Up in Smoke by Charlene Weir Page A

for the Republicans, historically always a good bet. All they had to do was keep patting him on the back and stating he was for God and country. With the Democrats it was all up in the air. Senator Roswell from Missouri, Senator Halderbreck from Massachusetts, Representative Barnes from Rhode Island, and Governor Garrett from Kansas, all with pluses and minuses on their records. Originally Halderbreck looked strong, but then Garrett started turning up in the polls.
    The Hampstead Herald was thick with articles on Garrett, many with pictures, one twenty years old of Garrett all suited up and parachuting in to fight a raging forest fire. Should be good for a vote or two. Sean was a little surprised to see the photo and wondered where it came from. Garrett shied away from using his smoke jumping days in his campaign. Why? Something strange here. He was considered a hero for what happened in the disastrous forest fire that killed—what was it, five, six people?
    Sean folded the paper, dropped it on the end of the bed and grabbed his jacket. One thing about small towns, you could walk just about anywhere. He shrugged on the jacket and set off for the Hampstead Herald. Even though the sun was still shining, the end of daylight saving time in the wee hours of the morning had shadows waiting in the wings and the wind was fierce. He turned up the collar of his jacket and upped his pace.
    The railroad depot was made of local limestone. Quaint, loads of charm. The whole damn town was quaint. How did Susan live with this? Across from the depot was a squat brick building that housed the paper. Practical, ugly. Made him feel better already. The brass plaque on the front read 1866. Inside, he asked for the library and was directed down some rickety wooden stairs to a basement storage room. The walls were dingy white and hadn’t seen paint in a long time. Rolling shelves had rack after rack of microfiche, and, farther back, manila folders filled with news clippings. Beyond that was only murky dimness. He told the troll at the gate that he wanted everything they had on Governor Garrett.
    In about ten minutes, the troll brought a set of microfiche cassettes. Sean sat at an old-fashioned metal desk, and scrolled through five-year-old articles. Nothing turned up that he didn’t already know. Any hint of something interesting required a different microfiche cassette and requisitioning another set. After the fourth request, the troll slid over the clipboard. “Fill it out and help yourself. Holler if you need anything. I’ll be in the back.” He disappeared into the gloom.
    Sean didn’t ask in back of where. He read articles about the fire on Pale Horse Mountain in Montana that happened twenty years ago. One headline screamed FIRE OUT OF CONTROL , with a picture of Wakely Fromm in a jumpsuit with two parachutes hanging around his neck.
    â€œThe blow-up was just below me,” Fromm was quoted as saying. “The only thing I heard on the radio was ‘Run!’ The top of the hill was probably a hundred and seventy-five feet straight up and the fire got there in maybe thirteen seconds. Everywhere was this wall of fire, three hundred feet high.”
    The forest had exploded around them, intense heat turning oak and pine and piñon into fodder for spontaneous combustion. Temperatures reached two thousand degrees that day, hot enough to fire clay and melt gold. Tools dropped by fleeing firefighters were completely incinerated. “You know it’s bad,” Fromm said, “when the guys are leaving equipment.”
    Fromm was one of fifty firefighters caught by the swiftness and fury of a wildfire. Tragically, three hot shots and three smoke jumpers were overrun on a spine of Pale Horse Mountain called Horse’s Teeth Ridge. They all died on the steep edge of a mountain in a fire that, initially, was so small crews didn’t take it seriously. They died near enough to a highway that the cars going by