Without a Grave

SEVEN

THE OLD SETTLEMENT OF NORMAN’S CASTLE… IN DAYS GONE BY… WAS A BUSY LOGGING CAMP, BUT IT WAS ABANDONED IN 1929. TODAY FEW TRACES OF THE SETTLEMENT OR THE INDUSTRY REMAIN AND THE ONLY INHABITANTS ARE HERDS OF WILD HORSES…The Yachtsman’s Guide To The Bahamas,1992, p. 235

P ro Bono seemed to enjoy her outing, skipping jauntily over the waves for the three and a half mile journey from Bonefish Cay to Marsh Harbour. I sat near the stern, keeping one eye on the smoke that was rising over Abaco, thick as Los Angeles’ smog. The sun made a valiant effort, but only managed to hang high in the pinkish-gray sky like a pale-yellow dime.

I was excited about volunteering, but worried, too. Everything I knew about wildfires I’d learned from watching CNN, so I fretted about wind shifts, sudden gusts, back drafts, and smoke inhalation. But most of all, I worried about the horses.

It was Chloe who told me they’d been named after constellations. Stallions Achenar, Hadar, Mimosa and Capella; and the mares, Nunki, Acamar, Acamar’s daughter Alnitak, and the princess of the herd, at least in Chloe’s wise, eight-year-old mind, the winsome, blue-eyed pinto, Bellatrix II. Chloe would hate me forever if I let anything happen to Bella.

Paul charted a crazy course through the maze of docks at the Conch Inn Marina, then tied Pro Bono to the floating dock moored in the slip closest to Curly Tails restaurant. As usual, taxicab vans were waiting in the parking lot that served both the restaurant and the Guana Cay ferry landing. We had already charted a course for the van nearest the road when a vehicle pulled in that I recognized. I grabbed Paul’s arm. ‘It’s “Papa Lou.”’

I have no idea who Papa Lou is (was?) but the driver of cab #11, Jeff Key, is a Man-O-War resident, a driver who’d cheerfully rearranged his pickups in order to accommodate our trips to and from the airport, or help schlep my groceries between Abaco Grocery, Price Right and the ferry dock whenever I made a major grocery run.

We were about to inconvenience him even further.

Paul quickened his pace, reaching the van just as Jeff opened the hatch to begin unloading his passengers’ luggage. ‘Hey, Jeff, let me help you with that.’ From all the duffle bags and boxes of provisions the two men hauled out on to the pavement, I guessed the passengers piling out of his cab were about to meet up with the sailboat they’d chartered.

‘Where to?’ Jeff asked us as the cruisers trundled away with a pyramid of luggage and groceries piled precariously in one of the marina wheelbarrows.

‘Heard about the wildfires?’ I asked.

‘Did. Sounds serious. Usually the caretakers can handle it, but the weather’s been so dry.’ He sucked air in through his teeth. ‘Must be bad if they’re asking for volunteers.’

Something had been bothering me ever since Mimi’s early morning Mayday; I figured Jeff, as a native, might know the answer. ‘Where’s the Treasure Cay fire department while all this is going on?’

Jeff slammed the hatch shut. ‘They rely on volunteers, too. They’ve got one pumper truck, but they still don’t have a tanker, so unless the fire’s near the sea or a blue hole, not much point. Besides, if Colin’s got everyone out in the boonies fighting a brush fire, who will respond in a real emergency where property and lives are in jeopardy?’

‘Seems to me that saving the eight most endangered horses on the planet constitutes a real emergency, don’t you?’

‘There’s many who would agree with you, Hannah, including me.’ Jeff waved an arm toward the passenger door, still yawning open. ‘Want me to take you up there?’

I tossed the canvas bag carrying our machetes on to the floor of the van and climbed in. ‘I thought you’d never ask.’

Jeff’s cab was immaculate, smelling like fresh-peeled oranges. He drove east along the familiar road that skirted the Marsh Harbour business district, turned left at the one and only traffic light in all of the Abacos, then carried on out the S.C. Boodle Highway in the direction of Treasure Cay. After driving for what seemed like hours, we left the main road and turned on to a dirt track surrounded by pines, tall and straight as telephone poles. From my spot in the back seat, I gripped the ‘Help me, Jesus’ bar with both hands as we porpoised over the road, bouncing and dipping over teeth-jarring potholes so numerous they were impossible to avoid. After this trip, I figured we’d owe Jeff more than cab fare; we might have to pony up for new shock absorbers, too.

I hadn’t expected an upmarket horse farm like Middleburg, Virginia, of course, but Mimi’s base, when we reached it, was still a surprise. Carved out of a clearing in the middle of four thousand acres of pine at the end of an old logging road, it more closely resembled a rough-and-ready cattle station in the Australian outback. Instead of parched clay pan desert, however, the camp was dense with palm, briar, poisonwood and Brazilian pepper, luxuriously leafy, lush and rainforest green. Steam rose from the forest floor. No, not steam, I corrected. Smoke. Smoke hazed the air, obscuring the forest canopy and any glimpse we might have had of the sky.

