Fire Read online

  Fire

  By Lou Cadle

  Copyright © 2020 by Cadle-Sparks Books

  All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the author except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Chapter 1

  James was going to be late for work, and he was guaranteeing that he’d be even later by continuing to argue with Sylvia as he tied his tie. He knew he should stop talking. He’d said his piece. But he’d overslept and missed his morning coffee, and he was in a bad mood, and he could not keep himself from repeating what he’d already said.

  “We don’t have fun anymore,” he said.

  Sylvia was at her desk—she had a mug of tea, he thought, knowing it for a petty and jealous thought—and had already begun work. She turned her head to meet his eyes, though her fingertips were still on the keyboard. “We have fun,” she said. “We went to that concert.”

  “Six weeks ago. I want to go hiking more. We used to do that all the time. And Pasquale and Lindsay want us to go camping this weekend.”

  “I told you earlier this week, I might have to work this weekend to get this finished.”

  “That’s just it,” he said. “You work all the time!”

  She never raised her voice. “I’m building a business. And this is—”

  “An important job, blah blah blah. Every time, you say that.”

  “Well it is. Lilian Campo is the president of the Filipino—”

  “I know; you told me.” He yanked at his tie in frustration, unable to get it right. He’d tie it at work. Screw this. “I feel like I don’t have a wife anymore.”

  She turned her head back to the computer screen. “Sorry, honey. I have work to do.” She must be irked at him as well, but not so irked that he was distracting her at all. She was also typing again.

  Damn it.

  He couldn’t get a rise out of her, even. And that scared him. Do you still love me? The question was on the tip of his tongue, but he was afraid of what the answer might be. “I have work too,” he said, and he marched out of the room, feeling he’d lost not only the argument but his self-control. He’d sounded petulant, like a teenager not getting his own way. And that made him dislike himself. He grabbed his keys and walked out the door, careful to not let himself slam it, and when he saw the time on the car dashboard clock, moved his topic of worry from her job to his own.

  Not that he’d get fired for walking in ten or fifteen minutes late, but in the shape his own employer’s business was in—the whole industry, really—he lived in fear of being downsized and being forced to job-hunt in a very tough market indeed. No reason to invite trouble by being late to work.

  As he steered his car down the loop road that ran through Pinedrops, California, he passed a county sheriff’s car and raised his right-hand fingers from the steering wheel in a half-wave. They didn’t patrol often out here, so it was likely the deputy had been called out. Crime was low in Pinedrops, and the patrol car’s lights weren’t on, so it was likely nothing major. Domestic squabbles, perhaps. He’d been feeling like throwing some crockery at home himself lately, so he had a grain of sympathy for that. Not for hitting a person you loved, of course. If you hit them, you didn’t love them, it seemed clear to him. And he did love Sylvia.

  The question was, a nagging voice in his head asked, did she still love him? The question dogged him as he drove onto the state highway. It kept prodding him all the way to the main highway as he drove westward along under a clear blue sky that promised more heat on this early October day.

  He and Sylvia had met in San Francisco eleven years ago at a mutual friend’s party. They’d moved in together quickly, after only seven months of dating. They had married two years after that. Moved out to Pinedrops two years later when he’d found the job in Sacramento and the welcome raise that came with it. Both of them loved the woods and mountains, loved hiking and camping and nature, so they took the chance to buy a house in a small town in gold mining country, an hour’s drive east of Sacto. The house was less expensive than its equivalent would have been in Sacto, and far less expensive than houses were in San Fran. It was also nearly perfect for them, a three-bedroom on one level with a deck that overlooked the woods and seemed to bring nature right into the living space.

  The town of Pinedrops was small, with a mixture of older conservative people whose parents were from the area, old hippies who’d moved out twenty-five or more years ago, and younger working people like Sylvia and himself. For people who loved the forests and could work from home on the computer, or for the retired person who disliked cities, it was an ideal place to live. It had decent internet access, a general store/café, a tiny art gallery featuring local artists, and one enterprising eighty-year-old man sold “antiques” from his front lawn, junky old furniture for the most part. The town wasn’t big enough for any franchise store. It was the kind of little town city people said had “character.”

  After they bought the house, Sylvia found a job she didn’t much like in Grass Valley, but she had decided soon after to start her own business in technical writing, using contacts she still had in San Francisco to develop her first clients. It had been a slow start, but now she was making decent money, more than she had in San Francisco, and she had clients booked out to the end of the year. She was the only employee of her company, and she did all the writing, all the sales, all the accounting, and all the networking. Once every week or two, she left at 5:00 a.m. to spend a long day in San Francisco or Sacramento, meeting with a client or two, lunching with potential clients, going to business club meetings to glad-hand, having supper with yet another potential client or, more rarely, an old friend, and limping home at 10 or 11, too exhausted to talk. And then that would be followed by six to ten solid days of work at her computer. At most, she took an afternoon off now and then. He knew that if she kept her company growing, late next year, or the year after that, she’d be able to hire content writers to do the regular work, and use an accountant more than once per year to do the books, and her workload would ease off to editing her employees’ work and cultivating more clients.

