English Creek - Ivan Doig

by Ivan Doig

  “I did. But that was then." I tried, for the second time this day, to put into words more than I ever had before. "If Stanley’s going to be any help to Dad, I’m going to have to be the help to Stanley. You know what he told me, after the camptending. When he said he couldn’t have got along up there without me. The fire camp will be even worse for him. Paul’s going to be looking down his neck the whole while and the first time he catches Stanley with a bottle he’ll send him down the road." Plead is not a word I am ashamed of, in the circumstances. "Let me go with him, Mom."

  She shook her head. "A fire camp is a crazyhouse, Jick. It wouldn’t be just you and Stanley this time. They won’t let you hang around—"

  Here was my ace. "I can be Stanley’s flunky. Help him with the cooking. That way I’d be right there with him all the time."

  Serious as all this was, my mother couldn’t stop her quick sideways grin at the notion of me around food full-time. But then she sobered. With everything in me, I yearned that she would see things my way. That she would not automatically tell me I was too young, that she would let me play a part at last, even just as chaperone, in this summer’s stream of events.

  Rare for Beth McCaskill, not to have an answer ready by now. By now she must have been on tenth and eleventh thoughts about the wisdom of having asked Stanley Meixell to go to Flume Gulch. My mother faced me, and decided.

  "All right. Go. But stay with Stanley or your father at all times. Do you Understand That? At All Times."

  “Yes," I answered her. Any term of life as clear as that, even I could understand.

  * * *

  Stanley was my next obstacle.

  “She said you can? C-A-N, can?"

  "Yeah, she did. You can go on in and ask her." I kept on with my saddling of Pony.

  “No, I’ll take your word." He rubbed the back of his right hand with his left, still studying me. “Going to a fire, though—you sure you know what you’re getting into?"

  Canada Dan and Bubbles and Dr. Al K. Hall in a tin cup had come into my life at the elbow of this man and he could stand there and ask me that?

  I shot back, "Does anybody ever?"

  The squinch around Stanley’s eyes let up a little. "There you got a point. Okey-doke, Jick. Let’s get to getting."

  * * *

  Up the North Fork road the summer’s second Meixell-McCaskill expedition set out, Stanley on a buckskin Forest Service gelding named Buck, leading the pack horse Homer with the load of lunches, and me behind on Pony.

  I still don’t know how Stanley managed the maneuver, but by the time we were past the Hebner place and topping the English Creek-Noon Creek divide, the smoke rising out of the canyon of the North Fork ahead of us, I was riding in the lead just as on our camptending expedition. That the reason was the same, I had no doubt. I didn’t bother to look back and try to catch Stanley bugling a bottle, as that was a sight I did not want to have to think about. No, I concentrated on keeping us moving at a fast walk, at least as fast as I could urge Pony’s short legs to go.

  Something was different, though. This time Stanley wasn’t singing. To my surprise I missed it quite a lot.

  * * *

  Smoke in a straight column. Then an oblong haze of it drifting south along the top of Roman Reef. The day’s lone cloud, like a roll of sooty canvas on a high shelf.

  A quantity of smoke is an unsettling commodity. The human being does not like to think its environs are inflammable. My mother had the memory that when she was a girl at Noon Creek the smoke from the 1910 fires brought a Bible-toting neighbor, a homesteader, to the Reese doorstep to announce: "This is the wrath of God. The end of the world is come." Daylight dimming out to a sickly green color and no distinct difference between night and day, I suppose it would make you wonder.

  That same 1910 smoke never really left my father. He must have been about twelve or thirteen then, and his memory of that summer when the millions of acres burned in the Bitterroot while the Two had its own long stubborn fire was the behavior of the chickens there at the family homestead on the North Fork. "Christamighty, Jick, by about noon they’d go in to roost for the night, it got so dark." The 1910 smoke darkness, and then the scarred mountainside of Phantom Woman as a later reminder; they stayed and stayed in my father, smears of dread.

