When a Fire Burns Hot

by Corey Richard

  Squad Two was surprised by George’s small kernel of cleverness, as was George himself, who hid his glee as best he could. He continued thumbing through the pages suppressing a giggle which would have ruined what little he had just achieved. He stopped at a page featuring a football celebrity of his liking.

  Scott was done taunting George, but felt neither defeated nor victorious. He figured that he would probably resume the confrontation at a later date, but for now he was satisfied to have called George “ignorant” and gotten away with it.

  “’The Crusher’. Now that fucker’s bad-ass!” George announced loudly at the football player’s face on the magazine page.

  Frank, who had been intrigued and excited during the brief confrontation involving his new friend Scott, saw an opening to step into the arena himself. With a new selfimage still under construction, he pounced on the opportunity. “So, then, he suits your fantasy of a real man, huh?” Frank asked in a deep voice.

  Many around them greeted his comment with laughter.

  George was dumbfounded as he tried to figure out how Frank’s comment should be taken. He quickly became like a confused bull, but fortunately for Frank, who was oblivious to any danger that might have existed, George remained penned in.

  Scott turned to Frank and flashed him a broad smile. Frank responded with one of his own, more squinteyed than usual.

  George saw the two men smile at each other and leaned over to Frank and growled, “That was a chickenshit thing to say! You better watch your ass!”

  Frank was aghast. For one of the first times in his postadolescent life, he was being confronted with the threat of violence. He nervously whisked the problem away, trusting in Fast Horse to protect him. Ordinarily Frank would have felt bad for George, and gone over to talk things out with him, explain that he meant no harm, but this time he didn’t. He wasn’t under the guidance of his usual set of emotions. He had gotten a laugh, made George look foolish and himself a little braver; according to the rules, he’d won the game. It was the type of game he had seldom, if ever, played, and it held a thrill for him. Why should he apologize? For the image of a victor to be complete, he had to act like a man who was accustomed to shrugging off threats. He figured that George had a lot more coming to him that was much worse. He told himself that morally, nothing should stop him from standing up next to Scott and completely brushing George aside.

  “Let’s hear what Alice has to say,” said Jim, in an effort to contribute to the crew’s entertainment.

  Alice’s fingers quickly searched her shirt pocket and extracted a cigarette.

  “So what do you think, who’s more of a man, Alice? The Crusher or Onyx?”

  “I wouldn’t even bother guessing,” Alice reluctantly answered.

  “You must have some idea. Pick one.”

  “No idea,” she said curtly. She looked out the window but was unable to focus on anything.

  “You like ‘ern big and thick, or short and skinny?” Jim asked, careful to lower his voice so as to keep Fast Horse from hearing.

  Alice’s anger began to surface with characteristic speed. Jim was asking to be put in his place. But she was tired of the game, tired of being reminded that she was the only woman on the crew. She looked up and saw Shroeder smiling with devious innocence, and cursed herself for having thought that he might be different, that his high government position and comparatively sophisticated demeanor was some indication of enlightenment. She told herself to remember that it took much more than cognitive intelligence for someone to understand. Alice took a drag of her cigarette and watched the smoke cloud billow upwards, to linger above the firefighters’ heads.

  Frank looked at Jim, who was still staring at Alice expectantly, and desperately wanted to speak, but fear and a lack of courage kept him from it. He quickly convinced himself that he couldn’t do anything about the situation if he tried. He looked at Randy in an attempt to read his thoughts, hoping that Randy was ready to step into the ring. After all, Jim was under Randy’s command.

  Randy saw Frank look in his direction and then turned to study Jim. Randy was slightly surprised to hear himself say, “If she doesn’t want to answer, why do you keep asking her questions?” Randy had spoken in a tranquil voice, no different than the one he ordinarily used with his friend.

