The Smoke Jumper

by Nicholas Evans

  After all that she had heard about him, it was interesting to meet him at last. Watching the two of them and listening to the way they talked, she could understand why Ed considered Connor his best friend. There was a stillness to him, a reserve that complemented Ed’s exuberance. Once while he was talking, Connor caught her staring at him and he simply smiled and she smiled back.

  Their bags arrived and Ed took a quick look inside his guitar case to make sure there was no damage and then they wheeled everything on a cart out to the parking lot. Connor’s truck was an old pale blue Chevy pickup which Julia declared a perfect match for his battered, sweat-stained hat. He told her the hat was entirely for Ed’s benefit and that normally, like all smoke jumpers, he dressed a lot more formally in a business suit and necktie.

  ‘And, of course, you wear that when you’re parachuting in,’ she said.

  ‘No, that’s when we wear the fireproof tuxedo. You never know who you might meet.’

  They dumped the bags in the back of the truck and climbed into the cab, where they sat three abreast with Julia in the middle. On the way into town Connor asked about her job with WAY and she told him what she knew about it from her time in Colorado. He asked her when she was due to start and she said they were expecting her in Helena first thing Monday morning. Connor thought for a while then said that if they had no other plans, they could maybe all drive over to the ranch Sunday afternoon and visit with his mother.

  ‘Maybe I shouldn’t tell you, Julia, but my ma’s always had a thing going for Ed here.’

  ‘It’s entirely mutual,’ Ed said. ‘I admit it. How could I not be in love with a woman who knows by heart every song in Oklahoma!?’

  ‘Pretty darned easily, I’d have thought,’ Connor said. ‘So, Julia, I guess that means you must know ’em all?’

  ‘What’s Oklahoma?’

  Ed groaned and put his head in his hands and Connor and Julia laughed.

  They ate that night at a little upstairs diner just across the river and afterward strolled back over the bridge. It was getting dark and the giant white letter M on the hillside above the town glowed as if tethered afloat in the ink of the sky. There was a small park below the bridge where some sort of informal concert was going on. There were lanterns down there and a small crowd of people sitting on the grass and the wafting sound of guitars made Julia feel warm and dreamy and she slipped her arm inside Ed’s and leaned her head on his shoulder as they walked.

  When they got back to the apartment, Connor made some coffee and they sat around the kitchen table talking for a while. Ed asked how the photography was going and Connor said he’d had a couple of commissions lately but on the whole things were quiet. He went across the room and came back with a large brown envelope, pulling a picture from it which he said he’d printed only that afternoon. He handed it first to Ed who was sitting across the table from Julia, so only he could see it. His eyes widened.

  ‘Wow. What on earth is that? Is it an elk?’

  ‘Yeah. He just stepped out of the fire.’

  ‘What happened next?’

  ‘I don’t know. One moment he was there and the next he was gone.’

  ‘Connor, man, that’s one hell of a picture.’

  Ed handed it to Julia. It took her a moment to focus and when she saw what it was she took a sudden sharp breath.

  ‘It’s terrible.’

  Ed laughed. ‘So much for compliments.’

  But Connor wasn’t laughing. He was staring hard at her as if he knew exactly what she meant. She shook her head and handed him the picture.

  ‘I’m sorry, but I can’t look at that.’

  Connor took it from her without a word. He slid it into its envelope and took it back where he’d found it. Ed made a joke about Julia being a tough critic of his music too but she was too shocked by what she’d seen to catch it. She stood up. Ed looked suddenly worried.

  ‘Julia? Are you okay?’

  ‘I’m sorry, I’m just so tired. I’ll leave you guys to it.’

  She kissed Ed on the top of his head. He said he wouldn’t be long.

  ‘Goodnight, Connor.’

  ‘’Night, Julia.’

