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IF YOU HAD AN HOUR TO PACK UP YOUR WHOLE LIFE, WHAT WOULD YOU TAKE?
This entry was posted on 4/18/2011 5:48 AM and is filed under uncategorized.
The fires started on the Cooper Mountain Ranch, some 18 miles from here, and for three days we thought they were going to miss us. It's been a terribly dry year--even the Texas bluebonnets that sprouted up this spring looked oddly stunted and faded, nothing like the glorious display they normally put on. The rugged ranch country, thick with dry grasses, brush, prickly pear cactus, Mesquite trees, and broomweed would have been an excellent source of fuel for any self-respecting grass fire, but what exploded into an inferno were the cedar trees that dotted the landscape. (I am not using the term "exploded" as a literary image--I mean it literally. A dry cedar tree will explode into flame once a fire reaches it, like a small bomb.)
High, dry winds turned the flames into a blowtorch, but even then, Texas Forest Service fire fighters were doing a fair job containing it with water and chemical transport planes and water-scooping helicopters, while county maintainers built fire guards to halt its relentless progress.
And then it hit the canyons.
What separates West Central Texas from the High Plains of the Panhandle or the deserts of far Western Texas are the arroyos, cedar breaks, rugged creek beds, mesas, and canyons. Some of those canyons can be 200 feet deep.
It's a beautiful, if formidable, landscape. Wildlife of all kinds thrive here: bobcat, coyote, quail, deer, lizards and snakes, raccoons and skunks, badgers, hawks--there isn't enough space to list them all. The Sand Hill Crane pass through here on their migratory patterns, as do the Monarch butterflies as they make their incredible journey from Mexico to Canada and back again.
So, it's not just FLAT, the way you see even in far south Texas on the Mexican border or in the desert country that approaches El Paso. It's also not mountainous, like the Big Bend country.
It has its own personality--not hostile to settlers, necessarily, but wary. "You can live here," it seems to say, "but you gotta be tough."
Hiking through pastures, one would be wise to wear thick jeans and boots, because every plant that grows here naturally has a weapon of some sort: spikes, stickers, thorns, jagged edges, or leaves that have hair-fine tines that wind up bristling from the palms of your hands.
If you plan to plant a garden, you must be prepared for ground as hard as cement and, when you kneel down--grass burrs that gouge your knees and hands. In a dry year, grasshoppers will eat whatever grows in your garden down to the dirt. When rain does come, it's as likely to flood, or bring hail, or winds that simply flatten the plants.
When we first moved into this place, I tried for four years to grow a garden. One year the grasshoppers got it. One year hail beat it down. One year it was flooded. The fourth year, all I wanted was tomatoes. I planted them in the most prize place I could find--next to my roses, safe up against the front porch. We did every single thing any gardener knew how to do to foster those plants.
The plants, in fact, grew tall and massive. But they only produced one tomato a day.
I gave up after that.
A few miles from our house lies a tiny country cemetery, long forgotten by all but a handful of lifelong residents. It is very old--well over 100 years. There is nothing manicured or maintained about that place; the graves are simple, with headstones that say things like, "Mother and Child."
There is nothing around the cemetery but sweeping pastures and a modest fence. Most of the graves are decorated with wildflowers rather than funereal flower arrangements or flags. They belong to pioneers who came west from overcrowded places back east, people who'd heard that there was far more land than people and that it was rich cattle country.
Some thought they could tame it, wrestle it down, plow it under, plant crops, change its essential nature.
They were punished for this folly.
No one had prepared them for the howling orange dust storms so thick back then, an old newspaper article stated, that toddlers wandering outdoors were lost. No one knew that a single bite from a brown recluse spider could rot a man's arm off without proper treatment--even today, skin grafts are usually required to recover the damage. They didn't know about the rattlesnakes. Or the droughts. Or the terrifying tornadoes.
Or the grass fires.
The Cooper Mountain Fire took a flying leap into the deep canyons on the ranch that traveled for miles across several counties, and it powered up into monster proportions. Fire fighters could not get to it; fire guards were useless; and the planes couldn't begin to carry enough water.
