Hotshots

by Judith Van GIeson

  “Very early in the morning. I want to get there before Ramona does.” He had a clock on his wall and it read eight-thirty. “I ought to go home and go to bed.”

  “Okay. I stay here till I finish. Maybe I go to my place so you can get up early.”

  I tried to remember the last night he’d spent at his place, but I couldn’t. “All right,” I said.

  “Pendejo,” Mimo screamed, cackling at its little joke.

  “Can’t you teach that parrot another word?” I asked.

  “I’m trying,” the Kid said. “Adios?” he offered, but the parrot didn’t bite. It liked the reaction it had been getting to pendejo.

  ******

  The Kid went back to work on the Dodge’s polluted system. I went home and looked up Cloud on the map. It was a small town about fifteen miles south of Thunder Mountain as the bird (or helicopter) flies, and about ten miles from Oro. It was at the edge of the National Forest, quiet enough and close enough that a helicopter flying overhead wouldn’t go unnoticed. I got into bed and made an offering to the sleep god that the god did not accept. I chased dreams around my bed for a few hours, then went outside to watch the moon, which was turning the field behind my house into a rippling estuary with a white horse running through the waves. I looked through the V between the trees and the horse came up and let me rub its nose.

  “What do you think? Should I go to Cloud?” I asked. The horse neighed and ran away.

  I went back inside and slept until the moon came round the bedroom wall of the house and beamed in the window. Then I got up, walked down the hall to the empty room, opened the door, and went in. I looked in the closet and saw nothing but a charred and crinkly reminder of death. A tree branch scratched at the skylight. The moon shone in, turning the room the color of ghosts. I couldn’t exactly see them, but I knew they were there: the ghosts of the family that had once farmed this property, the ghost of Joni Barker, the ghost of Tom Hogue, Joe’s ghost. One day mine would be hanging out here, too, unless the place got torn down or had occupants that were too busy to notice. The dead have their own language. One message they send is to look out for the living.

  Even in a roomful of ghosts, Joe’s stood out. “Why are you going?” it asked.

  “I do this kind of stuff because you didn’t,” I replied.

  “That doesn’t mean you have to pursue every suspect and face down every challenge,” the ghost replied.

  “When you choose a path you have to follow that path until it ends, don’t you?”

  “Sometimes the path forks and you can take a different direction,” the ghost said.

  “I haven’t reached that point yet.”

  “Then go for it,” said the ghost.

  There was no use trying to sleep after that, so I loaded my thirty-eight, put my listening device in my backpack, got in the Nissan, and let the moon guide me to Colorado.

  23

  SINCE A GUN in a glove compartment or a backpack is a concealed weapon and illegal in New Mexico, I put the thirty-eight on the floor. There were few cars on the highway; I went at my own speed. No trucks to pass, no motorcycles to pass me, no junkers without turn signals to get in the way. I settled into the rhythm of the road and the four hours went by like a trip to the grocery. The sun was rising as I got to Cloud. A misty film filled the valley. On top of that was a green layer of trees, then dark, hulking mountains and an orange sky shading to a pale green glow. A red K inside a red circle lit a convenience store with a surreal light. I pulled in for doughnuts and coffee. The coffee was brewed and black, although it had the taste of instant from the tap. The doughnut I picked had a dark chocolate glaze. The lone clerk seemed relieved that the night shift was just about over and I didn’t look like a person who’d be packing a piece.

  There was a risk involved in the question I was about to ask. The phone on the counter could be used to call the person I was inquiring about, but most likely the answer would be a message about the line being disconnected. And I wasn’t going to locate Jake Sorrell without asking somebody.

  “I’m looking for a guy named Jake Sorrell,” I said. “Do you know where he lives?”

  The clerk took my money and counted out the change. “Don’t know him,” the clerk answered. “I’m new in town.”

