Smoke Season

CHAPTER 13

Sam paced the kitchen at Highline. Despite the digital clock on the microwave telling him it was only 3:15 p.m., it was dark as dusk thanks to the smoke. In the living room, he could hear Astor trying to remain patient as she helped Claude download the crappy Outlaw County emergency-information app on his phone. For some reason, Sam’s hadn’t updated the way it should have, and they needed to know: Were they at evacuation Level 1, 2, or 3?

“We can’t get the blasted thing to work!” Claude called from Sam’s living room.

“That’s because you won’t let me see it!” Astor protested.

Sam abandoned his search of the kitchen cupboards for Annie’s backup inhaler and joined them in time to watch Astor take possession of the phone once again, swiping deftly across the surface. “Here, Uncle Claude.”

Claude scrolled through a few pages, then sighed in relief. “Level 1,” he announced. “Thank God.”

“Does that mean we’re safe enough to stay here?” Astor asked, brow furrowed.

“For now,” Sam told her. And they were decidedly safer than if they’d stayed in the smoke in town. Still, he glanced out the window again at the deepening gloom, feeling like a sitting duck. It was all so overwhelming, and they’d just gotten here. It was times like this Annie could use both her parents working in tandem, but thinking that way only made Sam miss Mel more. And worry more for her safety, somewhere up at Flatiron.

Claude studied him, worry creasing his forehead just like Astor. “We’ll get through this together, son,” he said.

Sam looked up, trying to offer a shaky smile. “You’ve been babysitting us far too long, Claude. Take a few minutes to get your things in order, how about?”

Claude agreed, but the worry remained all over his face.

“I’ll pop over in a bit to help you with Ingrid’s quilts. We’ll get your hoses ready, too.” Sam nodded. Even at Level 1, it might become necessary to protect their rooftops from flying embers that might catch and take hold, and to water down their lawns and driveways, soaking the ground before it could spark.

Claude’s face cleared somewhat. “That would be a lifesaver.”

“What are we going to do?” Astor asked, once Claude’s stooped back had disappeared back into the smoke at the end of the drive. “We already brought our go bags, and the rest of our stuff is at Mom’s, or still at the Eddy.”

Sam forced brightness into his voice. “That’s right. We’re already all set. Why don’t you two play a game while I help Claude? Check the cabinet by the TV ... I think we still have a deck of UNO! cards in there.”

“Annie doesn’t remember all the rules. She can’t reverse.”

“Candy Land, then. It should be there, too.” The game had been rejected by Astor as too babyish during the move to town, but Sam didn’t see the point in reminding any of them of that day. He’d been bereft. Astor sullen. Mel absent.

Astor took a few halfhearted steps toward the cabinet before turning back. “I’d rather help you and Claude.”

Annie heard her sister and looked up from the episode of PAW Patrol Sam had cued up on his old iPad. “I wanna help, too. Astor! I wanna.” She clamored to her feet clumsily, iPad cast aside amid the blankets on the couch.

For once, Astor exhibited patience, waiting for her sister. The sight brought a hard lump of pride, with a healthy helping of dismay, to Sam’s throat. If Astor had decided she needed to be this nice to Annie, he had clearly done a piss-poor job of downplaying the gravity of the situation.

“I want you to stay in the house, but why don’t you both fill up some water bottles,” he offered. “And, Astor, you can put your watch on the charger in the kitchen. We’ll want it fully juiced up.”

He and Mel had bought her the Gizmo kids’ smartwatch last year, when she’d found herself home with Annie alone when a tet spell had hit. Sam had only been greeting the UPS driver in the parking lot of the Eddy, but he was gone long enough for Astor to need a phone and come up empty. She’d worn it religiously ever since.

“Why does Astor get an Apple Watch but not me?” Annie had whined when Mel had presented the “present,” which to Sam was nothing more than responsibility disguised in pretty gift wrap.

