The gentle sound of rolling water reaches my ears. Apple Creek is just ahead. Dad and Sam murmur to each other about the direction of the wind. Sam says it’s against us and likely to remain so.
Dirt turns to sand under our feet. Dad and Sam lead us into the shallows where the water is just a few feet deep. The creek is no wider than a stone’s throw here. Anna May hikes up her skirt for the crossing.
My thoughts are chattering to themselves inside my head: Did Caleb Madliner really kill his own father? If he didn’t, that left just one other person who might have . . . and she was lying on the couch back at Stairways.
We come out of Apple Creek into Knee-Deep Meadow and a terrible quiet.
There is no singing of crickets in the long grass. No bullfrog lullaby or symphony of cicadas. But faint on the warm wind there comes the gasping breath of fire, the snickering of flames in the thickets.
A blanket of orange fog rolls, ghostlike, toward us. The firefighters spread out in a long line and, at a signal from Chief Coop, they bend and begin to dig, their spades biting into the earth, opening the gash in the meadow that will become for us our trench and first line of defense.
Behind us is Apple Creek. Behind that is Stairways.
Chapter 23
THE BATTLE OF APPLE CREEK
Never thought I’d go to hell. This night, hell comes to me.
Knee-Deep Meadow is on fire.
The honeysuckle is on fire.
The trees along Hopkins Road are on fire, burning like torches.
The butterfly weed burns, spewing sparks and choking black smoke. And beneath all that smoke, stealing across parched earth and dry grass, is a wall of hideous yellow flames that marches toward us, roaring like a wild animal, whipped by the eastern wind that blows and blows and won’t stop blowing.
The firefighters dig their ditch from Hopkins Road in the south to the field’s far end in the north, anchoring it at a bend of Apple Creek. The first fingers of fire rush against it, slip along its edges, devouring the high grass, furiously seeking some way across. From behind us in Apple Creek, the thump-thump of a pump starts, and now that hose is giving answer to those awful flames, spraying cold water into that shimmering wall and soaking the grasses before it. Clouds of steam leap into the air. There is a great hissing sound, like some enormous snake is writhing in the burning butterfly weed.
The men run back and forth before that crackling wall of red flames, their hunched shapes dragging lines of hose, swinging shovels, flinging dirt. My father and my brothers work with them, stabbing the earth in silent fury, their skin slick with sweat as they hurl earth in their desperate struggle to smother the onrushing fire.
Sam throws bucket after bucket of black creek water, passed up by Frankie, Anna May, and me. He tosses them faster than we can fill them, pitching the empty pails down in fury and shouting for more.
All my life I have heard how dangerous fire can be. It can move in ways you don’t expect. Sneak up on you. Burst upon you. Trap you. Fire can travel underground, burning through tree roots you did not even know were there until the tree behind you cracks into whistling flame. Fire can jump. It can travel through the air, eating whatever dust or bits of leaves might float there. I remember all these things as I pass the leaky pails.
Like all living things, fire must eat to stay alive. If we can hold it up long enough, it will burn up everything there is to burn. It will starve itself out. But first we’ve got to hold it. And if our trench fails, Apple Creek will be our last line of defense.
Chief Coop runs up to Dad.
“Fall back! It’s too hot here!”
And we do. With our shovels and our buckets we retreat across Apple Creek and, shaking and coughing, watch the fire pounce upon our thin, jagged line of trench. Our little platoon has fought bravely. Now we see if the trench can hold.
For a moment it seems it will. Then a patch of grass suddenly bursts into flames on our side of it. Then another, and another. We’ve lost. The fire has jumped our ditch.
Chief Coop shouts for us to spread out, to watch for fresh flames on our side of the creek.
We do. And that’s how I find myself walking upstream next to Pete. He’s quit his shirt in that heat, left it somewhere on the opposite bank. His face is flushed and his cheeks are black from ash. He smells like smoke.
“Still with me, Jack?” he asks in a ragged voice.
“Still with you.” I’ll stay with him forever.
“Good boy! We’ll lick this thing yet. Keep your eyes open!” Pete tells me as we thread along the bank, between tree trunks. The fire is almost upon Apple Creek now. Black water reflects its shivering flames. There’s a chattering sound from the fire now. Like rain. Funny. Fire that sounds like rain.