Heartland

by Davis Bunn

  “But essential.”

  “I hope so. I’d like to think I’m not wasting fifteen percent of everything I make.”

  “That’s debatable.” It was an old conversation. Peter dialed the studio operator. “Could I have Casting, please?”

  Derek asked, “What are you doing?”

  “Just checking on something. Hi, this is Peter Caffrey. Who am I speaking with, please?”

  “Phyllis Gleason.” The woman had “No” permanently implanted in her tone. “Who did you say this was?”

  “Peter Caffrey.”

  “Oh. Caffrey. Right. The scriptwriter on Heartland.” The voice lost a bit of its rough edge. “Sorry. I thought you were an actor looking for a bit part. They start calling about this time every afternoon.”

  “Sure. Listen, the guy you sent over for the JayJay Parsons role. I was just wondering where—”

  “Who?”

  “The new actor.”

  “What new actor? I haven’t sent anybody for a couple of weeks.”

  “Somebody else, then.”

  “Look, Caffrey. We’re a small shop over here. If anybody had come across another Parsons, I’d know about it.”

  “But . . .”

  “Besides, Britt Turner stopped by, when was it?” A voice in the background spoke up. “Beginning of last week, that’s right. Told us it was a waste of time.”

  “I don’t get it.”

  “Get what, hon?”

  “A new JayJay Parsons showed up and did a test.”

  “He can’t have.”

  “But he did.” For some reason, Peter found himself sweating. “I watched the filming and then sat in when they showed it to Allerby. He loved it. We’re supposed to start filming a new series.”

  “So what’s the actor’s name?”

  “That’s why I’m calling. All I’ve heard is JayJay Parsons.” Peter wiped his face. “Britt said Casting sent him over.”

  “That’s impossible.”

  “I heard the AD say it.” AD, as in assistant director. Kip.

  “Well, that little pest never got anything right. He entered the world backward and never got turned around since.” Phyllis spoke more loudly, “Anybody send over a new wannabe JayJay?” Then back to the phone. “Either you heard wrong or the pest is off by a mile. Again.”

  “You haven’t sent anybody over?”

  “What I just said, hon.”

  “Thanks.”

  “You tell Britt to make sure this new guy has his guild card. If he doesn’t, we need to jump on this.”

  “Okay.”

  “He’s not talking about some bit actor here. If we get caught using a noncarded actor in a starring role, we’ll have the unions down on us like the Mongol hordes.”

  Derek cast Peter glances as he wound the car up a steep incline, close behind the wheezing bus. “Look at it this way. You asked for a miracle. You got one. I was kneeling right there alongside you. I never heard you pray for logic.”

  Chapter 7

  The first hour or so, the bus ride was noisy as a fair-size rodeo. JayJay relaxed for the first time since coming to inside the warehouse of used clothing. The kids were too natural to hold him in awe for very long. He did not understand why they all seemed to know him so well. But as the bus wound its way into the northwestern hills, he decided it really didn’t matter. Their joy was as genuine as their excitement.

  But when they hit the high plateau, their mood turned tense and the noise dropped away. The northern reaches were cut off by a billowing dark wall. Overhead the high desert sky remained so blue it appeared almost black. Up ahead, however, there was no sky at all.

  JayJay had an aisle seat about midway back. While boarding he’d shaken the hands of two pastors and a number of ladies who had stared at him with that same astonished wonder. He was seated beside Ahn Nguyen, the Vietnamese kid. Ahn’s younger sister, Minh, sat across the aisle and one row up. She was small like her brother and painfully shy over her mouthful of metal. But she watched him with her brother’s bright-faced eagerness. JayJay found himself drawn to the young woman, and now, as the bus drew quiet, she asked, “You’re not from around here, are you?”

  “Not hardly, miss.”

  She blushed scarlet and cradled her arms on the seat back so she could use her elbow to hide her braces. She asked, “How did you come to be here? In Hollywood, I mean.”

  “All I can tell you for certain is, one minute I was snoozing in the back of a bus. Then lightning must’ve struck, because the next thing I knew, everybody was staring at me.”

