got a tough job and limited resources.”

  Most summer nights in the mountains of Colorado required a light jacket. Something. But not this stretch and not this July. The deck came with a sun shade, but sweat came as natural as sitting. Allison estimated it was 90 with a gusty, dry breeze. Her smoky jean jacket was inside. She was down to her smoky riding shirt—blue checked, cotton long-sleeve—and her smoky Wrangler jeans. There was promise of a hot shower and she owed a check on Sunny Boy, who could use a scrub-down and de-smoking too. He was down with dozens of other horses in the thirsty, miserable grassland by the White River. Sunny Boy would no doubt have troubled dreams about their harrowing moments with the fire. So would she.

  “They won’t give a flying crap about Buford—you know it. I know it.” Earl leaned back, plucked a stubby cigar from a shirt pocket. He fired up the smoke with a silver lighter that snapped shut with metallic authority. The ritual required mere seconds. Even Jayne understood he hadn’t relinquished the floor. “They’ll evaluate it, then the governor will check his list of contributors and see who deserves the big jets and the slurry drops. So, Ms. Allison, how far up was this when you tangled with the fire?”

  Now Earl McKee was in decision-making mode and, at last, listening. “Five miles. Most like
ly less by now,” said Allison. Wolf criers and worries were Earl’s least favorite types, although he had a long list of least favorite types.

  “If it runs into where the Big Fish Fire took down the forest in oh-two, it’ll run out of gas.” This was Daniel, the oldest, not an Earl echo chamber. But all the sons seemed to defer, Garrett especially.

  “If it started near Rat Mountain, it could come down a three or four different ways,” said Garrett. “Wouldn’t mind if it stays put up high where it belongs.”

  “You had lightning last night?” said Earl.

  “More lightning than rain,” said Allison. Two flashes were so close she’d climbed out of her sleeping bag to check on Sunny Boy, who was plenty agitated. The smoke in the morning wasn’t a shock, given the conditions.

  “But you thought you could get around it?” said Garrett. “I would have just headed the other way.”

  Garrett tried a protective arm around Jayne, but the arm did nothing to close the awkward gap of space between them. Jayne had checked her watch five times in the last minute. She was cute in a small-town way, but she tried too hard. Allison slapped herself for judging. Jayne’s fourth cocktail was already half drained. With Daniel and Gabriella, who barely touched the beer she was poured, Allison smelled a touch of religions and morals—and the whiff reeked of steady judgment. With Garrett and Jayne, she wanted to know if they had met yesterday or last week and what online dating algorithm had a serious flaw.

  “I thought I had an angle around,” said Allison, making a point to minimize the number of words uttered aloud. “It was a calculated risk.”

  “Uh oh,” said Daniel. He’d switched from watching the laptop to staring down a spot on the ridge. They all followed his view.

  High to the south, a dull orange glow pulsed. Silent. Against the sweep of the dark night, the orange flicker wasn’t much but the flames waved hello. We are coming for you. The pulsing waves of fire were careless, off-hand and powerful. The edges of the light throbbed. Allison had no problem adding her own soundtrack, that exploding lollipop effect she knew so well. Someone produced a pair of binoculars from the kitchen—Char was a back-deck birder—and they took turns trying to discern its intentions.

  “She’s coming hard,” said Daniel, apparently missing the double meaning. “Mann Gulch

  In Montana? Killed all those smokejumpers back in the 1940s? They figure it was moving four to five miles per hour.”

  “She?” said Allison. “Why a she?”

  “Mother Nature,” said Earl. “All her kids—tornadoes, hurricanes, floods. They’re all a bitch.”

  “Hurricanes get boy names now. Andrew, Igor,” said Allison. “Sandy could have been either one.”

  “Government for you again,” said Earl. “Always trying to even things up, when everything was fine the way it was.” Earl took his turn with the binoculars. “Holy hell she looks angry.”

  Jayne stood up. “Let’s get out of here, please.” Allison appreciated Jayne’s sense of urgency. Jayne steadied herself with an arm on Garrett’s shoulder. Garrett took the opportunity to hold her but nothing about the gesture looked smooth. “That shit scares the daylights out of me.”

  Allison took pride from in her resistance to panic, but the fire challenged those instincts. In this case, drunk Jayne was dead on. The ranch house stood in the middle of a field on the northern banks of the White River. It was an idyllic spot close to Buford, nothing more than a cluster of closer-together houses, a gas station and where the road from New Castle ended. The McKee location afforded splendid views, but they were limited to this spot in the valley. The big problem with any fire was a stand of eight towering cottonwoods that protected the house, like bodyguards, to the south. The shade kept the house cool in the summer but could now play the role of deadly fuse. Candles to the cake, in this case old clapboard. At the rate the wildfire was cooking, it would spew red-hot embers that could skip ahead on the fire’s own pumping, angry thermals and then land willy-nilly in dry timber downwind. Fires had their own selection process for destruction and it lived somewhere between random and nonsense. Once the fire had worked its way down to the southern banks of the White River, the McKee Ranch would be ripe fuel. The fire wouldn’t pause to burp.

  The match head on the high horizon had swelled. Through the binoculars, the fire filled Allison’s view. Individual trees stood black against their tormentor. The sight churned up fresh memories, mere hours old.

