Hotshots

by Judith Van GIeson

  “Where do we meet you?”

  “The parking lot at the campground near the foot of Thunder Mountain. That was the loading field for the fire. Ramona and I are driving up together. The Forest Service’s P.R. guy, Tom Hogue, will come with you and the Barkers. He’s a smoke.”

  “A smoke?”

  “An asshole. He resents having women in the Forest Service and he’s just putting in time until he retires. I don’t want to spend any more time with that guy than I have to.”

  And maybe Ramona was going with Mike because she didn’t want to spend any more time with the Barkers than she had to. “See you at Thunder Mountain,” I said.

  ******

  Eric and Nancy Barker were dressed for climbing in hiking shorts, T-shirts with green ribbons over their hearts, and matching bandannas. Eric carried a large backpack. His sunglasses were balanced on top of his head, staring at the sky. They both had the strong calf muscles of serious hikers. Hogue was dressed in a green Forest Service uniform. I wore jeans and running shoes myself, and carried my Aunt Joan’s birding binoculars.

  Hogue and the Barkers were standing near the helicopter when I got to the airfield. Hogue saw me coming and glanced at his watch. What’s this guy’s problem? I wondered. I worked fifteen minutes from Kirtland. How late could I have been?

  “Traffic,” I said, and was pissed at myself for having said anything at all. “I’m Neil Hamel.”

  “Tom Hogue.” He was tall and thin with a white mustache that made his face look as if it had been brushed by frost. The chopper blade spun impatiently, but Hogue had some things to say first.

  “Mike Marshall and Ramona Franklin are meeting us in the parking lot, correct?” he shouted.

  “Yes,” Eric replied.

  “I’ve arranged for the helicopter to come back for us at three. Will that present a problem for anyone?”

  “Not for us,” Nancy said.

  “Me neither,” I said.

  “I’ve made several of these trips,” Hogue said. “I feel it’s necessary to warn you that it can be difficult emotionally and physically.”

  “We’ll manage,” Eric said.

  “All right then. Let’s get going.” Hogue took a remote out of his pocket and clicked it next to each of his ears. He wore a hearing aid, I figured. This was his way of controlling the input and lowering the volume. If Hogue was the Forest Service’s P.R. man I wouldn’t want to meet their axman. On the other hand, it couldn’t be easy to return to the fire scene time after time with grieving and angry parents.

  Hogue motioned us inside the aircraft. We sat down and the chopper lifted off. This helicopter was used to carrying a larger load. There was plenty of space inside and Hogue sat down several feet from the Barkers and me.

  While we lifted off I studied him. There wasn’t much else to look at. Hogue struck me as a guy who’d been single for a long time. Maybe he’d been married once, maybe it didn’t take. Guys who are long-term single seem to be surrounded by an invisible bubble. Single women could well have their own bubbles, but I’m not the one to notice that. I saw Hogue’s bubble as hard, transparent, cold. Inside he’d keep the attitudes he wanted to protect, outside were the ones he’d prefer to ignore. A remote, older man appeals to a lot of women, but I have a built-in ice detector. I know that with a guy like that you can chop away with your ice pick forever and never get through.

  Once we were in the air I turned my eyes away from Hogue and toward the ground. A lot of things are revealed from the air, and pilots are the ones to see them. The year I was a ski bum I knew a pilot who buzzed the town every morning to find out where his buddies had spent the night.

  Our helicopter whirred over Sandia Indian Bingo, whose full parking lot was a stark contrast to the emptiness of the rest of the reservation. We followed the green thread of the Rio Grande Valley for a while, then crossed over Los Alamos and Abiquiu Dam. We flew over the Jicarilla Apache Reservation, and I spotted the blue jewels of Heron and El Vado lakes. The Carson National Forest was down below, and it was reassuring to see how much of it remained green. The Barkers sat together hip to hip and didn’t say a word. It was difficult to communicate above the noise of the helicopter anyway.