  But knowing that the future would be easier for them both didn’t help him today. He missed her, was the thing. He missed his wife—or the girlfriend she was before that—and their long days in the woods, or just hanging out with nothing to do on the weekends, or making love for two or three hours on a lazy Sunday afternoon. And he should have said that this morning, should have put it that way, but he hadn’t. More and more these days he simply got frustrated and then angry, when she said she couldn’t or wouldn’t do something with him, or put him off and couldn’t commit one way or the other until right before they were supposed to leave for some social event.

  At least they had money. There was that. They were paying double the mortgage payment every month and could probably afford to pay triple, and they sure weren’t overspending on entertainment. But money wasn’t everything, cliché as it was to think that. He’d rather have been poorer, living in a flat in the city again, and certain Syl was as madly in love with him as he was with her.

  He drove into the toll lane that read his FasTrak transponder. They still had two lanes of toll-takers here, so old school, but look at the lines for them! He’d be an hour late to work if he had to take those. Almost without thought, he moved the transponder back to the car’s center console after he’d passed by the sensor, tucking it under cover where it wouldn’t attract a thief. Twelve minutes after that, he pulled into his work parking lot and jogged to the building as his car locked itself behind him. He pulled out yet another electronic key fob and clicked it to release the magnetic lock of the side office door.

  It was no wonder he wanted to spend more time i
n the woods. All this electronic crap chased him all day long. It was convenient at times, like FasTrack when it worked, but it was unnatural. The more blinking, beeping, tracking doodads he had, the more he wanted to put on a backpack and walk into the woods to get away from them all. He had gotten to the point two years ago where he’d eliminated every push notification from his phone, suspended his personal social media accounts, and quit paying with credit cards when he shopped in local stores. He hated being tracked, not because he did anything illegal, but just on principle. Though he needed a cellphone, and that damned thing was tracking him every second, silently sending off signals so strangers could know how traffic was flowing around Sacto or how long it took to shop for groceries or to get an oil change. It knew his store preferences and could assume too much about him from that.

  In his office, only twelve minutes late, he slipped his jacket off, tied the damned tie already, turned on the computer, and punched in the codes to check his work voicemail. Another day, another dollar. At least work distracted him from his problems at home.

  Chapter 2

  Sylvia took a break at 9:30. She was going to get to the end of this section of the manual she was writing before the end of the day, a solid draft. She’d proofread it tomorrow and could get that version to Ms. Ocampo two days ahead of what she’d promised. Of course, Ocampo would find two days’ more work for her to do on it if she did that. So it was probably best to hold off on emailing it until first thing on the morning of the deadline day.

  She poured out her cold tea, made herself a fresh one, added a drop of stevia, and went outside to the deck. It was a warm day again, slightly breezy. The scent of dried pines permeated the air. The pots of flowers she’d put out in a fit of optimism this spring, imagining herself having time to water them, were all dead because she hadn’t watered them more than twice. She’d picked drought-tolerant plants, alyssum and globe amaranth, dusty miller, a sort of white and gray and muted purple theme in her mind, knowing that she’d be too busy to deal with fussy plants. But now even these were all gray and brown, the color of fallen pine needles, falling year-round now because of the years of drought.

  She should use the extra day she’d won herself with hard work to clean up the deck; that’s what she should do instead of working ahead on the project. She could pull out the vacuum and sweep the house tomorrow. Scrub the kitchen floor too. The robot vacuum was programmed and did part of the house every day, but it didn’t do it well. Not, certainly, to her mother or mother-in-law’s standards. Good enough for her and James though. Still, once every few months she liked to pull out a broom and vacuum and do a better job.

  By taking two days off and sticking to the promised schedule, she could do whatever it was that James wanted her to do. A hike, was it? She hadn’t listened very hard when he’d told her. Her mind had been on the project. She hoped it wasn’t overnight camping. That’d eat up both days. She had one day for housework and one for quality time with James. Sunday afternoon, she’d need to start work again.

  He wouldn’t like that either.

  In honest moments, she knew she’d been neglecting him, but if she could get Ms. Ocampo nailed down as a happy client, that meant really good things for word-of-mouth advertising for the business, and happy clients were the best and cheapest form of ad she could have. Ms. Ocampo was very active in the Filipino business community, in both the clubs comprised of Filipino-Americans and in the unofficial network that ran through the city’s life. There were a dozen such communities in San Francisco, Chinese people being the biggest, and the gay community and so on. She paid as much attention to that as did politicians, who wooed these smaller unofficial San Franciscos. Sylvia gaining another solid position in the Filipino community, via a happy Ms. Ocampo, would position her well for next year. She’d hire an accountant to help her incorporate, hire a part-time contract staff writer, and in two years she’d have a couple of full-time writers, be earning more than she was now, but only have to work thirty hours per week, supervising, shaking hands in the City, and meeting with the accountant. It would be a dream come true. A dream worked hard for, of course. She was in the final lap of the race to if not Easy Street, Much Easier Avenue.

