When a Fire Burns Hot

by Corey Richard

  Todd hadn’t expected this type of answer, and became angry that Paul had talked over his head. He wasn’t about to concede any points to Paul. He didn’t do that unless he absolutely had to; it would be like a salesman admitting that he didn’t know his product as well as he claimed.

  “I like meat, man, what the fuck you talkin’ ‘bout!” Todd paused to scowl. “Everyone besides you hippies been eatin’ meat forever. Who’s tougher, a tiger or a little deer, huh, Earth Boy?” Todd paused and then grumbled under his breath, “Stupid motherfucker.”

  Paul began to sulk in defiance. “People lived mostly off grains for centuries. Our society eats more meat than almost any society in history, that’s why everyone’s so fat,” he said in a shaky voice. He then mumbled softly, “It’s in the history books, man. Look it up.”

  “Now you listen, Earth,” Todd fired back quickly, his pointed finger steady as the barrel of a sharpshooter’s rifle. “I don’t give a fuckin’ shit what’s in a book! I studied in the school of life, and you’re about to get an F!” Todd lurched towards Paul like a bear makes a false charge, hoping to scare someone in its path.

  Paul jumped back, his face white with terror, eyes opened wide.

  “Heh heh heh! Like a little deer.” Effortlessly, Todd released the tension in his body and eased back in his seat, turning his hostility off as quickly as he had turned it on. “I think I’ll take your cabbagey little head and make me a salad,” he said, and laughed at his cleverness.

  Paul was frozen, but continued sulking.

  “Cut that shit out! Respect one another or you’ll both be out on your asses!” boomed Fast Horse, still facing the front of the bus. “This bull eats a lot of grass but it can still stomp the crap out of both of you!” Fast Horse smiled to himself at his own cleverness.

  A heavy silence settled over the two men, but the spell cast by the hostile exchange had been broken. Both the antagonists were relieved, as most of the tension subsided.

  Knowing when it was prudent to adopt an air of humility, Todd said quietly, “Yeah, I got ya, Fast Bull.”

  Fast Horse was the one man on the crew Todd knew he had to bow down to; Fast Horse had the command. And unless you had a chance to be the top man, you didn’t dare stand up to the one who was. For now, he felt that Fast Horse held too many cards. But he imagined he might get a card or two if he could convince people of his toughness out on the fire line and make it clear that he didn’t take shit from anyone. Without much conscious effort, sales pitches began being churned out within his mind. Todd hated to be powerless. The powerless were only used or destroyed.

  After about an hour of driving, the large yellow bus pulled up crookedly behind a straight line of buses waiting at the entrance of the camp. Directly in front was a new, custom-made bus with tinted windows and shiny new paint. Wilson Hot Shots could be seen stenciled in cursive on its side. Painted flames just reached the bottom of the lettering and around that was an artist’s rendition of billowing smoke.

  “Wilson Shots,” mumbled George.

  “Fuck, don’t get all wet in the pants,” Jim reprimanded. “They only get a dollar an hour more than us, remember.”

  “Yeah, but I bet they were here when it first began. Fuck, I’d like to be first called on every fire.”

  “You couldn’t pay me enough to hang around those fucking snobs... walk around the camps with their heads so far up their asses they don’t know if they’re on day or night detail.”

  The entire crew began to stir; the stopping of the bus had awakened them. Many wearily rose in their seats, attempting to catch a glimpse of the camp they would be calling home, while others craned their necks to look at the bus at their front. As soon as there was a gap, their bus pulled forward; the words ‘Kick Ash’ came into view painted on the rear door of the Wilson crew’s bus. Many suddenly felt embarrassed to be riding in their big, undecorated yellow school bus like kids on a field trip.

  The buses pulled up one at a time to the checkin area. When it was Fast Horse’s crew’s turn, a small, round man boarded their bus and smiled at the firefighters with nervous enthusiasm. “Howdy!... So, where y’all from?” He asked, getting ready to find their names on the clipboard.

  “How do you do, fine sir,” Fast Horse said, and turned his face toward the crew, showing a look of mischief. As with most such looks Fast Horse offered, it was familiar to those who knew him. “We’re Intertribal Number One,” he announced loudly, giving the man the name of his previous, now defunct, crew.

