by A. R. Shaw
Kim put out the cigarette carefully and tucked the half-smoked end back inside the pack, squeezing it into position next to its brothers. She’d have to save them. It was the first time she’d allowed herself the vice while she collected the money she’d need. Collected was a loose term. Kim flashed on the young lady in the car from earlier. She wasn’t hurt too bad…Kim could tell. Even if her injuries were life-threatening, the ambulance was coming anyway. Her insurance would take care of her. It was always that way with the rich ones. They never suffered or had to wait in line like the rest of ‘em. But last week…the man she hit…she wasn’t so sure about that one. He might not be okay…but then again, because of the amount of money he kept in his wallet, she figured his family, if he had one, would be better off with the insurance money they’d receive. She did them a favor, really. That’s the way she looked at it.
“Mom?”
“I said get to bed!”
23
Dane
A few weeks later, with the summer going from hot to hell, they’d gone after one fire and then they were off to the next. Many of them set intentionally by various arsonists for various reasons. Each morning, Dane eyed Cal thinking, Today is your death day, pal. But then, as she and Matthew discovered, Cal stuck close to Tuck and once, during a particularly difficult fire, she thought her chance was there. She watched as Cal chopped and shoveled with his Pulaski tool with his back to the flames, a rookie mistake. Tuck wasn’t in sight. She’d motioned to Matthew and took a few steps toward Cal, when suddenly Tuck stepped around from behind the trunk of a nearby tree. He eyed her with a dead serious glare and shook his head.
She was too far away to hear if he mouthed any words, but none were needed. His message was loud and clear. Don’t you even, it said. Tuck was protecting Cal, but he didn’t seem to like the job. Not just from her—the others also took jabs at Cal when Tuck’s back was turned. Only she meant to kill him outright. The others only meant to menace him.
Turning away, Dane continued on her way then. She wouldn’t hesitate again. She didn’t need this job. In fact, the more she thought about events of her past, she had other things to do. This was only her way of healing and gearing up for what needed to be done.
“All right,” Tuck said one morning, “this is it.” He’d prepared them for the very real possibility that they might have to fly into a city. They practiced for this scenario a few times. It still made them nervous. No one had ever done anything like what they were suggesting before. Those fires were set intentionally. Many of the local fireman either abandoned their jobs due to the chaos or died trying to the fight the fires themselves. As a result, manpower was slim, volunteers more so and fires were allowed to spread to the point everyone feared the entire city might burn to the ground. Only the inner, most expensive streets were spared until now. It was as if all resources were there only for the famed street, the Magnificent Mile.
“Chicago,” Tuck said. Groans erupted. “I know. Instead of a forest of trees, we’re jumping into a forest of buildings. Let’s go. Gear up. We do what we’re called to do.”
Matthew piped up, “Tuck, when we trained, we figured a city the size of Missoula…not Chicago. Do we have backup?”
“What do you mean?” Tuck said.
“Will someone watch our backs, like the military or police? I don’t mind fighting fires, I just don’t like being shot at while I’m doing my job.”
There were murmured agreements amongst the team. Tuck put his hands on his hips. “Look,” he shook his head, “we’re on this one alone. I don’t have to tell you how screwed up the country is right now. But we’re it, the last defense. People are literally burning alive there trying to escape. We’re there to hold off the fires for the rescue teams to come in.”
“Let them burn,” Cal said in a deadpan tone.
No one acknowledged his comments.
“Look, I understand the concern. That’s why we’re called to come in. I’ve been assured there will be armed guards there with us,” Tuck said.
Hmmm…Dane thought, as Matthew threw her a cautionary look.
“Cal, you’re with me,” Tuck said, like a parent calling to a disobedient child out of constant repetition.
“Oh, I thought I’d get to join one of the other teams this time,” Cal said.
“Keep it up, Cal,” Tuck said without even looking at him.
Dane briefly thought to offer Cal a position on their team, flashing ankle bracelet and all, but then discarded that idea right away, knowing Tuck would be suspicious of her intentions.
“I don’t know why we’re still standing here. Suit up; let’s go! The plane’s waiting,” Tuck ordered, and the fire team scrambled.
Though it made her nervous to return to Chicago, she thought, This is it. This is Cal’s last day if I have anything to say about it.
24
Kim
“Why are we…”
“Jasmine. Get. On. The. Bus,” Kim said to her daughter through gritted teeth as she straddled her son across her right hip.
“Mom, I don’t…”
But Kim didn’t give her daughter the chance to finish the protest. With her free hand, she yanked on the back of her daughter’s uncombed hair and shoved her toward the bus’s opened doors.
“Ouch!” the girl yelped automatically and pressed her lips closed as quickly as she could, before the next cry escaped or the tears sprang from her eyes. Instead, as she boarded the bus, she folded her arms in front of her as her cheeks reddened.
“Get in that seat right there, Jasmine. No, don’t look at him. You were there first,” she said loud and clear for the elderly man to hear. He’d already braced his hand on the metal back bar of the seat’s edge in order to sit down. She knew he’d heard her, as he reversed momentum and turned to make another selection with the painful speed of a man in his eighties. Kim nodded when he’d cleared away.