  She didn’t understand why James didn’t see that. A little sacrifice now, and they’d be set for life. It bored her to explain it over and over to him. He wasn’t dim. He was one of the smartest men she’d ever met. That’s why she married him! Well, that and his kindness and his strange sense of humor. And he was good in bed.

  How long had it been since they’d had sex? Too long. Maybe she could talk him out of this hike he wanted to take and convince him that a long day in bed on Saturday would be more fun. When they grew tired of that, just the two of them could hike locally, starting from their own backyard. Make a picnic lunch and sit by the river and watch the Sierra snowmelt run down toward the sea. The image of that scene made her sigh, and tension she hadn’t known she was holding flowed from her shoulders and neck. She stretched to take advantage of the moment.

  Anyway. Enough self-indulgence. She pulled out her phone and checked the time. If she hurried, she could take a twenty-minute jog into town and back before she got back to work. Or no, not into town. She might run into someone she knew who wanted to talk. Instead, she’d run along the road toward the highway for ten minutes, and then back home. She was already dressed for a jog, except for needing a sports bra. One of the great things about working at home, by herself, was that she never had to dress up while she did the technical writing. She was always physically comfortable, and she saved a ton of money on clothes.

  Her phone beeped at her. Text message. It was an old friend in San Francisco, asking the next time she’d been in town. She’d sort of hoped it was James. But no. In any case, they’d talk tonight and she’d apologize and suggest the alternative plan for the weekend. She had a lot to accomplish before he came home. The jog, then call Ms. Ocampo to clarify one little issue, and then finish this section of the manual. If she got a move on right now, she might even be able to make a halfway decent supper for a change.

  The day was beautiful, but already hot when she stepped outside for her jog. She ran along the road and broke out into a sweat in no time at all. A northwestern wind blew heat across her, evaporating the sweat on her face and arms, cooling her enough that the run was tolerable. She was trying to stay marginally fit with a short run every day. She wished she had time for a longer one, for hiking, for yoga a few times a week. She simply didn’t have that time.

  When Sylvia returned home from her jog, she took a two-minute shower. She made the phone call to her client as she got dressed, but Ms. Ocampo was in a meeting, so she kept working until the woman returned her phone call. As always, Ocampo was in a great rush, but not so great that she didn’t have time to nitpick. She was demanding, and Sylvia had developed a good deal of sympathy for the people who had to work under her every day, people she’d never met. Another great thing about being her own boss was contracting to different companies. Sylvia never felt trapped with a bad boss or coworker. Ms. Ocampo’s imperiousness too would pass. The thought helped her stay pleasant and accommodating on the phone, though the relaxation she’d felt just an hour before on the deck, which had lasted through her jog and shower, was entirely erased.

  Back to work. Buckle down. Get it done.

  Chapter 3

  In the 1980s, the electricity industry in the United States was deregulated. This led to Enron’s excesses, among other localized disasters. And it led to line maintenance, as a necessary task, falling between the cracks. Who was responsible for it? A loud chorus from the deregulated companies said, “Not us!”

  One particular company, a powerful and large one, in California was one of these companies. Rich people want to get richer, no matter how rich they are, and if the rich executives at the power company could ignore line maintenance and get another raise instead, they did. This company, more than once, took federal money, tax money collected from citizens all
over the USA and earmarked for line maintenance, and spent it instead on their executives’ bonuses, some of who were already earning over ten million dollars per year.

  California’s electrical grid was already a mess by the morning that James and Sylvia sat at their respective desks, earning the money it took to live a decent life. And on this Thursday morning, while James was at his desk in Sacramento and Sylvia was soothing Ms. Ocampo on the phone from her home office, an eighty-year-old high-tension line stretched onto a tower located just thirty miles from their Pinedrops home crackled once.

  High voltage electricity ran through that line, electricity starting in one of the hydroelectric generators on rivers flowing out of the high Sierra, moving west to feed the power grid where most of California’s almost forty million people lived. When a miniscule surge hit a damaged porcelain insulator on this tower, a part Thomas Edison would have recognized at once a hundred years earlier, it discharged electricity in the form of a bright spark.

  The spark shot to the ground, to the dry, dry ground where grass hadn’t been mown in three years. At the end of the parched summer, the dead grass was perfect tinder. The spark caught. A tiny flame emerged, and the thinnest white wisp of smoke swirled, shook, and then steadied.

  All around it, trees that had died in 2016 during the deepest drought California had known in decades watched the little flame burn.

  Chapter 4

  Just before lunch, James’s cellphone rang. Pasquale.

  “Are you two coming camping with us this weekend?”

  “No. I’m sorry, but it doesn’t look like it.” James sighed. “She’s working herself to death again on that stupid job.”

  “It’s hard building a business,” Pasquale said sympathetically. “We’ll miss her, Lindsey and I. Would she mind, do you think, if you came with us? It’d give her a chance to do nothing but work, maybe get more done, and you could take the break out in the woods.”