FireWatch

by Scott Blade

  He enjoyed that month and he had learned a lot.

  Yesterday, he was amazed when he stumbled upon a paperback version of Fire Season, in a remote, used-book store.

  As Widow read on about the life of a fire lookout, he closed his eyes and remembered that June, long ago. He imagined that summer. He lived in six different towers. All of which were basically twelve by twelve rooms on stilts. He imagined seeing mountain ranges hundreds of miles away from his window. He remembered being high enough to see aplomado falcons diving for ground rodents or Bendire’s thrashers brazing the southern skies. They were the most majestic views he had seen until that point in his life. He pictured himself walking through forest canopy, stopping in meadows, taking in the grasslands, One time he spotted grazing konik wild horses.

  As Widow continued to read, he remembered the most important part of fire lookouts—looking for fires. He read on about crown fires and purging fires. He imagined how beautiful such a deadly thing was. He read about record-breaking fires that engulfed entire species of trees. Purging fires killed off trees that were once deemed to be plentiful by the US Forest Service. One moment there was a healthy amount of a single tree species. And the next, they had been stamped out by fire.

  He learned that lightning strikes to a tree, in certain forests, were 30,000 times more likely than lightning strikes on humans.

  He read about the history of apocalyptic fires. The horror of the destruction. But then he read about the life that came after. He learned that it was in the nineteen seventies that scientist and firefighters and park officials realized that fires were good for forests. After a deadly blaze swept over hundreds of square miles, the aftermath was blackness, at first. But then the local forests began to bounce back with great resilience. Great rebirth. Streams sprung up again. Flowers bloomed. Once-dead trees were reseeded and grew back toward the sky.

  As Widow read on, he got the picture in his head. The fantasy of living as a fire lookout once again. Returning to a time that he had forgotten. He imagined living for months in God’s Country. Only having a dozen visitors in three months. Suddenly, Widow was in.

  The only thing to do next was to figure out the how and when. But that would have to wait. Right now, Widow sat in the same doorway two nights in a row, on purpose. He had a small mission to take care of. Something that he had to do. He didn’t like injustices. And he had one to correct before he could leave.

  Widow’s clothes were tattered, secondhand and thrift-store bought. Blue jeans with holes in the knees and bare white threads gushing out like gutted sinews hanging on display. His hair was overgrown like weeds, not long, just unkempt. Shades of whiskers stubbled out of his face.

  In truth, his hair had already needed a wash and cut. That was just coincidence. But two nights of rubbing dirt and dust in it helped to make it look dirtier than it would have been.

  Between a closed-down Starbucks and a hardware store that time had forgotten existed, Widow was in East Hollywood, in some of the worst parts of town. Which were some of the most crime-ridden places that America had to offer. Not all of it was bad. There were a couple of streets to the west where things got better. And the daytime wasn’t so bad, but none of it was safe at night. It was here that Widow had wandered into a little grocery store two days ago.

  The area was bad, but the Korean family who owned the store had been there for years, before other business moved out and moved on. They were there before the crime rate was so high. They held onto hope that one day it would flourish again.

  And even if they wanted to leave, they were not able to go. Widow didn’t know why. Maybe one of them was ill. Maybe they didn’t have the money. Maybe they were stuck in a mortgage. Bills still had to get paid. Crime or no crime.

  Or maybe it had just been a matter of pride. They had no children that Widow was aware of.

  If it had not been for his sense of justice, Widow would have left Hollywood, would have left LA in general. For the casual tourist like him, Hollywood was a city worth one or two days at most. Like Boston or New Orleans or D.C. Everything that you needed to see and do could be done in a single day.

  LA was more than a one-day place, but after seeing it before, it was actually not a place he wanted to visit at all. But the life that Widow leads led him there. Like being guided by fate, if you believe in that sort of thing.

