English Creek - Ivan Doig

by Ivan Doig

  "Then what—what do you think will happen after that? With Alec, I mean. Alec and you and Dad."

  "We’ll just have to see in September. Your father still has his mad on about Alec throwing away college. For that matter, I’m not over mine either. To think, a mind like Alec’s and all he wants to do Is Prance Around Like—" She caught herself. Then got back to her tone of thinking out loud: "And knowing Alec, I imagine he’s still just as huffy as we are."

  “Maybe"—I had some more careful deciding than ever, how to say this so as not to bring about something which would rile Alec even more—"maybe if you and Dad sort of stopped by to see Alec. Just dropped by the Double W, sort of."

  "I don’t see how it would help. Not until Leona and the college question are out of the way. Another family free-for-all won’t improve matters. Your father and your brother. They’ll have to get their minds off their argument, before anything can be done. So."

  The "so" which meant, we have now put a lid on this topic. But she added, as if it would reassure me:

  "We wait and see."

  * * *

  Say this for the Forest Service life, it enlarges your days. Not long after my mother and I were done with breakfast the next morning, the telephone rang. Everybody in a ranger’s family knows the rings of all the lookout sites and guard cabins on the line. The signal was from the fire guard Ames’s cabin, the one nearest to Flume Gulch. "Rubber that, will you, Jick," called my mother from whatever chore she was on elsewhere in the house. "Please."

  I went to the wall phone and put the receiver to my ear. Rubbering, which is to say listening in, was our way of keeping track of matters without perpetually traipsing back and forth between the house and the ranger station.

  "Mac says to tell Great Falls there’s no chance of controlling the Fire by ten today," Paul was reporting to Chet. "If you want his exact words, he says there isn’t a diddling deacon’s prayer of whipping it today." Even on the phone Paul’s voice sounded pouty. My bet was, when my father arrived and took over as fire boss, Paul had reacted like a kicked pup.

  "Approximate words will do, given the mood Mac’s been in," Chet told Paul. "Anything else new, up there?"

  “No” from Paul and his click of hanging up.

  I relayed this, in edited form, to my mother. She didn’t say anything. But with her, silence often conveyed enough.

  When the same phone ring happened in late morning, I called out, "I’ll rubber."

  This voice was my father himself.

  "It is an ornery sonofabitch," he was informing Chet. "Every time a person looks at it, it looks a little bigger. We better hit it hard. Get hold of Isidor and have him bring in a camp setup. And tell Great Falls we need fifty EFFS and a timekeeper for them."

  “Say again on that EFF request, Mac," queried Chet. "Fifteen or fifty? One-five or five-oh?"

  "Five-oh, Chet."

  Pause.

  Chet was swallowing on the figure. With crews of emergency firefighters already on the Chinese Wall fire and the fires down in the Lewis and Clark forest, Two headquarters in Great Falls was going to greet this request for fifty more like the miser meeting the tax man.

  "Okay, Mac," Chet mustered. "I’ll ask for them. What else can I get you ?" Chet could not have realized it, but this was his introduction to the Golden Rule of a veteran ranger such as my father when confronted with a chancy fire: always ask for more help than you think you’ll need. Or as my father said he’d once heard it from a ranger of the generation before him: "While you’re getting, get plenty."

  "Grub," my father was going on. "Get double lunches in here for us today." Double lunches were pretty much what they sound like: about twice the quantity of sandwiches and canned fruit and so on that a working man could ordinarily consume. Firefighters needed legendary amounts of food. "And get us a real cook for the camp by tonight. The CC guy we been using could burn water. I’m going to get some use out of him by putting him on the fireline."

  "Okay," said Chet again. “The double lunches I’ll get out of Gros Ventre, and I’ll start working on Great Falls for the fifty men and a timekeeper and a cook. Anything else?"

  "Not for now," allowed my father. Then : "Jick. You there?"

  I jumped, but managed: "Yeah?"

  "I figured you were. How’s your fishing career? Owe me a milkshake yet?"

  "No, I didn’t go yesterday."

  "All right. I was just checking." A moment, then: “Is your mother around there?"

  "She’s out in the root cellar, putting away canning."

