REDDING — Melody and the kids are on vacation, somewhere far away, Ed Bledsoe told himself as he steered his old red pickup along this city’s back roads. They weren’t running errands with him in the Chevy like usual because they were off fishing for bluegill or collecting rocks.

He knew it wasn’t true, but it was what he had to believe. It let him pretend, for another day, that California’s latest devastating wildfire hadn’t taken away so much.

His pickup doesn’t have air conditioning, so the same hot wind that had driven the flames into his family’s home blew through the truck’s open windows, sending a tiny toy car that had belonged to James “Junior” Roberts, his great-grandson, skittering across the dashboard. The darn 5-year-old had put it there a few weeks ago.

Bledsoe, 76, drove to Shasta College to retrieve the tiara studded with fake diamonds that Emily Roberts, his 4-year-old great-granddaughter, had left behind at her preschool graduation. He dropped by the hardware store to pick up a chain saw for Junior’s birthday — a real one, not plastic, just like the boy wanted.

When he stopped for lunch at Bartels Giant Burger on Lake Boulevard, the restaurant owner looked at him with sad eyes and didn’t charge him.

The errands went on through the afternoon. Melody would be back soon, he told himself. He could almost believe it — almost — until he looked through the rearview mirror. The urn was buckled in Junior’s car seat.

How could he have known the horror that would visit his home in Redding on July 26? That Thursday evening, he needed to drive just down the road to pick up a paycheck for some handiwork he’d done for his doctor. It would take little more than 15 minutes.

Now Playing:

Three days earlier, the Carr Fire had ignited about 10 miles to the west, when a trailer tire blew and kicked up sparks from a roadway. It was the latest big blaze to strike a dangerously hot and dry state, but Bledsoe’s neighborhood wasn’t one of those under evacuation.

Normally, Junior and Emily went everywhere with their great-grandpa. But it was 113 degrees outside, and the old truck would be sweltering.

“Grandpa will be right back,” he told them as he walked out the back door. Emily climbed into his arms, hugging and kissing and squeezing him. He put her down, and she grabbed his leg. Junior grabbed the other. “I’ll see you in a few minutes,” he said, prying them off and kissing Melody goodbye.

Bledsoe hadn’t even made it to the doctor’s home when the fire hopped the Sacramento River.

It burned so hot it created its own weather, the heat and the wind whipping up a massive whirl of fire, sometimes called a fire tornado or fire devil. It tipped a highway sign on its side, tossed trampolines from one backyard to another, and wedged a metal chair into a tree.

“This thing was making a run from the west to the east,” said Robert Little, a spokesman for the state’s Cal Fire agency. “When you get so much area under mass ignition at once, you get uneven heating, and it creates these vortexes. This is one of the largest ones we had ever seen.”

Winds in the fire whirl raced at speeds up to 143 mph. Its base glowed orange as it pushed toward Bledsoe’s home northwest of downtown Redding.

His flip-phone rang. “You have to come back,” Melody said. She had already called 911.

Fire was everywhere, and the 70-year-old woman and their great-grandchildren had no way to escape. Melody was recovering from hernia surgery, and Emily and Junior were too heavy to carry. So they waited by the front door, cowering under blankets Melody had soaked in the kitchen sink. The wind whistled through the home, sucking the breath from their lungs.

Bledsoe turned the truck around, but was locked in traffic on Lake Boulevard. Flames shot across the road ahead, already barricaded. The sky looked apocalyptic. He called 911 and told a dispatcher his wife and babies were trapped. He called his grown grandchildren, who didn’t pick up.

His mind raced: He should have taken the kids with him. But how could he have known?

His phone rang. It was Junior.

“Are you coming?” the boy asked.

“Don’t worry, Grandpa is coming.”

“You gotta come in the front door, the back door is on fire. I don’t want you to get hurt.”

“That’s where I’m coming. Be ready. You guys be ready. I’ll be there just as quick as I can. I’m waiting for the fire to pass.”

“Tell Grandpa I love him,” Melody said, her voice barely audible in the background.

“Everybody says they love you,” Junior said. “Come get us, Grandpa. There’s starting to be a lot of fire here.”

Junior’s voice cracked. In that moment, Bledsoe swore he heard angels come out of the children.

The line dropped.

Ed and Melody had raised Junior and Emily from the time they were babies. Their parents had separated and were in and out of jail. But that’s not something you talk about after something like this happens, Bledsoe says. The children were loved; their parents just couldn’t take care of them.

The Bledsoes had been married for 25 years, practically since Ed met Melody on a job. He was fixing the plumbing under her Redding home, and she asked him to stay for dinner.

“Heck yeah, I stayed for dinner,” he recalls. “We started hitting it off. I was thinking, ‘What the hell is she doing with me?’ She could pick anyone she wanted to.”

He was just “an old goat roper from the Modesto dust.” His father milked cows at a dairy farm and his mother worked in a chicken plant. He’d call himself a cowboy, but he could never afford a horse. He did every job he could find just to make enough for rent and propane. Melody came from money — her father was a child actor — but she didn’t act like it.

Once they’d met, they started sharing lunch together every day. Eventually, they went into diesel trucking, running the highway from Oklahoma down to Brownsville, Texas, and up into Kansas. They’d do that for 10 years, hauling highway paint and redwood, grandchildren often tagging along in the back.

