Fire on Headless Mountain, page 10
27
At the Lookout
At the edge of the gully, Joshua waved his arms and shouted, “Hello! Hello!”
But nobody answered, not even an echo. His voice was swallowed by the trees and the smoke.
Sore and tired, Joshua climbed down the cliff and started across the slope. The stones slithered away from under his feet and he went sliding down the slope like a skateboarder, with his arms held out for balance, until he could stop himself. But the stones kept tumbling on without him, leaping down the avalanche chutes and into the burning forest. With every step, he was afraid that he would follow them.
Halfway across, Joshua held onto a shattered tree trunk and stopped for a rest. He could see the cupola at the top of the lookout, its windows shining with reflected light: the gray of the smoke and the red of the flames, and the green of the trees all around. Was that all he’d seen from the distance, he wondered—just the flash of sunlight on a windowpane? He thought he could see someone moving around inside, and he shouted again, “Hello!”
The patterns kept changing on the windows, each pane a kaleidoscope. But nobody shouted back, and nobody came outside to look.
Joshua pushed himself away from the tree and angled across the chute. For every yard he gained, he slid six inches down. Twice he fell on his back and went tobogganing down the mountain, carried along by the stones with his arms flailing. Both times he grabbed hold of a stranded tree, a tiny island on the slope, and held on while the stones kept sliding past. And both times he shouted for help but got no answer from the lookout. When he reached the rocks at the edge of the chute and started climbing, he had an awful fear that no one was there at all.
Covered with dust and scratched by the stones, Joshua tramped up through the forest toward the lookout. It had the feeling of a house long empty, the trail overgrown by bushes, bits of metal left rusting on the ground. At the base of the tower, at the foot of a ladder, Joshua found an old sleeping bag and an empty whiskey bottle with a spider living inside it.
He bent back his head and looked up at the cupola, a hundred feet above him. Always afraid of heights, he told himself that it would be a waste of time to climb the ladder. He’d been following reflections, his signals only the flash of sky and firelight. But he asked himself, what if he was wrong? What if he’d come through the forest and over the mountain only to turn away a hundred feet from help?
There might be a radio.
Just as Virgil would have done, Joshua formed a picture in his mind. He saw the radio—a big old thing in a green metal case—sitting on a shelf in the cupola, a microphone hung on a silver hook with its cord in a tidy coil. He saw a battery under the shelf, a red wire and a black wire waiting to be connected—everything ready just in case somebody needed help.
But the ladder terrified him. The wooden rungs looked old and rotten, and the tower swayed as soon as he started climbing. Halfway to the top, he had to force himself to keep going, to let go of the rung and reach for the next one. Afraid to look up and afraid to look down, he kept his eyes fixed on the ladder. Seventy feet up, he thought he couldn’t possibly climb any higher. Eighty feet up, he started wondering how he’d ever get down. But rung by rung he kept going, lifting one hand and then the other, one foot and then the other, and the fire and the smoke whirled in a dizzying blur in the corners of his eyes.
At the top of the ladder was a little trapdoor, a panel set into the floor of the cupola. With his knees trembling, Joshua clutched onto the ladder with one hand as he reached up to lift the door. But it was too heavy to be pushed open that way, and he couldn’t climb any higher with one hand holding the door. So he pressed the top of his head against it and pushed it up while he climbed. As soon as the door cracked open, a swarm of flies came streaming from the cupola. They buzzed around him, against his hands and face, tangling in his hair. He couldn’t move his head to shake them away or let go of the ladder to swat them. He could only keep climbing, pushing the door until it flopped back on its hinges with a crash and a puff of dust. Another horde of flies shot out through the open hatch.
As Joshua climbed up into the cupola he wondered why it was full of flies. It was only a curious thought, but as soon as he asked himself the question he imagined a terrible answer.
A dead man was sitting inside.
Joshua was sure that he was right. He would find a corpse sitting in a chair, with maggots spilling from his eyes. It was almost enough to make him close the door and climb down as fast as he could. But the thought of the radio kept him going. He pulled himself up to the floor of the cupola and looked around the little room.
