Brave Enemies (15 page)

T
HE NEXT FEW DAYS
were the happiest I had ever known. In the night we loved, and during the day we worked around the cabin. We cut a supply of firewood for the winter, and we mixed mud and straw for mortar to chink the cabin walls. We took long walks in the woods and
sat on a hill to watch the clouds. We lay in an orchard and sang and John played his flute. We gathered chestnuts under a grove on another hill and roasted them by a fire. We had a picnic by a creek.

One day John remembered we had to go over to the meeting house at Briar Fork. Those folks were expecting him in the evening, and I had to go along as his assistant as usual.

“We do not choose to deceive,” John said. “And all is plain in the eyes of God.”

I dressed up as usual and put on Mr. Griffin's gray coat and a heavy wool cap of John's. But in my heart I knew I was Mrs. John Trethman. That's who I was in the eyes of God.

Though we had no wine, John had a jar of medicine whiskey in the cabin and we had a cup of that to celebrate before we started out. We drank the strong liquor and it burned my throat and brought tears to my eyes. But it warmed my belly and thrilled my blood, like the last few days had thrilled me.

T
O GET TO
B
RIAR
F
ORK
we had to cross Bee Water Mountain. It was a long steep running ridge, and the trail ran along a kind of shelf about halfway up the mountain. It was a long walk and we had got a late start. We would have to hurry. It had been dry that fall and the dirt along the trail was dusty as chalk. The creek we passed was dried up to a thread of water.

I reckon we'd just gotten to the foot of the mountain when we smelled smoke. The wind had been behind us, and we hadn't noticed the smoke before. It was the smell of burning leaves and burning trees, of scorched sap and roots. We saw the smoke and smelled the smoke, but we couldn't tell exactly where the fire was. Smoke drifted through the trees, but we couldn't see just where it came from.

John stopped and looked around. “Where is the wind coming from?” he said.

I licked my finger and held it up. I'd always heard you could tell where the
wind was coming from by which side dried first. I looked at my finger, but it was hard to be sure. John said he thought the wind was from the south.

“I don't want to walk right into the fire,” he said.

The trail ran west over Bee Water Mountain. I asked if there was any other trail to Briar Fork, but John said he didn't know of any. If the wind was coming from the south then the fire was on our left.

“We'll have to hurry,” John said, and we started walking again, faster. The smoke burned my eyes a little and I coughed as I breathed deeper. As we started to climb I hoped we'd get away from the fire. But the farther we went the less we could see, because the smoke got thicker. There were rocks leaning over the trail and big oak trees. But we could have been in a fog on a rainy day for all you could see. There was nothing to do but hurry on to get away from it. I'd never seen so much smoke. It smelled like the whole world was on fire.

“We can turn back if you want to,” John said.

“We can't be late,” I said.

The trail ran along about halfway up the mountain. The ground fell away so steeply on the left I didn't want to look down, and the ground rose so steeply on the right I didn't want to look up. Looking up at the steepness made me dizzy, made me feel I was falling away. In the thick smoke the mountain seemed like a place in a dream. The ridge above was steep as dread. My chest was sore from breathing the smoke.

Something flushed across the trail in front of us and I saw it was the white tail of a deer. And then I saw a raccoon and a rabbit run up the side of the mountain ahead of us. Another deer bounded past and didn't pay any attention to us.

“They are running away from the fire,” John shouted.

But instead of running out the trail to the west, the animals were climbing straight up the mountainside. I wondered if we ought to be following them. But the ridge above had cliffs and thickets. It looked nearly impossible to climb.

We walked along the trail even faster, but the smoke was getting so
thick you couldn't see anything. It was a brown dirty smoke that made you cough. My eyes were watering, but my hands were full. I rubbed my eyes with the back of my hands. I bent lower, hoping to get my face out of the worst of the smoke. We came around a bend where the trail ran near the head of a hollow and I heard a roar.

“What is that?” I yelled. John stopped and listened, but I already knew what it was. There was crackling and popping and a whooshing sound. But we still couldn't see anything except the smoke. Smoke was so thick my throat burned.

