Wildfire

by Toni Draper

  Mena waited.

  After Sydney had returned to her chair and settled comfortably against its back, the silence was broken by the cubes that rattled in Sydney’s tumbler as she tilted the glass up. Draining the amber liquid, she savored the last drop before facing Mena and forcing words that cut her out.

  “Please stop hurting yourself, and me. It’s over. It’s been proven beyond doubt that we are incompatible. You’ll find someone else to love.”

  At that precise moment, the log shifted, tilted, and slid into the ashes below.

  Sydney leaned back in the recliner and pushed the footrest up, refusing to look anywhere but into the flames. Perhaps in search of some source of comfort, she reached for what she’d forgotten was an empty glass. It was apparent even the warmth of the whiskey would fail to console her now.

  Mena merely watched. Saying nothing more, she simply turned and walked away into the dark of the split-level’s stairway. Evening had settled over them in a shroud of silence.

  They avoided each other intentionally, watching carefully for the surprise of opening doors and unexpected arrivals. Mena stayed out late and rose early. She avoided the only common area between them now, the kitchen, by eating all her meals out. Poor Jenny didn’t know what to do. Her allegiances were torn. Her back-and-forths and sad whimpering and whining were sometimes the only sound in the home. Three days later, with a winter storm warning in the forecast, Mena packed up the few things she hadn’t left in storage and moved out.

  Chapter 7

  “Can I help you?” the fire captain asked when the door to his office had been pushed open after being lightly knocked upon. He’d been typing up an overdue incident report, tedious and tiring paperwork. Welcoming the opportunity to take a much-needed break, he happily looked up.

  Mena approached cautiously, unsure whether she’d made a mistake in coming, but the room wasn’t large enough to offer the space or time needed for second thoughts. “My name’s Mendoza.” She extended her hand in greeting. “Jimena Mendoza. I’ve seen the posts and know you’re in need of help with the fires that are breaking out, and I’ve just moved back from out of town and have plenty of time on my hands. I thought I’d see if there’s anything I can do to help.”

  The tall, gangly man before her unfolded his body from the creaking chair and stood. He smiled and shook her hand. “I’m Joe Peña. Have a seat.” He gestured toward the empty chair in front of his desk and sat back down. “We need all the help we can get. If you’re from this area and have spent any time here, then you know fires don’t limit themselves to the season of summer.” His smile turned into a friendly and warm ear-to-ear grin. He settled back in his chair, and after waiting for her to get a little more comfortable in hers, he went on.

  “Thanks for coming in. But before I tell you exactly what would be expected of you as a volunteer firefighter here in our house, I’d like to know you better. So please, tell me a little about yourself.” Sensing a certain level of discomfort on her part and reticence in responding, Peña continued, “Let me help you out. You can start by telling me why on earth, of all the seasonal jobs you could choose,” he paused to tick off a few, “lifeguarding at the Y, summer camp, Dippin’ Dots at the ice cream parlor,” he smiled, then resumed, “you’d want such a dangerous and demanding unpaid job.” He leaned back in his seat and propped his feet up. With his fingers laced together behind his head, he showed no sign of being in a hurry to get back to what he’d been doing, and he waited for her to open up.

  “Yuma is my hometown and, although I’ve been away for a while, I know the devastation fires can bring, the force of nature’s fury. I’ve seen how careless many people are. The random acts of ignorance they practice, despite knowing what can happen here, where it’s often so dry and hot.” She paused, then went on, “I also know that changes were made some time ago in the way fires are managed, and that the forests, especially in the northern part of the state and across all the west, have become overgrown with grasses and brush, fuels that used to be regularly burned off. The heat alone on the many triple-digit days we experience here is enough to make such tinder spontaneously combust. But even without that, there are plenty of intentionally set fires, automobile tailpipes, and bolts of lightning to get them going with little more than a spark.”

