July Thunder by Rachel Lee Page B

“Bill,” he said in his firmest I-am-the-pastor voice, “we mustn’t get rid of anyone. Do you understand me?”
    â€œWe can’t tolerate abomination! That’s a sin.”
    Elijah nodded. “I’m not asking you to tolerate,Bill. But remember, we can hate the sin, but we’re required to love the sinner.”
    Bill scowled. “I ain’t loving neither of them.”
    Silence looked at Elijah, something indefinable in his steady gaze. For an instant Elijah thought his time in Whisper Creek had just come to a close. But Silence surprised him by nodding. “Brother Elijah’s right, Bill. We can’t allow someone else’s sin to lead us into sin.”
    â€œExactly,” Elijah said, feeling he had just passed a major watershed safely. “We must be good Christians ourselves. I’ll preach against abomination, Brother Bill. I may even speak to these young men about their conduct and try to persuade them to live a godly life. I’ll certainly tell our youth they mustn’t even consider such things, because they’re vile. But we must not lift a hand against another.”
    Bill went away looking unhappy, but Silence clapped Elijah on the shoulder. “We need to live in this town, Brother Elijah,” Silence said pointedly. “Some people, like Brother Bill, don’t seem to exactly understand that. I’m glad you do.”
    Elijah felt pretty good. Until he started thinking about Sam again. Until the mental hair shirt started itching like mad.
    Â 
    The fire was getting worse. A pall of smoke now hung over Whisper Creek all the time, dulling the sun, irritating the eyes. Efforts to put it out had mostly become efforts to control it. And for the firsttime all summer, thunderclouds were beginning to build.
    â€œRain,” said George Griffin. “We need rain, not lightning.”
    â€œPicky picky,” Sam answered. He’d spent all day working on firebreaks down below and was getting a breather as the next shift of miners coming off work was beginning to show up to help. Five days, and about all they’d managed to do was keep the fires boxed in. Every time they thought they were getting ahead of the game, flames would spring up somewhere else. Sometimes they managed to put them out before they spread too much, sometimes not. It was like fighting that many-headed Hydra he’d learned about when he’d studied mythology in high school. Chop it off here, and another one came at you from somewhere else.
    And fire was a big beast, bigger than men, bigger than all their resources.
    George turned to him and put a hand on his shoulder. “Sam, go home and get some rest. You’ve been working harder at this fire than anyone except the smoke jumpers. It’ll still be here tomorrow.”
    Sam was about to argue, but he stopped before the words came out of his mouth. George was right. He was getting a constant cough from the smoke, his eyes never stopped burning, and his body was aching all the time. Toward the end of his shift below, he’d found he was losing his coordination.
    â€œYeah, I guess I will,” he said. “See you tomorrow.”
    â€œWe’ll be here.”
    The words were grim, and so was Sam’s mood as he climbed into his truck and headed home. Bath, bed, about twelve hours of sleep, and he would be ready to pitch in again, he promised himself. It had gone well past the point of being a liaison. They needed every hand they could get to contain the beast.
    For some reason, as he was driving through the twilight down the mountain, he found himself thinking of Mary. He hadn’t seen her but a minute or two since the morning she made him breakfast. He knew she was still bringing food and drink up the mountain, along with a bunch of other women, but their encounters hadn’t been more than a nod and a smile in all that time. He wondered if her car was out of the shop, and if not, how she