Fire fighters began flying in from all over the country--20 states--and from all over Texas. By the time the fire reared up out of the canyons it was a great roiling fearsome beast covering thousands of acres of ranch land. Most people don't realize that a big fire creates it own wind--a hot howling breath of death whipped into a raging frenzy by West Texas winds gusting over 40 mph.
Within 24 hours of the fire's birth, we could smell smoke out at our place even though it was still a good 10 miles away and the wind was blowing in the complete opposite direction. Water transport planes and water-scooping helicopters began flying directly over our home and heading in the direction of the fires.
During thunderstorm and tornado season, every county in the country has all sorts of built-in warning systems. Local TV news stations run crawls across the bottoms of screens or little area maps in the corners, in order for viewers to be able to track storms. Weathermen break into regular broadcasts with updates on a storm's progress, and if a tornado hits, towns sound sirens.
But for big fires that spread across several counties at a time?
Nothing.
It only makes the evening news if a town is evacuated, and then, all they do is send bloodthirsty reporters out to interview traumatized residents and ask them how they feel on-camera.
God forbid they put up the weather map and show you the progress of the fire; give you wind-direction forecasts; warn residents in the fire's path the way they do when tornadoes strike.
In our case, we went to the Texas Forest Service website and to their Google Earth link. They did post updates on the fire's progress, but only once a day, in the morning. In West Texas, the wind was shifting direction so often and so quickly that those updates were usually irrelevant in a few hours' time.
By about 36 hours into the fire, I went out to the front yard, and there was not only a powerful smell of smoke in the air, but between our house and the nearest ridge west of us, smoky haze was so thick you couldn't see the mile and a half to our mailbox, and the huge wind turbines on the distant horizon had vanished.
My husband, Kent, was on his way home from a trip, and I called him and asked what I could or should do. I didn't know where to go online to see if we were in danger or not. He said he was close to getting home but that he'd heard the fires were heading northeast of us and told me not to worry.
Exactly forty minutes later I went back out on the front porch and the smoke was gone. Sky blue and clear. Wind turbines whirling away. I looked toward the northeast and saw no fire. Only a pearly haze.
Whew. THAT was weird, huh?
Kent called a number of clients and friends he has in the area of the fire, got updates, and then when he got home, he drove his pickup to the highest ridge a couple miles from our home and watched the fire with binoculars. He reported that it was about eight miles away and moving in the opposite direction. Then, he called up Google Earth and showed me where the fire was in relation to our house.
Thank goodness. WAY far from us. Plus--a few cotton fields in the way, and cotton crops have already been stripped and sent to the gins. The stalks have been plowed under--a perfect fire guard.
So we had nothing to worry about.
About 48 hours into the fire, the town of Rotan, some 16 miles northeast of us, suddenly had to be evacuated. Of course, THAT made the evening news. Hapless reporters coughed through smoke and ash so heavy that it looked as though a volcano were erupting nearby.
Some of our closest friends in the WORLD--old Aggies who went to college with my husband (one was our best man)--live on farms on the outskirts of Rotan. We could not get ahold of them.
Only a few hours after the evacuation, the townspeople were permitted to return. Those cotton fields had done their job and the fire had been turned away from the town.
Whew. ANOTHER close call.
But it frightened us, of course. Kent made frequent trips to his hilltop vantage point and visited neighboring ranchers to discuss options.
I asked him if I needed to pack up anything, and he said, "Not yet."
But the smell of smoke had returned, and now the whole sky was hazy. I started to play a game with myself: If our house were destroyed, what things would I look back on six months from now and wish I had? What things would I most regret losing?
What things could not be replaced?
The next morning, Kent worked in a home office and fooled around on the computer. We had been planning to shop for a new car, believe it or not. The old Chevy Prizm I drive used to belong to my mother. When she'd become unable to drive, I'd taken over the payments--ten years ago. It now has more than 150,000 miles on it and is reaching the point where repairs are becoming prohibitively expensive. We'd been browsing the Consumer Reports website, discussing what we wanted and what we could afford and so forth.
Kent said, "I don't think we should go into town today."
I agreed.
