Almost True (Copper Creek Alaska #1)
Chapter 1
Korren
The column of smoke from the bonfire guides me toward the beach. When the plume drifts over to sear my nose, I shove my hands into my pockets and kick at the ground, all the nerves I’d pretended I didn’t feel returning to my stomach in full force.
It’s my first time meeting the rest of the firefighting crew, and I’ve been too busy worrying about whether I’d even find them to think about what comes next.
I’d been told to follow the road to the end and then bushwhack down to Bear Lake, which is fucking massive.
I thought I’d be wandering around until midnight.
Now I can barely convince my feet to move forward.
Am I ready for this?
Not at all.
But I need money. I can’t keep living if I don’t find work, and this is what I’ve trained for, so…
I make fists in my pockets, trying to keep myself together. I thought I’d moved on from that day. I thought I’d be able to handle this better.
Soon I’m distracted by the difficulty of forcing my way through the tangle of growth separating the road from the lake.
Alaskan bushwhacking isn’t like it is back at home.
What looked like a few weeds that I could stride through without trouble is actually a waist-deep snarl that has me changing direction every couple steps in hopes I can find an easier way through.
I’m about to give up when I break through onto what is unmistakably a path.
My relief turns almost immediately to annoyance. Why hadn’t Chief Rhodes mentioned there was a trail?
With the undergrowth scratching at my hands as I push my way along the narrow path, I soon pick up voices and laughter rising from the beach. And immediately my stomach ties itself in knots again.
I need to make a good first impression. If I can act confident and laid-back—if I can summon even a fragment of who I was when I first started the other job, which seems like another lifetime—no one will pry any deeper.
They’ll think I’m just another guy lured to Copper Creek by the adventure of it all.
The idea of living in a spectacular small town in Alaska accessible only by boat or bush plane.
Not that any of that mattered to me when I applied for the job.
Closer to the waterfront, a row of willows rises up to screen the beach from view—thank god for the trail, or I would have given up long ago and resigned myself to spending the night curled up somewhere in this fucking tangle.
At last I break out of the scrub and stumble onto the rocky beach of Bear Lake, which is surrounded by snow-capped mountains that glow a dusky orange in the late-night sun. It’s the summer solstice, which is apparently a big deal here, hence the bonfire.
I pause a moment, trying to even out my breathing and straighten my shoulders.
I can do this.
As I pick my way down the beach, I size up the rest of my new crew.
Chief Rhodes is obvious as the only middle-aged man among them, with an impressive black beard and a flannel shirt.
The others are exactly what you’d expect from a fire crew anywhere—burly guys in their twenties and thirties with massive biceps and six-packs. Oh, and one equally tough-looking girl.
It’s a much bigger crew than you’d usually have stationed in such a small town, because they’re also one of the teams responsible for wildlands firefighting across Alaska.
It’s not quite smoke jumping, which was one of my childhood dreams, but we’ll get helicoptered to remote locations to fight fires wherever we’re needed.
Another guy immediately draws my attention, a tall, sturdily built twenty-something with short brown hair and an ever-present smile.
That’s who I need to emulate. The others seem to gravitate to him, beers in hand, and while I can’t hear what he’s saying, the laughter that keeps rippling out around him tells me he’s got a sense of humor too.
But first I trudge over to Chief Rhodes, forcing a smile.
“Hey!” he calls out when he spots me. “You must be Korren!”
“That’s me.”
He holds out a hand and gives mine a vigorous shake.
“Glad you could make it up here, and in the middle of the summer too! It’s been a brutal fire season, and we need all the help we can get.” He says all of this with a grin beneath his bushy black beard.
“Hey, no worries,” I say. “And thank you for paying for my flights.”
“It’s nothing.”
It’s true—the cost will be taken out of the first month of my wages, which means I’ll be earning fuck-all until they’re paid off. At least the bush plane from Anchorage didn’t cost me anything. That one was courtesy of the fire crew.
“I’ve got your accommodation set for the first month or two,” Chief Rhodes says. “It’s nothing fancy, but I’ve got an old campervan behind my place. Rent free. Only problem is, you can’t stay there once it starts snowing.”
“That’s fine.”
It will be something to keep me busy—searching for a place to stay once I can afford it.
Most of the crew here is only working for the summer, but I intend to win myself a year-round position.
At least until I can sort my shit out and go back to living in the real world as a functioning human being.
“You said you’ve done firefighting before, but you’ll want to leave all your assumptions about the job back in the lower forty-eight.
We do respond to calls around Copper Creek, but that’s maybe twice a year.
The rest of the time we’re doing wildlands firefighting, which is a whole different animal. ”
I nod, trying to look eager rather than worried about this. It’s not the physical nature of the work that I’m concerned about, or the firefighting itself, but the fact that I don’t know how I’ll respond in a crisis. I used to have a good head for those sorts of things, and now I don’t. Not at all.
“Now, we’ve just gotten off a long commitment, so we’ve got a week off before we can be called in again. We’ll be doing intensive training during that time, trying to get you up to scratch, because we’re on standby for a big fire in the Brooks Range.”
“Great,” I say, trying to put enough enthusiasm in my voice that it doesn’t sound sarcastic.
Chief Rhodes claps me on the back. “No more talk of business now! It’s the solstice, and that means you have a solemn duty to get drunk.” He shoves a lukewarm beer into my hand.