July Thunder (21 page)

Mary's voice cut the quiet. “Sam. Your hand.”

“Not now,” he whispered as the cub twisted to look at her, pulling him off balance. Pain tore through his shoulder as he fought to regain his foothold. “We can worry about that once I'm out of this damn tree.”

His feet once again set, he lowered the cub again.

“I've got him,” Barry said. “Let go, Sam.”

It was, Sam realized, easier said than done. He met the cub's eyes. “I'll be down right after you, kiddo. I promise.”

And with that he released his charge into Barry's hands. The tightening in his chest grew into a fist as the cub let out a single howl. Sam scrambled to lower himself the last few feet to the ground, then knelt beside the cub as it rolled in Barry's arms.

“
Shhhhhhh…
I'm here, little guy. You're safe now.” He looked into the woods as a wind shift
swept smoke over the clearing. “As safe as any of us are, in these woods,” he added grimly.

“He seems okay,” Barry said as his practiced hands examined the cub. “But you need to get that hand looked at. It's blistered, Sam.”

“It'll be fine,” Sam said. “We don't have as much time as we thought. That fire's closing in fast.”

“You'll get yourself to the doctor,” Elijah said, having come out of the church. “There's plenty enough of us here to do the work. Get yourself to a doctor, son, and stop acting like a damn fool. You're hurt!”

Sam felt something snap inside, driving him to his feet. A distant part of him realized he was over-reacting. But pain and exhaustion numbed his self-control. He whirled and met his father's eyes.

“Everyone's hurt out here. People are hurting all over this mountain, Dad. Sometimes God or the universe doesn't give a damn whether we're hurt. Sometimes we just have to suck it up and press on.” He paused to draw a breath, and his father began to respond, but Sam yelled over him. “That fire isn't going to take a break because I'm hurt, or you're hurt, or anyone else is hurt. There's work to do and too little time to do it. So I'll leave when the work's done and not a minute sooner.”

“I always said your sinful pride would be your undoing,” Elijah said.

“You always said everything, Dad. But you never
listened worth a damn. Well, I'm not an eight-year-old boy anymore, and you're not the cock of the roost. Mom's dead because you were too busy preaching and praying to notice when she started hurting.”

“Your mother died of cancer,” Elijah thundered. “In my arms, Sam.
In my arms!
”

“My mother died of loneliness, Dad. She died of being the pastor's wife, always smiling, always willing, always taking care of everyone else and too afraid of you to speak up when she felt those first cramps inside. She died because everyone else's pain was more important than your own family's. If you'd taken her to a doctor—”

Elijah cut him off with a stinging slap. “Don't you
ever
talk to me like that, boy. If you hadn't been so damn busy carving out your own life as far away as you could get, you'd have known we went to the doctor the first time she felt a lump. It was already too late, Sam. Don't you
dare
blame me for your mother's death. God just took her home, and it ripped my heart out.”

“You never had a heart to rip out,” Sam said.

“That's enough!” Mary said. “Just shut up, both of you! Shut up.
Shut up!
”

Both of them froze and looked at her. Her fury seemed to be shooting like sparks from her eyes. “You're scaring the cub!”

Sam immediately looked down to see the cub struggling against the backpack straps in which it
had entangled. He squatted at once and started talking in a soothing voice.

“Don't worry about it,” Barry said. “The more scared he is of people, the more likely he is to live to a ripe old age. Let's just load him up in the cage in the back of my truck. I'll let him go down south, away from the fire.”

But Mary had another concern. “Is he old enough to make it on his own?”

“I don't know,” Barry admitted. “But he deserves the chance, and it's clear his mother isn't around. The alternative is life in a cage.”

Mary nodded, though she didn't look happy about it. “I guess you're right.”

“At this time of year,” Barry said reassuringly, “they depend mostly on vegetation. I'm sure he knows how to forage.”

“Okay.”

Sam scooped up the tangled cub and talked soothingly to him as he carried him over to Barry's truck. “You're going to be all right, kiddo. You'll see. Barry will leave you someplace with lots of berries and stuff.”

The cub made a mewling sound and struggled against the confinement of the straps and backpack. Whatever was left of the sedative was gone now, and strength was coming back into those limbs. Sam made quick work of putting the cub into the cage and disentangling him from the straps. Those two-inch claws were beginning to pose a real threat.

A minute later, Barry drove off with the cub.

