Chapter 9

We were sitting on the patio, looking east, the smell of burnt sagebrush filling the air with an oily odor. My father turned to me and said, “Hoyt, that was scary. I don’t think my heart has stopped pounding. I have never been so afraid in my life.”

I finished the pull on my beer, and then responded. “I know what you mean, Dad. Everything happened so fast that I didn’t have time to think of anything but getting the trucks in the garage.”

With a puzzled expression in his voice, my father asked, “You must have thought something like this would happen when you designed this house. Or was it all just a coincidence?”

“Dad, it doesn’t take much thought to look at the land around us here and imagine what a fire would be like. Especially given how much the wind blows out here, there’s nothing to stop it. Right from the start, I realized that an underground home had a lot of advantages: the house would be energy efficient, it would blend in with the surrounding terrain, and most importantly, it would be impervious to fire.

“The whole house was designed for the environment here. Underneath this concrete patio we’re sitting on is a layer of gravel that slopes from the center of the house at a two-degree angle. This allows for drainage on the few occasions when we have thunderstorms here.”

“It must have taken you quite a while to build,” he said, taking a draw from the beer bottle.

“No, not really. Once JR and I had the dome shell sprayed and cured, it went pretty quickly. The two of us took a week off to let the concrete cure, and when we came back, it was only a matter of finish work. We had the whole thing finished three weeks after we got back.”

We sat there in companionable silence for a few minutes when Dad shocked the hell out of me.

“You know, Hoyt; I didn’t think I would like it here. That first day when we got here, I thought you had lost your mind. All I could see was a vast area with nothing around it.”

He paused for a moment, “I was wrong, you know; there’s a lot of life and beauty out there,” he said, pointing out towards the burnt sagebrush. “You just have to know where to look for it.”

We talked for a few more minutes, mostly about some of the specifics of how the house had been constructed, when we were interrupted by the telephone ringing.

“Hello,” I answered.

“Hoyt, this is Dwight. Looks like Marsh lost his house to the fire.”

“How bad is it?” I asked.

Dwight paused a moment, then answered, “From what he said, they lost the house and the barn. They managed to get everyone down into the tornado shelter before the fire got to the house. They were damn lucky that there was such a strong wind, or they might have suffocated in there. Anyway, I’m calling around to all the neighbors to see if they want to help.”

“Sure, Dwight, how can I help?”

“Well, the close neighbors have them all covered as far as a place to stay, but I was thinking that maybe you could help with tearing down the house. How about we meet and take a look at what needs to be done?”

“Sure, Dwight, I’ll meet you at your place soon as I can.”

“I’ll be waiting on you,” he said, hanging up the phone.

I returned the phone to the cradle and walked back out to the patio.

“Dad, Marsh lost his house to the fire. I’m going to head over to Dwight’s and we’re going to take a look at it. You want to come?”

“Sure, let me get some boots on and I’ll be right with you.”

When we arrived at Dwight’s farm, he was waiting for us in the yard. With a wave, he jumped in his pickup and headed down the farm lane, and I followed. After about ten minutes, we all arrived at Marsh’s farm. I had not been here before, but could see that it had been hit pretty badly by the fire. The barn had been made of wood and was mostly burned to the ground. The house was made of cinderblock, and although the walls were standing, the roof was completely gone.

When Dad and I got out of the truck, Dwight was already talking to Marsh and a couple of other men I didn’t know.

Dad and I walked up to the group of men and listened to the conversation. Marsh, of course, was more than a little upset but was also pretty stoic about it as well.

“Hoyt,” Dwight said, turning towards me, “you’ve done a lot of construction work. Do you think we can save the house?”

“I don’t know. Let’s take a closer look.”

Dwight, Marsh, and I trooped through the house. They were interested in looking at the interior structural elements. I knew that these could be replaced; my concern was the outside cinderblock walls. I spent a half hour inspecting both the inside and outside of the exterior walls before I was ready to state my opinion.

When Dwight and Marsh had finished looking at the inside of the structure, they had joined me for the last part of my inspection.

“Marsh, I think the whole thing is going to have to come down.”

He looked at me in disbelief. “Why, the walls are still standing, and it looks good to me?”

“Let me show you,” I said, walking up to the north side of the house.

I pointed halfway up the side of the wall, “Look here, you see how gray the mortar looks?”