We finally heard from Kent's former best man, Raford. He told us terrifying tales of trying to get down the rural road to his son's house, where he knew the young man had stayed to fight, only to run up against a roadblock. He'd sat, helplessly, while car after car passed by--none of them his son's. Then, unbelievably, here came 20 firetrucks hauling ass OUT of the road, away from his son--who, he finally learned, had survived and saved the house.
Then he'd driven another friend of ours up to a roadblock. "I don't know if my house is still standing or not," the friend told Raford.
So Raford took his pickup truck and drove past the roadblock and straight through a cotton field in order to get to the house. They discovered that the fir had burned "right straight up to the front door"--and then inexplicably stopped.
Relaying the story of trying to get to his son, our friend's usually calm, matter-of-fact voice was high-pitched, his speech fast. Clearly, he had been traumatized.
That's when it started to become real to me.
Kent drove out to the hilltop again, returned, and said, "It's about eight miles from here, but the wind is blowing in the opposite direction. We should be fine, but..."
"But?"
"But if the wind changes direction..."
I asked, again, if I should pack up some things and he said, again, "Not yet."
We checked the Texas Forest Service website but there were no new updates.
The smell of smoke was growing stronger. Outdoors, the light had a coppery hue to it--not quite like a sunset or a solar eclipse--just something not RIGHT. Something I had never seen before.
I wandered the house, uncertain what to do. Anxious and on edge. I posted updates on Facebook simply because I was frightened and the sense of community was immensely helpful while my husband was away from the house.
Before lunch, he made another trip to the high point, came back, and said, "So far everything is holding."
Overhead, the trips from the planes and helicopters had taken on a more urgent edge--back and forth, back and forth.
Out back, the northeastern corner of the sky was an ominous brown-gray, like gathering storm-clouds.
We were eating lunch when, all of a sudden, Kent sprang to his feet and went outdoors. He came back in, set his lunch aside, grabbed his hat, and said, "I'm going to go check on the fire again."
This time, I paced the floor in a dream state, a "this-can't-be-happening" state.
When he returned, he said, "I think you should pack up a few things, just in case we have to leave. JUST IN CASE," he emphasized. "Right now the wind is still pushing it northeast."
By this time, the entire eastern half of the sky was nasty brown-gray, the wind whipping my hair in my eyes.
I pulled on jeans and shoes and bra (which I only wear when I have to leave the house), and began dragging out our overnight cases, tossing in the kinds of things you take on a weekend trip.
Because we were going to be coming back, weren't we?
An hour or so later, he left to go fire-watch again. I took hang-up clothes out of the closet for both of us and laid them on the bed. I remembered his 91-year old dad, who's just been put into an assisted-living center after breaking a hip and was not doing well.
"We might need nice clothes," I thought. "If anything happens to Dad, we wouldn't want to go to his funeral in jeans." So I set out the clothes I'd just picked up from the dry cleaners--the clothes we'd worn to our son's wedding two weeks before. Grabbed what few medications we needed; made sure I had plenty of ibuprofin, tossed those things into the bag.
After all, Kent has a 17" neck, 36" sleeves, and 40" inseams. You can't just run down to Wal-Mart or someplace and grab him up something to wear. And Western long-sleeved shirts are expensive, so I made sure to grab up a pretty good selection for him.
Jotted down a note to myself that, since we'd be taking the cats, we'd need a litter box, litter, and a scoop as well as food. Set out Maggie's leash. Gathered up her food and water dishes and some for the cats. Set those aside.
The pickup returned. Kent hurried into the house and said, "We've got to leave. Pack up anything you want to keep. Hurry! The wind shifted and it's heading this way."
The wind, in fact, had not just "shifted." It had done a complete about-face.
"How far is it now?" I asked.
"Maybe two miles," he replied.
In Texas ranching country, two miles is NOTHING. Hell, it's a mile and a half just to my MAILBOX.
For the first time, all my careful denial fell away and I realized that we were probably going to lose our home. We've lived in this 107 year old house for 30 years. My babies grew up here. They showed horses in 4-H horse shows; we went on family rides. They loved this old place like a second mother.
