“I’m leaving to there,” I say, pointing at the other cot.
She closes her eyes again, snuggling into her sleeping bag.
“Fine,” she says, and then she’s asleep again.
I have a feeling she won’t remember this conversation in the morning.I get into my own sleeping bag, in the cot perpendicular to hers.
I’m asleep in seconds.
I wakeup to the sun slicing through the windows, the hard yellow rays hitting the ceiling of the lookout and illuminating everything inside.It takes me a minute to remember where I am, but I wake up in strange places alot.Usually a strange tent, sometimes a strange motel, sometimes a strange bunkhouse.
I’ve never woken up in a strange fire lookout before, though given my job, it’s weird that I haven’t.
Then I think the same thing I always think.
Is something on fire?
No.
It used to beam I in a red zone, but two years of firefighting has at least changedthathabit, even though I still wake up the same way: instantly, and all at once.
I stretch and look at the cot perpendicular to mine, but Clementine isn’t in it.
“There you are,” she says.
I look down.She’s sitting, cross-legged, on a big wooden trunk, binoculars in her hands.All she’s wearing is a shirt and underpants, though I’m not really sure why she’s even wearing that.
“You need those to watch me sleep?”I ask, my voice still rough.
“Yeah, I really enjoy examining your individual pores,” she teases.
I lay back, hands behind my head.I kicked my sleeping bag mostly off during the night, because they’re usually too warm, but it’s still strategically covering my junk.
“Good, because I’m on the cover of theHot Firemen Pores 2017calendar,” I say.
“Hunter, wake up before you try to make jokes,” Clementine says.
She checks me out anyway, and I just enjoy it.I get checked out alot, and though I don’t usually mind that much, Ilikeit when she’s the one doing it.
“You want me to move the bag?”I ask, still sounding blurry.
She glances down at my morning wood tenting up the sleeping bag, as if she hadn’t already noticed.
“Actually, I want you to look at that white column,” she says, and leans toward me, handing over the binoculars.
It’s less exciting than showing her my dick, but itiswhy we’re here, so I take the binoculars and look at the white column.It’s the same one she showed me yesterday, but this morning itlooksa little bigger, and it’s definitely rising upward.
“It’s smoke,” I say, half a second later.
“I thought so,” she says.
I keep looking at it, and a knot tightens in my stomach.It’s not big.The smoke’s not billowing upward, like it would if this were a serious fire, but something about it looks like itmightbe worse than just a lightning strike.
But it is definitely, absolutely a column of smoke.Clouds don’t have that slightly tan tinge to them that smoke from burning wood does.
I take the binoculars down, and Clementine is still looking at me, though now she’s not checking me out.Now she looks a little worried.
“Can you tell if it’s just a lightning strike?”she asks.