  Jim appeared unfazed by Randy’s comment. With unnerving calmness, he continued fanning the embers of Alice’s rage, “I only wanted to know what a real man is like.” Jim smiled, his lips turned upwards and froze like those of a reptile. “And Alice here claims she knows what one is.”

  “I’m just telling you...

  Randy’s stern message was interrupted by Alice, who had turned around, unable to contain her burgeoning anger a moment longer. “SHUT THE FUCK UP, you prick!” Alice’s words hissed out like steam. She quickly turned back around in her seat and again faced the front of the bus. For the first time, she felt hatred for Jim consume her entirely. She had always hated his taunting, destructive, maleoriented group attack tactics, but now the hatred was not focused simply on what he had done or said; she had been pushed beyond the threshold of her tolerance for any part of him; her hatred was allencompassing. Outwardly, she shook under the control of her rage; inwardly, she shuddered at the intensity of her emotions.

  Jim raised his eyebrows in mock amazement, yet slightly startled to find that he held a fear of Alice at that moment. Still, he was not surprised by her charged words. He was actually pleased that he had made her lose her poise and had thus accomplished one of his possible goals. He would have preferred to continue with what he envisioned were harmless, nasty little contests of cleverness, but he figured that the fact that she came across as a cold bitch and he a humorous, lighthearted kind of guy served him well. He settled for it as a victory. He knew that battle lines had finally been drawn, and felt no remorse.

  There was something unsettling about Alice, however, and he wasn’t sure what it was. If she were male, it would have been a threat of a fight. Jim quickly brushed his anxiety aside and turned to his squad, asking calmly, “Whew! D’ja notice the temperature of the bus go up a few degrees just now? Or am I havin’ a hot flash?”

  Only Randy abstained from laughing. Randy sensed that his squad would not appreciate a verbal chiding of Jim, so the agile leader responded with some comedy of his own, “Jim, if you’re so hot to know what a real man is like, why don’t you just go ask Susan?”

  “Ooooooh!” The rest of Squad Two hooted in a rising pitch. All of them knew story of Susan, who, several years earlier, had frequently rebuffed Jim’ advances, choosing instead to be Randy’s girlfriend for a short time.

  “It’s your wife who oughta know...” Jim said, in reference to Randy’s wife’s sexually promiscuous past.

  Randy smiled back at Jim, forcing himself to welcome the response, even if it did hit a little too close to home, the bedroom, and his wife’s status as a tainted commodity in the eyes of the community. Laughter managed to seal the schism between the two men. “Sure she oughta, she settled for the only man who could please her.”

  John had laughed at Jim’s comment and then at Randy’s, but now a look of confusion diffused over his face. He examined each of the two men in turn, while inside a small but important battle was being waged.

  Frank looked at Alice, and compassion joined the thoughts that swirled through his head. She, in contrast to Jim, was not laughing in the company of friends, but looked troubled and uneasy, and slightly lonely. Frank knew what loneliness was, but something told him that Alice’s loneliness was different from that which he had experienced. He guessed that she must be growing tired of fighting battles. He studied the nearly hidden signs of tension in her face, and decided that each battle must take a lot out of her, leave her wounded in some way. She had always seemed so invulnerable to him, but now saw that there was indeed a soft, vulnerable side concealed beneath her impressive armor. He sudd
enly wanted to save her from the assault that seemed imminent, and felt more strongly for her than before.

  Frank then reminded himself that it was support that he should be offering at that moment and nothing more. He leaned over to her as she puffed on a cigarette. “Hey Alice,” he said quietly, in order to keep the conversation confidential. “What is it, you’re the only duck around on the opening day of hunting season?” Alice turned to him. Frank smiled boyishly, assuring her that nothing but goodwill had motivated his comment.

  Battle-weary Alice, after a few seconds’ delay, dropped her guard like a heavy crate of grenades. She allowed herself to relax a little. “Yeah, and all I can do is quack,” she said, laughing youthfully at her words.

