by A. R. Shaw
“Now, Talbot! Up and over, faster. The flames won’t wait for you!” Tuck bellowed after her.
Kiss my ass! she thought in a sing-song voice and ignored him as she summited the wall, swung her legs over to the other side, landed, and hit the ground running. She was strong. She could run faster than the other two women in the group and most of the men. At five-foot-seven, Dane’s build wasn’t exactly athletic. No, she had more of an old-fashioned hourglass figure, an anomaly passed down from generations…it wasn’t even that she wanted it more than the others. To her this wasn’t a race to beat the other firefighters. Competition wasn’t in her DNA. She didn’t need to prove herself to anyone. It wasn’t who won…it was determination beyond all others, beyond all achievements. She pushed herself past the run, past the muscle fiber damage, past the exhaustion. Nothing would hold her back. She took pleasure in pushing herself, her motives never a competition with anyone else or any record. She didn’t care a damn thing about coming in first or last. It was in the run, that by the day’s end, her nightmares subsided just the smallest fraction more. It was a race against her past that consoled her soul.
By the time she crossed the end line, the men ahead of her, Matthew, Owen and Cal, were bent over at the waist in obvious pain, their packs sliding toward their heads. Cal actually heaved bile and tried not to. He’d not learned yet it was better to submit to the vomit. Let it all out.
Owen patted him on the shoulder in what she thought was a condescending gesture. Cal must have thought so too because he flung his hand away. Sweat poured off their skin and darkened their clothing. Matthew handed her a water bottle from the several waiting on a nearby table. She ignored him and grabbed her own. He smiled and shook his head, still in the effort to calm his own breath.
Cal, vomit-free now, watched her before he was distracted by another female crossing the finish line. He tended to linger on the opposite sex with shameless disregard, she’d noticed.
As Dane finished slogging down the last of the liquid in her bottle, she kept a decent distance from every one of them as long as that distance didn’t cause her to attract more attention. As everyone settled in, the dry breeze actually cooled her as it blew past the sweat covering her skin.
“All right, Matthew Brogen came in first, Cal Weston, second, and Dane Talbot, third,” Tuck announced. “The rest of you have some work to do. We’ve been at this for weeks now. Even though all of you have technically passed requirements, that’s not good enough,” Tuck yelled. “Dane, good job.”
All eyes were on her instantly. She nodded her chin and though she didn’t smile at the compliment, she also didn’t frown. That would also cause Tuck, and everyone else, to observe a bad attitude. She’d learned, along the winding path of life, the subtitles appreciated by common human interactions. Her goal was invisibility, not to be seen. Not to attract attention.
“Listen up,” Tuck said as they were all in recovery mode around him. “It looks like we’ve had a change in our schedule. Instead of dropping in on the Bitterroot Fire, we’ve decided to graduate all of you early.”
All the firefighters stopped, looked nervously from one to the other and then at Tuck again.
In a serious tone, Tuck said, “This fire season is looking more ominous than we’d first thought and we’re shorthanded. Many of you should have noticed on your run today how dry conditions are. We had little rainfall in May and June. Even though our winter snowpack was sufficient we’re now in mid-July and it’s so dry, the fire hydrants are chasing the dogs around town.”
Dane looked up at him. Everyone looked up at Tuck, his face a blank stare, and Cal snickered.
“It’s not funny, dammit!” Tuck yelled. “The dry winds of the Palouse are increasing every day.” Tuck pointed at Cal. “Why is that a bad sign, Weston?”
Cal’s Adam’s apple bounced once and he said, “In this area the dry winds of the Palouse fuel the burn, sir. It caused the Big Burn of 1910; that’s what all other burns are measured by since then.”
“That’s right. You are all familiar with the events of the historic Big Burn by now.” He shook his head. “We are not more advanced than the firefighters of that era. I don’t care what anyone tells you. In many ways, we are less advanced. It will happen again.
“That…and we have a damn war going on, though no one wants to call it that. Some of the fires lately were arson or set accidentally. The one in the Bitterroot Forest, as you know, was set by a helicopter crash after it was hit by a ground-to-air missile. Apparently, Senators are targets these days. Cathy McCarthy was on board with her family and blown to pieces because she announced her bid for re-election. Looks like the investigation has come to the conclusion her death was a hit by rightwing fundamentalists.”
“But that’s not what they’re saying on the news,” Cal said.
“Cal, who’s talking here?” Tuck seemed weary of correcting the man by now. “The news is nothing but propaganda. And we’ve all taken a pledge to ignore the ignorance of the man in the box and focus on the fires they set, no matter their political affiliation. The point is, there will be no graduation. Few of you are ready, even though you’re all assigned to teams already. Check your wrist device for that notice and report tomorrow morning.”
Tuck turned to Dane before he left and said, “You have a message in my office. Some family member’s looking for you. She’s your aunt, I think she said. Number’s on my desk.” Then he headed down the hill from which they came. Unease swelled up inside Dane’s chest. Messages didn’t come for Dane and she didn’t have any aunts. She had no family at all, actually. And she had no use for messages.
