Fiction: The Black Hills

The threat of a wildfire forces a family to evacuate their home.

Ten minutes before Rose had to pick up her son at school, her phone offered a reminder ding. Still in her gym clothes from her early morning workout, she strolled out of her home with her younger son, Jack, in tow. Behind the school rose a series of roll- ing hills, dusted brown by months of dry weather. There had been no rain since last winter, and none was in the forecast.

It was early November, and the Santa Ana winds of Southern California blew through a nearby palm tree. Several palm fronds had already fallen into the street. The air was dry and wild, tousling Rose’s hair as she walked up the hill to the school. Something was wrong with the wind today: It smelled faintly of smoke.

Rose reached the pickup area a few minutes early and waited with a small group of other parents. She asked, “Do any of you smell that smoke?”

“Yeah, there’s a fire over in Oakbrook, and with these winds, it’s really carrying,” one of the other moth- ers answered.

Oakbrook was 15 miles away, closer to where her parents lived.

Another mother added, “I heard there’s another fire in Greendale too. It just started a few minutes ago.”

Before Rose had any more time to worry, Kobe rushed from his class- room. Jack met him in a bear hug that turned into a boisterous wrestling match of brotherly love.

Rose snapped, “Come on, boys! Let’s get home. The air is lousy, and I want to check the news and call your grandparents.”

“Why?” asked Jack.

“Just some fires. They are really . . . really far away,” Rose added.

“So there’s nothing to worry about?” asked Kobe.

“Right, guys. Everything is fine.”

Rose had faith in the firefighters and in the 10 miles of open space between the small fire and her home.

Within the hour, Rose had checked the news on television and online several times. Her parents called to say they were coming over due to a mandatory evacuation in their neighborhood. The first fire was moving fast and was just three miles from their home. The fire closer to Rose’s home was reportedly very small and under control.

At dinnertime, Rose’s husband arrived and got caught up on all the news. Rose’s parents were in the living room playing Simon Says with the two boys.

“What should we do?” Sam asked.

“Better prepare an emergency bag just in case,” Rose said.

Rose spent the next half hour packing clothes for the boys and herself. Sam checked outside. The wind blew even harder now. The sun was setting, and the sky was the color of a tangerine. He felt like some medieval lookout searching for an enemy attack.

The family ate a quick dinner, watched the news, and tried to keep the boys from seeing the flames rushing toward their grandparents’ neighborhood.

Rose and Sam paced for the next hour as the boys played together. Just before putting the boys to bed, Rose called the emergency fire line.

She asked the fire operator, “The smoke’s getting closer. Is the fire headed our way? Do we need to evacuate?”

The operator answered, “Right now, there are no evacuations in your area. We will update the emergency website within the hour—if not sooner.”

After they put their sons to bed, Sam went outside again and looked to the north, wondering if the fire would travel over the hills to their house. Across the street a couple of the neighbors packed their cars. One of them yelled across, “My friend says the Deer Valley neighborhood has been told to be ready to evacuate.” That neighborhood, about two miles away, was in the foothills between acres of open space and the origin of the fire.

Sam went inside. “What do we do?” he asked Rose.

“We’re ready. If we have to leave, then we have to leave.”

“What about a shelter?”

“I don’t know where they are. I’m trying to get information.”

“Maybe we should try a hotel in the valley.”

Rose’s mother offered, “Sandy, my friend from Hilldale, says there’s a shelter opening up in the valley at Howard High School.”

Rose called her brother who lived 12 miles away. He said, “I just lost power, and I think the fire is headed my way, but I can’t get any good information.” Rose felt as if a lurching and unpredictable avalanche was squeezing in on them, ready to destroy anything in its path.

Rose and Sam paced inside their home. Finally they went outside and loaded the car with three suitcases, birth certificates, Social Security cards, extra cash, and some photographs. They went inside and paced again.

A moment later a police car, sirens wailing, drove through the neighborhood. Rose and Sam rushed to the street, waving to flag down the officer. Sam asked, “Is this a mandatory evacuation?”

“Yes, get out. Get out now!”

The police car barreled down the street as they rushed back inside. Rose hurried down the hallway and turned into the only bedroom her young sons had ever known. When Rose picked up Jack, he didn’t even blink. He twisted his body and rolled into her arms.

Sam got Kobe, carrying him in his arms as if he were once again a newborn. The boy opened his eyes. “Is this because of the fire?”

“Yes, but it’s OK,” Sam answered. “We’re getting out.”

Rose’s parents hurried out with them. They all packed into the car and left their home. The fire was behind them. As they turned onto the main road out of town, in the rearview mirror they saw a blazing crush of headlights. From every side street, dozens of cars poured onto the main road out of town, fleeing like ants. Rose felt as though they were getting away just in time. She pictured the fire engulfing them with orange and red flames 20 feet high.

