Starvation Ridge: Abide the Fire -- Chapter Eleven

 

Vernie fell again, his legs turned to jelly from heat and exhaustion. Errol and Wilson stripped off his tools, weapons and pack, and lifted him to his feet. Billee, who had forged ahead, turned back to face them, illuminated by the flaring of gases in the cloud behind them. Trees all around were bending as the fire fed itself air.

    Wilson pondered for a moment whether to try for the saddle of Ridge or follow the river toward Bridge. As he thought, the wind seemed to intensify; a branch fell heavily somewhere. The roar of the burn deepened. As one, the men turned to see what Billee, now open-mouthed, was watching.     

    A tower of flame rose from the mountain they had just descended. The fire was not only torching trees and everything else on the heights, but lifting much of the fuel into itself to burn in the upper air. From the looming mushroom-shaped cap of the steam-and-flame-laced column, blackened sticks and even small rocks showered down, glittering with sparks, creating spot fires all along the broad slope behind them. A snake-like shape fell from above, smoking, close by, and set a cedar tree alight.

    "Blow-up," said Wilson, matter-of-factly. "Never mind Ridge. We'll make for Lawson's."

    Billee broke her reverie. "There's nothing there!"

    "That's the idea! The whole place already burned once, and there's still the cellar."

    Billee scooped up Vernie's things and led out. Half-walking, half-carrying Vernie, the men followed her down to the almost-dry river, crossed the water ankle-deep, scrambled up the other side, and emerged from the cottonwoods into such daylight as the offered. In less than half an hour, they came to the burned-over farmyard and shell of the house with its hollowed-out stone walls, and raced up the steps.

    Within the walls, the floor had collapsed, and burned joists and the like lay in a tangle, with a few weeds sprouted among them. Wilson and his crew from Ridge, during the New Moon War, had attacked Wolf's rear guard here, sequestered such things as could easily be carried away, and set the place on fire to deny the bandits a provisioned retreat.

With care, realizing that much of the wreckage was capable of giving way beneath them, the crew picked their way across the charred heap of timbers to the staircase, only partly burned, that led to the cellar. Wilson and Errol helped Vernie, who had recovered somewhat; Billee turned back once more to see what she might and report it to the others. 

    The great fire had slowed upon reaching the river. Cottonwoods and willows had scorched but were steaming more than burning. Horsetails and nettles had merely wilted; but sparks from the timber to the south had showered onto the open field with its dry grasses; and what amounted to a prairie fire was advancing upon the homestead. She ran down the stone steps.

    Space among shattered Mason jars and splintered crates had been made for Vernie. Wilson and Errol, breathing heavily, sat at his head and feet, their backs to the pantry shelves. Billee told them what she had seen.

    "All to the good," replied Wilson.

    "How so?" wheezed Errol, as he dug out a bottle of the slimy but now much-appreciated creek water for Vernie. 

    "The grass won't be enough fuel to cook us, down here; th' wind will carry th' smoke away from us for a couple of hands yet; and as far as th' Creek's chances go, this valley will hold up things for a day or two. We might make it and th' Creek might make it."

    "What if the wind changes and we get smoked out?"

    "We might have to bury our faces in some of that dirt over there and breathe through it till th' smoke lifts. Might not even need to, though."

    "When can we leave?" asked Billee.

    "No way to know. If th' fire goes down to th' big valley, we might be able to follow it round to Bridge and get home tomorrow. If it goes th' other way, same plan." 

    "And if it goes both ways?"

    "Still same plan. Th' main thing is, we got down out of the woods. No way we were gonna survive up there."

Vernie passed the bottle to Wilson, who took a few swallows and gingerly wiped at his swollen lips. "Bee, ya done good up above Blue Creek. Real good."

    If Billee's face had not been as sooty as her hands, he might have noticed her blush. 

    A slight noise above drew their attention. On the top step stood a singed bobcat. It looked as if it were considered whether to join them in their hideaway.

:::

Lockerby snapped the latch open and swung out the rear door of the LAV. Wolf, with a steel ring round his neck that was chained to the wall, sat up, blinking. He was naked, and sweat gleamed on every part of his body.

    Lockerby saluted, sardonically. "Hey, fella; change out yer chamberpot?"

    Wolf, who saw no advantage in his first impulse, which would be to throw the bucket's contents over Lockerby, complied. "Where are we?" he croaked.

