Читать книгу Public Trust - J. M. Mitchell - Страница 9

In the end, nature herself took back control of the Gabby Fire. After two weeks of the fire doing pretty much as it pleased, a change in weather crept in overnight and humidity quickly tamed it. A few hours later, a slow steady rain knocked the life out of it.

Jack Chastain woke to the sound of rain gently falling on his tent. Relieved, he fell into a deep, restful sleep—until five o’clock, when his alarm clock went off.

“No! Can’t we sleep?” someone complained groggily from a nearby tent.

Jack rolled over and turned off the clock, then sat up in his sleeping bag. “Yes, I think so,” he said. “But I can’t.”

“Think they’ll let us go home?” asked a woman’s voice. It sounded like Cristy Manion, one of the other firefighters from Piedras Coloradas.

“We’ll see.” For all he knew, they might be sent to another fire in some other distant corner of the county. “I’ll know more when I get back.”

He took his time about dressing. All he had was the same smelly nomex he’d worn for the past two days. At least he had a rain parka.

At a little before five thirty, he wandered out into the rain, across camp, though pools of standing water. At the briefing area, crew bosses, division supervisors, engine foremen, the air operations chief and others were assembling in a loose circle around the briefing board. The board was covered with maps streaked with running colors. Jack found a place and waited.

Precisely at 5:30 a.m., the Incident Commander—a shorter, wiry man in a Forest Service ball cap—emerged from the Planning Section tent and stepped out into the rain. He slipped into the midst of the throng. His words were sparse. “The rains are gonna continue for another two days. We’re demobing most of you, starting this morning.”

Those words summed it up. This fire was history. The IC turned the briefing over to the Demob Unit Leader, a slightly overweight man who looked not at all familiar, wearing an extremely clean nomex shirt, but none of that affected his credibility—this guy could get them home.

He stepped to the center of the circle, and looked down at his clipboard. “Okay, we’ve got thirty some-odd crews, twenty-seven engines, four helicopters and overhead. Some of you are going back on the board, cause we’re getting orders from up north. Idaho and Montana. They’ve got new fires.”

Jack glanced around, catching sight of other eyes nervously doing the same, all except leaders of hotshot crews, who seemed anxious to have someplace to go.

“But,” the Demob leader said, and halted, knowing everyone hung on his words. He smiled. “Fire season’s winding down everywhere else in the country. Hotshots, we’re shipping you north. The rest of you, we’re sending you home. We’ll post the travel arrangements as we get ‘em made.”

Those were pretty much the last words anyone really heard.

Jack walked back to camp and let the others in on the news.

Most of the crew of twenty slipped back into sleeping bags that smelled of smoke and sweat, while a few grouped together into tents, talking quietly with new buddies from other agencies, testing out fire stories they would likely tell over and over again when they got back home.

Jack dug into his bag for his toilet kit. He had time for a shower. He needed one. And a shave—his beard was growing itchy.

He made his way back through camp to the supply unit, where he got a clean change of clothes. Then he headed for the shower trailer.

A line of firefighters stood waiting. It was not nearly as long as the one he’d given up on the night before. It worked out—he had gotten a little more sleep, and now he might get a little more time to soak.

When it was his turn to shower, he propped himself against the wall and let the water strip away layers of soot and sweat, and soak his aching muscles as long as his conscience let him. Then he walked naked to the other end of the trailer and found a mirror. He wiped away the condensation. In the instant before it fogged over, something caught his eye. He swiped again. Gray—his beard on the sides of his face. It was gray.

He tried to laugh. “You’re getting old,” he said aloud. How much had been brought on by everything in the past year? Maybe some, but he wasn’t getting any younger. Thirty something wasn’t old, but he wouldn’t be taking this kind of assignment much longer. It was about time to turn it over to the younger bucks. He would miss it. There was something oddly satisfying about being responsible for nineteen other people, being both their taskmaster and single parent, taking care of them, being there to see them come through when it counted most.

This might be the last of it. The park superintendent would likely see to that. Joe Morgan seemed less than pleased about letting him leave the park for such an extended period.

Jack shaved, dressed and wandered back through the rain to the mess tent. After breakfast, he checked the demob board. Nothing yet.

He started back to the crew. He stopped. They would only pepper him with questions he could not yet answer. He turned and headed for the bank of portable phones, to call the park and let them know the crew was coming home.

