Full Blaze

by M. L. Buchman

  With a roar like a wounded beast, Cal plunged into river, hit the midstream with a racing dive and was coming up fast. She sprinted for the bank, but didn’t make it. He tackled her in the shallows, bringing her to her knees in the soft mud.

  When she tried to rise, he dragged her back. He pulled her so hard against his chest that he knocked the air out of her lungs. His hands were everywhere, and his mouth was locked on hers. She wrapped her arms around the back of his head and simply did her best to hang on. At some point her blouse and shorts hit the beach with a wet splat.

  He took her with his mouth and drove her up until she cried out at the midday sun. When he was done, the feeling of floating pervaded from the shallow water outside her body right down into the deepest center within. She wasn’t sure where she belonged, other than with this man.

  ***

  “You’re a drug,” Cal said as they headed back toward camp in the late afternoon. He counted three times, or was it four, that one of them had jumped the other in the last couple hours. That they’d collected any food at all was a miracle. That they had no protection with them just meant they were finding some creative ways to have sex. Really creative, though the time against the ghost gum, its eerily white bark a sharp contrast to her lovely pinking skin, had to be the best for sheer visual imagery.

  In between bouts, she showed him the elusive bounty of the Outback. “This isn’t deep Outback. That can be hard. Pickings are pretty easy here in the grasslands. Go out beyond the Red Centre into the Simpson or the Great Victoria Desert…those are harsh. And ten to twenty degrees hotter than this.”

  They napped through the peak heat of the day. Too hot to do more than hold hands, they’d waited it out in the scattered shade of a gum tree just as any sensible Australian would.

  “Am I an addictive drug?” Jeannie teased him as they came back toward camp.

  “You have no idea, Helitack.” She was the most damn addictive drug he’d ever tried. He was hooked, lined, and sunk. “What is it about you?”

  “It’s a secret.”

  “You’re a lousy liar, Helitack. Give.”

  “Trade.”

  “Trade what?” He leered at her and hoped that was what she was talking about.

  She stopped at the bank edge and faced him. Resting a hand on his chest, she looked up into his face. He could see that she was suddenly serious.

  “If this is going to work, then we have to trade. I tell you about me, you tell me about you.”

  He could feel the walls coming up. Could feel a need to turn and run. He dug in, planted his heels in the sand, and managed to stay in place and face her.

  She searched his face, looking for something. Seeing something that abruptly made her look infinitely sad.

  At least she didn’t slap him. He wasn’t sure if he could take that from her.

  “I’ll try, Jeannie. I really will. So ask.” Cal braced himself.

  She opened her mouth, then thought better of it. Going up on her toes, she leaned in and kissed him lightly.

  “Ask, already!” Cal’s fingernails dug into his palms painfully as he tried to prepare himself.

  Jeannie shook her head. “No. For tonight, let it be enough that you’re willing to try.”

  Then she took his hand and led him into the clear, cool water of the gently flowing river.

  ***

  “What is it with you?” Henderson sounded furious. Carly’s barramundi was six inches longer and several pounds heavier than Mark’s.

  “Women rule,” was Carly’s response.

  Emily laughed at her husband, which elicited a matching laugh from the baby.

  “C’mon, guys,” Henderson begged. “Give me a hand here.”

  Steve shook his head.

  Cal raised his hands, begging off. “Way outta my league, boss. Woman outfishes you, you’re on your own.”

  “Crap!” Henderson knocked back a swallow of beer and glared down at the fish as if it was the barra’s fault.

  Cal just sat back to enjoy the show. Jeannie had wrapped one cleaned fish in some soaked palm fronds. She’d dressed it with salt, pepper, and eucalyptus, then stuffed it into the fire’s coals as the sun set. The other one she laid on a rock she’d kept covered in coals for the previous half hour. That one was dressed with some tiny bush tomatoes just an inch across, pink, yellow, and green and shaped more like warped jelly beans than tomatoes. They’d found no yams, but she’d also tucked some large pigweed in with the fish that she swore tasted like potatoes, as well as steamed parakeelya that she said went better with a salad dressing. Looked nasty to him, kinda like psychotic asparagus.

