Chapter 6: Burn Line

We were dressed and in the truck in under two minutes.

The smoke stood in a brown column over the north pasture, bent flat by the wind.

Under it, a low orange line was walking south through the dry grass toward the barn.

"Call the volunteer department," Rex said. "Tell them Hollow Oak, north pasture, wind from the north."

I already had my phone out.

The dispatcher picked up right away.

"They're twenty minutes out," I said.

"Twenty minutes is a barn."

He swung the truck into the yard and jumped out running.

I stood there for a moment, looking at the fire coming.

Then I did what I do for a living.

I looked at the whole problem and decided who stood where.

I rang Zelma.

"Fire," I said. "I need every tank of water in the county and every man with a shovel. Can you do that?"

"Honey," said Zelma, "I've got the church phone tree open as we speak."

Rex was already on the old tractor with the disc harrow behind it.

He drove it straight across the fire's path, cutting a black stripe in the dirt, a firebreak a hundred yards ahead of the flames.

I took Orville's water truck, the one with the five-hundred-gallon tank in the bed.

I drove it down Rex's stripe with a hose on the passenger seat.

I had never driven anything that heavy.

I did not stall once.

By seven there were fourteen trucks in the lane.

Men in work boots came, and women with wet feed sacks.

A teenage boy hauled a drum of water on a four-wheeler.

Zelma, in her sequined jacket, pointed at them all.

"You, with the sacks, behind the break! You, boy, take that hose to the barn roof!"

We fought it for an hour.

The wind pushed, and we pushed back.

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