There was no dead man staring blindly across the valley. There wasn’t even a chair. There was no desk, no shelf, no telephone, and certainly not a radio. There was nothing but the ends of clipped-off wires poking out from a painted wall.
Joshua hauled himself into the cupola and looked down at the burning valley. He couldn’t see any way out of it. To the south the fire had climbed up the mountain, and it was closing in from above and below. In an hour—maybe two—it would be burning all around him.
Joshua had never felt so afraid as he did right then. But over the sound of the fire, he heard something that gave him hope. There was a faint rumbling of engines, the chugging drone of a helicopter.
It was growing louder, coming closer.
Joshua raced from window to window, peering out in each direction. The sound grew so loud that the panes of glass rattled in their frames. He felt the thumping of the rotors but couldn’t see the helicopter until he put his face against a window and looked straight up. And there it was!
The machine hovered right above him with the rotors blurred into a gray disk. It was drifting sideways above the treetops, rocking from side to side. In helmet and goggles, the pilot was leaning out through an open door, peering straight down.
Joshua waved to him. But he remembered the windows reflecting the light and knew the pilot couldn’t see through them. He banged his fists on the glass, trying to shatter the pane, and shouted into the thunder of the rotors. But the helicopter kept sliding away, turning slowly as it skidded above the forest. The tips of the trees bent and shivered in the wind that it made.
Desperately, Joshua launched himself through the trapdoor and grabbed onto the ladder.
28
A Thing of Beauty
The wind came up as Virgil lay underneath the van. It made a whispering sound in the tops of the trees and a strange sort of ghostly moan. Flat on his back, with the engine right above him, Virgil was trying to connect the last hose. But it was the hardest of all, barely long enough to reach the fitting. It kept springing out of his hand, whipping back to strike him on the stomach.
He nearly had it in place when Kaitlyn startled him by hammering on the van. The hose flew away and slapped him again.
“We have to go right now,” said Kaitlyn.
“Okay!” he said. “I’m almost—”
“No, it’s not okay,” she told him. “It looks like the sky’s on fire, Virgil. We’ll die if we stay here.”
Virgil thought he was too close to being finished to give up just then. “Quittin’s for kittens,” he muttered. Then he grabbed the hose and tried once more.
“Well, I’m leaving,” said Kaitlyn. “Do you hear me, Virg? I’m heading for the lake, if you want to try to catch up.”
Virgil could see only her feet and the tip of her crutch as she hobbled away. In a moment she had vanished around the front of the van. He didn’t yell at her to stop, or tell her again to wait, because he was sure she couldn’t go very far. He grabbed the hose and jammed it once more at the fitting. He pushed and turned it, and with a little plop it snapped into place.
Virgil could hardly believe he’d done it. He tugged on the hose to make sure, gently at first and then harder. When it didn’t spring loose, he smiled to himself.
“Hey, Kait,” he shouted, “it’s fixed!
There was no answer. But that didn’t surprise him. With the sound of the fire rising every moment, she wouldn’t have to go far before she couldn’t hear him.
Virgil tightened the clamps around the ends of the hoses, using the dinner knife as a screwdriver. Then he rolled onto his stomach and squirmed out to the road, pushing with his elbows in an alligator fashion.
When he stood up on the Boneyard, he was amazed by the smoke. It was a wild river flowing through the sky, churning through the treetops. Burning debris tossed up by the fire made a huge whirlpool of embers and sparks. Virgil couldn’t see the flames, but he knew they were close. He could hear them crackling, louder than fireworks. He could see their glow in the smoke, and it was just as Kaitlyn had said. The sky was on fire.
“Kaitlyn!” he shouted. “Kaitlyn, where are you?”
He turned right around, looking along each side of the road, hoping she had sat down to wait for him. Again he called her name, and when she didn’t answer he turned once more and dashed across the gravel pit, heading for Little Lost Lake.