Mary came up beside Sam. “Thanks for saving him.”

“It was the right thing to do.”

“Let me see your hand.”

But he didn't hold it out. “Just a small burn. It's nothing.”

“Sure.” Her eyes were sparking again as she looked at him. “I can't believe the things you said to your father, Sam. You're every bit as bad as he is.”

Sam, suddenly feeling ashamed, agreed. But before he could answer her, she was marching toward his father and poking a finger at the old man. “As for
you,
” she said, “you've said some pretty unforgivable things to your son in the past. You two are as alike as peas in a pod.”

Then she stormed off to the church hall, even as workers were beginning to reemerge to take up their tools.

Sam, feeling more ashamed of himself than he could remember feeling in his entire life, would have apologized to Elijah, but the old man was already stalking stiffly away to pick up a shovel and start pouring dirt on a tree stump. A chain saw sprang to life with a roar, and the cub's recent treehouse felt its bite.

Later, Sam thought. He would apologize later. Right now they had a fire to worry about.

N
ight had fallen. The clouds to the west glowed a dull orange. Sam was so drunk with fatigue he didn't dare handle anything more dangerous than a shovel. Someone else, a fresher volunteer, was driving his truck to pull the cut timber across the road. The stack was growing, but the clearing still wasn't big enough.

Sam paused, wiping his brow. Was the temperature rising? He didn't want to think about it; there could be only one reason for it to rise at this time of night.

They had a new group of volunteers. After the mine shift let out, people had begun arriving to replace their tired neighbors. Mary had gone home about six, trembling with fatigue. Elijah remained but was slumped on a pew in the church, incapable of doing another thing for a while.

And Sam was getting there. He hadn't had any sleep except for that hour-long doze at Mary's last
night. Every muscle in his body was shrieking a protest at every little move.

He'd been trying to get Elijah to go home for a rest most of the day and hadn't succeeded. And all of a sudden, as he stood there almost brain-dead from fatigue, he heard Mary's voice saying, “You two are as alike as peas in a pod.”

The thought stung him, but so did the realization that he was no good to anybody in his current state. He went looking for Joe and Louis. The two of them had returned a couple of hours ago, after taking a break most of the day to sleep. They had showed a lot more sense than he had, his numbed mind admitted.

They didn't exactly stand out in the dark, with everyone looking so strange between the dull orange glow of the sky and the harsh glow from headlights. The whole place looked like it had come from an alien planet. He came upon them at last and waited for Joe to finish cutting a tree down.

“I'm taking my dad home,” he told them when he got their attention. Everybody knew about the relationship now. How could they not?

“Good,” said Louis. “And get some sleep yourself. You're no good to anybody now.”

“Yeah. You two take over, okay? Here's the whistle.” He pulled it from around his neck and passed it to Louis.

Louis looked at it doubtfully. “Will they listen to us?”

“If they're not fools,” Sam said flatly.

“Don't worry, Sam,” Joe said. “We'll take care of it.”

He was sure they would. “Call me if you need anything.” He handed them a card with his pager number. Joe stuffed it into his pocket.

“Now go, go,” Louis said, making “go away” motions with his hands. “Before you collapse.”

Back in the church, Sam found his father slumped in a pew. He touched the old man's shoulder, trying not to startle him awake, but Elijah wasn't asleep. He looked up slowly and said, “I'm getting too old.”

“You're getting too tired, Dad. So am I. Let's go home and get some sleep.”

This time Elijah didn't argue. Maybe because Sam was going, too. Or maybe because the fatigue and helplessness had crushed him. Sam hoped not. Lions weren't supposed to get laid low.

They took Elijah's truck so Sam's could still be used to pull timber. Sam drove, and his father slumped beside him, saying nothing.

And the farther they got from the fire, the better Sam could see it. As they rounded one bend, he caught sight of it in the rearview mirror and swore out loud. It looked like the gates of hell had opened.

“What?” Elijah said, rousing himself.

“Look behind you.”

Elijah pushed himself around and looked through the rear window. “Oh, my God!”

Sam tried to keep his attention on the road, but all he could see in his mind's eye was the raging wall of fire behind him.

When he'd been at the church, the fire had been hidden by the tall trees, but now that he saw what it really looked like, all he could imagine was the puniness of that building and the puniness of all those people working to save it against the out-of-control monster that was devouring the woods.