  She brushed her teeth in the black bathroom, which Ed called ‘the suicide cell,’ then went to their bedroom and undressed. Connor had given them the bigger room and thoughtfully pushed the two single beds together. There was a wooden rocking chair, a bedside table and a lamp with a frayed purple shade and in the corner stood a big old closet with one handle missing. There were dust-rimmed rectangles on the walls where pictures or posters used to be. Bugs were clattering against the screen of the open window and a few of the more enterprising had found a small tear in one corner and were doing demented loop-the-loops above the lamp.

  She got into bed and opened her book. She was reading Anna Karenina for the third time and was more moved by it than ever. But now she found herself reading the same paragraph over and over again and soon she gave up and switched off the light. She could hear the rustle of the river outside and the muted voices of the men in the next room and although she knew it was warm, she pulled the covers up over her shoulders against the chill she still felt within her since seeing Connor’s photograph. She couldn’t get the image out of her head. Ed had called it ‘one hell of a picture’ without realizing that was literally what it was. But Connor had understood.

  She must have dozed off, for the next thing she knew, Ed was lying naked behind her, kissing the back of her neck. He wanted to make love and when she murmured that she was too tired he acted all hurt, saying it was going to be days, maybe even weeks, before they might see each other again. So she turned and let him stroke her and soon the image that had so troubled her melted and was gone. But in the soft collusion of their limbs there was that night, for the first time, a trace of sadness.

  5

  The eagle rose in languid circles on the thermal, its shadow sliding across the canyon wall that glowed like baked ochre in the afternoon sun. In places the rock face was stained darker with patches of rust where winter water had run and parched tufts of scrub sprouted from its cracks and ledges like hair from an old man’s ears. Slowly now, as the sun lowered itself behind the canyon’s other wall, this tableau of color was being swallowed in a rising tide of shadow. Every so often the eagle called and the sound wafted away down the canyon in an echoing lament.

  What, if anything, the bird made of the straggled band of beings many hundred feet below was impossible to tell, but the woe of its cry was never more apt. They came trudging along a trail that wound beside the bed of a dried-up creek. Their heads were bowed, their shoulders slumped, their faces caked with dirt and sweat. The trail was steep and their progress painful and slow and the dust they kicked rose in clouds around their knees. They were like pilgrims who had lost both their way and their faith or forlorn refugees from some distant atrocity, stripped of all but grief and self-pity. Which was what, in varying degrees, all but four of them were.

  They were passing through a tangle of dead pines that had been ripped from their roots by the torrent of snowmelt that had raged down the canyon in early spring. And here they halted while one of their number stumbled away from the trail and hid herself behind a clump of willow scrub.

  ‘Let’s hear the call, Skye!’

  There was a pause. The eagle called instead. One of the boys sniggered.

  ‘Come on, Skye. You’ve gotta call your number!’

  Behind the screen of scrub, Skye McReedie, half-breed, cop killer and all-around no-hoper, squatted with her teeth clenched and her pants hitched around her knees, peeing into the dust. She was damned if she’d play their dumbass kids’ games.

  ‘Skye, if you don’t call it, we’ll have to come looking.’

  Skye closed her eyes to contain her anger. It was so humiliating. You couldn’t even take a piss without them being on top of you. That stuck-up little missy-prissy Julia, the so-called ‘senior staff,’ the one yelling at her right now, was the worst of all.
She was always so goddamn nice. Skye had been trying hard to get a rise out of her, to make her lose her cool for a moment, but so far no luck. You’d think, being a woman, the bitch would understand how tough it was for her. There were ten kids on this fucking chain gang and Skye was the only girl.

  ‘Okay, sorry, Skye, but I’m coming in there!’

  ‘Fuck you,’ Skye muttered. ‘Seven!’ she shouted.

  ‘Thanks, Skye. Keep it going.’

  Skye angrily hauled up her pants and fastened them.

  ‘Keep calling it, Skye.’

  ‘Seven! Seven! Seven! Seven!’

  She stomped out from behind the bushes and kept shouting her number all the way back to the others, until she was standing right in front of Julia and shouting it a foot away from her nose.

  ‘Seven! Seven! Seven! Okay? Is that okay now?’

  ‘Yes, Skye. That’s fine. Thank you.’