On one trip, driving through Las Vegas, Bledsoe asked Melody to marry him. They hadn’t planned it, and for all he cared, the ring could cost $5 and be plastic. If the gold started flaking, he said, they could paint it with nail polish. “Let’s make it right,” he said. “How am I going to keep you if we don’t get married?”

So they pulled over, got hitched at a gaudy chapel, and then kept driving. Melody was his lady, and he thanked her every day for it. When he said stuff like that, she laughed and told him he was crazy, that he was “pushing daisies the wrong way.”

Ten years ago they moved into the three-bedroom house on a ridge near Redding. They were about broke. The owner offered to cut the rent to $750 if Bledsoe would fix the plumbing and electricity. Melody didn’t much like the place, but it was all they could afford.

Kindness was their guiding rule. What money they had, they gave away. Between the two, they had nine children, 35 grandchildren, 15 great-grandchildren, and three great-great-grandchildren. Informally, they adopted even more. It seemed everyone called them Mom and Dad.

Children know where they feel safe, and with the Bledsoes, Emily and Junior felt safe. They had routine and structure.

Bledsoe wanted the kids to be good people. He showed them how to shoot a BB gun, but told them to never point it at another person. Good hunters only shoot what they want to eat; if you don’t want to eat it, you don’t shoot it. He taught them to open doors for shoppers at the grocery store, and to call women “ma’am.”

When they’d cut up straw and pretend to puff on cigarettes, he spanked them. He didn’t want them to grow up and become smokers. He wanted to protect them.

After the phone line went dead, Bledsoe abandoned his truck and rushed up the back of the ridge from Lake Boulevard.

He ran 3 miles in his red cowboy boots, climbing over fences and across knotted terrain. When he got to Quartz Hill Road, he saw his house. There wasn’t much left. The roof had collapsed. The oak tree out front was stripped of its leaves. Fifty firefighters had hoses trained on the blaze. A helicopter had dropped water, and the ground was wet.

Melody and the children escaped, one of the firefighters told Bledsoe.

“Thank you, Jesus,” he thought. Maybe that’s why the phone call had ended. Maybe someone had got them out.

He searched for them for the next 30 hours, even though, deep down, he began to realize they were gone. He called the burn center in Sacramento. He scoured Red Cross shelters, screaming Melody’s name and hollering for the kids. His grandchildren posted pleas on Facebook. He hunted for them until he “couldn’t walk no more,” then finally laid down and slept.

It took two days for the Shasta County coroner to verify that remains found in the ashes belonged to Melody and the children. Bledsoe believes they died in an unusual way, with the fire whirl attacking from above, but it will be months before the death report is released.

Confirmation brought anguish and guilt. God should have taken me instead, he thinks. God should have let those kids live and do the things kids are supposed to do. Emily’s pink flowers were just starting to bloom in the garden. Junior was learning to tie his shoes.

“Never in my wildest dreams did I think I would lose them,” Bledsoe says. “God almighty! Grandpa should’ve been there. I should’ve put a blanket over my head and run through that fire. I should’ve because it was my job. I could’ve got them out or went with them.

“Shoot — I hope they still love old Grandpa for not being able to get in there and get them. ... What a deal. … What a terrible deal. What does a guy do? To let something like that happen?”

When reporters started coming around to ask about the tragedy — which stood out even in a year that had, as of last week, seen 10 wildfire deaths in California — Bledsoe talked to each one.

He wanted the world to know how thankful he was. People from Ireland and New Zealand were sending him cards. Strangers were donating money to an online fund. Posters in town read: “We love you Ed Bledsoe.”

He broke down in every interview. A man who hadn’t cried in 40 years sobbed uncontrollably on national television.

That’s not who he is. He is grease and Carhartt suspenders, bushy eyebrows and a singing voice so bad it can scare cockroaches away. He is tough. But his piercing blue eyes are always watering now.

As he drives around Redding, he tries to pretend his family is just away, gone on vacation. He looks for a new place to rent, a place with a garage, maybe some space for machinery, table saws and a few old cars he can fix up. He knows he has to begin living again.

In the room he’s taken in a grandson’s home, he sleeps with Junior’s well-worn polar bear pillow and Emily’s fuzzy teddy bears. They still smell like the kids. Emily’s sparkly sandals and pink sneakers are in the closet, next to his work boots. The children’s paintings and artwork are in a shoe box on the top shelf. Melody’s cane hangs off the closet door.

Give me a sign, please, he pleaded with God in the days after the fire. I can’t do this. Then, sifting through the ashes of his home, he found something.

Three little stone angels. One a woman reading Scripture, a wing broken off. Two tiny angel children, their faces blackened. The figurines are on a shelf near his bed. Every night, he says the Lord’s Prayer with them, just like he and the children used to do. He talks to them, kisses their heads and says goodnight.

Last week, he went to Lowe’s and bought Junior and Emily miniature blue work aprons. They’re still wrapped in plastic in the back of his truck. The ones the kids had burned up, and they’d need new ones for cooking with Grandma and working in the vegetable garden.

They’ll come home soon, he tells himself. They’re just out hunting for opals and crystals or looking for polliwogs in Churn Creek. They’re going to bring Grandpa some pretty rocks.

“I just don’t know how an old guy can survive through all of this,” he says. “I don’t know if I done them right, but I tried to. I have to believe they’re coming back to keep my sanity. God almighty. I’ll tell you what, they’re worth waiting for.”

Lizzie Johnson is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: ljohnson@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @LizzieJohnsonnn