When a Fire Burns Hot

by Corey Richard

  “That was a fuckin’ buck!” one awestruck crewmember exclaimed.

  Frank quickly registered the fact that even a large buck deer, in the peak of its maturity and wellsuited to this fire-prone environment, wasn’t exempt from the dangers of a forest fire. Surely smaller does and fawns had died out there, along with scores of smaller creatures that had been unable to escape the walls of flames and billowing smoke. Frank thought back on the time he had encountered a small, brown, nearly hairless lump of a creature stepping gingerly and slothlike across charred ground. Upon closer examination, it had turned out to be a squirrel, its hair and feet burnt, probably from a crown fire that had forced it to run down the burning bark of a tree. He had fed it part of his sandwich and then left an apple next to it as it rested, abandoning concern for its safety. His compassion for the animal had nearly overwhelmed him at the time, and he had fought off the tears as soon as he was alone with the creature. The squirrel was probably eaten soon after, he now guessed, and reminded himself that nature was indeed brutish and remorseless. Frank recalled another occasion that same fire season, when he had seen two small fawns lying in the path of a slowly advancing fire. Instinctively, they had stayed nearly motionless, only the expanding and contracting of their lungs signaled they were alive. Fast Horse had instructed his firefighters not to touch the pair, because if they did, they would be abandoned by their mother and die. The men quickly became frustrated in their desire to save the fawns. Some had tried to scare them into fleeing, but it was not in the animals’ nature. The fawns had stayed motionless and vulnerable while chaos reigned around them. In the past, Frank had wondered if the mother had ever come back or had even known of their danger. Now, as he sat, he kept his emotions at bay.

  As the bus rolled on, Frank’s thoughts drifted lazily, while his vacant gaze rested haphazardly on random objects inside the bus. His boots finally held his attention, and he admired their worn look. He had never given them much thought, but now he wondered what oil he should buy to rub into them so as to keep them in good shape. He guessed that oiling boots was something working men did all over America. He next examined his gloves. They were stained black on the fingers and palms and had a clawed, worn look to them. He put one on and clenched and unclenched his fist. He scrutinized the cuts and worn areas, and the way in which the glove was creased from wear. He had worn it in his way while performing tasks using only the raw strength of his muscles, and his work had been valued. He had set a good example. He pictured his arms and hands powerfully swinging a sharp Pulaski. Fast Horse must have seen a strength contained in him that he himself had not seen before, a strength that demanded notice.

  The bus was again too quiet for Jim, who loathed anxiety’s lingering presence. “Hey, that bloated cow looked like Roy’s ol’ lady,” he said with a cackle.

  Roy looked over with tired eyes that said, Don’t fuck with me right now.

  Jim looked at Frank, then at Alice, and decided the time was finally right to antagonize Alice a bit. “Hey Alice,” he said, forgetting to lower his voice. “What was wrong? Alaska a size too small?”

  Alice pulled a cigarette from her Nomex shirt pocket and stuck it between her taut lips.

  “Jim...” Randy said, as if to warn an obstreperous youth.

  “That’ll be enough of that!” Fast Horse thundered, surprising everyone. “I’m not going to babysit you guys! You talk to her like you would to me, ‘cause when you don’t, I’ll take it personally!”

  Jim tried to appear playfully amused, but this time it didn’t work; his disguise was finally wearing thin.

  Randy saw Frank look at him imploringly, displaying an upturned palm. Despite his posture, Frank seemed to be making more of a demand of him than a plea for action. Randy knew that he would have to lay into Jim about his behavior, especially now that Fast Horse had stepped in. He had to take a stand if someone like Jim was fucking things up for his squad and the rest of the crew. He was going to act like one of the crew’s leaders even if it meant giving an ultimatum to one of his best friends.

