Wildfire at Larch Creek

by M. L. Buchman

  Old log cabins and modern stick-framed buildings with generous windows stood side by side. Mason’s Galleria was an ultramodern building of oddly-shaded glass and no right angles. One of the town mysteries was how Mason kept the art gallery in business when Larch Creek attracted so few tourists. Macy’s favorite suggestion was that the woman—who was always dressed in the sharpest New York clothes and spoke so fast that no one could understand her—was actually a front for the Alaskan mafia come to rule Larch Creek.

  This newest, most modern building in town was tight beside the oldest and darkest structure.

  French Pete’s, where Brett parked his truck, was the anchor at the center of town and glowered out at all of the other structures. The heavy-log, two-story building dominated Parisian Way—as the main street of Larch Creek was named by the crazy French prospector who founded the town in the late-1800s. He’d named the trading post after himself and the town after the distinctive trees that painted the surrounding hills yellow every fall. French Pete had moved on, but a Tlingit woman he’d brought with him stayed and bore him a son after his departure. It was Hilma who had made sure the town thrived.

  There had been a recent upstart movement to rename the town because having the town of Larch Creek on Larch Creek kept confusing things. “Rive Gauche” was the current favorite during heavy drinking at French Pete’s because the town was on the “left bank” of Larch Creek. If you were driving in on the only road, the whole town was on the left bank; like the heart of Paris. The change had never made it past the drinking stage, so most folk just ignored the whole topic, but it persisted on late Saturday nights.

  Macy took strength from the town. She had loved it since her first memories. And just because she’d been dumb enough to agree to a date with Brett, she wasn’t going to blame Larch Creek for that.

  Well, not much. Perhaps, if there were more than five hundred folk this side of Liga Pass, there would be a single man that she could date who didn’t know every detail of her life. She still clung onto the idea that she’d find a decent man somewhere among the chaff.

  Dreamer!

  That wasn’t entirely fair. After all, some of them, like Brett, were decent enough.

  The problem was that she, in turn, knew every detail of their lives. Macy had gone to school with each of them for too many years and knew them all too well. A lot of her classmates left at a dead run after graduation and were now up in Fairbanks, though very few went further afield. The thirty-mile trip back to Larch Creek from “the city” might as well be three hundred for how often they visited. The first half of the trip was on Interstate 4 which was kept open year round. But once you left the main highway, the road narrowed and twisted ten miles over Liga Pass with harsh hairpins and little forgiveness. It didn’t help that it was closed as often as it was open in the winter months. The last five miles were through the valley’s broad bottom land.

  The town was four blocks long from the Unitarian church, which was still a movie theater on Friday and Saturday nights, at the north end of town to the grange at the south end. The houses crawled up the hills to the east. And the west side of the fast-running, glacier-fed river, where the forested hills rose in an abrupt escarpment, belonged to bear, elk, and wolf. Only Old Man Parker had a place on that side, unable to cross during fall freeze-up or spring melt-out. But he and his girlfriend didn’t come into town much even when the way was open across running water or thick ice.

  The main road ran north to meet the highway to Fairbanks, and in the other direction ended five miles south at Tena. Tena simply meant “trail” in the Tanana dialect and added another couple dozen families to the area. The foot trail out of Tena lead straight toward the massif of Denali’s twenty-thousand foot peak which made the valley into a picture postcard.

  Macy did her best to draw strength from the valley and mountain during the short drive to French Pete’s. Once they hit Parisian Way, a bit of her brain returned. She even managed a polite inquiry about Brett’s construction business and was pretty pleased at having done so. Thankfully they were close, so his answer was kept brief.

  “Mostly it’s about shoring up people’s homes before winter hits. There are only a couple new homes a year and Danny gets most of those.” He sounded bitter, it was a rivalry that went back to the senior prom and Cheryl Dahl, the prettiest Tanana girl in town.

  The fact that Brett and Danny drank together most Saturdays and Cheryl had married Mike Nichol—the one she’d accompanied to the prom—and had three equally beautiful children in Anchorage had done nothing to ease their epic rivalry.