They reached the freeway shortly before midnight and drove another 15 minutes until they arrived at a hotel. It was already full, as was the second hotel a few blocks away. Finally, they made it to the shelter at the local high school, where they found a line of other evacuees waiting outside the gym. Inside, volunteers had just begun to put up long rows of cots. Once at the front of the line, Rose and her family were each given a small bag filled with a new toothbrush, toothpaste, a comb, and a bar of soap. They made their way to the back of the gym and positioned six open cots close together.

“We should have taken both cars,” Sam sighed. “We should have taken more things like their baseball gloves and tennis racquets.”

“We did our best.”

“But what if—our house is gone?”

“We got out. That’s what matters.”

“I know, but why didn’t I take the second car? Why didn’t

I stay and fight that thing? Why didn’t I keep the house safe?”

“We’re all safe. All of us are together. That’s the important thing,” Rose said.

Evacuees kept arriving, and the lights in the gym remained on into the wee hours of the next morning. Everyone tried to sleep, but the adrenaline of the evacuation and the jarring dislocation of being a refugee led to a restless night.

At daybreak, Sam asked the volunteers at the shelter if it was safe to go home. One of them said, “Last I heard the freeway was closed.”

“Closed? Why?”

“Because the fire has jumped the freeway.”

“Oh, maybe it’ll reopen by the time—”

“Sir,” the volunteer cut in firmly, “it’s not safe for you to go home.”

He walked back into the gym, which was now at full capacity. Dozens more people without a place to go waited outside.

He returned to Rose. She complained, “The lights didn’t go out until at least three in the morning.”

“We had to sleep somewhere. There was nowhere else to go.”

Later in the morning, Rose called to find a hotel room. It took her five calls, each one to a hotel farther from home. Around lunchtime, she finally found one. They packed up their belongings and drove away.

Once in the hotel, they finally got a glimpse of the fire on television. Every image was of homes ablaze. Homes in their town. Homes in the town five miles away. Everywhere, homes were under attack.

The images were a blur of a firestorm, and Rose had no way of knowing if her house was still standing or when they would be allowed to return.

While Rose and her family were cramped in their hotel room, they tried to forget the fire. To take their mind off the fire, she and her parents visited a native-plants center Rose had always wanted to see. She wondered if she would need to replace all the native poppies she had planted just three years ago. Each spring, they bloomed into a gorgeous slope of orange beauties.

On the way back to the hotel, they stopped for a few groceries: bananas, a loaf of bread, peanut butter, jelly. Eating out had already gotten old.

In the motel room, as the boys played a new robot battle game from the dollar store, Rose checked the news on her phone and texted her friends. They were all safe and scattered in shelters or hotels, and some were with friends who lived 30 or more miles away from the fire.

After one night in the shelter and three in the hotel, the mandatory evacuation was lifted.

Rose and her family packed up their car, checked out of the hotel, and drove home.

Three miles from home, they saw the first signs of the devastation. One house was an enormous hollow shell. Dead trees, as black as the night, lay fallen and twisted along every canyon and side slope. Closer to home, four firefighters with a long water hose in tow walked up from a slope that led to the local creek.

“They’re still fighting hot spots,” Rose said.

“I can’t believe this is our town,” Sam added.

From the back seat, Jack asked, “Mommy, what’s a hot spot?”

“There might be embers still burning, but don’t worry, guys. The firefighters are here. They’re putting them out.”

When they reached their street, six pairs of eyes peered anxiously out the car windows. Amazingly, the houses were still standing. When they pulled into their driveway, the only evidence of the fire was some heaps of ash covering the front doorstep and the driveway. Inside, the house reeked of smoke. For an entire week Rose ran portable air filters to get rid of the smell.

For three weeks, the schools stayed closed. Inside their home, the kids played board games and ran around the house as Rose tried to get the scent of smoke from their clothes. Outside, charred black trees dotted the landscape. The buzz of limb crews chopped through the debris, reducing the limbs to wood chips.

Less than a month after the fire, some of the black hills started to turn green. A springlike hum and buzz returned to the air. Birds and squirrels, displaced from their homes, sought food in their backyard. Life, on the surface, got back to some kind of normal.

When the schools reopened, Rose dropped Jack off at preschool. The parking lot was next to a church saved from the fire, the fire line etched right up to the curb. A metal sign rested on the ground, damaged and bent by the flames. Its steel pole was twisted and folded like a distorted origami paper crane.

Rose could not keep some tears away. Next to the damaged sign, a long row of bushes was charred to the ground, left to wither, left to crack, left to remind.

Michael T. Best is a Catholic writer from Oak Park, California. His short fiction has appeared in Liguorian and other publications, including this one. A married father of two sons, he has volunteered in youth ministry and coached Little League and youth soccer.