Dane watched as Tuck’s head hung down as he went back to the building. He seemed defeated. It was as if they hadn’t passed a physical and he was sending them off to war anyway—not because he wanted to, but because he had no choice in the matter. He felt guilty. She could see it weighed on his shoulders until he was a bent man walking.
Stunned, the group in front of her looked from one to the next. Some still sucked down the remains of their water while others attempted in vain to read the screens on their watches in the glaring sun. A few, like Cal, clenched and twisted the recycled plastic in their hands, emitting an annoying sound.
Dane lifted her brown eyes and thought, Someone should punch him, as she adjusted the pack slack on her back and drank the few dregs left at the bottom of her bottle. Then she stood up, and trailed Tuck’s shrinking image, shadowed with thoughts she embraced. Tomorrow brought a new day. A new day to relinquish her demons in the run and in the water.
4
Ed
If it wasn’t his feet aching, it was Ed’s left shoulder giving him fits. Standing on the factory-line floor of the molded plastics company with his safety goggles strapped to his head and an elastic arm brace Velcroed around his forearm, which didn’t help relieve the repetitive pain of reaching out with his left arm, he pulled the molder toward him, releasing the resin injection and then pulling out a perfectly new white plastic lawn chair. Releasing the weight of the molder machine with ease, over and over again, all day, every day took a toll on his joints. The only thing that changed was the color of the lawn chair. Today, it was white; tomorrow it might be dark evergreen. Ed preferred the white since the color didn’t transfer to his gloves throughout the day. The green ones made his gloves look like some landscape guy. He also preferred his title to be production personnel. It just seemed like a step up from landscape laborer.
Yet, despite the everyday pain caused by his job, he was worried that any day now, some new machine would come in and take his place, and it would. Only a matter of time, he thought, pressing his lips into a thin line. He was sure of it. Not that he had anything against mechanization; he just hoped they brought in the technology after he retired and not before.
From the glare of his safety goggles, in patriotic hues of blues and reds, the reflection of an emergency broadcast came from the breakroom television, a few yards past the yellow safety-line in
front of him. When he looked up, several Easter-egg-hued hard hats were crowded around the television above them.
From his position, the headline read: EXPLOSIVES STOLEN. WHITE SUPREMACISTS SUSPECT…
“Bad idea, skinheads,” he mumbled and returned to work.
Then moans from the breakroom erupted and he turned his attention again to see what the commotion was about this time.
“Where’s the remote?” someone yelled from underneath a baby blue hardhat. “I can’t hear a damn thing.”
The remote was passed like a baton through the crowd to the requester and he pointed up at the television, increasing the volume with each click.
On the screen, a woman sweating in a dark blue wool suit with long blond hair shading the left side of her face said, “…killed in an ambush. Families are yet to be notified. The White Supremacists of Clark County are claiming responsibility.”
Cutting to the news desk, an anchor asked, “You mean they’re claiming that they’re responsible for killing thirty-two police officers while in a funeral procession, like a terrorist organization?”
The reporter moved a lock of hair away from the delicate structure of her face before the wind had a chance to malign her features again and said, “It appears so.”
“Thank you, Andrea,” the news anchor said. “It’s a sad day, indeed.”
“That was fast. Must have been an inside job,” Ed said to himself, turned back to his task at hand before the supervisor detected the distraction and noted the time left in his shift. Elated that there were only a few more hours before he was scheduled to head home, he mentally went through his freezer, picturing the labels on the sides of the blue boxes and their contents, debating between the one that read ‘Boneless Pork Ribs’ or the ‘Homestyle Meatloaf.’
5
Dane
The early morning haze was interrupted violently by an ominous orangey-yellow. That’s what Dane looked upon as she stood her turn in the Twin Otter, hooked on a line far above the earth. Matthew, in front of her, took his hand signal from the drop coordinator and then her turn was next, but Dane had already released her carabiner from the line, barely acknowledging the order, then hurtled herself into thin air. As she surrendered to the smoky dawn freefall, arms and legs splayed out like a flying squirrel, only the wind lifted her in weightlessness. Through all her training, she couldn’t help but smile behind the gridded mask with each jump. She was not afraid, welcoming what lay aground. The sight of them, they drifted down like a string of angel’s wings into the flames below.
Of course, in front of Tuck, she told herself to grim up, because Tuck would not like the fact that she enjoyed the prospect of hurtling to her own death as she rapidly narrowed that distance to earth. She did her best to withhold any public signs of elation as it was. Nor did Tuck know she released the parachute a millisecond or two after the required time. Her index finger twitched at the cold metal lever, and she always caught the ground too hard.
Later, on the surface within the burning forest, fighting the flames, she heard, “Dane. On your left!”
She heard the warning shout in the distance over the roaring fire, but just barely. Had she taken the time to look at what Tuck alerted her to, before leaping right, the burning limb would have at least landed on her shoulder, singeing her and knocking her to the ground.
“You’re moving too damn fast, Dane. The terrain’s too steep. Slooow down,” he yelled over as he caught up to her.
