“Where’s Jack?” she asked.
“Mel,” he said. “We can’t find him, Mel. We looked all night.”
“What are you talking about?” she asked with a nervous laugh. “You lost him?”
“They were evacuating the area and he didn’t come out. There was a sudden explosion. Fire swept over the road.” He grabbed her upper arm. “Mel, he might have been trapped. Three firefighters were lost in a blast of fire when the wind shifted.”
“But not Jack,” she said, shaking her head. Her eyes were perfectly clear. “No, Jack’s coming.”
“Baby, I don’t know.” He pulled her into his arms, but she kept hers at her sides. “I don’t think so.”
Preacher came up the steps. His eyes were bloodshot, weary and sad. His face was covered with soot, as were his turnouts. He stood before her and hung his head as if ashamed. She knew him so well—he wouldn’t be able to live with himself if he thought he let Jack down.
“It’s okay. He’s coming,” she said. “He’s going to be pissed, but he’s coming.”
One by one they approached her, touching her, hugging her, some of them with tears running out of their eyes. Before long the general was on the porch and, seeing the men, went to rouse Muriel and the younger women. But Mel was unmoved. “No,” she said over and over. “You don’t understand. If anything had happened to him, I’d know it. I’d feel it. He’s coming.”
“We’re going back out there after some fluids and rest,” Paul said. “We’ll figure out what happened. No matter what, we’ll bring him back.” Then, hanging his head, he walked into the bar. It wasn’t long before the sound of Brie’s cry split the dawn and caused Mel to stiffen her spine. But she grabbed on to Joe’s arm as he passed and said, “Tell her. Her brother’s all right. He’s coming. Tell her.”
Joe pulled Mel against him and held her. “Honey, I’m not sure about that.”
“You don’t understand,” she said. No one understood. If Jack were gone, she would feel it—there would be a deep, dark, hollow place in her. For just a second she was reminded that when her first husband, Mark, had been killed, she hadn’t had any kind of premonition. There had been no warning, no deep feeling. But she banished the thought—it was different with Jack. It had always been different with Jack. “He’s on his way.”
Nineteen
Jack sat by the side of a deserted farm road at dawn, his ankle a mess, his face scorched. He was dehydrated, weak. His turnouts were covered with flame retardant, peppered with little holes from flying sparks, and he wondered how long he should rest before he just started walking again. Make that limping—he’d wrecked the ankle pretty bad. The area had been completely evacuated and it was unlikely anyone would be driving along this road until either Forestry or Cal Fire came this way. By that time he could be passed out, if not dead.
Then, against all odds, he saw the dust from a moving vehicle. He dragged himself to his feet, but he was dizzy and wobbly, his dehydration made worse by the dryness from smoke in the air. He placed himself in the center of the road. He decided he’d rather get run over than passed by. Who would pass someone in firefighter’s turnouts? Only the devil himself.
Then the devil himself in a dark pickup with tinted windows came to a stop just inches from him. “Son of a bitch,” Jack muttered to himself, his mouth dry as cotton.
The grower who’d crossed his path too often in the last couple of years opened the driver’s door and stepped out. “Jesus. You’re like a bad dream,” the guy said to Jack. “You look like hell.”
“Yeah? You’re not exactly my favorite person, either,” Jack returned thickly.
“How bad are you hurt?”
“Thirsty,” Jack said. “Just thirsty. Just let me siphon out of the radiator tank and you can go,” he said, insane though the notion was. He was insanely thirsty.
The guy, minus the Shady Brady and a little smudged with what could have been ash, sighed deeply and walked around the front of the truck. He opened the passenger door and said, “Get in.”
“You got water?” Jack asked.
“Yeah! I got water! Just get in!” Jack limped toward the truck. “You said you weren’t hurt,” Shady Brady said, eyeing the limp.
“I’m mostly just thirsty,” Jack said, walking very badly.
“You break it?”