“It’s not an Apple Watch, and it’s just to use in emergencies,” Mel had said. They’d shown Astor how to push the button for 911 and had disabled just about everything else.

“I should at least get to play Plants vs. Zombies ,” Astor had grumbled.

Sam smiled at the memory. Yanking his Buff high over his face and calling out to Astor that he’d be right back, he trotted the hundred yards or so up Highline to Claude’s place. The smoke and ash raining from the sky brought an instant ache to his chest, and, not waiting for Claude to get to the door, he let himself in, surrendering to a coughing fit in the foyer. A pile of framed photos had already been stacked there: Claude and Ingrid on their wedding day, in ... what? 1960? ’65? Claude’s framed diploma from Johns Hopkins, 1971. A portrait of their son, Peter, at a graduation ceremony, maybe college, maybe grad school. Peter and his wife and daughter on a beach. Sam thought he remembered they’d moved to Santa Rosa, or maybe Santa Cruz. So much for only packing the quilts.

“Hello!” he called once he’d caught his breath. “Claude?”

“In here!”

He was in Ingrid’s old sewing room, which, Sam saw now, was still stacked with quilts, bolts of material, and batting on shelves that ran floor to ceiling. He managed to stifle a moan. No way they were going to salvage all of this.

“I’ve pared it down,” Claude said, pointing at one large moving box stuffed with folded quilts. “Though it was damned difficult.” He looked pained, the rare frown lines back, leaving deep creases on his tanned face.

Sam hoisted the box to his hip. It weighed an absolute ton, but he knew how hard it had been for Claude to resign himself to leaving the vast majority of Ingrid’s creations behind. He didn’t complain as he braved the smoke again to heft it into the back of Claude’s ancient Ford pickup with a grunt. He made a second trip for the framed photos, then returned to the sewing room. “What else?” he asked.

Claude looked over the room, at a loss. He picked up a framed cross-stitch: Home Is Where the Handk?se Is. Ingrid had made the dish for the girls once, as a treat. To say sour-milk cheese had not become a Bishop family favorite would be the understatement of the year, but the gesture had touched Sam. He smiled sadly now as Claude returned the cross-stitch to its place on the wall. “Maybe Level 1 will hold,” Claude said hollowly.

“Maybe.” The fire was still traveling west, after all, away from their ridge.

Sam must not have sounded convincing, because Claude pressed, “What you said before ... You’re not planning to go sooner, are you?”

Sam stared down at his phone. He’d been trying to get ahold of Mel again, to no avail. “I don’t know what to do,” he admitted. He raked his hand through his hair. “You and I both know: Level 1 can turn into Level 2—even higher—just like that.” He snapped his fingers in the air. “And if Level 3 is inevitable, I’d rather take my time about it, not have it catch me by surprise. But on the other hand ...” He stared back out at the smoke, hands fisting at his sides in frustration at the lack of clarity, figuratively and literally.

“Annie can’t risk the air quality outside,” Claude finished for him. He sounded firm on this point.

Sam nodded. “If it weren’t for that, we’d probably already be gone.” All of them together, Mel included, like the family they used to be, if Sam had his way.

As if to punctuate this point, he stared out Claude’s living room window at the sight of a small but steady trickle of family vehicles already on the road: their most proactive neighbors, without a medically compromised family member to consider. Soon enough, though, all but the most stubborn would follow suit, with cars stuffed to the gills with duffels and camping gear, dog kennels and crates.

“You’ve got all Annie’s meds, right here,” Claude reminded him. “Her oxygen, her canula, all that stuff needs power ... another reason not to be on the road right now.”

Sam nodded. He knew that was true.

“And if you do have to leave, you’ve got that portable power bank, that Goalie thing—”

“The Goal Zero,” Sam corrected. He’d bought it to keep Annie’s medical equipment juiced when they had appointments in Portland or Seattle. He needed to make sure it was charged, plus gather more portable water, and maybe pack the Yeti with ice. The Goal Zero was in the garage next to—

Sam’s stomach dropped out from under him in a sudden realization. “Shit! Claude! I lent the Goal Zero to Kim last month, when her neighbor had that graduation party. She dropped it back off at the Eddy.”

