And that’s the problem: if Hunter had just been a stranger in the fire crew who walked me home and called me about my dog and came to my stargazing talk,I think I’d like him.
I have no idea what the fuck to do withthat.
ChapterFourteen
Hunter
Dinner istwenty-cent ramen followed by freeze-dried backpacking food.All it involves is boiling water, and I do that while Clementine sits on a cot, ankle wrapped in instant ice packs, scanning the horizon with a pair of binoculars.
“Anything?”I ask.
We both changed out of our sweaty hiking clothes.I’m wearing super-lightweight “lounge” pants — okay, they’re basicallyreally thinsweatpants — and tomorrow’s shirt.Clem has on leggings and a long-sleeve t-shirt with no bra on underneath.
The no-bra thing is making it kind of hard to focus.
“Not yet,” she says.“There’s a couple of clouds that kind of look like smoke, but I’m pretty sure they’re just clouds.”
“Want the expert to take a look?”I ask.
“You’re not the expert on firespotting,” she says.“You just put them out.”
“Really, I’m the expert at making boundaries that fires can’t cross, if you want to get technical about it,” I say.
Clementine doesn’t answer, and the cabin goes quiet.I don’t mind.The silence now is different from the loaded silence this morning in the car.That one felt like an anvil was swinging over my head, ready to fall, but this one is oddly comfortable.Companionable.
Sometimes you run out of things to say to another person, especially if you’ve been together for twelve hours already, and it’s fine.It feels like putting on a pair of worn-in shoes.
Not that Clementine is a pair of old shoes.
The water on the stove boils, and I pour it into the laminated bags of freeze-dried spaghetti, close them, and wait.I’m not exactly a gourmet chef, but we won’t starve.
“Hey, c’mere,” Clementine says.
I walk to the cot where she’s sitting and stand behind her.She looks back and hands me the binoculars, then points.
“That’s a cloud, right?”she asks.
“I thought I wasn’t an expert,” I say, lifting them to my eyes.
“I didn’t say you were,” she teases.“I just need a second opinion.”
I adjust the lenses and the faint white column she’s pointing at comes into view.I stare at it for a long time.
“Huh,” I finally say.I examine it harder, because while itdoeslook like a pillar, it doesn’t seem to be growing.It doesn’t seem to be emanating from one spot, like smoke would be.
Ithinkit’s just a weird spot of half-fog half-cloud, though it’s hard to tell.Plus, the sun is setting, and that makes it even harder to tell.
“We’ll see if it’s there in the morning,” I say.“If it is, we should call it in, but if it’s anything at all it’s just a lightning strike.Most of those go out pretty fast.”
As many wildfires as there are in the west, there are way,waymore trees struck by lightning.Most of them smolder for a little while, then go out, and nothing around them even catches fire.Sometimes, some of the brush around them will catch, a few of the drier trees, but those usually put themselves out too.Even in a drought, live trees don’t catch fire very easily.
It really takes a bad combination for a lightning strike to turn into a wildfire: dry, dead trees, lots of underbrush, dense foliage that hasn’t gotten rain in too long.We’re here because conditions in Big Sky National Forestcouldbe right.They’re probably not, but theycouldbe.
Clementine just nods.
“Dinner?”I ask.
I pour the spaghetti onto tin plates, and we eat with sporks, sitting on one of the cots, watching the sunset.I don’t say anything, and it’s partly because I’m eating, but partly because I can’t think of anything to say as the clouds above turn from pink to orange to purple, striping the sky with colors I wouldn’t believe if I weren’t sitting here, looking at them.