The roaring sounded behind us, and then it seemed ahead of us. A polecat ran across the path just ahead.

“We must keep going,” John shouted.

Just then we saw the flames. I don't know if the smoke cleared a little or the wind changed, or the fire got closer. But we saw a flame here and we saw a flame there in the woods below us. Fire was jumping from limb to limb and from tree to tree. It looked like there was fire behind us and fire ahead of us.

And then I felt the heat. Before that moment the smoke had been cool. But suddenly the air was warm, and then it was hot. It was like the air just in front of a fireplace, or a blacksmith's furnace. The fire was climbing up the ridge below us and sending its heat and smoke ahead. Burning leaves and pieces of ash flew by us. The blaze was throwing rags of fire ahead. The air was hot enough to scorch you.

“Where can we go?” I screamed.

We looked ahead and saw fire already on the trail at the head of the hollow. Flames jumped from bush to bush up there.

I'd never felt anything like the heat coming up the mountainside. It blistered my face just to look that way. The fire was behind us and below us, and the fire was in the treetops. There was a wall of fire crawling and leaping up the mountain. It was a thousand different fires jumping sideways and straight up. Fire shot ahead and fell to the ground. The ground itself seemed to be on fire.

“Lord help us,” I hollered.

“We must climb straight up,” John said.

We had to drop the lantern and our bundles. John slipped his Bible and songbook inside his shirt. He gave me a push up the mountain which was steep as a road bank. I grabbed hold of trees and saplings and pulled myself up. I clawed the leaves and grabbed fistfuls of dirt. I crawled on my knees and gripped roots and rocks. John reached back and pulled me over a log.

But the fire was getting closer. I felt the heat on my backside and on my feet. The soles of my shoes were hot. Burning leaves and twigs fell around me. A pine bush burst into flame. I reckon the air on the mountainside was so hot things were just kindling all by themselves.

I figured if we could reach the top of the ridge we might get away from the fire. The fire would slow down at the ridge comb and we could drop down to the cool north side. But there didn't seem to be anything but laurel bushes and rocks and oak trees above us. We were a long way from the top of the ridge.

John looked back at me and yelled, “Take your coat off.” Mr. Griffin's gray coat had caught fire on my back and I burned my hands a little jerking it off. The tail of the coat was burning and I beat it out on the ground. John grabbed my hand and pulled me up the steep slope.

But the worst thing was when I looked ahead and saw fire up there too. The fire had leaped over us and the mountainside above was already burning. Other fires were starting around us and in the trees above us. And the big wall of fire was just below us. The air was so hot I smothered and coughed and couldn't see anything. This is what hell is like, I thought. This is the devil's torment.

John turned to the left and he turned to the right. He stumbled backward and pulled me with him. I thought he'd gone crazy. The heat was so bad and the smoke was so bad I couldn't tell anything anymore. We ran sideways but the fire stopped us. The fire had us hemmed in.

“We've got to run,” John said, but he looked around confused. He
looked up in the trees like he thought of climbing them, but fire was already jumping in the limbs above us. He looked back down the slope, and then he looked at me. I saw a change come over his face, like he'd decided what to do. John rushed forward to where the fire had already burned, and he started raking ashes and smoking leaves. He clawed into the dirt and roots with his bare hands, like he was trying to dig a grave.

“What are you doing?” I yelled.

John dug out a kind of hole in the mountainside, and then he grabbed me and pushed me down into the fresh dirt. He fell on top of me so hard my face was pushed down into the ground. My mouth was right in the dirt and my teeth ground in the soil, and I couldn't move, for John was on my back and holding me down. My nose was mashed into the ground so I could hardly breathe and I couldn't yell. John's head lay right on mine so I couldn't raise up.

He is trying to kill me so I won't suffer from burning up, I thought. He is trying to save me from the pain of roasting. Above John's breathing, I could hear the fire. There was snapping and crackling and a rush of wind like a chimney on fire. There was a whoosh of flames on top of flames, and flames inside of flames. It was the awful breathing of fire.

