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Show Go Love/212 She raises her brows "Fire?" I point out the plate glass window. "Mustang Ridge," I say "It's on fire. We're the last folks out" Hearing myself say it makes it real. Out in the tmck, Renee and Lara are blank-eyed stargazers, light in their eyes. "Oh," she says "Oh." She smiles as if the fire is her one-eyed cousin, popping the glass-eye out of its socket for laughs "We have double queens, no smoking. The special tonight is prime rib Will that be a credit card." A few more vehicles pull into the parking lot, and those families no doubt find rooms just like us, for the place still dozes at three o'clock on a summer day in June with the earth on fire. Nobody has an inkling of what's coming, what we were up against, even us who've looked it in the face I hand Renee the keys, start the tmck and drive up to the motel-style rooms, back into our slot outside the front door and porch, where sits a pair of white plastic chairs and an ice bucket. People are getting here now; outside the main office there's no parking. We'd been just right on the inside cusp. Dutch John, the town settled by people who built the Flaming Gorge Dam back in the '60s, was being evacuated. Inside twenty minutes, every available room is gone I recognize Emmett Heath, Fly Rod & Reel's Guide of the Year in '92. His brother was with him-two men big as bears, wearing flip-flops and cut-offs. Inside the cool room, Renee is on the phone with her father long distance to Florida, trying to explain Two men from Wisconsin unlock the room that shares our porch. Lara has started the room's pre-loaded video~a film about flyfishing the scenic Green, reading the hatch, tying the blood-knot Renee is telling her father about passing through the fire. She doesn't want to scare him, |