  Or perhaps it was because Brett’s blue pickup had a bumper sticker that said America Is Under Construction and Danny’s blue truck had a drawing of his blue bulldozer that read Vogon Constructor Fleet—specialist in BIG jobs.

  “Small towns,” Macy said in the best sympathetic tone she could muster. It was difficult to not laugh in his face, because it was so small-town of them.

  “This place looks wackier every time,” they’d stopped in front of French Pete’s. “Carl has definitely changed something, just can’t pick it out.”

  Macy looked up in surprise. The combined bar and restaurant appeared no different to her. Big dark logs made a structure two-stories high with a steep roof to shed the snow. A half dozen broad steps led up to a deep porch that had no room for humans; it was jammed with Carl Deville’s collection of “stuff.”

  “Your junk. My stuff,” Carl would always say when teased about it by some unwary tourist. After such an unthinking comment, they were then as likely to find horseradish in their turkey sandwich as not.

  There was the broken Iditarod sled from Vic Hornbeck’s failed race bid in the late 1970s piled high with dropped elk antlers. An Elks Lodge hat from Poughkeepsie, New York still hung over one handle of the sled. The vintage motorcycle of the guy who had come through on his way to solo climb up Denali from the north along Muldrow Glacier and descend to the south by Cassin Ridge was still there, buried under eleven years of detritus. Whether he made the crossing and didn’t come back or died on the mountain, no one ever knew.

  “Man asked me to hold it for him a bit,” Carl would offer in his deep laconic style when asked by some local teen who lusted after the wheels. “Don’t see no need to hustle it out from under him. ‘Sides, the baby girl he left in Carol Swenson’s belly whilst he was here is ten now. Mayhaps she’ll want it at sixteen.”

  There was an old wooden lobster pot—that Macy had never understood because the Gulf of Alaska to the south wasn’t all that much closer than the Beaufort Sea to the north and the pot looked like it was from Maine—with a garden gnome-sized bare-breasted hula dancer standing inside it; her ceramic paint worn to a patina by too many Alaskan winters spent topless and out of doors. A hundred other objects were scattered about including worn-out gold panning equipment, a couple of plastic river kayaks with “For Rent” signs that might have once been green and sky blue before the sun leached out all color—though she’d never seen them move. And propped in the corner was the wooden propeller from Macy’s first plane that she’d snapped when her wheel had caught in an early hole in the permafrost up near Nenana. That was before she’d switched to helicopters. She’d spent a week there before someone could fly in a replacement.

  “Looks the same to me.”

  Brett eyed her strangely as he held open the door.

  And just like that she knew she’d blown what little hope this date had right out of the water. Brett had been trying to make conversation and she’d done her true-false test. It wasn’t like she was anal, it was more like everyone simply treated her as if she was.

  Inside was dark, warm, and just as cluttered. A century or more of oddbits had been tacked to the walls: old photos, snowshoes strung with elk hide, a rusted circular blade several feet across from the old sawmill that had closed back in the sixties, and endless other bits and pieces that Carl and his predecesso
rs had gathered. He claimed direct lineage back to French Pete Deville, through Hilma. It wasn’t hard to believe; Carl looked like he’d been born behind the bar. Looked like he might die there too.

  The fiction section of the town library lined one long wall of French Pete’s. Most of the non-fiction was down at the general store except for religion, movies, and anything to do with mechanics. They were down in the movie house-church’s lobby, the mechanical guides because the pharmacy-gas station was next door.

  Though Carl didn’t have any kin, Natalie, the ten-year-old daughter of Carol Swenson and the mountain climber with the left-behind motorcycle, was sitting up on a high barstool playing chess against Carl. It was a place she could be found most days when there wasn’t school and Carol was busy over at the general store and post office. She was such a fixture that over the last few years everyone had pretty much come to expect Natty to take over French Pete’s someday.