    "Yer parked in th' shade till th' heat lets up some. Everybody's doin' siesta; even th' Riders."

    "I c'n hear that. I mean location."

    "High ground and gnarly; slow goin'. Found an old signpost for ya." Lockerby took the night soil bucket and set it down, then picked up the sign and showed it to Wolf, whom he knew could read.

    "'Drain,'" said Wolf dully.

    "Drain what?"

    "It was a town. We're close to th' North-Runnin' River now."

    "Cool. So how close are we to Eugene?"

    "Not so far. Two more ghost towns first. Th' good news is, it opens up more ahead and flattens out th' rest of th' way. Th' bad news is, there'll be more trees 'n such in th' pavement."

    "So, long as we don't have any more breakdowns with th' Cat for awhile, what? One day? Two?"

    "Two days out."

    "Uh huh; and where's that old gun shop you're takin' us to?"

    "'Bout three, four days past Eugene."

     "Anything we should know 'bout Eugene, bud?"

    "Naw, it's like Roseburg, grown over, only worse. They was some kind 'o rad-bomb used on it by th' Chinese. Stay to th' right of th' river 'n don't eat th' plants."

    Though he was on his guard, Lockerby looked on his old friend with kindness. "You've been a good man, Wolf, an' yer still a good man. I hope we c'n all get past this situation, come a day."

    "That'd sure suit me, Locky. Only thing'd beat these chains for comfy'd be no chains, 'n that is a fact."

    ''K, well, gonna leave this door open, give ya air; we'll get rollin' about – " Lockerby held out his hand, fingers together, at arm's length toward the Western horizon, beneath the red and glowering sun. 
" – two hands."

    "Lockie, a question."

    "Hmm?"

    "Who 'n hell has been drivin' this thing?"

    "New kid."

    "Uh huh. Could ya teach him a little more about smooth clutching? I don't have much tail bone left."
    Lockerby grinned. "I think Mullins will be drivin' this afternoon. You'll be able to catch some shut-eye." He picked up the bucket and walked away in the dim red light.

    "Huh." Wolf sipped at the bowl of water Lockerby had also brought. If the evening cooled enough he would try to do some calisthenics; if nothing else, hold a length of chain between his outstretched hands and pull, counting to a hundred. Got to stay in shape. I ever get the chance, I just might kill ever' one of these sonsabitches with my bare hands.

:::

Jorj thought that, if he were the swearing kind, he'd swear now. Deerie was not really up to this kind of thing.

    "What is the matter, Mr. Jorj?" asked Bolo.

    Jorj looked at him. Bolo, the biggest fellow in the tribe, had tremendous strength but was only moderately useful. One had to tell him "Go left" to have him turn right, and use exactly backward hand motions to get him to tie ropes or such. A gentle giant with his brains in backwards.

    "We have to pull this tree to get through here, and I'm tired, Deerie's tired, and you don't look so hot yourself." He'd attacked the fir with the dozer blade, skinning the bark away, but it was uphill, and Deerie, a mere three-roller, was not up to it. A foul stench arose from the tractor's ancient joints. Can't run iron machinery in bear grease, anyhow. The poor thing's dying. He looked again at the tree, which was already weeping resin from the wound.

    "Mr. Jorj, I could use the axe."

    Jorj glanced at the trailer, parked a ways back, piled high with smashed two-by-sixes. "Thank you, Mr. Bolo, but that's an all-day proposition. And we've scouted right and left. If we can get through here, we'll be down into that valley of super-heroes of yours before the day gets too hot to drive. Let's go get some more wood first. Then we'll take this choker and set it around the base of the tree."

    The choker was a steel cable, with a loop at one end, a knob at the other, and a sliding hollowed-out iron block on it, known as a "choker bell." After the cable was thrown around a log, tree, or stump, or even a boulder, the knob could be snapped into the bell, and the noose thus formed could be drawn tight by pulling on the loop. Bolo knew enough about the choker to set it properly, but he would have to be talked through the rest of the procedure.

    "Now take this and put it on the loop." Bolo grabbed the iron-shanked single-block pulley and climbed up to the tree. "No, no, Mr. Bolo, not the wheel. The top part there – okay, let's call it the bottom part. There's a pin in it. Pull the pin out and and it opens up – like a padlock – and wrap that thing around the end of the loop."

