she had first seen him, regardless of his moodiness. She had perceived
a hopefulness beneath his glower, a tenderness beneath his gruffness, a
better man beneath the exterior of a lesser one, but in his current
buoyant mood, she found him easier than ever to like.
She playfully pinched his cheek.
“What?” he said.
“You’re cute.”
As they drove out of Svenborg, it occurred to Holly that the
distribution pattern of the houses and other buildings was more like a
pioneer settlement than like a modern community. In most towns,
buildings were concentrated more densely in the center, with larger lots
and increasing open space toward the perimeter, until finally the last
structures gave way to rural precincts. But when they came to the city
limits of Svenborg, the delineation between town and country was almost
ruler-straight and unmistakable. Houses stopped and brushland began,
with only an intervening firebreak, and Holly could not help but think
of pioneers in the Old West constructing their outposts with a wary eye
toward the threats that might arise out of the lawless badlands all
around them.
Inside its boundaries, the town seemed ominous and full of dark secrets.
Seen from the outside-and Holly turned to stare back at it as the road
rose toward the brow of a gentle hill-it looked not threatening but
threatened, as if its residents knew, in their bones, that something
frightful in the golden land around them was waiting to claim them all.
Perhaps fire was all they feared. Like much of California, the land was
parched where human endeavor had not brought water to it. Nestled
between the Santa Ynez Mountains to the west and the San Rafael
Mountains to the east, the valley was so broad and deep that it
contained more geographical variety than some entire states back East
Although at this time of year, untouched by rain since early spring,
most of it was brown and crisp. They traveled across rounded golden
hills, brown meadows. The better vantage points on their two-mile route
revealed vistas of higher hills overgrown with chaparral, valleys within
the valley where groves of California live oaks flourished, and small
green vineyards encircled by vast seared fields.
“It’s beautiful,” Holly said, taking in the pale hills, shining-gold
meadows, and oily chaparral. Even the oaks, whose clusters indicated
areas with a comparatively high water table, were not lush but a half
parched silvergreen. “Beautiful, but a tinderbox. How would they cope
with a fire out here?”
Even as she posed that question, they came around a bend in the road and
saw a stretch of blackened land to the right of the two-lane county
road. Brush and grass had been reduced to veins of gray-white ash in
coalblack soot. The fire had taken place within the past couple of
days, for it was still recent enough to lend a burnt odor to the August
air.
“That one didn’t get far,” he said. “Looks like ten acres burned at
most.
They’re quick around here, they jump at the first sign of smoke.
There’s a good volunteer group in town, plus a Department of Forestry
station in the valley, lookout posts. If you live here, you don’t
forget the threat-you just realize after a while that it can be dealt
with.”
Jim sounded confident enough, and he had lived there for seven or eight
years, so Holly tried to suppress her pyrophobia. Nevertheless, even
after they had passed the charred land and could no longer smell the
scorched brush, Holly had an image in her mind of the huge valley at
night, aflame from end to end, vortexes of red-orange-white fire
whirling like tornadoes and consuming everything that lay between the
ramparts of the two mountain ranges.
“Ironheart Farm,” he said, startling her.
As Jim slowed the Ford, Holly looked to the left of the blacktop county
route.
A farmhouse stood a hundred feet back from the road, behind a withered
lawn. It was of no particular architectural style, just a plain but
cozy-looking two-story farmhouse with white aluminum siding, a
red-shingle roof, and a commodious front porch. It might have been
lifted off its foundation anywhere in the Midwest and plunked down on