  It was obvious the minute we crossed the Colorado border. I saw long lines of condominium roofs and houses surrounded by acres of fields or backed up against the wilderness. Some were trophy sized, some were tiny hunting cabins, but those were remnants of a poorer era. Baja Colorado (lower Colorado) is a phrase you hear in New Mexico once developers start showing up. We have pockets of development among our mountains and deserts—ranchettes in the East Mountains, sprawl on the West Mesa, Santa Fe’s million-dollar casitas—but you have to cross the border into Colorado and Arizona to find development big time. That’s when I realize how close to the Third World the Land of Enchantment is. Once you cross the state line, “For Sale” signs sprout like weeds beside the highway. In southern Colorado everything seems to have a price; in New Mexico we still have the original Spanish land grants, where signs say that nothing is for sale ever.

  The helicopter began its descent and Nancy gripped Eric’s hand. Our range of vision became more limited and more precise. Cars and trucks rode a highway and beside it a brown ribbon of a river flowed. We crossed a valley where horses grazed. There were a couple of A-frames and a log cabin in the valley. People here must have gone about their business while the fire raged several miles away. We were approaching Thunder Mountain. The piñon and juniper on its western slope churned like surf in the wind. The chopper crossed a ridge and we were looking into the heart of devastation. Hogue fumbled with his remote and cleared his throat. Nancy buried her face in her hands. Eric pulled his dark glasses down.

  The ground was the color of pink skin. Tree trunks were black stubble on a face that had been scraped raw. The steep walls of the South Canyon were burned bare. There was a dry arroyo at the bottom, but often it was hidden by the shape of the canyon walls. I could understand how a lookout on the ridge might miss a fire in the arroyo, though from the air it should have been easy enough to spot the smoke.

  The pilot negotiated the chopper through the high winds. We passed the helipad at the top of the ridge, the place the hotshots had been dropped in, the place from which their bodies had to be lifted out, the place we would return to once we had picked up Mike and Ramona.

  “I don’t think I can go down there, Eric.” The pain in Nancy’s voice cut through the roar of the chopper. “You go if you want to. I’ll wait below.” Eric squeezed her hand and said nothing.

  We descended along the eastern slope, which was as heavily forested as the western slope had been except for some dark patches where the fire had spotted. I could see a serpentine dirt road curving up the far side of this canyon. About halfway up stood a massive wooden house with a cedar-shake roof. It was clear from here how close this trophy had come to being kindling. Standing on the deck watching the smoke rise, who wouldn’t have reached for the phone and called anyone with influence?

  The pilot negotiated the parking lot landing. Mike was visible waiting next to a red car, but there was no sign of Ramona. We landed, escaped for a minute from the noise of the whirling bird, and went to talk to Mike. He gave Nancy and Eric an awkward hug. He carried a large backpack and a radio, and wore a green hard hat, wool pants, a bumble-bee yellow shirt with long sleeves, and a red bandanna around his neck. It had to be an uncomfortably hot outfit, and we were a long way from a live fire. It must have been the same outfit he and Joni were wearing the day she died.

  “Where’s Ramona?” Eric asked.

  “She’s hiking in. She wanted to face the mountain in her own way,” Mike said.

  “That’s the way Ramona does everything, isn’t it? Her own way.” Nancy looked across the canyon to where the trophy house was making a loud statement. “My daughter died trying to save that house,” she cried, shaking like an aspen in the strong wind.

  “Come here, Nancy,” Eric said. He took her hand and th
ey walked to the edge of the parking lot, where they stood under the shade of a large cottonwood. He’d hitched up his pack, and red sticks that resembled dynamite were sticking out of it. The Barkers appeared to be engaged in the mixture of negotiation, argument, and understanding that comes with a long-term relationship. The arms of a cottonwood are a good place to hide and think. Tom Hogue watched them from where he stood near the helicopter. Mike and I were far enough away from the noise that we could talk without shouting.

  “Disappearing into the shade of a tree is a firefighter’s trick.” Mike said. “You’d be amazed how many firefighters can hide under the shade of one tree.”

  “That gear you’re wearing looks muy hot,” I said.

  “After a while you hardly notice. How do you like my pants?”