  The folks within listening range erupted in laughter. Those who had not heard it the first time had it repeated for them, until JayJay’s words were echoing up and down the aisle. He would have been ashamed over the attention were it not for seeing Minh laugh so fully she momentarily forgot her braces.

  The pastor rose from the front of the bus, smiled JayJay’s way, and raised his hands for silence. “Okay, we’ve gone through everything a dozen times, but once more won’t hurt. We work in teams of four.”

  The kid in the row ahead of them, Robbie Robinson, turned around and whispered, “My girlfriend had to back out. She sprained her foot. Want to hook up with me and Ahn and Ming?”

  “I’d consider it an honor.”

  Once more he was rewarded with a from-the-heart smile from Minh. The pastor continued, “What’s our first and only rule?”

  The bus shouted in unison, “Stay safe, stay together!”

  “Right. You folks who are doing this for the first time, your team leader has been out before.”

  “That’s Ahn,” Robbie said.

  “No wild heroics. Keep your team in sight at all times. Follow orders. Questions?” When the bus remained silent, he said, “Okay, let’s bow our heads and pray.”

  The bus wheezed to a halt just as the pastor intoned his amen.

  People lifted their gazes to an utterly different world. The clearing was full of trucks and equipment and smoke-stained people in fire-retardant gear. A fist banged on the bus door. A burly man with red eyes, a three-day beard, and a smoke-roughened voice climbed the stairs and said, “Name’s Sears, like the stores, and no relation, I’m sorry to say.”

  He got a few chuckles, but not many. People were too busy getting used to the proximity of danger. His helmet was stenciled with one word, Boss. “I’m your section leader. Anybody asks, this is section two. You find somebody wandering alone out there, you bring them back here. Firefighters or civvies, it makes no diff. You bring them here. Everybody clear on that? Nobody but nobody works the fire line alone. Let me hear you’re listening.”

  There was a chorus of assent. He nodded. “Team leaders, raise your hands. All of you have been on a fire line before, right? Good. Everybody know your team? Okay. Pile out, grab your gear, and head for the woman at the assignment board. She’s over there by the chuck wagon. Only team leaders speak to her. Otherwise things get chaotic. She’ll tell you where to go and what to do. No arguments, you hear me? You do what you’re told or you sit it out on the bus. Let me hear you’re listening.”

  This time the response was stronger. “Our job is to finish a fire line between the burn along the western ridge and the houses to our east. We could have a code red today. No chance of rain before tomorrow. Latest meteorology report warns of rising winds. If you hear the claxon, you run. Tell me you’re listening.”

  This time he got a shout in reply. He nodded. “Now tell me, what’s rule one?”

  “Stay safe, stay together!”

  “Right. And rule two?”

  There was a confused silence. A grin split his blackened and bearded face. “Same as rule one. Okay. Let’s go fight some fire.”

  Derek stopped his car along the curve leading into the clearing. “This is as close as we want to park.”

  Now that they were there, Peter faced a rising dread. “You’ve done this before?”

  “My first shots on national news came from a wildfire.”
/>   Reluctantly Peter rose from his seat and walked around to the back of Derek’s aging hatchback. “My throat hurts.”

  “You get used to it.” Derek flipped open a metal box. “Well, actually what happens is, in about ten minutes you’ll be too busy to pay your throat much attention.”

  Peter watched the crowd including the studio’s new JayJay Parsons cluster around a woman with a bullhorn. She stood beside a park bulletin board that had been covered with a plastic-encased map. She pointed to the map, then to one of the upraised hands, made a note on a sheet, then turned back to the map. Again and again. Peter asked, “Too busy doing what?”

  “Staying alive.” Derek handed him a thick padded belt. “Here. Make yourself useful.”

  “You’re actually enjoying this.”

  “You kidding? Far as I’m concerned, they could charge admission.”

  Peter watched as a sudden blast of smoke obliterated more than half the clearing. He tasted the acrid stench far below the level of his taste buds. Then it was gone. All but the feeling in his throat. He appeared to be the only one who even saw it. “I’m pretty sure my wife would tell me to stay in the car.”

