by Cassie Cole
Trace turned and ran backwards. “Hey Willard! You were a puddle pirate, right?”
“Fuck you,” Willard called, to a chorus of laughs from the rest of the Redding smokejumpers.
Trace laughed and resumed running normally. “Nah. We’re good with just us four.”
“I agree, boss,” Foxy said.
“Stop calling me boss!” Trace growled.
*
Aching muscles aside, it did feel good to get the blood flowing. When we got into the home stretch of the run, Trace lengthened his stride and increased his breathing. I struggled to keep up, but Foxy and Derek were fresh and had no trouble. Foxy soon passed Trace, who sped up again so he wouldn’t be outdone. I had to drop back as the two of them finished at a full sprint.
I couldn’t see who won until I came jogging up to the C23 Sherpa parked on the tarmac. “Better luck next time, squid,” Trace said.
Foxy was doubled-over with his hands on his knees, panting. “I could’ve beaten you if I really tried.”
“That’s good you left some in the tank,” Trace said smoothly, “since you have another lap.”
Foxy groaned. “For someone who insists he’s not our boss, you sure act like it.” He stood up straight and started out on his second lap, with Derek right behind him.
Trace wiped sweat from his forehead. His entire body glistened. He looked like the first olympian from ancient Greece, the kind that sculptors made statues of.
I had to peel my eyes away. I was used to being around muscular guys in the Air Force, but Trace was in another league of sexiness. He was damn near flawlessly beautiful.
“Now we’ve earned our breakfast,” he said, patting me on the back. “See you there in fifteen.”
“Foxy’s right,” I said. “You do act like our boss.”
He grumbled something incoherent as he went into the barracks.
I showered and ate breakfast with Trace. The guy who was on mess duty today wouldn’t give me any sausages, but Trace was nice enough to share his. I was so hungry I could have eaten three plates worth.
“Don’t blame you for having an appetite,” Trace said casually. “Between yesterday and today, you burned a lot of calories.”
At first I thought he was making a reference to what Foxy and I had done, but of course he didn’t know. Still, I laughed nervously and said, “Yeah, lots of calories.”
“Going to be burning some more tomorrow, too.”
I glanced at Foxy as he entered the common room from his run. He grinned at me.
“You’ve got that right,” I told Trace.
I was done with breakfast, so I left before Foxy could sit down with his food. The others were spreading out among the common room to watch TV and play pool and other recreational activities, but I left the room and went down the hall to the door connecting to the gear warehouse.
It was quiet and cavernous, and the sound of the door closing behind me echoed through the room. The smell of smoke still lingered in the air, along with a deeper dusty scent.
I found what I wanted in one of the all-purpose supply drawers: a small sewing kit. The kind with just a needle and three spools of thread, like my grandmother used to put in our Christmas stockings. I found a bag of cloth patches in another drawer.
It wasn’t much, but it would have to do.
I carried it to the locker that held everyone’s fire suits. Most of them had names patched into the chest, except for the five or six spare ones that Foxy, Derek, and I had to choose from on our mission. The first one I pulled out belonged to Jameson, and had holes in both elbows, one knee, and one more on the inner thigh.
Commander Callaway found me on the floor next to the locker an hour later.
He didn’t notice me at first. He walked down the hall at the other end of the storage warehouse with a box of tools, which he placed onto a peg board individually. The jostling of wrenches and screwdrivers made a metallic ruckus in the box, and I could tell when he did notice me by when that sound suddenly ceased.
“Hinch?” he called.
“Yes, sir,” I called back, still sitting cross-legged on the floor.
I heard him put down the box and pad toward me. He stood over me and put his hands on his hips. “What in the hell are you doing down there?”
“Sewing up the hole in Lamarre’s suit.” I stuck my finger through it and wiggled it. “Wouldn’t want his nipples to get toasted, sir.”
“Let me rephrase that,” Callaway said through gritted teeth. “Why in the hell are you sewing up Lamarre’s suit?”