  He’d do it, but not because of Frank. Who was Frank to tell him to do his job whenever Frank felt like it? He wanted to say to Frank, “What the fuck do you expect from us hicks, huh?” He was glad Frank’s feathers had been ruffled, and found himself hoping they would be ruffled again. Frank was getting too big for his own head. He didn’t care what this new squad boss thought; what really mattered to him was his friends, the men he could always count on. Perhaps Frank’s openness had only been a ruse to help him make others match up to his ideals. That was really just disapproval if you thought about it, he decided.

  Randy thought about how college kids like Frank had come to his town for years on their holidays, some staying to guide their own breed on increasingly popular summer rafting trips. Lately, it seemed that his whole town was on the verge of becoming their playground. The newcomers often walked down the main street and looked down their noses at the town and its inhabitants, or went into the local bars and became drunk and loud as they arrogantly tossed their money around. He had noted the way the youths had looked at the shabbiness of the town, thinking it repulsive and backward or, even worse, quaint. They had laughed at, or denounced, the place that housed the memories of his life, the artifacts sacred to him: the huge decrepit statue of Paul Bunyan in the center of town, the local tavern with the lower half of a woman’s torso mounted on a wall, right next to the bear’s head with a cigar sticking out of its mouth, and the junk yard with its piles of rustingrotting metal where a sign read ‘Used Cars’ as if existing solely as a trap for some rube. It had all had been there as long as he could remember, and he had been glad that his town had retained a degree of genuineness. It made the people feel real, not artificial, not something quaintly different than what they were - as others would have them be.

  But now the new rafting and fishing shops that had sprouted up upon the arrival of the newcomers had begun to put up store fronts resembling that which was in decay all around, but in a flashy and artificial way, wellsuited to the crass new breed. He was proud of his town, probably prouder than anyone else on that squad; he knew more about its value.

  “Fucking chief on the warpath again,” Randy heard Jim say in disgust.

  “He’s scalpin’ you, man,” said John.

  Randy suddenly became consumed with the need to protect his squad, keep them together for the rest of the summer. He leaned towards his men and said, “Hey... Fast Horse has a job to do. We might not like the way he does it, but he’s our boss, and we just gotta respect that. So what if he gets on you for something, we’re out here with our own fuckin’ squad, and you can’t tell me this isn’t the best work situation we’ve all had in a hell of long time.”

  Most of the men nodded, and all agreed. Even Jim had stopped ignoring Randy and gave him a telling look. Randy’s eyes panned the squad and was pleased. “And we’re about to go kick some fucking ass!” he added and saw the men warm slightly to his words. He then nudged Jim and said, “And you can kiss mine for all I fuckin’ care,” for which he received a limp-wristed slap in the arm and a walleyed smirk.

  The bus came to an abrupt stop in a wide, flat staging area atop a ridge that poked up alongside a deep, smokeobscured valley. It was a hostile, burning world that they now found themselves in, at the edge of a vast and smoky nowhere. The forest stretching up to meet the crew contained thick, overmature stands of scrawny lodgepole pines. Growing fast after a fire decades earlier, they had been successful in choking out most other species as they established themselves. But now this stand looked dilapidated, with the younger trees growing up weak and scrawny in the shade of the older ones, vulnerable to disease and insect infestation. There was only one solution: fire. And the tinder-dry forest near the bus was long overdue and primed for the occasion, with numerous dead trees standing like matchsticks amongst the living.

  Also on the hillside were monstrous ponderosa pines. Th
ese monoliths, each standing in isolation from the others, stood in stark contrast to the lodgepoles; their trunks exploded solidly out of the ground, shooting up to heights that seemed impossible for a living thing to reach. They seemed invincible, like slender castles, towering for centuries over the constantly changing forest below.

  There to give the crew a lonely welcome was the strike team leader, McDaniels. Fast Horse and Shroeder immediately exited the bus to confer with the man. The firefighters grew restless while waiting for Fast Horse and Shroeder to return. They had a sense of their remoteness, after traveling the long distance from camp to such strange surroundings. Yet it was all thrilling in its own way. It felt like they were on their own.

