““No, thank you,’’ I croaked, remembering my manners. ““I’m from Idyllwild,’’ I added, as if that explained everything. But her expression told me that I was still wide of the mark. ““We’re doing the same thing, aren’t we?’’ she continued. ““Shopping early in the day, before it gets hot.’’ ““Ma’am,’’ I said, carefully picking a splinter from my thumb, ““I guess you haven’t heard. More than 5,000 of us were evacuated from the Hill yesterday. You know, the fire?''
Idyllwild, Calif., is only 20 miles from Hemet, where this conversation took place. Ten thousand acres of brush and woodland, transformed into air pollution, had rained ashes on this woman’s town all night, oppressed the lungs of every valley resident and painted a vivid orange sun and moon that will haunt my dreams forever. But she didn’t know. ““You were in a fire?''
I told her, in a refugee’s monotone, how I was forced to abandon my custom-built home and nearly all my family’s possessions on a few minutes’ notice, grabbing what I could, forsaking my toothbrush and my beloved pet pocket mouse. How I had spent the night in my truck – avoiding the evacuation shelter – with my head on a box of baby pictures and my feet hanging out the window, making room in the cab for my son’s snake and my daughter’s fish and a portable computer and my work files; while my vacationing husband and children, watching the news, could only wonder if their home still stood. And I told her how, when the fire first threatened, I had asked a neighbor what was going on, explaining that I had no radio – and he rudely said to go buy one.
The woman in the express line looked appropriately shocked as I described how accurate information was unavailable and evacuees were left to imagine the worst. For comic relief, I told her about the Hemet man who said he couldn’t see any smoke so there must be no fire – everybody was having a hissy fit for nothing. I relived the experience of wrestling 80-pound boxes of business records and family treasures down the front stairs and into my truck, shaking with exertion and gasping for air. But it seemed best to spare her the horror of being lost in the dark, of letting go forever. It was too soon to speak of the mountainwide column of black smoke, the wailing sirens, the fluttering ashes and the bloodstained light through the now menacing columns of trees, all evoking images of hell, of the Biblical plagues of Egypt, of the three days of darkness that could be felt.
Thousands of acres gone, the fire within 500 yards of our homes, local TV and radio stations covering the story, displaced persons everywhere – yet neighbors in the next town, breathing the products of our combustion, knew nothing of our pain.
The woman in the express line wished me the best, rather than telling me to have a nice day. May God bless her for trying to understand. Some others tried, too. A phone volunteer, stuck with the thankless task of providing nonexistent status reports to angry evacuees, broke the tension by reporting that the roads to Idyllwild were open only to emergency personnel, looters and storekeepers who sold beer to firefighters. A business client, who let my dispersed family use his office as a communications base, shared the details of his parents’ exodus from the Oakland firestorm of 1991. (While a house burned every eight seconds, they escaped to safety through a wall of flame, their car stalling in the heat, saving only a tuxedo and a pair of high-heeled shoes.)
Meanwhile, the checkstand clerk had overheard the conversation and wanted to contribute to it. She explained that looting was impossible, because she had watched the TV news and ““they showed the firemen sitting on the porches of all the houses, keeping everybody out.’’ I just looked at her. Did she really believe that the overworked fire crews could individually guard thousands of homes? ““Besides,’’ she added, ““if you locked the door when you left, how could anyone get in?’’ Thank you for that, my dear.
On the second day a motel room became available, so at last I could sleep long enough to have nightmares and wake up screaming. And on the third night, those of us with proof of residency were allowed to return home. Armed with a flashlight and a 12-gauge shotgun, I inspected my property and found it safe. Except for streamers of yellow ““Sheriff’s Line’’ ribbon and a coating of ash, there was no sign that anything evil had passed this way.
The nightmares persist, but they trouble me far less than the memory of a brief exchange with the motel managers – an Asian couple, Vietnamese or perhaps Cambodian. Referring to the fire, I had remarked to them that it was a terrible thing to let go of one’s home, to leave everything behind. And they both smiled, with more human understanding than I had seen all day. Finally the man spoke. ““It happens,’’ he said, simply.
I did a double take, mumbled an apology and left, realizing what each of us had said. There are many different kinds of fires. What was this couple’s story? What had they lost, what dreadful sights had they witnessed? And how many of us, their new neighbors in America, had ever cared enough to ask?
Now I understood family stories told decades ago: how Armenian friends had fled their homeland, hiding from the Turks by day and traveling by night; how my great-grandmother left Ireland at 15 and sailed around the Horn to a new life. Beneath the romance and excitement lay the truth of people torn from their homes and cast adrift. It is a truth known only to refugees.
