SIX YEARS AGO
“Thank you for coming.”
My voice sounds hollow even to my own ears. I’ve repeated the same sentence so many times it’s started sounding less like real words and more like a foreign language that I’m not fluent in.
The room around me is bustling, though subdued. Small groupings of attendees, all waiting to head into the parlor, waiting to pay their respects to my dad.
Superintendent Garrett Macomb, lost in action.
I can see through the dark wood double doors left open wide to the front of the funeral home, to the solitary pedestal in the center of the dais. Flanked by a large, framed photograph on one side, and a folded American flag secure in its shadowbox for safekeeping on the other. His Pulaski—a tool that combines an ax and an adze hoe—is propped up, and his yellow helmet is balanced atop it. Sprays of ferns and a few Peace Lilies are scattered along the floor as a backdrop. A stage light illuminates the metal urn sitting on the pedestal, theburnished red flaring like flames. I can just make out the metallic gold Maltese Cross of the firefighter emblem on the front of the urn.
I hate the sight of that urn; it’s there simply for show. My dad’s ashes are out on that mountain where he’d laid his life down to get his team out alive.
My mom is standing just to the left of the large photograph, staring at the man pictured there in the standard yellow wildland fire shirt with his helmet pulled over his graying brows. His eyes are crinkled in the corner, face hastily scrubbed of soot and dirt, but a wide grin splits his face. It’s a candid photo; I remember the day it was taken. Though the photo is cropped to show only him, I know that his arm is thrown across my shoulders. We were posing for the picture after fighting a fire in Arizona that had lasted over a month. We were exhausted and hungry and desperate for showers… but damn. That was a good day.
Mom’s black clad back is to me, to the still empty room behind her. Alone in her grief, mourning the man she’d loved and lost nearly thirty years ago, only to lose him all over again now. My throat closes with unshed tears as her shoulders shake, and she reaches out one hand to draw her fingers over my dad’s cheek in the photo. She’d requested a few minutes alone with him, so my brothers and I had made ourselves scarce.
I look up when a shadow appears next to me, and I reach out to hug my younger brother Zach. He’s a structure firefighter back home in Michigan, and he’s garbed in his dress blues. My mom, Zach, and our youngest brother Joel had flown into Sky Ridge, Washington from Michigan to attend. Michigan had been home for the first twenty-five years of my life, but I’d followed Dad to Sky Ridge, much to my mom’s disappointment. Followed in the career that had taken my dad from her all those years ago, and the career that had now taken his life.
We all know the risks of the job. He knew. I know. We’re Hotshots—wildland firefighters—and the risk of not cominghome is always high, no matter how well trained and how meticulous we are in the field.
My mom had given Dad an ultimatum all those years ago. God, I could still hear the argument, the crying, the begging. She’d begged him not to go, not to leave us again. Told him if he walked out the door, he wasn’t welcome back. That we needed him home more than his crew needed him out here. I was eleven, Zach had been eight, and Joel was six. She said we needed him home, that growing boys need their father home. She wasn’t wrong… but neither was he.
I love my mom, truly I do. And I grieve for her more than she knows. She lost the love of her life to the love ofhislife; the job. But she doesn’t understand, doesn’t understand that these men and women are family, too. That the job we do, the lives we save…it’s important. And to those of us that are in it, it’s hard to explain to others that aren’t.
So Dad had kissed my mom one last time, and then he’d left, because his crew—his brothers—needed him. And when I was twenty-five, I’d made the decision to leave the safety of home, our little slice of heaven in northern Michigan, and join him in Washington. Because this was where my heart was. I’d joined the fire department at nineteen, but my heart wasn’t in fighting structure fires. I was born to be a Hotshot. I knew it; my parents knew it. Even back then.
I hadn’t looked back. Not in all the years since.
We’d worked side by side, year after year. He was a fair but demanding superintendent. He gave as much of himself as he demanded from any member of his crew.