As he passed the Supply Tent, he caught sight of the line at the phones. Dozens of firefighters stood in the rain, waiting. What else was there to do? Jack took his place at the back of the line.

Most of the firefighters were rain-soaked. Either they didn’t bring foul weather gear, or they didn’t mind the rain. A few were in nomex, but most were in wet T-shirts emblazoned with crew logos or commemorations of past fires they’d worked.

Tammy Sams was at one of the phones. She was being admired by a young firefighter with a ‘long time from home’ look about him. The sight of Sams—rain soaked and blonde hair pulled back—wasn’t helping. Tuning out her admirers, Sams stood engrossed in the phone, a contented look about her. Probably talking to her honey.

“Hey, boss.”

Jack turned. “Johnny.”

Johnny looked like a wet rat. Others from the crew fell into line behind him. “Hear they’re sending hotshots to Montana,” he said. “Gonna try to get us sent up there? We could go stompin’ around your ol’ haunts.”

“No thanks.”

“You could arrange for someone to drop into camp, come see you.” He raised a brow.

“There’s no one there I need to see.”

“I’m talking about a certain red-headed lady ranger? I hear she looks good in uniform. Awfully good.”

“Is that so?”

“Am I right?”

“I don’t know.”

“Looks better out of uniform, huh?” He laughed. “I know rangers like that.”

“I don’t want to talk about it. Your sources are out of date.”

Johnny’s mouth gaped open. He wiped the rain from his face. “You mean? Sorry, man.”

“Long distance relationships. Hard to make ‘em work,” Jack grumbled, hoping the distortion of facts would get Johnny to leave him alone.

“Hope you’re wrong, man. I’m in one myself. A lady at Organ Pipe.”

Jack turned away. He couldn’t stomach another contented face. Jack put his attention on a firefighter from another park. “Frank, ready to go home?”

“I guess.” He looked down.

“How could you not be ready? After this past two weeks.”

He tried to smile, but couldn’t muster much of one. “I guess I’m ready.”

Jack realized his blunder, having forgotten what had happened in Frank’s park in the past year. The prescribed burn that got away. The dozens of homes burned, the hundreds of lives affected. People’s treasures, all of their possessions, and for some, their dreams—all lost. There was no point in seeming oblivious to it. “How are the people back at your park?” Jack asked.

“Okay,” Frank said, the word paining him. “On the mend. Some people got moved.”

“I heard.”

“It’s still hard.” He looked like he wanted to stop talking, but something kept him going. “No one’s blaming us specifically…as individuals, that is. But it’s hard for those of us who live in the community. Especially, if we didn’t lose anything. It’s like, we feel guilty for coming out of it better than the people who lost everything.”

“I understand.”

“And the people who lost their jobs, in the end they were exonerated, but…they were good people, and...” He couldn’t finish.

“I know.”

Frank held his tongue.

“It’s unfortunate what happened, Frank. It could have happened to any of us.”

The words stirred a reaction. “That’s not what some people think!”

“Well, they should.”

“They don’t. I can tell.”

“Frank, there are risks, and there may have been lessons learned at your expense, lessons that help the rest of us, but there are risks inherent to this line of work. Prescribed burns, fire suppression, managed wildland fires, they’re all risky, but we’ve got to do it. We all know that, and we lived that nightmare with you, because we’ve all done some things, for what we thought were the right reasons, and we’ve seen them go wrong.”

“Maybe. But we’re the ones living it.”

“You’re right. But we’re all Park Service. You’re not alone.”

Frank nodded, but even to Jack the words sounded hollow.

Frank turned away.

Jack looked at Johnny and shrugged.

“He’s not the same guy he was last year,” Johnny whispered.

Frank Boyers drifted away from the line.

“Didn’t mean to chase him off,” Jack said.

“What’s with you? I’ve never seen you philosophical. So…” He paused, searching for a word.

Jack frowned and looked away. “Don’t get used to it.”

When Jack finally got his turn on the phone, he made one call, to Molly in the dispatch office at Piedras Coloradas. “We’re on our way home,” he told her. “I should be in the office tomorrow.”

“We’re anxious to get you home, all of you,” Molly said. “And your desk, you should see it. It’s just piled high with papers.”

“Burn em.”

He ended the call and made his way back through the muck to the message board. Their demob orders were posted.