  After finding nothing more to say, Frank’s mind began to wander. He pictured some sexual harassment inspectors coming to hear Alice’s testimony and his corroborating statement. The uniformed men would reach the proper decision immediately and cuff a humiliated Jim, taking him away in disgrace.

  Having shed the influence of her rage, Alice’s mind wandered even further than Frank’s. She imagined Jim would be hauled away by some female Forest Service police and delivered to a reform camp, filled with widebodied feminists as the wardens. He would be reeducated, and part of the program would be for him to recite feminist poetry by Adriene Rich every night before going to bed. And the song that went “I am woman, hear me roar” would play all day in every room Jim entered.

  Alice made a quick return to reality, and pondered the thought of filing a sexual harassment charge against Jim. She quickly ruled out the idea. She had no particularly damning evidence, and neither the crew nor its two leaders were likely to support her in her claim. She might go over their heads, but she knew that if she did that, she’d never be welcomed back. Her goal of starting a women’s ranch would then be further out of reach. For the greater good, she reasoned, she would stay on the crew and keep silent. Only moments ago, however, she had felt the temptation to light the match that would cause Jim and herself to go up in flames.

  Chapter 16

  The crew, still seated on the bus, was informed that they would again be digging line. They greeted the news with less enthusiasm than they had the day before.

  After walking off the bus, Jim passed Alaska, who was furiously struggling to untangle the many straps of his Forest Service backpack. Nudging Alaska gently, he said, “Hey ‘Laska, you gotta keep that squad of yours in line, my man,” he said in an amiable tone.

  Alaska looked up and leveled a fierce glare at Jim, as irritation surged through him. “Buddy, don’t tell me what to do with my squad!” he snarled.

  Jim had not expected Alaska to respond with such hostility. To him, the comment had seemed closer in resemblance to a friendly jeer than anything else. “Hey, I didn’t mean to offend you. Lighten up there... buddy.” Jim said, almost haughtily.

  “You do your job and I’ll do mine! Okay, guy?” Alaska said, and thoughtlessly severed his ties to his only allies on the crew.

  Jim shook his head in disbelief. “Whatever... Do your job, then.” Alaska’s hostile reaction hadn’t had much of an effect on Jim, but it did bother him slightly that once again, someone hadn’t seemed to enjoy a little verbal taunting. He looked over at his squad and decided that the rest of the crew was way too serious and uptight, except, perhaps, for the Mexicans, but they didn’t really count. He walked over to his men and announced under his breath, “Alaska’s fuckin’ crazy. Fucker tried to flip me some shit about our squad.”

  A moment of understanding passed between the men, and some narrowed their eyes maliciously. Alaska was now out of favor and possibly condemned to an even worse fate.

  Alice had witnessed all that had transpired, and found herself smiling thinly. Squad Two had made their decision, and there was a break in the ranks. Alaska was alone, more exposed and vulnerable than before, and she was a little bit safer.

  The crew worked steadily for most of the morning, as they extended a line another crew had begun the day before. By noon, they tied into a new line that ran through a steeply sloped forest, not far from the place they had worked the previous day. They broke for lunch at a safe distance from the flames.

  After eating, Derrick took the brief moments of freedom to wander through the trees, stopping to examine anything that caught his attention. The rest of Squad Three, meanwhile, reclined, using their sooty packs as pillows.

  “Hey, Alaska.”

  “Yeah, uh, Frank.”

  “What do people in Alaska think about people down here? I mean, do they think of themselves as Alaskans or Americans?”

  “Hell, what do you think?”

  “I imagine they want to be separate in some ways.”

  “Well, there you go, maybe they do. I know some do. Me, I don’t give a shit. I’m American.”

  “Yeah, I understand that. But don’t you all want to control the state yourselves?”

  “Control what? Hell, like I said, Alaskans like to party.”

  “Are there lots of drugs up there?”