And then, at last, it started to rain.

 

It was still raining by the time he pulled into Elijah's driveway. A steady drizzle. Not enough to put the fire out, not even enough to slow its spread, for the heat of its breath would be enough to keep drying out the fuel it needed to advance. But if the rain got harder, if it kept coming, it might begin to slow the fire down a bit.

Elijah could barely move as he climbed out of the truck and limped toward his front door. Without saying anything, Sam followed him inside.

“Go take a shower, Dad. I'm going to make you something to eat, then you get to bed.”

The old man didn't even argue with him, just shuffled down the hall. Sam dragged himself into the kitchen to check out the refrigerator and the cupboards. Apparently Elijah wasn't much of a cook. Finally he settled on a couple of cans of New England clam chowder and started heating them on the
stove. He found a box of crackers to go with the soup.

It wasn't much, but it was nourishment. His thoughts kept straying to Mary, just across the street, and he wondered if she would even speak to him again after today. He'd acted like a real ass. Fatigue and pain were poor excuses for what he'd said. She was right. He'd been every bit as cruel as his father had been when Beth died.

It didn't make him feel good at all.

What had he been after? Revenge? A desire to make Elijah feel the same pain Elijah had made him feel? Or maybe—and this was the worst thing—maybe somewhere inside himself he'd really believed those things he'd said.

If so, he was appalled at himself. Because Elijah was right, he hadn't been there when his mother sickened and died. He'd been long gone from home and unwelcome to return. Or so he'd thought.

God, memory was a tricky thing. Looking back now, he didn't know how much of what he remembered was true and how much of it was things he'd imagined to be the case at the time. How much of it was colored by bad feelings and pain.

And if you couldn't trust your memory, how could you know what was true?

Elijah returned just as the soup was beginning to bubble a bit. He'd put on pajamas and looked a lot cleaner, if not less tired.

“Take a seat, Dad. The soup's almost ready.”

“Thanks.” Elijah sat at the old dinette, the same dinette Sam had eaten at as a boy. Preachers like Elijah didn't make a lot of money. They learned instead to make everything last as long as it possibly could. Sam had sometimes been embarrassed by the hand-me-downs he'd had to wear or the clothes that had been purchased way too large so that he could grow into them, but he'd eventually learned to wear that thriftiness with pride.

He and Beth had furnished their own house with secondhand furniture and had done a pretty good job of it, too. It was amazing how many people discarded items that were barely worn.

And all of this was nothing but sidetracking as he tried not to think of all the times he had sat at this self-same dinette with his mother and father. The vinyl on the chairs was a lot older now, cracking in places, but it was still the same bright white-and-yellow flower pattern that his mother had loved. And the white laminate tabletop was scratched and scarred. He even remembered where some of those scars had come from: the first time he had tried to whittle his knife had slipped, leaving that tiny, deep scar near the edge. And over there was the time he'd gotten impatient and sliced a loaf of his mother's homemade bread without using a cutting board.

He turned away, reaching for bowls to distract himself.

“You need a shower, son,” Elijah said. “Feel free.”

“I'll go home and do it.”

“Have it your way.”

Yes, he would have it his way, because he didn't want to go into the bathroom and see the shaving mug and brush his dad probably still used. Or discover that the same lavender towels, however worn, were still on the towel rack. It didn't matter how different the house was. He was used to seeing all these things in different settings. During his childhood, his family had averaged a move every two years.

No, there was no house he thought of as home. Just the items in it. And the occupants.

He filled the bowls and brought them to the table, along with spoons. The same spoons and bowls he'd used all his childhood. They were dime-store blue willow dishes, cracked and stained from thirty years of use. And boy, did they bring back memories. As a child he'd always studied the picture on his plate, imagining stories about the woman on the footbridge and the tall house behind her. It had seemed so exotic, unlike his own life.

They ate in silence for a while, but finally Sam made himself offer the apology he owed. “Dad, I'm sorry about what I said earlier. I shouldn't have said those things.”

Elijah looked up, his blue eyes bloodshot with fatigue. “We all say things we don't really mean at times. I hope you didn't mean them.”

“I was just trying to hurt you.”

“I know. And you did.”

“I'm sorry.”

Elijah ate a few more spoonfuls of soup before he spoke again. “You always did seem to be able to get my goat. Well, what's past is past.”

