Jack nods to them as he pulls the buggy off the road and onto a hiking trail. We don’t make it very far before the surrounding brush is too dense. If we take our standard issued tires through this terrain, we’ll get stuck.
It’s not until we’re diving out of the back of our vehicle that I notice the ambulance is gone. Ben and Hailey must have stayed behind with the engine crews. Jack circles his arms to gather us and shouts his debrief over the crackle and pop of bright orange flames.
“Listen up. We’re dealing with extreme fire behavior. We’re talking flame lengths up to fifty feet in the sage and lodgepole pines. We’re keeping the crew together. Four saws up front cutting a fifty-foot swath. Everybody else with hand tools scraping behind them. We need to make it as far as we can today. Marshall, you’ll be posting lookout on that hill spinning weather. I need an update every hour on the hour.” Jack tosses him a radio. “Use Tac 3.”
“You got it, Supt.” Marshall catches the device with one hand, clips it to his collar, and slings his line pack over his back. He takes off on his own for the summit.
“What are your questions?” Jack asks the rest of us.
I raise my hand. “I’ve got a question.”
He plants his hands on his hips, his mustache set in a firm line. “Something tells me I’m going to regret hearing it.”
“How often do you think we can expect an update from Captain Jack Sparrow back there?” I ask.
He rolls his eyes. “You’ve been waiting the last five minutes to say thathaven’t you?”
I grin. “Yes. Yes, I have.”
“This is Copter 110, issuing water drop.” The declaration comes through Jack’s radio, and like a dam breaking, water gushes from the sky and drenches the flames a hundred feet from us. The helicopter arcs to the left, the blustering wind spraying a net of heavy mist over our entire bodies. The initial condensation dampens our clothing and drips down the lenses of our protective eyewear. Most of the crew drops to the ground in a plank for the rest of the deluge. I take it standing up, arms spread wide.
“What a time to be alive, boys!” I yell, shaking my body like a wet dog. I may look as though I just walked through a car wash fully clothed, but Ifeellike I just free-fell from a fifty-foot cliff.
Nowthisis what I came here for.
When night falls, the wind carries smoke away from the campground where we’ve settled with the engine crews. The deep-blue sky glitters with stars—a respite from the heat of a fourteen-hour workday. Clearing one mile of brush is what we have to show for it.
McCafferty was right. A day of hiking in 90 degrees is nothing like laboring beside open flames.
We dug and scraped for hours. My forearms and hands seize so badly from the fine motor strain they’re struggling to support my dinner fork. But that’s not stopping me from cramming in two thousand calories of beef and bean burritos as my stomach gnaws on my spine.
Jack squeezes Marshall and Murphy’s shoulders as he says to the crew, “Good work out there today. Let’s get some rest. We’re in this for the long haul.”
When he steps to the side, I see Hailey waiting in the shadows beneath a tree. She’s chewing on a nail as she tracks her father’s footsteps. There’s a sadness in her eyes as she watches him. It makes me want to ask her questions. Personal questions that I’m afraid I’ll have to reciprocate. But I give in to the pull anyway and approach her.
“Long day, huh?” She stuffs her hands in her pockets as I stop in front of her.
“They’re about to get even longer I’m afraid.” I sweep my eyes past the charred vegetation where the woods glow a brilliant orange.
“I heard,” she says. “They’re setting up a fire camp here tomorrow. This place is about to become a city.”
We both scan the beginnings of that new city forming, with water tender crews and hand crews setting up tents. The idea that this fire could morph into a new animal every day excites me, no two days on the job looking alike. It’s exactly what I was hoping for.
“That means you’re staying too?” I ask.
She nods, and I smirk.
“What?”
“Oh, there’s only one part of this new camp I’m disappointed about,” I say.
“What’s that?”
I take a step closer to her. “What happened this morning not happening again.”
Even in the dark, I watch the color in her face deepen, like a layer of red crayon shading in the apples of her cheeks. Her eyes flare as she bites her lip.
“I thought we weren’t going to talk about that,” she whispers.