Claude’s aura of comforting assurance slipped a bit upon hearing this. Actually, it fell off his face altogether. “You mean you have no way of keeping her equipment charged in case of evac?”

“I thought it was here!”

Claude gathered himself. “All right now, son, all right.” He laid a hand on Sam’s arm. “You just have to go get it, that’s all.”

He delivered this task like it was a routine run to the grocery store for a stick of butter, but that firm tone he sometimes adopted, especially when it came to Annie’s medical needs, was back.

“How can I? I can’t leave Annie!”

Claude turned from the window and took one more long look around his living room. He paused to straighten one of Ingrid’s afghans where it rested, folded, on the arm of the couch and then exhaled a breath that sounded to Sam like he’d been holding it for a long while. “You can, if I’m here.”

“Wait, what?”

But Claude was already yanking his Buff up over his face and tugging open the front door. “I’m gonna wait this out over at your place,” he said. “You head into town.” He held up a hand as Sam attempted to interrupt him. “Yes, I know ... it’s been a minute since I practiced medicine, but trust me, son. You don’t forget forty years of ongoing training in a hurry. I know the drill ... Pulmonary care, inhaler, the whole nine yards. Besides, while you’re in town, you can assess the air quality in case it’s gotten better for our little miss.”

“Hold up, now,” Sam called, trotting to catch up as Claude set off. They hadn’t hauled Claude’s hoses to the front porch yet, hadn’t unkinked the coils and hooked them up to the water faucet. “Claude, we can’t leave your house unprotected.” When the older man didn’t turn back, he added, “Can we at least discuss this?”

“Nothing more to discuss,” Claude grunted, already starting up the truck. It took a couple tries, but he got it going. “I’m staying at your place with the little one. Dusting off my stethoscope and holding down the fort. You’re retrieving the power bank and coming right back. That’s all there is to it.”

Sam searched his neighbor’s age-worn face, looking for uncertainty. Regret. Misgiving. Finding none, he nodded tightly, wondering anew at Claude’s sense of loyalty. His dedication to his neighbors. He felt a wash of gratitude, making it impossible to speak. He’d choke down all the handk?se in Bavaria for a friend like Claude.

They parked the pickup to the side of Sam’s driveway, so he’d have plenty of room to pull out in his rig later. Back inside the house, they were met with an eerie quiet. Even the TV had been shut off. “Astor!” Sam called into the gloom. “Annie!”

“In here,” Astor called.

He left Claude to seal up the doorway as best he could with damp beach towels and went in search of her. He found her with her sister in the living room: Annie propped on the couch, Astor on her knees on the floor, holding her sister’s pulmonary-function machine to her face. “She said it was getting harder to breathe,” Astor said, “so I went and got her inhaler and her tube.”

Her sharp brown eyes sought her father’s and held.

Sam stared back, communicating a silent gratitude for the second time in as many minutes. Astor acknowledged this with a solemn little nod.

“That’s exactly right, young lady,” Claude said, stepping into the room behind him. “Good on ya.”

“Yes, thank you, Astor,” Sam echoed, even while mourning Astor’s innocence anew. Astor was a marvel. But she also deserved to be a kid. Not tethered to her emergency watch, burdened with listening closely for abnormalities in Annie’s labored breathing. Watching the little plastic ball in her pulmonary tube rise pitifully before falling again.

He came to an instant decision. “We forgot something important back at the Eddy. Come along to keep me company?”

She blinked, a question in her eyes, but Sam didn’t pause for her to ask it. “Your sister will be fine. Claude’s going to stay here and take care of her until we get back.”

Claude nodded his approval. Annie was already settled back into the confines of the couch, and so Sam grabbed the SUV keys and steered Astor toward the door before he could change his mind.