  “Is she. Okay, then."

  "Anything you want me to tell her ?"

  “Uh huh, for all the good it’ll do. Tell her not to worry."

  * * *

  "I will if I want to," she responded to that. “Any time your father asks Great Falls for help, it’s worth worrying about." She set off toward the ranger station. "At least I can go into town for the double lunches. That’ll keep Chet free here. You can ride in with me."

  While she was gone to apprise Chet, the Flume Creek fire and my father filled my mind. Trying to imagine what the scene must be. That campsite where my father and I, and Alec in the other summers, caught our fill of brookies and then lazed around the campfire; flames now multiplied by maybe a million. In the back of all our minds, my father’s and my mother’s and mine, we had known that unless the weather let up it would be a miracle not to have a fire somewhere on the Two. Montana weather, and a miracle. Neither one is anything to rest your hopes on. But why, out of all the English Creek district of the Two Medicine National Forest, did the fire have to be there, in that extreme and beautiful country of Flume Gulch?

  I heard the pickup door open and my mother call: "Jick! Let’s go."

  I opened the screen door and stepped from the kitchen. Then called back: "No, I think I’ll just stay here."

  From behind the steering wheel she sent me a look of surprise. "Do you feel all right?" That I would turn down a trip to town must be a malady of some sort, she figured.

  "Yeah. But I just want to stay, and do some more papering on my room."

  She hesitated. Dinnertime was not far off, her cookly conscience now was siding with her motherly one. "I thought we’d grab a bite at the Lunchery. If you stay, you’ll have to fix your own."

  "Yeah, well, I can manage to do that."

  As I was counting on, she didn’t have time to debate with me. "All right then. I’ll be back as soon as I can." And the pickup was gone. I made myself a headcheese sandwich, then had a couple of cinnamon rolls and cold milk. All the while, my mind on what I had decided, my eyes on the clock atop the sideboard.

  Each day a room of time. Now each minute as slow as the finding and pasting of another page onto my bedroom wall in there.

  I waited out the clock because I had to. It at last came up on the noon hour. The time to do it.

  Out the kitchen door I went, sprinting to the ranger station. Just before coming around to its front, I geared myself down to what I hoped was my usual walking pace.

  Chet was tipped back in a chair in the shade of the porch while he ate his lunch, as I’d counted on. Dispatchers are somewhat like gophers: they’re holed up indoors so much they pop out into the air at any least chance.

  "Hey there, Jick," I was greeted by Chet as I sauntered onto the porch. "What’s up? It’s too blasted hot to move if you don’t have to."

  "I came to see if it’s okay if I use the town line. I forgot to tell Mom something and I want to leave word for her at the Lunchery."

  "Sure thing. Nothing’s going on right now, you can help yourself. You should’ve just rung me, Jick. I’d have gone in and switched it for you." Uh huh, and more than likely have stayed on and listened, as was a dispatcher’s habit. Rubbering was something that worked both directions.

  "No, that’s okay, I didn’t want to bother you. I won’t need the line long." In I went to the switchboard and moved the toggle switch that connected the ranger station to the community telephone line
.

  "When you’re done," Chet said as I headed off the porch past him, "just ding the dealybob and I’ll switch things back to our line."

  "Right. Thanks, Chet. Like I say, I won’t be long." I moseyed around the corner of the station out of Chet’s sight, then sped like hell back to our house.

  Facing the phone, I sucked in all the breath I could, to crowd out my puffing and my nervousness about all that was riding on this idea of mine. Then I lifted the receiver, rang central in Gros Ventre, and asked to be put through to the Double W.

  Onto the line came a woman’s voice: "Hello ?"

  Perfect again: Meredice Williamson. I hadn’t been sure what I was going to resort to if Wendell answered.

  “ ’Lo, Mrs. Williamson. Can I—may I speak to Alec McCaskill in the bunkhouse, please? That is, would you ask him to go to the phone out at the bunkhouse? This is, uh, personal."

  Down the line came the silence of Meredice Williamson pondering her way through the etiquette of yet another Two country situation. Maybe I would have been better off with Wendell’s straightforward bluster. At last she queried: "Who is this, please?"