Jeff pulled in next to an outbuilding, one of three shipping containers Mimi used for storage and staff accommodations, and braked hard. Through my window I noticed an oversized dog pen where Mimi housed her rescued dogs. I recognized one of the animals from Buck-a-Book – Bianca, a laid-back potcake with more than a little bit of white lab somewhere in her family tree. ‘Why is there a solar panel in the middle of the dog pen?’ I asked Jeff as I stepped out of the cab.

Jeff slid the passenger door closed behind me. ‘Would you steal a couple of solar panels with those fellas on guard?’ He pointed to the dogs.

Solar panels. Another hard-to-get item. Silly me to overlook the obvious. ‘Uh, I guess not.’

Seeing us approach, the dogs set to barking like crazy until they were shushed in rapid Creole by a Haitian dressed in a white T-shirt and torn jeans, carrying a blue, five-gallon water jug.

‘Bi-lingual dogs,’ Jeff commented in an aside before turning to wave at the Haitian. ‘Hello, Jean! We’re here to help. Where’s Mimi?’

Jean set the jug he was carrying next to a couple of others, wiped sweaty soot from his face with the hem of his shirt. ‘She’s gone in the truck with Avener and some volunteers. They’re running down the logging road, looking for breaks.’

Jeff hustled to the rear of his cab and wrenched open the hatch, reaching inside for a small duffle bag. ‘The two logging roads run more or less parallel,’ he explained. ‘There’s a crossroad cut perpendicular to the two, like an “H.” The road serves as a firebreak, but it’s a constant battle for the caretakers to keep it clear.’

I thought about Daniel and how hard he had to work, week in and week out, to keep vegetation from choking the modest paths around Windswept. I couldn’t imagine how difficult a task that would be on a four-thousand acre preserve.

I watched Jeff strip off his tie and toss it inside his van. ‘You staying?’

Jeff grinned, withdrew a pair of tennis shoes from inside the duffle. ‘Can’t leave you stranded out here, can I?’

I could have hugged the man. If he’d gone back to Marsh Harbour, our alternatives for the return trip would have been limited. I could see Mimi’s motor scooter, now leaning against the wall of a shipping container; three decrepit ‘island cars’ of undistinguished pedigree parked higgledy-piggledy nearby; and, incongruously, a bright red BMW Z4.

I tugged on Paul’s sleeve, put my lips next to his ear and whispered, ‘Who owns a BMW in the islands?’

On Abaco, a hot car was a souped-up electric golf cart, shrunk down and tricked out like a 1957 Chevy Bel Air. Not much use if you lived to pop wheelies in the parking lot of A &K Liquors, but it got you from Point A to Point B with a minimum of fuss and expense.

My question was answered almost immediately when someone I recognized emerged from the bushes, zipping up his fly.

‘Beg your pardon,’ Jaime Mueller said with a smirk, ‘but when a guy’s gotta go, he’s gotta go.’

I winced. ‘Is Alice here?’ It seemed unlikely that she would be – fighting fires can wreak havoc on your manicure – but thought I’d ask. Jaime’s answer didn’t surprise me.

‘She’s gone shopping in Lauderdale with my sister.’

How nice for her. ‘Your dad here, then?’

‘Nah. Flew out to Bogota this morning. Left me in charge. A todos les llega su momento de gloria.’

I was saved from having to comment about Jaime’s moment of glory by the arrival of Mimi Rehor, riding in the bed of a moribund red pickup, if the gasping and grinding being emitted by the engine was any indication. Once the driver had brought the pickup to a halt, Mimi hopped out and began unloading empty water jugs. She wore khaki cargo pants and a loose white shirt, both streaked with soot. Dilapidated Tevas were strapped to her stocking feet with bands of duct tape.

‘The fence line is holding,’ she said when we went to help her unload, ‘but the stallion area is ablaze.’

I knew that Mimosa and his mares were contained in mini-pastures set up with portable fencing within the preserve. The stallions, on the other hand, still lived on farmland outside the preserve. ‘Are they OK?’

‘Don’t know yet. We’re worried about Achenar. He had lung damage in the last fire, so we’re hoping he and the two others can stay upwind of the smoke.’ She swiped at an errant strand of blonde hair with the back of her hand. ‘Thank you all for coming!’

‘What can we do?’

Mimi issued instructions with the authority of a drill sergeant. ‘First, we need to refill those water jugs and load them into the truck. Once we get them back down to the crossroad, I’ll need half a dozen of you to keep watch along it, dousing any sparks that try to cross over. And then…’ Mimi paused, as a horn toot-tooted behind me. ‘Ah ha,’ said Mimi. ‘Reinforcements.’

