by Roxie Noir
“What were you doing in Elko?” Daniel finally asks. “And what were you being punished for?”
I laugh, even though I can feel my face turning bright pink, because they were having a nice conversation about getting drunk and I interrupted.
“I had a conference for work,” I say.
“You’re the forest ranger, right?” a guy whose name I don’t know asks.
“I’m one of them,” I say.
“And there was a conference in Elko?”
I pull one foot onto the couch in front of me, still very aware that everyone’s looking at me. I kind of wish I hadn’t said anything.
“It was on, um, the microbiomes particular to the high desert region,” I say.
“That’s the crust, right?” Daniel asks.
“Yeah,” I say, a little surprised that he knows about this. “Cryptobiotic crust. There’s a lot of it near Elko, so we’d look at crusts during the day and drink at the Wildcat’s Lair at night.”
“You don’t have to look that surprised that I know about desert crust,” Daniel says, lifting his eyebrows.
I turn a deeper shade of pink.
“I wasn’t surprised,” I say.
“Mhm,” he says.
“I mean, I’m surprised whenever anyone knows about it because most people don’t really know a lot about desert bacteria? I only know because of my job. Otherwise I’d be clueless as a babe in the woods. Or a babe in the desert, I guess.”
I can’t believe I opened my mouth just to call Daniel dumb, I think. Shit.
Shit shit shit.
“Daniel, quit being an asshole, she’s new,” Hunter says.
Daniel just laughs.
“He’s not being an asshole, it’s just his shitty personality,” Silas says, also grinning.
“Yeah, I can’t help it,” Daniel says, then looks back at me. “Sorry, I have a shitty personality.”
“At least you know what desert crust is,” I say. I’m still blushing, but I’m relieved that at least I wasn’t being the asshole.
“And thank God for that,” Silas says.
Hunter strokes my shoulder with his thumb, and I feel some of my anxiety dissipate. He’s acting so normal about this, like of course he’s got a girlfriend over at the house, and none of the other guys seem to even notice.
I, on the other hand, had a weird conversation in a supply closet at work, and then completely clammed up when my very nice boss tried to ask about Hunter. I’m doing spectacularly on the “not making it weird” front.
“Did the Wildcat’s Lair get out the moonshine for the rangers?” Silas asks me.
“Not that I know of,” I say.
“Maybe it’s the desert crust that made that stuff so lethal,” Hunter offers.
“Everybody listen up,” says a voice from the door. We all turn, but no one stands.
Hunter’s boss is standing there, a dark-haired guy in his forties who’s just starting to go gray. The living room goes silent, and I hold my breath, because I have a feeling the announcement isn’t “There are cupcakes in the kitchen.”
“I just got the call that a cold front is moving through,” he says. “And there’s likely to be a pretty big shift in weather patterns over the next few days, so we’re heading up north to Eaglevale an hour before dawn tomorrow. Briefing in twenty.”
Then he walks off, and the pit of my stomach goes cold.
The guys in the room all exhale at the same time, like they’ve got one set of lungs. Hunter rubs one hand over his head and starts laughing, and then so do the rest.
“God, I thought we were gonna be stuck here forever,” Silas says.
“No kidding,” says Hunter. “Send us or don’t, just fucking decide. I can’t stand the sitting around.”
“I know it,” Daniel says, standing. “See you guys in twenty.”
“I should get going,” I say, uncurling my legs, standing, and sliding my shoes back on. Hunter gets off the couch too, but I can’t bring myself to look him in the eye right now.
“It was nice meeting you guys, maybe I’ll see you around again?” I say.
They both stand, and weirdly, we all shake hands.
“Have a good one, Clementine,” Silas says, and then I walk for the door, Hunter following me.
“Walk me home?” I ask him, trying to smile, but it feels mechanical.
“Of course,” he says, but he looks puzzled.
We head through the foyer. I wave goodbye to some of the other guys, and then I’m outside in the cool night air.
“Clem,” Hunter says, the moment the door is shut.
I walk down the porch stairs and onto the sidewalk before I answer.
He’s happy about it, I think, over and over. He didn’t like being here, sitting around. With me.
“Yeah?”
He grabs my arm and stops me.
“Say something, you can’t just go quiet and walk away.”
I want to wrench my arm away and shout watch me but instead I take a deep breath.
“I’m worried about you guys, because the Saturn Fire seems pretty bad,” I say. At least it’s part of the truth.
“I’ll be fine,” he says. “I’m always fine.”
“Yeah,” I mutter.
“What,” he says.
I just shake my head.
“And if I’m not, you can find someone who knows about desert crust,” he says.
“What the hell?” I say, my voice starting to rise. I swallow hard, trying to keep it down.
We stare at each other for a moment, and I can sense that we’re on the knife’s edge, one more word away from a stupid fight that I don’t actually want to have.
“Nothing,” he says, crossing his arms over his chest, looking away. “Sorry. Just forget it.”
I close my eyes and breathe deep.
It’s not about you, I remind myself. Almost nothing is about you, really, so chill the fuck out.
“I’m sorry,” I say, though the words come out stiffly. “You’re leaving and I don’t know when I’m going to see you again.”