  “Yeah, mine too.” Derek handed Peter an orange canvas vest with Press written in black letters across the front and back. “Good thing they’re not here, right?”

  Peter let his friend stuff lenses and cloths and extra film into the belt’s various pouches. “Remind me what we’re doing here.”

  “You’re the one who told me to follow JayJay from the studio.”

  “Stop calling him that.”

  “So what name should I use?”

  “That’s exactly what worries me. I have no idea.” He turned to where JayJay Parsons was slipping into an orange fire-retardant jacket and helmet. “Who is this guy?”

  Derek slapped a press cap onto Peter’s head. “I already told you. Our paycheck, is who.” He hefted the camera. “Okay, let’s move out.”

  A blood red sun glared down from an acrid sky. Angry streamers poured up from the west, black and gritty and laced with heat. Loudspeakers hanging from the chuck wagon’s corners blared “I Am a Man of Constant Sorrow.” Three soot-blackened firefighters sprawled on the earth beside the paramedic station, coughing into oxygen masks. They watched JayJay and his team stride by, wearing their pristine fire-retardant jackets and their axes and shovels sparkling in the wretched light. The bedraggled firefighters didn’t say anything. They didn’t need to.

  JayJay said, “Don’t worry about it, friends. Come sunset, we’ll be just as dirty.”

  Minh was the only one who managed a smile. “Have you ever fought fires?”

  “Been through a lot, sister. But this here is a first.”

  As they entered the forest, a woman so hoarse she had lost all but the last shred of her voice stood in a fork of the trail. “The line is three hundred meters straight ahead. Listen for the claxon. If the wind rises we’ve got to clear out of here fast.”

  The trail was rimmed by fire hoses that writhed and slid like canvas snakes. They passed through a clearing that held a half dozen houses. Families frantically packed SUVs. People hosed down roofs. Two women standing in the nearest home’s front drive hugged in tear-streaked terror.

  “I’m frightened,” Minh confessed.

  “I’m sure glad to hear it,” JayJay replied. “Hate to think I was the only fellow scared out of his tiny mind.”

  Robbie asked, “What’s that sound?”

  Ahn replied, “Take a guess.”

  But it didn’t sound like a fire. It sounded alive. A growling roar rose ahead and to their left, an angry rumbling JayJay felt in his chest.

  They followed the sound of chain saws and bulldozers. The fire line was such an astounding sight they froze at the point where the trail opened. Another woman was clearly used to the response, for she started grabbing sleeves and pointing them ahead. Another man waved to them. He pointed to the shrub. Then to the people scurrying to either side.

  “Come on,” JayJay yelled. “We got work to do.”

  “Hold it right there, you two.”

  Derek pointed to the yellow letters on his vest. “Press.”

  “Hey, I’m so impressed I can’t hardly stand it.” The bearish guy’s soot-stained helmet read Boss. He turned his head and coughed. His throat sounded semiruined. “Out here you either follow my orders or you leave, got me?”

  “Sure, Boss.”

  “You ever been on a burn?”

  “I have, Boss. More times than I can count.”

  “Then you should know better than to head out on your own.”

  “We’re trying to catch up with JayJay Parsons.”

  “What, the actor from Heartland?”

  “He was on the church bus with those kids.”

  The guy grinned. His teeth looked impossibly white. “This is a joke, right?”

  “No, Boss. No joke.”

  “Okay, but you still got to team up.” He scouted around. A trio of weary firefighters were gathering their gear from a pile by the oxygen tanks. “You guys headed back out?”

  “Got to get that line done,” one replied, then had to cough from the effort of speaking.

  “Take this pair with you.” To Derek and Peter he said, “Grab coats and helmets from the pile by the ambulance.”

  The firefighters glared at where Press was written on their vests. “Why us?”

  “They need a team, you’re it. And keep an eye out for JayJay Parsons.”

  “The actor? For real?”

  “All I know is what these two are saying. But if you find him, do us a favor and keep the six o’clock news from telling the world we toasted my favorite TV star.”