  I went outside, sat on a milk crate, ate my doughnut, drank my coffee. The morning was cool enough that I could see steam rising from the Styrofoam cup. The air had that early morning freshness that’ll lead you to believe you can leave your mark on the day. It was damper than I’m used to and it wasn’t just the dew. A front was moving in. Clouds already shadowed the horizon. It was the hour when some go off to work and some go out to hunt. Several trucks passed by with rifles balanced like levels across their rear windows. I threw my cup in the trash, got back in the Nissan, and continued searching for Jake Sorrell.

  A few miles further down the road I came across another convenience store, a Diamond Shamrock. This time the clerk was a sleepy woman. I got another cup of muddy coffee and asked again about Jake Sorrell.

  “Jake.” She yawned. “Where does he live? On Sagebrush Ridge, I think. Turn left, go down the road a ways. You’ll see the sign.”

  “Any idea how far ‘a ways’ is?”

  “Couple of miles, I think.”

  “Thanks,” I said.

  I drove ten long miles before I came to the Sagebrush Ridge sign. The letters had been carved into the wood and the lots would probably sell for a hundred grand. It didn’t strike me as the place Jake Sorrell called home, but I drove around the winding roads anyway, looking for a brown truck. All I saw were trophy four-by-fours and cedar-shake roofs. Maybe the convenience clerk had been confused, maybe she’d been trying to confuse me. In any case the sun was up, time was passing, Ramona would be on the road, and it was important to get to Jake’s before she did.

  I figured the people at Forest Sentinels would know where Jake lived, but coaxing that information out of wolf woman might require more powers of persuasion than I possessed. Still, I’d run out of convenience stores and Forest Sentinels seemed like my best bet, so I drove into Oro. The office happened to be open and the person sitting at the desk was a man in his twenties wearing khakis and a cotton shirt. Blond bangs flopped across his forehead.

  “I’m a friend of Jake Sorrell’s,” I said. “I thought he lived in Sagebrush Ridge, but I drove all around there and it doesn’t look like his kind of place.”

  “No,” the man smiled, “it’s not. Jake lives off Sagebrush Trail. It’s a very different neck of the woods. Go back to the highway, go north six miles, and you’ll see a small sign on the right that says Sagebrush Trail. There’ll be a couple of miles of paved road before it turns to dirt. Keep going and when you get to the big rock, turn left. You can’t miss it; Jake’s cabin is the only one on the left fork.”

  “Thanks a lot.”

  “Glad to help,” he said.

  Finding Sagebrush Trail with his directions was a piece of cake, although the trip into Oro had wasted precious time. The paved road headed west across a green valley where horses grazed. There were a couple of trailers beside the road, some A-frames, and a log cabin. This was the working-class side of the mountain, a pocket of rural poverty in an area of distant beauty that reminded me of my own neighborhood. I had a big city breathing down my neck. These people had big money. The paved road continued for a couple of miles, then entered the foothills, where it became dirt. This, I figured, would be where the plowing stopped in the winter and the mud started in spring. Anyone who lived beyond here would have to make his own arrangements to get in or out in winter. Whatever color Jake’s truck was, it would need a large plow. I drove the dirt road trailing a dust parachute behind me, looking for the large rock and wondering what the difference is between a rock and a boulder. A boulder is a detached entity, I decided. You can have a rock face, but not a boulder face. There were several of either (or both) beside the road and in the field, but no roads that led left.

  The
flatness of the valley and the road pointing toward the mountains were familiar. It wasn’t that I’d been in similar sites in New Mexico, although I had. It was that I’d seen this valley before—from the air. The Forest Service helicopter flew over here before it descended into South Canyon. Anyone below could have seen the chopper fly over and land, identifying it as belonging to the Forest Service. A helicopter’s insistent buzz is hard to ignore. It’s an annoying mosquito. It’s a traffic reporter covering a Big-I wreck. It’s the sound of surveillance. It’s the sound of war. The peak in front of me was the top of Thunder Mountain. If I looked carefully I could see the black.