  Mitch, the self-appointed bigmouth of the group, made some smart remark about how pissed Skye was and she wheeled around and told him to shut the fuck up or she’d kick his fucking face in.

  ‘Okay, okay, everybody,’ Julia said, raising her hands. ‘Let’s circle up, right now.’

  There were groans, but the other staff - Scott, Katie and Laura - started marshaling everyone and soon, for the umpteenth time that day, they were all standing in a circle looking at each other in silence. Skye just stared at the ground.

  ‘Okay,’ Julia said calmly. ‘We all know by now what happens when someone uses abusive or inappropriate language. So, Skye, when you’re ready, we’d like to hear twenty alternatives to what you just said.’

  ‘What? I just said my number. What do you want? Six? Five? What?’

  ‘No, you said the F word twice to Mitch and threatened him with violence.’

  ‘Like, oh my, I was so scared,’ Mitch said.

  ‘And we’ll have twenty alternatives from Mitch when Skye’s done.’

  Mitch gawped with offended innocence and there was a ripple of laughter. At seventeen he was the oldest in the group. He was tall and dark and muscular and knew exactly how smart and good-looking he was. Skye couldn’t stand him. They all fell silent again. Everyone was staring at Skye and she was still staring at the ground. They waited a long time and as far as she was concerned they could wait for ever.

  ‘Well, Skye,’ Julia said. ‘You know, there are no deadlines here. We haven’t got a plane to catch or anything. We’ve got all the time in the world, so all we’re going to be late for is getting supper.’

  Skye sighed and threw her head back. She didn’t want to make eye contact with anyone. That goddamn eagle was still flying around up there, squawking away like an idiot.

  ‘Okay,’ she said at last. ‘Like, I could have said: “Oh please, dear Mitch, please don’t make jokes about poor little me”’

  ‘Good. That’s one. Let’s try and steer clear of sarcasm, though.’

  ‘Or. I could have said, you know, it’s kind of hard if you’re the only female on this gig, taking a leak in front of all these . . . boys. It’s, like, totally embarrassing, okay?’

  ‘Yes, I think we all understand that. Good, that’s two.’

  It took another half hour for her to come up with the other eighteen. And then almost as long again for Mitch to do his twenty. And at last, after they’d all taken a drink from their water bottles and several more had been into the bushes to pee, hollering their allotted numbers like a stuck stereo, they shouldered their packs and set off again up the trail.

  When the judge had told her he was going to send her on this program Skye hadn’t had any idea what it might involve. All she knew was that it sure sounded better than being sent to jail like that maniac Sean. And for the first month it had been a breeze.

  They’d lived in a disused barracks just outside Helena and although it was a pain being the only girl in the group and you had to get up at the crack of dawn and do all kinds of dumb things like jogging twice a day and doing P.T. and hoisting the flag every morning, the rest of the time all you had to do was sit around and be ‘evaluated,’ which meant answering the same boring questions she had been asked a million times before by probation officers and case managers and social workers and so many different kinds of shrink she’d lost count. Sometimes she just made things up to confuse them or to fool them into thinking they were onto something, but mostly she just trotted out the same old answers. About her home, her childhood, her parents and, of course, her feelings.

  They always wanted to know how you felt about everyone and everything and they asked you so goddamn often it made you want to scream. It was like it was the only thing they’d ever been taught at shrink school or wherever it was they sent these jerks. ‘And how did that make you feel, Skye?’ Like, when you’d just told them how you had to listen every night while your stepfather came home drunk and beat and raped your mom and then came looking for you. ‘And how did that make you FEEL?’ ‘Oh, terrific, I just loved it, you know?’ And they always asked it with that same look of care and concern, like they really, really understood how it must have been, like they shared the pain, like it had happened to them too, which was of course total bullshit because they were all a bunch of spoon-fed do-gooders and not one of them had lived in the real world or had the faintest fucking clue what it was like.