  Widow had planned on leaving two days ago until he wandered into this Korean grocery store on his way to a bus station. All of it by chance. He had walked a little too far down one street and turned on another, misread one street sign, and turned onto another wrong street, and before he knew it he was in the bad part of town. And completely lost.

  He knew the grocer was Korean before he set foot in the store. He knew because above the single open door was a sign written in both English and Korean. He recognized the letters. Before Jack Widow was a drifter, he had spent sixteen years in the United States Navy.

  The USN had a significant presence on the Korean peninsula. He spent enough time walking around Seoul and cities near CFAC, better known to noncombatants as Commander Fleet Activities Chinhae, which is near Busan, South Korea. It is cradled neatly on the edge of the coast and the Sea of Japan.

  Widow knew what Korean words looked like. He had no idea what they said, but he recognized the characters.

  He walked into the grocery looking to ask for directions. And maybe a cup of freshly brewed coffee for the road. But he got neither thing.

  As he stepped inside he had to walk past an LAPD patrol car. The light bar was off. The engine still ran and hummed and smoked pools of exhaust out of the tailpipe.

  He heard the chatter of cop voices on the police radio. He heard cop codes. All was calm in a normal city kind of way, which was to say busy for a small-town police force, but calm for a major city force. He heard familiar bandwidth static. And then the familiar humdrum of dispatcher voices. He listened and picked up a few things. He made out familiar radio codes and others that he could guess what they meant.

  Widow ignored the codes and the dispatcher talk and entered the store. His hands in his pockets. His face forward. He ducked his head an inch on his way under a low doorway. It wasn’t a necessary act. It was just a habit that tall people everywhere shared. Right then, it happened. He was shoulder-checked by one of two cops, walking out. It wasn’t an accident. He knew that right off. The act had been on purpose. Widow knew that because it was stone hard. Shoulder to shoulder in unadulterated, brutish gorilla fashion. No confusion there. Widow had been shoulder-checked before. He knew the act. It was not something he looked forward to, but it seemed to follow him everywhere he went.

  The second cop closed the lid on a metal clipboard that he had been carrying. Next, he clicked and shoved a ballpoint pen into his shirt pocket. He stopped dead in front of Widow. He stayed still. Stood his ground.

  The first cop stopped.

  The second cop stopped.

  The first cop had spun around to face Widow.

  Widow stopped inside the doorway. He stood with the first cop at the nine o’clock position and the second cop right there at his three.

  He stayed quiet.

  The first cop said, “Watch it, pal.”

  Widow said, “Sorry. My bad.”

  Apologizing, even without meaning it, was always the fastest way to deescalate a tense situation. Especially when the other two men involved were armed with Glock 21s.

  The first cop rested his hand on Widow’s. Fingers loose like a seasoned gunslinger at high noon. He studied Widow up and down and back up again, slow like some kind of ancient lawman from those old Eastwood Westerns. The same tired clichés of local lawmen and the new, rough-looking stranger who just moseyed into town. And the lawman who was going to warn him off.

  The first cop said, “You’re sorry?”

  Widow stayed quiet.

  “You got a problem?” the first cop asked.

  Widow said, “Nope. No problem.”

  “That’s Officer.”<
br />
  “What?”

  “I said, that’s Officer. You say, ‘No problem, Officer.’ Got it?”

  “You serious?”

  The two cops moved an inch to their right, in unison, like a preplanned move of engagement. Which it probably was.

  Widow stayed where he was. He did not respond to the move. He did not reply with an “Of course, Officer.” Which was what the cop was waiting for.

  Instead, he said, “Sorry.”

  Apologize, even when you didn’t do anything.

  All three men stayed quiet. So, Widow waited a beat and added, “Officer.”

  The two cops nodded like they had taught a monkey a new trick.

  The second cop looked at his partner and then back at Widow. He asked, “You got an ID?”

  Widow stayed still.

  “He’s asking you a question, son!” said the first cop.

  Son? Widow was in his thirties. Not a young man in his own mind. The first cop looked like maybe he was in his late thirties. Calling him son was a little weird.