“He was going to sit here, Mom,” Jasmine said in a loud whisper, red rising up her cheeks.
“He can get himself another seat. There’s no reason for you to look after that old man, sister. He can take care of himself,” she said as she abruptly sat her son down between them. “You are big enough to walk on your own. I don’t need to carry you everywhere.”
As many times before, she noticed Jasmine take hold of her little brother’s hand when she scolded him. She babied him too much. The boy didn’t even talk. That had to stop. But then she caught judging stares of too many strangers watching them as they settled in. She needed to keep a low profile while they got out of Canton. She was attracting too much attention as it was.
You two settle down and stop upsetting me.
Kim sat on the aisle side as a few more passengers came down the row, one brushing against her ample hip as he passed. “Excuse you!” she yelled.
“I’m sorry, ma’am,” the passenger said and when Kim turned to face the front of the bus, she caught sight of the bus driver staring at her. She nearly flipped him the bird but then saw two police officers walking nearby through the small windows of the bus.
She wanted to glare back at the driver but then shook her head instead and looked down. It was about a fourteen-hour bus ride, give or take the traffic, and the lady at the counter warned of delays, but they would make it. She had to be patient if she wanted to get there despite these people provoking her at every turn.
As Kim studied the wadded-up silver gum wrapper lying over the grilled black aisle mat, her daughter said, “Mommy, are we going to Grandma’s?”
Kim turned her head to face her daughter, thinking the police officers had to have moved on by now since she wasn’t already in handcuffs, “Yes, we’re going to Chicago, baby. Now don’t ask any more questions. I’ll tell you what you need to know.”
25
Dane
Held by a string, Dane found herself in the dark plane again, suited up and gazing down through the slight windows, glimpsing the hungry fires miles below. The confinement, she told herself, wa
s allowed only temporarily. That was the only way she’d make it through. The convincing was much like the running when one had no stamina left to go on. Only five more minutes. You can endure any hard task when you know how long it will take, when you have the knowledge it’s only temporary. Only this time it was different. Much different. This time it was a forest of concrete buildings below them. The flight had lasted a few hours and the drone of the plane had most of them falling asleep just after takeoff, like a bunch of newborns in a car seat, except for Dane. She watched Cal’s head bob to the side of his shoulder. She watched the drool strings deploy to his coat below and when Tuck caught her watching Cal, he made that same undeniable eye contact again with a slow shake of his head subtly, but without a doubt, no. His message loud and clear. Whatever you’re thinking, don’t do this thing, the look said.
Respecting Tuck was easy. He was an honorable man. But Dane no longer took orders from honorable men, or otherwise. Dane Talbot didn’t take orders. She just allowed others to tell her what to do for a limited time. Dane Talbot looked for distractions now…to get even. To get back at those that had done her wrong. And this…was just practice. Her motives, at the moment, were pest control and nothing more. She couldn’t leave Cal in place, not after what he’d done to Rebecca and not after the failed and broken system put him back in their midst. No, Cal had to go before she could leave. No one else would get justice for Rebecca or for the other women he’d likely prey upon in the future or those he’d created nightmares for in the past. No one, not even Matthew, had the strength to do what needed doing.
Filing out of the plane, the wind whipped at her clothing, carrying a burning scent burrowing deep into the fibers. Only this burning odor was different than what they were used to with forest fires. This one smelled more like burning oil, burning old mattresses, burning flesh and despair. She kept trying to huff it out of the lining of her nose and throat, to no avail. It wasn’t a pleasant smell like the burning of a forest of pine or cypress. This was something you wanted off you quickly. Off your skin. Out of your hair and yet, in an instant she’d dive into the acrid smoke, gliding through the misery of the failed concrete forest of man. Down between the buildings where the term light at the end of the tunnel took on a whole new meaning.
Surviving this city, any city, was just that…survival, especially when it was on fire and there existed no route of escape.
Landing with a thud between the buildings, as her predecessor had before her, she ran forward a few steps to let the chute glide down behind her and quickly unclasped her gear, automatically going into her routine after landing.
“Dane!” Matthew called back to her. “You’re over here with us.”
After packing up, she ran with her gear jostling against her frame. They held their Pulaski axes for chopping at closed doors and debris this time, not cutting lines on a forest floor. This was different, but they were also armed with wrenches and hoses sent down before them. They quickly linked up to hydrants or what few water trucks made it through, yelled out commands and started. More teams arrived behind them and soon all she saw were firefighters in action, with guards watching their backs.
“How’s that working out?” she yelled to Matthew with a tilt of her head at the assembly of men clad in camo holding guns.
“Hell if I know. I’m trying to pretend we don’t need them,” he yelled back over the din.
She and Matthew worked well as a team. This time they had four others along with them, including Owen. Matthew was the team lead even though Dane could do the job. She didn’t want the job as leader. She had no desire to give orders and if anyone came up with that idea, she’d stepped back into the crowd. She was capable…she just didn’t want the responsibility. Existing in a useful setting was her only purpose…not climbing the ranks—that she was happy to leave to the others.
