He remembered his cousin telling him about a shelter that recruited people to fight forest fires. He could handle that, he figured, whatever it was you had to do out there. He’d survived in jail without many problems, able to pop con well enough to be accepted by some of the toughest lifers. Hell, he’d probably come back some kind of hero. That’s what he’d do. It’d be like going off to fight in a war; no shame in that.
Chapter 3
“[S]pecies having a narrow ecological tolerance do not fare as well in a Fire-prone environment.” (Effects of Fire on Fauna, U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service)
The short night had taken its toll. After eating lunch, all the members of Squad Three, except Alaska, were sprawled out and sleeping on the soft bed of ash. Alaska, swatting flies in agitation, glanced repeatedly at his squad and shook his head. He had no trouble convincing himself that he was the only firefighter of any worth on the squad, and probably the whole crew. He never slept on a fire site, even if the danger of the fire coming and threatening the safety of the crew, or of a tree or rock hitting one of them, was virtually nonexistent.
“Saddle up!” the radio attached to Alaska’s chest commanded.
“Squad Three copies,” he answered eagerly, before the other two squad bosses sounded their acknowledgements. To his squad he bellowed, “Time to moooove! Nap time’s over, kids... up up up!”
To the squad, Alaska seemed an evil taskmaster, hovering menacingly over them. Under his close supervision, the firefighters mechanically went through the motions of packing their things and putting on their small but complicated Forest Service packs. “Line out! C’mon!” Alaska yelled.
It was evident to Frank that Alaska took too much pleasure in this part of his job. He wished someone besides Alaska had the responsibility, but decided he was glad it wasn’t him. It wasn’t worth the stress, he told himself. He would hate to end up as tightly wound as Alaska.
Alice, meanwhile, looked into the distance and saw the other two squads still getting to their feet. She looked at her own squad and at Alaska, who was taking a critical inventory of those in his charge who were not yet ready. This is going to be a long fire, she thought. She lifted her backpack and tried awkwardly to put it on.
Frank noted Alice’s problem and walked over to her. “You’re all tangled up. Here, let me help.” Frank lifted the backpack off Alice’s back and unwound the strap before letting the pack rest again on her back.
Alice turned to look Frank in the eye, and said with a sarcastic smirk, “Thanks... but, um, Mr. Chivalrous... I think your partner over there is the one who really needs your help.”
Frank looked over at Scott and laughed uneasily. Scott’s pack looked like some sort of yellow space alien was attacking him from behind, straps and buckles violently whipping through the air. Scott cursed profusely as he tried to fasten the pack to his back. Frank offered Alice an embarrassed smile and called out, “Hey partner, you got that the wrong way up.”
“Oh? Oh yeah... Thanks, man.”
“C’mon, Scott! Move it!” the heavy voice of Alaska pounded. Scott mumbled something that might have been derogatory. Alaska, seeking to regain his poise after the incident with Todd, and sensing Scott would be an easy target to fire a few rounds into, demanded, “What did you say?” He took a couple steps in Scott’s direction, poking his bristly chin at the object of his ire.
Scott did not answer.
“You got somethin’ to say, say it to my face!”
Scott looked at him with tired eyes and sighed. Alaska was just another man who wouldn’t let him be. “Naw, I didn’t say nothin’.”
“Yeah, I thought so,” Alaska said smugly. He left his eyes fixed on Scott a moment, for effect, before turning his attention to the rest of the squad. “Okay, everybody, I’m gonna change the arrangement. Alice, you and me’ll be workin’ on the end. Planet Earth, you and Todd work in the middle, and Frank and Scott, you guys work next to Squad Two. Okay, spread out! And work TOGETHER!”
Alaska let Alice walk in front of him. His eyes traveled down her body and lingered on the roundest portions of her backside. He then eyed Frank, who had glanced in his direction, and grinned devilishly. Frank, inwardly repulsed, raised his eyebrows and gave an obliging, perfunctory smile. The fact that he too had searched Alice’s clothing earlier for a hint of her hard body underneath added to the guilt of his accession.
