TreeVolution, page 26
“Get in,” he said, pushing her gently into the passenger seat and closing the door. He jogged around the driver’s side and turned on the ignition. Cool, filtered air circulated through the car.
Tamia poured water over her face to flush her burning eyes. She blinked and wiped them with her sleeve, finally able to see clearly. And then she understood what had made the officers flee. All around the car, in every direction, craters and cracks gaped where something had pushed up through the surface of the road. A huge crevasse had opened up in front of her car, and another one behind. A movement caught her eye, and she turned her head just in time to see something slip down beneath the surface of the road—something that looked like a root.
She turned to Charlie. His expression told her he’d seen exactly what she had. “Guess we’re not drivin’ out of here,” he said.
“We need masks,” said Tamia, popping open the glovebox and pulling out the first aid kit. “Why didn’t I think of this before?” She wetted one of the gauze pads with water and held it up to Charlie’s mouth and nose, then wound gauze around his head to hold it in place.
“Do me,” she said, wetting another pad. He tied it to her face.
“What about our eyes?” she asked.
He held the gauze up to his eyes, then looked around. “You got any sunglasses in here?”
“I live in Seattle,” she said, a bit of sarcasm to mask her fear.
“Guess we’re out of luck.”
She stuffed as much gauze, pads and water into her bag as would fit and looped it over her head. “Ready?”
Charlie nodded. “Let’s go find that fire.”
As soon as she opened the door, it felt like the fire had found them. A hot wind pressed against her as she got out of the car and followed Charlie into the trees on the uphill side of the road. They’d have to get high enough to spot the fire, and stay away from the emergency crews long enough to negotiate with the trees. The sound of helicopters above reminded her that they couldn’t stay hidden for long.
They clambered up the slope, maneuvering over branches and underbrush, winding through cedars and firs. While Charlie stopped for a drink, Tamia climbed onto a small, flat clearing with two squat utility buildings. He joined her at the edge, where she had found a view of the valley.
A thick haze hung over the deep green carpet of treetops stretching out below them. The wind caught and bent columns of dark grey smoke rising up from the forest, carrying heat and ash for miles. A tanker plane flew in low and dumped a plume of blue retardant over a distant knot of smoke.
Tamia wiped her gritty eyes and focused on the undulating treetops. Amidst the drone of planes and helicopters, she heard the distant creak and pop of trees flexing. Haze blurred the details, but she knew what was happening. The trees were waving, bending, passing the flame from one to another, westward toward Seattle. She tried to check the fire activity map again, but it still wouldn’t load.
She squinted, trying to spot the far edge of the blaze, but the smoke was too thick. She wanted to know where the fire ended, how close it was to Seattle. What if it was already on the outskirts? She imagined flames dancing through the cedars and pines in her parents’ yard, licking across their lawn, crawling up the side of their home.
How far away were Mom, Dad and DeShaun right now? They’d told her they were going to head north, join the growing line of cars seeking refuge in Canada. But even on a good day the I-5 was a mess, so by now they were probably stuck in a parking lot on the highway.
Tamia imagined what it would be like when the fire got to the heart of Seattle: smoke, sirens, panic, burning buildings, streets clogged with cars and glittering with broken glass. People screaming and running for the harbor, desperate to get to the water, the city turning to ashes behind them.
Charlie crossed over to a large Whitebark pine on the edge of the clearing and stood facing it. He put both hands on the tree and leaned in toward its pale, scaly trunk. Something in his stance told her not to intrude. She took out her phone instead and typed in Governor Palmer’s direct extension. She knew it from work—but she’d never dared to dial it before.
“Palmer,” he answered.
Her stomach twisted at his deep, authoritative voice. “Governor Palmer, this is Tamia Bennett. We’re up at White Pass, off Highway 12. We’re looking right at the fire.”
“Tamia? How did you get up there? Doesn’t matter, you have to get out. They’re evacuating.”
“I know,” she said. “But we can stop this. We’re negotiating with a pine right now. I think we can get the trees to stop this if you call off the fire crews.”
“You can’t be serious. I don’t have time for this.”
“Please wait, sir. I am serious. The trees are open to negotiations, but only if you stop dousing them with chemicals.” She glanced over to Charlie, who had wrapped the translator around the tree and was speaking into it.
“Out of the question. I’m watching footage right now. That fire’s out of control.”
“You’re watching the White Pass fire?” she asked. She looked at the helicopters circling and thought she could make out the News 5 Logo.
“Yes, and it’s a hell of a fire. We can’t stand the crews down.”
“Sir, you know I work with Dr. Block.” Not that this was Dr. Block’s plan, but it was the only thing that would get him to listen. “If we can show you something—if we can show you that the trees are serious about cooperating, will you stop dumping the retardant?”
“If you stop that fire, we’ll talk.”
“Keep watching,” she said, glancing over at Charlie again. “I’ll call you right back,” she told Palmer and hung up.
She approached Charlie and the pine cautiously. Now he wasn’t saying anything at all, just resting his head on the trunk. Was that good or bad?
“Charlie?” He didn’t respond. “Charlie, talk to me.”