  Jeannie squatted back on her heels, her elbows resting on her knees and her butt about an inch off the ground. She looked completely comfortable, but every time Cal tried it, either he fell over or his knees started hurting after just seconds.

  “You gotta loosen up, Hotshot. You’re way too tight.”

  Jeannie didn’t say “uptight” or even imply it. She’d even flexed one leg out and back, while balancing on the other in her squat, to make her point. While he admired the long length of golden skin in the firelight, he heard her words the wrong way anyway. That she was right didn’t make it any easier. He’d always thought of himself as pretty mellow and easygoing. Before Jeannie, it was easy to brush off his past. But she came straight in like a helicopter strike. Dodging around a little looking for the best approach, but nailing the target nonetheless.

  He’d appreciated her letting him off the hook this afternoon, but that meant soon he’d have to begin answering her questions. Or she’d start drifting away, and while he didn’t know what he wanted, he knew he didn’t want that. He couldn’t stand distance between them. Hell, the six inches between them at the moment was almost too much. He nudged her shoulder with a fingertip, trying to ruin her balance, but she was too well planted so he turned it into a caress down her back that almost did unbalance her.

  Henderson poked a stick at the fire. “I remember the first time I tasted barra. I was—” He cut himself off, then looked over his shoulder into the darkness. “I was flying somewhere unmentionable north of here. We’d just inserted a team way deep, carrying more fuel than ammo because there was no way to get a refuel in there. Squatting by a river for three days, the choppers buried in tree branches, hoping to God no native fisherman would be out that time of year. Dangled a line because we didn’t have anything better to do. I caught a barra. He was—”

  “How big?” Carly cut off his story.

  Henderson groaned. “Not as big your damned fish. You happy?”

  “Totally!” Carly leaned back against Steve and waved for Henderson to continue his tale like a queen commanding her court.

  “Problem was we didn’t dare light a fire, and all we had were a tiny, white gas camping stove and a fry pan about as big as Tessa’s face. We sat there all night cooking these tiny fillets. Damn good eating, though.”

  “And the point of your story?” the reigning queen asked.

  “The point is, if that fish isn’t ready soon, I’m going to eat it raw.”

  Jeannie poked the one on the rock with a practiced finger. “Almost there.”

  “You have permit for dat fish, cobber?” a deep voice asked from the darkness.

  Henderson spun to face the intruder, slapping his hip as he reached for a gun that wasn’t there.

  “Dale!” Jeannie leaped to her feet straight from her squat in a motion that made Cal’s knees hurt in empathy. A moment later she was wrapped around a tall, spare black man with shots of gray in his hair catching the firelight. “Kalinda!” Jeannie squealed. She actually squealed like a little girl as she threw herself into an even darker woman’s arms.

  The man and woman who stepped into the firelight were spare without being gaunt. They could be in their forties as easily as their sixties. Cal had no way to j
udge. They both had the wide features of their Aboriginal heritage.

  Introductions went around.

  Cal kept expecting some mystic, insightful statement, but they just smiled, shook hands, squatted beside Jeannie, and talked about the beautiful hike up from the national park. It was twenty or so miles over rough country, but they didn’t appear tired.

  Dale poked a long finger at the fish. “You watch that, skygirl.”

  “I was watching it before you distracted me. And there’s another in the coals.”

  They worked in easy harmony, shifting the dinner from cooking to serving.

  Dale and Kalinda refused beers. “Black man’s blood is no good with alcohol. We live in a dry community.”

  The love they had for “skygirl” was obvious. The ease with which they chatted and touched and smiled, this was her Outback family. Cal wanted to ask questions. How long had they known each other? Were they the ones who had taught Jeannie so much about survival out here?

