Torch

by Roxie Noir

  I laugh and tuck my hair behind my ear, a nervous tic because I’m not really sure what to say when a cute fireman says he remembers me.

  “Thanks,” I say.

  Trout comes back with the stick, briefly saving me.

  “Okay, Houdini,” I say to her. “Ready to go home?”

  “We’re just hanging out back here, drinking some beers,” Silas says. “You’re welcome to stay.”

  Just as I reach down to take the stick out of Trout’s mouth, the back door opens and Hunter walks out. Wearing a shirt.

  Maybe it’s my imagination, but I think he pauses for half a second in the doorway, looking from me to Silas and back, but then he keeps walking. Trout drops the stick before I can grab it, then trots over to Hunter.

  “Traitor,” I mutter, and Silas smiles.

  “Watch out, I might steal her,” Hunter calls. He roughs her up for a few moments before she leaves and walks over to the firemen playing baggo at the end of the yard, and he walks over to us.

  “Want a beer?” he asks.

  I was going to do laundry and make chili for next week before I went back to work, but standing between two hot firemen, suddenly those things don’t seem like much of a priority.

  “Come on,” Silas adds. “It’s Friday.”

  “We’ve got a whole case of Pabst,” Hunter says, like that’ll entice me. “Or, if you’re gonna be discerning, Fat Tire.”

  I blow my bangs out of my face.

  “I’ll take a Fat Tire,” I finally say, sneaking a glance around the yard.

  I’d be an idiot to say no, after all. Someday, I’ll be telling my granddaughters about the afternoon I spent surrounded by shirtless firemen.

  Hunter heads back inside. A shout goes up from the other end of the yard as a game of baggo ends and someone wins.

  “Wanna play?” Silas asks.

  I honestly can’t tell if he’s flirting or just being friendly.

  But is either one that bad? I think. Nothing is going to happen with Hunter because there’s never been a worse idea in human history, and a little flirting never hurt anyone. Nothing’s gonna happen.

  “Sure,” I say.

  6

  Hunter

  I grab two beers from the fridge, and as I open them, I glance through the kitchen window. Silas and Clementine are walking together toward the baggo boards, and as I watch, he smiles at her and she laughs at something he said.

  My stomach knots.

  Quit it, I think. There’s no damn reason at all to get upset. You two are done as hell. Silas is a good guy.

  It doesn’t make me feel better. I walk back outside, give Clementine the beer, and play a game of baggo with them and Daniel, another one of the guys. She and I are standing opposite each other, maybe twenty feet apart, but she’s next to Silas even though they’re on different teams.

  I make myself act normal, but every time she smiles at something he says, my stomach knots a little harder. I fucking hate not being the guy she’s laughing with.

  Finally, Clementine and I win. She sticks her tongue out at Silas, who says something back.

  “Rematch?” Daniel calls.

  We play again, and I have to watch them enjoy each other’s company for even longer.

  As the afternoon wears on, more of my squad shows up, along with Clementine’s roommates and some people I don’t even know. But we’ve got beer, a cute dog, and plenty of outdoor games, so let the good times roll.

  I try to ignore whatever Clementine’s doing, or who she’s talking to, because it’s none of my goddamn business. We’re just two people who knew each other in high school, who used to date a long time ago, and none of that matters any more.

  I fail. After playing two rounds of baggo with Silas, she plays one with me and then one with Daniel. Some more guys come in and she tries to teach Jordan and Rupert how to lawn bowl. I toss some horseshoes and try to pretend that she’s not sitting on the lawn furniture, drinking beers and chatting with Mandy, one of her roommates, along with Silas and Daniel.

  When I walk to the cooler for another beer, Mandy calls out to me.

  “Hunter!” she says. “Daniel says you had an encounter with an owl.”

  I grab a beer from the cooler and open it, grinning.

  “This asshole said that?” I say.

  Mandy reaches out and pulls a plastic chair up next to her, smiling back at me. Maybe I’m imagining it, but Clementine’s face freezes, her eyes flicking away.

