“It started just about where you’re standing.” A voice behind me spoke aloud the thought that was running in my head. I just about jumped out of my skin.
“You shouldn’t sneak up on a body so,” I said. “Might like to get you killed someday.”
Red Hadley gave me a deadpan look and shrugged his shoulders. “I wasn’t particularly trying to be quiet,” he replied. “You seemed pretty wrapped up in your own thoughts.”
“Can’t say I particularly expected to see anyone around here. ’Specially you. I thought you were solidly of the act-of-God school of thought.”
“Got curious, that’s all. Thought I’d see how you were doing.”
“You mean Anson Horne wanted to see what I was up to, don’t you.”
He shrugged and looked past me to the other end of the valley. “Yep,” he said, “I guess it started just about here. Nothing but burned-out stumps this side of the creek bed. Those boys weren’t expecting to meet fire between them and the road. They had a radio, but nobody’d reported it.
“Funny thing about fire,” he continued. “I like near froze to death once. Never was so glad to see a fire in all my life. It felt like I could just plunge my feet into it up to my knees and it wouldn’t hurt me none. Didn’t do it,” he added, “got more sense.”
The floor of the valley sloped upwards from where we were standing. I took a deep breath and started the climb. The stillness of the air had a weight to it, making it hard to pull it into my lungs. It seemed to want to wrap me up the way a spider does before it sucks you dry.
The dry grass crackled under my feet and broke the spell. The going wasn’t bad but the soil was loose. I was taking my time, but a flat-out run would sure be hell. And that’s what they were doing, those six boys, a flat-out run, with the fire roaring and howling at their heels.
Hadley stuck to me like glue. We walked for a while without talking before we came to a marker of sorts, a concrete cross about four feet high. It looked out of place in this wild setting.
“There’s a cross for every spot where they found a body. Here’s where Morris bought it,” Hadley commented. “He was only sixteen.”
Baumgartner, Dorn, Green, Morris, Torvilson, and Taglia. I knew from my research that Morris had been the first boy to die.
“How d’you know so much?” I inquired.
“Torvilson spent nearly every day for close on to six months at the station. Kept ragging on us to do something. There isn’t any little detail I don’t know from that man. Morris lied about his age,” he continued as if impelled to tell me everything he knew. “This was his first jump.”
I looked up the valley and could see four more crosses strung out ahead. Morris had finished last in the race that nobody won. We kept on walking. We were going at a slow pace, but by the time we got to the second cross I was exhausted. The incline that had seemed deceptively gentle at the mouth of the valley was tying the muscles of my legs into knots. At the base of this cross someone had laid flowers. Even in the heat, they still retained their shape.
I thought that Hadley would start a lecture about whichever poor kid this cross represented, but he was silent. I guess he was as breathless as I was.
“Someone’s been here,” I finally managed to get out, “and not too long ago by the looks of things.”
“Torvilson,” Hadley muttered. “It’s Torvilson’s cross,” he said in a louder voice. “It doesn’t do to dwell so much on the past.” He turned on his heel and started back down the valley.
I looked up to the head of the valley, then back at Hadley’s retreating form. The shadows had shifted some, and then I saw it. High on the rim of the valley, alone from the rest of the crowd, the sixth cross stood outside the edge of safety. I guess when you’re running from red death a miss is as good as a mile.
The folly of man hit me like a blow. The bodies had been taken elsewhere. The entire valley was an empty graveyard of hope. The crosses were cruel reminders that young men don’t always get to be old ones. My only comfort was that the crosses that disfigured the fire-scarred valley would eventually crumble away. Hadley was right. Sometimes it’s best to leave the past alone. “Rest in peace,” I whispered and followed the policeman down.
Hadley was out of view when I spotted Ranger Benson lumbering round the bend as I came to the little stand of pines. “Well, isn’t this a regular convention here,” I called out. Old pasty-face didn’t improve on coming close.
“We’re conducting a federal investigation here,” he snapped at me without preamble. “What are you doing here?”
“This here is a national park, or it was last time I noticed, and I’m a private citizen just enjoying the view.”
“I can run you out for disturbing the peace. It would be your word against mine.”
“No, it wouldn’t,” Hadley said. He must’ve circled back through the pines because he’d come up behind Benson real quiet-like.
“You’ve got no jurisdiction here,” Benson snorted.
“Maybe this says I have,” Hadley replied, slapping his holster.
Benson huffed and puffed, but he couldn’t seem to get any words out. I stepped between them and said, “Maybe you could give us some general information, you being a forest ranger and we being interested tourists, so to speak.”
“Like what?” He eyed me suspiciously.
“Like what’s a blowout?”
His chest seemed to swell, and the little toad even took on a superior grin. “A blowout’s a firestorm, I thought everybody knew that. The air gets so hot everything bursts into flame. Then the winds whip up because there’s a temperature gradient...”
“Speak English,” Hadley interrupted. Benson looked offended and I thought he was going to clam up.
“We haven’t had your schooling,” I interjected.
Darned if the little toad didn’t puff up some more.
“If there’s cooler air coming in from somewhere, then there’s a temperature gradient, a difference between the cool air and the superheated air. The difference causes the hot air to rise, sucking in the cooler air. There’s literally a tornado of fire. It’s called a firestorm.” He grinned. He thought he was lecturing idiots.
“You must know a lot about fires,” I prompted.
“I’ve fought a few. Took care of one all by myself, right here, the day before.”
I was confused. “You mean yesterday?” There didn’t seem that much left to burn.
The self-satisfaction seemed to drain from Benson’s face. “You ask too many questions,” he replied and stumped back off down the trail.
When I got back to my office a woman was waiting for me outside the door. She was wearing a worn, faded dress that looked like it had been washed too many times and she clutched a cheap leatherette handbag with hands that would be a poor ad for Palmolive. They were red and callused, one finger adorned with a wedding ring. She was somebody’s hard-working wife.
“Mr. Traveler?” she asked in an anxious kind of voice. I wondered how long she’d been standing there.
“Yes ma’am, were you waiting for me?”
She nodded mutely and I ushered her in. She didn’t sit down when I pulled out the client’s chair and that left the two of us standing sort of stupid-like in the middle of the room.
“I shouldn’t have come,” she said and turned as if to go.
That’s women for you, never wanting what they have, only what they can’t get. “Well, you’re here now, ma’am,” I said in my softest voice. “It would be a shame to waste all that time you spent waiting for me, wouldn’t it?” I could tell she was the kind of woman who hoarded up the minutes and was careless of the years.
After I settled her down, I asked, “Now, ma’am, what can I do for you?”
She dithered some, but finally came out with it. “It’s Harold Torvilson, he’s going to kill my husband, I know he is.” She turned on the waterworks and for a minute I thought I was going to have to give her my only clean handkerchief, but she fumbled in her battered purse and came up with one of her own.