He wasn’t sure how much time had passed since she’d told him she was leaving. With a broken ankle and a stick for a crutch, she couldn’t go very fast. But he was afraid he wouldn’t find her with the smoke growing thicker.
Virgil scrambled up the slope. And right at the top, he found Kaitlyn.
She was sitting there with her back against a tree, her ankle looking twisted and torn. She was staring at the smoke as it flowed above the trees.
“Kait, it’s finished,” he said.
Slowly, she turned her head to look at him.
“I fixed it,” he told her. “We can drive away.”
There was no emotion in her voice. “That’s great, Virg.”
He was disappointed by her answer, and he didn’t understand why she wasn’t excited.
“Look.” She pointed toward the fire. “It’s almost at the road. We’re not going to get away.”
“I think we will,” said Virgil.
She shook her head. “It’s cut us off. That’s why no one’s come to get us. The whole Boneyard’s on fire.”
“We’ve still got time,” said Virgil. “Come sit in the van, Kait. I’ll fill the water, and then we can go.” He reached down to pull her up. “Come on.”
She didn’t move for just long enough that he thought she wouldn’t move. Then she picked up the crutch that lay beside her and took his hand. Virgil helped her up, then guided her down the slope and across the gravel pit. But she refused to get into the van. “I’ll help you get ready,” she said.
“I can do it,” he told her.
“We can do it faster together.”
At the very back of the van was a small expansion tank. Kaitlyn took off the cap while Virgil brought the water. Careful not to spill a drop, he swung the bucket between his legs while he walked like an old, bowlegged cowboy.
A burning branch fell on the road in front of him. It landed with a whump and a hiss of embers. Twists of smoke curled from the tip of each little twig.
Virgil stepped over it. Kaitlyn helped him lift the bucket, and together they poured the water into the tank, nearly gagging from the smell. Wads of tangled hair and tiny chunks of food spilled over the rim and gurgled down through the pipes, into Rusty’s rubber arteries.
“That’s not very much,” said Kaitlyn.
“There’s no more. It’ll have to do.” Virgil dropped the empty bucket on the road and picked up the cap to close the tank. But Kaitlyn stopped him. “Let’s use the good water,” she said.
“Oh, I don’t know,” said Virgil. The idea scared him. He didn’t know for sure that the van would start. Joshua had said that it would, but Joshua had said as well that it might blow up if they drove it. Kaitlyn was taking a huge chance, gambling their drinking water on his repair job.
“It’s okay,” she told him. “I trust you, Virg.”
She couldn’t have said anything that would please him more than that. With a grin on his face, he went into the van and got the Coke bottle. They each took a tiny sip of water. Then Virgil tipped up the bottle and emptied it into the van. But when he peered into the tank, it was empty. Every drop of water had vanished down the pipes.
“It’s not leaking out, is it?” asked Kaitlyn.
Virgil wished he’d thought of that before he emptied the bottle. Almost fearfully, he got down on his knees and looked under the van. “No, it’s okay,” he said. His repair job was working.
“Let’s see if it starts,” said Kaitlyn.
29
In the Driver’s Seat
All along, Virgil had imagined himself driving the van. But he had never told his sister that, and she went straight to the driver’s door, hopping on her crutch. She pulled it open, then turned to look back at him.
“Let’s go,” she said.
Virgil sighed to himself. It didn’t seem fair that he had to help her into the driver’s seat after he was the one who’d fixed the van. But he knew it had to be that way. Kaitlyn had a learner’s permit, and she had practiced with their father. The only time Virgil had sat behind Rusty’s steering wheel, he was balanced on his father’s lap. And even then he had steered right into a huckleberry bush. He had never worked the gearshift, never pressed the pedals. He told himself it was only right that Kaitlyn did the driving.
“Virg, come on!” she told him. He started for the other side, toward the passenger’s seat. But she shouted at him again. “Where are you going? You have to drive.”
That took him by surprise. “Why?” he asked.
“I can’t do it with a broken ankle.”