  “Come on,” she says. “Owl.”

  I sigh and pretend to be slightly annoyed.

  “This was about a year ago,” I say. “The thing you gotta know is that, when we’re on the job, we’re lucky if we get five hours of bad sleep per night. More often it’s four hours, maybe even three, and half the time we’re just sleeping wherever we can stretch out.”

  Clementine tucks one leg under herself and takes a sip of beer, and I can’t help but watch the cords in her throat as she swallows.

  “Excuses,” says Daniel, but he’s laughing.

  “I’m just setting the scene,” I say. “Because one night, I walk a little ways away from the camp to take a piss, and I hear this weird noise. It’s this low, melancholy ooooooo, like nothing I’ve ever heard in the woods before.”

  Everyone’s looking at me. I’m looking at Clementine.

  “So I follow it,” I say. “I’m sleep deprived as hell, and my first thought is, that’s the most beautiful sound I’ve ever heard. I think it’s angels or something, like maybe I died and didn’t know it. And I go around this big tree, and suddenly, I swear to God, I see an alien.”

  Daniel’s laughing softly already, and Silas is grinning. They know the story. Clementine at least looks amused.

  “It’s this big, white, imposing, majestic being, and it’s got a tiny mouth and big eyes, and I swear to God, it was glowing,” I say. “I have no idea what to do. I think, they’re here to take me away, and I know that I should run or something, but I’m pretty sure the alien is controlling my mind already, so I just drop to my knees in front of it instead.”

  Mandy’s giggling behind her hand, and Clementine is biting her lip, trying not to laugh.

  “I’m on my knees, with the alien, for a long time. A couple minutes, at least, and it’s staring at me, looking around making these weird, soft, strange, peaceful noises. I start thinking, maybe it won’t be so bad. It seems like a nice alien.”

  I pause for another moment. Silas snorts.

  “Then, from behind me, a voice shouts, ‘Casden, what in God’s name are you doing?’”

  Now everyone is laughing.

  “I’m so surprised that I nearly fall over, and right at that second, the alien spreads its wings and flies right at my head. I screamed like a little girl,” I finish.

  I felt like a total idiot when this happened, but it’s a good story now.

  “Porter wasn’t impressed,” Silas says.

  “He never is,” says Daniel.

  “Especially not with me,” I say.

  “You sure you were sleep deprived and not drunk?” Mandy asks. She’s got one leg up on the chair, her elbow resting on her knee as she plays with her hair.

  She’s cute. She’s not the make-your-mouth-go-dry knockout that Clementine is, but I’d pick her up in a bar. I bet she’s a fun time when she’s had a couple of drinks.

  “I don’t drink on the job,” I say, leaning back in my plastic chair. “That’s a good way to get yourself killed.”

  “We make up for it on our time off,” Daniel says, and he and Silas clink their beer bottles together.

  “We’ve been invited on a historic pub crawl tonight,” Silas says. “Organized by... who was it?”

  “The Homebrewers Club of Lodgepole,” Daniel says.

  “Better than a spaghetti dinner,” I say, then glance at Mandy and Clementine, who looks faintly amused. “Sorry.”

  “Does a pub crawl mean you’re going to both bars?” Clementine asks.

 
“Isn’t the Harried Bear closed right now?” Mandy asks.

  “I thought it reopened last week,” Clementine says.

  “It looked closed when I drove past the other day,” she says, and shrugs.

  Both girls look at us, then laugh.

  “Sorry,” Clementine says. “You might be going on a crawl of exactly one historic pub.”

  “Want to come with us?” Silas asks her.

  For a second, they look at each other, and I feel like my blood stops pumping because I think he just asked her out.

  Then I breathe again and hope no one noticed, because I don’t fucking care if Silas asks her out. I don’t care if they go on a date, I don’t care if they go home together, and I don’t care if they fuck and she whispers his name into his ear—

  “I can’t,” Clementine says. “I have to go back to work, I’m hosting a stargazing session for kids up at the mountaintop visitor’s center.”