  The road began to climb. The grass turned to piñon and juniper. My ears popped. Piñon-juniper became aspen. I didn’t meet another car, which was fortunate because the road was only wide enough for one. This road got so little traffic it hardly even had ruts. My thirty-eight was on the floor, but being out here in the woods made me wish I had a rifle across my rear window. While I was wondering if my thirty-eight could shoot as far as the listening device could hear, the road took a sudden dip. I came up the other side and faced a rock the size of a wall. One fork of the road went to the left of the rock, the other bore right. The left fork had been defaced by hand-painted signs that read “Keep Out,” “No Trespassing,” and “Not Responsible for Accidents on Private Property.” That sign had been pockmarked by bullets. The road on the right said nothing. I took it, looking for somewhere to leave the Nissan.

  When I found a place I could pull off I parked, closing the door quietly and locking it. I put the thirty-eight in my backpack and began walking through the woods looking for the “Keep Out” road, listening to the sound of a gurgling stream. When you’re lost in the woods the best way out is to find water and follow the flow. I wasn’t lost yet, but I’m always drawn to the sound of running water. There are times in New Mexico when I miss water—I’ll admit it—but there were times in the East when I thought I’d die without sun. I reached the stream at a place where it could be crossed easily by stepping on stones. When I got to the other side I followed the water until it lapped up against the back side of the rock and formed a pool. The sun was still a couple of steps ahead of the clouds and it turned the water the color of Jack Daniel’s. Light reflected from the surface of the pool and flickered across the rock, making it appear to be on fire. I dropped a stone into the pool and watched the rippling circles spread. But the reflections on the rock’s surface were less predictable. They boiled and churned and curled in and out of the rough spots like smoke until a cloud covered the sun and put the light show out.

  The stream split at the rock. I took the north fork, followed it to a culvert that went under the “Keep Out” road, and continued on the road, staying close to the edge of the forest in case I heard someone coming and needed to duck for cover. I heard nothing but leaves rustling, squirrels chattering, and my footsteps crunching the dirt. The clouds and the sun were doing a little dance, lending me a shadow and taking it away again. I’d walked for about a mile when I saw the sun, which had escaped temporarily from the clouds, beaming into a clearing ahead. I entered the woods and circled around the clearing, keeping trees between me and the open space. When I reached a spot where the undergrowth was thick, I got down on my knees and crawled through the brush until I could see into the clearing. I saw a cabin made out of boards that had weathered old-barn gray. The windows had small panes with the opacity of one-way glass. The cabin had a metal chimney, a steep tin roof that the snow would slide off, and a woodpile that was several cords thick. There was a garden with cornstalks tall enough to hide a marijuana patch and staked tomato plants the size of a man. I was looking at subsistence living, maybe even survivalist living. It was the kind of place the FBI likes to stake out and shoot up. Inside an open shed a chain saw, a bunch of tools, and a plow were visible. Parked behind the house was a relatively new brown Ford truck with Colorado plates and a rifle leveled across the rear window of the cab.

  I aimed my eavesdropping device at the cabin, turned it on, plugged in the earphones, and heard nothing but the leaves rustling in the trees—which I’d been hearing without the device. Hoping the batteries hadn’t gone dead, I gave it a shake, turned it off, then on again, listened, and heard the distant but distinct sound of a cough and a man’s voice swearing. Someone was in the house and someone had coughed, reminding me that I hadn’t had a Ricola since I’d left the car. I unwrapped one and popped it in my mouth, turned the device off to save the batteries, then lay down on my stomach and settled in to wait. I’d left earlier than intended, but it had taken longer than I expected to find Jake’s cabin.

  Waiting isn’t my forte. I can do it when I have to but this wasn’t a very comfortable wait. The clouds had taken possession of the sun and the air had the damp, charged feeling that precedes a hard rain. A fly buzzed in and out of my hair and ants crawled up my legs. I rested my head on my arm and snuggled into the ground, trying not to cough or scratch. My arm went numb, but there was no way to shake some feeling back into it without standing up and blowing my cover. I couldn’t see any sign of Jake, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t inside looking out through the panes of one-way glass.

