17. Ivy
seventeen
Ivy
Main Street smells like funnel cake and cut grass, and somewhere up ahead a brass band is playing a John Philip Sousa march with more enthusiasm than accuracy.
“This is incredible,” Nolan says, turning in a slow circle, trying to look at everything at once. “There are, like, three separate flag displays.”
“Four,” Dani says. “You missed the one on the gazebo.”
Silver Creek does the Fourth of July properly. Bigger than Timber Creek, but still small enough that half the crowd seems to know each other, kids darting between booths with flags painted on their cheeks, somebody's dog wearing a tiny star-spangled bandana.
We come every year the fire calendar allows it. This year Beck and Reid were supposed to be here too, before Elk Ridge called. I don't dwell on it. I'm getting reasonably good at the not-dwelling part.
Nolan starts drifting toward a food truck advertising loaded fries the size of his forearm.
“Nope,” Dani says, catching his arm. “Church booths first.”
“Is that a rule?”
“Yes.”
Nolan looks at the rest of us for backup. Nobody gives him any, so he follows us.
“Silver Creek's churches do this every year as a fundraiser,” I tell him as we walk.
“A lot of the families cooking today go back generations.
When Silver Bell's mine started failing, a bunch of families moved down here instead of scattering completely. Norwegian, German, Irish, mostly. The food traditions stuck around.”
Nolan glances back over his shoulder like he's trying to connect the ghost town we hiked around a couple weeks ago to the smell of bratwurst currently filling the air. “That's kind of cool.”
We hit the Norwegian booth first, because I've been thinking about this stop since I arrived at the crew house for the season.
Lefse, warm off the griddle, brushed with real butter and a generous dusting of cinnamon sugar, rolled up and handed over in wax paper that's already going translucent with grease.
I take a bite and close my eyes. “That’s so good.”
“What's in it?” Nolan asks, studying his own piece with deep suspicion.
“Potatoes.”
“This is a potato?”
“It used to be,” Tessa says.
He takes a bite, and his whole face changes. “Okay,” he says, turning back toward the booth. “I need another one.”
I take a second bite of my own. I'd been looking forward to watching Beck try one, imagining his reaction. It's not a sad thought. My lefse is perfect, warm, and what I've been waiting for since last summer. I just wish he were standing next to me eating his own.
Beck's last message came Thursday night.
Friday passed with nothing, which I told myself was normal, long operational days, exhausted crews, poor reception in the backcountry.
I worked. I ate dinner. I went to bed early and didn't check my phone more than was reasonable, which is to say I checked it constantly and pretended otherwise.
Now it's Saturday. It’s been even longer since Reid's checked in with anyone. I know what it likely means. I've lived through enough of Reid's radio silence to know the list of logical explanations by heart. I check my phone one more time, see nothing new, and put it back in my pocket.
Nolan decides to eat his way through the entire festival in the name of cultural education. More lefse. A bratwurst the length of his forearm. Soda bread from the Irish booth that he declares essential to his understanding of the region.
“I'm supporting local heritage,” he says.
Cassidy gives him a look. “You're going to regret local heritage in about an hour.”
We wander the craft booths for a while, admiring some nice woodwork and some deeply questionable taxidermy.
I run into three different people I know from Timber Creek, and it's easy, comfortable, the kind of afternoon I've had a dozen versions of over the years.
There's a booth near the historical society with old photographs of Silver Bell, faded sepia images of the same buildings we climbed around.
I linger there a minute longer than everyone else, thinking about a rock overlook and the first time Beck kissed me.
Someone announces the pie-eating contest starts in ten minutes, and Nolan decides to enter.
“You just ate an entire bratwurst,” Dani says.
“That was lunch.”
“It was seven minutes ago.”
He signs up, chest puffed out, already composing his victory speech.
Cassidy signs up right after him, quiet, almost offhand, like she's mentioning the weather.
Nobody questions it until the contest starts, at which point it becomes clear Cassidy has some kind of hidden competitive gear the rest of us have never seen engaged.
Nolan starts strong but fades fast, visibly regretting every heritage-based decision of the past few hours.