I gestured at the locker. “Because I already patched up Jameson’s, Hernandez’s, and Brinkley’s suits. Lamarre’s was the next in line. Sir.”
Callaway stared me down without saying anything. Eventually I broke first. I put down my sewing needle and thread and looked up at my boss.
“Sir, yesterday you told me there are a lot of ways to contribute around here, and that I should make myself useful. I heard the other jumpers complaining about the condition of their gear. So.” I swept my hand around me. “Here I am, making myself useful, sir.”
Callaway’s face lost a little of its tension. “A smokejumper is responsible for keeping his or her own gear in workable condition.”
I shrugged one shoulder and picked up my needle. “Thanks to the Shasta fire, you guys haven’t had much downtime. I’m happy to pick up the slack while I’m still fresh.”
I was hoping Callaway would compliment me, but he left the warehouse without another word. Guess I’ll have to work harder to impress him.
But another smokejumper arrived a few minutes later. James Brinkley was his name, and he had a thick Brooklyn accent. He glanced at me, disappeared into a closet in the back, and emerged with three spare jumpsuits.
“Commander told me to give these to you,” he said sheepishly. “One of them’s a woman’s medium. They, uh, got misplaced in the back.”
I accepted them with a small smile. “Thank you.”
He shuffled one foot while staring off at nothing. “Thanks for patching up my suit.”
“You’re welcome.”
He disappeared like a toddler who had fulfilled his parents’ wishes and now wanted to go back to playing with his friends. I stared at the new jumpsuits he’d brought. They were as moth-eaten as all the rest, but the women’s medium was perfect for me. There was a larger one that looked about Foxy’s size, too.
That’s two teammates I’ve convinced, I thought as I got back to work.
17
Derek
I wasn’t good with apologies.
A psychologist might say it was because I was a middle child. “You’re in a state of perpetual injustice,” they might say, reciting the description from a 1950s textbook on personality traits. “Everything is a slight to you, and you feel that the world owes you an apology, and not the other way around.”
But that wasn’t it. I mean, sure, sometimes I felt like the world was constantly giving me a bad deal, but I tried not to let it get to me. I usually soldiered on and did my job. The real reason I was bad at apologies was that I wasn’t good at being vulnerable. That was partly due to being a middle child, I guessed. My older brother got a lot of attention since he was the first. My younger brother got babied by mom well into his teenage years. But Derek the middle child? If I tried to be vulnerable about my feelings or anything else, my parents thought I was just acting out for attention. They didn’t take me seriously.
So, yeah. I was bad at apologizing because it required me to be vulnerable. I knew it in the calm, retrospective way that an adult looked at a problem, but that didn’t make it any easier to overcome. And as if that wasn’t enough, a decade in the Army really smashed my feelings deep down where I couldn’t access them, much less share them with other people.
Then there was the shit with Commander Wallace that was getting to me. Souring everything I did and leaving me feeling downright despaired. Like nothing I did mattered because, no matter what, he was going to get e
ven with me for what happened back in Syria.
As I walked through the halls of the barracks, I knew I needed to apologize to Haley. I’d intended to do it on our morning run, but I never got a chance to talk to her in private. Same for breakfast—she’d left before Foxy and I got back from our second lap.
I paused in front of her room to take stock of myself, then knocked.
There was no answer. Nor was there on the second knock.
I found Trace in the common room, relaxing into a recliner while a TV showed footage of the wildfires to the north. “Have you seen Haley?”
“Not since breakfast,” he replied without taking his eyes off the TV.
“Hinch?” one of the other guys said with a laugh. “Heard she was in the storage warehouse playing seamstress. Guess it comes natural, huh?”
“Shut the fuck up, Donny,” said another jumper with a thick New York accent. “She wants to help pick up the slack we’re too tired to do, I say we should thank her, not ridicule her.”