  Macy scanned the tables hoping that no one would recognize her, fat chance in a community the size of Larch Creek.

  And then she spotted the big table back in the corner beneath the moose-antler chandelier. It was packed.

  Oh crap! She’d forgotten it was Sunday.

  Too late to run for cover, she guided Brett in the other direction to a table in the corner. She managed to sit with her back to her father’s expression of mock horror. That she could deal with.

  But it would have been easier if Mom hadn’t offered a smile and a wink.

  # # #

  His gut now rumbling in anticipation of at least getting brunch, Tim drove down off the mountain from the high camp used by Mount Hood Aviation. It was a gray, drizzling July day. The kind that promised no new fires. It was the first good soaking the forests had received in months, but it wasn’t ripping through in some violent whorl of thunder and a storm of lightning to kick off another fifty fires. Just a slow Pacific Northwest drizzle, warm and muggy.

  As he drove down the winding road toward the town of Hood River, he remembered when such days had chaffed at him. As a rookie smokejumper all he cared about was that he was only paid when he was on the jump. No fires meant no money which meant fewer cool toys.

  Five years up in the mountains and the remote wilderness had taught him about the hell that the landscape paid, and the people. Steve Mercer, MHA’s drone pilot, would never walk right again because of an accident as a smokie. Tim had lost both friends and mentors in the jump and in the fire. He’d lost five to a vehicle accident one year; a wilderness tanker truck bringing out a team after they’d beaten the fire, had swung wide on a back logging road. The sodden shoulder had given away and they’d rolled all the way down the high bank into the Rogue River. Anyone that survived the roll had drowned trapped in the vehicle.

  If Mother Nature wanted to give Tim a rain break, he’d take it happily. Not that he’d ever let another smokie know that, not even Akbar. He had his pride after all.

  The Doghouse Inn was packed. The soft rain had also chased all of the windsurfers out of the Columbia Gorge. So even though it was more brunch than lunchtime, the place was thick with immensely fit young women in tight t-shirts and shorts. There were men too, but playing the smokejumper card always trumped anything they could bring to the table, so they didn’t count.

  “Tim!” Amy came out from behind the bar and laid on one of her hugs. Damn but women weren’t supposed to feel that good, especially when they were married to the cook who had fists the size of bowling balls.

  “Hey beautiful!” he did the catch-and-release thing, but still felt better for it. Shot a wave to Gerald in the back.

  The guys were at the central table: Mickey, Gordon, and Vern, the pilots of the small MD500 helicopters. Mickey waved him over, but the open seat by Vern had better positioning on a group of hot windsurfers.

  Then he spotted Akbar and Laura off to the side at a small table against the wall; he just had to go over and give them shit for doing the “couple” thing. He took the ice tea Amy held out for him, signaled for Vern to hold the seat next to him, and headed for Akbar.

  “Akbar the Great, holding hands in public. Never thought I’d see the day,” Tim hooked over a chair and sat down at the table partway into the aisle. That left him facing the giant Snoopy World War I fighting ace painted on the wood-paneled wall. The entire interior of the Doghouse was covered floor to ceiling with photos of dogs and their crazy doghouses, except the one wall where Snoopy dominated the landscape in his never ending battle with the Red Baron.

  Akbar raised his hand, which lifted Laura’s as well, “Yeah, who’d have thought.”

  “Ruined a perfectly good bachelor there, Laura.” Tim was looking for some good tease but the two of them just ate it up. He’d been best man at their wedding and it still struck him as plenty strange.

  “Proud to have. Of course I hadn’t pictured falling for an arrogant, full-of-himself smokejumper.”

  “I’m only arrogant if I don’t live up to my reputation.”

  Laura ignored her husband, “I always pictured some nice, sophisticated quiet type like…you.” She spoiled her tease with a delightful giggle.

  “Ah, if I’d met you first, lady—”

  She shook her head, “Too much of a good thing, Tim. I’d have overdosed. I settled for Akbar and that has worked out just fine for me.”

