Wildfire

by Carrie Mac

  “My dick is going to freeze and fall off.” He sucks his breath in as the cold water hits his crotch. “Fuck.”

  “That rock face better be as good as we think.”

  “That trail we were on was shit anyway.”

  The icy water is waist-high now. We both keep focus on the rock face, long with shadows now. It must be late afternoon. I’d glance up to look at the orange sun, but I don’t want to slip, and I do want to get across as soon as possible, because I can no longer entirely feel my feet. But at least all the heat in my gut and the tingling throughout my body have succumbed to the icy water for now.

  * * *

  —

  The little rock face is even better than Ugly Mug, if only because no one has probably ever been here to climb it. We decide to stay in our underwear so it will dry quicker.

  “And it shall be christened Uglier Mug!” Pete hollers, his arms spread wide. “And it shall be good! And gnarly! Gnarly good. Full of gnarly goodness.”

  “Just climb already!”

  “You just climb already!” Pete chases me to the base. “Do it. Come on. Show that shriveled little arm of atrophied doom who is the boss.”

  * * *

  —

  Turns out my arm is the boss.

  “I guess there is a reason for the physiotherapy the doctor ordered.”

  “Just try hanging from your fingers a bit,” Pete says. “Boulder down here.”

  Pete turns his hat backward and scrambles up one way, then another, trying a new line each time. All those muscles he puts to use crunch into action. He looks like an ad for the company that made his high-tech underwear. The smoky forest behind him, the late-afternoon shadows. I dig my phone out and turn it on. This is too good not to take a picture. My battery is low, and by the time I take a couple of pictures and a very short video of him scaling up to the top, it’s on red.

  “Pete!” I call when his feet are on the ground again. “Quick before my battery dies.” He puts his arm across my shoulder and we grin. When we look at the photo, we notice the blood-orange sun just over his shoulder, as if it’s resting on it. And our faces, tanned and totally filthy.

  “One more,” he says. He lifts my phone and eyes it as he poses to kiss me on the cheek. What if I turn right now? What if I just turn my head? The phone goes black. “That’s okay. Grab mine.”

  I dig in his pack. We hear it before we see it. It’s playing an Outside podcast. The one about the man who almost died after he was stung by hundreds of bees when he disturbed them while he was out in the wilderness by himself.

  “Why are you listening to Outside? It’s all so worst-case scenario.”

  “I couldn’t sleep last night,” he says. “So I listened to a couple.”

  “Well, now you have twenty percent battery.”

  “The charger is in the electronics bag.”

  Which is inside the waterproof bag. And it is. But no red light comes on.

  “It’s not charged.”

  “I charged it,” Pete says. “Ask my dad. I had it on the kitchen counter. Overnight.” He takes the portable charger and turns it over in his hand, as if a TRY AGAIN button will magically appear. “Okay,” he says after a moment. “We’ll keep my phone off until we need the topos. That’s fine. Just won’t have pictures or music or podcasts. We’ll survive.”

  * * *

  —

  While Pete goes up one last time, I make sure we’re not leaving anything behind, other than this perfect climbing spot in the middle of the extra nowhere that is the original middle of nowhere.

  Pete looks like a cover of Outside magazine.

  “The mighty unicorn!” he shouts before getting ready to scramble back down along the steep but doable slope just to the side of where he was climbing. He hops down to a little ledge—not even two feet down—but just as he lands, he bends over, grabbing his leg.

  “Ow! Shit!”

  “Pete!” I drop my pack. “Are you okay?”

  “Yeah!” he growls through a clenched jaw. “Yeah. Just a scrape from a bush…a stick.” He snaps it off and throws it down. The same dimensions as a half-used pencil. No bigger.

  “Is it bleeding?”

  He nods as he eases down the rest of the way on his butt, one hand clutching his leg. I can see blood oozing between his fingers.