  “This is Alec’s brother Jick. I put Blanche and Fisheye in your barn that time, remember? And I’m sorry to call but I just really need to talk to—"

  "Oh yes. Jack. I remember you well. But you see, Alec and the other men are at lunch———"

  "Yeah, I figured that, that’s why I’m calling right now."

  “Could I have him return your call afterward?"

  “No, that’d be too late. I need to talk to him now, it’s just that it’s, like I said, private. Family. A family situation has come up. Arisen."

  “I see. I do hope it’s nothing serious?"

  "It could get that way if I don’t talk to Alec. Mrs. Williamson, look, I can’t explain all this. But I’ve got to talk to Alec, while he’s alone. Without the whole damn—without everybody listening in."

  “I see. Yes. I think I see. Will you hold on, Jack?" As if from a great distance, I heard her say: "Alec, you’re wanted on the phone. I wonder if it might be more convenient for you to answer it in the bunkhouse?"

  Now a dead stretch of time. But my mind was going like a million. All of the summer to this minute was crowded into me. From that suppertime when Alec stomped out with Leona in tow, through all the days of my brother going his stubborn way and my parents going their stubborn one, through my times of wondering how this had come to be, how we McCaskills had so tangled our family situation, to now, when I saw just how to unknot it all. At last it was coming up right, the answer was about to dance within this telephone line.

  Finally a voice from across the miles. "Jick? Is that you? What in the holy hell—"

  "Alec, listen, I know this is kind of out of the ordinary."

  "You’re right about that."

  “But just let me tell you all this, okay? There’s a fire. Dad’s gone up to it, at Flume Gulch—"

  "The hell. None of that country’s ever burned before."

  "Well, it is now. And that’s why I got hold of you, see. Alec, Dad’s only help up there is Paul Eliason, and Paul doesn’t know zero about that part of the Two."

  A void at the Double W bunkhouse. The receiver offered only the sounds within my own ear, the way a seashell does. At last Alec’s voice, stronger than before, demanding: "Jick, did Dad ask you to call me? If so, why in all hell couldn’t he do it him—"

  "No, he didn’t ask me. He’s up on the fire, I just told you."

  "Then who—is this Mom’s idea?"

  "Alec, it’s nobody’s damn idea. I mean, it’s none of theirs, you can call it mine if it’s anybody’s. All that’s involved, Dad needs somebody up there who knows that Flume Gulch country. Somebody to help him line out the fire crew."

  “That’s all, huh. And you figure it ought to be me."

  I wanted to shout, Why the hell else would I be on this telephone line with you? But instead carefully stayed to: "Yeah, I do. Dad needs your help." And kept unsaid too: this family needs its logjam of quarrel broken. Needs you and our father on speaking terms again. Needs this summer of separation to be over.

  More of the seashell sound, the void. Then: "Jick, no. I can’t."

  "Can’t? Why not? Even goddamn Wendell Williamson’d let you off to fight a forest fire."

  "I’m not going to ask him."

  "You mean you won’t ask him."

  "It comes to the same. Jick, I just—"

  "But why? Why won’t you do this?"

  "Because I can’t just drop my life and come trotting home. Dad’s got the whole damn Forest Service for help."

  "But—then you won’t do it for him."

  "Jick, listen. No, I can’t or won’t, however you want to say it. But it’s not because of Dad, it’s not to get back at him or anything. It’s—it’s all complicated. But I got to go on with what I’m doing. I can’t—"

  All these years later, I realize that here he very nearly said: "I can’t give in." But the way Alec actually finished that sentence was: "I can’t go galloping home any time there’s a speck of trouble. If somebody was sick or hurt, it’d be different. But—"

  “Then don’t do it for Dad," I broke in on him, and I may have built up to a shout for this : “Do it because the goddamn country’s burning up!"

  “Jick, the fire is Dad’s job, it’s the Forest Service’s job, it’s the job of the whole crew they’ll bring in there to Flume Gulch. It is not mine."

  "But, Alec, you can’t just—" Here I ran out of argument. The dead space on the telephone line was from my direction now.

