“Any questions?”Porter shouts.
No one has any.
“Then it’s time to move out,” he says.
We taketurns at all the jobs.Taking down full-size trees, even though we’ve got chainsaws, is exhausting, backbreaking work, and it’s even more so because I started the day with a three-hour fully loaded hike.
I chainsaw for a while, then Silas takes over, handing me a GPS and a can of orange paint.Then I mark trees for removal, making sure we’re keeping the break the right shape and width, and he cuts them down.
Around lunch, we go on lookout for an hour and watch the fire from a high, rocky outcropping.We report in every fifteen minutes, but miraculously, the Saturn Fire seems like it may have stalled, or at least, like it might have slowed, both to the west and across the river.
The dry, hot winds from the west have stopped blowing, so the fire doesn’t have that force driving it forward any more.It’s still destructive and dangerous, and we can still hear trees exploding every once in a while.
But it seems like we might be getting the upper hand, like Eaglevale and Coldwater are being evacuated for nothing.
At least, I hope so.
“Casden, Dewar, take a break,”Porter says.We’re standing on either side of the fire break, carefully lighting fallen trees and tree stumps on fire, then watching the fire as it burns itself out, making sure there are no embers remaining.
It’s hot, hard work, but everything here is hot, hard work.
“I’m fine,” I say, and Silas agrees with me, nodding assent from across a blackened, charred log.
“Guys, I said go take a dinner break,” Porter repeats, jerking his thumb over his shoulder.
I look down and stomp out an ember, my heavy boot crushing it into the charred black earth.
Fucking asshole, I think.Giving orders all day while I sweat my balls off.
Silas shrugs.
“Okay,” he says, and gives me a look.
I glare at Porter, but he doesn’t take the bait.
Fuck it.I’m hungry anyway.We eat more MREs, because that’s all the food that’s here, and talk a little about what we’re doing when fire season ends.I mention that I’m moving to Lodgepole, where my girlfriend lives, and he says again that Clementine is cool.That’s about it.
We go back to the fire break, and we burn until it’s past dark, when Porter comes back and orders us to take the first four-hour sleep shift.
I don’t bother setting up a tent, just lay out my foam pad on the gravel beach by the river and crawl into my sleeping bag with my clothes in a pile next to me.Even though there’s something poking into my back, I fall asleep almost instantly, thinkingI wonder what Clementine is doing.
ChapterTwenty-Seven
Clementine
I wakeup in the dark to a horrible, rattling, buzzing sound, and it takes me a second to realize that it’s my phone, on the floor, in vibrate mode.I dangle one hand off of Jane’s couch and grab it, answering without even looking at who it is.
“Yeah?”I say.
“There’s a guy in a cabin,” Jennifer says.
The gears in my head have to turn for a few moments as I look around the room, trying to figure out where I am and what I’m doing there.
ThenI remember what’s going on, and whatthere’s a guy in a cabinmeans.
“Shit,” I say.
“Can you go?”