Kaitlyn held the door while Virgil climbed up to the seat and wriggled in behind the steering wheel. Though he was twice as old as the last time he’d driven Rusty, his feet still didn’t reach the pedals. They dangled below him, making him feel as small as a child in a high chair. Through the windshield, he could see smoke swirling above the trees, colored red by the flames of the fire.
“Take my stick,” said Kaitlyn, pushing it into his hands. “You can use it on the clutch.”
He didn’t want to ask where the clutch was. He took the stick and planted its tip on one of the three pedals.
“That’s the brake,” said Kaitlyn. She moved the stick to the left-side pedal. “There, that’s the clutch. When you hold it down, it keeps the engine out of gear. That’s the gas pedal on the other side, the brake in the middle. Now give me the box.”
“What box?”
She pointed at the seat beside Virgil. “Mom’s ashes.”
“What are you going to do with it?”
“Just give me the box!”
Another burning branch, bigger than the first one, fell out of the smoke and burst onto the middle of the gravel pit. It sprang up for a moment and settled again in a smoking heap of embers.
Virgil passed the box to Kaitlyn.
She wedged it against the steering column to hold the gas pedal down. Virgil hated to see it used like that. But he reminded himself that it was only a box, and that the whole reason for being there was to get it down to Little Lost Lake.
On her one good foot, Kaitlyn stepped back and slammed the driver’s door shut. She hopped around the front of the van and got in beside Virgil.
“Push down on the clutch,” she told him.
Virgil leaned on the stick and pressed the pedal right to the floor. With a crunch of gravel, Rusty rocked forward. Kaitlyn leaned over to work the gearshift, jamming it back and forth. “Okay, I think you’re in second,” she said. “Now listen, Virg. When the engine starts, it’s going to be racing. When I say ‘Now,’ let the clutch out. But don’t drop the stick because you’ll need it for the brake pedal. It’s going to slam into gear, so be ready.”
“What about the roof?” asked Virgil. “It’s still open.”
She glanced up at the big canvas roof. “Let’s not worry about it. Just turn the key.”
It was still in the ignition. Virgil waited for a moment, going over in his mind what he had to do. He pushed down hard on the clutch pedal and turned the key.
The engine made a grinding sort of groan and turned over once. After that, there was nothing.
“Try it again,” said Kaitlyn.
Virgil turned the key off, then on again. A loud click came from the starter. But the engine wouldn’t turn over.
“The battery’s dead,” said Kaitlyn.
30
The Helicopter
From the ladder on the lookout, Joshua watched the helicopter drift above the trees. The tips of the blades were painted yellow, and they drew a circle in the sky. The whumpa-whumpa sound of their thrumming beat inside his ears.
He waved one hand as he clung to the ladder, and his clothes flapped in the helicopter’s wind. He kept yelling, though no one could hear him.
The helicopter turned away and slid across the treetops. Then its nose suddenly lifted, and it swung toward him again. Virgil saw the pilot through the windshield, and beside him was a woman with red hair and a black helmet. She made a hand signal that Joshua didn’t understand, then pointed at the ground.
Joshua was afraid he’d get blown right off the ladder if he let go with even one hand. The wind tore needles off the fir trees and whipped them against his cheeks. He pressed his face against the ladder and waited till it eased off.
When he looked again, the helicopter was well below him, swinging across the mountainside with a red light flashing on the tail. A hundred yards away, it started hovering above the forest, then slowly dropped between the trees.
Joshua scrambled down the ladder. He found the helicopter sitting on a platform made of logs. The rotors were whumping round and round, the engine whining softly. The woman opened her door and climbed out. She met Joshua at the edge of the platform, shouting questions at him over the engine’s roar. Where had he come from? Was he hurt?
But Joshua had only one thought in his mind. He pointed high toward the mountain’s ridge, toward the valley on the other side. “My little brother’s over there. My sister too,” he said. “They’re stranded on the Boneyard at Mile 34. You have to help them. Please.”