“I know,” he says. “That was an asshole thing to say, I’m sorry.”
We stand there, awkwardly, on the sidewalk for another moment.
“I’ll see you in a couple weeks, okay?” he says.
I just nod.
We kiss, but it’s not quite right, too stiff and strange and mechanical. It’s almost worse than if we hadn’t had a goodbye kiss at all.
“Stay safe,” I say, and climb the steps to my porch.
“See you soon,” he says, and I go inside my house.
Then I close the door, put my forehead against the wall, and think: fuck. Fuck. FUCK.
24
Hunter
I can’t fucking believe I said the thing about desert crust. Now I’m not gonna see Clementine for weeks, and the last conversation we had was an almost-argument because I’m goddamn jealous.
This is familiar, too, in the worst kind of way, because I feel like I can’t give her what she needs. She goes to conferences about bacteria and I dig holes in dirt for a living, and sometimes, it feels like there’s no way she won’t get bored with me sooner or later.
And I fucking know picking fights with her won’t help. Especially not now, but then I went and almost did it anyway, out of some terrible self-sabotaging instinct.
I head back inside, into the kitchen, where Porter’s got everyone assembled, two guys holding up the laminated map like a makeshift bulletin board. On it, the towns of Eaglevale and Coldwater are big black squares, and Porter points at them.
“These fire breaks are gonna be our first priority,” he says. “Emergency personnel have already started evacuations, but we need to save as many homes as we can...”
It feels like it takes me hours to finally fall asleep. I’m thinking about the time that I hiked into the Spires, and how hard it was even without equipment. I’m thinking about building fire breaks on rocky, steep terrain like that.
I’m thinking that maybe I should go to Clementine’s house before we leave, even though it’ll be 5:15 in the morning, and apologize, because I hate the thought of saying goodbye like this, the weight of things unsaid hanging in the air like an axe over my head.
By 4:45 a.m., nearly everyone is awake and out of bed. I’m not the only one who could barely sleep, and even though we all get dressed and prep our equipment without talking too much, the air feels charged, electric, like a spark could make everything explode.
I haul stuff outside to where the trucks are waiting. We load them, as quietly as we can, so we don’t wake anyone up. I keep looking at the house next door where Clementine lives, hoping to see a lighted window that I can take as a sign.
Her house stays dark. I load more stuff, then start checking that it’s all secured, that we’ve got everything. Everyone mills around a little. None of us are very good at waiting, and once everything is loaded and checked and triple-checked, we stand around, kicking the sidewalk, hands in our pockets.
I look at her windows again and again. I think that maybe I should let sleeping dogs lie, and when I get back it’ll be better. We’ll talk it over then, like adults.
But then I remember our uncomfortable, stiff kiss. The way she couldn’t look at me, the way I lashed out at her for no reason, and I know I can’t say goodbye to her like that.
I turn to Silas, who’s standing next to me, lost in his own thoughts.
“I’ll be back in five minutes,” I say.
He just nods tensely. It’s hard to be about to head into a fire zone. Almost easier to just be there.
I mount Clementine’s porch steps as my phone dials her number, because I don’t want to wake her roommates if I don’t have to. The call takes a few moments to go through, and as it starts ringing, I stand on her porch, my stomach in knots, hoping she answers.
It feels like an eternity, but then the ringing stops.
“Hey,” she says softly, and her voice comes through the phone and also through the front door.
Before I can answer, it swings open, and she’s standing there, her phone up to her ear.
“Oh,” she says, still talking into the phone.
“Surprise,” I say into mine, and she smiles, closing her door behind her.
“I was about to come say goodbye,” she says, keeping her voice low, clicking her phone off.
She looks away, at the trucks with the guys standing around.
“I didn’t want to leave things like we did,” she starts, then pauses.
“I’m sorry I was an asshole,” I blurt out. “It’s the same bullshit. I can do better.”
Clementine just looks surprised. She pushes her bangs off her forehead.
“Me too,” she finally says. “I can be petty and jealous and insecure, and...”
She shuffles her feet against the porch floor.
“And I don’t really like that about myself,” she finishes.
“I don’t want to be away from you,” I say. “I wish there was a third option, to have this job but come home at night.”
She smiles faintly.
“I don’t care if you don’t know what cryptobiotic crust is,” she says. “You’ve never bored me, which is more than I can say for most people.”
I step forward and put my arms around her.
“This was stupid,” I say.
“Yeah,” she agrees. “I promise to never have stupid feelings again.”
I just laugh, and so does she.
“Same,” I say.
Behind me, I hear a truck start, and I turn my head. The guys are milling around with slightly more purpose, and even though a few of them glance over, they look away quickly, like they’re faintly embarrassed.
“You should go,” Clementine says.
I kiss her, and this time it feels normal, her lips firm but yielding under mine, her arms tight around me. A proper goodbye kiss.
We separate and I kiss her forehead.
“I’ll call you when I can,” I say.
“Wait,” she says, and reaches into her pocket. She holds up a small, smooth, gray rock.
