“How come I never heard this story before?” Elizabeth said as Grant began tossing.
Pops shrugged. “I tell it when it needs to be told. That night, as I lay in bed, pondering my life, I heard this loud voice in here.” He patted his chest. “That I was proud. Too proud to admit Harvard wasn’t for me. Too proud to tell your Granny the truth.”
Grant’s bag landed just short of the hole.
“Good tossing, Grant,” Pops called.
“I’m not married, Pops. I have no children.” She turned to her partner. “Will, do a flop shot and jump over Grant’s bags.”
“It’s the principle of the thing,” Pops said. “Will, nice flop shot. Grant, we’ve been hoodwinked.”
“How is it the principle of the thing? Will, wow, you holed all four.” Elizabeth collected her team’s bags. “I appreciate everything you’ve said, Pops.” Her first airmail shot landed in the hole. “But I’m not you.”
Suddenly, a chorus of shouts cut through the night. “There’s a fire at Cheatham.”
Men and women scattered, hollering to one another. Granny stepped off the deck, dish towel in hand, her expression sober.
“Grant, Will, let’s go.” Pops dropped his cornhole bags and ran for the house. Elizabeth spotted Ryder running to his truck and caught up to him.
“Is there really a fire?”
“I don’t know.” He climbed inside the cab. “But I smell smoke.”
Sirens began to fill the air. Party guests dissipated. From a clearing in Granny and Pops’s front yard, Elizabeth could see small tendrils of smoke circling above the western trees.
“Fire,” she whispered. And Ryder was heading straight for it.
13
Geared up, Ryder worked the fire line, cutting a firebreak as the blaze burned up a hill. A shovel dangled from one hand and a pickaxe from the other. He was exhausted.
“Ryder—” From the command center, Travis’s voice came over the radio strapped to his side. “You watching the weather? A front’s coming through. The wind is picking up.”
“I’m watching it.” After weeks of no rain, a storm seemed to be the answer. But a simple gust of wind could spark the hot spots over the firebreak. A crack of lightning could ignite the trees, which were nothing more than dry kindling.
The whole Wade Reed Road area was fire fodder. He’d seen a fire jump a firebreak once, but he’d also seen flames die out at an old, untended break as if it somehow knew thus far and no more.
Ryder scanned the area he and the others had just worked. Every officer in Cheatham WMA was called out, as well as the fire department and a crew of volunteers. He suspected the illegal loggers he’d spotted cutting down trees a few weeks ago were behind this, but the proof had become ashes.
He glanced down the line, checking to see if the wind would kick this thing up. Acrid smoke filled his nostrils, his eyes, his throat.
The Dorsey guitar pull, dancing with Elizabeth, listening to Buck, Aubrey, and the Oklahoma woman sing sweet hymns, was a world away. Moving on, Ryder continued along the top of the line, picking at hot spots, ignoring the ache in his back, arms, and healing knee.
His crew moved slowly ahead of him, but the wind, a force he normally loved, moved along with them. Ryder peered at his watch. Three a.m. More than six hours had passed since the initial alarm, and the fire still had life.
Pausing for a gulp from his water can, he studied the night sky. The moon and stars watching them at the Dorseys’ were now obscured by clouds, and an eerie feeling slipped through the air.
“Rick, Chet,” he called on the radio. “Pyle and Thompson. Let’s make this our final sweep for hot spots. I have a feeling this thing is about to shift on us.”
But he was too late. As they moved along the top of the ridge, they walked straight into a stand of spruce pines ablaze in a golden-orange crown fire.
“Crown fire!”
Elizabeth looked up from where she worked alongside Tina and the other volunteers manning the makeshift command post, serving sandwiches and water to tired firefighters and volunteers.
She’d been at Granny’s, stuck in a fret of “stay” or “go” when Tina called. “I need you. Meet me at the diner. We’re hauling water and supplies to the fire command post.”
Yes. Gladly. Thank you. She needed something to do. All she could picture was Pops, Will, Jeff, Ethan, and Julie, all volunteers, rushing off to fight a wildfire.