  “They’re okay.”

  “They’re women’s. All the guys bitched when they started making special pants for the women, but one by one they started wearing them.”

  “Why?”

  “Better fit. They’ve got more room. Joni used to joke about my getting into her pants.” The wind danced a dust devil around the parking lot. Mike looked up the mountain at the rippling piñon and juniper. “I’d like to get going. The updrafts increase at this time of day.”

  “This is the time of the fire?”

  “Getting close. The sky was like this then, so clear and blue that everybody miscalculated the strength of the cold front that was moving in.”

  I was curious about the absent Ramona. “Would a Navajo woman go back to the place where someone she cared for died? Navajos are known to be suspicious about death.”

  “She’ll have to make her own decision about that when she gets nearby. She wants to leave a tribute to Joni somewhere on the mountain. The Native American firefighters like to leave something at a fire. She didn’t have a chance to do it before.”

  “When did she leave here?”

  “About an hour ago.”

  “Will she meet us on the mountain?’’

  “That’s up to her. You guys ready?” Mike yelled at Eric and Nancy. Nancy shook her head, sat down, and leaned against the tree. Eric walked over to us, and then so did Hogue, who was clicking on his hearing aid and looking at his watch.

  “She doesn’t want to go?” Hogue asked Eric.

  “No.”

  “The mothers never do,” he said. “Where’s Ramona Franklin? We can’t wait here for her all day.”

  “You don’t have to wait for Ramona. She’s already on the mountain,” Mike answered.

  “I don’t want to leave Nancy here alone,” Eric said. “You guys go, let us know everything you see. Okay?” He punched Mike’s shoulder lightly with his fist.

  “Will do,” Mike said.

  6

  IN THE HELICOPTER Mike and Hogue tried to ignore each other, but their body language indicated they were all too aware. From this side of the mountain the burned area looked like a pink conch shell floating on a green sea. The pilot dropped us off at the helipad. The helicopter was creating its own weather system, a tempest within the cold front. The sky was a calm, deep blue, but the winds were churning on top of the ridge and the temperature felt fifteen degrees cooler than it had below. Hogue told the pilot that he was thinking about walking out and having someone from the Forest Service pick him up in the parking lot later; he wanted to check the condition of the forest on the east side of the mountain. The pilot confirmed that he would come back for Mike and me at three.

  The South Canyon looked even more desolate up close than it had from the air. The devastation was absolute. Downed trees, twisted by fire, resembled black lizards crawling over the canyon walls. The remaining trees had burned down to stumps. At my feet lay a handful of empty, white snail shells. The only signs of life I noticed in the canyon came from the base of the Gambel oaks, where pale green leaves sprouted. The restless wind seemed hell-bent on making it to Kansas for dinner; then it spun around and whipped the loose pink soil into billowing shapes of clouds and flame. Hogue clicked his remote near his right ear, then his left, turning down the wind’s volume. I could see why; I was hearing voices in the wind.

  “Was the wind this squirrelly the day of the fire?” I asked Mike.

  “Worse,” he said.

  “I’m smelling something burning or burnt. Could it be the fire after all this time?”

  “Could be. Yellowstone smelled for months. I’ve lost my sense of smell myself. I’ve eaten too much smoke. I’ll be coughing up black stuff until November.” He looked across the canyon to a spot near the top of the opposite ridge. “That was where I escaped to. It was good black PJ—that’s what we call piñon, juniper—and it didn’t burn again. But down below there was more Gambel oak. The fire was in the drainage, then it started up this side. That’s where it blew up, jumped the canyon, and trapped the firefighters.” He pointed to a line of white crosses climbing the slope that resembled stitches on the naked hill. Each one marked a place where a firefighter had fallen and died. “The hotshots had been coming back up. The blowup took them by surprise. They weren’t as concerned as they should have been because the area they were in had burned previously. They didn’t know about the reburn potential of Gambel oak.” Mike turned hard eyes toward Hogue, who busied himself with his radio.