I turned to see a spanking white van bearing the familiar Tamarind Tree logo lock its brakes and skid sideways in a shower of loose sand. Once it stopped moving, four darkly tanned college-aged guys spilled out of it, followed by their lobster-red, formerly fair-skinned companion who must have left his tube of SPF30 back in Florida. All wore Tamarind Tree polo shirts over their jeans.

Mimi took a moment to size up her troops. ‘You!’ she ordered, pointing to Jaime Mueller and his boys. ‘I’ll need you to pull fence. You got gloves?’

Jaime’s acolytes looked helplessly at their hands, then one another.

‘Anybody got gloves?’ Mimi asked.

‘We do,’ Paul said, digging around in the canvas bag he carried. Before leaving the house, he’d tucked several pairs of sailing gloves into the bag. Sailing gloves had cut-off fingertips, but were designed to protect hands while pulling lines, so they’d do nicely.

‘Good. Jean’s got extra pairs, too.’ She waved an arm, pointing Jamie and his boys in the caretaker’s direction. ‘You follow Jean. He’ll show you what to do.’

As I watched the boys trudge down the road and gradually disappear into the fog of smoke, I felt grateful not to have pulled that assignment. Hauling and coiling thousands of feet of heavy-duty fencing line while bent over double seemed like back-breaking work better left to the resilience of youth.

My elbow found Paul’s ribs. ‘I’m surprised to see young Mueller here.’

‘You heard the man, Hannah. It’s his momento de gloria.’

I winced. ‘Right. Wouldn’t do to disappoint Papa.’

‘I wonder if Mueller knows what he’s signed up for,’ Paul said. ‘Fighting wildfires is no picnic.’

‘Messes with your hairdo something fierce,’ I joked, thinking about Jaime’s carefully arranged locks, lightly oiled with something that smelled like coconut and swept back, except for a comma that curled artfully over his left eyebrow. My own hairdo was already beyond help, squashed under the band of a Baltimore Orioles ballcap.

Mimi sent Jeff Key and another group of strapping volunteers off with machetes and weed whackers to manicure fence lines along the vulnerable eastern edge of the preserve. Meanwhile, Paul and I joined another couple in the bed of the pickup for a short ride down to the crossroad.

That’s where I learned what the five-gallon water jugs were for: to refill the backpack water pumps.

I’d carried my grandchildren in backpacks. It seemed like no big deal. Once they were filled, I volunteered to carry one of the simple, but effective, fire extinguishers.

‘Are you sure?’ Avener asked as he lifted the tank and held it up so I could slip my arms through the harness.

‘No problem.’ I braced my legs while Avener adjusted the straps over my shoulders, but I staggered and nearly fell over when he let go.

What’s so hard about carrying a five-gallon water tank on your back?

Water weighs eight and a half pounds per gallon, that’s what. I may have had experience toting grandchildren, but I was now carrying the equivalent of quintuplets on my back.

But I’d asked for it, so I didn’t complain.

Equipped with similar tanks and operating on the buddy system, we were instructed to patrol the crossroad in half-mile laps, guarding against flare-ups. The other couple who’d drawn the same assignment walked east while my husband and I went west. We kept our backpacks primed with regular strokes of its trombone-style hand pump, and doused errant sparks before they could catch and take hold in the dry underbrush.

Mercifully, the wind blew the smoke away from us, but the heat remained oppressive.

‘Do you think we’ll get rain?’ one of the volunteers asked as our paths intersected on the second round. ‘Cruisers’ Net predicted we might have rain.’

It seemed like ages since that morning when I first heard Stu’s forecast.

Paul paused and instinctively looked up. I did, too, but if there were rain clouds gathering above the canopy of trees they were obscured by the smoky haze. ‘My advice?’ he said. ‘Pray.’

We passed them, and kept on walking.

After an hour, I’d grown rather skillful with the nozzle, able to lay a stream of water directly on a patch of flames maybe ten or fifteen feet away. With experimentation, I found I could increase the distance to almost twenty feet by placing my finger just so over the nozzle as I pumped. I was turning into the Annie Oakley of backpack sprayers.

When I ran out of water, Paul kept an eye on the fire while I refilled my tank from one of the jugs. Then I returned the favor. And we walked on.

Everything seemed so under control that at one point we stopped for a break, gulping down cans of lukewarm Bahamas Goombay Punch, a super-sweet pineapple-lime soda that had been left out for the volunteers near the water jugs. Not my first choice, but under the circumstances, a sugar high could come in handy. I was unwrapping a power bar, preparing to chow down, when the wind turned.

We felt the heat first, and then the choking smoke. A cinder landed on my tennis shoe, flared orange and faded to black, leaving a pinhole. ‘Damn!’ I said, tucking the half-eaten power bar into my pocket. Maybe there’d be time to eat it later.