  But if he asked questions, he’d have to “trade.” That meant answering questions that he’d never answered for anyone. Not for foster parents, not for child services, not for that doctor who had patched him up that one time with a grim look on her face before he was moved to yet another home.

  Instead he waited and simply enjoyed the company. Dale and Kalinda had intimate knowledge of the land for an area ranging hundreds of kilometers around. And they had amazing “dumb tourist” stories that made his sides sore from laughing.

  Jeannie was yet another woman when she was with them. She was even more herself. Not self-conscious, she held his hand as the conversations went late into the night. Dale and Kalinda didn’t comment, but there was no doubt that they noticed.

  A dozen hours sleep had barely dented the deficit of three days awake. By the time the party wound down, Cal’s eyes were crossing. The fire was suppressed as only a firefighter could—doused, dug over, repeat twice more, then check it ten minutes later and douse it again just to be sure.

  He followed Jeannie back to the Firehawk and helped her pull an air mattress to the ground. The last thing she said to him was a whispered comment: “Remember to check your shoes in the morning before you put them on. Scorpions like the warmth and will curl up in there.” Cal assumed she was joking, but decided he’d check just to be sure.

  Too tired to sleep, having crossed over that point hours ago, he lay for a long time and watched the Milky Way turn across the sky—so much brighter from the southern hemisphere that it was like a streak across the heavens. By its light he could see both choppers, spot the other sleeping couples, and watch the gentle smile on Jeannie’s lips as she slept curled against him.

  Chapter 13

  Jeannie didn’t wake alone. She’d half expected to. Half expected Cal to be walking down the river, hiking out to avoid her questions. But he lay there dead to the world as the last stars faded with the beginning of the day. She tried exploring her own feelings with little luck. They were still a jumble.

  She’d never been the sort to make lists; they never seemed to help. Best lover ever? Check. Thoroughly decent? Check. Insane amounts of integrity? Check. A total and complete mystery in almost every way? Check. She was a hundred percent desperate for something he might never be able to give? Check! That was why she hated lists. Once you got through the easy questions, you always arrived at the really hard crap.

  “What are you thinking about, skygirl? Thinking hard on such a pretty morning.” Dale crossed over and squatted close beside the mattress, across Cal’s chest from her. He could speak so quietly that a kangaroo wouldn’t blink or a chameleon run.

  She wasn’t that good, but Cal was dead to the world. Keeping her voice low should be sufficient. Hell, she could probably shout without fear of waking him. “I’m thinking that I have stepped into an unknown world. He sees me in ways I’ve never seen myself.”

  “Ah.” Dale nodded. “He sees you as you truly are, rather than the limited way you see yourself.”

  Okay, she wasn’t ready to believe that one. She knew from experience that in the long run Dale was almost always right, but it often took her a long and winding journey to arrive in the same place he started.

  “He is very observant.”

  “That was easy to see last night, luv. You can’t even breathe without him observing you.”

  “He’s having the same effect on me.”

  “No. You offer him so much more.”

  “I do?” She sat up and did her best not to jar Cal, even if he was past caring.

  “It’s not that you see him as he is, skygirl. It’s that you accept him as he is.”

  She was quiet for a long time, considering that. Dale left her the space to think until the sun had cracked the horizon and then passed it by and reached into the sky.

  “I suppose I do. But it’s hard, Dale.”

  “If it were easy, everyone would do it.”

  Crap! She hated it when he was right. “How do you know when it’s too hard?”

  “You’ll know, skygirl. That is a long way off from where you now tread. Patience.”

  “Yes, Dale.” She always felt like a little child taking her first steps when she spoke with him, but his patience with her was infinite. Perhaps that was the next lesson she had to learn.

  “Come, luv. Walk with an old man partway down the trail. The park does not manage herself when I am away.”