  The uniformed man looked at Fast Horse, and then at the stew of racially mixed crewmembers, and a puzzled look diffused over his face. He then scanned the list of names. “Intertribal... Intertribal...” The man went through the entire list before looking up. “Can’t seem to find the name here.”

  “Wirahwee,” Fast Horse said, pulling a line out of a joke he had told the previous year. He nodded his head assuringly, thumping his finger hollowly on the man’s clipboard.

  A few on the crew choked on their laughter.

  The man knitted his brow and continued to search the clipboard. “Wirahwee... Wirahwee...” he repeated, as his eyes traveled down the list. A few laughs escaped the lungs of some of the crewmembers. “Wirahwee?” the man said questioningly, unable to locate this name on his clipboard as well.

  Fast Horse’s eyes twinkled at Julio, the Mexican squad boss, who then sat up to speak. “Wheer are we? You forget where we are, señor? ‘Scuse me, but meester, if you don’ know where we are, we’re in a lotta trouble, I think,” he said gravely, and shook his head slowly.

  Those crewmembers holding their laughter let it escape. The man still retained a puzzled look, but embarrassment was fast setting in.

  Fast Horse smiled, clasped the man’s shoulder, and pointed to the crew name ‘Willamette’ on the clipboard.

  “Urn... yeah... Willamette crew. You’re at spot twenty-five, down by the river. You can park the bus straight ahead next to those other ones,” the man said quickly.

  “Thank you,” Fast Horse said, laughing politely as the man hurried from the bus.

  The shutting of the bus door was greeted by a burst of laughter. “Wir-ah-wee!” many mouths echoed.

  Fast Horse smiled widely and slapped the back of a puzzled Shroeder, who smiled back uneasily.

  When the level of laughter dipped slightly, Scott announced in a deep, slightly hostile-sounding voice, “I ain’ part a no Wirahwee tribe, Fast Horse.” When all eyes were on him he announced with pride, “No sir... I’m parta the Chumuckley tribe.” Scott puffed his chest out with pride and then broke into a contented smile.

  Fast Horse tilted his head back and laughed hard at the roof. Even Scott had some spirit this year, he considered.

  Frank laughed, too. He understood the joke, a leftover from the previous summer, Most of the rest of the crew, however, looked puzzled. One young man named Carlos, sitting next to Frank, asked loudly, “Señor, what eez de meaning of dees ‘Chumuckley’?”

  The crew, particularly the Mexicans, laughed at Carlos’s exaggerated accent. It was a mockery of a mockery.

  “It’s an old name that Indians used to call... uh... darker Indians... like Scott,” Frank answered with a hesitating smile.

  “Okay, tank you very much, meester,” Carlos said quickly with an innocent look, appearing quite pleased to have learned something new.

  The Mexicans’ laughter rose above the rest.

  Carlos turned back around to face Frank again. “You from de Gringo tribe, very smart, so you know ‘bout deez teengs, I teenk,” he said, and then turned to face the front again in contentment.

  Carlos’s comment gave rise to a surge of nearly debilitating laughter in the front and the middle of the bus, with Fast Horse letting loose with one last whooping yell.

  The ugly yellow school bus, driven by a now-giggling Christine, soon creaked into its spot next t
o the Wilson crew’s flaming bus. The Wilson crew already stood rigid and silent in a line in front of their bus, soldierlike and serious. The Willamette crew, meanwhile, stumbled raucously out of their bus, still laughing and passing jokes as they began to unload the red backpacks filled with their personal gear. Most of the Willamette crew did not notice when the Wilson crew marched off, looking straight ahead as if no one else existed.

  Scott alone watched them depart and before they were out of earshot chided, “Shiiit, them boys cain’ even put out they own bus,” feeding the laughter.

  Jim, who had been feeling left out because the joke-slinging had not involved him, stepped quickly out of the unformed line toward the hot shot crew’s bus. With his finger, he drew a line in the dirt through the ‘kick’ in the ‘kick ash’ slogan on the bus, and replaced it with ‘kiss my.’ He quickly stepped back in line amongst the snickers of his squad.