    Bolo tried, but Jorj could see that he thought he should try to stuff the entire bight of the loop into the shackle. "Wait, I'm coming up." Jorj climbed down from the torn leatherette seat of the Deere.
    "I'm sorry, Mr. Jorj." 

    "Don't be. You've worked d... – awfully – hard the last couple of days, and all night too." Jorj snapped the shackle onto the choker. "Where's th' pin?"

    "The pin?" Bolo looked chagrined.

    They sought for it among the sword ferns and duff for what seemed an eternity, but the pin was no longer a part of their world.

    "Never mind. See that hemlock over there, good ways off? Get the other choker, set it there, and come back for th' wire rope." 

    "Yes, sir."

    "No, wait."

    Bolo stopped in mid-stride, choker in hand.

    "Lessee," said Jorj, speaking mostly to himself. "Tree wants to go straight down hill. So Deerie's gotta go off over here and pull that-away. A little steep. But doable. So, wire rope from drawbar to hemlock, up to th' fir, down to another anchor tree. Deerie heads downhill over here, pulls tree thataway." He focused on Bolo. "K, we're gonna single-block in two places and let's hope th' wire rope will reach that maple over there." 

    "Yes, sir."
    It seemed to Jorj to take forever to lay out the wire rope and the blocks. And the day was already shaping up hot. From time to time he glanced at the chimney pipe and listened to the little engine chuffing away on high idle. Deerie was not efficient in hot weather.

    "What about the pin, sir?"

    "Bolo, I'm proud of you for remembering that. Good boy." Jorj watched Bolo's face break into a rare, shy smile at the slight praise. "Here's what we do. You got muscle, I got tools." Jorj tipped Deerie's seat forward and extracted a box wrench.  "Pull that bolt over there; I think it might just be the right thread to fit that shackle."

    Bolo took the wrench and stared at the bolt head.

    "Here; snap it on here like this and then pull the handle towards ya."

    "Oh." Bolo pushed.

    "No, pull."

    "Oh." Bolo pulled. The long-rusted bolt complained loudly, then the bolt head sheared; it and the wrench came away together.

    "D... – doggone it, Bolo."

    "I'm sorry, Mr. Jorj."

    "Not your fault. Next one."

    The bolt extracted, they completed their layout. At Jorj's direction, Bolo slid the choker as high on the fir tree as he could reach, then scrambled down the slope and climbed aboard Deerie.

Bolo raised the blade a bit by cranking on the come-along that was hooked to the right front post of the cage, and Jorj tapped the throttle bar several times, trod on the clutch, pushed the gear shift into the lowest gear, and shoved both levers forward. With a lurch that felt frighteningly tippy, Deerie snuffled off along the mountain's slope, gouging away a thin rind of dirt and brush with the lower right corner of the blade. The wire rope lifted itself from the forest floor, carrying fern fronds and dirt. It pulled taut, singing. 

    All three trees shivered. Deerie's tracks chewed up duff, then hit mineral soil and dug in. The little tractor began to slip downhill. Five more feet to the left, and they would be entangled with the wood trailer.

    Bolo leaned out as far to the right as he could, as if to try to keep Deerie upright with his own center of gravity. 

    Jorj reached over and tugged him back onto the seat. "That wire rope is bad frayed, Bolo; if you are out there when it parts, it can whip you to pieces."

    Deerie lurched forward again, and Jorj, looking over his shoulder through the diamond mesh of the steel cage, could see that the wire rope had sagged again among the ferns.

    "We got 'er, we got 'er!" he sang out. 

    Bolo began to climb down from the seat for a better view.

    "No, no, stay here! Stay in th' cage!" 

    Bolo complied. 

    The fir tree moaned as it leaned downhill, following the insistent tug of the cables. The massive fan of roots on the tree's uphill side rose into the air, carrying a portion of the forest floor, ferns and all, with them. The roots moved slowly and majestically, but the treetop swung quickly through the canopy of the forest, snapping off its own and other trees' branches as it went, flinging them far and wide. One of these landed on Deerie's roof and skittered across it, to land on the engine cover. The ground shook beneath the tractor as the tree struck the earth, covering Deerie's tracks where she had come up the trail earlier in the day.

    Jorj grinned at Bolo. "Good one, huh?"

    "Mr. Jorj, I have never seen such."