As we watched in horror, the wind snatched fire from the ravaged fields, sending a wave of sparks in our direction. A fire broke out in a patch of underbrush to our left. With me screaming, ‘Be careful!’ at the top of my lungs, Paul charged after it, disappearing into a cloud of smoke.

‘Take that!’ I heard him shout, addressing the flames, punctuated by fits of coughing. ‘And that!’

Something flared to my right. A line of fire was eating its way along the tree line, heading toward the road. I aimed my nozzle at the foot of the flames and fired again and again, watching with satisfaction as the fire fizzled out.

But there was no time to gloat. Just beyond the blaze I’d just extinguished, another one had taken hold, feeding on dry palm fronds and crackling merrily. I dashed over to it, drenched the palms with water, and waited to make sure it was thoroughly out before moving on to the next outbreak. No sooner had I doused one area than flames would pop up again somewhere else.

‘Paul! Over here!’ I yelled, but I couldn’t take time to wait for his answer.

Chasing red-hot embers, I staggered over broken rocks and zigzagged through the underbrush. Vines clawed at my ankles like the devil’s hands, and I tore them free. With sweat running down my forehead and into my eyes, I chased one line of fire down a rotten log, stamping on the flames in frustration as they flared up again around my feet. Sparks from the blazing underbrush spiraled up, turning to ash, disintegrating into powder which found its way into my nose and mouth. I snatched the scarf from my head and used it to mop my forehead, my nose and lips, before moving on to the next hot spot.

I tripped over a rock, staggered, and grabbed the trunk of a tree to keep from falling. Poisonwood? I didn’t notice or care. Trying to keep myself between the fire and the safety of the road, I crashed through the underbrush, attacking flare-ups to my left, flare-ups to my right. Carrying the backpack grew easier and easier. I credited the adrenaline.

Where the hell was Paul?

Where the hell was I, for that matter?

I paused for a moment to take stock of my surroundings, but because of the smoke my world was limited to a ten-foot radius from where I stood, breathing air so hot that it made my lungs ache.

Eyes streaming, I squinted into the smoke. A wall of trees, now, fire glowing hotly at their roots. Where the hell was the road?

‘Paul!’ I screamed, my lungs seared with the effort. ‘Anybody!’

Disoriented, I staggered away from the flames, keeping the wind at my back. But the fire seemed to be making its own wind now, first blowing this way, then that, so how could I be sure I was heading in the right direction?

I tripped over a stump and fell to my knees under the weight of the backpack sprayer. I rested there for a moment, then used my hands to push myself into a sitting position. Hot, so hot! My skin tingled as sweat evaporated almost the instant it appeared. Using a bit of my precious water, I dampened my head scarf and tied it around my nose and mouth. Annie Oakley became wild-west desperado.

On my feet again, I kept moving, using the water to douse any flames along the way, clearing my path. When water began to drizzle from the nozzle, I worked the pump harder. And harder.

Damn, damn, damn! Adrenaline had nothing to do with it, you idiot. My backpack was lighter because I running out of water.

I slipped the harness from my left shoulder, tipped the tank so the remaining liquid drooled out of the hose and on to the scarf I had bunched up in my hand.

I am going to die, I thought, as I used the scarf to wipe my face. I’m going to die, but not of the fire. I’m going to die of stupidity.

How could I have let myself get separated from Paul?

I pressed the scarf against my forehead and used it to soothe my eyes. Its coolness was miraculously calming. Spread it over your nose, Hannah. Breathe in. Breathe out. Try not to cough. Breathe in. Breathe out. Think!

You have a radio!

I worked the hand-held out of my fanny pack and pressed the talk button, silently apologizing to listeners for the call signs Paul and I had assigned to one another. ‘Rhett, Rhett, this is Scarlet, come in.’

Paul answered right away, forgetting everything he knew about proper radio etiquette. ‘Hannah, my God, where the hell are you?’

‘I don’t know exactly,’ I croaked. ‘One minute the road was behind me, the next it had disappeared.’

‘Look around! Can you see anything?’

‘Smoke.’

Stay calm, Hannah. Think. Sign on hotel-room door: If you encounter smoke en route, crouch or crawl low to the ground.

I dropped to my knees, put my head to the ground and squinted into the distance. ‘I see a fence! Looks like it’s made out of branches lashed together. Wait a minute.’ Crouching, I crab-walked over for a closer look. ‘And believe it or not, there’s an old bathtub.’

My throat was so parched that every word was an effort. I stuck the nozzle in my mouth and sucked the last few drops of water out of my tank, then pressed the button again. ‘I’m going to clap. See if you can hear me.’

I hadn’t clapped so hard since seeing The Producers on Broadway.

My radio crackled. ‘I hear you! Keep clapping!’

I clapped for minutes, hours, days.

I clapped for my life.