  It wasn’t long before wheels came barreling down the road. Ramona’s, I hoped. The vehicle I saw through the underbrush was her white truck and she was alone in it. She stepped out, slammed the door behind her, and the sound resounded like a rifle volley through the clear mountain air. It couldn’t have been often that Jake Sorrell heard a vehicle approach. That would have brought him out if the sound of the slammed door hadn’t.

  As he stepped from the darkness of the cabin into the light I saw that Jake Sorrell was my man. He walked toward Ramona with a slight limp that I hadn’t noticed when we’d met in McDonald’s. He and Ramona hugged. He was wearing black, and next to her he looked even frailer than he had earlier.

  I turned on my listening device and heard her say, “Hi, Jackie.”

  “Hey, Ramona.”

  They stepped apart. Ramona stood in front of him with her arms at her sides, a sturdy, steady figure in her faded jeans.

  “How are you?” Jake asked. His gravelly voice crackled though my eavesdropper like static.

  “I’m okay.” Her voice had its measured softness. “Your garden’s looking good.”

  “It’s coming along. How’s Hanna?”

  “She’s good. You don’t look well today.”

  “It’s the weather. Whenever there’s a front moving in I hurt. Why did you come back? There’s trouble?”

  Ramona nodded. “Yes.”

  “What happened?”

  “Somebody saw a truck like yours in the drainage the day of the fire.”

  “Who told you that?” He raised his head and the hair fell away from his thin face.

  “The lawyer who is working for the Barkers. She said she talked to you when she was in Oro.”

  “That’s who that woman was? The Barkers’ lawyer?”

  “Yes. She went back to the East Canyon Sunday and talked to some bird watchers. They’re the ones who told her they saw the truck.”

  “Did they get a license plate number?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “They can’t trace the truck if they don’t have a license number,” Jake said.

  “The lawyer said that because of what happened at Lone Ridge and because you are connected to Forest Sentinels the arson investigator will be looking for you.”

  “Forest Sentinels wasn’t involved. Nobody will be able to pin anything on them. They don’t even know I did it.”

  “She said that sooner or later the investigators will find out about the truck and they will find you.”

  “Don’t worry.” Jake pushed his hair back and smiled slightly. “I can be gone long before they get here.”

  “Where will you go?”

  He shrugged. “Anywhere.”

  “The arson investigators will keep on looking for you. They know the fire was started by a firefighter
. They suspect Mike Marshall. They suspect Eric and Nancy Barker.” What she didn’t say was that she had been the prime suspect. “We were all on the mountain that day”

  Jake looked down at the ground. His voice turned into a mumble that I needed total concentration to pick up. “You gotta believe that I didn’t know any of you were there,” he said.

  “I believe you. I already told you that.”

  “When I heard the helicopter I thought it was more Forest Service investigators going back to do more studies, to write another report. Did you ever read what they said?”

  She shook her head. “No.”

  “They blamed the hotshots.”

  “I know.”

  “If they’d used my report, nobody would have ever died at South Canyon. The Incident Commander never would have sent a crew in there if he’d been educated about Gambel oak. Joni Barker died because the Forest Service put her life and every other firefighter’s life at risk. And for what? To save somebody’s goddamn house. Joni was murdered as sure as if they’d put a gun to her head. She was one of the best people who ever lived. The Forest Service fucked up and then they blamed the victims. I was out here when the helicopter went overhead. I cracked. I wanted that house to burn. I wanted the Forest Service investigators to suffer the way Joni and the others did.”

  Ramona looked around the clearing in the woods. “You stayed here too long, Jackie, alone with your grief. That’s not the way out. Having Hanna and my family has helped me so much. The man who died in the fire had children. He had people who cared about him.”

  “What do you think I should do? Turn myself in?”

  “It will go better for you if you work with them. The lawyer could find someone to represent you.”