She’d found out weeks ago several of them from training ended up on Tuck’s new team: Matthew, Cal, Rebecca, Owen and herself. She’d looked forward to moving on to where no one really knew her name but that wasn’t going to happen, not yet. Not sure what to think or what the deciding factors were for her to remain under the supervision of Tuck, she didn’t really care. She was as far as she could get from where she once was. The series of events that landed her in Missoula, Montana, within the burning Bitterroot Forest, never quite left her when she was conscious by day or in the dark of night. Always under the surface, the miserable pain would take hold of her and plunge her beneath depths of misery if she didn’t constantly keep it in check. And in order to keep it in check, she pushed herself harder and harder. At night, the opposite was true. Only…she tried to mask the worst of the pain with the packets.
“Let’s move!” Tuck yelled as Cal and Dane finished cutting a line for the backfire they were about to light in hopes of extinguishing its date with the coming blaze.
Sweat dripped down into her eyes as they stood at a distance watching Matthew and a few of the others move through the night in front of the nearing fire, their blackened silhouettes in a sort of choreographed theatrical display. Dripping liquid fire onto the brittle ground, Dane found beauty in the destruction.
Her hair up and held in place behind a bandana, she leaned forward to ease the weight of the heavy pack on her back and poured water from her bottle along her exposed neck. At times the heat was unbearable, the tiny hairs along her neckline long ago singed away.
“Are you seeing anyone, Dane?” Cal asked her.
His voice was like an army of earthworms. She stared first at his boots and stood up, rising slowly…glaring. “Don’t ever ask me that again. Step off, Cal, now!”
Cal first smiled and then sneered at her, the firelight casting ominous shadows across his smirked face as he rocked back and forth on his heels. He moved away reluctantly, as she wished, sidestepping in the crunching brush a few yards, and casually swung his Pulaski tool to his side in wide swaths.
She didn’t like Cal…not from the start. Her initial assessment had been right. But there was something more. He was off, somehow. All through training, he’d gone after one female or the other, was often rebuffed, and then when that didn’t work, he got pushy and insistent, even grabbing young Rebecca in the bunkroom one night while the rest of them were relaxed in front of the television watching the latest hit episode of the protesters of the day.
Rebecca screamed, “Get your hands off me.”
One of the guys jumped up. Without seeing, they all knew who the hands belonged to. He darted into the darkened bunkroom and Cal yelled, “I didn’t touch her. She’s batshit crazy.”
“Get the hell out of here, Cal.”
“I’m goin’,” he said and though Dane never cared to watch the commotion, she did hear the front door slam as Cal left the building.
That should have been the end of things, but it wasn’t. After they’d returned from a local brushfire, Dane heard Cal pleading his case again to Rebecca on the front porch.
“I’ve already filled out the report, Cal. There’s a case number and everything. Give me a reason to press send. Go ahead. You do not talk to me, touch me…nothing. You keep your distance.”
Cal must have reached for her as he said, “You don’t mean tha…”
But that’s where it ended. The next sound was a hand slap across his face. “I do mean it, Cal. Listen to my words…never…again!”
The altercation ended there for now, but there was something about the sound of that slap that instantly brought Dane back to a place she didn’t like, didn’t want to ever visit again.
By the light of the television, she stood from the comfortable chair she’d occupied.
Matthew caught her look as she passed. “I’m sure Rebecca can handle this herself,” he said.
Dane nodded. “I’m just getting a drink.” She passed the back of his chair. Matthew often watched her in a way that didn’t bother her. He had an annoying habit of looking out for her. She knew he had a crush, but she’d never acknowledge that. That was a part of life that wasn’t in the cards for Dane. Not now, not after what’d happened. All of that was gone for her now.
In the kitchen, the light over the stove arched out along the stone flooring. They kept it obsessively neat, all of them. It was always a joint effort. Probably had something to do with their structural firefighter days. The cleanliness just carried over. They all smelled like smoke conti
nuously. That aroma was embedded in the woodwork of the table and chairs, of the fabric curtains, of the tapestry of comfy couches they lounged on. It was in the molecules of their hair and would never go away so that burning aroma was always a part of their being.
Dane opened the upper cupboard and slid out a deceptively fancy-looking acrylic glass. Upper management didn’t seem to trust them with actual glass. The plates and bowls were a Creamsicle sunny-orange melamine, too. The color always contrasted oddly with her food, made it less appetizing somehow. She’d wondered more than once if perhaps they’d been white or cream and the last crew had a penchant for spaghetti and meatballs, staining the dishware for eternity. She’d never know. Filling the glass at the sink, she looked behind her at the open doorway. Seeing no one, she reached into her pants pocket and pulled out a thin paper tube. Tearing the tip away with her teeth, she poured the powdered contents into the water and stirred the liquid into a tiny typhoon until the powder dissolved to invisibility.
Quickly, she discarded the paper vial in the trash without regard to the flavor selection this time, making sure to plunge it into the depths, never to be seen again. Matthew walked in as she held the glass to her lips, thinking to herself, Ah, margaritas. Though no one could smell the contents, her eyes widened anyway.
“They’re fine. She really told him off. We’re keeping an eye on him. Rebecca might be looking for you though. You should talk to her.”