If you have one hour to pack up your whole life, what do you take?
I abandoned the overnight bags and headed straight for the hallway bookshelf/cabinet that holds a lifetime of photo albums and scrapbooks.
Next to that cabinet was a Rubbermaid storage container with 50 author's copies of my book, Faces of Evil, a true-crime I'd written with Lois Gibson, a Houston P.D. forensic sketch artist.
Tearing off the lid, I dumped out the books onto the carpet and began stacking scrapbooks and photo albums into the container.
Priorities.
Those albums contained my childrens' whole lives, carefully documented by me over the course of their preschool, school, college, and professional lives. There were theater programs from my daughter's plays along with ticket stubs and snapshots of her in costume. There were newspaper clippings from my son's deployments to Iraq, along with priceless photos he'd sent home in disposable cameras. There were articles cataloging my career as an author, and mementoes from my husband's work each summer with youth wildlife camps.
We'd been storing up stuff in a back room which Kent had converted into an office; we were trying to make more space for his work product. Those containers were all up-ended. Favorite stuffed toys from my kids' childhoods, commemorative plaques given to my husband from the wildlife camps, framed headshots from Jessica's acting career.
From shelves, walls, corner tables, I grabbed up armsful of framed family photographs, a painting of the Chinaberry Grove done by my friend Karen, two of my mother's needlepoints, the comb my son's bride had worn in her wedding that was adorned with my grandmother's cameo.
The smell of smoke was overpowering now. My hands began to shake. I broke off every fingernail at the quick in my rush--and I don't wear girlie fingernails. No manicures, no polish. I wear them trimmed fairly close and practical. They STILL broke off.
The framed invitation to the Obama Inauguration. The hand-written letter to me from feminist icon, Gloria Steinem. The letter to me from Wilma Mankiller, first female Principal Chief of the Cherokee Nation, for my book, Ordeal. The letter from bestselling author, Dean Koontz, encouraging me to keep writing.
The framed copies of my first four book jackets.
Then I went around my office, gathering up one copy apiece of all my published books: hardcover, paperback, foreign-language. Those books, alone, took up one whole box.
"Is this ready to go?" Kent would ask. "Is this ready?"
I kept expecting him to chastise me, to say, "We can't take all this crap. Take what you need and go!"
But he never did. Not once.
When I started to whimper, trying to stuff something into a box that wouldn't fit, he gently took it from me and said, "Let me do this."
The bronze statue of two kids clamboring aboard a patient horse with the brass plate title, "The Babysitter," that had been given to us by our daughter. The shadowbox my son's then-girlfriend, now-wife had given to me our first Christmas together. (She'd made it herself: a miniature hay bale, a photograph of Dustin and Jessica at two and five, riding their Shetland pony, Chiggar, and a copy of one of my "Country Life" columns--all in a beautiful little arrangement.)
A Mother's Day card Kent had made for me himself, just last year, on his computer.
Needlepoints my kids had made in grade school when one of their teachers taught them how.
But oh! The choices! There was only so much space in a Chevy Prizm, you know?
Cat carriers. They take up a lot of space.
When Kent left with a box in his arms, sweet little Lady dashed out between his legs and would not come to me no matter how often I tried to retrieve her. I ran out into the pasture after her, calling. She would scamper about, let me get within a foot then dash off playfully. I tried repeatedly to snatch her up.
"Let her go!" my husband yelled. "THERE IS NO TIME!"
I had two cat carriers.
Teddy, who I'd hand-raised from a tiny kitten when his mother abandoned him, and to whom I was particularly attached. Nikki, a real sweetheart, who we'd taken from my sister when she moved into an apartment that disallowed pets.
And Annabelle, the large, gnarly, evil-tempered cat my daughter had brought home from college.
I'd thought I could fit two cats in the large carrier, but Teddy has grown into a big cat. He and Nikki took up the two carriers.
Perhaps another cat could have been put in the car loose, but you can't even pick up Annabelle. When we take her to the vet, they have to sedate her in the carrier before they even try to treat her.
