Ms. Got Rocks (17 page)

“What, did I wake you up, sorry, Sis. I found out what that dude what’s his name, where he lives. I saw the truck, but it was parked,” Devlin was yelling into the cell phone.

“Okay Dev, I can hear you fine, I can‘t believe you said dude. Where does this guy live?” Rocky was trying to clear her head.

Her brother answered, “Oh no, you don’t get to know that, I know what you would do and I’m not giving you the chance to do it. I’ll take care of it from this end.”

“Yeah, well, what is it that you are going to do that I would not be doing? I would go park by his place every night and follow him, until he made one false move toward the place. Then I would call the Sheriff,” Rocky felt like she was reporting illicit sexual activities to her big brother.

“That is exactly why, my sweet little hot head of a baby sister, you are not going to find out where he lives.” Her older brother switched off his cell phone.

She put some frozen lasagna into the nuker, planning to split the thing with the dogs, and jumped into the shower and clean clothes.

Rocky felt ready to spend the night watching and waiting. Rechecking the camera and the scope, rechecking the door and window locks, all was well. The buzzer for the lasagna went off, the dogs and Rocky sat down on the kitchen floor. They companionably shared the dinner.

It was full dark now, and the dinner mess was cleaned, the floor bore no traces of lasagna on it.

The phone in the kitchen rang.

“Hi, this is Margie, have you seen anyone yet?”

“Margie, I’m glad you called, I forgot to ask Devlin for the license plate number to the truck. Can’t know whom to watch for in town without it, since every pickup around here looks the same.”

“I do not know what it is, hold on I’ll ask Devlin,”

The phone went to hold, while Rocky looked through the night vision scope and watched two deer slowly, gracefully, circling the fence.

Oh, yeah, she re-focused the scope back up onto the hill.

“Shoot that wasn’t too smart, do I have it in focus or not?” she asked herself.

“Are you still there Rocky? Devlin wants to know how old the shells are that you have in the shotgun. Are they leftovers from Dad?” Margie asked.

“No, I couldn’t find Dad’s. I bought these the other day in case of rattlesnakes, and tell Dev that he isn’t going to sidetrack me. I’ll call you back, Margie, I forgot something.”

Rocky set the phone down, hurried into the living room and got the shotgun out of the broom closet.

“Crap, how could I have been dumb enough to not have it ready?” Rocky was muttering to Lovie “I’m getting dumber than dirt. You don’t have to agree with that, dog.”

She got a big dog grin from the agreeable Boxer. Lovie got an ear scratch in return.

Several hours later, Rocky guessed that it was midnight, she started checking the doors and windows again. She stood for minutes at the living room window and watched the driveway and the meadow. It was not possible to see the county road from there and almost impossible to hear the cars going through on it. The river and the rapids were a steady thrum that blocked all other sound from a distance. The night birds near the porch were calling; telling Rocky there was no one out there. She stood still and watched anyway.

C
hapter 16

T
hat morning the news on the radio was becoming increasingly serious, urging residents to plow their firebreaks at the edge of their fields. The radio advised to keep everything wet that they could, to clean away brush from the buildings. Soon after that,the authorities issued a cautionary announcement to watch for any strangers in the area.

The grass and brush fires have been burning for three days. The high temperatures were drying out the grassy foothills almost as fast as the wildfires were destroying them. The wind kept blowing hotter and faster from the west, it was that west wind that concerned Rocky, it would blow the wildfires directly to Whiskey Gap.

The fires were coming from every direction. When the firefighters had cleared one area, meadows miles away would burst into flames.

No one in authority had come out and stated that someone or many persons were setting the blazes. When the fires moved back and forth across an eight lane freeway, anyone could see arson as plain as the nose on a face. After the bunkhouse fire scare at her godmother’s Lucky J Ranch earlier in the spring, Rocky purchased a pond pump for the river. Good thing she did it then, now there was no purchasing fire fighting equipment.

The County Animal Shelter had burned to the ground. It was the only structure involved in the fires, to that date. The good news was that all the animals and the workers were ferried to safety.

Devlin Clancy’s elegant suite of offices was turned into a shelter for the displaced animals from the county and for any animals displaced in front of the wildfires.

Rocky’s three and Margie’s Pokey have joined the mix at the Clancy and Associates Geology Offices in Auburn.

Devlin admitted that a whole office full of animals was a handful, but at any time you could find him in his office talking long distance to a head of a government, with a lap full of very contented cats. His office being the most private and quiet had been designated as the cattery, to the total disgust of his Border Collie and the delight of Devlin.

Rocky spent hours listening to the radio reports. She pumped water from the river wetting down the meadows and even stretching the surplus fire hose as far as it will go to wet down that jackass Callaghan’s meadow adjacent to hers.

“Rocky, this is Jazz Harris. Are you all right? I heard about the fires on CNN,” Jazz was calling early one morning.