— • —

The chartered plane carrying three crews from New Mexico touched down in Albuquerque, and taxied to a darkened corner of the airport, far from the main terminal. At a hanger with doors open and lights flooding out onto the tarmac, the plane rolled to a stop. They deplaned and Jack gathered his crew together one last time. In the midst of red bags and fire tools, he passed out timesheets and commended the firefighters for their work. “Drive safely,” he said, to end it.

Cheers erupted, mainly from new firefighters who had just survived their first big fire. A rite of passage, it seemed. The others, they understood.

It was time for good-byes, and promises that they would all do it again when duty called.

It had been a good crew. Possibly his last.

— • —

On the drive back to Piedras Coloradas, Jack sat on the passenger side and watched the road. Johnny drove. Miguel Vera and Christy Manion fell asleep in the back seat of the crew-cab truck as it rumbled down the road.

As road flowed past, something reminded Jack of Frank Boyers. There are people in the world with bigger problems than yours, he told himself. Forget Montana.

In some ways he knew he already had. There was comfort in the canyons of las Piedras Coloradas. They had taken him in. It was people he could not reconcile, even after a year. People had taken a public servant, and made him nothing more than a pawn to use in their own little games. Why would the people around Piedras Coloradas be any different?

He forced his mind onto his work. There were things he needed to get back to. There was one project in particular. The fuel reduction and ecosystem restoration project up on the plateau, in an area where Mother Nature needed a little help. After decades of fire suppression, what were once open stands of ponderosa were now thickets, dense with young pines and oak brush. Fire could now climb easily off the ground into the canopies of the old giants. Conflagration could now occur—destruction at the hand of the force that once maintained it.

If he could get the fire staff working there before someone else gave them something to do, they could wrap up the thinning, and burn it next year. The project was already planned and approved—his predecessor had seen to that. The public process was finished and nearly half of the thinning was done. If the work did not get finished, the risks would simply grow, as they did with each passing year. Homes were creeping up the hill from the town of Las Piedras, joining the ranches outside the park. He needed to finish the job.

“What ya’ thinkin about?” Johnny Reger asked.

“How to put you to work. We need to get back to that project on the plateau.”

“Ah, up in the cool pines,” he said. He approved. “That’s good, but I was sure you were thinking about going to Elena’s Cantina and getting a beer.”

Jack laughed. “No, not me. That was just you.”

Reger looked over his shoulder at his two sleeping compadres. “Naw, these two are just hopping to go, and I don’t want to disappoint ‘em.”

“Johnny, you’re not serious. You wouldn’t do that to them.”

Reger’s easy smile grew across his face. “Yep, I would.”

— • —

They drove through the government housing area, and stopped at Jack’s cabin at the end of the road. He pulled his bag out over the gunnels of the pickup, and set it on the cut-stone steps. “I’ll see you tomorrow,” he said.

He watched Johnny and the other two, now awake and stoked to take up at Elena’s where they’d left off two weeks before, as they drove off to the fire dorm to change.

The down-canyon breeze rustled in the cottonwoods that lined the creek. Just a sliver in the east, the moon cast a dim light into the side canyon behind the house. The west-facing wall of Cañon de Fuego stood in shadow.

Quiet settled over him. The side canyon was not as beautiful as big sister, Cañon de Fuego and her walls of fire. Few knew little sister existed, but she was well worth knowing. She was more prone to intimacy. She had her little secrets.

He listened, and caught the sound of distant voices. The voices, like bleating sheep, echoed from up the creek. The Fuego Canyon tree frogs--the endangered little creatures were calling. This late in the year.

Jack turned to the door. A note was taped to the glass.

Jack, welcome back. I need your help tomorrow. Let’s talk first thing in the morning. Come in uniform. Joe Morgan

This wasn’t anything to think about now.

He unlocked the door, carried in his gear, and pulled off his fire boots and clothes. After putting on canvas shorts and a pair of hiking sandals, he looked in the refrigerator. One beer. He grabbed it, and headed out into the night.

He found the traces of trail that made their way toward Warm Creek. Picking his way among the shadows, he slipped past desert shrub and slabs of sandstone. Once along the creek, he tread more softly, wanting, as he always did, to get as close to the tree frogs as he could before they became aware of him.

The community of tree frogs continued passing around their little love calls, and maybe a bit of news or rumor of the day. Jack crept toward his preferred location, a boulder outside the alcove from which the creek emerged as a dripping spring.

He made it to his spot. The voices continued.