Aquaboogie

by Susan Straight

  On the way to the tumbleweeds, he leaned back and dreamed of napalming feed trails in the spring. The heliotorch dropping liquid fire in loops that fell on dense patches of hundred-year-old chaparral, thick and tangled mats of vegetation, making scar-trails, singeing in precise lines for the deer and other animals that couldn’t force through the brush. He smelled it, the smoke almost wet with the moist rain still clinging to the leaves.

  “When do we torch trails?” he asked Fricke, who sat a few rows away.

  “No way,” Corcoran said, before Fricke could answer. “Rio Seco County’s only gotten three inches of rain for the whole damn year. Fricke said you gotta have five to torch.”

  “Big-time drought,” Fricke said.

  “Shit, we been here since what—April?” Scott said. “Season don’t usually even start till May.”

  Darnell kept looking at Fricke, who was one of the permanent Forest Service crew, the supervisor. “Not enough rain’s gonna fall while you seasonals are laid off,” Fricke said in his slow, twangy voice.

  “That’s the wet months, though,” Darnell said.

  “Not this year, homeboy.”

  “Your home ain’t my home,” Darnell said. “But we torch first thing when we get back, if it rains, right?”

  Fricke laughed. “You better wait and see who gets called back.” Darnell stared at him. “Hey, I heard the funding might get cut, might have fewer seasonals up here.”

  “No way,” Corcoran said again.

  “Yeah, a second ago you’re talking drought and now fewer guys—what kind of voodoo is that?” Darnell said, watching Fricke’s eyes, even bluer with the smudges of black underneath from rubbing his dirty sleeve against his face. His Marlboro Man moustache.

  “No bullshit, man—I feel a greenhouse effect coming,” Fricke said, raising those bushy eyebrows, and Darnell knew he would play dumb cowboy and change the subject. “Hotter and hotter,” Fricke said, turning to Perez.

  It was Friday. That meant yesterday’s puny twenty-acre job near Poppet Flats really might have been the last one, because seasonals could get sent home for good tonight. Panic shifted from side to side in Darnell’s stomach, swayed with the shoulders in front of him, rows of dirty collars and heads that wobbled loosely with the bus lurches. Used to the rhythm after the long season, the same mountain curves.

  “Friday. Tumbleweeds,” Perez said, pinching the skin between his eyebrows.

  “Season’s gotta be over, man, it’s past Thanksgiving,” Sutton said.

  “I’m going out every night,” Scott said, smiling. “Find me some beach babes cause I’m staying with Doyle in Newport.”

  “Not me, dude. I’m finding sleep, forty-eight hours of sleep,”

  Sutton said. “I don’t want no chick snoring, no nobody snoring.

  No goddamn fire.” He pushed Darnell’s shoulder. “You don’t look thrilled about the weekend. Or you still hate tumbleweeds that much?”

  Darnell didn’t answer. What, tell everybody I want to stay? No sleep, nasty food no woman would cook, white-boy rock in my ears all the time—say that’s cool with me.

  “You asking about the heliotorch cause you got somebody to fry at home in Rio Seco?” Perez asked, and they laughed.

  “I need to fire up that nasty shirt Fricke’s been wearing four days straight,” Darnell said.

  “Ah, but nobody smells it except me, until I go down the mountain. Then I catch women with the firefighter smoke, because I’m not a kept man. Kept on a leash like you, awhoooh.” His lips barely showed under the moustache.

  “I’ma see her soon enough, okay?” Darnell said. “Bow wow wow.” He didn’t want them talking about Brenda. They were off the mountain now, on the freeway toward Beaumont. I shouldn’t have told them anything. I’ma be in touching range every minute I’m home. Every weekend, Brenda got angrier about how long the season lasted; every Sunday, she kept her fingers on his shirt, his belt, delicate and persistent as the raccoons that came to camp for food. My only crime? She’s five months pregnant and sometimes I’m out the house for an hour. The mass of fear stayed in his stomach, hard as bad biscuits. Different from fire scared, he thought—that was like liquid smoke his father added to barbecue sauce, warmth that made his muscles slide against bones, his joints swing with the shovel. Fumes turned to the feel of Yukon Jack, the stuff Fricke and Corcoran had given him once or twice.