“I’m fine for now, but things are changing by the moment,” Rocky told her friend.

“I’m almost at the airport now, say ninety minutes out and I can use the exercise,” Jazz said through the static.

“Huh, you are where?” Rocky was puzzled.

“I’ve borrowed the company Gulfstream, I think we went over Salt Lake City or Denver a few minutes ago. I’m bringing the fire retardant stuff, as much as I could get my hands on,” Jazz said. “Hugs, I’ll be there soon.”

Rocky stared at the disconnected cell phone and said, “Must be nice to be filthy rich, but I’ll be glad to have her here, and I know she isn’t afraid to get dirty.”

The cell phone rang again.

“I forgot to ask, where are the dogs and Thumps? Do you want to send them home with me for the duration?” Jazz asked.

“Uh, right now they are ten miles away, with my brother in town,” Rocky was stunned at the generous offer.

“Okay, be there soon, I brought my jeans and boots,” Jazz hung up.

“Whoa, she would fly my pets back and forth to Boston? Yeah, she would, she is that kind of person.” Rocky was shaking her head as she disconnected the hose and moved the pump farther down the river.

The wind was blowing so hard and loud from the west, that Rocky did not hear the tractor until it was fairly on top of her.

“Hey, Clancy move out of the way, this old bugger doesn’t stop on a dime, you know,” Callaghan shouted, waving his arms to get her attention.

“What the hell are you doing?” Rocky asked, while she stood totally dumbfounded.

“I’m plowing a firebreak, if you will move your arse, so I can do that,” Callaghan was smiling because he was steering the old tractor directly at her.

“Why?” was the only thing Rocky verbalize.

The old John Deere pulled to a stop at the water’s edge, Callaghan jumped from the seat and strode back to Rocky. Callaghan’s black satin hair was blowing in the hot west wind.

“I would think that would be apparent. If the fire breaks through your place, mine is next.” Callaghan stated the obvious anyway for her. “I spent every spare moment last winter planting grapes and peaches on the other side of the rise. I don’t want to lose them.”

That settled to his satisfaction, he swung back onto the tractor seat and resumed the scraping of the firebreak. Rocky watched where he went and then turned to see from where he came. At the bottom of the driveway, the wire fence had been mowed down by the tractor.

“Well, I guess that won’t make much howdy do, if the whole fence is burned,” Rocky  resigned herself to fence stringing at some future time. She walked to the gate at the bottom of the driveway, unlocked it, swinging it wide.

“Just in case, he decides to go out over the gate,” she said into the smoke laden air.

Rocky could hear the old tractor chugging its way on the other side of her meadow, building a break between the two properties.

The fire hose was streaming water with as much pressure as she could hold steady. The logs and the front porch of the cabin were getting a thorough soaking.

Changing her mind Rocky stopped the fire hose and put the lawn sprinkler on the front fence line that Callaghan tilled.

Walking back to the fire hose Rocky heard a big vehicle coming up the county road. It was a bright yellow Hummer towing some type of machine.

“That can’t be anyone but Jazz,” Rocky said aloud, she smiled while watching the big vehicle climb the steep driveway as if it were as flat as a pancake.

“Hey Rocky, we don’t have time to spare, I have the sprayer on the back, we can start spraying around the cabin first,” Jazz was talking as fast as she was moving out of the Hummer.

Throwing open the fill spouts on the commercial type sprayer, she seemed unconcerned about her yellow slacks and print Tee shirt, and the yellow leather three inch heels. The sprayer looked very similar to what Cal Trans used to spray oil on the roads. Jazz handed Rocky a respirator mask then she ripped open a bag of powder and poured it into the sprayer while her gold bracelets jangled and glittered in the sunlight.

“Get the hose for me, will ya,” Jazz asked as the last of the powder went down the tube. “We don’t even have to measure; Dad has the bags made up to fit these sprayers. When the sprayer is full of water that is the right concentration, clever huh?” she explained while she worked. “He came up with that, because most of our employees can’t read English, actually most of them can’t read any language.”

Rocky hustled back to the sprayer with the garden hose and stuffed it into the sprayer barrel.

“But what is this glop?” Rocky asked Jazz as they stood on either side of the big sprayer.

“Daddy makes this. Our company developed this for our plants in South America. It takes a little while for it to start working though, it has to be exposed to air for several hours. But, we have saved I don’t even want to think how much money, by spraying the grounds and buildings of the factories. Every once in a while the locals or their Federales try to burn the factories down. Daddy had his chemists working for a year to develop this mixture,” Jazz said with pride.

“Wow, I could have bought some, saved you the trip out here. Not that I’m not glad to see you, but really...,” Rocky did not get to finish her sentence.

“You can’t get this in a store, the EPA hasn’t approved it, and this is what we had at home. We use it on our house in Boston and the compound,” Jazz said. “We’ll try to keep it out of the river.”