    "Well, we never had to do it before. Lord be praised, it worked out. Let's get that mess off th' hood and stoke the fuel pot. Then we'll pick up all our d... – our toys and be on our way." He pulled back on the levers, grinning.

:::

Ellen Murchison leaned on her walking stick and raised the binoculars to her eyes with her free hand. As she scanned the gathering smoke cloud behind Ridge, she thought of the strange, sad battle in the night, in this very spot, that had broken her health.

She'd had a relatively small wound. Back in the day, it would not have gotten her much of a triage ticket. Young Huskey had saved her, hammering that stranger's skull in with a hatchet, but the damage was done. No, not really. It was the cold rain, afterward; stumbling down a mountain in the dark for hours is not really suitable for women –or men, she thought wryly – in their sixties. It's not for anybody. Not to take anything away from poor Marcee, she thought. But we really don't have medicine any more. We barely even have soap. She wrinkled her nose as she became aware, once again, of her own body odor. At least, with the new no-hair hairdo, she didn't have to smell her own unwashed head.

    "I want to thank you again for bringing me up here," she said to the young man standing beside her, without taking her eyes from the glasses. "It's been a while."

    "Thank you, ma'am, it was not a problem."

    Neel Perkins would not have been counted a man in her generation, she realized. He would be – what? A 'seventh grader', with four or five years of childhood remaining to him. Yet here he was, standing with his hand resting easily on the pommel of his sword. He and Elberd, the youth whose face Elsa and Karen had sewn up the day after that battle, had brought her to Ball Butte, sometimes drawing her in a garden cart, sometimes offering a steadying hand as she staggered forward along the steepening trail. It had been a long journey, begun by the thin light of a faint moon, – and ending in what would surely have been a blistering sunrise but for the everlasting smoke. It was exhausting, and not a little dangerous, to climb the Butte under these conditions; a shift in the smoke could smother their position and make much too much work for her fragile lungs. But no other position in the region offered such a commanding view of the surroundings, and, besides, the lookout had a working telephone.
    The youth broke into her reverie. "Stinks, doesn't it?"

    She smiled. "Me, you, or both?"

    Oh, not us, ma'am; the fires. It's like burning a pile of leaves, but something else, too."

    "You're right. Leaves have a kind of clean smell. Or so we tend to think. This is leaves and such, but also duff, moss, lichens – bugs, animals, feathers, creek beds – dirt. It's the earth burning; that's what you smell. Other things, too. There was a lot of plastic left lying about, Before."

    "Why is there so much fire, ma'am?" 

    "Well, the world's a hotter place than it once was. Not all the time; you might be old enough to remember the Big Winter – "

    "Yes, ma'am. Kinda."

    "– but, anyway, now we get more record highs, as they used to say, than record lows. When a big high – unusual hot weather – comes in summer, or even spring or fall, it dries out everything. Dry stuff, you know, burns better than wet stuff. Trees are wet inside; they are a kind of standing water tank, really. But they can dry out, too, if things go like this long enough. And about half the forests around here are dead wood, too, from bark beetles, which have taken over because of the – usually – warmer winters. Dead trees make really good fuel." 

    "What made the world warmer?"

    She lowered the binoculars and looked at him. This is a smart kid. He asks good leading questions. "Well, you've farmed at Tomlinson's. Did you work with the cold frames?"

    "The window boxes along the south slope? Yes, ma'am."

    "How do they work?"

    "Dad says the sunlight comes in through the glass but not all of it comes back out, so it heats up the air and stuff inside."

    Ellen smiled grimly. "Mm-hmm, same thing. Air is like glass, in its way. Visible light goes in through the glass, but infrared, which is a part of light you can't see – without help – can't all come back out with the rest. So it gets converted into heat, locally. They found out, many years ago, that some gases in the air act more like glass than others. There's more of these gases in the air than there used to be, so the sun heats us up more than it used to."

    "If you say so, ma'am. But why would there be more 'gases' now than then?"

    "Ever heard of coal, oil? Methane?"

    "Oil, yes ma'am. If you mean like 'gasoleen'?"

    "Very good! Out there on that highway, and all around the Creek, you've seen machinery that's not going anywhere. Cars, trucks, buses, tractors, lawnmowers. To use them, we burned oil – which we got from underground, where it didn't off-gas much. Burn oil, or coal, or methane, and you add heat-trapping gases to the air we breathe. The air everything depends on."