  “Jick," Alec’s voice finally came, "I guess we’re not getting anywhere with this."

  "I guess we’re not."

  “Things will turn out," said my brother. “See you, Jick." And the phone connection ended.

  * * *

  It was too much for me. I stood there gulping back tears. The house was empty, yet they were everywhere around me. The feel of them, I mean; the accumulation, the remembering, of how life had been when the other three of my family were three, instead of two against one. Or one against two, as it looked now. Alec. My mother. My father.

  People. A pain you can’t do without.

  Eventually I remembered to ding the phone, signaling Chet that I was done with the town line. Done in, was more like it.

  For the sake of something, anything, to do, I wandered to my bedroom and listlessly thumbed through magazines for any more sea scenes to put on the wall. Prey to a Profound Preoccupation, that was me.

  * * *

  At last I heard the pickup arrive. Nothing else I did seemed to be any use in the world, maybe I at least had better see if my mother needed any help with the fire lunches she was bringing.

  I stepped out the kitchen door to find that help already was on hand, beside her at the tailgate of the pickup.

  A brown Stetson nodded to me, and under it Stanley Meixell said: "Hullo again, Jick."

  Civility was nowhere among all that crowded my brain just then. I simply blurted.

  "Are you going up to the fire ?"

  "Thought I would, yeah. A man’s got to do something to ward off frostbite."

  My mother was giving Stanley her look that could peel a rock. But in an appraising way. I suppose she was having second thoughts about what she had set in motion here, by fetching Stanley from the Busbys’ ranch, and then third thoughts that any possible help for my father was better than no help, then fourth thoughts about Stanley’s capacity to be any help, and on and on.

  "Do you want some coffee?" she suggested to Stanley.

  “I better not take time, Bet. I can get by without it." The fact was, it would take more than coffee to make a difference on him. "Who’s this dispatcher we got to deal with?"

  My mother told him about Chet, Stanley nodded, and she and he headed for the ranger station. Me right behind them.

  "Getting those lunches up there’d be a real help, all right," Chet agreed when my mother presented Stanle
y. But all the while he had been giving Stanley a going—over with his eyes, and it must be said, Stanley did look the worse for wear; looked as old and bunged up and afflicted as the night in the cabin when I was rewrapping his massacred hand. In this instance, though, the affliction was not Stanley’s hand but what he had been pouring into himself with it.

  Not somebody you would put on a fire crew, at least if your name was Chet Barnouw and the responsibility was directly traceable to you. So Chet now went on, “But beyond you taking those up for us, I don’t see how we can use—"

  "How’re you fixed for a hash slinger?" Stanley asked conversationally.

  Chet’s eyebrows climbed. "You mean it? You can cook?"

  "He’s A-number-one at it," I chirped in commemoration of Stanley’s breakfast the morning of my hangover.

  Chet needed better vouching than my notorious appetite. He turned to my mother. If ever there was a grand authority on food, it was her. She informed Chet: "When Stanley says he can do a thing, he can."

  "All right then," said Chet. “Great Falls more than likely would just dig out some wino fryhouse guy for me anyway." The dispatcher caught himself and cleared his throat. "Well, let’s get you signed up here."

  Stanley stepped over to the desk with him and did so. Chet looked down at the signature with interest.

  "Stanley Kelley, huh? You spell it the same way the Major does."

  My mouth flapped open. The look I received from my mother snapped it shut again.

  All politeness, Stanley inquired: “The who?"

  "Major Evan Kelley, the Regional Forester. The big sugar, over in Missoula. Kind of unusual, two E’s in Kelley. You any relation?"

  "None that I know of."

  * * *

  Chet went back in his belfry, and Stanley headed to the barn to rig up a saddle horse and Homer as the pack horse. Ordinarily I would have gone along to help him. But I was shadowing my mother, all the way back to the house.

  As soon as we were in the kitchen I said it.

  "Mom? I’ve got to go with Stanley."

  The same surprise as when I’d stepped up and asked to dance the Dude and Belle with her, that distant night of the Fourth. But this request of mine was a caper in a more serious direction. "I thought you’d had enough of Stanley," she reminded me, "on that camptending episode."