  The wind blew into our faces and covered us with a layer of pink dust that clung to everything but the bristles on Hogue’s white mustache. When the dust settled I could see a rectangle carved into the slope to the left of the crosses. I peered through my Aunt Joan’s birding binoculars and focused on the rectangle that had been formed by four burned logs. Inside a stick figure made from pink stones was wearing a hard hat and running.

  Mike saw where I was looking. “The firefighters left that monument. Makes a statement, doesn’t it?”

  “Yeah,” I said. Someday something slick and smooth would be erected here, but it would never have the power of this crude, raw box.

  Mike hitched up his pack, turned around, and looked at the opposite ridge. Red sticks were attached to the sides of his pack and bottles of oil dangled from the bottom. He pointed at a spot near the middle of the saddle. “That’s where Ramona was.”

  I looked down into the drainage, trying to visualize what Ramona could or could not have seen. Even without the trees there were so many ridges and gullies in the South Canyon that there didn’t seem to be anyplace you could see all of it at once.

  Hogue cleared his throat. “Actually, the interagency report placed Ramona Franklin about fifty yards south.”

  “That’s bullshit.” Mike said. “Her post was exactly where I said it was.”

  “Where is she anyway?” Hogue asked, glancing around the naked canyon. “Isn’t she supposed to be meeting us here?”

  “She’s coming,” Mike said.

  Hogue looked at his watch. “When? Indian time?”

  “I said she was coming.”

  “If she thinks the report misrepresented her position this is her chance to explain,” Hogue said.

  “She’s not going to say anything in front of you but ‘Yes, sir,’” Mike answered. “She’s got a kid. She needs the money. She needs the job. You can take if from me, that was Ramona’s post, that’s where she was assigned, and that’s where she stood.”

  “Why wasn’t she on her radio? No one mentioned hearing her in the report.”

  “She didn’t have anything to say.”

  “There was talk she programmed her radio to the wrong frequency.”

  “Ramona knows how to program a radio. The problem with this fire wasn’t that Ramona couldn’t see it. The problem was that there was no aerial surveillance.”

  We were near the ridge top and it was hard to maintain your balance in the strong wind. Hogue was digging in his heels. “That wasn’t the only problem,” he said. “The hotshots were constructing fireline downhill. They didn’t drop their backpacks when threatened. They didn’t deploy their fire shelters. Those are three situations right there that shout wat
ch out. It’s all in the interagency report.”

  “You know what you can do with your interagency report …You can take your …” Mike hitched up his backpack, giving him the hunched shoulder silhouette of a mountain goat. He leaned forward as if intending to butt Hogue’s head, but he stopped himself, saying, “Never mind.” He began striding downhill.

  Hogue stared at Mike’s retreating back. “The Forest Service sure isn’t what it used to be,” he said. I didn’t particularly feel like hanging around Hogue reminiscing about the good old days, so I followed Mike down the precipitous slope, feeling the earth crumble beneath my feet. It was dust now, but one day rain would turn this hill into a mud slide. My knees hurt from holding the rest of me in check. Climbing hurts your knees when you go down and your lungs when you go up. Mike stopped about halfway down and stared across the narrow drainage at the row of white crosses. When I caught up, his eyes were tearing from the wind and the pain. “Joni is the number-seven cross,” he said. He shook himself and channeled the pain into measuring the natural forces. “That slope is sixty degrees. The wind was forty miles an hour the day of the fire. It’s thirty-five today.”

  “How can you tell?” I asked.

  “Experience.”

  He sounded convincing to me, and Hogue, who had climbed down to where we stood, didn’t challenge him.

  “See that spot?” Mike pointed to a place beneath the crosses where the fallen trees were thicker.

  “Yeah.”

  “That’s where the fire jumped the drainage. In order to escape it the hotshots would have had to run over six hundred yards in a minute. It wouldn’t have made any difference whether they carried their packs or dropped them and stripped naked. No one can run that fast on a sixty-degree slope. It can’t be done and I’m going to prove it. Joni could sprint one hundred yards in fifteen seconds. I can do it in ten. He handed me a stopwatch. “I’m going to run the distance with and without my pack. Will you time me?”