Cassidy just keeps going, calm, efficient, terrifyingly focused, and wins by a margin that isn't even close.
“I underestimated you,” Nolan says afterward, wiping cherry filling off his chin with the back of his hand.
“That was your first mistake,” Cassidy says.
I get a picture of the aftermath, Cassidy triumphant with both arms raised, Nolan slumped beside her looking like a man reconsidering every choice that brought him to this festival. I pull up my thread with Beck before I even think about it.
Cassidy destroyed Nolan in the pie-eating contest, I type. He's currently questioning all his life choices.
I hit send. No response comes back, which I anticipated. He can't answer right now. That doesn't mean I want to stop telling him things.
Later, the crowd settles into folding chairs near the stage, and a local band starts working through a set of country and classic-rock covers. Somewhere in the middle of the third song I catch myself thinking Beck would know the original artists without even trying.
Between songs, the singer pauses to thank the local firefighters, first responders, and anyone else working instead of celebrating today.
The crowd applauds, warm and genuine. I think of Beck and Reid somewhere west of here, breathing smoke instead of funnel-cake air, working long hours on a fire most of these people will never think about again once tonight's over.
I think about how a day like this, easy and safe and full of lefse and brass-band renditions of patriotic songs, exists partly because people are willing to do the kind of work Beck's doing right now.
I'm proud of him. Both of them, though it's Beck's face I keep picturing.
“No fireworks?” Nolan asks at some point, scanning the schedule flyer like he's missing something.
“We're surrounded by trees,” Tessa says.
“Right.”
Nobody misses the fireworks. There's music, food, and people I care about gathered in one place, and that's plenty.
I check my phone again. Still nothing. It's edging toward forty-eight hours now.
Tessa finds me a few minutes later. “Still nothing?”
“Nothing.”
“Reid either?”
I shake my head.
“If there was something wrong Russ would have heard by now,” she says.
“I know.”
She doesn't say anything else. She just stays beside me. A few minutes later Dani says something about finding better seats, and the moment passes.
I don't stop having fun. I go back to my friends, I laugh at Nolan swearing off pie forever while eyeing a funnel cake stand. I listen to the music. There are stretches of the evening where I don’t think about checking my phone.
We head back to Timber Creek as the light finally starts to fade, the noise of Silver Creek falling away behind us, the crew house quiet and familiar when we pull in.
Russ is on the porch when we get there.
I know before he says anything that it's not bad news. Something in the way he's standing, relaxed, tells me before he says a word.
“Got an update from Elk Ridge,” he says. “Took a while working through channels, but Beck and Reid got reassigned to a different section of Granite Creek. Deeper into the backcountry. Cell coverage out there's basically nonexistent.”
“Are they okay?”
“They're okay, Ivy.”
Something in me lets go that I’d been holding onto for two days. My shoulders drop. I breathe differently, all at once, like I've been taking shallow breaths since Thursday without noticing.
I thank Russ. I'm relieved, deeply, the same relief I've felt a dozen times over the years. But when Russ said they're okay, the first face I saw was Beck's.
Later, once the house has quieted down for the night, I go out to the porch. The same spot where we stood almost a week ago, except tonight the air is warm and still, stars coming out clean and bright over the tree line, nothing like the storm had been at all.
I let myself finally think about the last two days.
Every time I checked my phone. Every reasonable explanation I gave myself and half believed.
Every time I wondered whether he was eating enough, sleeping enough.
Whether he’s safe. Then I think about the rest of the day and how often Beck surfaced in my thoughts.
All day, every time something good happened, there was one person I wanted beside me.
Beck.
He's coming back from Elk Ridge. That much I know.
But Blackpine's temporary assignment ends eventually.
He'll go back to his regular unit. Fire season ends.
And then winter will come, and he'll go wherever ski patrol takes him.
I'll finish my thesis and figure out my own next step.
Neither of us has any idea yet where either of those paths lead.
I can't make him choose to stay. I wouldn't want to, even if I could. That needs to be his decision, not something I talk him into.
But tonight, I don't chase those thoughts any further than I have to. Instead, I hold onto what I know.
I’m falling in love with Beck.