  “Must you go? Don’t you want to talk with Cal?” Was she so desperate that she wanted Dale to break down the barriers that she’d only begun to see and couldn’t begin to get around? Yes, she was that desperate.

  “Oh, I’ve already said everything he’s willing to hear. Come, girl.”

  ***

  Cal felt the mattress shift as Jeannie slipped off and followed Dale. He’d lain there in a dreamy state while they spoke about him. Normally he simply woke up and got up. Maybe it was because he’d been so sleep-deprived the night before, but he’d simply lain there and listened. At first he’d thought it was a dream, but it was so concrete. So real that he’d finally decided he was awake. But still he hadn’t spoken or reacted.

  And Jeannie had treated him as if he still slept.

  Was he somehow drugged? No. His fingers flexed, his eyes opened and saw blue sky. He heard the others going about the business of starting the fire for breakfast. He joined them quietly. None of them had apparently seen Dale, Kalinda, and Jeannie leave camp.

  How far was “partway down the trail”? He didn’t know what he wanted to say, but he knew it was there. Something that needed saying. But he couldn’t do it if Jeannie wasn’t around to say it to.

  They were past breakfast and well on their way to lunchtime when she finally came back into camp. He did his best to not rush to greet her, but expected that he didn’t cover it very well.

  “You okay, Helitack?”

  She kissed him lightly and accepted his hug, but there was a distance. Not as if she were angry, but rather distracted. He was going to ask what had happened and do his level best to trade back, but Emily Beale chose that moment to walk up.

  “How are you feeling?” It wasn’t some friendly greeting. Beale was asking her number two pilot for an assessment of her condition.

  “Hot, tired, need to just stop for a bit.”

  “Perfect. Come with me.” And just that fast they were moving away from him. He scrambled to follow.

  Beale shooed Jeannie into her helicopter in the pilot’s seat, then circled the bird and climbed aboard in the seat Cal normally occupied. They didn’t preflight the bird or close the doors, so Cal moved up beside Jeannie’s still open door to see what was going on.

  Beale’s glare was sufficient to warn him not to distract Jeannie. He climbed into the cargo bay and sat cross-legged on the deck right behind the end of the central console for the best view. Here he was out of Jeannie’s range o
f vision unless she deliberately turned and looked.

  “Okay, you’re tired, out of sorts, and probably low on blood sugar,” Beale started out.

  “About right,” Jeannie agreed.

  “Perfect. Imagine that you’ve flown fire for a full day, the sun has set, but the fire has not. This is how you will feel, only worse. I have loaded a night-flying scenario into the onboard systems. Let’s power up everything, except the engines, and get some practice.”

  She reached for the checklist and Beale pulled it out of her nerveless fingers.

  “Do you know how many steps there are in a full startup?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good. Count them aloud as you go. Check your totals by group.”

  Jeannie nodded to herself as if getting her brain organized. “If preflight is complete, the next group is ‘before starting engines.’ Number one, ‘Copilot’s collective—extended and locked.’ Number two, ‘shoulder harness locks.’” Soon she was off into subparts: a, b, c…

  He watched the transformation as Jeannie worked her way through the procedures. She grew sharper with each step, more focused until she appeared to meld into the machine.

  Beale looked back at him as if to say, “Do you see the miracle she does?”

  He did, and it was absolutely fascinating. It was beyond what he could capture with his camera. Images rarely allowed him to show transformation; instead, they immortalized the moment. Jeannie was evolutionary, growing, changing.

  By the time she was done here, she would be different. Not some gross transformation, but incrementally more than she’d been this morning while speaking to Dale when she thought Cal slept. Cal saw her as she was, absolutely magnificent. What possible reason could he have for not accepting her as she was?

  While she prepared and finally, based solely on instrument readouts, flew a night flight in her mind’s eye, he slipped out of the rear of the chopper. He found a spot of shade beneath a paperbark tree and sat to watch the Katherine River wander southwest as it drained toward wherever it was going.

  ***