When a Fire Burns Hot

by Corey Richard

  When a Fire Burns Hot

  Copyright © 2018 Corey Richard

  All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  ISBN (eBook Edition): 978-1-54394-181-4

  Table of Contents

  Introduction

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Introduction

  The phone rang for the first time that day. As he snatched it up, Frank’s heart beat faster at the appearance of possibility. But it was just his mother, asking, in a hesitantly cheerful voice, what he wanted for dinner. Both were conscious that they were tying up the phone, so it was a quick conversation. He sank back deeper in gloom, feeling a little guilty about how he had so quickly dismissed his mother. She’d understand, though; she always did.

  He changed channels and settled into the cushions. He’d been waiting for over a month now; all winter, actually. But today the feeling of futility nagged at him. He tried to be patient, but what else was there to do but wait? He once again questioned his decision to dedicate his summer as he had. There was no guarantee of anything.

  An hour later, the rang again. “Saddle up, College Boy! It’s on!” came a booming, cheerful voice.

  “Copy that!” Frank said eagerly, but the phone had already gone dead. “Fuck yeah!” he yelled, and pumped a solid fist high in the air. He jumped up and punched the air repeatedly, until he felt slightly foolish. He mentally surveyed the bags packed by the door. He knew everything was there, but he did it anyway, and didn’t stop until he was out the door and in the car.

  As he drove, he considered the fact that in a matter of minutes, he would be on a bus headed somewhere new -- somewhere that would undoubtedly deliver on its promise of adventure. And he’d be making money just for sitting there, surrounded by new faces. This year would be different from the last. There was no way he’d back down and let himself feel uneasy in the camaraderie of others. He would be more like them. After all, this year he wasn’t green.

  As he pulled into the lot, he surveyed the mix of men milling about the bus, and his courage instantly waned.

  Chapter 1

  The trip to the fire had been uneventful. The firefighters had quickly gone silent, letting the rumble of the bus lull them to sleep. A sharp turn off the main highway, up a dirt road, past the fire camp, and the bus arrived at the day’s work site. There, the crew was met by a Forest Service regular. Instructions were given as the crew stumbled out of the bus into the bright morning sun. They squinted and studied their surroundings, stretched their legs, and gathered tools from the back of the bus. Then they dispersed, as ordered, to form one long line, their new, bright-yellow shirts and matching hard hats contrasting fiercely with the gray-and-black dullness of the charred landscape. At their front lay the vast remains of the forest. Small fumaroles of smoke snaked up out of holes in the earth where trees had once stood.

  Standing motionlessly, Frank surveyed the carnage, almost savoring the thoroughness of the destruction. He wiped a sandy brown strand of hair clear of his blue eyes and scrutinized a few scrawny nearby trees, bereft of needles, poking out of the desolate earth. He forced himself to briefly mourn the absence of the early summer foliage that had decorated the land only yesterday. Gone were the subtle shades of color that had given distinction to things now transformed into indistinguishable particles of ash.

  Frank patted a tree under which he had found a measure of shade, and a small cloud of black soot swirled around his gloved hand. He looked up and saw that some of the tree’s needles were still green. The tree might yet live. If it did, it would grow as never before, free from the competition of others, feeding on the nutrients of the dead.

  He took the smell of the burn deep into his lungs, and memories of things seen and experienced during the last fire season surfaced. He was glad to be back again, standing in costume on the huge black stage, and more than ready to play the role he had rehearsed all winter.

  Frank examined his fellow firefighters, now spaced out as points on an imaginary line running to either side of him. He forced himself to be pleased with their dissimilarities, and tried to look forward to knowing these now-unfamiliar faces. These were people he might not have had a chance to get to know otherwise, he reminded himself, and he was someone new to them, as yet unlabeled and free to re-create himself.

  Frank realized that he was lagging behind the others as the line slowly advanced. In an attempt to cover lost ground, he took a hasty step forward on what he figured was solid ground. To his surprise, the ground gave way and he sank to his knee. “Whoa!” he exclaimed, laughing to cover his slight embarrassment as he pulled his foot-tall leather boot out of a loose pocket of minerals and ash. He straightened to see the wide, grinning, brown face of Scott, his newly assigned work partner, angled down at him.

  “We got a smoke, partner,” Scott said.

  “Oh, okay...”

  Side by side, the two men kicked up a low-lying cloud of ash as they broke a little ahead of the line and stomped over the soft, gray land toward a small wisp of smoke, which waved like a dirty flag. It told of wood smoldering beneath ground level.

  “Everythin’ a hundred percent out, huh?” Scott asked, already knowing the answer.

  “Yeah, that’s what Fast Horse said.”

  Both men paused when they arrived at the rim of a shallow, smoking cavity. Frank removed a water bottle from the case that hung from his belt. He took a gulp. The water was still slightly cold. Enjoy it now, he told himself. Its contents would soon be hot and unsatisfying.

