Marcia Talley - Without a Grave

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.