Tin City Tinder (A Boone Childress Mystery) (2 page)

The highway wound up and around, and even in third gear, I passed truckers grinding up the grade. The side of the hills where the road cut scars in the sedimentary rock was decorated with fallen chunks of shale. As big as my arm, but not quite as hairy, they glistened in the sunlight.

I rolled down my window to get a breath of air, and the wind stank of diesel exhaust.

The old V-8 rattled like a pile of dry bones. My truck was a long bed ’72 Ford, painted white under the layers of dirt caked on the body. When I hit the steepest grade, the transmission started slipping, and I shifted to low.
 

The old girl could get me through just about anything. She just couldn’t do it very fast.

My mind drifted, and I found myself thinking not about the fire call, but about the last blaze I'd worked. A chemical fire had broken out on the USS Theodore Roosevelt, a carrier in the Seventh Fleet. All sailors worked fire crews, but mine was the first crew in. We rescued one sailor, but another, an officer in his rate, had died. His body was so badly burned, they had to ID him with DNA.

Even though the Navy had offered me a hefty sign-up bonus to re-enlist, I decided then to get out of intelligence and start a career as a fire investigator. I hated fire, hated her like the bitch she was, hated her for taking the life of my best friend on the Teddy Roosevelt. I had to find something to do with that hate, instead of letting it eat me up.

The truck’s eight cylinders roared as I stepped on it. The speedometer climbed.
 

Sixty.
 

Seventy.
 

Eighty.
 

Eighty-five.

The pine trees that lined the highway shot by. A national forest passed into and out of my peripheral vision. The wind caught a plastic bag inside the cabin and whipped it out the window before I had the chance to catch it.
 

In the rearview, I watched the tattered bag rip into the truck’s jet wash and then float gently down onto the hood of an Allegheny County Sheriff’s cruiser as it passed me going the opposite way. The brake lights glowed, and the driver whipped a U-turn.
 

The roll lights switched on, and the siren sounded.

I tapped my brakes and waved the cruiser around.

“Come on, come on,” I said, “the road’s clear.”

The cop hit the strobe lights. The siren squawked.

I caught the cop's eyes in the rearview.
 

Me
? I mouthed.

The deputy jabbed a finger at the shoulder of the road.

“Damn it,” I said and pulled off.

The foothills were an odd place, sort of a landmark of contrasts where several counties touched, each one with its own way of doing things. In Allegheny County, which was on the east side, people tended to be plain folks. They went to high school—most of the time finishing— then either worked on a farm, for minimum wage in town, or else drove down the other side of the mountain to Manchester or Winchester where they got jobs in the mills. They went to church on Sundays and Wednesdays like good Baptists and voted Democrat because Lincoln was a Republican, and they knew how to carry a grudge.

Unless your name was Boone Childress, and you expected public officials to earn respect.

The deputy slammed his door. He walked up to my truck, adjusting his gun belt. “License and registration.”

I opened my wallet. Handed them over.

The deputy clicked his ballpoint pen. “Where’s the fire?”
 

“Box 425 Route 9, Tin City, North Carolina.”

“Excuse me?”

“The fire, Route 9 in Tin City, sir. I’m a firefighter.”

“I know all the firemen in town. You ain’t one of them.”

 
“I’m new, and I’m a fire
fighter
. That’s why my license plate says firefighter and why there’s a flasher on the roof.” I patted the seat. “And why I have turnouts and a hooligan tool next to me.”

“Don’t get smart with me.”

“Can I get a rain check on the ticket? This is my first fire, and I’d like to respond before the owners put it out with a garden hose.”

The deputy’s lip started to jump. He unclipped his Taser. “Get out of the vehicle.”
 

“A Taser? Come on!”

The deputy pulled the door opened. He signaled me out with an officious wave.
 

I slid to the rocky clay of the shoulder. My boots sank a half-inch in the soil, but I still towered over the deputy, being six-four with hands wide enough to palm a medicine ball.

The deputy waved the Taser. “You’ve got an attitude problem, boy.”

Judging by his dentition and light facial hair, the deputy was less than twenty-five, probably in his first couple of months on the job. It was obvious he cared more about me respecting the badge than doing what was right.

“Face the vehicle. Hands on the hood.”

