The Alpine Obituary by Mary Daheim Page A

been gone only a little over an hour. Putting my worries aside, I went home.
    Such was my state of mind these days that I had sunken to eating TV dinners. But lately, I’d made a small effort to improve my lifestyle. I no longer microwaved the dinners but actually baked them in the oven. One day at a time.
    While waiting for my feast—Mexican tonight, olé!—I drank a glass of bourbon and 7UP and watched the Mariners play the Blue Jays in Toronto. The three-hour time difference meant that I could eat during the last two innings.
    By the time I’d finished dinner and the Mariners had finished the Jays, the smell of smoke had permeated the log walls of my house. I went outside to see if the fire had spread.
    There seemed to be more smoke. My view from above the town showed a haze over the business district six blocks below. The wind had died down; the air was quite still. This wasn’t the first forest fire I’d watched in Alpine, but there was something ominous about the quiet that had settled over the town along with the haze. The entire population couldn’t have gone to see Jack-in-the-Box.
    The phone rang just as I went back inside. It was Scott, calling on his cell.
    “Hey,” he said over a connection that was marred by static, “I got some great pix. This thing has spread toward Embro Lake, but the fire crews expect to have it out by morning.”
    “You’re okay?”
    “Sure.” He laughed, or maybe the sharp sound was static. “I’m kind of warm, but this is really cool. If you know what I mean.”
    “I do.” I’d gone back to the front porch where I gazed again at the billowing clouds of smoke. “Exactly where are you?”
    “Well . . .” Scott sounded uncertain. “I’m on Department of Natural Resources land, according to my buddies here. We’re off the road about a quarter of a mile.” He paused. “What’s that?” Apparently, he was speaking to someone nearby. I could hear another voice, very faint. I could also hear what sounded like the snapping of branches and more dimly, the fire itself. “We’re at about the forty-five-hundred-foot level.”
    “When are you coming down?” I asked.
    “What? I can’t hear you very well.”
    I raised my voice and repeated the question.
    “Not right . . .” There was a loud noise, like a champagne cork, and then nothing but static. Apparently we’d lost the connection. At least, I hoped that was all we lost.
    Maybe, I thought, I should be at the fire scene, too. But if Scott was right, by the time we ran the story in the next issue, it might be relegated to page two.
    For the next two hours, I puttered around the house but kept my eye on the fire across the valley. As darkness settled in, I could see several pockets of flames. The smell of burning wood is usually a pleasant, comforting aroma. But the smoke was thickening over the town and turning acrid. I closed all the windows and considered going to bed.
    The phone rang again just as I was heading into the bathroom.
    “Emma.” It was Vida, sounding perturbed. “What are you doing?”
    “Nothing, really. Why?”
    “I’m calling from Driggers Funeral Home. Can you come over to the Froland house?”
    “What for?”
    I could hear her take a deep breath. “Something’s amiss,” she said, lowering her voice to its familiar stage whisper.
    “Don’t tell me Jack got out of the box.”
    “No, no, nothing like that.” There was a long pause. “June Froland is in a state of collapse. She insists that Jack was murdered.”
    June 1916
    The mail had arrived as it always did, on the ten-thirty
Great Northern freight train. Mary Dawson had picked up
the family’s delivery at Alpine’s general store. There was a
postcard of the Isle of Wight from her husband’s family in
England, the new Sears Roebuck catalog for fall, and a letter from her in-laws in Seattle. Bad news, Mary thought. It
was almost always bad news when Fred and the other Mary
wrote to their son and his wife.
    Her two older daughters,