The Ides of Matt 2015

by M. L. Buchman

  “Well,” he told a turkey buzzard soaring on the high winds with its wing-tip feathers spread like fingers—the bird was probably the only one he’d be talking to most of the time. “If you’re seeking something that died, you can cart off the Old Me.”

  He didn’t know who he’d be by the end of the summer, that’s why he was up here. But he knew he wasn’t going to be the wandering soul who was presently standing on the lookout tower.

  It was going to be an interesting summer.

  2

  Patty Dale hiked up the narrow trail. She’d been looking forward to this summer for four years now. Sure, it was the ass end of wildlife biology—first-year field work—but she didn’t care. Being paid to tramp over the mountains and valleys of the Lolo for the next year was her idea of heaven.

  She’d absolutely paid her dues.

  “No one,” her parents had told her, “no one does Army ROTC as a wildlife biologist.” Her fellow cadets agreed, but she’d known what she wanted to do since the first reintroduced wolves were released into Yellowstone Park on her sixth birthday—March 21, 1995 after a seventy-year absence.

  “Just watch me,” though she’d said it only to herself at the time.

  Now, after four years in the Army, she’d have said aloud, “Who the fuck do you think you are, judging my ass?”

  Patty liked the self-confidence she’d learned in the military, though she was going to have to clean up her language—another gift of her military service—now that she was an academic, working for the Montana Fish, Wildlife & Parks.

  An academic—first in her family past high school. First not to work in the open-pit copper mines of Butte, Montana. Busted flat when the operations closed down for several years in the ‘80s and again when she was in her teens. She was the only one to make it out.

  Now, at twenty-six she’d done her time and survived her two full tours overseas. For the rest of her life, she would get to do what she wanted to. And right now that included hunting gray wolves—the largest of the wild canines—with a camera and a notebook.

  It seemed cliché, but two wolf packs had bred in dens on the mid-level slopes to either side of Gray Wolf Summit. The chance to study two packs simultaneously was almost unheard of. Her rookie year was going to fucking rock…to seriously rock. Whatever.

  Patty would be spending most of her time down in the forest, but the chance to sit on Gray Wolf Summit before she did was too perfect to pass up.

  Shaded north sections of the trail were still covered with snow. Typical June in Montana. Portions of the mountains were still thick with winter, while in other sections the aspen and maple leafed out in a hundred shades of bright green. The dark spruce and Douglas fir grew bright fingertips at the end of every branch making the mountainside glow with new life.

  She took her time hiking up the trail. Rabbit pellets and deer scat littered the trail here and there. Wolf tracks crossed the trail in a section just a half-mile long, this is where she’d start tomorrow. A single massive bear’s paw print, in the mud close beside a racing stream of snowmelt runoff, was the first she’d ever seen on her own. She took a photo of it next to her own size six hiking boot. It would look great on her wall, if she ever got a place of her own.

  Right now, home was a barracks in Helena, two hundred miles to the east. She didn’t plan on being there much this year.

  She filled her water bottles, dropped a purification tablet and an electrolyte packet into each one, resettled her pack, and continued up the trail.

  Patty made it to the peak after full dark. The fire lookout tower was a blacked-out silhouette against the stars. She dropped her pack and sighed, glad to be free of the load. Using only the starlight, she rolled out an air mattress on the lichen and climbed into her sleeping bag on the very summit. She lay awake a long time after finishing an energy bar and an apple for dinner. Her contentment reached far and wide, watching her breath turn to mist before dissipating against a wilderness of stars.

  She knew a lot of the constellations, but the old stories never seemed to fit. Well, now they had plenty of time to become friends. She had been planning to pick up a book, or at least one of those charts with the pretty drawings so that she’d really know the constellations by summer’s end. Then she decided that she’d rather make up her own mythology, reinvent herself in the here and now.

  She’d never really seen the big bear of Ursa Major in the Big Dipper. It was just a dipper. From now on, it would be dedicated to her first drink of stream water now that she was free.