  But this panic, that yesterday’s fire was the last… stepping off the bus, he raised his arms to smell the ash in his sleeves, while everyone groaned at the tumbleweeds, huge and humped as Volkswagens covering the vacant fields.

  Orange vests were scattered against the dead-brown bushes. “Road-camp guys?” Doyle said. “I thought they only did fire roads.”

  “Don’t matter to me.” Perez smiled. “I don’t care who does em, long as I don’t.”

  “You do,” Fricke said. “They fork em, you guys supervise the burn.”

  Darnell looked quickly at the prisoners to see who he knew. None of the other guys ever had to do that; they were all Orange County boys except Scott, who was from San Bernardino. College types, doing their training so they could get hired on regular. I’ll have to put in four years of seasonal before they even look at me, he thought, watching the road-camp faces. This is the only time I see a brother all week. Nobody from the Westside today, not like last month when he’d recognized Victor Miles and Ray-Ray. They were doing time for dinky shit: tickets, drunk in public, child support. He remembered when Roscoe, his father’s partner, did three months, last winter.

  The road-camp guys piled the bushes into the roadside ditch. “I heard these guys are doing a lot now,” Corcoran said, leaning against the bus. “This stuff, the fire roads, and somebody said they got a prison crew doing the Highway 74 fires. One every week, just about.”

  Darnell walked closer to Fricke. “So that’s how we save money on seasonals, huh? Get all the brothers and Chicanos for free.”

  “People would ask what the problem is,” Fricke said, and Darnell drummed his heel, waiting through the well, pardner pause. “The jail’s overcrowded. Get guys outside all day, and they don’t want to fight as much.”

  “Save that shit,” Darnell said. “I know all that fresh-air shit by heart. I spent a year in the Conservation Corps, remember? ‘Low-income youths, between the ages of eighteen and twenty-three… We promote spirit, instill discipline.’ You’re talking free labor. And I get a promoted spirit. Uh-uh, save that shit for somebody else.” He walked partway into the field, listening to the rattling tumbleweeds and then the muffled tremble of the flames. Perez laughed.

  Darnell was whore of the day. He looked again at the calendar—December 1st: Tucker. Moving cans in the dark pantry, he found several jars of Ragu. The camp was still full staff, high alert, and he wasn’t making something he had to cook one by one. He fried some hamburger and poured the Ragu into the huge cast-iron pot. When he heard glopping bubbles, he turned down the heat and went to check the bathroom. Leaving the door open, he crouched in the shower to pick up rogue pieces of soap.

  Pine needles scraped against the screen; the wind had been high for two more weeks, and the crew was out almost every day. Brush went up from an exhaust spark, or a train wheel striking the track. The air was so dry he felt it deep in his throat even with his mouth closed, rushing down to steal his spit. Smoke in his crotch, his armpit hair. Since the Santa Anas had started, the creosote and manzanita seemed to crackle, waiting, ready.

  Thrownaway ovals of Dial were cemented to the floor. Perez and Scott were slobs. Everybody was in a bad mood now, throwing clothes and dishes around because they wanted to go home, everybody but him and Corcoran. Corcoran always talked about his grandfather was a fireman in New York, his dad was in L.A., yeah, yeah. Darnell rubbed the chips like chalk in his palm. They were all waiting for Thompson, the big boss, this morning, thinking he’d say the word. But he’d laughed, said, “Breathe, huh? Two more weeks, minimum.”

  Brenda would love to wash
the smoke out of his clothes one last time, in the washer below their apartment. In the carport. They’d moved downtown, away from the Westside a few miles. Now he’d be stuck trying to get a slave, pay the rent until he could come back to camp in the spring.

  Voices came from the kitchen door. Scott and Fricke. The pot lid clanked, and Scott said, “I thought Tucker was whore of the day.”

  “He is,” Fricke said.

  “Man, I thought he’d make fried chicken or something. One of his specialities,” Scott said. “It’s Friday, and we gotta eat spaghetti again.”

  Darnell moved toward the door. Fricke said, “Specialties?”

  “Yeah, you know, fried chicken, watermelon.” Scott laughed.