  The second cop repeated, “ID?”

  “What for?”

  The first cop reached his left hand up to his belt. Kept his right hand on his Glock 21. He stopped his left hand at what appeared to be a second holstered gun. Widow knew what that meant. The second gun in the second holster was not a gun at all. It was a department issued Taser. Tasers were meant to be a safe alternative to shooting a suspect. A way of humanely rendering a man ineffective and compliant and docile. But Tasers had killed people before—many times. Unlike a gun, a Taser is a much more unpredictable weapon. You can shoot a guy enough times and he’s not getting up. With a Taser, you only get the one chance.

  Being tazed was up there on Widow’s list of things he didn’t want to experience. Not today, not any day. He also did not want to get shot.

  Widow said, “I got a passport.”

  “Get it!” the second cop said.

  The other one said, “Slowly.”

  Widow put his left hand up. It hung in the air. And with his right hand, he reached around to his back pocket, slowly as instructed. He slid the tips of his fingers in and slid out a passport. He returned his hand to the front with the passport pinched between two big fingers.

  The first cop said, “Take it.”

  The second cop nodded and stepped forward and with a gloved hand, took the passport.

  The first cop said, “Why don’t you step out of this doorway here.”

  Widow stayed quiet.

  The first cop backed out onto the sidewalk, motioning for Widow to follow. But that was where he had just come from. And he hated going backward. Even just a little bit. Just the symbolism of going backward irked him. But what was he to do?

  Widow followed the first cop out, slowly. Kept his hands visible. Palms out and open.

  “Stand over there.” The cop pointed with his right hand at the wall.

  For a split second, Widow thought about going for the guy’s Glock 21. This was his best chance. It was right there. The cop’s gun hand had moved away to point him to the wall. He could lunge forward, one big step, and clamp down the guy’s Taser hand with his own. Then grapple the Glock out of his holster. He could use the cop’s body weight and his own momentum to spin them so the first cop became a human shield against the second cop, in case he drew his gun fast enough.

  The second cop had one hand occupied with Widow’s passport. He stared at it. Eyes down at the passport and off what was happening. And he was still back inside the grocer’s doorway. Just enough to box him in and make his reactions smaller.

  This was Widow’s only chance.

  But he was not in the habit of taking guns away from cops, not unless they did something to deserve it. Right now, they may have been acting as the best examples of police procedure, but they had a tough job. Tough neighborhood. Tough hours. Tough route.

  Widow did not envy patrol cops who worked in major American urban centers. Not one bit. It was a hard life. He had been there, done that. He had nothing but respect for them. But wouldn’t trade lives with them for a second.

  Widow did nothing beyond what the first cop was instructing him to do.

  The second cop followed outside and stood to Widow’s right. The first moved over to his left.

  The second cop flipped open Widow’s passport until he found Widow’s photograph and pedigree information. He held it up and did a side-by-side comparison of Widow’s face and the old photograph on his passport.

  He said, “Jack Widow. Born November nine. Height six-four. Weight two-twenty.”

  The first cop looked at Widow with another up-down-up look over. He said, “You’re a big guy. You think you’re a tough big guy?”

  Widow said nothing to that.

  The second cop flipped through the passport, beyond the ID page, and kept flipping. He looked like his interest piqued a whole hell of a lot by the stamped pages.

  “McDiggs, take a look at this,” he said and held up Widow’s passport so that the first cop could glance at it.

  Widow took the opportunity to glance at the second cop’s nameplate over his breast pocket.

  The nameplate said his name was Officer Jones. He took a glance back at McDiggs’ nameplate and confirmed his name. Jones and McDiggs were their names.

  McDiggs looked and squinted his eyes. Then he stepped closer. He kept his hand on his Taser, still holstered. He reached out with his gun hand and took the passport.

  A second opportunity to take his Glock, Widow thought.

  “What the hell is this?” McDiggs asked.