Considering how many times I've threatened to kill that cat, I didn't expect to cry at the prospect of leaving her behind, but for all the grief she gives me daily, she is a living creature who trusts me with her care. I petted her head for a moment or two--before she bit me--told her I was sorry that I had to go, and left her in the back room with plenty of food, water, and a litter box. She was lounging on the bed, oblivious to her impending peril, happy because that is Nikki's lair and she had successfully stolen it from her.
I still hadn't finished packing the overnight bag. By this time, there was no time left.
I could not think or plan. Bottles of ibuprofin, Excedrin, and Benadryl got thrown into the cooler with water bottles and blue-brick cold things.
The small diamond-and-ruby earrings Kent had given me for my 40th birthday got zipped up in a plastic bag and crammed down into a paper sack containing stuffed toys.
Hair scrunchies went into the backpack that held all our electronic chargers and my Kindle, as well as the back-up device for my desktop PC.
The first chapter of my new book manuscript got stuffed, along with bills and Netflixes I didn't want to have to replace, into a box of photo albums.
Bag packed. Hang-up clothes loaded. Kent's laptop whisked away.
Notimenotimenotime.
I started scooping things up as I left each room: from off my desk, the miniature Dungeons & Dragons figures hand-painted for me by a guy who'd helped me research LOSERS, WEEPERS, the Don't Give Up paperweight I'd had my entire career, a miniature framed photo of the Chinaberry Grove in full fall regalia--all those things got stuffed into my jeans pockets.
Put the cats' sheepskin beds in the carriers. Crammed yowling struggling cats inside.
"You have to go!" Kent yelled. "NOW!"
Grabbed down the small plaque my late, great mother-in-law had made: she'd decoupaged a hand-written recipe for sugar cookies from Kent's great-grandmother onto a wooden plaque and it had hung in my kitchen for 30 years. Barely managed to bury it into my wildly overstuffed purse.
A miniature bunny rabbit Easter decoration of a mama bunny pushing a baby bunny in a stroller with a tiny butterfly on a spring. Yanked it up, wrapped it in a paper towel, put it in with the electronic chargers.
Kent loaded the cats in the front seat, Teddy balanced on top of the gear-shift knob. Every available inch of space was filled.
Smoke was everywhere. By this time, the entire sky was brown-gray with it, and to the northeast, boiling plumes of smoke.
He told me that Rod and Mary were waiting for me at their ranch.
I stepped outside. Satchmo, the sweetest little barn kitty in the WORLD, who always comes to greet me, follows me cheerfully out to the pasture to set out seed for wild birds, sleeps on the front porch with Maggie--Satchmo bounded up to me for a pet.
And I lost it.
Satchmo was going to die. As was Rocky, his front-porch kitty-buddy who we'd cut out of the rock wall of the house when he was only a few weeks old. All the other barn cats were going to die.
The quail and rabbits, the cardinals and deer, the raccoons and the rattlesnakes--all the wildlife who kept us company and tolerated our presence in their midst were doomed. I had even raised an orphaned baby bunny once, and had set him free in a bed of clover beneath a thatch of Mesquite trees behind the horse barn.
Gone. All gone.
This old house, this sanctuary, this refuge, our HOME, was about to burn to the ground.
For the first time, the full finality of what was about to happen hit me in the gut. I bent over, sobbing. Arms tight against my body, I blubbered and cried--and then Kent took me by the shoulders, made me stand up straight and look him in the eye, and said, "Stop it! You have to be strong! You have to have your wits about you! I need you to be strong, Deanie. We all need you."
Then he hugged me tight, and said, "Please, go. Hurry."
I said, "PROMISE ME you won't do anything dangerous that risks your life."
He promised.
Swiping tears from my eyes, I fondled Maggie's ears, then got into my overstuffed car and headed down the road, Nikki crying steadily and Teddy mute beside me, panting shallowly.
I managed to spend an hour at Mary's kitchen table while her husband Rod came in and out.
She kept making small talk and serving brownies, God bless her. She was scared.
I was screaming inside.
The phone rang, startling us. It was Kent, who told me that the fire had passed just east of the house, but that there was another one coming from the north.
"When will you know if we're going to lose the house?" I asked.