  Darnell stood in his face. “Ho, ho, ho. When you gon learn to say it right? Ho of the day. Speak so I can understand you, boy. Cause on the serious tip, your attitude is to the curb.” He pushed Scott against the counter, and Fricke’s forearms slid up his sides and pulled.

  “Man, what’s your problem?” Scott said, his upper lip rising square, incredulous, the way Darnell hated. “It was a joke, man.”

  “I’ma kick your ass all the way to the Colonel, buckethead,” Darnell said. “Buy you some Original Recipe.” He jerked his shoulder away from Fricke.

  Scott was out the door. “It doesn’t make a difference,” Fricke said. “It didn’t apply to you anyway. Fried chicken is a southern dish, and you’re a native Californian. Scott’s a little ignorant.” Darnell shook his head. Fricke always tried so hard; under the Willie Nelson voice, something was there, sharper, or laughing, when he talked to Darnell. Fricke touched the ends of his moustache, not twirling the tips like guys did to call attention to the hair. He just liked the feel.

  “You want me around,” Darnell said. “You want me next to you when we’re on the line, and you’re always trying to tell me something.”

  “You’re a demon on the line,” Fricke said, “and you’re the best at chopping rattlers. I don’t know where you get that.”

  Darnell saw the snakes rushing ahead of the flames, and he smiled, thinking of how he loved to slice the shovel at them, but he knew what Fricke was trying to do.

  “We’re not talking about my talent. I’m not getting called back, I know it. I’ma tell you something, I hear Thompson when he talks about me, I listened once when you guys were outside. Every time he says my name, it’s a hesitation.” He stopped, not knowing how to explain. Like when your transmission isn’t working right, and the car doesn’t want to shift into overdrive, just hanging there at the edge of the gear, and he’d had to think about it—his name, that’s what Thompson didn’t like.

  “That’s not it,” Fricke said, but Darnell went back into the bathroom. He’d heard Thompson say, “Darnell, Carnell, Martell. You watch the NBA, and half the names are ridiculous. Colored give their kids a burden in them names.”

  “If you don’t get called back, and I’m saying if,” Fricke said, following him, and Darnell sucked his teeth. “It’s nothing like that. You and Scott are the only ones here on that training grant from the government. That’s all it is, just funding. If it happens.”

  Darnell turned. “Save that shit, too,” he said. “I’m going down the mountain early.”

  “I can’t bleed the brakes here, we have to go to my dad’s.” He watched her on the couch, her belly a round mixing bowl, a dome, under the T-shirt. “The Fiat’s having trouble getting down from camp.”

  “You said the season was over.”

  “Yeah, but I’ll have to go up and get my stuff,” he lied.

  “Only home one day and we gotta go to your father’s,” she said. “Everybody on the Westside is gonna tell me how big or small or high or low this baby is, and I ain’t in the mood.” She kept the side of her neck to him all the way there.

  At his parents’ house, he followed her into the back room, where he had pressed himself against her on Friday nights all during high school. Everyone used to be asleep, and the gray TV light would flash in her earrings when he pulled back to look at her. He put his lips under her ear and said, “Come on, don’t be evil. I’ll only take an hour. Ain’t nothing to eat at home anyway, go out and help Mama, let her ask you about the baby. She can’t wait to be a grandma.”

  She opened her eyes a little wider, not the slits she’d kept them all day, and pushed him out ahead of her.

  In the front yard, his father’s shouts floated from the side of the house. “What’s today—Saturday? Y’all bring that thing back Tuesday.”

  Nacho and Snooter, who lived down the street, wheeled out the battery recharger. “Shoot, Red Man, we’ll take care of it,” Snooter said.

  “You the ones let somebody steal my best dolly last month. I brought that sucker in the kitchen every night, and you left it in the yard. Gave it away.”

  Roscoe, his father’s friend, said, “They stealing hoses, trashcans, anything. Need to get enough for a smoke of that shit.”

  Darnell crouched beside the Fiat. “You bleeding them brakes again?” Snooter asked. “You home for good now?”

  Darnell shook his head. Snooter pointed toward L.A., to the Sugarloaf Hills near the freeway. Except for a few weeks in winter, they were always wheat-brown, with dirty cream rocks scattered thickly on the ridges. “Somebody done burned the toast and put strawberry jam on it. Y’all help out?”