Frank shuffled away from his squad boss and stepped into position at the end of his squad, near the closest member of Squad Two, helping to reform the long, continuous line of firefighters who would soon grid the area in front of them in what was usually a slow, halting procession. As before, the crew lined out into the burn at a right angle to the cat line, which had been made by a bulldozer the night before and had proved successful in stopping the fire’s advance.
The crew boss, Fast Horse, strutted down the line, inspecting his troops and displaying his pride. His square head held high, he walked with a steady, nimble gait, his sinewy body moving nearly effortlessly over the uneven terrain. “All right, men! And woman. Looks good!... Spread out on the end there, Squad Three, we’re bunched up in the middle,” he called out, with calm authority. As he walked by Frank, he winked at him and asked in his deep monotone accent, “Learnin’ anythin’ in school yet, there, College Boy?”
Frank swelled with pride at having been addressed by Fast Horse. “Yes sir, you’re gonna have start calling me Mister College Boy now,” he joked, pleased that he had dared to be so informal with his leader. He briefly recalled that he had initially been intimidated by this rough-faced Indian. How hastily formed his first impression had been.
A smile erupted on Fast Horse’s face. “Sure, and when I do that you’re gonna be calling me Sir Fast Horse.”
“Yessir, Sir Fast Horse!” Frank quipped.
Fast Horse tilted his head back and gave his characteristic whooping laugh before continuing down the line. After covering its entire distance, Fast Horse doubled back and stopped in front of Squad Two, most of whom were talking and laughing amongst themselves, oblivious to the fact that Squad Three had moved over, making room for them to spread out. “Squad Two! Pay attention!” he commanded.
The squad boss, Randy, surprised by Fast Horse’s booming voice, turned around quickly and stepped into place near Frank.
“Remember,” Fast Horse continued, “I said I’d keep alla you together only because you said you were used to working together. I don’t care how well you talk together, I won’t hesitate to split you up if I have to.” Fast Horse didn’t sound angry, but there was a firmness in his voice that made it clear he was to be listened to.
“Yeah, okay,” Randy said placidly.
Fast Horse gave a mock salute and marched down the line to issue some commands in fluent Spanish to Squad One, a group of young Mexican men.
Signs of resentment were openly exhibited on some of the faces of Squad Two; their cold eyes followed their new crew boss. Frank knew from the previous fire season that Fast Horse could be tough, but he also knew that it was selfdestructive to start resenting him. It was safer and more reasonable to respect the job he did and let him do it. “Sure thing there, Chief,” cracked one of Randy’s cohorts, Jim, prompting some snickering from the rest of Squad Two.
Frank studied Randy and Jim as they conversed. Randy’s eyes had an almost opaque look to them, and he seemed to study everything around him with detached interest. He had a hint of selfassuredness and an unmistakably calm demeanor. Jim, in contrast, the loudest of the group, had piercing eyes that darted skittishly as he spoke. His features could be called handsome, but there was something about them that made Frank uneasy. His hawklike nose and sharp chin jutted out to puncture the air directly in front of him. His gaze had a penetrating quality, like Alaska’s, but with a hint of ruthlessness the Squad Three leader lacked. Frank guessed the man didn’t care much for other people.
Jim glanced
absently over Randy’s shoulder in Frank’s direction, giving Frank only a blank look, as if Frank weren’t there. The young man was apparently above acknowledging the presence of someone he didn’t yet know, Frank guessed, and he was embarrassed to have been caught staring.
Frank felt bad for Fast Horse, who would have to lead men like these. Frank was not alone in thinking that Fast Horse deserved to be able to pick his own crew, as he had done in years past. Then, it had primarily been Indians who had fought fires on his crews, and they had seen it as more than a job. Among other things, it had been a chance to work together in a spirit of unity and pride. But that was before the Forest Service chose to punish the Indian sponsors of the crew for a money-related matter and ordered the crew disbanded. Fast Horse had managed to keep the crew alive by moving the headquarters to the Forest Service office and opening it up to nonIndians. He had once told Frank about this part of his crew’s history with a trace of resentment, but had quickly switched subjects and winked at him, saying, “I can make a firefighter out of anybody with enough self-respect -- even some people you wouldn’t think were worth a damn. I don’t care who you are: if you want to work hard and learn, and if the crew comes first, you’ll probably be worth somethin’... and not just out here. This stuff becomes a part of you.”