  Hercules was high in the sky, a wasp-waisted group of stars with a sword raised high. She renamed it Warrior Patty. Four years she’d fought for the U.S. Army. Before that she’d fought against the vortex of her family’s history that had threatened to suck her down into the copper mine as well.

  She fell asleep before she’d decided how to rename Cygnus the Swan flying up over the eastern horizon.

  3

  Tom woke in his lookout “cab” disoriented by the soft dawn light in such a foreign place. His body felt like he’d been battered by the night. The silence was so deep that his ears had rung loud enough to keep him awake. And no matter how deeply he tucked into his sleeping bag, he couldn’t seem to get away from the cold.

  And there had been the noises.

  With the sunset, the world had gone silent, every bird asleep, his buddy the buzzard nesting somewhere in the trees far below. Not a breath of wind.

  Then, he’d heard animals rustle about outside and imagined the worst. After a loud thump and strange, soft call like a sigh, there had been slick, snake-like sounds he couldn’t identify. Torn between cold and fear, he’d decided that getting up to lock his front door situated at the top of thirty-seven stairs really wasn’t necessary—not if he wanted to have any self-respect in the morning.

  On the verge of getting up to lock it anyway, a wolf howl lifted into the night. He pictured a entire pack storming his tower if he made the slightest noise. The single cry was far off and left him awake and shivering for hours.

  With large windows encircling his cabin in the sky—his tiny summer home was almost entirely glass from waist to head-high—the low sunlight was rapidly heating it up from sub-Arctic to toasty. Around the edges it had a bed, desk, two comfortable chairs, and a long worktable with a pair of stools facing an amazing view. The entire view was amazing. He could see no signs of civilization in any direction and he was above the whole forest.

  Up above the wrap-around windows was an outlined drawing that was a map of the surrounding terrain which named every peak and valley for three-hundred-and-sixty degrees. In the center stood a raised cabinet topped by the Osborne Fire Finder for locating a burn if he saw one.

  The first thing Tom did after crawling out of his sleeping bag was to pick up the big binoculars and scan the horizon and the trees for smoke. His training had made sure he remembered to look both near and far—to scan the nearby slopes as well as the distant peaks. The fire season didn’t officially start for a few days and he knew that it could be weeks before he saw his first one, if he saw one at all.

  Three-quarters of the way around, he yelped.

  Smoke!

  A huge plume of it.

  Still holding the binoculars, he waved his other hand around reaching for his radio when he caught a view of something silver.

  Tom peeked over the top of the binoculars, but couldn’t see any fire down toward Cougar Peak or in the valley directly below.

  But the thing had been massive.

  And then he looked closer.

  A woman with light-colored hair was sitting cross-legged in front of a small fire that occasionally released a little puff of smoke. The flash of silver was a small cooking pot. Even as he watched, she tipped it into a mug and then dumped in a slim packet of—he adjusted the binoculars’ focus—instant coffee.

  He swung the glasses up to see
her face…and she was looking right at him.

  Okay, voyeuristic. He lowered the glasses and waved before it could become voyeuristic in a bad way. She didn’t wave back.

  He stepped out the door onto the walkway around the cab.

  “Sorry,” he called out. “I thought you were a forest fire.”

  “Well, that’s a new one.”

  At just fifty feet away he could see she sat on a heavy field pack. She wore a thick jacket, messy light-brown hair ruffled down to her collar. Looking at her all wrapped up, he suddenly realized he was freezing his balls off. He looked down.

  Briefs and binoculars.

  “Holy crap!” he hurried back inside to the sound of her snort of amusement.

  4

  About the time Patty finished making her oatmeal in the same pot she’d made coffee, the lookout guy emerged again. This time he was wearing enough layers to look like the Michelin tire man.

  Too bad. He’d looked good in just his tighty-whities. He wasn’t macho-soldier strong, but he was close.

