The heat storm is so close there’s no delay between the flashes and the booming thunder. It’s like we’re inside the lightning. The flashes turn the canvas walls transparent, cracking brighter and brighter, and I expect that any second a sizzling bolt will hit us directly and the deer stand will explode.

I want to tell Delphy not to be afraid, but I’m too scared to talk. She grabs my hand and squeezes so hard I think she’s going to break it. The trees are shivering all around us, as if they’re as terrified as we are.

There’s no wind or rain, just hot, humid air alive with electricity. Mighty bolts crack open the early morning sky, thumping the earth like hammer blows.

A bolt strikes close by, with a cracking boom that could be the world splitting open. So loud my ears hurt. A tree groans and splinters and falls, crashing into more trees on the way down. We see the hot glowing sparks of it burning from the inside.

We’ve been running away from the fire, putting miles between it and us, but now it has found us.

The deer stand begins to shake and rumble as more falling trees brush by.

Delphy shouts, “We better get out of here!”

I’m about to slide the aluminum ladder to the ground when the hair lifts on my head. My scalp tingles in a strange way, and I drop the ladder just as everything goes sun-blaze white. A bolt snakes down the tree right next to us and explodes into the ground with the sound of a million M-80s going off at exactly the same moment. The tree roots begin to glow and smolder like fiery finger bones.

If I’d been holding the ladder, the lightning might have gone through me on the way to the ground.

Delphy is standing up, shaking her fist at the sky and screaming, “STOP! STOP!”

I try to pull her down, but she’s stronger than me, and more angry at the thing that scares her.

“On the floor!” I beg her. “That’s the safest place! Keep a low profile.”

I’m not sure if it really is the safest place, but raising a fist to a lightning bolt has got to be more dangerous than lying flat on your face with your hands protecting your ears.

Let it stop, please make it go away.

And after what feels like an eternity, it does go away, rumbling off into the distance. Heading for the fire line, as if it wants to join in the fun of burning down the forest.

Delphy, face to the floor, says, “Is it safe? Are we alive?”

“Yeah, we made it. But there’s one little problem. The ladder fell to the ground. I, um, dropped it.”

She slowly shakes her head, as if to say, What next?

I lean out the opening, into a whiff of smoke from the smoldering roots. Ground is maybe ten feet below. If I were to jump, there’s a chance I’d sprain or break both ankles. Instead, I get down on my belly and carefully lower myself from the platform until I’m hanging on by my clenched hands. So, according to my semi-panicked calculations, the ground is five feet or less beneath my dangling feet.

I let go, landing feetfirst in the layer of pine needles, and then tumble over backward. It hurts, but nothing is broken. I limp over to the ladder and lean it up against the opening. Delphy peers down at me. “You’re crazy, you know that?”

“No choice!” I say, feeling good about my decision.

I hold the ladder as she descends. I can tell her ankle hurts as she puts weight on it, but she doesn’t complain. She fusses around until she finds her walking stick and looks back up at the tree stand.

“Sam? We need to get out of here. Like right now!”

I look up. The canvas walls of the deer stand have caught fire. Our refuge is going up in flames! The fire is already spreading. Not fast, not yet. But it will grow and feed on itself, tree by root by tree, and within an hour or two it will become a new, full-scale wildfire.

We’re hurrying to the Jeep when Delphy says, “What’s that smell?”

“Probably me.”

“Not a boy smell,” she says, puzzled. “More like a zoo.” Her dark, shining eyes get big and round. “Uh-oh.”

“Uh-oh, what?” I say, but then I see it, rising up in the back seat.

A black bear, looking at me like he’s starving and I’m breakfast.