  “Could work its way down overnight,” said Daniel. “And we know the state won’t attack anything up this way until tomorrow.”

  “At the earliest,” said Garrett.

  Daniel stayed at the table, monitoring the laptop. Gabriella and Charlotte busied themselves with the clean-up. Allison knew they would wonder why she didn’t join the chore.

  How about this once? Channel your inner Trudy, Allison chided herself. Your best friend would never let a kitchen-related task happen without pitching in so couldn’t she get off her ass?

  Allison gave Colin a high sign and a smile like “watch this.” She stacked dirty plates and grabbed empty dishes in an ungainly pile. Her arrival in the kitchen was greeted warmly, though Allison worried she smelled too much like a week of camping. Or a month. No doubt she was spraying a scent like adrenaline-tinged sweat shaken with eau de forest fire. Neither Char nor Gabriella were prone to fingernail polish or fussiness, but the big gatherings at least called for a clean shirt and a comb through the hair. A look. Gabriella wore crisp new blue jeans. Charlotte—Char—sported a bright turquoise top. Nearing sixty, Char was a feisty presence who put her head down and did one thing at a time and did it well. Char managed chores around the ranch—working the vegetable gardens, keeping the house ship-shape, keeping the family well fed and attending to a variety of church and school organizations in Meeker, a booming metropolis compared to Buford’s blip.

  Char stood at the sink, conducting the orchestrated clean-up attack. Gabriella hand-dried bowls and pots with a towel. Through the kitchen window, Allison could see Garrett with his arm around Jayne at the deck’s railing, staring up the valley. Her attempts to keep her distance from Garrett were now a constant source of amusement and Allison almost felt sorry for the guy.

  Inside, Char spoke first. “If he decides to go, we’ve got a lot of animals to haul out and a ton of stuff to pack. But he might stay and fight.”

  “You don’t have a say?” Gabriella was a dark, beautiful woman whose Mexican-born parents were successful owners of a restaurant in Glenwood Springs, El Conejo. Gabriella was five months pregnant with the McKee’s first grandchild. The attraction between Daniel and Gabriella was obvious—her beautiful golden-brown skin, dark eyes like black beads, and a trim figure that sported the baby bulge like an appealing element of femininity. A temporary one. Pregnancy wouldn’t change Gabriella. Even Allison wondered what it would be like to kiss her sleek mouth—sharp corners and screaming white teeth. It was easy to think some beauty might rub off.

  “A say? He lets me think so.” Char smiled.

  “This summer is terrible,” said Gabriella. She and Daniel had made the trek up from Denver for a week’s stay at the ranch. “You get the feeling the whole state is on fire. Or about to go up. Makes you appreciate the normal years.”

  “Just don’t mention global warming,” said Char. “Not tonight. Not ever.”

  Allison knew Earl McKee wasn’t the last non-believer in Colorado. There were bunches of them out there who walked around with the old ostrich mentality down pat. It was all a government hoax or a longer-than-normal shift in temperatures. By now the non-believers had dived deep underground, but they were out there crawling around in their secret tunnels and meeting up to mock what was happening to the water supply and the coastline. Her client base of hunters included the occasional denier. The idea that anyone could dismiss global warming was the equivalent, Allison thought, of dismissing east as the direction where the sun would rise. In all ways she could think to measure and weigh over the
past years suggested that Colin was perfect long-term material. The lone complicating element was how much she might be expected to interact and tangle with the McKee family as time went on. Tongues could be bitten for only so long before they started to bleed. Maybe she needed to homestead with Colin in backwater Alaska. Or the Himalayas.

  Dishes clacked into the washer. Gabriella wiped down the half-acre of counter. Everything about the house was double or triple in size and scale. Daniel showed up carrying a two stray beer mugs and his laptop, tucked under one arm. Jayne had sat by her margarita, alone. Her glass had magically refilled itself. Garrett remained by the railing.

  “I guess that huge fire down south has got Paonia in the crosshairs so the Denver station is going to full-time coverage,” said Daniel. Garrett drifted into the kitchen, Jayne on his fingertips, not even palm to palm. Jayne looked woozy. Daniel was the better groomed of the two older brothers—a fresh shave and bit of polish. He cared about his shirts and hair. The look said he cared. Garrett kept scruff and country grunge alive. He was prone to plaid flannel shirts and his jeans looked tired and ill-fitting. He had long, scraggly hair. Now that Daniel and Colin had moved off, Garrett helped around the ranch, home to the fine horse collection and a large head of beef cattle kept on separate sides of the property. Garrett could strap on a distant gaze like he had taken full advantage of Colorado’s legalization of weed. She hadn’t had much reason to nail down the details of Colin’s two brothers—in part because Colin deflected probes on the general topic. “They already lost some ranches and barns outside Paonia and it’s a skip and a jump into town.”

  Allison snuck a glance at the big picture window over the sink. The wedge of orange jabbing its way down the ridge had tripled in size in the last ten minutes.

  “Thanks for all the help,” said Char. “Many hands, you know.”

  “No problem,” said Daniel. An old, tired joke. “I needed another drink after all that work.”

  “I’m afraid sons one and two learned the old school separation of roles from their father,” said Char by way of explanation to Allison. “You got the one who doesn’t draw distinctions.”