  “I’ll get the first-aid kit.” His is always within reach, kept in the pocket under the lid of my pack, because Pete gets queasy at the sight of blood, and so he figures if the kit is in my pack, he won’t have to do anything with it.

  I meet him at the bottom, and he’s wincing, his eyes squeezed shut. “Don’t be a baby,” I say. “Show me.”

  He takes his hand away and turns his gaze to the sky. His happy place. He’s imagining that he’s flying, or maybe BASE jumping, or paragliding. Flying a plane. My happy place is the water, his is the sky.

  “Tell me,” I say as I press my bandana against his leg and hold it there as firmly as I can.

  “BASE jumping,” he says. “From the top of a mountain, shrouded in fog. Then I run off and I’m flying along a narrow valley, and it’s clear now. Blue sky. White clouds.” I sit on the dirt and lift his leg into my lap. After a few minutes of pressure, I take away the cloth, fully expecting the bleeding to have stopped. It’s slower but still bleeding a lot. The cut is deep. That half-pencil stick must’ve dug in deep and then torn up about an inch.

  “Pete—”

  “It’s fine.” But he hasn’t looked at it. He’s still looking at the sky.

  “You need stitches.”

  “I don’t.” He looks at me at last but avoids his leg. “Let’s cross back to the other side of the creek—”

  “With your leg like this?”

  “Annie, I didn’t look at maps for this side. We’re almost out of battery, so we can’t look at them as often as we’d need to on this side. I know the peaks and the lakes on the north side. I know what the land is supposed to look like. We’re already so far south of the main trail, I’ve got to use what we’ve got, which is a little bit of phone and a lot of my memory.”

  “Not until it stops bleeding.”

  “No.” He shakes his head. “Let’s just cross right now. Before we don’t.”

  He moves my hand out of the way and ties the bandana tight. He hobbles to where the packs are and lifts his onto his head. I follow him and do the same, and then we’re getting into that same icy water and doing the trip in reverse.

  I wish we’d never crossed in the first place.

  * * *

  —

  Pete drops his pack as soon as we’ve stepped out of the water. He collapses onto the nearest boulder and winces, the look on his face so twisted with pain that I suddenly have the urge to cry.

  “Are you okay?”

  “Translucent wings,” he says, nodding. “No rainbows. Too corny.”

  This makes me laugh. He is a lot of corny.

  “Can you look now?” He waves at his leg.

  The water did slow the bleeding, but I rip open an alcohol wipe. The wipe is dry. So is the next one. And all the other ones we have too. I dig in my pack for the vodka bottles. Pete doesn’t even give me a dirty look as he opens one and downs it. I do the same.

  “Ready?” I open the last five and line them up.

  He squeezes his eyes shut as I empty the first bottle on his wound.

  “Ow! Shit! Ow!”

  One after another, until the bottles are empty.

  “Hold still.”

  I sprinkle anticoagulant powder on the wound before trying to pull it together with Steri-Strips, but the gouge is deep and sloppy, and the strips just don’t stick. I put some sterile gauze on and wrap the whole thing with the Tensor bandage, because I am sure nothing else will stay put in the middle of his calf.

&nbs
p; “Tighter,” he says. “It’s not going to stay.”

  “We can’t wrap it too tight, Pete.” I start to feel a little shaky inside, like this is a bigger moment than it seems.

  “It’s okay, Annie.” He smiles at me, genuine and confident. “It’ll be absolutely fine. Remember that wilderness first-aid course we took?” He leaves my bandage but puts his bandana over top too, tight.

  “Yes.” That feeling has gotten louder, a ringing in my ears. It’s just a small cut, I tell myself. Pete was top in the class and walked away with a gigantic first-aid kit for the truck and a small one that’s in his pack now. He knows what he’s doing. Theoretically.

  In practice, he can’t handle blood, or even the thought of a bone poking through skin. He literally goes pale if anyone gives any detail about any gnarly injury. He passed out when his dad sliced open his forearm with a box cutter last year and he had to help him with it, and then he passed out again when he saw blood all over our new trail shoes, which were in the box Everett was opening. They still have stains, even though Everett did his best to wash the blood out.