  Chapter 8

  There was no room for anything but speed.

  The din was earsplitting. Bulldozers driven by insane men with lightning reflexes shoved down tree after tree. Chain saws chopped off the branches. JayJay and his team joined sweaty, soot-blackened workers pulling the debris into mountains on the opposite side of the line from the approaching burn. The line was a hundred and fifty feet wide and ran off in both directions to where ridgelines became swallowed by smoke. Their task was to widen the line. The four of them wrestled mammoth branches and fragments across the stumpy earth. No one needed to tell them to hurry. Every hint of wind carried the threat of the enemy.

  JayJay welcomed the work. He relished everything about it. The people, the hoarse commands he couldn’t understand, the sweat, the aching muscles, the heaving chest. This was real. The sparks that floated in the air and burned the exposed skin of his neck were not just painful. They anchored him. The tormenting thoughts were banished. He was among new friends. He was doing something useful. Something important.

  He had never felt so alive.

  Derek’s mouth almost touched his ear. Even so, Peter scarcely made out the question, “Do you see him?”

  “Are you kidding?” Peter had never experienced such sensory overload. His mind threatened to shut down. He wanted to curl up in a safe corner, close his eyes, and just make the whole thing go away. He could scarcely hear himself, much less Derek. The noise held such intensity it assaulted his brain.

  A trio of planes lumbered by overhead, so close Peter thought he might be able to reach up and touch them. They were followed by two helicopters, the big ones with two rotors each. The choppers carried huge buckets on long metal lines. The buckets almost scraped the treetops. Then they were gone, but the noise level remained the same. As though the din had reached a point where it could not grow any louder. Just change in nature. The dozers and the chain saws and the fire formed fists of noise. He had never heard a burn before. But he knew the sound. It could not be anything else.

  He jerked as one of the firefighters grabbed his sleeve. The man’s words were lost to the din. But Peter read the man’s lips. Stay close.

  They jogged across the clearing. The fire line was frightening in its unnatural straightness. And the people. Hundreds and hundreds of
people. All of them moving at breakneck speed. Gestures took the place of words. Everybody worked in frantic coordination.

  One of Peter’s team grabbed an idle chain saw. Peter flinched as the man gave the handle an easy toss and the machine whined to life. He had always hated the sound of those things. Now he was surrounded by a hundred of them. All screaming and biting and cutting.

  Derek punched his shoulder. He pointed to a group of four people who came and went in the drifting smoke. He said something Peter missed entirely. Then he started walking.

  “Wait!” Peter glanced nervously at the guys they had arrived with. But the firefighters were intent on a felled tree. Peter stumbled after Derek. The earth was rutted and jumbled, the going made treacherous by deep bulldozer furrows and exposed roots. The mud was glutinous. Yet even carrying the camera, Derek sprinted toward the foursome. Peter followed only because he was terrified of getting lost and never finding his way out again.

  Derek stopped without warning and dropped to the earth. He was still thirty paces from the four. He braced his elbows on the highest stump in the clearing. He focused. Took a slow breath. Then hit the trigger.

  Derek did a slow sweep of the entire scene. Taking in the dozers and the saws and the workers and the angry sky. He lingered on the smoke overhead. Then he drew in close and tight. Taking aim at one group in particular. Four people hauling a branch. Four out of hundreds. Struggling with just another huge branch.

  Then Peter saw him.

  JayJay’s face was streaked like an Indian’s. His teeth were drawn back in a snarl of sweaty effort. The reddish-gold hair emerging from his helmet was matted to his forehead. The four of them were dwarfed by the pine branch they carried. Even so, they ran. JayJay Parsons and three others. Two of whom were Oriental. The fourth guy had freckles and looked about seventeen. They were all clearly very scared. They dumped the branch. Kicked it well back out of the clearing. Stood breathing hard for a minute. Then they turned and headed back across the line for the next branch.

  Peter found his breath returning to normal. He took a more comfortable position on the ground beside Derek. He took mild notice of the wet seeping through his trousers. He no longer cared. His mind had moved into creative mode.