    "Doesn't the forest fire do that?"

    "Well! Keep it up and Dr. Savage will grab you and make a scientist of you."

    "She's already interested in my sister. I'd rather be a soldier."

    "Hmh. Well, yes, fire puts the stuff – most of it used to be called carbon dioxide – in the air, but it's nowadays mostly from wood, which took it out of the air. So that was a kind of a circle of stuff. When you get it from underground you add in more than can be circulated."

    "But, ma'am, isn't the world a big place? How could we do all this ourselves?"

    "There used to be a lot more of us than there are now, young man. I'd be surprised if there are more than ten thousand people in the whole of Oregon, as this area used to be called, and I remember when there were close to five million. Those machines out there, on the freeway?"

    "Yes, ma'am?"

    "In my world, my world that died, there were more than a billion of those. Each one doing more to the air than the kitchen chimney at Tomlinson's. Along with locomotives, airplanes, ships, buildings, you name it, we had it. And the breathable air over the whole planet, really, is only about four thousand meters deep."

    Neel was not sure of the meaning of half her words, but he'd learned to let most of that slide. "Why'd we do it, then?"

    "Everyone wanted to live comfortably, Mr. Neel. Everyone wanted to live comfortably. Do you see the old yellow bus at Mary's?"

    "At 'New Ames?' Yes, ma'am, I can see it from here."

    "That thing had a two-hundred-and-eighty horsepower engine. That means it could do the work of, I think, a little over two thousand humans. Ever heard of slavery?" His deep brown eyes met hers. A man's gaze.

"Yes, ma'am. My mom tells me most of my ancestors were slaves."

    "Well, there you go. Getting thirty kids to school five days a week was the equivalent of eighty thousand slave-hours of work. And that was only one of a billion such machines. And that's why the world is on fire today."

    She handed Neel the binoculars. The distant Cascades could not be seen at all, but Ridge, Maggie's Hill, the Great Valley, and the Creek were all visible from here, though smudged. Because Ridge and the Butte both swung in toward the Creek near Bridge, they could see all the way to Old Ames up Starvation Creek. "Tell me what your young eyes see."

    "Nothing much doing at Ridge. It looks different to me than a few days ago, though."

    "They have been cutting trees to get fuel away from the Door."

    "Oh." He swung round to his left. "There's someone heading for Bridge. On a horse!"

    "Which way?"

"Oh, sorry! Going out."

"Whew. Alone?"

    "Mm-hmm, I mean, yes, ma'am – no, wait. There's an animal walking beside the horse."

    "That would be Krall, a dog from Roundhouse. So that's Tomma, who's been turned loose to look for the Wilson crew."

    "Yes, ma'am, it's him. I think. Things are kinda doubled up in this thing."

    "It got whacked once. Cross your eyes a little. How does the Valley look?"

    "Same as ever. There's not so much smoke that way, and I can see the big mountain pretty good."

    "Mary's Peak. Can you see the freeway?"

    "The Highway of Death? No, ma'am, the trees have dropped a lot of leaves, but it's pretty thick woods down there."

    "Nothing burning?"

    "Not yet, anyway."

    "How are we to the east?" 

    He crossed the room. "I can see some men and women swinging tools down there; like they are building a road."

    "Fire trail. At Schneider's?"

    "No, not across from our old place. Gulick's, already."

    "Already, you say; but that is terribly slow. With tractors, it would be very different. We could really use that horrible old diesel right now."

    He lowered the binoculars and raised his eyebrows. 

    She couldn't help but laugh. "See, that's how it always was. The stuff was killing us, but we couldn't do without. Still don't really have any good alternatives; that's why we're all hungry."

    "Yes, ma'am." He renewed is watch. "There are two cows at Peacher's. And ... and some wolves or 'yotes are standing there looking at them."

    "Damn. Not much we can do for them at this point."

    The boy glassed up Maggie's Hill. "Funny."

    "What's that?"

    "A big tree in the north saddle just fell over all by itself."

    "What? Where? Let me see that." She almost snatched the binoculars from Neel's hands.

    "Right in the low spot."

    Ellen peered through the lenses for a long moment. A thin blue vapor rose from the saddle – no, a pulsing smoke that did not look like wildfire. She'd swear it was from a machine! It would have to be the wood-gas tractor she'd heard about. About time we had some good news around here.