  Peña smiled, pleased with her awareness of the seriousness of the situation. Although Yuma itself was replete with dry washes and desolate highways, one needn’t travel far to find sites where they have wreaked devastation. Laguna and Mittry Lake, even on the Fort Yuma Indian Reservation where former Bureau of Indian Affairs employees who had been contracted on an as-needed basis had set fires on tribal and Bureau of Land Management acreage to be hired for the increased pay of a quick-response. Humans aside, the area was a magnet for thunderclouds and severe storms, and there was no controlling Mother Nature.

  He reached for a set of keys that hung from a wooden peg beside the room’s sole curtained window, complements of a doting and domestic ladylove. “You’ve come to the right place, Mendoza, follow me,” he invited as he pushed his chair back once again and stood.

  He took her out the door and down a long, narrow hall, past a lone combination ladder and pumper truck, pointing out rooms and introducing her to a trio of men who stood next to a collection of red helmets and yellow turnout coats. They stopped at a large, open bay in which tires were laid out, artificial inclines had been created, and dangling ropes had been hung.

  “This is where we train and stay fit when we have to stick close to home and wait for calls. Speed, agility, and endurance, among other strengths and abilities, are periodically tested here in timed trial exercises and runs. In our line of duty, none of us can afford being out of shape or facing an obstacle we can’t overcome. The people we pledge to protect and serve depend on us.”

  He looked her over, sizing her up for the job.

  “It’s important that every man—and woman—” he smiled and continued, “on the line is prepared and able to handle everything from a smoldering ember to a full-out and enraged blowup. Whether confined to an unoccupied, dilapidated shack of a building in the middle of a football field of asphalt or running free in the wild, racing toward an over-populated and dense civilization.”

  Their eyes met, and she nodded once in understanding and agreement.

  He walked on, pointing to a pile of overstuffed sacks lined up against a painted block wall. “See those over there? Each one weighs between twenty-five and forty-five pounds, give or take an ounce, a weight every member of our crew is expected to be able to carry over those hills.” He pointed back at the inclines. “And up and down ladders that extend to a height at least two stories tall.”

  As they rounded the corner and entered the truck room from the rear, Mena saw a series of rolled hoses off to the side. “And, of course, you’d have to learn to roll and be able to wield and carry those.” He pointed to them, then flipped a thumb back toward the engine. “And ready gear for each truck. We also make house calls, you know.”

  It wasn’t long before Mena had secured a teaching position. It was a profession that always suffered needs and never experienced a surplus. But she continued to fight fires on weekends until the winter months passed and spring gave way to the end of the academic year and the relentless heat of an unbearable desert sun. She’d no sooner packed up her classroom for the year when structure fires were outnumbered by calls of the wild, and it was time for her to pack her bags and go where duty called.

  “Grab your gear and get moving. We’re hiking in.”

  The last of the trucks had just pulled in on the gravel at the base of the mountain they’d be climbing that day. Doors were slammed shut as the crew piled out and reached for the tools of their trade. Lucky for their lungs, the worst of the smoke was still far away. It was a steep climb, especially taxing for the rookies not yet conditioned to the rigors of their work or the challenges of the terrain, m
ade more difficult when they were laden down with the extra weight of shovels, saws wrapped in heavy chains, and five-gallon water jugs.

  After what seemed like an eternal march, the crew leader at the helm stopped and turned to face them. “That’s good for now. We’ll start here. Ready on line. Follow the yellow shirt to your right. Don’t wear yourselves out, but do try to keep a steady pace. Let’s go!”

  “A peso for your thoughts, Mendoza.” A hand placed gently on her shoulder invited Mena to turn around.

  “Isa, I didn’t hear you come up.” She paused for a few seconds, rearranging her thoughts.

  “I was just thinking about the fires. So many so soon, with no storms, no dry lightning, or strikes of any kind.”

  Although Salas knew that wasn’t really what had been on the woman’s mind, she also knew there was no way to get Mendoza to open up. She would when and if she became ready, which wasn’t often, so she let it drop. “I know, right. I mean, it seems like there’s been one right after the other. Anyway, I just wanted to say hey. I’m being moved further down the line.”

