Neil Plakcy - Mahu Fire

My trough was next to Jimmy’s, and I lay down next to him. He was shivering with fear, and I reached my arm over his shoulders. He started talking again as soon as my ear was near him. “We pulled up in the driveway of this house,” Jimmy said. “He told me to stay in the truck. He came back a little while later, with this big leather bag and a couple of rifles. I was so scared. I was sure he was going to kill me.”

I heard a boom and a crackle behind us, and knew that the fire had to be close. I squeezed Jimmy’s shoulder, and he continued his story.

“He drove us up to the park, and he put duct tape on my mouth and made me get in the back of the truck, and covered me up with this thing.”

Suddenly, the fire was all around us. I’d thought that the flames at the Marriage Project headquarters were bad, but this was a thousand times worse. The noise was overwhelming, and at any moment I was afraid that a tongue of fire would land on one of us.

I had been in bad situations before, but I’d always felt there was something I could do. Talk down a guy holding a gun, use my weapon, run away. But I felt so helpless there on the ground, knowing there was nothing more I could do to protect myself or the people around me.

Thankfully, Pele was watching out for us, and she guided the flames along the firebreak Akoni and I had constructed. As quickly as the fire descended on us, it passed us by. I just lay there in my trough for a minute, my whole body shaking, waiting for my heart rate to slow down.

Almost as soon as the flames passed us, Air-2 passed overhead. The Bambi bucket dropped water on the path below, and the cool breeze swept over us. We all sat up, evaluating our condition. “My skin feels hot,” Kitty said.

“Mine, too,” Jimmy said.

“Anybody burned?” I asked. We all looked at each other. Akoni and Saunders, the biggest of us, hadn’t been low enough into the ground, and both their backs had been swept by the flames. Their burns looked superficial, though, just some reddened skin on the parts of their lower arms that hadn’t been covered by their shirts.

“I think it’s time we get out of here,” I said. It only took us a few minutes to descend the path to the park entrance, though we had to be careful of the slippery trail and any smoking embers still around.

Sampson saw Kitty coming and ran up the trail toward us, running surprisingly fast for such a big man. “Don’t you ever do that to me again,” he said, grabbing her in his arms.

I turned aside to give them a chance to share their tears in private, and was surprised to see my parents, Aunt Mei-Mei and Genevieve Pang standing below. My father looked pale and tired, leaning against a black and white police car, my mother standing next to him. Both their faces were wreathed in smiles when they saw me.

I hurried over to them, and hugged them both. Jimmy followed shyly, though Aunt Mei-Mei enveloped him in a big hug, getting smoke smudged on her face and her white blouse.

“We need a quick debriefing, and then you can take Jimmy home,” I said to Aunt Mei-Mei. As he and I walked over to Sampson and Kitty, I tried to raise Mike on the radio, to let him know that we were safe, but I couldn’t get him. I told both my brothers to get their teams down to the park entrance, that the fire was too strong and we had to let the fire fighters take over.

“I thought you said there were kids up there,” Haoa said.

“There are,” I said. “But we don’t know where any of them were when the fire swept through. It’s too dangerous, Haoa. Mom and Dad are here. You both need to get down.”

Saunders couldn’t stop coughing, so he went over to the paramedics for treatment. Akoni and I sat at a park bench with Sampson and Kitty, and I relayed most of what Jimmy had told me, ending with him wrapped in a tarpaulin in the back of Jeff White’s pickup.

“This is where I come in,” Kitty said.

I saw her squeeze Jimmy’s hand again.

“I went over to the Hardings’ this morning for the picnic, and Fran and Eli said that we were going to meet the Whites, too. So we all drove over to their house, and I left my car in the Whites’ driveway.”

“I saw that,” Sampson said. I could see he was struggling to keep a lid on his temper.

“Everything was going okay,” Kitty said. “Fran and Eli went in the cabin to get the food together, and I took Caitlin and Cole for a walk in the woods.”

“Where were the Whites?” I asked.

“I drove up in Sheila’s car with her, following the Hardings. Jeff went off to get some beer. When we got up to the cabin, Sheila started unloading stuff. While I was gone with the kids, Jeff came up in his truck, and I saw him go off into the woods with her.”

She looked pleadingly at her dad. “Everything was going fine. It was just going to be a picnic.”

“I’m just glad you’re safe,” he said. “But if you ever scare me this way again I’ll kill you myself.”

I had a feeling my boss might be capable of just such a thing. There was a wildness in him, lying below the surface, the kind of temperament that let him romp around naked in the mud at a rock concert. I’ll bet he had worked hard to civilize those impulses.

“I was walking past Jeff’s truck when I heard this thumping. I steered the kids over there, and I saw this big bundle under a tarp. I could see a piece of Jimmy’s hair at the top, and as I was looking his foot snaked out from under the tarp, too, and banged on the side of the rail three times.”

Kitty looked more sure of herself then, and in that moment I knew that she’d be a damned good police officer some day. “I sent the kids up to the cabin, and once they were out of sight I reached over and pulled back the tarp. That’s when I saw Jimmy. His hands and feet were bound with rope and there was a piece of duct tape over his mouth. He looked scared as hell.”

“My hero,” Jimmy said.

“I didn’t know what was going on, but I knew something had to be wrong. I peeled the duct tape off his mouth, and he told me that Jeff was the guy in the picture.”

She looked over at her dad. “Sometimes it takes me a while to listen to you, but everything you’ve been saying for years finally kicked in. I know I’m not a cop, that the best thing I could do was call you. But I couldn’t get a cell signal up there, so I had to get Jimmy out of there and get down to the bottom of the hill.”

“Smart thinking,” Sampson said.

“It took me forever to untie the knots around Jimmy’s wrists. I kept looking up at the cabin, worrying that at any minute, Sheila or Jeff or one of the Hardings would come out and see me there, and know that the game was up. I was so nervous I was sweating, and my fingers and hands were slippery. I finally just made myself stop trembling, and eventually I got the knot undone.”

She looked over at Jimmy and squeezed his hand again. “We worked together to get his feet loose. Finally he was able to jump out of the truck, and we started going down this trail.”

“Kitty was awesome,” Jimmy said. “She kept us off the road, because she thought Jeff might come after us in his truck. And then we smelled the smoke, and I was like ready to lose it, and she calmed me down. Then we came to this steep part, and she was so brave. She went first, to make sure it was safe for me.”

“I wasn’t careful enough,” Kitty said. “I was picking my way down, one step at a time, holding onto rocks and trees, when this little tree I was holding gave way. I lost my balance and started sliding. It was awful. I was scared I was going to hit my head on something and die.”

She smiled over at Jimmy. “You should have seen Jimmy. He jumped over everything like he was some kind of mountain goat, and he landed right next to me. I hurt my ankle, but he helped me stand up. I wanted him to go on and find help, but he wouldn’t leave me.”