  Noting the tracks over the ashy floor next to him, Frank suddenly felt like he’d been sent to clean up after a party other crews had been important enough to be invited to. Just hours earlier, those crews had faced the most unforgiving of elements, and had been given the opportunity to test their skills and redefine their limits. Frank envied them. He’d seen very little real fire action. Again, he was mopping up. “Already mopping up, and we just got here. Probably got the whole fire knocked down by now.” Frank became concerned that his statement might be taken as a whine. As he returned his water bottle to its case, Frank told himself he had no choice but to accept what he had no power to change.

  “Yeah, prob’ly,” Scott said wanly. “After you,” he added, gesturing toward the smoking depression.

  “No, I wouldn’t dare rob you of such a fine opportunity.”

  “You get on in there, skinny boy, you need mo’ muscle on you,” Scott said in his smooth, deep voice, readying a smile.

  “Well, which is more important, Scott, building muscle or getting rid of that winter fat?” Frank suddenly feared he had spoken too daringly, and wondered what had made him act so uncharacteristically. He decided it must be the lack of sleep.

  Scott, however, was not so easily offended, and turned to him, laughing squinteyed before dropping into the depression. “You got a point there, partner. I’ll give you that one.”

  Frank’s eyes quickly skated over the
horizon, and he caught sight of his squad boss eyeing him and Scott from a rapidly decreasing distance. Frank and he locked eyes for a few seconds before Frank lowered his and moved into the depression. He absently watched Scott unearth glowing red coals with a shovel and remembered hearing their squad boss being dubbed “Alaska” by someone in the crew who had learned which state this boss called home. As he chopped into the ashy ground next to the exposed embers with his Pulaski tool, Frank relived the uneasy feeling that this man, Alaska, had left him with the previous night. Alaska had openly sized him up upon learning that he would be in his squad, as if using intimidation as a tool to scour for any signs of weakness. Frank guessed that Alaska, like other men before him, had been trying to determine if Frank met some pre-determined set of criteria. He could only hope that Alaska would notice that he was a good worker and leave him to do his job. Something told him he wouldn’t mix well with this new boss; but if so, it wouldn’t be his fault, he decided.

  A face soon appeared at the rim of the depression, and Frank looked up to find himself the target of a withering glare. “That smoke’s not goin’ out by itself, ya know.”

  “Uh... yeah, we were just startin’ on it,” Frank replied sheepishly, drawling his words but not really meaning to. He just did that when he was nervous. He stooped beside Scott and vigorously dug up more embers using the hoelike blade of his Pulaski. Alaska’s smothering presence bred uneasiness in the pair.

  The partners labored steadily and methodically, remembering that the crew boss, Fast Horse, had ordered the crew to conserve its energy. It would be a long, hot day, with the temperatures likely to exceed one hundred degrees in the black, nearly barren area to which the crew had been assigned. Moppingup was never an occasion to push one’s limits.

  The squad boss became increasingly critical as he observed the performance. “You gotta get real aggressive, there,” he said, sounding faintly condescending. “Bump outta there,” Alaska grunted, as he displaced the pair in order to give them an unneeded demonstration.

  “We were pacing ourselves,” Frank said to the ground after stepping aside. He realized too late that he’d said the wrong thing. Alaska slowly turned and aimed a hostile look of incredulity at Frank. Then, with a scowl, he released Frank abruptly from his visual grip and began digging furiously with his Pulaski.

  Alaska worked as if his body and tool were inseparably joined to form one solid, welloiled unit. Soon all the smoking wood and coals in the pit lay scattered about his feet in disarray. “Now you, with the shovel, get in there and mix all this up,” he said, not bothering to wipe away the sweat which trickled down his face, some of it finding its way into his eyes and mouth.

  Frank felt himself shrinking back at Alaska’s harsh tone. He was filled with resentment as he watched Scott dutifully drop into the pit. He then, almost unconsciously, recalled his days on the playground where he and an occasional playmate had been subjected to the kindergarten cruelty of those with something to prove. A familiar feeling of helplessness wormed its way through him.

  After Scott had finished, Alaska stepped back into the pit. He removed his glove and thrust his bare hand into the dirt to inspect Scott’s work. He found nothing overly hot to the touch. He put his glove back on and stepped out of the depression. “All right, I want to see every single one done that way,” he barked.

  Frank managed to reply, “Yeah, sure... No problem!” hoping to sound enthusiastic enough to convince Alaska that he had already been planning to do a good job. Alaska’s piercing gray eyes bored through Frank one last time before he swaggered insistently towards another pair of firefighters working on a smoke of their own, but spending more energy in recanting tales from the prior year than on the task at hand.

  As he watched Alaska depart, Frank guessed that his boss was the type who was consumed with an immediate need to establish his absolute authority. Or maybe Alaska was just out of his element, and would only feel he had something to prove out here until he became more confident. Frank heard his mother’s voice telling him that Alaska was probably just insecure and needed someone to understand him and be on his side in this strange new place. He tried to shake the idea out of his head, as if it tainted him to have it there. He was beginning to think that it was his mother who had gotten him into trouble all the time in the first place, trying to raise him as a sensitive child when he’d always been surrounded by packs of ruthless dogs.