He raised his head from the trunk and walked past her to the lip of the clearing, then looked out over the valley, silent.
Her heart sank. This didn’t look like success. It didn’t look good at all.
Charlie glanced over at Tamia, phone clamped to her ear, as he wrapped the translator around the Whitebark pine. He heard her say “Palmer.” Now it was time for him to seal his part of the deal.
The pine spoke immediately. “Charlie Meninick, you must go away from fire. You must be safe.”
“I’m trying to help everyone be safe. I’m asking you to stop the fire.”
“Cannot. Your people are too—”
“Hang on,” Charlie interrupted. He couldn’t have any confusion backfiring on the Palalla. “Those people out there, the ones you’re fighting right now—those aren’t my people.”
“You live here, live there. Over mountains and back. You choose them, live like them, only return to Palalla when you hurt too much.”
The tree’s words stung. “I’ve made a lot of bad decisions,” Charlie admitted. “Yes, I turned my back on my people. Shit, I couldn’t get out of Nakalish fast enough. And I said ‘yes’ to every bottle I drank.” He looked down at his boots. “But I decided to make a change. I did. And that’s the only way it’s gonna stick, because I made the decision.”
Charlie turned at the sound of a plane in the distance. His gut clenched when yet another plume of toxic blue retardant billowed out the back.
“Your leaders make their decision too,” said the tree.
“Those aren’t my leaders. I’m Palalla. But those people,” he said, pointing toward the plane, “you back ‘em into a corner, they’re gonna keep doing more of the same. You gotta give ‘em an opportunity to make the right choice.”
“How you know they make right choice?”
“You talk to ‘em,” said Charlie. “You negotiate, you make a deal.”
“And trust them?” asked the tree. “Your people, Palalla and other native species . . . in-di-ge-nous people, learn about cost of too much trust for new species.”
Charlie searched for an argument. Nothing he could say about peace and forgiveness and looking toward the future could erase everything that had happened to his people since the “discovery” of America. But he had to try.
“Look, not all white people are evil. We’re all the same species, and we can all live together.”
“Does not matter now what color flowers are,” said the tree. “Whole field needs to be resown.”
“But what you’re doing will wipe everyone out!”
“Most, not all. Humans are . . . resilient. You spring up again, together we reshape land, create healthier . . . environment for all. Everything . . . will be better.”
Charlie looked out at another airplane approaching a plume of smoke in the valley. “Yes, humans are resilient,” he said. “If anyone is resilient, my people are. You watched it all happen, and now you understand what you saw. Our land was stolen, our tribes slaughtered and torn apart, but we survived. We’ve come back strong and proud, more determined than ever to keep our ways alive. But our survival doesn’t excuse everything that was done to us in the name of ‘progress.’”
“Invasive people had wrong idea of ‘progress’,” replied the tree.
“But at the time,” said Charlie, “they were completely convinced they were right. Do you know the term ‘Manifest Destiny’?”
“‘Ma-ni-fest Des-tiny’ not progress. If trees could think and move then, in past, everything change, everything different today. But we cannot go back. We can only change now.”
“You’re right,” said Charlie. “We can’t go back. We’ve seen the evil that happens when one nation can’t think of any better solution than wiping the other nations out; when people think war is the only way toward progress.” He gripped the trunk, willing the tree to understand. “You’re making that choice right now, war or peace. And once you choose, we can never go back.”
The tree didn’t respond. Charlie waited, more uncertain with every moment of silence. He closed his eyes and leaned his head against the trunk. The trees had to make this decision on their own time.
Tamia called his name, wanting, he knew, to hear good news. Any news.
He walked past her to the lip of the clearing, stalling for time, looking out over the valley. Hoping.
Tamia couldn’t bear any more silence. “Charlie,” she called sharply. “Talk to me.”
“Now we wait.”
“How long?”
He shrugged. “It’s up to them.”
She cast her gaze out over the valley. Trees continued to creak and pop as planes buzzed overhead. Bitter ash coated the inside of her mouth. What would happen now? Had her family gotten out in time? Wasn’t there anything more she could do?
The hours passed as the sun marched overhead. Tongues of flame leapt up from the valley, and load after load of blue retardant floated down into the forest. Charlie pulled out his phone, turning away from Tamia as he dialed and waited. He spoke softly, but she still heard the message he left. “Dad, if you’re still in Seattle, get out. Now.”
So they’d failed. It was going to be all out destruction. Tamia closed her eyes and wiped tears off her grimy cheeks. She felt numb, helpless. She sat down on the ground and buried her face in her hands.
Then, finally, Charlie tapped her on the arm.
She opened her eyes and looked up at him. He pointed out toward the valley. The smoke billowing up from the forest had thinned a bit, enough for her to see that the trees had changed their movements. Instead of thrashing into one another to pass along flames, they were swaying gently from side to side. Tamia jumped to her feet. In another minute, the trees stopped moving completely.
Tamia scrambled for her phone. She pressed redial for Palmer and put the phone to her ear. All she heard was a stream of rapid, high-pitched beeps before the line went silent. Oh no. No! She punched her screen to call again. This time she didn’t hear anything.