  She’d done her best not to think about men since she’d gotten her commander court-martialed for thinking he could take liberties. It had led to her complete isolation by the men in the unit, and by the women as well—a lot of whom were screwing other soldiers, married and not. Totally gross.

  Mr. Fire Lookout stood about six feet and didn’t move down the stairs like an athlete or a soldier. He moved like a geek. Even though he now carried a mug of his own, he didn’t approach her campfire until she waved him over.

  Man unsure of himself. That was a new one. Most guys, especially the ones without a clue, moved with a self-entitled assuredness and bravado that only served to piss her off.

  He moved close to the fire but didn’t sit, instead looming above her. Well, she wasn’t going to crick her neck for any male of the species.

  “Sit down or shove off,” she pulled out a squeeze bottle of maple syrup and drizzled a scant teaspoon on her oatmeal to make the syrup last.

  “Sorry,” he sat. So not a total write-off.

  Patty hadn’t really wanted company, but then again, she was the one who’d camped by a lookout tower—you get what you pay for. “Got a name?”

  “Yes. Do you?”

  She almost spewed her first mouthful of scalding oatmeal in his face along with her barely contained laughter.

  Handsome unsure guy with a sense of humor?

  “Sure,” she kept eating and they shared a smile. “They’re useful things to have…at times. I’ll just call you Fireboy.”

  “Works for me.” Still he didn’t ask her name and she could no longer conveniently ask for his. Instead he sipped his coffee and stared out at the sunlight-etched shadows as sunrise moved across the tree-dark slopes.

  This was why she’d come here, to watch daybreak sweep over the rugged mountains.

  It certainly wasn’t to be studying the profile of the man etched against the softening blue sky.

  5

  Tom stared into the distance and struggled for something to say. Though women didn’t make him tongue-tied, he knew that he wasn’t the smoothest guy around. Now Jimmy at the auto-body shop could talk female clients out of their BMWs and straight into a hotel room, but Tom had never figured out how.

  But after convincing himself that he was alone in the wilderness, then flashing himself at a woman camping at the edge of a thousand foot drop-off, he didn’t know what to say. She was pretty, at least her face and hair were. Her fingers were fine and strong. The rest of her was covered in a thick jacket, many-pocketed camo pants, and heavy hiking boots.

  The women he knew were the sorts who wanted to hit a movie or go out drinking. Outdoorsy ones would play Frisbee on the lawn at Gasworks Park overlooking Lake Union and downtown Seattle.

  This one was sitting on a pack that looked heavier than his had been and was cooking breakfast over an open campfire a dozen miles from the next nearest living soul.

  “What brings you to Gray Wolf Summit?” That was safe enough, wasn’t it?

  “Exactly,” she mumbled as she sucked in cool pine air over a hot mouthful of oatmeal. She didn’t elaborate.

  “You came for the summit?”

  “No, the gray wolf part.”

  Was she naturally prickly or was she just teasing him? He decided to wait her out. After all, he’d felt plenty lonely last night—not knowing that an attractive woman was camped just a shout away—and it was only his first day in the wilderness. He didn’t want to scare off what might be his only visitor for the entire summer.

  “Wildlife biologist. I’m here to monitor the gray wolf dens off either side of the trail,” she hooked a thumb back over her shoulder.

  “They’re here?” He spun to look, feeling as if one was about to attack him from behind. Nothing but the rolling line of the ridge, the narrow alpine meadow of grass and wildflowers with his wooden outhouse perched a few hundred feet downslope. Beyond that, the short scrub trees that eked out a living high on the granite, though their spareness quickly developed into a thick forest.

  “Sure,” she said, continuing to pay attention to her oatmeal and the distant mountains. “Plenty of trail sign if you’d known what to look for on your way up.”

  He could hear all of the points he’d just lost by missing the “shit signs.” Like how was he supposed to know. Though drawings did fill the tiny safety handbook the Forest Service had given him during training.