  Stanley too had undergone the 1910 smoke. In the cabin he had told me of being on that fire crew on the Two fire west of Swift Dam. "Such as we were, for a crew. Everybody and his cousin was already fighting some other sonuvabitch of a fire, Bitterroot or somewheres else. We dabbed at it here as best we could, a couple of weeks. Yeah, and we managed to lose our fire camp. The wind come up and turned a flank of that fire around and brought it right into our camp. A thing I never will forget, Jick, all the canned goods blew up. That was about all that was left when the fire got done with that camp, a bunch of exploded goddamn tin cans."

  All three of them, each with a piece of memory of that awful fire summer. Of how smoke could multiply itself until it seemed to claim the world.

  * * *

  Now that my father had stepped in as fire boss at Flume Gulch, Paul Eliason was the camp boss. I will say, Paul was marshaling things into good order. We rode in past a couple of CCs digging a toilet trench. A couple of others were setting up the fire boss tent, each of them pounding in tent pegs with the flat of an ax. The feed ground the kitchen area—already was built, and there we encountered Paul. Paul still had an expression as if somebody big was standing on his foot and he was trying to figure out what to say about it, but he lost no time in sending one of the CCs off with Homer and the lunches to the fire crew. "Late is better than never," he rattled off, as if he invented that. “Thanks for delivering, Jick," he next recited, awarded Stanley a nod too, and started back to his next target of supervision.

  “Paul," I managed to slow and turn him, "somebody here you got to meet. This is Stanley, uh—"

  “—Kelley. Pleased to know you, ranger."

  "—and, he’s here to—" I finally found the inspiration I needed:

  "Chet signed him on as your cook." Well, as far as it went, that was true, wasn’t it?

  Paul studied this news. "I thought Chet told me he was going to have to get one out of Great Falls, and the chances didn’t look real good even there."

  "He must have had his mind changed," I speculated.

  "Must have," Paul conceded. He looked Stanley over. “Have you ever cooked for a fire camp before ?"

  "No," responded Stanley. "But I been in a fire camp before, and I cooked before. So it adds up to the same."

  Paul stared. "For crike’s sake, mister. Have you got any idea what it takes to cook for a bunch of firefighters? They eat like—"

  “Oh yeah," Stanley inserted, "and I almost forgot to tell you, I also’ve ate fire camp grub. So I been through the whole job, a little at a time."

  “Uh huh" emitted from Paul, more as a sigh than an acknowledgment.

  Stanley swung his gaze around the camp in interest. "Have you got some other candidate in mind for cook?"

  "No, no, I sure as the devil don’t. I guess you’re it. So the feed ground is yours, mister." Paul waved to the area where the cookstove and a work table and the big T table to serve from had been set up.

  "You better get at it. You’re going to have CCs coming at you from down that mountain and EFFs coming up from Great Falls. Figure supper for about seventy-five." Paul turned to me. "Jick, I appreciate you getting those lunches up here. If you start back now, you’ll be home well before dark."

  “Well, actually, I’m staying," I informed Paul. "I can be Stanley’s flunky. My mom said it’s okay."

  Possibly this was the first time a member of a fire crew ever arrived with an excuse from his mother, and it sure as hell was nothing Paul Eliason had ever dealt with before. Particularly from a mother such as mine. You could all but see the thought squatting there on his mind: what next from these damn McCaskills?

  But Paul only said: "You sort that out with your fa
ther. He’s the fire boss." And sailed off to finish worrying the camp into being. Stanley and I began to tour our feed ground. The muleloads of groceries and cooking gear Isidor Pronovost had brought in by pack-string. An open fire pit and not far from it the stove. Both were lit and waiting, as if hinting that they ought to be in use. A long work table built of stakes and poles. And about twenty feet beyond it, the much bigger T-shaped serving table. I could see the principle: tin plates and utensils and bread and butter and so forth were to be stacked along the stem of the T so the fire crew could file through in a double line, one along each side of the stem, to the waiting food at both arms of the T. The food, though. That I could not envision: how Stanley and I were going to manage, in the next few hours, to prepare a meal for seventy-five guys.

  "So," Stanley announced. "I guess—"

  This I could have completed in my sleep—"we got it to do."

  The Forest Service being the Forest Service and Paul being Paul, there hung a FIRE CAMP Coon Book on a nail at the serving table. Stanley peered over my shoulder as I thumbed to the page titled "First Supper," then ran my finger down that page to where it was decreed: "Menu—beef stew."