  Salas smiled at her and waved goodbye, noticing Mena had already returned to her faraway thoughts.

  It was only the second week of June, and the earth at her feet had already been sucked dry by a brutal Arizona sun, relentless with its scorching heat and the burning rays it hurled down from cloudless skies. The canopy provided by the branches of the trees kept them mostly shielded, but it also blocked any chance for a cooling breeze that might come down from above. Reaching down for the canteen she had clipped at her side, Mena tipped the aluminum flask up. When her parched throat and cracked lips were satisfied, she emptied the rest of the refreshing liquid over the top of her pounding head in an effort to drown out her surfacing thoughts. Instead, the cascade merely added to the force of the waters within, upon which her memories now freely flowed.

  The inescapable pull of the swift current carried her up over the banks of the Gila River through winding canyons and over rocky mountaintops. Back in time to a place where, and to a woman with whom, she’d finally discovered the depth and experienced the true meaning of love.

  A cold, yet comforting shiver ran down her spine as she closed her eyes and felt the winds pick up. When she reopened them, she found herself surrounded by the natural beauty of a landscape covered with a blanket of glistening and freshly fallen snow. In her hands, the cool metal gave way to a steaming mug of marshmallow-topped hot cocoa, around which reddened and numbing fingers curled as she stepped back to admire the freezing sculpture onto which she’d just added the finishing touches: a woolen hat she’d bought during a surprise winter sleet storm, a brightly colored scarf, and her cherished Oakleys, now perched comically across the smooth bridge of an icicle nose.

  In that one unforgettable moment of pure and simple pleasure that would be frozen into her mind forever, Mena smiled and looked up. Beyond the window’s frosty barrier, further still than the hearth’s warm and inviting glow, sat a woman. Her face was fixated upon and illuminated by the halo cast from the small rectangular screen at which she stared, oblivious to all but her own innermost thoughts.

  “Mendoza!”

  She snapped her head, still dripping wet, in the direction of the unwelcome and intruding voice. With piercing and penetrating eyes, she glared at the man responsible for interrupting a feeling she wasn’t ready to abandon or let go.

  “I’ve been calling you for the last twenty minutes.” The man jerked his hand in the direction of her radio, which she knew hadn’t squawked once. “Now that you’ve finally decided to grace me with your attention, have you seen Selitto? I can’t find him anywhere. He was supposed to relieve Gonzalez over an hour ago.”

  Seth Henderson, the six-foot-two, blond, blue-eyed, and brawny—albeit, mostly brainless—lumberjack loomed over her, effectively blocking the slant of a sun that had found its way through the foliage overhead. He momentarily blinded her by the light that ricocheted off the shovel he shouldered near a diamond-studded lobe.

  “No tools on shoulders.” She was happy to remind him of one of the first rules they’d learned as probies.

  He merely smirked at her, but in spite of her present mood and personal dislike for the man she often found herself digging line with, Mena attempted a forced smile. The corners of her mouth, however, promptly fell in protest as her squinting eyes came to rest on the words rippled across the too-tight T-shirt that stretched across his chest, which included the words firefighters and hoses. She really didn’t want to know what it read. Shaking her head in disbelief, she stooped to tighten the lace of her boot and turned away in disgust.

  “I haven’t seen him since we cleared the ridge. Check with Larsen over there.” She shrugged him off, sharply signaling the way with the wave of a stiff and slightly charred, well-worn yellow glove.

  Although she’d signed on with the forest service specifically for, and welcomed, the rigorous, distracting, and physically demanding aspects of the job, sometimes the displays of testosterone simply got to be too much for her, and Mena wondered how long she could go on. In spite of what she’d read and heard, her experience had been that the average firefighter, with very rare exception, not only failed to acknowledge the equality and worth of the women on his squad, but had no qualms about loudly and repeatedly voicing and displaying his belief that the only place for a woman, in what he claimed as his world, was flat on her back, waiting for him in bed at home or, in his shared ad-nauseam fantasies, at the station house on a bunk.