I left the two of them to argue and went to the warehouse. Sure enough, Haley was sitting cross-legged on the ground by the suit lockers. A big olive jumpsuit was draped across her lap, and she moved a needle up and down through the fabric.
“I think you’ve impressed another jumper,” I said. “The guy with the New York accent is defending your honor in the break room.”
Haley grinned up at me. She was especially beautiful when she smiled. It made the world around her suddenly seem brighter, like her very essence created an aura in the room. “One down, another couple dozen teammates to go. Hey! Check this out.” She flipped the jumpsuit over and held it up. A white patch had been stitched onto the breast, and the name SALE was sewn in thin black thread. The E on the end was almost complete.
“That… looks wonderful,” I said. “You didn’t have to do that.”
“Nobody has to do anything,” she said, flipping it back over and resuming her work. “But I was already stitching up all the other jumpsuits, and they all had names patched into the front. I already did mine, and didn’t want you and Foxy to be the only ones without names.”
Foxy. He and I had a good talk while running our second lap this morning. Foxy pretended like our hallway confrontation last night had never happened, and chatted me up about hockey instead. Turns out he was a Dallas Stars fan, and as a New York Islanders fan myself we had a lot to discuss. We finished the lap less as enemies, and more as neutral acquaintances.
I still felt jealous thinking about him coming out of Haley’s room last night. Maybe nothing happened, but I suspected…
“Thanks,” I said, shaking myself out of my thoughts. “I, uh, wanted to apologize to you.”
“If you had a long name like Donaldson, then you’d owe me an apology.” She held up the needle. “But Sale is nice and short to stitch.”
It was nice of her to pretend like I didn’t need to apologize. It was tempting to seize on it and pretend like things were square between us. But I knew they weren’t, and they wouldn’t be until I made things right.
“I owe you an apology for what I said at dinner last night. Claiming I’d be embarrassed to be rescued by you.” I sat on the ground next to her. “It would be an honor to be rescued by you. Again, I mean, since you’ve already done it once. I shouldn’t have thrown it in your face. I don’t give a shit what the other guys think.”
To my immense relief, she reached out and patted my knee. “I kind of had it coming. I goaded you into snapping by accusing you of being scared and defeatist.”
I snorted. “I deserved it by acting defeatist. You’re right—I’ve been in a funk since we left McCall. It’s nothing professional. It’s just personal shit. I shouldn’t let it affect my work and the people around me.”
She nodded, and resumed sewing. “You wanna talk about it?”
Vulnerable. That’s where I was at that moment, with Haley prodding me for information and inviting me to share what was really bothering me. Even though she was my teammate and had good intentions, the idea of telling her the truth about Commander Wallace and his son and Syria all those years ago filled me with dread. Cold sweat suddenly bubbled up on the back of my neck.
“I don’t really want to talk about it,” I said. “But I promise not to let it affect me anymore. Or at least, I promise to try.”
“That’s all any of us can do,” she said simply. “But Derek? Don’t feel like you have to hold it all in. Whatever personal shit you’re dealing with, you should find someone to talk to about it. Either a friend, or a teammate, or a professional. I’m sort of those first two things, so if you ever change your mind and need an ear, I’m here.”
“Thank you.”
Haley put a hand on mine and squeezed. I smiled back at her and genuinely felt better.
“You want some help?” I asked.
She arched an eyebrow. “Can you sew?”
“No, but I’m a good learner.”
For the next half hour she showed me the basics of sewing. It was one of those things that was incredibly simple in concept, but much more difficult to put into practice. I tried sewing a patch of cloth into a jumpsuit elbow, but my stitching lines were crooked and resulted in a big floppy piece of the patch sticking out. Haley tried to suppress a giggle.
“Nobody’s good the first time,” she said. “Most of this patch is good, though. I’ll salvage the remaining part for you. In the mean time, start stitching Foxy’s name into this patch, like I showed you.”
“Thanks,” I said, laughing at myself. It felt good to work on something with low stakes. “When did you learn to sew?”