"About an hour," he said.
I called my son, but Rod and Mary don't get any better cell service out here in the boonies than we do, and it was a nightmare of a conversation while I roamed all over the house, then stepped outside to find a signal.
When I hung up, I looked in the direction of our house. Black smoke.
Grass fires usually burn white.
An official-looking man in a white pickup drove up, cruised around the house, and told Rod and Mary that their house was probably going to be all right but that it wouldn't hurt for them to leave.
I said, "I'm Deanie Mills." I described where my house was.
He said, "I'm sorry. Your house is lost. The worst of the fire is coming straight out of the north and there is no way it's going to miss your house. I'm sorry."
Your house is lost.
I'll never forget those words, or the no-nonsense way he delivered them. He was sorry but he was too busy to deal with frantic women. I refrained from comment or emotional display and asked if he was sure.
This is the country. You deal with the heartbreaks in life in a matter-of-fact manner. You deal with them. You help your neighbors deal. And you move on.
He said, "The wind is pushing straight down out of the north, and it's eating up everything in its path. Your house is directly in the path of this fire. I'm sorry."
And he left.
Frantically, I tried to call Kent. No response.
I told Rod and Mary, I'm outta here. I have to go see if Kent is all right. I have to go see if our home is still standing.
At their mailbox, I angled the car left--toward the north--to return to at least my mailbox, so I could see if my house was there or not.
A white pickup with hazard lights blinking flashed past me, and the driver stuck his arm out the window, gesturing, "WRONG WAY! WRONG WAY! GET OUT! GET OUT!"
I turned left.
The sky north and east was nothing but billowing smoke.
At the mailbox, the smoke was so thick that I could see nothing, so I drove down halfway to a spot about a half-mile from the house.
All four pastures on all four sides of the house were ablaze, flames shooting 30 feet in the air. I could not see my house. I could not reach my husband by cellphone.
A woman sat in a pickup there. I thought she was checking on the cattle in a neighbor's pasture that was unthreatened by the fire because of wind direction and the fact that it was a cultivated field with short grass. I told her who I was. "That's my house," I said.
My voice sounded hollow and unfamiliar, so I repeated it. "That's my house."
She got out of the pickup, an elderly, kind-faced woman. She enfolded me in a giant hug and said, "I'm so sorry. So very sorry."
She said her husband had gone down to the house to help Kent, but she was certain they had left.
She said, "He drove down the road."
I stared at her and said, "Ma'am, there IS no road. I mean, this is our private ranch road."
Pointing toward the holocaust, I said, "This road ends at the house."
I turned back, and then, like some sort of slow-motion movie or maybe a dream--it was, in fact, very similar to the opening scene in the Hitchcock movie, Rebecca,--a small window seemed to clear itself in the midst of the smoke for just a split-second, and there was my golden-cream front porch, gleaming in the afternoon sun.
And there, moving about purposefully in the yard, was Kent.
It simply was not possible. How could that BE?
Flames roared into the sky from the horse barn; the hay barn was completely invisible (so I assumed it was gone), and the fire was raging through the pastures like a freight train.
HOW could that house still be standing?
A state trooper drove up, and I told him my husband was at the house. "He needs to leave," he said, and as he said it, the trees at the bend in the road leading to the house exploded into flame so furious that when the trooper tried to get down to the house, he had to turn back.
He was a young man, that trooper. My son's age, maybe. He watched as I tried in vain to reach my husband. I kept saying, "He promised me he would not put himself in danger. He PROMISED."
With the saddest look I have ever see in a man's eyes, he said, "Ma'am, I am so sorry. There is nothing more I can do here. Would it be all right with you if I go and warn some other families?"
The wind generated by that fire was so ferocious at this point that words were snatched from us before we could speak them.
I shouted, "I've been married to that hard-headed Aggie for 37 years and he's not going to change now. Yes, of course, go and see who you can help."
Then, I blew him a kiss--the wind was so hellacious, the fire so hot and horrific, that I did not know any other way to express to him my gratitude for his kindness and concern.
I tried to reach Kent again, and though he did answer the phone--he was wearing his Bluetooth--the wind was whipping around him so violently that he could not hear me and I could not hear him.