Frank reflected on the fact that Fast Horse had been a crew boss for at least the last twenty fire seasons. He worked hard most winters on his family farm on an Indian reservation in South Dakota, and Frank had noted evidence of this in Fast Horse’s leathery hands, but every summer since he was of firefighting age, Fast Horse had left home to face the great fires of the west. It was clear that he loved being on a fire and in charge, never seeming to waver in his command. He nearly always displayed an intense, almost childlike gleam in his eyes, yet no one took their job more seriously. Respect, though not consciously sought, seemed to accrue easily to him.
Frank speculated that Fast Horse’s selfworth had become tied to work at a young age, and that might be why he never seemed to yearn for moments of idleness as did some of the others. It was as if firefighting was a vacation to Fast Horse; he loved to meet people and spin tales, and seemed to open eagerly to the adventure of the road. But firefighting meant more than that to him, as if the job was part of what he was. Frank had once laughed out loud when he thought about taking Fast Horse to meet his grandfather. They came from such different worlds, with such different sets of standards! At first he had wondered if they would find any common ground. He had decided that it was possible, but eventually his grandfather would reveal his selfishness, and the differences between the men would become glaring and unbridgeable.
A Forest Service line officer named Shroeder, the Crew Liaison Officer or “CLO,” caught Frank’s eye as he walked the length of the crew in Fast Horse’s wake. He moved with hesitancy and awkwardness, evidently feeling somewhat out of place and, Frank guessed, overly conscious of the eyes on him. Frank watched the lanky man with curiosity. Frank knew him from a week-long dispatch the year before. He was an office worker whom Frank, and many others on that dispatch, had considered much better suited for deskwork than work on the fire line. Though he always tried to appear collected, he often had an excited look about him, like a dog just let out of the house to scamper onto the lawn. He seemed to know very little about firefighting, but his high Government Service grade enabled him to appoint himself to the CLO position if a call for resources went out to his District. It was Fast Horse who was ultimately responsible for the firefighters, and Frank felt there was something wrong with having Shroeder there at all.
“Move out!” Fast Horse yelled.
“Move out!”
“Move out!”
“Move out!”
The command echoed down the line, reaching all ears more than once. On cue, the entire line of yellow shirts moved forward as if the individual firefighters had been transformed into one long, rolling creature. It was soon obvious, however, that the arrangement needed work, as the line went from straight and impressive to jagged and uneven.
“Smoke!” a firefighter yelled, to hear his words repeated down the line, stopping its advance.
The unoccupied firefighters were soon yawning and fidgeting as two men from squad one chipped coals out of the hollow trunk of a downed tree. Frank noticed a fallen tree beside him, and sat in the sliver of shade covering its trunk. Paul approached, and Frank forced himself to start a conversation to pass the time. “So, how long ya think we’ll be on this fire?” he asked.
“I don’t know... Long as it takes. Ask the crew boss, I guess,” Paul answered, almost sullenly, and sat down in the same sliver of shade.
Frank wanted to ask Paul if he knew how wretched a conversationalist he was, or ask him what had given him such a shitty attitude, but instead he continued talking with civility. “I figure it’ll be a quick one. Hear they called in about every crew in the state.”
“I don’t know about every crew, but it looked like a full camp when we drove by. Pretty shitty-lookin’ camp, huh?”
“Yeah, not too good,” Frank agreed, for agreement’s sake, glad Paul was making an effort to converse. Frank disliked hearing Paul complain; there were good reasons for following the unwritten rules of the fire line. He had a feeling Paul wouldn’t last long.
Paul removed a tape player from his pack and put on a pair of earphones. “Um, don’t let anyone catch you listening to that,” Frank cautioned.