  After a month at the barracks, suddenly, one night last week, they were given this big spaghetti meal, handed a sleeping bag and a few other things, bundled onto a bus and, four hours later, dumped in the middle of nowhere. On the journey Skye had tried to work out where they were heading but it was too dark. For two days, with barely a bite to eat, they had hiked thirty miles through the mountains which Skye figured was supposed to shock them or break them or something and because of that she just kept her head down and did it. Sometimes her lungs felt like they were going to explode and her feet got all bruised and blistered and hurt like hell but she was damned if she was going to show it.

  On the third night they arrived at a clearing and there was Glen, the program director, to meet them and some other staff, all smiling and joking and slapping everyone on the back and saying how well they’d all done. The staff had buried some cans of peaches in a circle and the whole group had to find them, like it was a game you’d really want to play when you’d been busting your ass hiking for forty-eight hours. The peaches sure tasted good though.

  Ever since, the food had been boring as hell, granola and nuts and raisins and oatmeal and rice, that kind of healthy shit. On that first evening, as they sat around the campfire, Glen told them that they were going to have to learn how to make fires with a bow drill, like Indians did (only he said Native Americans like people did nowadays so as not to cause offense or to try and make you feel proud or something). Glen looked like some old hippie. He had long blond hair tied back in a ponytail and this wispy beard that he kept stroking and a gentle voice that went up at the end of each sentence as if everything he said was a question. When he mentioned this bow-drill thing, he looked at Skye as if, being half Indian, she might already know how to light fires this way. Yeah, right. As if.

  All of the group, he went on, would have to master the bow-drill technique. Each night it would be somebody’s turn to make the fire and if he or she couldn’t do it, then that night no one would get hot food. Which was fine for him because the next morning he got in his truck and went home, leaving Julia in charge.

  They all had to make their own little bow-drill set after combing the forest for the right bits of dead wood and in the five days that had since passed, all but two of the group had learned how to use them. The only two who hadn’t were Skye and a kid from Billings called Lester whose head was so cooked from all the crack he’d done, he’d probably have had trouble lighting a pool of gasoline with a blowtorch. Skye figured she could make a bow-drill fire easily enough, but she was damned if she was going to try. Last night it had been her turn and everyone had to eat cold food. She wasn’t popular, but who gave a shit?

&n
bsp; The hiking since that first forced march had been easier. They’d done maybe ten miles a day but with lots of stops to form circles whenever anyone cussed or did something wrong. No one told them where they were or where they were headed and whenever anyone asked, Julia just smiled that annoying, cute little smile of hers and said it was the journey that mattered, not the destination. Which was about as dumb a remark as Skye had ever heard, because who in their right mind doesn’t care where they’re going?

  Skye was one of Julia’s ‘primaries,’ which meant they were supposed to have, like, this special relationship. Skye was supposed to go to her for help, cry on her shoulder and confide her innermost secrets. Yeah, right. Julia was walking behind her now as they made their way up the canyon. In front was Byron, a boy from Great Falls who’d stabbed someone in a robbery.

  He had straggly red hair and a tattoo of a tiger on his left shoulder which was supposed to look scary but somehow only looked sad. Skye couldn’t stop staring at it. Beneath the layer of smeared dirt, Byron’s skin was as pale as an albino’s. There was a ring of pink at the back of his neck where the sunblock had been rubbed off by his pack. Skye liked him. He tried to act tough like the others but, just as you could see his pale baby skin under the grime, you sometimes got a glimpse of the sweet kid he really was. He was the only boy in the group who was at all friendly toward her. The others spoke to her only when they had to, except Mitch, who never missed a chance to taunt her, mostly when the staff couldn’t hear.

  The light in the canyon was fading, as if it were being siphoned out by the pale salmon sky. For half a mile the trail grew steep and treacherous with rocks that slipped beneath their boots to roll and clatter through the dry brush below. Then, as they rounded a ridge, the land fell away before them and opened into a meadow with a lake at its center. Far beyond it, the mountains they had glimpsed throughout the day were still catching the last rays of the sun and their reflection shone pink and unruffled on the surface of the lake. As if on some tacit command, the group stopped and stood in silence, gathering their breath and taking in the view. Skye was beside Byron.