  “I promise you…” He thinks about it. “Okay, I promise you three things. The wildfires are going to stay out of our way. We are both going to love Fire Camp. We are both going to be official fire slayers by the end of the summer, and then one more year and we can do it for money.” He winces as he gets up. “That last statement doesn’t count. It’s an addendum to number two. Third, now that we’re back on this side of the creek, we are going to find that hot spring.”

  “Let’s forget about the hot spring. Let’s just keep going, okay? We’re already a day behind.”

  “We’ll count the crystals as a half day.”

  “And cutting in farther south because of having to leave the truck.”

  “We’ve pretty much made up for that.”

  “And now this!”

  “It’s nothing, see?” He puts his full weight on it. “It’s not too bad.”

  “Pete.”

  “Annie.”

  “We’re having this conversation in soaking-wet underwear, with your leg bleeding from a gaping hole.”

  “Small gaping hole.”

  “I’m just saying that I get it, and you can stop. We can stop.”

  “Stop what?”

  “The Great Annie Rescue,” I say. “You got me out. Out of my rut. Out of my house. Out of my head. Out of my grief, okay? This can just be a hike now. It doesn’t have to be a movie.”

  “Out of your grief?”

  “Well, maybe not that. But out of my head, which is the main thing, right?” That’s what always scares him, that I’ll get stuck in my head like my mom did, and everything will unravel. “I am officially out of my head, so long as you don’t count me worrying about your leg.”

  “My leg is fine. It was just a plot point so you could focus on something in the real world. And it worked. Roll credits!” Pete stares at me, smiling. For a moment, I can imagine that the cut on his leg didn’t happen, because his smile is all Pete, no pain. “I missed you, Banana. You had me worried.”

  “I missed you too, Unicorn Pete.” I point to his leg. “You still have me worried.”

  “Totally fine.”

  “To be worried?”

  “My leg is totally fine.”

  “Stay here.” I poke around the edge of the forest until I find a tall, sturdy stick that Pete can use to help him walk.

  When I return with it, I see that he has something in his hand. Those boxes, from Preet. For the record, I do not want Preet here in this moment.

  “Preet told me to take these out when you came back.” He hands me one.

  From my own mess, he means. Not back from getting the stick. Even though I would not be surprised if she could foresee the whole trip, as smart and intuitive as she is. Aggravatingly talented at knowing what people need before they need it. What’s in the box, for example. Without even opening it, I know that it will be expertly perfect in every way.

  “What is it?”

  “I don’t know.” His box has a two on it. “We’re supposed to open yours first.”

  When I lift off the lid, I see a note folded inside. Even before I unfold it, I know who it’s from. It smells of Chantilly. Gigi. That smell makes my heart crunch in on itself, and I have to wait a moment before I can take a full breath again. The tiniest, most ridiculous thought occurs to me, that she might be there, right behind me, if I turn around. Of course she isn’t. Even if it were possible, the only wilderness she experienced was picking blackberries along the road.

  “I don’t get it,” I say. “What are these? What is she doing?”

  “Preet didn’t tell me.”

  The note is written on Gigi’s special stationery, with roses all around, and pale pink lines. I read the letter out loud. “ ‘Dear Annie and Pete: A gift to you from beyond the grave, or the ashes, so to speak. Take care of each other, my dears. Love, Gigi.’ ”

  It’s a thin silver chain with a unicorn pendant, no bigger than a bottle cap, with Soul engraved on the back.

  Without a word, Pete opens his and finds a matching unicorn, with Mate written on the back.

  Neither of us says anything as we clasp the necklaces around each other’s necks. What can I say right now? What can I say that won’t sound flippant, or shallow, or so deep that I can’t climb out of it? What do you say when your best friend’s girlfriend gives you a message from your dead grandmother? It’s too intimate. Or weird. Or so much of both that there is nothing to say about it. Don’t make it too big, Annie. I touch the necklace that now rests at my throat. Soul. Pete touches his. Mate.