  I realize my hand’s gripped tightly on the arm of my plastic chair, and I let it go.

  “That sounds cool,” Daniel offers.

  “You could come up if you wanted,” she says. “We usually go pretty late, until eleven or so. Less alcohol, though.”

  Maybe it’s my imagination, but I think she glances at me.

  Clementine can do whatever she wants. We tried having a relationship. It didn’t work, and I’m smart enough to know that people don’t change, not really. Just because we’re older now doesn’t mean we won’t have the exact same problems.

  I’m also pretty sure you can’t casually hook up with someone you once swore you’d love forever, even if you were young and dumb when you swore that.

  Move on, I think.

  “You around tonight for this one-bar pub crawl?” I ask Mandy.

  “Sure!” she says brightly.

  The Harried Bear is open, in an old hotel in Lodgepole’s historic downtown. It’s got a huge, beautiful, polished wood bar with a mirror behind it, booths lining the walls, and black-and-white photos of Lodgepole’s mining town past all over the place.

  To someone who spends a lot of his time in former mining towns deep in the mountains, this kind of bar feels like home. There’s something particularly western about it, like at any moment Billy the Kid could come through the doors, guns blazing.

  “I just work in the office, actually,” Mandy says. The bar is pretty full and pretty loud, so she’s leaning in toward me, her hair tickling my neck so I can hear her.

  “You don’t spend three weeks a month out in the wilderness?” I ask.

  She laughs, putting one hand over her mouth.

  “God, no,” she says. “I don’t know how they do that. I feel gross if I go a whole day without showering.”

  I said that once, but it was before I went to basic training and then spent months in the dust and dirt halfway across the world. After that, a few weeks without a shower wasn’t a big deal at all. I can’t imagine I smell good when I come in from the field, but I never notice.

  “You get used to it,” I say, and take a drink of my beer.

  Mandy’s nice. She’s cute. She’s into me, even if she’s not the most forward girl. Any other night she’d already be sitting in my lap, giggling, and in ten minutes we’d either be making out in the bathroom or going back to her place.

  But tonight, I’m fighting the urge to ask her how Clementine is. What she’s been up to. What her favorite movie is these days. Dumb shit like that.

  Mandy looks down at her drink, like it’ll tell her what to say next.

  “So, is firefighting a full-time job year-round, or do you...”

  The rest of her sentence gets lost as another woman bumps into me by accident, then turns and puts her hand on my arm.

  “Sorry,” she says.

  Then she does a double take, tilting her head a little to one side, her red lips just barely parting.

  “Are you one of the Canyon Country Hotshots?” she asks, her voice suddenly getting lower, almost a purr.

  She’s wearing a tight white t-shirt, tight jeans, high-heeled cowboy boots, and has hottest girl in a small town written all over her.

  “Yes ma’am,” I say, turning on the charm without meaning to.

  She laughs.

  “God, don’t call me ma’am, you’re making me feel like my mother,” she says. “I’m Jean.”

  Her hand is still on my shoulder. Mandy is just looking at her like she’s been betrayed.

  “Hunter,” I say. “Nice to meet you.”

  “Let me buy you a drink as thanks,” Jean says. She’s acting like Mandy’s not even there, and from the corner of my eye, I can see Mandy look away.

  If I wanted, I’m almost positive I could have a threesome tonight. Jean’s ready to go, and Mandy might take another drink, but I bet she’d be down for a night of fun.

  Instead, I wonder what Clementine is doing. I imagine her, lying in a field, surrounded by a bunch of kids, all on their backs, as she tells them about the constellations.

  Fuck this, I think.

  “Thanks, but I’ve actually gotta go take care of something,” I say.

  Jean’s mouth droops a little at the corners, and she looks taken aback, suddenly unsure of herself.

  “Thanks for hanging out with me,” I tell Mandy, which is a fucking lame thing to say, but I can’t think of anything better.

  Then I grab my jacket and head out the door of the Harried Bear, turn left, and walk for the mountain.