“We’ve already got plenty of ways to start a fire,” I say. “We’re not actual cavemen.”
Clementine rolls her eyes, but she’s smiling.
“It’s from the waterfall,” she says. “Just fucking take it and think nice thoughts about me once in a while.”
She puts it in my hand, small and heavy, warm from being in her pocket.
“Can I think nice thoughts about you a lot?” I ask.
“Don’t go overboard,” she teases.
“Like when I’m alone in my tent, and I’m dead tired but still too wired to sleep—”
Another truck starts behind me, and we both turn to look at it.
“Yes, you can jerk off thinking about me,” Clementine laughs, then kisses me before I can respond.
“Did that anyway,” I say.
“Go,” she says, pushing me toward the porch steps. “I don’t wanna hear that Eaglevale burned down because one of the fire crew wouldn’t quit talking to his girlfriend.”
I grin, kiss her hand, and head down the steps.
Minutes later we’re driving out of Lodgepole, the sky just barely starting to lighten at the eastern edge, the truck silent. Daniel and I are in the back seat, Silas in the front as we head north.
Daniel turns to me.
“Clementine’s nice,” he says.
“Yeah, she seemed cool,” Silas says from the front.
“Thanks,” I say.
We fall quiet again.
The whole way up, we listen to reports from the people already in Eaglevale — a few forest rangers, the Ashlake Volunteer Fire Department. They’re bad, the Saturn Fire’s bigger and faster than anyone predicted.
We should have left earlier, maybe even yesterday, and the feeling that I was in Lodgepole eating Italian food and laughing with Clementine gnaws at me. Logically, I know that fires are nearly impossible to predict, and that everyone always does their best, but deep down, the thought that someone might lose their home because I wasn’t fast enough is hard to shake.
We all ride along in tense silence, listening to slightly staticky voices talk about the Saturn Fire making its way down the canyon, watching the smoke billow out of the forest north of us.
The air gets a little thicker, and the mountains in the distance have a dull haze in front of them, the sickly yellow color of wood putty. Bits of ash collect on the ground. When the sun comes up it’s a dull, glowing, nuclear orange, and as it rises it becomes a blood-red ball in the sky.
Heading toward a fire always feels apocalyptic, almost like I’m in a movie where society has broken down and everyone lives in cars in the desert or something. The light is always the color of sunset, even if it’s seven o’clock in the morning, and it makes the primal, instinctual part of my brain whisper it’s nearly dark, it’s nearly dark all day.
I thought I’d get used to it after the first few times, but I never did. I guess humans aren’t wired that way.
As we get close, helicopter and drop planes start buzzing overhead, more and more often. The flame retardant powder they drop combines with the smoke and turns everything a little redder. It feels a little more like the end of the world. It feels like that every time, but the end hasn’t come yet.
The truck doesn’t even stop in Eaglevale. A ranger wearing a big hat and an orange safety vest just waves us past some sort of checkpoint, and we head down a rough road and into the canyon. We drive until the road runs out, and then we park behind the other Canyon Country Hotshot trucks.
No one talks much as we load up with our gear. I think we all feel the same way right now, the buzz and excitement of last night gone, traded in for a grim determination about the task ahead.
The first thing we have to do is hike down a tricky trail, carrying seventy pounds of equipment: drip torches, rhinos, chainsaws, plus food and water. Once we get there, then we get to actually start work.
>
Another truck pulls up behind us. Guys pile out. I double check that I’ve got everything, that it’s all firmly strapped to my back.
I run my fingertips over the rock Clementine gave me, safe in a small zippered pocket, and for a moment I let myself think about tossing her into the pool, about lying with her on a warm rock in the sun and teasing her about male strippers.
Then we get moving.
25
Clementine
I watch Hunter drive off, and surprisingly, it feels okay. Sure, it could feel better. We could be asleep in my bed right now, snuggled together, but that’s not what’s happening.
This is. And, honestly: it’s okay.
The land line starts ringing almost the moment I walk back into the house, and I rush to grab the receiver since Lucy and Mandy are still asleep. I don’t even have to answer to know it’s not going to be a good phone call.
“Get your rangin’ hat on,” Randy says.
I glare out the window at the darkness for a full two seconds before I respond, because I’m tired and it’s early and I’m stressed on several fronts, and all of that isn’t putting me in the mood for Randy’s weird shit right now.
“My ranging hat?” I finally ask. “Are we evacuating?”
“You got it,” he says. “This here sheet says you’re to report to the Eaglevale checkpoint and then receive further instructions, which I assume are gonna be, ‘tell people to leave because there’s a fire.’”
“Where’s the checkpoint?” I ask, my stomach tightening.
I’ve only had to evacuate people once, when there was a big fire in the Lolo National Forest, a few hundred miles to the west, and the Forest Service over there needed all the help they could get.
I hated having to do it. I became a ranger because I like being outdoors, because I think plants and fungi are interesting, and because I don’t mind going for stretches without seeing another human.
Telling people that they need to leave their homes, now, and that I don’t know if they’ll ever be able to come back isn’t really my strong suit. Even the people who are well-prepared, packed, and ready to leave are pretty emotional about it.