“Aw, fuck ‘em,” Paul groaned quietly. He pressed the ‘Play’ button, and music screeched out into the surrounding air.
As Paul listened to the music and separated himself from his surroundings, he was seized unexpectedly by a longing for his home. Then, suddenly, a sliver of fear pierced him. Were they thinking about him? Was that last trip to drug rehab enough for them to finally write him off forever? He knew it wasn’t supposed to work that way, but it seemed inevitable. After the boarding school incident, he sure hadn’t made up for the past. He had fucked up, yeah, but it wasn’t his fault. There had been too many there like himself, he remembered, and too many games for them to play with the accompanying substances to abuse. Even if his relationship with his parents had suffered, it had been a good time, though, all in all. Finally he had found others with his same restlessness, driven by the inexorable need to find peace by filling themselves with chaos.
His vision of his parents sharpened as he stared into the burnt horizon. He could almost hear their forever-raised voices. He remembered having once come to the realization that if they hadn’t yelled at him regularly, days might have passed with little or no communication with them at all. He had wondered if they hadn’t even wanted to have any children, if he had been an accident. It would explain a lot of things... which was maybe why he now felt sentimental about the dirty footprints he’d left on their white linoleum floor.
Paul laughed at himself. Why else had their exhibitions of pride in him been a rarity? They had come to his Little League baseball games, he remembered –- probably just to be seen and talk to the other parents. He had wanted so desperately to give them something to brag about, but he just hadn’t found the ability within himself. His jersey number had been 13 back then, and his luck had been commensurate. Not much he did ever panned out. Maybe that was why they didn’t give him much in return over the years. They were natural overachievers; he was disappointingly normal. They had never struggled for him, only against him, it seemed, always pushing at him to change. But it was as if they had only landed harmless, glancing blows from a distance, never getting close enough to be effective. Sure, they had given him all the things he asked for, and they had kept him healthy and maybe sane while growing up, and he supposed he owed them something for that. But then again, they sure as hell could afford it. And they never really showed him the one thing he really wanted.
Paul sickened at an almost unconscious loathing of himself surfacing in his thoughts. He closed his eyes, breat
hed deeply, and let the music guide him back to the familiar, staving off the tears before they reached the surface. He relaxed as he arrived at a place where he felt comfortable. The music was an integral part of this sacred place, defining it to the outside world and shaping it from within. It seemed to fill the void, ease his torment. He started running an inventory of the tapes he had brought. All were from music shows he and his new friends had attended during the previous year. There, he hadn’t just belonged, but had reigned supreme. He longed for those days, but they were already fading into obscure memories. He told himself that such days would come again, and he would wear a new image -- as a firefighter.
***
As the firefighters progressed, the morning haze lifted slowly to unveil a deep-blue central Oregon sky. The sun’s unobstructed rays bore down on the exposed black ground, which offered no resistance. Layers of heatwaves settled on the black horizon in all directions, and the only hint of a breeze came from dust devils, swirling tornadolike, occasionally coming close enough to fling soot and ashes at a firefighter or two. Overhead, the garbled mocking cry of a crow could sometimes be heard, as if taunting those who were not free to abandon the place at a moment’s notice. There were otherwise no signs of life.
Frank took several gulps of tepid water from his canteen. Fast Horse, picking up where the instructors at guard school had left off, preached about the importance of drinking a lot of water, and in Frank he had found an eager disciple. Frank put the canteen away before advancing with the crew. As he walked, he looked into the near distance and viewed a smoke he and Scott were slowly approaching with trepidation. He cursed his bad luck. It was too early in the campaign for him to accept as routine the performance of such an unpleasant task. “Smoke!” he yelled. His words immediately echoed in the mouths of others down the line until all had halted their advance.
Both men stepped into a large depression where a stump had recently stood. All the smokes had been much like the first. Frank, standing on a bed of hot ash, began digging out live embers from holes where dead roots still lay smoldering. Both firefighters then mixed the newly-exposed embers with dirt that Scott brought from a cooler spot nearby.
When a Fire Burns Hot Page 3
