At first Michael calls out as if winning a war. He is jubilant and cries out, then the flame turns toward him and he begins coughing but still laughing until General realizes the wind has shifted. “We gotta get out of here!” he yells, coughing, his own eyes burning and tearing. The great flames begin to catch and rise up tree trunks, then tree to tree, and it is mesmerizing to look at, but frightening, too, as if they are being bombed. There are loud sounds of cracking and popping, explosions as the fire travels not away from them but toward them.

Michael backs away first, then he begins running. General is hit by a flame and screams as his shirt catches fire. He runs and takes it off at the same time, screaming. He is badly burned and all General can do is get in the car, crying, “Oh man, oh man. Look at me. Oh shit!” And the smell, like meat cooking.

“We’ll fix it,” says Michael. “We’ll go home and fix it.”

“No, man, you gotta take me to the hospital.”

“Then they’d know it was us.”

“Forget it.” He is crying. “I gotta go to the hospital.” Then he falls silent, eyes wide open.

Michael drops the wallet on the road where it won’t burn.

As he drives, Michael concocts a lie. They were on their way to go fishing when they saw the fire. They tried to put it out. General took off his shirt to smother it.

Meantime, smoke is seen as far away as Kimbal and the fire trucks pass them on the highway, loud sirens screaming, and later there will be the copters and planes and one fireman takes a look at the boys’ car and tries to get their license plate, but it is hard to do, as quickly as both vehicles are driving. ARL3 is all he got. But the car, anyway, belongs to a man named Dwight, they discover, who will have an alibi because he is in Watertown visiting his sister.

At Linda’s café, half the town hears the sound of loud trucks full of water. They mistakenly think they are the trucks bringing them the water they’ve been loading into five-gallon drums to take home. But the trucks pass by. They don’t hear the sirens.

In the distance there is still smoke. In the little dried-up town on the reservation they think at first it is a rain cloud. Soon the world is red with the fire bursting from the trees, crowning, spreading, a horrible rose-colored light. “What more could happen?” says Aurora. But at least no wind is blowing in the deathlike stillness. Still, they watch the news until late that night.

Dick Russell is the Forest Service employee who first sees the fire. He is the sole worker for the area near the reservation. He has also been a fire jumper, but the chemicals had given all the men on his crew Hodgkin’s disease and cancer. He is one of the few survivors of his team and now he just likes to work the forest.