  “Don’t let him get to you. He’s got it in for all women right now. His girlfriend just dumped him. We’re not all assholes, you know.”

  Mena turned to see Joe Peña standing behind her. She hadn’t heard him come up, and she wondered how long he’d been there. Warmed by the sincerity of his words, she returned his smile and stood back up.

  Indeed, Peña was different. She had liked him from the start. He’d never singled her out or treated her as any less than the other guys. As soon as she’d shown she was tough enough, which was about the same time she’d grown restless and tired of sitting around the station house waiting for a call, he’d convinced her to head up to Montana for three days of Fire Guard School. There, surrounded by a brigade of mint green Forest Service F250s and amidst a bunch of seasonal workers in search of a Red Card—the basic certification a wildland firefighter needed to be paid for their grueling work—she’d found her niche in the wild.

  By way of practice fires and written tests, she had learned how to recognize dangerous weather conditions, monitor wind direction, speed, and humidity, and dig a real fire line in the duff. Although she still helped at Yuma’s firehouse when at home, she now spent her summers on-call and rotating out to hot zones like Montana, California, Washington, and Oregon. Tomorrow, she was heading to the famed ponderosa pine forests of northern Arizona, where supposed lightning strikes during a recent and severe electrical storm had caused several fires to break out, but now she found she wasn’t convinced of their causes.

  “Anyway…” Peña went on, “now that we’ve got this one pretty much under control, we’re all getting together tonight at the Pop a Top before we get orders to move on and scatter about. After all, it’s not only fire season, but Miller time.” He uncapped a nonexistent bottle of brew in mime and poured out his plea: “It’d be nice to have the whole crew there, but that can’t happen without you, Mendoza. So say…seven o’clock?”

  “I’ll try to make it,” she said, gathering her gear and heading down the hill toward their makeshift parking lot.

  He knew her well enough to know she wouldn’t come. She never did, although he went out of his way to make sure the invitation always went out. He watched her walk away, then glanced over at Henderson, who’d stopped to talk to Salas and now had his back facing him. Guys like Seth would always split up a group.

  As far as Peña was concerned, it made no difference what gender
a firefighter was, or who they chose to go to bed and wake up with. What did matter was that a person had your back when you needed them, that they could be counted on when the going got rough, and Mena had proven to be one of the best he’d ever worked with. He’d trust her with his life, if it ever came to it, though he hoped like hell it never would.

  By the time Mena made her way back down the mountain, the sun had already begun its descent as night’s sentinel prepared to stretch a blanket of stars above the ocotillo and palo verde trees. Far below, the coyotes, foxes, and rattlesnakes readied themselves for a few hours of foraging and play after yet another day spent languishing in the desert dunes in sands scorched by the heat of the midday sun. Having stored and secured the last of her gear in the rear of her Jeep, Mena paused to gaze up at the gorgeous canvas above her head onto which Mother Nature was subtly splashing and boldly brushing red, orange, and lavender hues with colors that burst forth from the direction of the setting sun.

  “Isn’t it beautiful?” A hand placed gently on Mena’s shoulder brought her back to the earth’s ground, and she turned to see who it was. As she refocused her attention, a friendly face came into view. Isabel Salas—the only other woman on the crew, a graduate student at Northern Arizona U, and the young woman who’d greeted her earlier—smiled at her from beneath the blue bill of a Lumberjack’s cap.

  Mena smiled and looked at her, as if for the first time, studying her intently.

  Isa didn’t look away. On the contrary, her smile and step forward welcomed the lingering attention.

  Suddenly uncomfortable with the closeness and undeniable physical provocation caused by the heat of the woman’s nearness and touch, Mena stepped back, causing Isa’s hand to fall.

  From a safer, more comfortable distance, Mena continued her unabashed observation, during which she saw that they shared similar features, no doubt the legacy of distant, yet linked ancestral families. The same skin tone, straight black hair, and shape of eyes that rested atop high, well-defined cheek bones. Isa’s mouth, Mena noticed, was distinct; her lips were fuller and more sensuous.