I thought, this is the last thing I will remember. I couldn't get any breath except dirt in my mouth. There was dirt on my tongue, and I couldn't see anything. John was crushing me with his weight on the back of my head.

I must have fainted then, for the next thing I knew John had lifted some of the pressure from my head and back. He got off me and pulled me up. I was dizzy and my eyes were watering so badly I could hardly see. There was dirt in my nose and in my mouth. I blew my nose and tried to spit out the dirt. I spit and spit and coughed.

There was smoke in the air but it wasn't as thick as before. Everything was smoldering and smoking. Everything was black as soot. The fire had gone on up the mountain. I could hear the flames crackling and raging up above us.

John's face was red and his hair was singed. He had taken off his coat and beat the flames out while I was coughing. And I saw his trousers were burned right at the seat. He'd burned his buttocks and his back as he lay over me while the mighty fire raged past us. His face was black and already blistered. I was not burned anywhere because he had shielded me. He had saved us by crawling into the ashes.

I put my arms around him trying not to touch the burns on his back. The mountainside was nothing but smoldering black trees.

I
T WAS HARD TO
tell how bad the burns on John's backside and back were. His boots had partly burned too, but I don't think the flames had touched his feet. His back was such a mess of soot and blood and burned cloth, and he smelled like meat braised in a pan. I was afraid to touch him again. I wondered if I ought to put my coat over his back.

The fire was gnashing and raging in the woods above us, but the smoke was starting to clear lower down the mountain. John moaned and gritted his teeth when he moved.

“I'll have to get somebody to help us,” I said.

“No, I can walk,” John said, and winced as he twisted around.

“You can't even stand up,” I said.

John held on to me and stumbled to his feet, his teeth clenched with the pain. The burns made him stiff and the burns tore on his skin every time he moved. He held on to my shoulder.

“You go on to Briar Fork and lead the service,” he said.

“I can't lead any service,” I said.

“You must,” he said and looked me hard in the eye. The pain made him sweat through the soot on his face.

“I have never preached,” I said. “I've never even led in prayer.”

“They know you are my assistant,” John said. “Even if you only sing one song and say one prayer, and tell them I'm injured, it's better than to leave them waiting.” He reached into his shirt and took out the Bible and the songbook. They had not been touched by the fire. They were clean and cool.

“You are my wife,” he said. “You must do this for me.” He handed me the books.

I didn't know what to say. I looked at the blood and soot on his back. I couldn't just leave him there on the smoking ground. I was only married a few days, and my husband had asked me to do something for him. I had a duty to him.

“If you love me you will go now and take my message to Briar Fork,” John said. “You are my wife.”

“Because I'm your wife I'm not going to leave you,” I said. It came to me that because of the pain John was not at himself. I had to stay with him and look after him. I was only sixteen years old, but I could see that.

“Then you have deceived me,” John said. “I thought you loved me.”

“You can't walk by yourself,” I said.

“Then damn you!” John shouted.

I broke a stick to use as a crutch, and I helped John stumble down the trail. The mountain was burned as far as I could see and smoke rose thick as pillows into the sky. Sooty birds and burned rabbits lay on the trail. The smells of burned meat and scorched bark and sour roots were sickening. Bushes here and there were still burning. John didn't say any more about me going to Briar Fork, but I could tell he was angry. His face was sooty and grim and he was sweating with the pain and heat of the burns.

It was almost dark as we started back on the trail. We were at least an hour from Pine Knot Branch. We didn't have any lantern, and my night eyes were ruined by the glare of the fire farther up the mountain. As it
got dark you could see all the little blazes on the side of the mountain where the fire had been. The mountain looked like hell itself tilted up to the sky.

There were fires burning close to the trail and that made it a little easier to see our way. I stumbled over rocks and charred logs, and held John's arm tight. The woods were dark as a cave away from the scattered fires, and poplar trees loomed above, hung with blackened grapevines.