Yellowstone Superintendent Janet Bolido was barricaded in her office with her TV on. The twenty-four-hour news network had picked up the Yellowstone story like a terrier with a new squeak toy.
In a live-action shot from Gardiner, a fat guy in a dirty T-shirt packed his car beneath a streetlight’s illumination. “I’m getting all my stuff, case I don’t get back.”
In the next scene, an elderly woman with a drawn face stood in front of a tidy bungalow. “Our house is all mine and Dave got no insurance.” She laughed nervously. “Course I guess insurance doesn’t cover a volcano.”
Janet twisted her hands together. All day she’d been watching similar scenes from Montana, Idaho, and Wyoming. Cities and towns up to a hundred miles from the park were emptying, as people stated their intention to get out, “at least until after the full moon.”
Outside, horns blew from the traffic jam in the hotel parking lot. The bottleneck was the only route onto the narrow dirt track to Gardiner since the canyon road was closed. She looked out the window and saw the line of cars and campers moving at a crawl.
The list of messages Janet was ignoring was impressive: TV and radio stations from as far away as Vermont, somebody from Monty Muckleroy’s show.
How was it possible she had such rotten timing? Twenty-seven years at Interior, sucking up to all the right politicos, to end up by blind dumb luck in the middle of this?
She channel surfed and found Billings Live Eye in Gardiner. Carol Leeds held her jeans jacket closed against a brisk wind as she reported on the exodus north.
Another earthquake, larger than the others today, knocked a coffee cup full of pens off Janet’s desk. A glance up at where the massive bookshelf had been before going to the scrapheap sent a clutch through her.
Get out, she thought. Catch the next plane back to Washington and let somebody else handle this.
The hell of it was that she’d never been good at making decisions. And she had never been in charge of a situation where peoples’ lives were threatened.
Her office door opened without a knock. Joseph Kuni’s impressive figure in his pressed uniform filled the doorframe. His stormy gaze from beneath salt and pepper brows took her in, along with the TV.
Stepping in, he watched silently as Carol Leeds reported, “There has been no word from park officials, but many employees are taking matters into their own hands and leaving.”
“I just flew in from a meeting in Denver,” Kuni said in a controlled voice. “Am I to understand you have not ordered an evacuation?”
Janet cleared her throat unnecessarily and pushed to her feet. “Yesterday, I talked to Dr. Darden, the volcanologist, and he said …”
“That was yesterday.” He dripped disdain. “Did you see America Today this morning?”
She nodded without meeting his eyes.
“So what are you going to do about it?”
Her mouth opened. No sound emerged.
Kuni advanced on her. “I think, Ms. Bolido, that you are going to issue a statement calling for the evacuation of Yellowstone, and that you are going to do it right now.”
Feeling as though her legs went weak, she sat back down.
Interpreting her silence as resistance, Kuni loosed his famous temper. “Or I will do it for you!”
“I’m not going back to Yellowstone,” cameraman Larry Norris told reporter Carol Leeds and Billings Live Eye manager Sonny Fiero. It was after 11 PM at the end of a workday that had begun before daybreak.
Sonny’s moon face expressed displeasure from behind his elevated desk. Carol slid a hip onto the polished wood and looked down at Larry. “Don’t you know what’s happening right now? Every major network in the country is mounting an expedition to Yellowstone. We’ve got to salvage our exclusive.”
Larry wasn’t much for talk; that was Carol’s job. And though she’d overridden him plenty in the past, he’d never been quite this upset.
Carol went on, “We’ll charter a helicopter and be the first reporters to show the smoking peak from the air.”
Sonny smiled and flicked ash from his cigar. “I like it.”
“Are you both crazy?”
“Come on, Larry,” Carol said. “How am I going to do this without you?”
“Take Sonny. He knows how to operate a camera.”
The newly minted station manager seethed. “I’ve got to run things from here.” He waved a stubby arm. “Look, it’s your job to cover Yellowstone, has been for twenty years.”
“Twenty years ago I didn’t have Donna and Joey.” He felt a wave of pride, for his hardworking gamin wife and for Joey, a bookworm who excelled in school as compensation for not being able to play sports.
Carol tried again. “I’ve got Louisa in high school, but I’m not going to miss the story of a lifetime.”
“We’ve all got to pick our priorities,” Larry said.
Sonny stood up to his full five-foot-one. “So pick this. If you don’t have a job, how will you take care of your family?”
Larry pushed up and towered over both Carol and Sonny. “Are you threatening me?”
Carol stepped between the two men. Her hand felt light on Larry’s arm, but it restrained him. “We were in dangerous places during the ‘88 fires and got out just fine. Don’t go off half-cocked over this and lose your health insurance.”