When she had a quick second, Dane looked around her. She searched for Tuck. Where Tuck was, Cal too should be nearby, but Matthew caught her and shook his head.
Why was everyone always telling her no? Didn’t they understand she had to do this thing? No one else was going to do what needed to be done.
As if he read her mind and understood, Matthew gave her a sympathetic look and mouthed, “Not yet.”
Instead, she returned her attention back to the task at hand. They couldn’t afford diverted attention soon. She knew this. There was chaos all around them. They’d hooked up to the nearby fire hydrant and fought the flames on the first floor of what used to be a department store. The walls protested and groaned out as if in pain while the flames licked farther up, ruthlessly spreading.
“Hurry up!”
Where they worked in silence, as a team in the lit forest, here they were out of their preferred environment. They were all trained in structure fires before they were ever allowed to become smokejumpers but being suddenly thrust into an enclosure with walls once again took away the freedom of fighting a fire on their own terms. Suddenly walls were in a given space. Stairs. The oxygen itself was more limited, without a breeze through the trees or an extra place to run from the flames.
26
Kim
By noon, the bus was stuck in traffic that inched along desperately, like a shopper in the express lane snagging the last load of bread and milk before a hurricane. Despite the air conditioning, Kim noticed beads of sweat slowly running down Jasmine’s neck where she’d fallen asleep leaned against the window, her jaw hung open slack. Kim’s boy was also asleep, lying against his sister’s side. It was the perfect opportunity to go to the bathroom. Kim stood up and walked down the aisle toward the back of the bus.
“Ow,” one woman said as Kim’s hip brushed hard against the passenger’s hand.
“Well, move then,” Kim said so loud several other passengers jolted.
The woman instantly held her hand as if she’d touched fire and looked away.
Kim smiled to herself, knowing not too many people were willing to tangle with her, if they knew what was good for them.
After she finished in the restroom, she headed back to her seat only to notice the bus driver glared at her through the overhead mirror, intermittently staring between her and the next available inch through traffic as he made their slow escape. Her first inclination was to call him out, loud and clear…ask him what his problem was…tell him to mind his own damn business. Anger built up in Kim, but she knew deep down she could only glare back, not shout at the driver’s nasty glances. She had to keep a low profile no matter how rude they were to her, so instead she smiled at him enough that he gave up the staring contest in the end and shook his head and looked back into traffic, inching them forward a little bit more.
As she reached her seat, satisfied she’d won the battle, Jasmine said, “How much longer?”
“Too long with this driver, baby. He’s a lamebrain…can’t even drive a bus. Now here,” Kim said, reaching into her bag and handing both sleepy children a package of those orange-colored crackers with peanut butter smeared between them. She’d stood in one of those lines last week in downtown Canton at the Stark County Hunger Task Force building for hours to get them. The line wrapped around McKinley and Ninth Avenue on a cloudy, humid morning that had her dripping in sweat in minutes. Finally, in the end, she gave up after spotting the neon crackers in the young lady’s open bag in front of her with hands full of toddler struggling to get down for a run in the grass. Kim reached inside and grabbed them in the palm of her hand and swiped them under her loose cotton shirt into the waistband of her pants in a flash.
The lady looked back at her, thinking she’d just bumped into her when she felt the nudge. “Oh, sorry,” she’d said to excuse herself.
“Don’t worry ‘bout it. We’re all in this together.” And she smiled, then said she had to get to work and left the line. “No time for this. I’ll have to come back later and get something for my babies.” She smiled at the little boy giving his mother trouble.
The woman nodded her way as if she underst
ood.
Jasmine jumped up in her seat when she saw them, eager to unwrap the surprise.
“Don’t get crumbs all over, either. Took me a long time to get those.”
Jasmine began peeling away the wrapper when her brother thrust his package into her hands. The tight plastic too much for his tiny fingers to pry open.
“Just a minute,” Jasmine complained. “I’ll open mine first.”
“Keep it down,” Kim warned them through clenched teeth. Both children reflexively pulled away and then Kim leaned her head back against the vinyl seat. “I’m gonna shut my eyes now for a while, if you two can behave yourselves and not act like a bunch of animals.”
27
Dane
Dane exploded into movement when a nearby wall collapsed. The burning staircase they soaked with a deluge was collapsing in places, too. Clouds of sparks shot up toward their face masks, blinding their view.
“Retreat!” Matthew yelled and suddenly Dane backed away with her section of hose. That’s when she heard the child’s cries. “They’re still up there,” she shouted over the din.
Knowing she wasn’t in the right position to move fast enough, she moved sideways quickly, and Matthew jumped into place instead. With a gap in the staircase and limited time, the other firefighter held the child out in midair, dangling by the arm despite the child’s attempts to cling to the fireman’s suit. He let the boy free drop to Matthew below, like pitching a desperate perch back into the fresh waters of life.
Others fled past her. She only saw their uniforms, their respirators and tanks, never their eyes…not the fear in them.