  “Kiss my ash,” George read aloud before letting out a deep, hollow laugh.

  With a pack slung over each shoulder, the crewmembers lined out. The squads were in numerical order with each headed by its squad boss, Fast Horse and Shroeder in front. When the line was acceptably straight, Fast Horse called out to them, “All right, I want to see you all looking sharp. Most crews go through camp lookin’ like a herd of moose. I want to see Intertribal lookin’ like it’s fulla firefighters meanin’ business.”

  “Intertribal’s bad-ass motherfuckers!” Todd exclaimed.

  “That’s right. A lot of people know us out here, so we got an image to keep up that a lotta them other crews don’t. I’ve told incident commanders many times that we’re as good as and probably better than the hot shot crews, so we’ve gotta look it. All right. Dominos!”

  “Dominos!” a few Mexicans parroted happily.

  Two men in green Forest Service uniforms strolled by the marching Willamette crew and smiled warmly upon recognizing the crew leader. The eyes of the smaller one, a young black man, lit up with enthusiasm. “Glad to see you made it, Fast Horse!” he said as he stopped to watch Fast Horse pass.

  Fast Horse smiled, stuck out his chin, and as he passed, playfully saluted the man, who was now his superior in the agency but had once been a member of Fast Horse’s own crew.

  The young man never stopped smiling and, hiding a thick street accent, said, with a trace of sentimentalism. “You guys got about the best crew boss there is out here. See ya ‘round!” Both uniformed men resumed walking.

  When the crew marched through the skinny young ponderosa pines bordering the makeshift parking lot, the newly erected camp came into view. The whole set up was, as usual, efficient, orderly, and uncomplicated. Three yellow tents, larger than two school buses and held down with metal spikes the size of a person’s arm, served as the eating areas. Adjacent to these tents stood half a dozen truck trailers containing food and supplies, one with a fully equipped kitchen inside. Across from the eating tents were two rows of outhouses totaling around two dozen in number. Several hundred feet away from this central area, several long desks had been set up next to another truck trailer where crewmembers could come to obtain supplies and exchange dirty fire clothes for clean ones. Also, there were truck trailers and a few tents clustered together to make up the offices of the medical staff and the Forest Service personnel in charge of organizing the firefighting efforts.

  In an area separated from bulk of the camp infrastructure, stood one of the more remarkable components of the camp: the showers. Some in the crew noted that the type that was set up consisted of small, clean, individual plastic stalls, built into the inside of a typical truck trailer. Better than the group showers so often provided, where you were often splashed with the grime of others. The model provided at this camp was usually complete with curtains and soap dispensers, and rarely ran out of hot water. With all types of showers, water was heated after being sucked from two huge rubber bags about fifty feet square that lay on the ground outside, refilled by water tankers parked and waiting nearby. Also linked to these bags were small outdoor sinks, with accompanying mirrors.

  The camp looked large enough to accommodate nearly a thousand firefighters, and had room to expand as needed, which was not always the case. Aesthetics weren’t important to the Forest Service, but this particular camp was located in a meadow with a river below. Often camps were often set up in existing gravel lots, school football fields, or even cow pastures, so as to minimize the impact, but this fire was far from any town, so a natural field was the only option.

  Frank looked over the camp as the crew hiked downhill to their sleeping area. He always liked the feeling he got when in a fire camp, and found himself looking forward to walking through it in the days to come. It was almost like being back at summer camp, where all his needs had been so easily met, and hours so easily filled through the decisions of others. And, just as with summer camp, when the activities ended for the day, he was free to wander by himself if he chose. But it differed from camp in that the tension in the air on a new fire was palpable; people streaming in and out at all hours, dispatched to various parts of the forest, returning exhausted and sooty, knowing little of what they would encounter on their next assignment. And when the fire represented an unpredictable monster, there was nothing like it. Sometimes even entire camps had to be evacuated in a matter of minutes if the flames rolled too far from their predicted path. Frank decided that this camp was not going to have that feeling, however. The fire seemed almost out. The war was over before it had begun.