“Charlie, I can’t call Palmer. There’s no service!”
She tried again, stumbling over the buttons on her screen. No connection.
She tried again. Silence.
This couldn’t be happening. They couldn’t have come this close for her to fail at the very last step.
Charlie jerked into motion, digging his phone out of his pocket and handing it to her. Hands trembling, she typed Palmer’s number into Charlie’s phone. Her knees almost buckled with relief when she heard ringing.
The call clicked through. “Palmer.”
“Governor Palmer, it’s Tamia. Are you still watching the White Pass fire?” The connection was hollow and scratchy, like through a radio system. He must be evacuating, his phone forwarded to whatever car or helicopter he was using to flee.
Garbled voices rose behind his before he replied. “Yes.”
“So they can stop dumping retardant, right?”
“Don’t be stupid,” he scoffed. “We still have to get the fire under control.”
Her face flushed with anger. “But can’t you use something else? Water or a different retardant, one that doesn’t poison them?”
“Look, whatever you may have done to slow this down, I thank you, but—”
“What about the people?” she argued. “There are towns around here. And the waterways; didn’t the Forest Service guy say—”
“Who are you to question me?”
“Call off the poison, now!” she demanded, clenching her fist. “If you don’t, and the trees start moving fire again, it’s on you.”
“Tamia—”
“Has anything else you’ve tried worked?” she yelled. “Are you going to call this off and save millions of lives, or do you want to watch those trees rise up and burn the whole damn state to the ground?” Silence. “Do you really want that to be your legacy?”
She hung up and had to stop herself from throwing Charlie’s phone into the valley. She slapped it into his palm and stood with him on the ledge, watching helicopters buzz overhead as the smoke died down further. They watched and waited. The forest remained still, but how long that would last was anyone’s guess.
Charlie pointed toward an approaching tanker plane. Tamia sucked in her breath. She would be sick if she had to watch another cloud of blue smother the trees.
Charlie put a hand on her shoulder. “We did everything we could.”
“But what if . . .” She couldn’t even finish.
“The trees have given us as much room as they could,” he said quietly. “Whatever happens next is exactly what we deserve.”
Tamia held her breath, praying she wouldn’t see blue.
The tanker doors opened, and a roiling white cloud poured out. Suspended by velocity, the churning plume of water trailed the plane for a moment before descending, clean and clear, into the forest below.
Charlie sped along Highway 90 in his new Chevy Ram, its wipers batting at the rain. The truck wasn’t actually new, but it was new to him. The A/C was busted and the brakes would need some work soon, but it was his.
Only forty more miles to Tacoma, according to the sign that rushed by. Urgent-sounding music blared out of the speakers and an announcer launched into the afternoon news. “The long-anticipated official launch of Tad Palmer’s campaign for U.S. Senate has been pushed back yet again. The governor was called to testify once more in the ongoing investigation of ArborTech Industries.”
He turned the radio off, content to listen to the thunk of his wipers laboring at the windshield. He was tired of hearing about the investigation and what various officials thought about who did what, when. None of that really mattered. What mattered now was that they were dealing with a whole new world. In the six months since the White Pass fire, he’d been inundated with requests to mediate between the trees and the Palalla Nation, as well as local farmers, businesses, and government agencies. After the initial distribution, the supply of translators had been restricted while the powers that be argued about who should have them and why. People who had machines, like him and Tamia, were in high demand.
And guess whose call was ringing through right now? He put Tamia on speakerphone and kept his eyes on the road.
“I can’t believe you’re leaving,” she said. “Wish we could have said goodbye in person.” A flight announcement drowned her out for a moment. He should have known she’d be at the airport. She was almost always on the road now, sporting some long job title that basically meant ambassador between the State of Washington and the trees of the Pacific Northwest. “So, my appointment’s official next week,” she said after the airport loudspeaker went quiet. “You sure you don’t want to reconsider what we talked about?”
Charlie heard the sly smile in her voice and couldn’t help but chuckle. The job offer again. “Sorry, Tamia. You sure made it sound tempting, but—”
“Come on, you’re already doing the job, you may as well get paid for it. Thanks to you, we’ve worked out industrial zones for all of central Washington. We know where those tree communities stop and start, where we can log, how much we can take, what they’ll allow.”
“Now, it wasn’t all me.” He knew her game by now, roping folks in with praise. She was good at what she did.
“But the trees trust you. They really respond to you.”
“Maybe,” he said. “But you were the one who worked through all the property rights.” The tree communities ran across boundaries through state, tribal, or private land, and in many cases, all three. Each deal with a tree community required agreement from multiple human entities, and Tamia made each side feel like they were making the smartest decision. Leading from behind, she called it.
“But we make such a great team.” Her excitement was genuine, and hard for Charlie to resist. “And we’re not even done yet. We still have to pin down the details.”
“Just a matter of signing papers. You don’t need me for that.”
“Maybe, but what about the rest of the state? What about Canada? The whole border area is on standby, waiting to see what happens here.”
“Okay, okay, I get it.” She was relentless, in a good way. “I’ll think about it. But you know, I’ve got some business to attend to first.”