  “There are two known dens and we think they’re both occupied. I’m going to watch, record, set camera traps…all of the fun stuff.” She’d finished off her breakfast and returned to her coffee.

  “You don’t look like a lunatic.”

  “Don’t ask my former commander.”

  “Deal.” Ex-military, which made the “lunatic” assessment even less likely. This was a woman with skills and a lack of fear because of those skills.

  Whereas he had a complete lack of wilderness skills, which totally explained last night. Well, he wouldn’t be letting himself go there again. From now on his fears would only be real ones.

  “I’ll just call you Wolfgirl.”

  “You’re saying I’m not a woman?” No sense of offense, as if she was just asking.

  “Wolfwoman doesn’t exactly trip off the tongue. Besides, if I’m Fireboy, you’re stuck with Wolfgirl.”

  “As long as you aren’t calling me a bitch.”

  Female wolf. Bitch. “Don’t know you well enough to decide one way or another.”

  “I’ll be around. By the end of the summer, you’ll know for sure that I am.”

  She’d be around.

  He’d spent much of last night wondering if there was any way he could cut and run. Fire tower, isolation, howling wolves, the whole bit. Now, no more imaginary fears and, maybe, he wouldn’t be so alone all summer.

  A regular visitor.

  He could deal with that.

  6

  Tom had settled into a semblance of routine after the first couple weeks. Up with the sun—he’d never been an early riser—but there wasn’t much to do up here at night except watch the stars. First scan of the horizon for the day, then a couple-hour hike up and down the trail. Eventually, he’d branched off the trail for longer and longer forays through the pine and fir forest. He started seeing the “shit signs” but decided that unless they were still steaming he wasn’t going to worry, too much. The one time he saw bear scat—freaking gigantic—he actually pulled his pepper spray can from his hip holster for the rest of that hike.

  At first, he’d been hoping to run into Wolfgirl, but then he’d started noticing the wildlife and the plants changed with elevation along the trail. The Forest Service safety guide let him identify the basics, but he’d get a better guidebook on his first break back in town.

  He was on duty from nine a.m. til six in the evening. He sent
a morning radio report of weather readings and the fact that he was “in service.” Every fifteen minutes, scan the horizon for “a smoke”—the little wisp of white that promised fire close behind. It was a little dizzying at times sweeping the binoculars up and down the hills—they went on forever. Once he got disoriented enough he couldn’t remember where he’d started and had to go around a second time. After that he started and ended with due north.

  Due north was the trail that Wolfgirl had walked down two weeks ago, swinging her monstrous backpack on as if it weighed nothing at all.

  He felt better when he noticed that she too carried the bear spray rather than a gun. She was a wildlife biologist, so he’d guess that she knew what was best. And being a soldier meant that she had a handgun skill set that he didn’t.

  When she’d stood up, she’d been smaller than he’d expected. Somehow a person who tracked over the wilderness fearlessly seeking a massive four-legged predator should stand more than five-foot six. His final view of her had been a single pair of slender, camo-clad legs sticking out from below her pack and a battered blue baseball cap with a Montana State University bobcat logo above.

  After two weeks—and still no sign of Wolfgirl—he’d had his first two days “down.” A lookout relief had hiked in and continued the firewatch while he got off the mountain and went into town—a four-hour hike out and another hour skidding his car down muddy logging roads and then the bland pavement of the highway to Missoula. A night at the bar and crashing in a cheap motel. Alone.

  There’d been a couple of potentials at the bar, but he wasn’t into it. He’d had his fair share of cheap sex—it usually cost a couple beers, some nachos, and a little dancing. It had always bothered him that the dancing was often better than the cheap sex.

  He hadn’t felt that way at first, of course. Women in bars had started happening for him as he’d shifted from geeky academic to muscled mechanic from wrenching on crumpled car frames all day. It was true, macho guys got the hot women and he’d certainly enjoyed the benefits of that at first. But now, his ego didn’t need the boost and he just didn’t care for the hollow feeling morning-afters always left.