  "Slumgullion," Stanley interpreted. "At least it ain’t mutton."

  Below the menu selection, instructing began in earnest: "Place large wash boiler, half full of water, on fire."

  "Christamighty, Stanley, we better get to—" I began, before noticing the absence at my shoulder.

  Over beside the packs of groceries, Stanley was leaning down to his saddlebags. Oh, Jesus. I could forecast the rest of that movement before it happened, his arm going in and bringing forth the whiskey bottle.

  I don’t know which got control of my voice, dismay or anger. But the message was coming out clear: "Goddamn it all to hell, Stanley, if you start in on that stuff—"

  "Jick, you are going to worry yourself down to the bone if you keep on. Here, take yourself a swig of this."

  "No, damn it. We got seventy-five men to feed. One of us has got to have enough damn brains to stay sober."

  “I know how many we got to feed. Take a little of this in your mouth, just enough to wet your whistle."

  When things start to skid they really do go, don’t they. It wasn’t enough that Stanley was about to begin a bender, he was insisting on me as company. My father would skin us both. My mother would skin whatever was left of me after my father’s skinning.

  “Just taste it, Jick." Stanley was holding the bottle out to me, patient as paint.

  All right, all goddamn right; I had run out of thinking space, all the foreboding in the world was in me instead; I would buy time by faking a little swig of Stanley’s joy juice, maybe after putting the bottle to my lips like this I could accidentally on purpose drop the—Water.

  Yet not quite only water. I swigged a second time to be sure of the taste. Just enough whiskey to flavor it faintly. If I’d had to estimate, perhaps a finger’s worth of whiskey had been left in the bottle before Stanley filled it with water.

  “It’ll get me by," Stanley asserted. He looked bleak about the prospect, and said as much. “It’s worse than being weaned a second time. But I done it before, a time or two when I really had to. Now we better get down to cooking, don’t you figure?"

  * * *

  “The Forest Service must of decided everything tastes better with tin around it," observed Stanley as he dumped into the stew boiler eight cans each of tomatoes and peas.

  "Sounds good to me right now," I said from where I was slicing up several dozen carrots.

  * * *

  "You got time to slice some bread?" Stanley inquired from where he was stirring stew.

  “Yeah." I was tending a round boiler in which twelve pounds of prunes were being simmered for dessert, but figured I could dive back and forth between tasks. "How much?"

  "This is the Yew Ess Forest Service, remember. How ever much it says in the book."

  I went and looked again at the "First Supper" page.

  Twenty loaves.

  * * *

  "Jick, see what it says about how much of this sand and snoose to put in the stew," Stanley requested from beside the wash boiler, a big box of salt in one hand and a fairly sizable one of pepper in the other.

  "It doesn’t."

  "It which?"

  "All the cookbook says is ‘Season to taste.’ "

  “Aw, goddamn."

  * * *

  My right arm and hand felt as if they’d been slicing for years. I remembered I was supposed to set out five pounds of butter to go with the bread. Stanley now was the one at the cookbook, swearing steadily as he tried for a third time to divine the proportions of salt and pepper for a wash boiler of stew.

  "What’s it say to put this butter on ?"

  His finger explored along the page. “Pudding dishes. You got time to start the coffee after that?"

  “I guess. What do I do ?"

  "Fill two of them halfbreed boilers in the creek .... "

  * * *

  All afternoon Paul had been going through the camp at such a pace that drinks could have been served on his shirttail. But he gave Stanley and me wide berth until he at last had to pop over to tell us the fire crew was on its way in for supper.

  He couldn’t help eyeing us dubiously. I was sweaty and bedraggled, Stanley was parched and bedraggled.

  "Mind if I try your stew?" Paul proposed. I say proposed, because even though Paul was camp boss it was notorious that a cook coming up on mealtime had to be handled with kid gloves.

  This advantage must have occurred to Stanley, because he gave Paul a flat gaze, stated, "If you’re starved to death, go ahead; I got things to do," and royally strode over to the work table where I was. We both watched over our shoulders like owls, though. Paul grabbed a spoon, advanced on the stew tub, dipped out a dab, blew on it, tasted. Then repeated. Then swung around toward us. "Mister, you weren’t just woofing. You can cook."