Zach brings me back to the present, slapping my back and then squeezing my shoulder. Taking a deep breath in, I run my palm down my chest, over the front of my own standard issue yellow wildland fire shirt. It’s clean—mostly—and the olive green Nomex pants I have on are the cleanest ones I own. My boots are scuffed and work-worn, but I’d cleaned those the best Icould, too. I’m fairly certain Mom had almost had an aneurysm when I’d arrived wearing my gear; she had urged me to go back home and put on a black suit, but I’d said no.
Our gear is like a badge of honor—this is how we choose to show respect to those that we’ve lost.
Zach pulls a silver flask out of the inner pocket of his dress blues and uncaps it, handing it over to me. We share a small smile before I tip it up and take a healthy swig; our dads favorite whisky burns my tongue and throat as I swallow. Handing the flask back to Zach, he does the same before pocketing it again.
“Superintendent.”
I stiffen at the title and turn, nodding at the man that had spoken. Mack Treynor, superintendent of Colorado’s Vantage Hotshot crew, a man that had worked alongside my father for most of their careers. His hazel eyes are solemn, his face stoic as his gaze bounces between mine and Zach’s.
“I know how awful that must sound to you right now,” my dad’s friend says gently, reaching out to grip my shoulder hard in his hand. His grip is tight, grounding me. “Your dad was a great man, and you’ve got big boots to fill, son. He was so proud to know you were stepping in behind him. I’m sorry he didn’t make it to retirement.” My gut clenches. Twelve weeks.Twelve fucking weeks and he’d have been retired, he wouldn’t have even been on that goddamn call, wouldn’t have died on that fucking mountain— Mack clears his throat, his own emotions making it difficult for him to speak. His eyes go to Zach then. “He was so damn proud of all of his boys, for following in his steps.”
My brothers are both firefighters back home in Michigan. We’d all been on the same crew when I still lived there, before I’d moved. Joel had only just joined when I left. Zach is now married and has the two cutest girls I’ve ever seen—not that I’m biased as their uncle or anything—with another on the way. I have no idea what Joel is up to these days, other than being a giant pain in my mom’s ass.
Zach nods. “Thank you, Mack. He loved this job more than anything.”
But Mack shakes his head, his eyes growing sadder, and he slides his gaze over to my mother, still weeping in front of my dad’s photo in the parlor. “Not more than anything.”
With one more squeeze to my shoulder, he turns and walks away, leaving the two of us alone. We’re not alone for long, because through the plated glass doors leading outside, I see a group of men, dressed in mostly clean wildland fire gear, making their way across the parking lot.
My brothers, my crew; eighteen of them in total. A force to be reckoned with, and some of the bravest motherfuckers I’ve ever met.
Callahan Woods, my newly appointed captain, leads the pack. He’s followed closely by Jacob Taylor and Rowan Kingsley, two of our newest recruits. They’re young, can’t be more than twenty-two, but damn they’re hard workers. Jack Taylor—my dad’s right-hand guy and Jacob’s father—walks several paces behind the others. He’s been our Squad Leader for as long as I can remember. He’s retiring at the end of the season, having decided to move his own retirement up, but he wants to work one season with his son, Jacob.
Losing my dad hit him hard and it opened all our eyes to the risks of this career. He has a family, a wife… And he’s choosing to step away to focus on them. I can’t fault him for it, in the light of what we’re doing here today. Jack’s wife and their daughter, Violette—Jacob’s twin—follow the group in from the parking lot, coming to pay their respects to my dad, too. We’re all family. Especially on days like today.
Jack walks beside Dixon, one of my crew, who is slowed by a set of crutches and a heavy cast on his right leg. My heart hammers in my chest, the fear and anxiety barreling through me all over again, much like it had in those terrifying moments on the mountain. I had nearly lost most of them, and that memorywill haunt me forever. The bravery and leadership that had been my father’s roman empire had saved them; and I know he would gladly have given his life a hundred times over to save the lives of his outfit, just as he’d done until his dying breath.