At a moment in time like that, you stand suspended, in a dreamlike limbo where nothing you see is as it seems in your brain. The disbelief is so overpowering that your regular emotions are erased by a certain calm numbness.
Everything we had worked for and built together in the 30 years we'd lived on this place was being scorched off the earth in less than an hour.
You can't wrap your mind or your heart around such a truth just then. It is too unreal.
It can't be happening. It just can't be happening.
I introduced myself to the lady and she to me. She told me they had lost their ranch but that they no longer lived on it and their house was safe. I said, "I can't believe your husband is risking his life to help save our house."
She shrugged, raised her hands, and said in that simple country way, "It's what you do."
Once the monstrous beast had finished savaging the trees at the bend in the road and moved on to devour the Chinaberry Grove in a explosion of flame, I saw my husband's pickup heading our way.
It was only later that I learned that, although county maintainers had built fire guards around several neighboring ranch houses, they had missed ours; either in haste, or forgetfulness, or maybe because they believed what that fire guy had said to me, "I'm so sorry. Your house is lost."
Only later that I learned that five young men from Rotan, several farmers, one a cotton gin assistant manager, had found us somehow--they were driving around with a big water tank--the kind that tractors use--with a pressure hose. Using that high-pressure water, they had thoroughly soaked the house, the yard around it, the hay barn, the propane tank, the back and side yards, and a rickety wooden shed where we have stored, not just tools and things, but storage containers with some of our kids' childhood toys.
Kent said that you could hear the fire as it approached, that it ROARED like a massive beast, that you could hear the trees popping, but that those boys stayed until their water ran out.
He caught the name of a couple of them, but neither of us knew those kids.
Young heroes, they were.
And Kent had kept his promise to me. He'd loaded Maggie into the front seat of the pickup when the first train of flames approached, and driven a quarter-mile away to a rise in the road, where he sat, hands shaking, and watched as it literally reared up above our house like a prehistoric monster.
To keep from breaking down, he had taken up his camera and started snapping pictures of the destruction.
But the monster got distracted by the horse barn and attacked there first, moving on east of the house to gobble up the pastures.
Kent was so astonished that the house had been spared, that he drove back. He thought, "Maybe I can fight this thing."
Leaving Maggie in the pickup, he watched, then, as the second roaring line of flames came straight at him from the north--traveling, he said, at least 40 mph.
Our friend Rod joined him for a bit, (while I was still with his wife Mary), and the two of them fought back the flames with shovels and a garden hose, beating it back when it got bored with the horse barn and headed for the house.
Years ago, I once researched arson and fire suppression for a book, Torch. I had been permitted to go into a training fire in full turn-out gear with fire fighters. They had put me on the nozzle of the hose, and I'd learned then that when you fight a fire--it really is hand-to-hand combat. Kent says it feels like being in a battle, and afterward, it looks like a warzone.
At one point, Mary called Rod, in a panic to leave--apparently while I was talking to my son--and he left to get her. Then this older gentleman who'd already lost his ranch, came down the road to help Kent.
"The reason it looked so bad when you got there," Kent explained, "was because this was the third wave, and it was west of the other two. What you saw was the pasture west of the house burning--we were not in danger at that point."
"So you kept your promise to me."
"I kept my promise to you."
Kent and the man, Dwaine, fought back the third attempts of this voracious beast to devour our house, by beating it back from the west and south.
We thanked that couple--if there is such a thing that you can actually do--I hugged Dwaine--and then Kent and I headed back to the house, where our horse barn had collapsed and still actively burned, and small fires leapt to life from ashes all around us.
When I got out of the car, who should bound up to say hello but Satchmo!
I gathered him into my arms and cried again.
Rocky was sprawled out in the mud room, not a singe-mark on him.
Over the next few days, we were able to find all the barn cats--none injured--and discovered little Lady cowering in the attic. She's now inside with us.
In a 360-degree area, every acre on our small ranch, and 162,000 other acres--so far--burned to the ground. We lost all our fences, horse barn, and pens.