  Shortly the CCs streamed into camp, and Stanley and I were dishing food onto their plates at a furious rate. A day on a fire line is ash and sweat, so these CCs were not exactly fit for a beauty contest. But they were at that brink of manhood—most of them about Alec’s age where energy recovers in a hurry. In fact, their appetites recuperated instantly. Some CCs were back on line for seconds before we’d finished serving everybody a first helping.

  Paul saw how swamped Stanley and I were with the serving, and sent two of his CC camp flunkies to take over from us while we fussed with reheating and replenishment. The fifty emergency firefighters from Great Falls were yet to come.

  So was my father. I had seen him appear into the far end of camp, conferring with Kratka and Ames, now his fireline foremen, and head with them to the boss tent. He wore his businesslike look. Not a good sign.

  I was lugging a resupply of prunes to the T table when I glanced into the grub line and met the recognition of my father, his hand in mid-reach for a tin plate.

  For a moment he simply tried to register that it was me standing before him in a flour sack apron.

  "Jick !-What in the name of hell are you doing here?"

  " ’Lo, Dad. Uh, I’m being the flunky."

  "You’re—" That stopped not only my father’s tongue but all other parts of him. He stood rooted. And when I sunk in, so to speak, he of course had to get his mind to decide who to skin alive for this, Paul or Chet.

  "Mom said I could," I put in helpfully.

  This announcement plainly was beyond mortal belief, so now my father had definite words to express to me. "You’re going to stand there with your face hanging out and tell me your mother—" Then the figure at the stove turned around to him and he saw that behind this second flour sack apron was Stanley.

  “Hullo, Mac," Stanley called out. "I hope you like slumgullion. ’Cause that’s what it is."

  "Jesus H.—" My father became aware of the audience of CCs piling up behind him in the grub line. "I’m coming around there, you two. You better have a story ready when I
arrive."

  Stanley and I retreated to the far end of the kitchen area while my father marched around the T table to join us. He arrived aiming huffy looks first to one of us and then the other, back and forth as if trying to choose between targets.

  "Now," he stated. "Let’s hear it."

  "You’re kind of on the prod, Mac," observed Stanley. "You don’t care that much for slumgullion, huh?"

  “Stanley, goddamn you and your slumgullion. What in the hell are the pair of you doing in this fire camp?"

  Stanley was opening his mouth, and I knew that out of it was going to drop the reply, "Cooking." To head that off, I piped: "Mom figured you could use our help."

  "She figured what?"

  "She wouldn’t have sent us"—adjusting the history of my inception into the trip with Stanley and the lunches-"if she hadn’t figured that, would she? And what’s the matter with our cooking?" Some CCs were back in line for third helpings; they didn’t seem to lack appreciation of our cuisine.

  I noticed something else. My father no longer was dividing huffy looks between Stanley and me. He was locked onto Stanley. My presence in this fire camp was not getting my father’s main attention. As steadily as he could, after his afternoon of drought and wholesale cookery, Stanley returned the scrutiny. "Mac," he said, in that rasped-over voice from when my father and I first met him on the trail that day of June, "you’re the fire boss. You can put the run on us any time you want. But until you do, we can handle this cooking for you."

  My father at last said: "I’m not putting the run on anybody. Dish me up some of your goddamn slumgullion."

  * * *

  It was getting dusk when the EFFs arrived into camp like a raggle-taggle army. These men were drift, straight from the saloons and flophouses of First Avenue South in Great Falls, and they more than looked it. One guy even had a beard. Supposedly a person couldn’t be hired for emergency firefighting unless he owned a stout pair of shoes, but of course the same passable shoes showed up on guy after guy in the sign-up line. Most of these EFFs now were shod in weary leather, and hard-worn blue jeans if they were ranch hands, and bib pants if they were gandy dancers or out-of-work smeltermen from Black Eagle. Motley as they looked from the neck down, I paid keener attention to their headgear. There was a legend in the Forest Service that a fire boss once told his sign-up man in Spokane: "Send me thirty men if they’re wearing Stetsons or fifty if they’re wearing caps." Most of these EFFs at least were hatted ; they were used to outdoor work, were not city guys except for recreational purposes.