  After the crew arrived at the sleeping area, Alaska led his squad to a small grassy area in the trees. Squad One found a similar spot nearby, while Squad Two began to march off to some distant, yet-unknown location. “Squad Two! Stick with the rest of the crew!” Fast Horse commanded sternly.

  Randy mumbled something to Jim, turned around, and headed for a thick stand of trees he guessed were acceptably close to the rest of the crew.

  Everyone on the crew looked for a suitable spot within their area to sleep. When they found one, they happily unburdened themselves of their packs, letting both fall heavily to the ground.

  “All right,” Fast Horse began, “Dinner’s ready, and you’re all off the clock and free to go. I don’t care what you do, so long as it doesn’t involve drugs or drinkin’. And it’s supposed to be a closed camp, so don’t go too far. Alaska, your squad gets the lunches first thing in the morning. Get two veggies.”

  “Who’s the other veggie?” Todd asked, smiling and preparing to laugh derisively.

  “Me,” Fast Horse announced, neither expecting nor hearing any laughter from Todd.

  Alaska eyed Frank before telling him and Scott to get the lunches the next morning. It was an order Frank had somehow anticipated.

  Scott then led the others up the hill to the first square meal in months he hadn’t gone to a shelter for. Steaks and pies entered his imagination, and, for a change, he wasn’t disappointed.

  Last to walk up the newly-stomped path was Alaska, letting himself relax a little for the first time in the campaign. Everything suddenly brightened as he considered the agreeableness of his new nickname. He wanted everyone to know he called the state of Alaska home; it made him different, somehow better. The Alaskan image served him well; he was one of the tough, brawny men at battle with the elements in a rugged, unforgiving land.

  Then a slight panic rushed coldly over him. He couldn’t go back. He couldn’t face his parents, the town, and everyone knowing everything about everybody. He yearned desperately to see and smell the forests of his home again, witness the spectacle of green-up, when the hillsides burst into a rich green in a matter of days. He could almost smell the sweet odor of life that hung thickly in the air for a few months, until the yearly decay began again. He wasn’t there to see it for the first time in his life. But then he scoffed at the fact that half the drunk, lazy people in town missed spring anyway, and only managed to note summer’s arrival becaus
e the commercial fishing season changed, the tourists arrived, and the bars became more crowded. Right now, most of the locals were probably sitting in a bar in town, cut off from the outside world, doing what they always did: slowly wrecking themselves on their vices and pettily destroying that which others occasionally tried to create, like children fighting over a corner of a sandbox in the middle of an enormous playground. He pictured it all as clearly as he pictured the winter, and those long, dark nights where the entire town lay under the same cold blanket of dirty white snow.

  ***

  “Yeah, that bitsch Trish... I tol’ her not to fuhck Darrell,” a sallow-complexioned woman snarled harmlessly, between puffs of her cigarette, at another sitting next to her. Both looked as if they had weathered their share of storms. But they were Alaskan women, and no matter how they looked or acted, they were royalty of sorts. Neither was sober enough to notice the young firefighter sitting in the corner of the dimly lit bar, the son of Jim and Trish Everheart. But even if they had, they might not have cared if they were overheard.

  “Thaht bastard come into town ahfter being out a couplah months with a bag; you know how he gets, I cahn’t keep him in.” The speaker lowered her slurred voice and continued, “I knew he was headed for Trish when he found out Jim was still down crabbin’... I knew it!” The woman was becoming increasingly angry as she spoke, but she still sounded as if she was talking about someone other than her own husband.

  “Yeah, that bitch’ll fuck anything.”

  “Well, I’ll ghet me some revenge... Yep, I’ll ghet it when Jim’s boat comes in.”

  “You gonna?...”

  “Naw, Jim’s as ugly as mah dog’s fleabitten ass.”

  Both women looked at each other and cackled, mouths wide open, before raising their drinks to their wet lips. After swallowing, the conversation resumed.

  “Naw, I’m jus’ ghonna tell him is all. You know how he gets...”

  “Uh huh,” the woman raised her eyebrows in lackluster alarm.