“Not like that is going to make much difference to the fish, when the fire goes through, the water temp. will go to boiling and the fish and crawdads die,” Rocky explained.

“With La Extinga, the fire isn’t going to get that close, so I want to be super careful of the river. God, I hope I have enough of this to get the entire front where it is plowed.”

“Crap there is not going to be enough. Rocky your place is a lot bigger than I thought it was,” said Jazz when she turned around surveying the meadow.

It took more than fifteen minutes to fill the barrel of the sprayer. Rocky and Jazz caught up on each others news. Rocky took Jazz for the tour of the newly completed bathroom. Rocky showed Jazz the unfinished guest room,

Jazz stayed to change clothes from her elegant pants outfit to jeans and a Tee with the new hiking boots she had bought for the aborted Lost Dutchman Mine trip.

“Jazz aren’t we going to get into trouble with the EPA, for using this?” Rocky asked as they got into the Hummer and started the circle of fire retardant around the cabin.

“You want your cabin or are you going to wimp out on me. Deal with the EPA later,” Jazz said like ignoring the federal law was something she did daily.

“Don’t worry Rocky, this La Extinga isn’t going to hurt anything, and it does work. Maybe this will be the push the EPA needs to see this is a good thing. They’re pissed because one of the big chemical companies didn’t develop it. Daddy doesn’t pay lobbyists,” Jazz stated with a flat cold tone in her voice.

Two swoops around the cabin; one stop for reloading, and the women were down to the fence line, leaving fifteen feet at the river edge unsprayed. Callaghan’s fire break and Rocky’s pump and fire hose jury rig would have to take care of that section. When they stopped for another reload of La Extinga they could hear the fire sirens in the distance and feel the wind changing again to the west. Soon the air was filled with the smoke of burning dry grass and cinders were falling like a brief nasty rainstorm.

“Jazz do you get poison ivy? If you do, you are probably going to get poison oak from the smoke. Go put on a long sleeved shirt of mine,” Rocky directed her friend.

The two women stood side by side waiting, facing west; they felt they were as ready as they would ever be. There was nothing more they had the equipment or the time to do, but wait. There was absolutely no chance that a summer rain shower would drench the foothill battle line.

In the next quarter hour the wind changed again to the south, the change cleared the air of the smoke and ashes. Rocky waded into the river to ensure the dredge motor powering the submersible pump was topped out with fuel.

With the wind in the other quarter they could hear the roar of the fire; they could not tell how far away it was. It could be in the next gulch for all they could tell.

They stood and watched. Behind them Callaghan had parked the tractor near the cabin. As he moved toward the women, Jazz checked her watch for the umpteenth time.

“Rocky, we made it in time; the La Extinga should have had enough time for the oxygen to escape into the air.” said Jazz.

Then she heard a movement behind her and turned to see Callaghan.

“Who is that guy?” she asked.

“Oh, that is the jerk who is my neighbor, at least I think he is a neighbor,” Rocky answered her, giving Callaghan a double whammy look with her gemstone brown eyes.

“He showed up with the tractor this morning and made the firebreaks. He is putting in a vineyard next door. He is the claim jumper I told you about.”

“He looks vaguely like I know him from somewhere,” Jazz said softly to Rocky. She spoke softly because Callaghan stood next to them.

Callaghan looked at Jazz and Rocky. A small wrinkle passed between his black eyebrows, but briefly. Rocky did not notice, Jasmine most certainly noticed.

Callaghan asked, “Did you see the fire yet? I brought the tractor over here. You can drive it if you have to, do you think you could drive it?” he was asking Rocky.

“If it is stick, I can drive it,” she assured him.

When it became apparent that Callaghan was not leaving immediately Rocky introduced the pair.

“Jazz, this is Callaghan,” Rocky said. Unlike herself, Jazz did not present her handshake. Rocky again failed to notice that Jazz had blanched and her body stiffened momentarily as Jazz remembered where she saw this man.

“Callaghan, this is Jazz,” Callaghan made no attempt to shake her hand. He acknowledged the introduction with a curt nod. He knew precisely who Jasmine Harris was, and recognized her from across the meadow.

As Rocky finished the presentation, the wind turned again and with a roar like the winds of hell the fire came over the rise. The fire had to consume the east side of the rise and then jump the two lane county road. Then the fire would be on the Clancy property.

“Jazz, there are wet burlap bags in that wash tub, when you see any embers land, hit them with the wet sack. I’m going into the river and start the pump, I’ll keep you wet,” Rocky yelled over the noise of the on rushing fire.

As if on cue over the fire line the flames sputtered, dying into golden ash and pearly white steaming little beads.

Within five minutes, the only fires were the ones Rocky and Callaghan were battling with the dredge fire hoses. The County and State tanker trucks raced over the bridge and down the far river bank, the men now have the fire blocked. The fire was smoking and resisting death directly across the river from the now safe cabin.