  Widow stayed quiet.

  Jones stayed quiet.

  McDiggs asked, “Why you got so many stamps?”

  “I traveled. A lot.”

  “I’ll say,” Jones said.

  McDiggs said, “I’ve never heard of some of these places.”

  Widow shrugged and thought, Not my problem.

  McDiggs flipped the page, one-handed. He stopped somewhere between the first stamped page and the last stamped page.

  He looked over at one country’s stamp and tried to pronounce it.

  The sounds that came out of his mouth made no sense to Widow.

  McDiggs spun his hand around and showed the passport page to Widow. He asked, “What the hell is this?”

  Widow stayed still. He wasn’t going to step forward. That was a mistake. That was a trap. An old trick used by cops all over the world. Get the subject to step in, step forward in a sudden, quick movement that could be misconstrued, mischaracterized, misinterpreted, misdiagnosed, or simply used to make it look like an attack. Next thing, the Taser came out and the cop tazed the perpetrator.

  McDiggs would say that Widow lunged at him. Suddenly. What was he supposed to do? SOP called for action. And action meant a takedown.

  The second cop would back up the story. No question. That’s what good partners do.

  Widow did not fall for it. He stayed still and stared at the stamp from where he was instead. He said, “It’s a stamp.”

  “Looks like Chinese. This supposed to be the date? Why the numbers backward?”

  “They’re not backward. It’s the year first. That’s how they write the date,” Widow said. And it wasn’t Chinese. It was Korean, stamped in Pyongyang. It was a North Korean travel stamp from a mission to the north, way back once upon a time when Widow had another life. An undercover cop life. An undercover SEAL life.

  Widow figured it best to omit pointing the North Korea part out.

  McDiggs said, “It’s backward.”

  He turned the page and looked at others. Moving on. Widow breathed out.

  He stopped on one and pointed it at Jones. He said, “That’s a penguin.”

  And once again McDiggs’s facial expression indicated that his interest was again piqued. He shoved the passport back in Widow’s face and asked, “Who uses a penguin?”

  “Polar bears have been known to eat them”

  “What? Not eat them! Who uses t
hem? What country?”

  “Antarctica.”

  The two cops paused a beat. Stared at each other.

  Jones asked, “What the hell you doing in Antarctica?”

  McDiggs said, “I thought that was all tundra and ice?”

  Widow nodded, “Antarctica has about ninety percent of the world’s ice.”

  “So what the hell you doing there?”

  “I thought only scientists live there. You a scientist?”

  Jones said, “You don’t look like no scientist.”

  “It’s not just scientists. There are military there too.”

  The two cops looked at each other, again. And back at Widow, again. McDiggs stared at Widow’s arms. He saw the American flag tattoos on his forearms. He looked like he was about to ask if Widow got them in the service. Which he did, technically, but he didn’t get them to fit in with his team or anything. He got them for other reasons.

  McDiggs did not ask because, just then, the radio squawked from Jones’ radio rig over his chest and shoulder. He stepped back, took his eyes off Widow and off the passport. Stepped to the side and stopped. He reached up to the radio and clicked the button.

  McDiggs stayed where he was and closed the passport. Kept his hand over the Taser and tilted his head in Jones’s direction so that he could overhear the conversation.

  They both listened to Jones talking back to a dispatcher. Listening. Talking again. And then responding with an “affirmative.”

  Jones clicked off the radio and stepped back over to them. He said to McDiggs, “Let’s hit it.”

  McDiggs dog-eyed Widow one last time. He tossed the passport at him. It bounced off his chest and landed in his open palm.

  Without saying anything more, both cops turned and walked back to their police cruiser and slid in opposite sides. Jones in the driver’s seat and McDiggs in the passenger’s.

  Widow listened to Jones swipe the car’s auto transmission out of park. He heard the accelerator igniting the engine and the tires taking a grip on the road. Without checking to see if anyone was coming from behind, Jones hit the gas and they were away.