  The brush was blackened, and red phoscheck coated the boulders. He laughed at Snooter. “That’s city land, man, not Forest Service territory.”

  Brenda glared out of the wrought-iron screen door. “You ain’t even started yet. Uh-huh,” she said, arms crossed high. Darnell slid under the car; he could tell when she was gone because Nacho said, “What’s wrong with her?”

  “Bellyache,” Darnell’s father said. “And it ain’t hardly gon get better.” Folding chairs scraped across the driveway and beer cans popped open. “You best stop hiding up there in the mountains and get you a real job,” his father said to Darnell’s feet. Darnell jerked his knee, and his father said, “And you heed to quit hiding over here, too. I ain’t playing.”

  “So damn dry the eucalyptus are falling like sticks in the wind,” Roscoe said. Roscoe and his father trimmed and took out trees, hauled junk and brush.

  Darnell knew exactly how Roscoe’s face would look, dreamy blurred, his eyes stuck on something not moving. Roscoe was a poet, and he drove people crazy with his arguments about precise words and meanings.

  “Winter’s supposed to be a different light,” Roscoe said. “Silver, I guess, paler, and summer’s heavy, hot gold. This winter ain’t acting right.”

  “Give me a break, just for today,” Darnell’s father shouted.

  “Oystershell,” Nacho said, surprising everyone. Darnell rested his hands on his chest for a moment. “That’s the color. Supposed to be.”

  Darnell was still under the car when he smelled the burning, acrid and faraway. Pulling himself out, he walked to the street to look at the sky. From the way the smoke rose and roiled, hung there till the afternoon turned plum-dark as sunset, he knew the fire was in the river-bottom again. Homeless people living down there, cooking, and didn’t know the wind. This was thick cane and bamboo, black smoke, blazing ten-fifteen feet down into the stand where water and retardant couldn’t reach. West of the city, he thought, the sun soon so completely gone that Esther, two doors down, came out looking sleepy, like she’d napped with her new baby, and called to her kids. “How it get dark so fast?” she said to Darnell.

  “It’s not evening yet,” Roscoe said. “Fire.” They squinted at the ashes falling like snow, the flakes of gray rocking back and forth until they settled on car hoods.

  “Look at that,” Roscoe said, head thrown back. Streams of crows flapped over, quiet and straight instead of jostling each other. “They got fooled, heading to the river-bottom because they think it’s time to bed down for the night.”

  “Girl,” Esther called, “look at you!” Brenda put her arms around Darnell’s waist and bum
ped the baby against him. Damn, he thought, watching the red-tinged sidewalks, the palm fronds lifting like hair in the wind. No way she’d come with him. And this wind might turn cool tomorrow, pick up some rain. This could be it, the last one.

  “What y’all staring at? Helicopter?” she said into his back.

  “Bring that belly over here,” Esther said. “We looking at the smoke.”

  “Not another one,” Brenda said, swinging around to face Darnell, forehead lowered.

  “You better hold that baby,” he said, taking Esther’s girl gently. “You need the practice.” He cradled the head in his arm for a moment, made himself stare at the tiny lips, shiny-wet. And her breath smelled clear and citrus, like 7-Up. He leaned closer, shocked, and Esther laughed.

  “Smell good?” she said. “That’s why baby’s breath is a pretty little puff of flowers.” He couldn’t look at Brenda; he’d only wanted to distract her. The baby felt heavier than he’d expected, and he passed her to Brenda.

  Turning back to the car, he called to Roscoe, “Come help me finish up.”

  An hour later, the sun lowered itself from the smoke, hanging in the band of sky between the pall and the line of hills. No progress for the crew, he could tell by the smoke, rising just as dark and no white puffs to signal success. The way the whole day had changed, the darkness, called to him like always, like when he was ten, eleven, riding his bike for miles to find the fire, in the orange-packing houses by the railroad tracks, in the fields near the freeway, on the Sugarloaf Hills. He kept his face away from the west, waiting for Brenda to come back from Esther’s.

  But when she padded across the street, Esther behind her, he said, “You want a milkshake? We can go for a test drive, see if the brakes are okay.” She smiled, mollified, and then she must have seen the excitement in his face.