  Alaska squinted his eyes. “Yeah, I guess there’s a lot. I dunno. Since I came down here, I haven’t seen as much, I guess. Thing about it is that up there, there’s not as much to do at night, so I guess people do just kinda sit there and get fucked up. Man, drugs are a part of life everywhere, though.”

  “Yeah, I guess so. I just imagine isolated places having these problems for some reason. Maybe people get frustrated seeing the rest of the world on TV.”

  Alaska tried to consider what made Frank think the way he did. He wasn’t an Eskimo, for God’s sake. People in small communities helped each other more, he supposed. But then again, there wasn’t much up there to step in if the people turned their backs.

  He soon abandoned his thoughts. He hated being confused, and had not been at all comfortable with the topic of discussion in the first place. He wished people would just stick to subjects like engines or weather, things you could see or put your hands on that offered only hard evidence as to whether you were right or wrong.

  Alaska’s silence made Frank think that he had deposited something that might just grow up between the cracks in the Alaska’s muddled head and flourish. He told himself that pushing the subject at this point might only make Alaska put up stronger walls of defense.

  But beyond this strategy, there lay dormant another strategy in Frank’s inaction, very different from the first. It was readying itself for deployment, and was fueled by a deeper set of feelings just beginning to come to life, the future of which was still uncertain. It was these feelings that made Frank look at Alaska in a new light. For the first time, he felt a loathing for the type of intentional ignorance Alaska repeatedly exhibited. Suddenly, people of Alaska’s sort seemed certain to always be in his way. He looked at Alaska in disgust, despite himself.

  “Saddle up!” Fast Horse’s words thundered down the hillside.

  The firefighters slowly got to their feet and fumbled with their packs, adjusting them to rest properly on their backs. When ready, the firefighters stood at attention, tools in hand.

  “Okay, move out! Dominos!”

  The crew followed orders mechanically, and soon everyone was marching on a trail heading uphill. Frank felt the familiar satisfaction of being in some way connected to each dissimilar member of the crew as they traveled together to the same unknown destination. They were all out there together, miles from civilization, in what could often seem, and sometimes was, a hostile and forbidding world. As they fought a common enemy together, they could only learn to rely on each other more and grow closer, he assured himself.

  Frank turned his attention to the trees of the surrounding forest. He felt at ease under the canopy of evergreens, among things also managing to achieve their goal of survival. With his sooty glove, he picked up a pinecone off a passing stump. He looked it over and thought of the many factors that would
have to come into play for one of the little seeds nestled within to grow into one of the enormous trees of the forest. Sun, nutrients, clean air and water, all had to converge in the right amounts for the seed to sprout and survive its younger years. And even in maturity, these factors would continue to shape the tree’s existence, just as much as its genetic makeup, inherited from trees long dead. Then there were perils the tree would encounter and be lucky to live through: lightning, fire, insects, drought, floods. Survival was not easy or automatic.

  Frank looked up at Scott and then at the tree his partner was passing. It was almost as if a tree was at the whim of the elements, he decided. But he realized that the power of growth, of life, would always be the tree’s own. But it had an advantage over humans; it naturally made use of all the beneficial resources at its disposal.

  After nearly an hour of climbing, Fast Horse granted them a break, and each crewmember immediately sprawled out on the nearest patch of comparatively even ground. A second crew suddenly appeared from below, abruptly shattering the feeling of isolation as they stomped alongside the Willamette crew. This crew halted as its crew boss conferred with Shroeder and Fast Horse, being unsure of exactly where he was. As the three men talked and looked over maps, most in the new crew nervously eyed the Willamette crew at their feet. When this crew too was ordered to take a break, all the firefighters suddenly found themselves sitting together and surreptitiously studying those unfamiliar to them. The sawyers of the Willamette crew and those from the new crew rested in close proximity. Each sawyer sensed the others’ willingness to talk, but none would make an overture. After a few conversations had sprung up between opposing crewmembers elsewhere, Jim asked loudly of one of his counterparts, “Had a busy day?”