  Frank then remembered hearing that Alaska had nine fire seasons behind him. He felt the release of a reckless trickle of sympathy for a man he had been preparing to despise. It must be hard for Alaska to be getting paid only a dollar an hour more than a rookie out here, he thought. He wondered what brought this Alaska guy to Oregon in the first place. Surely he could have found a better job back where he was from; they’d had more fires up there last season than any other state.

  The two partners stood where their smoke had been and gazed numbly at the churned ground, waiting for others to put their smokes out. The silence was unsettling to Frank, and he decided to try and coax Scott out of his stupor. “Think it was a pretty hot fire yesterday?” he asked after setting his foot on the rim of the depression.

  Scott left his thoughts to answer, “Seems like it was, but not real hot like some last year.”

  “Probably should’ve let it burn longer, then. It’d be good for the area.”

  “Somebody gotta make a decision either way, I figure.”

  “Yeah, even a wrong one sometimes.” Frank momentarily reveled in the perceived strength of his convictions.

  Scott looked at him with puzzled amusement. “What you doin’ out here fightin’ fires, then?”

  “Guess I need the money,” Frank said, after a pause.

  Scott smiled. “Don’ we all, brother.”

  “Yeah, I wanna go back to college.” Frank felt that he had answered Scott’s question accurately, but he was conscious of something more luring him back to the fire crew for a second season. This other motive, however, eluded him, as if it already knew the searcher’s next move.

  Scott looked at Frank seriously. “You stick with it. Cain’ ever hurt a man to get a degree if he got the chance to. Grunts ain’ nothin’ much, and they don’ never have a say. Degree’s got a chance to give ya some kinda power, I figure.”

  That Scott thought of a college education as attaining power surprised Frank. “Yeah, I’ll be in charge next year,” Frank laughed, before admitting to himself that power wasn’t for him. To him, power was associated with abuse and injustice. He wasn’t that type of person. But there was some truth to what Scott had said about grunts not having a say in the world. Maybe he wouldn’t be powerful, but he could be important nevertheless. To get there, though, he might have to compete with others. Would he fit in? Or would he just be another odd piece of furniture, compelled to remain inconspicuous, maintaining a distance from his office pals to keep from being exposed as not being one of them?

  Frank left his mental wanderings in the hope of returning to a worthwhile conversation. “So, what have you been up to while waitin’ for the fire call, Scott?”

  Scott finished his scan of the horizon. Without turning his head to look at Frank, he voiced a slow response: “Been livin’ at a shelter.” His words carried thinly-veiled tones of disconsolation.

  “They recruit there or something?”

  “Kinda. Fast Horse drags some folks from the FS office down there every year, and they sign a few up for that fire guard school if they pass the step test.”

  Frank’s interest was quickly kindled, and he looked at Scott with curiosity. Scott looked back at Frank and said, “You know what I mean, don’ ya? Step up and down on that box and you can go if you got a low pulse count. You had to take that, din’t ya?”

  “Oh yeah. Everyone does, far as I know.”

  “Don’ know ‘bout that...”

  Frank looked at Scott quizzically, but let
it pass. “Do a lot of people pass at the shelter?”

  “Sure, pretty many. Lots don’t, though. Me, I got off my ass and started runnin’ in the park. Tried da get some folks to join me, but it was tough.”

  “Do a lot of people there want to fight fires? I mean, the money must seem pretty good to ‘em.”

  “Not too many. Money’s pretty good to ‘em, but’cha gotta give up the booze for a summer.”

  “So they like being drunks?”

  Scott paused before answering, “No, I ain’ sayin’ that. Some’re happier than others, but I guess no one likes it.” Scott clearly thought he was stating the obvious.

  Frank searched for the right thing to say, or for a provocative question to pose to this man, whom he now realized must spend a significant part of his life living in homeless shelters. Frank desperately wanted to come across as being squarely on Scott’s side, while at the same time hoping to learn something from him. Yet Frank feared that with so little in common, he would inadvertently say the wrong thing. “So, how are things these days at the shelter?” Frank said, expecting a negative answer.

  “Oh...” Scott sighed deeply and stared off in the distance. “S’all right... I guess.”

  Frank refused to believe that Scott was as resigned to his fate as he appeared. On a short dispatch the previous year, Frank had observed Scott to be a usually sullen but occasionally jovial man who spoke little with others. Scott’s eating habits had been ridiculed on occasion, but he always seemed to let the insults slide off him. He didn’t seem to care about any would-be antagonists. But Frank, on several occasions, thought he had sensed a dormant rage smoldering somewhere deep inside the man, like a smoke after a forest fire.

  Frank expressed his disbelief. “Really? It’s all right there?” Scott looked at Frank for a moment, then resumed the motions of a visual search for smokes. “Aren’t there too many people these days?” Frank pressed, after recalling a local television special he had watched recently.