  Fast Horse, Shroeder, and the strike team leader hunched over a map spread out on the hood of a pickup. Fast Horse was gesturing and asking more questions of the strike team leader than was Shroeder, who periodically cast an uneasy eye at Fast Horse and repeatedly interrupted, inquiring about the weather. Fast Horse preferred to concentrate on safety zones, topography, and the fire’s location.

  At the conclusion of the briefing, Fast Horse smiled boyishly at the strike team leader and vigorously shook his hand, receiving a tentative but warm smile in return. Fast Horse then strolled back to the bus and bounded up the steps, waiting only moments for the conversations to stop and for all eyes to turn toward him.

  “All right, this is the situation... the fire died down a bit, but it’s a long way from being contained. Right now, it’s moving uphill pretty slow. They haven’t been able to get hand crews in here to get a line around it, but now they think we got a chance and we’re gonna be digging some line as soon as we get to our area. Before we go, I wanna talk about a few things: first, we may be digging in some rocky areas, so heads up and yell ‘rock’ if one starts to come down. And watch for spot fires... anything that looks like it might be smolderin’ on the other side of the line we build is gonna make that line useless, as you guys know. And beyond that, I don’t want to get into a tight spot if the wind picks up, so always be aware of your safety zones.”

  “The weather is supposed to stay pretty calm,” said Shroeder after re-boarding the bus, honoring the designated first rule of firefighting: always be aware of weather conditions and forecasts.

  “Doesn’t matter,” Fast Horse interjected. “We prepare for the worst. I don’t like how the weather guys said they weren’t too sure about the forecast beyond today. I’m not puttin’ anyone’s neck on the line ‘cause someone in some station miles away looked at his charts and said I could work for a little while longer.” Fast Horse shined protectively on his firefighters. “So safety zones are gonna be important to all of us.” Fast Horse glanced at Shroeder. “I want to have radio communication at all times with any squad out of my sight, and remember to do the usual, like look out for snags, aaand...? Aaand...?”

  The crew joined in a weak chorus of “Drink lots of water.”

  “Okay! Dominos!”

  As they busied themselves with the now-familiar routine of putting on their packs and selecting tools, many of the firefighters reviewed the perils Fast Horse said they might encounter. None felt terribly unsafe, however; others were taking care of them, and much of their recent apprehension had been dispelled after their leader’s lecture. Their feelings were more of an excited nature as they considered the prospect of facing an imposing threat, something that might inject in them a dose of the adrenaline to which they were becoming increasingly addicted. Some resembled green soldiers before the onset of real battle. The majority imagined themselves able to withstand anything that might come their way, able to rise to any occasion, and able to cope with the rigors of hard manual labor in such adverse conditions. At this point, only one person on the crew thought of the tasks in hand in the context of the entire crew. If it was a war they were going off to fight, they were vulnerable on more than one front.

  After everyone had lined out, Shroeder assumed the lead, marching uphill along the top of the ridge that flanked the canyon. Soon, everyone panted heavily, dense smoky air again amplifying the effects of strenuous activity. Two long hours into the march, the crew came to a rocky crest, jutting up above the layer of smoke. The firefighters took the clean air deep into their lungs and looked out over the fire’s lair. Another mountain range could be seen in the far distance, but everything else for miles below was coated in smoke, as if they were perched at the edge of a bottomless chasm. Below, a small creek could be heard, but not seen, rushing through the valley floor. Also not visible were the flames across from them, marching slowly up the valley to leave a fire-swept blackness in their wake. Fast Horse alone recognized the flames’ telltale signs: bulging areas in the blanket of smoke and the faint growl of the fire.