She bent over the next jumpsuit that needed repairing. “My grandmother taught me when I was a little girl. She had high hopes that I would be a girly girl. It didn’t quite work out that way.”
“You mean there’s no smokejumper Barbie doll?” I teased.
“Not yet, as far as I know. Maybe we should write in to the company and tell them to update Barbie’s credentials.” She shook her head while starting a new stitch. “I’m glad you apologized. I was surprised that you were lashing out at me yesterday.”
“Why do you say that?” I asked.
“Well,” she said without looking up, “back at McCall I thought you had a crush on me.”
I stopped paying attention long enough to stab myself in the thumb with the needle. I winced, and sucked on the skin to keep it from bleeding. “I, uh, do what now?”
“You had a crush on me. At smokejumping school.”
“What made you think that?” I asked carefully.
“Oh, I don’t know. I saw you lookin at me sometimes. You acted almost shy whenever we were working together. One time when I caught you staring at me, you blushed.”
I stiffened. “I don’t blush!”
She gave me a look.
“Don’t take this the wrong way,” I said, “but you were the only woman at McCall. I’m pretty sure everyone had a crush on you, and would have even if you were hideously ugly.”
“Are you implying I’m not hideously ugly?” she joked. “I can look ghastly first thing in the morning, especially after a night of drinking.”
“Somehow I doubt you could ever look ugly, no matter how hard you try.”
She smiled at me. “Thanks.”
“Foxy is a nice guy,” I said, changing the subject.
It was her turn to miss a stitch and act awkward. “Yeah, he’s great,” she said, a little too casually.
“You two have been friendly since we got here.”
“Well, I only knew two people when I got here. And one of them was acting like a sourpuss. So naturally I’ve been leaning on the other for friendship.”
I winced. Maybe I had fucked up my chances with Haley by being preoccupied with what Commander Wallace had said to me. I’d driven her right into Foxy’s arms.
If she’s actually in his arms. Maybe all they had done last night was share some beers, like Foxy had said.
“Well, I’m going to
work on my attitude from now on,” I said.
“Good. Because the next time I save your ass from a tree, you’d better be chipper and cheerful.”
We laughed while finishing the sewing.
Afterwards, I thought about what she had said. How I needed to find someone to talk to about my personal issue. I considered going to Commander Callaway, but I couldn’t think of a way to bring it up that didn’t feel like tattling. Besides, I didn’t have any evidence. Wallace’s vengeful intentions were obfuscated behind layers of good excuses: we were qualified smokejumpers who were fresh and ready to be sent on the most challenging missions.
And I didn’t want to talk to a professional, like a psychologist. That wouldn’t resolve the root problem.
Instead, I walked outside to the front of the barracks, where the parking lot and main road were. It was a cool California night, with a wind blowing out of the north that brought with it the acrid smell of smoke from the nearby fires. I looked up a phone number in the Forest Service directory and waited while it rang.
“Commander Wallace here,” came the response.
A lump formed in my throat. I tried to swallow it down.
“It’s me. It’s Derek Sale.”
On the other end, Wallace exhaled. “I’m a busy man, Sale. I don’t expect to be disturbed on my personal phone unless it’s an emergency.”
“The emergency is what you’re doing,” I shot back. “Word from Commander Callaway is that you insisted on sending us into the most dangerous mission right off the bat.”
There was a short pause on the line. “A tremendous amount of time and effort went into training you and your teammates. I have full confidence in your abilities right out of smokejumper school, and I did not want to see Commander Callaway waste your talents by leaving you on the bench for three months.”
The response sounded canned. Like he’d rehearsed his excuse in case he had to defend it later. It made me sick to my stomach.
“You’re not just getting revenge on me.” I kept my voice cold. Appealing to reason rather than emotion. “You’re risking the lives of Haley and Foxy, too. You’re willing to make them collateral damage in your personal vendetta?”