I roll my eyes, even though I’m smiling too, because I know he’s just winding me up.
“Lord of the Ringsis notnerd shitanymore,” I say.“The movies were huge hits, and the books have really informed all fantasy?—”
The radio crackles, cutting me off.
“Spruce Mountain Lookout, come in,” a gnarled voice says.It sounds like an ent.
Not thatHunterwould know what that is, but he’s laughing at me from the kitchen table.
“This is Spruce Mountain, over,” I say.
“You got the firefinder in front of you?”Randy asks.
“Roger.”
“Okay then.What you wanna do first is make sure that you’re facing the fire.Make sure you don’t lock your knees, since you’re at altitude, that can be dangerous.Get real lightheaded.I knew this guy one time, Brian I think his name was, and he locked his knees trying to locate a fire and smacked his head real good when he fainted...”
“Does Gandalf tell a lot of people not to lock their knees?”Hunter whispers at me.
I flip him off and keep listening to Randy.
Randy is a very,very patient man, and as I listen to a long digression about how they just don’t make rubber gaskets like theyusedto, I do my best to be as patient as him.
Hunter, on the other hand, couldn’t take listening to Randy for this long.He went down from the lookout tower to explore around a little, though I don’t think there’s much to explore besides the outhouse and some rocks.
He’s always been a little twitchy, though.Not the kind of person who can sit still for more than a couple minutes, which is why an exciting job with plenty of physical labor suits him.I can’t imagine Hunter in an office, wearing a suit or something, calmly meeting with clients or whatever people with office jobs do.
I’m looking through both sights of the firefinder at the column of smoke, following Randy’s instructions for the second time.He wanted to double-check my numbers, and I don’t blame him.
“All right, that ought to do ‘er,” he says.“Read me the damage.”
Bythe damagehe meansthe heading you calculated for the fire.I rattle off coordinates into the radio.
There’s a brief pause.
“They’re a degree off from each other, but that’s to be expected,” he says.I can hear him tapping a pencil against a piece of paper, probably on a desk.“Congratulations, Clementine, you’ve found a lightning strike in the Spires.”
“Thanks?”I say.
I walk to the windows facing the smoke.It hasn’t changed at all in the past couple of hours, ever since I woke up, so I’m not exactly sure what we’re going to do about it.
Randy laughs into the radio, a dry sound.
“Mike had to go to a meeting, but he left me in charge of you for the time being,” he says, and I can hear the sound of a chair creaking, like Randy’s leaning back and putting his feet on the desk.
“I know how much you like being in charge,” I say.
Randy just sighs, because hehatesbeing responsible for other people.
“How do you feel about staying at that lookout another night or so?”he asks.
I spot Hunter down below, climbing a stack of boulders.He’s got his shirt off, and even though he’s far away, I can see his back muscles rippling and bulging in the sunlight.
“I can do that,” I say, hoping my voice sounds normal.
“In all likelihood, that fire’s gonna burn itself out and it won’t be a problem,” he says.“Besides, that area hasn’t burned in a good fifty years, so it needs to be cleared out.This’ll save us having to send in a crew to do a controlled burn, which they never want to do in the Spires, becauseyowza, that hike.”
That’s the tricky thing about forest fires: as far as nature is concerned, they’re not actuallybad.The wildlands of the western United States are supposed to catch fire every so often, because that’s how they evolved.Most of the adult trees are more than hardy enough to survive a fire, and they help clear away the underbrush, keeping the forest from getting too choked with bushes and weeds.