With that the shutters fell and the conversation ended. And Sam felt the old anger rising in him again. Didn't
he
deserve an apology, too?

Instead Elijah was treating him as he would have treated any stranger. Unfortunately the past wasn't past. It was very much alive between them, a writhing mass of pain that was as impenetrable as any brick wall.

Sam couldn't take anymore. It was as if the careful barricades he'd built to protect himself were bursting wide-open and all the old pain was eating him alive. He had to get out of here now.

He shoved his chair back from the table, leaving his soup uneaten. “I'm going home. I'm tired.”

“You do that,” Elijah said without looking up.

He didn't give a damn, Sam thought as he went out onto the street. Elijah no more gave a damn about him than he gave a damn about some stranger on the street. He'd opened the door to a conversation with his apology, and all he'd received was a mild rebuke.

Damn him anyway!

Sam stood out on the curb in the gentle rain, looking up the valley toward the orange glow of the fire, and he wanted to swear or kick something. Hell,
he'd left his car up there, he had no way to get back up there, and his house was across town, a good half hour walk that he didn't feel much like taking right now. His mind might be alive with fury, but his body was ready to wilt right on the sidewalk. Hell, he should have asked if he could take Elijah's truck.

But right now he would rather walk to the ends of the earth than go back in there and ask that man for anything. Hell's bells.

Mary's lights were still on. They drew his attention inexorably. She was up. Right across the street. He supposed he had some fences to mend there, too. He swore again, thinking that he was too damn tired for any of this, and stomped his way across the street. The night air was getting chilly, and the steady drizzle wasn't helping.

He knocked on her door, trying not to rouse the whole neighborhood. It took a while, but eventually she opened the door. She looked as if she'd been sleeping, and was wrapped in a white terry-cloth robe.

“Sam!”

“You told me to come by when I came down from the fire.”

“Yes, yes. Of course. Come in.”

But the invitation held little warmth. Not that he could really blame her, after the way he'd acted today. She must be feeling very wary of him now. His own fault.

He stepped inside, aware of how dirty and grungy he was, and without even a change of clothes.

“I wanted to ask if you could drive me home,” he said. “But I guess not. You were sleeping.”

“No, it's okay. I've been sleeping for hours. Do you need to eat?”

He thought of the bowl of soup he'd abandoned at his father's house and shook his head. “I'll be fine. I just need to shower and clean up and get a few hours of sleep before I go back.”

“Well, come sit in the kitchen while I go get dressed.” She paused, looking adorably confused. “Uh…did something happen to your car?”

“I brought Elijah home in his. I left mine up there so they could use it to pull timber.”

“Oh. Elijah couldn't take you home?”

“He's too tired, and I didn't ask.”

Her lips pursed a little, and he saw the disapproval in them. But all she said, coolly, was, “Go have a seat in the kitchen. I'll be dressed in a jiff.”

“Thanks.”

He sat at her kitchen table and put his head down in his arms. All the warmth was gone, he realized almost stupidly. All the good feeling he'd had with Mary was gone. He'd killed it today by turning on his father.

It seemed like only an instant later that Mary was shaking his shoulder. It was longer, though. He knew it when he moved and realized his arms were numb.

“Sam,” she said, “you can't sleep all night like that. I spread an old sheet on the couch. Just go lie down. You can clean up in the morning.”

It was almost like a dream. Maybe it was a dream. But somehow he shuffled to her couch and sprawled on it. An instant later, the dream was gone, replaced by another.

In it, he was trying to reach something just out of his grasp.

 

Mary woke at 4:00 a.m., slept out. Rising, she tiptoed in the dark past Sam and closed the kitchen door behind her so she wouldn't disturb him. She made a pot of coffee and peeked out the window to see if it was still raining. It didn't look like it, unfortunately.

Stepping out her back door, trying to keep the springs on the screen door from squeaking, she went out to look up at the sky. It was clear and full of stars. And to the northwest, she could still see the angry glow of the fire.

Shaking her head she went back inside and wondered how long she should let Sam sleep. He wouldn't be happy if she didn't wake him at a reasonable time.

But why should she care? He was only one man. It wasn't as if he could singlehandedly save the church and the valley. And what was more, after yesterday, she wasn't sure he was a man she could trust. The way he had struck out at his father… Her
chest tightened at the memory. She hated to think how he would react if she ever told him the truth about herself.