  Fast Horse called for the crew to gather around him, seizing another chance to educate while they rested. He began reciting the details of the plan slowly and carefully, giving each important fact time to sink in: “Now, the idea, according to that strike team leader, is to cut this fire off on the other side of the canyon before it gets out of this big valley we’re on top of. The fire started somewhere on the opposite side over there, down about a mile. Just so you know, that fire you saw comin’ over here is a spot from one of those two main fires, but it’s a ways away and we aren’t worrying about that. This fire here is bordered on this side by the crick you might hear down there, and on the other side by a ridge like the one we’re standin’ on. Our assignment is to dig a line up other the side of this valley, over there across the crick. We’ll be attacking the front of the fire indirectly and then we’ll probably burn the area out. If we get that done, tomorrow they might move us to dig a line around the rear of the fire. It’s backing downhill slowly, but it’s pretty well sandwiched in by the water and the far ridge. So, according to the map there should be a good scree patch near our starting point that can be our safety zone. Whad’ya think, Shroeder?”

  “Seems okay to me.”

  “Hey, Fast Horse, what’s this fire called, anyway?” someone asked.

  Fast Horse took a small map out of his shirt pocket and read from the top. “It’s called the... Devil’s Gulch fire.” He paused and then asked, “Any more questions?... No? Okay... Dominos!”

  “Dominos!”

  “Dominos!”

  The firefighters picked their way down the hillside, immersing themselves in smoke once again. Thick patches of dry forest met them before they dropped into denser timberland. Most of the ground below the tightly spaced trees was covered with dead logs and sticks, making walking difficult. Occasionally, curses could be heard when a firefighter negligently let a branch spring back to slap the face of another. Before long, the crew reached the creek. Everyone but Fast Horse was apprehensive at the prospect of crossing its rushing waters.

  “George, see if you can drop that snag so we can cross here,” Fast Horse ordered.

  George pulsed with importance as he fired up his chainsaw. He quickly sliced into the dry, rotten ponderosa snag, which fell into the water with a loud splash. It cracked in several places, but held together enough to make a jagged bridge across the water. Then, one by one, the crewmembers climbed on top of the log and carefully walked its length, before dropping onto solid ground on the other side. Each then clambered up a scree slope until they reached a lightly-forested area. There, they caught their breath before Fast Horse yelled, “Okay, start diggin’.”

  Most were silent as they worked in the dry, smoky landscape, quickly becoming drenched in sweat. Some of the Mexicans started singing a now-familiar work song until one of them yelled, “Roke!” The yell was late in coming.

  “Rock!” Randy yelled after the first cry, late enough that those immediately behind him were unable to react in time.

  Frank looked up through the smoke and the cloud of dust the crew had stirred up to see a large boulder pounding the ground as it passed him, several feet away. “Rock!” he yelled to his s
quad protectively. The rock rumbled by the rest of his squad, missing some by inches, and crashed harmlessly into the creek below. “Thanks for the warning!” Frank yelled with bitter sarcasm, loud enough for everyone to hear, including Fast Horse.

  “Communicate better!” Fast Horse yelled.

  Both Frank and Randy felt vindicated.

  Frank returned to concentrating on the line building efforts and closely monitored the work of his squad. He decided that the other squads in front weren’t working hard enough, thereby leaving too much work for his squad. “Hey ... take more off!” he yelled, adding an angry tone to his voice that sounded commanding enough to satisfy him. The message wasn’t passed up the line, with Randy continuing his conspicuous silence, causing Frank to believe those in front of him recognized their guilt.

  Shroeder, meanwhile, climbed up the hill ahead of the crew and looked down at his workers through stinging eyes. He could just barely make out the hunched shapes and caught a glimpse of Fast Horse surveying the line, busily attending to his job. Under his guidance, Fast Horse was doing a good job for him and his agency, he thought to himself. Being able to direct the crew and see to it that the job got done was just another achievement for him during his career. Shroeder patted his radio once to reassure himself, and climbed higher on the hillside.

  Meanwhile, pacing the length of the line of firefighters, Fast Horse thought about the backburning they were likely to be doing. He considered that he might have to keep the crew on the line a little later than planned, and make use of the downslope winds that the late afternoon usually brought. They might even have to spend the night; if so, he’d then have to order a helicopter to deliver supplies before nightfall to the helispot the strike team leader had claimed existed on a butte above them. Shroeder might disagree, but he could wait until it was too late to do anything else. He wasn’t out here to teach Shroeder how to fight fires.