  You don’t have to say anything at all, Annie.

  Oh, but I do. And what I want to say is this: Did Preet know what was inside the boxes? Did she and Gigi have a conversation about how Pete and I are soul mates, which means that she is not? Is this a concession?

  I give my head a little shake. A few short seconds to myself to let my thoughts run wild, and I come up with this being a gentle and elaborate way for Preet to break up with Pete so he can be with me, his soul mate.

  “Okay. We can go home now,” Pete says. “Mission accomplished.”

  We both laugh, and keep laughing as we start hiking in our still-wet underwear, our clothes lashed to the outside of our packs.

  Soul. Mate.

  Soul Mate.

  We walk away from the sunset, away from home, long shadows cast in our path. Pete isn’t limping, so it can’t be as bad as I thought.

  The best kind of day on the trail is when we both wake up in a good mood and have something to talk about. This morning it was all about what the hell I was going to do with my life, and for some reason, I was okay with it. Maybe it was because of the blue skies above, because the winds were pushing the smoke out of the way for once. Or that I’d saved the best oatmeal flavor combo for today—two plains plus one maple cinnamon plus one apple pie. If you close your eyes and imagine you’re sitting at Thanksgiving supper with the football game on too loud in the background and Gigi lecturing Everett on how a meatless holiday is not a holiday at all, you can just, just about taste apple pie.

  “That is such bullshit,” Pete says as I try to convince him of this yet again. He’s walking ahead of me. He may or may not know that I’m keeping an eye on his bad leg. “You need a crunch to give you the right texture. Not mush.”

  “That time I brought candied pecans and sprinkled them on top.”

  “Now, that was crazy-accurate fake pie.”

  “If we keep up this pace, we’ll go farther than we have for days.”

  I watch his leg.

  If I hadn’t bandaged it and seen the mess myself, I would have no idea that he got hurt back there at Uglier Mug. But I know Pete. He plows past things that would stop other people in their tracks.

 
; “Aren’t you getting tired, Pete?”

  “If you’re talking about stopping for lunch, then yes.”

  “Mmm. Shriveled-up soy protein mock-chicken butter chicken.”

  “And rice,” Pete says. “That’s the best, Annie. Love that shit. Could eat two.”

  “We could swap for the lasagna? I get two of those, you get two of the fake buck-buck.”

  Pete stops in the middle of the field of boulders we’ve been making our way over for more than an hour. “Look!” He’s pointing up. “Peregrine.”

  “Nope.”

  “Then what?”

  “Wings are angled differently,” I say. “That’s a hawk.”

  “Or a frigging pigeon, if you’re denying that it’s a peregrine.”

  “Not a peregrine.”

  We keep weaving between the bigger boulders.

  “That is a hawk.”

  “Is not.”

  “Is too.”

  “Isn’t, Annie.”

  “That is a goshawk.” The bird is almost right above us now, so I have to shield my eyes from the smoky red sun. “Look at the wings.”

  “That is a peregrine.”

  “Pete!” I chuck off my pack and root in the side pocket for the little pair of mostly useless binoculars. Sometimes I think I was born without the gene for using binoculars. Pete says they’re fine, but I can’t usually see anything in them other than a green mash of forest or all sky. But now I take my time and find the bird in the sky and get it into the best focus I can. “Flap, flap, glide. That is an accipiter.”

  “Pulling out the big words.”

  “Goshawk.” The bird swoops toward a tree at the far side of the clearing and lands on a branch, giving me a perfect view. “Huh.” I hand him the binoculars. “We were both wrong.”

  “Let me see.” Pete looks and laughs. “Hello there, sweet little kestrel.”

  “Not a peregrine falcon.”

  “And not a goshawk.” Pete lowers the binoculars. “But I was more right than you. Kestrels belong to the Falconidae family, Banana.”