  7

  Clementine

  “Okay,” I call out. “Has everyone got their star maps?”

  A chorus of small voices all say “Yes,” with varying degrees of enthusiasm. Most of them are into it, though there are always a few whose parents dragged them out here when they’d rather be watching TV.

  “Great!” I say. “Now, who can find Mars?”

  I like to give them a pretty easy one first. If I ask where the moon is right away, everyone over the age of about seven rolls their eyes and thinks this is kid stuff. But Mars is easy enough to find that they can do it, and hard enough that they don’t think I’m making fools of them.

  A whole bunch of fingers point in the general direction of Mars.

  “Exactly!” I say. “If you look a little to the left and up, now that your eyes are adjusted you can really see the Milky Way.”

  I sweep my arm up and over my head, indicating the broad swath of stars that speckle the black sky. This is one of the best places in the country for stargazing — the closest city is Missoula, which isn’t very big or very close. Other than that, it’s small towns like this one and nothing but wide open sky, with hardly any light pollution for miles.

  Especially on a clear night, like tonight, with just a sliver of a moon, it feels like you can see the whole universe from here.

  Sometimes, I really understand how people used to think the earth was the center of the universe. It sure feels that way.

  “...So when we look at the Milky Way, we’re actually seeing the flattened disc of our own galaxy,” I’m saying, the words pretty much on autopilot. “Like being in the center of a frisbee and looking out toward the edge.”

  Lots of small, thoughtful faces look upward, craning their necks.

  “Now,” I say. “Can anyone tell me which way is north?”

  A bunch of hands point. Several of them are even pointing north, but something’s caught my eye: a figure, walking through the parking lot and toward the field where we’re all standing.

  It’s Hunter. I can barely see his outline, and I can’t see his face at all, but there’s something familiar in the way he walks, his hands in the pockets of his jacket. I can’t help but smile.

  “That’s right!” I say.

  I keep talking about the north star and the big dipper, but I’m not really paying attention. I’ve got this on autopilot. Instead I’m watching Hunter walk up and stand way, way in the back of a group of kids. In another minute he’s following along as I talk about the constellations — Orion, Sagitt
arius, the Pleiades — and I just think, he came.

  At the end of the naked-eye portion of the evening, I clap my hands together and then rub them.

  “Who’s ready for telescopes?” I ask.

  A couple of kids run for the telescopes set up at the opposite end of the field, each manned by a volunteer. Most of the kids just walk. It’s probably not very cool to get excited for telescopes.

  Hunter waits until they’re gone, hands in the pockets of his Carhartt jacket, then walks to meet me.

  “You picked stars over beers?” I ask.

  “I can drink beers anywhere,” he says. “I don’t get many stargazing invitations.”

  “You could just look up.”

  He smiles.

  “Smartass,” he says. “Fine. I see too much of those guys and figured I’d spend time with an old friend instead. Happy now?”

  There it is again: old friend. He came all the way here, away from a pub crawl to see me. An old friend.

  “Cool!” I hear a really enthusiastic kid shout.

  “Happy that I dragged the truth out of you?” I tease.

  “Kicking and screaming,” he says.

  Be sincere for one second, I think. I swallow and look straight into his eyes.

  “Thanks,” I say. “It’s good to see you again.”

  “It’s good to see you too,” he says softly.

  I can’t help but smile. I almost say I didn’t think it would be, because the last time we talked, over video chat, I alternated between sobbing and shouting for two hours.

  But there’s no point bringing that up now: he’s here for a couple of days, and it’s nice to see him again. As friends. The past is past.

  “I’ve gotta go monitor the telescope situation,” I say, nodding my head toward the circle where people are gathered. “But you’re welcome to hang out if you want.”

  “I CAN SEE THE RINGS!” shouts the same kid, who sounds almost too excited.

  “That is why I came,” Hunter says, his drawl dusky, his blue eyes sparkling even in the dark.

  “C’mon,” I say. “I’ll show you some cool planets,” I say.