But encased in a bubble was our house, most of the yard, and the hay barn. As darkness fell, the horizon in all four directions glowed red from fires.
Right now, there are at least half a dozen big fires still ongoing in Texas. So far, at least 1.5 million acres have been destroyed, and numerous homes. The governor has just requested permission to declare the entire state a natural disaster area. [UPDATE: As of mid-July, almost 3 million acres in Texas have been destroyed by wildfires, which still burn in various places. Due to severe drought conditions, every single county in the state has been declared a natural disaster area. Drought conditions are expected to remain for the foreseeable future. Here in West Texas, we have now had eight straight weeks of daily temperatures over 102--soaring up to 110 at times, which has heat-stressed what grasses did try to grow following the fire. We have had virtually no rain. Most days our humidity level is in the 1% range.]
Our son drove up from College Station to help out. He and my husband both said it looks, and smells, like a battleground.
Dustin carried in all the boxes with my hastily hoarded treasures and helped me put back the stuffed toys, the scrapbooks, the photo albums, the framed photos and momentoes.
There is a sadness in his eyes I can't describe. Grief, surely, for the loss of the place that fostered a childhood he'd told his wife had been "magical." But also, watching me hang the plaque back up in the kitchen and unwrap the little bunny-mama, I think touched his heart in a way neither of us can describe.
"What are all these books doing piled up here on the floor?" he asked. "These copies of Faces of Evil?"
"I dumped 'em in order to make room for these albums," I said. "It's your childhood, your college years, your time in the Marines, your wedding. It's your LIFE. I wasn't about to sacrifice that for a few books."
What is the sum total of our lives, anyway?
That one box full of one copy apiece of each of my books--that was 20 years of hard work, of dreams, of frustrations and intense joy. It was my life's work.
Those boxes stuffed with photo albums, pictures of the Chinaberry Grove in spring and fall, pictures of snowfall, rainbows, horses and dogs and cats, childhood friends, parties, and many Christmases.
You can lose those things and you still have your memories. Tsunami victims can testify to that. You still have each other.
But when I had one hour in which to pack up my whole life, I didn't worry about what was most valuable in terms of what we paid for things.
I didn't worry about practical things like dishes or pots and pans or even bath towels.
I packed some clothes, jackets, Kent's best cowboy hats, which can be very expensive to replace.
Pets and sustenance for them.
In my one hour to pack up my whole life, I put my whole life into that packing. But I didn't really reflect upon it until I started to UNpack.
In bad moments, I'd think: "THIS is all you've got to show for your WHOLE LIFE? Some scrapbooks and photos, a box of books?"
Other times I'd look around, see something I'd overlooked, and wince, thinking how much I'd've missed it if it was gone.
But the truth is that my whole life is NOT in those boxes.
My whole life came driving down the road with Maggie in the front seat beside him. My whole life walked in the door from College Station and hugged me so tight I couldn't breathe. My whole life called me from California and cried.
In the end, things are, indeed, things.
But if you could be assured that your loved ones would be all right in the end, then what would YOU take?
If I had it to do all over again--God forbid--I would not change a thing, at least, in terms of what I stuffed and crammed into those Rubbermaid storage boxes.
Because I knew that if we had to start all over again in a trailer or rented house or motel or whatever--in some strange, unnatural place--I would have photos of my beloveds around me; familiar things from my home. And that would MAKE a new home.
We know we have been unbelievably lucky, or blessed, or protected by the Hand of God, that we still have our home and Kent was unhurt. That goes without saying.
But the loss of cherished places like the Chinaberry Grove and other treasured landmarks where we've ridden horseback, hiked, watched children play...is a loss--in many ways, like losing a family member-- and we grieve that loss.
Some of it will grow back, to be sure, but it will take a great deal of rain to return it to its former glory, and that's likely to take years. At our age, lost years are hard to get back.
After all, it's a lot harder to start all over again when you are 60-something rather than 30-something. That will also take time.
For now, I awaken each morning and mentally list the things we still have, rather than the things we have lost. And I know that, as long as we all still have each other, then anything remains possible.
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I'm just thankful that you, Kent, your animals and home are all okay! *hugs*