  Tim drank back a large hit of his ice tea, but his throat felt no less dry for it. If only he didn’t like Laura, it would be easier. But he’d put his seal of approval on her way back when the two of them were first dating and she’d never given him a single reason to take it back. They were amazing together. But the thing was, they were just…together.

  And he was sitting here being a third wheel.

  “Did you hear that we’re supposed to get rain for a week?” Akbar kept Tim in his seat a moment longer.

  Tim hadn’t.

  “Henderson said we’re going dark. A whole week off in July, how’s that for a crazy-ass thing? Even the Bureau of Land Management smoke teams are being pulled off the remaining fires because the rains are doing their work for them. We freelancers are totally off the hook for seven days…as long as we keep our phones with us of course.”

  “Of course,” Tim echoed. A week off. He looked over his shoulder at the guys playing the game. Not a single woman there was a week-off sort. These were one night stands or hot-and-heavy weekend flings. And there were definitely no Laura Jensons there; not a one.

  A week?

  Normally he could fill a week with a whole string of hot women, but sitting here with Akbar and Laura, it didn’t feel so tempting.

  He turned back to them and tried to slide into his usual form.

  “Crap, Akbar. Do you have to look so damned happy?”

  “Yeah,” Akbar raised their joined hands again. “Always second place, Tim. Number Two man on my jump stick. Now third wheel left standing out in the rain,” he bent forward to kiss Laura’s fingers right on her wedding ring.

  Tim felt the blow as if it had gone straight to his gut. If he’d had more in his gut than ice tea, he’d probably have been sick from the power of it.

  He didn’t see the signal that passed between them. It was too fast, too effortless, too…couple-based. Laura somehow warned Akbar he’d crossed the line without her making any big deal of it. The two of them had moved on to some other level that Tim was no longer a part of.

  “Shit! Sorry, man,” Akbar really did look sorry. “Didn’t come out right, Tim. Not at all.”

  “No problem,” Tim should be laughing it off, would have even six months ago. But he wasn’t. It was just normal teasing between them. They’d each slung far worse crap at each other. After you’d been through as many close calls on a fire as the two of them had, with no one else to rely on but each other, what did a few jibbing words mean. Despite that, this time it stung.

  He looked up at Snoopy, but the do
g was busy with battles of his own.

  “No problem,” he repeated. He rose to his feet and looked at the empty chair by Vern. Like a good friend, the man had laid the babe groundwork for him; a leggy brunette was already casually eyeing Tim. It was tempting, but lately—even on the nights he’d chosen to play the game—he had more often ended up in his own bed rather than some willing lady’s. For a moment he wondered when that trend had begun. Since back before Akbar met Laura…which mean what? He shrugged it off.

  He peeled a couple dollars out of his wallet and dropped them beside his half-finished ice tea.

  “You two have a great week. Laura, you’ve got the best man I’ve ever known, even when he’s an idiot. You hang on tight.”

  He whacked Akbar on top of the head for old-time’s sake and headed for the door.

  Akbar caught up with him out in the gray rain halfway to his truck.

  “Hey Tim. You okay man? Look, what I said back there—”

  “We’re fine, Akbar. Just my own garbage I guess. Think maybe I’ll go home.”

  “Up to the base? I’ll come up later and we’ll make some plans. Go fishing or something.”

  Home. Tim looked up into the rain and let the drops patter down on his face. He hadn’t had a “home” in years; he’d just been living in temporary quarters. Jumpbases in Colorado, California, and now Oregon. And the last few years MHA had been running off-season contracts down in Australia which had been a kick. Australian women were much more relaxed than their American counterparts.

  But home?

  He looked back down at his friend and punched him hard on the arm.

  “Ow! What was that for?” Akbar’s solid smokie-fit frame didn’t waver in the slightest despite the power Tim had put behind the blow.

  “That was for finding such an amazing woman that you ruin it for the rest of us.”

  His grin was electric as always, “Yep! Jackpot on that one. Sure you want to go home? Come back in and have something to eat.”