“We’re on the same side,” I protested. “I was only speeding to respond to a call.”

“Don’t sass me!”

A second siren sounded, and a smile slowly formed on my face.
 

Down the highway, behind the deputy’s car, I saw the familiar sight of Sheriff Hoyt’s gold and white cruiser pulling off the pavement.

Paul Davis Hoyt was an ex-state trooper, a box of a man sporting a plush gray-brown flattop and jowls dappled with ancient acne scars. He hitched his britches over a hickory-hard gut and stuck out a wide, flat hand. The palm was so red, it looked like he had been picking blueberries. He wore a dark blue uniform and a thick, leather belt that creaked when he walked alongside the empty highway. He was also a vet, just like me.
 

As Hoyt reached the truck, I noted that I smelled of aftershave and starch and a touch of body odor.

“What in blue blazes is going on here?” The sheriff spat a stream of tobacco juice. “Deputy Mercer, why’re you frisking a Navy Medal recipient?”

The deputy jumped back like he had been zapped. “A what?”
 

“You heard me. This boy’s a war hero.”

Mercer bobbled the Taser, and it bounced from hand to hand.
 

I snatched it out of the air with my big mitts an handed it over. “You dropped this.”

The deputy snatched it back. “Sheriff Hoyt, I apprehended this hoodlum traveling at a high rate of speed. While writing his citation, he became agitated and aggressive.”

Hoyt pointed at the Taser. “Looks like you’re the one got agitated, Pete. Didn’t you see the cherry top on the boy’s car? He’s on a call.”

“Which I tried to explain to him,” I interjected.

“Thought it was fake.”

The sheriff raised his hand.”Tell you what, Pete, you head on back into town, and I’ll take care of the ticket on this one. Stop by the Red Fox Java and get yourself a slice of pie. My treat.”

The deputy rubbed his neck. “My shift ain’t over for another two hours.”

Hoyt took the ticket book from him. “I’ll take care of it.”

The deputy grimaced, but there was nothing he could do but return to his cruiser.
 

Hoyt and I silently watched as he hit the siren, made a sharp U-turn in the highway, and roared back toward Galax.

Hoyt whapped my arm with his ticket book. “That Pete, I tell you what. Two months on the job, and he’s written more tickets than the other deputies combined. Now, about that fire.”

“Yes sir,” I said, “that.” I’d given up being first responder. All I wanted was to respond at all.

Hoyt nodded for me to get in the truck. “Then let’s not keep the old boy waiting. You know the rules. No passing. No tailgating. And son?”

“Yeah?”

“I drive fast. Try to keep up.”
 

3

The dilapidated house sat atop a slight rise, next to a man-made pond. The pond had once been used for irrigation, back when the overgrown lot had been part of a family farm. Past the pond and up a rise, a half dozen tobacco barns and a derelict chicken house had been left to rot.

They were no longer rotting. They were on fire. All of them. The barns. The chicken coup. The farmhouse.

Eight plumes of smoke drifted into the cloudless sky.
 

The only structure not ablaze was a rusted out Airstream. The white and blue trailer had a tattered canopy, a picnic table, a TV antenna stretched thirty feet into air.

By the time I drove down the long dirt driveway to the fire, the roofline of the house was engulfed in flames. If the roof was gone, the rest of the house would be lost.
 

A stack of spent kindling.

The air smelled like fire, a mix of ash and burned fat that left me with a sweet taste in my mouth and a sick feeling in the gut.
 

I loved it.

The rest of the Allegheny VFD was already on the job. The six-person squad had set up hoses to the pumper engine. The engine drew water from an abandoned cow pond. Otto and Jimmy had trained hoses on the roof of the house, and Julia was manning the pumper.

The only woman in the crew, Julia was a fitness instructor and adrenaline junkie. She stood over five seven, had the shoulders of an Olympic swimmer, and could kick harder than a pissed off mule. The other firefighters knew that because she won every mud-wrestling match in the county.

Two other Allegheny firefighters had containment detail. They were busy smashing the windows on the left side so the hoses could reach inside.

“Lamar!” I parked beside the tanker. “Hey, Cap!”

Lamar was the captain. He was also my stepfather. He stood fifty feet from the tanker, talking to the captain of Galax VFD and Sheriff Hoyt, who had beaten me by a good three minutes.

