Jennifer Greene - Man From Tennessee

With a disgusted sound in her throat, she reached one last time for the telephone, arranging for a plane ticket to Knoxville and a rental car from there. In five minutes she was pulling things from her closet, scolding herself in a raging inner tirade that wouldn’t quit. Someone would be doing her a kindness to come in and simply put a straightjacket on her. What did she think she was going to do in a fire? Did she have any illusions that there was actually anyone who would allow her within miles of it? And in emergencies too many bystanders always crowded in. The sensible thing to do was wait and see, stay out of the way. And if she did find him-what was she supposed to say? I know I just left you, Kern, I even applied for the divorce papers this afternoon, but…

But what, Tish, she told herself sarcastically. Yet the clothes kept filling the suitcase and the robe she wore was in a heap on the floor, replaced by a simple pair of light brown pants and gold-yolked shirt, a brown, gold and orange scarf on her hair. She paused in front of the mirror, seeing the mascara wand in her hand as if it were a stranger’s. Getting made up to go to a fire? But the hand kept moving-mascara, blush, lipstick. She was running on instincts and they were stronger than any rational argument she was capable of.

Fifteen miles away from Kern’s and there was the smell of forest burning. There were no billowing clouds of smoke but an increasingly pervasive haze that made the air difficult to breathe, as if something heavy were trying to force its way into her lungs. She stepped out when she stopped the car for gas. The atmosphere in the cloying heat had a tension to it, a brooding stillness. No birds were singing, no branches rustling in the surrounding woodlands. Fear paralyzed her for a moment as she got back in the rented car again, and then she felt a kind of desperate calm.

Each mile increased her determination to find him. She braked once, backed up to where she could see between two crevices in the cliffs; in the far distance was smoke, the beginnings of a ravaged forest. People, like brown-uniformed ants, were walking around bare tree trunks, and even from where she had stopped there was the sickeningly sweet smell of new ash. The sun blazed cruelly down on that glimpse of hillside, showing off stark, pitiful destruction.

She drove on, the rock face too high for several miles on both sides to see anything. That desperate calm had suddenly clotted inside her. The instinct to reach Kern, see him, know he was all right, was like a monumental force that surpassed any other emotion.

About five miles from Kern’s, a brown-uniformed ranger guarded a makeshift roadblock. Sweat was pouring from his brow as he marched the few steps to lean on her windshield. “We’re diverting traffic to another route, miss. I’m afraid there’s been some road damage up ahead, trees and rocks down. If you just turn around and head south about two miles, we’ve mapped out an alternative route-”

She interrupted him. “My husband is Kern Lowery.” Suddenly her throat was so dry she could hardly get the words out. “Our home is just ahead a few miles. If you by any chance…if you know…”

Compassion touched the dark brown eyes of the officer when the question faltered on her lips. “Sure, ma’am. Last I knew he was fine. Known Kern for a few years, I have. Fire tickled his northern slope, I hear, but it jumped on by him for the most part. You must have been away?”

“Yes. Can I get through? I have to get through! I could walk from here-”

“It’s just not safe, ma’am.” He shook his head sympathetically. “And there’ll be road crews that don’t need a car in the way, neither. It’s not like you’d be likely to find your husband home, ma’am. Everybody around here has been helpin’ as they could. The damage-” He shook his head sadly. “Well, we help each other around here. We always have. People been workin’ around the clock for some thirty, forty, hours now-”

“Is it finally out? I saw some smoke a while back-”

“Smoldering mostly. There’s a few places still blazing, but the flames finally tuckered out.”

“There must be camps set up. Coffee and food for the men working-”

He nodded. “All over the place. Down the road a mile is one-”

“I can get to that then?”

The ranger adjusted his hat to scratch his balding head, squinting in that direction. “I don’t rightly know. Jeeps have been getting through, of course, four-wheeled-drive vehicles-”

“I can get through,” Trisha said firmly and restarted her car.

Stumbling a little awkwardly on the rocky path, Trisha crested the rise and stopped. The camp was chaos: three makeshift tents with army-cot beds, kerosene burners where huge coffee pots steamed in the middle of the sun, a pair of Red Cross Jeeps. There was one long picnic table where some twenty people or so were eating, and another table where two men were standing making sandwiches, their fingers like fan blades in ceaseless motion. Each face had the same story to tell: physical and mental exhaustion. Soot-stained foreheads, ripped clothes, a mixture of uniforms and regular locals, a few with bandages in one place or another that gleamed white against the general grime of everyone’s person. Trisha let out her breath when she was certain Kern was not among them. For another full sixty seconds she stood surveying the scene, unnoticed, and then she strode forward and rolled up her sleeves.

At dusk a new shift of women came. Trisha barely noticed. The why, when or how of people coming and going was long irrelevant by then. There was always a reason. Hunger, rest, transportation, first aid. Very little talking went on because no one had that kind of energy, and after six hours Trisha knew she looked no different than anyone else-vacant-eyed, exhausted, dirt-smudged, harassed by mosquitoes. It didn’t matter. It was two hours after that before the workers were assured the siege was over. The fire was well and truly out and it was just a question now of hauling in the people involved. Trisha was refilling a heavy pot of coffee with both hands when she felt a hand on her shoulder. She whirled, “Kern” on her lips before she even saw who it was.

“Sorry, not Kern,” Rhea said with a wry tone that was not without compassion. “He’ll be here in an hour or two from now, I should think. Do you know I’ve been working next to you for over half an hour without even recognizing you?”

Trisha smiled ruefully in greeting, wiping a damp strand of hair from her forehead. “There’s hardly been time to worry about looks,” she admitted. “He’s all right?”

Rhea, setting out cups in front of her so that Trisha could pour, looked at her curiously. “Well, you’ve probably seen him since I have. I caught two minutes of him this morning when he got a spot of breakfast here. Said hello to him and had my head bitten off-not that we’re not all tired. But he wasn’t talking to anybody, like he was fighting his own personal war.”

Trisha frowned. It didn’t sound like Kern, who was always cool in a crisis. And obviously from her comments Rhea was unaware she had left, so it was all the more awkward to try and talk. “I don’t know the last time you saw Julia,” she said, probing carefully.

Rhea laughed. “She is something, isn’t she? So determined not to leave, you could have heard her in California yesterday afternoon. But the Carolina coast’s only a couple of hours’ drive, and that professor from the camp looked like more than a good Joe. A full week on the ocean and everything will be back to normal around here, Kern had said.”

So Kern had packed Julia off with Mr. Michaels, out of harm’s way and in safekeeping. Her heart was suddenly singing. They were all right, both of them…