“Julia! I’m here!” I pulled on my fire pants. Grabbed my jacket, gloves, and helmet. “What’s my duty spot?”

“Ask Cap!”

“He didn’t answer me!”

“You know the procedure!” Julia shouted over the mechanical clunk of the pumper. “Unless you need help getting dressed!”

“Very funny!”

I knew the procedure. But knowing it and doing it automatically were two separate things.
 

Lamar had preached the same sermon all during training: Firefighters had to know procedures so well, they could react without having to think. When a two-thousand-square-foot roof was collapsing on your head, there was no time to consult the manual.

“Lamar!” I ran over to Hoyt’s cruiser. “What’s my post?”

Lamar Rivenbark was my opposite. He stood barely five feet, eight inches tall, a solidly built man with cropped brown hair and hands as thick and coarse as cinder blocks. His hair was almost completely gray, like the stubble on his cheeks. A lifetime of farming had given him a deep tan and a slight gait, a gift from a runaway hay baler.

“Slow down now, no need to huff and puff,” Lamar said. “You don’t just rush into a fire.”

“Yes sir.” I took a deep breath. “Now, what’s my post?”

Lamar scratched his head. “Maybe you got a genius IQ, but you’re still thinking like a soldier, all nerves and guts. Like you could huff and puff and blow out the fire all by your lonesome.”

“Sailor, not soldier. I didn’t shot people in the Navy.” I surveyed the damage. Flames poured out of the windows, the doors, and through the roof near the chimney. The rafters had collapsed there, opening a gaping hole. “I can help. I’m ready.”

“Back up Julia on the pumper engine.” Lamar snapped his chinstrap. “You’ll be feeding out the lines.”

“I was hoping to work the attack.”

Lamar slapped me on the shoulder. The blow was hard enough to knock me back a step. “We’ve already rung four alarms on this job. The residence is empty. The other structures are all goners. Our job now is to wash down the fire, stomp out the sparks, and get back to the station with all our fingers and toes. Which is why, for now, you got the pumper. Get to work and don’t argue.”

I held my chin high, looked my stepfather straight in the eye, and said, “Yes, sir, Captain.”

A wise man once said that everybody has to pay his dues. I was no exception. My turn would come sooner or later.

Probably sooner.

4

An hour later, the fire was under control. Otto and Julia had soaked down the roof. They worked around the house to the kitchen. Lamar ordered me to back them up. I tied a clove hitch knot to secure a reel of unused hose I had been spooling, then went to help Julia with the blitz line.
 

The charged hose was as hard as concrete and just as heavy. I held it on my hip, supporting Julia as she opened the nozzle and a battering ram of water broke free. The line fought me as much as I fought it. It was like wrestling a Burmese python that had swallowed a water tank. My turnouts were immediately soaked with backwash, and the hose hammered my chest.

“Hold tight!” Julia ordered Otto, then turned her attention to the structure. “I’m taking the hooligan to it!”

With one deft swing, she knocked the back door off its frame.

“Swing battah!” Otto yelled. “That’s how you use a hooligan!”

Julia took a step inside.
 

Then she froze. “Down! Everybody, down!”

Fueled by fresh oxygen, the fire came alive, and flames erupted from the door frame. They seemed to be suspended in air. A ballet dancer in the midst of a
grand
jeté
. Then—boom! A wave of heat swept over the porch with a roaring ovation of sound and furious heat.

Julia was thrown down on the porch. She threw an arm across her face to cover the face shield. Then she went limp.

“Jules!” Otto hit the fire with a jet from the hose. “Get her, rookie!”
 

I dived onto the porch. Rolled under the flames. Grabbed Julia under the arms for a carry. She was solid as an engine block, but the backdraft had tossed her like a rag doll.

“Julia!” I carried her to the grass. “Can you hear me?”

“Hell, Boone. I’m not deaf.” She popped her chin strap. “Just knocked the wind out of me. Lucky I landed on my ass.”

“Yeah,” Otto shouted. “It’s got more padding than a LazyBoy!”
 

“Look who’s talking! Give me a hand up.” Julia got to her feet, holding her back. She pulled her helmet off. Her face was encrusted with black ash.”Hold down the fort, boys. I’ve got to have a cigarette.”