Chapter 1
CHAPTER ONE
“What the hell is going on?” I mumbled, slowing my truck to a crawl.
Carefully, I avoided side-swiping the long line of parked vehicles that stretched along the narrow shoulder of the highway in front of me.
On the opposite side of the road, dozens of people milled around in groups, many of whom were dressed in bright pink shirts and congregated around signs staked into the ground.
“ZONE A”, “ZONE B”, and “ZONE C” flashed by as I passed. I lost track of how far down the alphabet the signs went before media vans overtook the narrow patch of grass.
Odd. It didn’t look like a protest, but I couldn’t think of what else it would be.
A police officer wearing a bright yellow safety vest stood in the center of the road up ahead, directing passing cars through the congestion.
Several other police vehicles were parked along the highway, and a handful of officers appeared to be calling out directions to the people gathered farther back.
I nodded at the cop and rolled by, picking up speed again. Thankfully, traffic wasn’t backed up. Not that there was anything close to real traffic on the winding highway into Ponderosa, Idaho.
It was called the Gateway to Nowhere for a reason, after all.
I’d worked and lived in Missoula, Montana, for the last six years, and as rugged as it was compared to most cities in the country, it paled in comparison to the terrain surrounding my hometown.
Really, Ponderosa looked more like a moody off-road SUV commercial than anything else.
Tunnels of fir, spruce, and pine so thick and tall they blocked out the sun grew on either side of the pavement.
Abruptly, a sharp bend in the road plunged vehicles out into the open, winding around the sheer mountain face, unveiling dramatic vistas of conifer-covered valleys and steep canyon drop-offs blanketed in fog.
“Douglas fir, Lodgepole pine, Western redcedar!” I used to call out, pointing at each cluster of trees Dad and I drove by on the way home from school. My Forestry Merit Badge was the one I’d been most proud of.
“Very good,” he’d say, chuckling and ruffling the hair on my head. “How about that one?” he’d ask, slowing down to point so I could get a better look.
“Um… I don’t know that one,” I’d said, brow furrowed. That was ok, though, because Dad did, and he’d never once made me feel bad for needing help.
“It’s a Ponderosa pine,” he’d said with a smile. “Don’t usually get them up this high, despite the namesake.”
The forest was magic, then. Ethereal. A never-ending vastness I couldn’t comprehend beyond infinity, filled with trees and birds and bears and mountain lions. As a child, it’d been exciting.
Now, I saw it for what it really was.
Stark and harsh, the landscape still took my breath away, but in the way a siren song lured an unsuspecting sailor. The forest would swallow me whole if I weren’t careful, caught staring for too long, and not watching my step.
Beautiful and dangerous.
Maybe I would let it, one of these days.
An incoming call rang through the truck speakers, briefly pulling my attention away from ensuring I wouldn’t steer off the side of the mountain road into Nowhere.
That would not be the way to go out.
I checked the caller ID and answered. “Hey, Mom. I’m just coming into Ponderosa now.”
“Oh, good. How was the drive?” she asked. A water faucet shut off in the background, followed by pots and pans banging around like she’d called mid-dinner preparation.
“Uneventful for the most part. I’ll be at Dad’s in ten minutes or so. I think we’re meeting Leonard and Bobby for a bite tonight, so I can grab the keys to the lookout.”
“Are you driving out tomorrow?”
I flicked on my blinker and turned off the paved highway just before coming into town. The deep ruts in the dirt road jostled me as I slowly wound down the steep drive. “Day after. I need to finish supplying up in town tomorrow. I’ll head out Sunday morning.”
She sighed. “Well, just be careful. Keep your phone with you all the time when you’re out there, you know I worry. Call me if you need anything at all, that’s all I ask.”
I knew what she wasn’t saying.
I wasn’t before Reece anymore, so I had to be extra careful. I wasn’t the man who’d practically grown up in a fire lookout.
When I wasn’t visiting Mom in Tennessee, I’d spend at least a few weeks every summer with Dad when he’d fill in as a lookout for the U.S. Forest Service. I could operate an Osborne Firefinder in my sleep and knew how to mentally manage the extended periods of isolation.
That was the whole reason I’d agreed to take the job this season. The thought of leaving everything behind and disappearing into the forest for a few months was music to my ears.
“I’ll be fine, Mom, please don’t—SHIT!” I yelled, slamming on the brakes. My tires skidded, sliding on loose gravel and dirt until the truck lurched to a halt.
A large tree limb lay across the road and blocked my path. It was hidden around a bend, my view of the road obscured by the thick brush growing on either side until I was nearly on top of it.
“Reece! Oh my God, are you alright? Reece? Reece!” Mom yelled, voice pitched high.
“I’m alright!” I answered, probably louder than I needed to. “It’s just a fallen branch in the road, that’s all. Nothing to freak out about.”
Great. Another worry for her to suffocate me with.
Heart still pounding, I unplugged the phone, cradled it to my ear, and stepped out to move the obstruction aside.
“Are you sure you should be out there all by yourself?” Mom asked, just like I knew she would.
I rolled my eyes and gripped the snapped-off end of the branch to drag it back into the encroaching tree line. “I’ll be fine,” I repeated with a huff. “The scariest thing at a fire lookout is the lack of indoor plumbing. As long as there’s enough toilet paper, I’ll be set.”
She wasn’t assuaged by my sparkling sense of humor.
“What if you have another flare-up? Or something else goes wrong? It could take hours for someone to get to you. I’m just not sure you’re ready—what?” She hollered the last part away from the phone, her voice echoing like she spoke to someone across the house.
“Oh!” She continued, talking to me again. “Keith wants to say hello. Hold on, let me put you on speaker.”
I took advantage of the brief pause and heaved the other end of the branch to the side of the road. Dad would probably have to deal with it later, or else it’d roll and block the drive again, but I’d at least get through for now.
Back in the truck, I connected the phone to the speakers again and crept along the bumpy road the rest of the way to the cabin.
The various meal-prep noises suddenly grew louder, followed by my step-dad’s booming voice.
“Reece! How’s it going? How’d your, uh, what’s that medicine you’re on, now? How’d that go?”
Thank God for Keith.
He was always attentive to Mom’s penchant to worry, and had been a life-saver the last few months in dissolving the tension between us when it began to grate.
My parents divorced when I was ten, as amicably as that sort of thing could be.
Mom remarried Keith, a computer programmer who worshipped her and his lawn—in that order—a few years later and moved to Tennessee.
She and Dad had decided it was best for me to stay in Idaho with all my friends during the school year, and visit her for a month or so over the summer.
Short and soft-looking, with a round face and a laugh that could be heard a mile away, my mom had gone full Tennessee bleach blonde when they moved, complete with a twang in her voice. She dressed like she was headed for the country club every day.
“Hey, Keith. My infusion went really well. It’s supposed to be highly effective in preventing flare-ups, so crossing my fingers it works.”
Crossing my fingers it works!
Hopefully, this takes care of it for now!
Just gotta keep trucking on!
I really fucking hated every single word that came out of my mouth when I updated family and friends since I’d been diagnosed back in January.
Almost five months later, and I still wasn’t sure what I was meant to say.
How could I explain the snarling, tangled mess of fear, denial, and anger that simmered every time I thought about it?
I had a potentially life-changing chronic illness that I’d manage for as long as I was alive.
I’d already been a grumpy, emotionally unavailable asshole on a good day; now I’d have to explain to anyone I dated that a future with me could be fine, or it could be a slow, sad, painful descent into losing my independence.
A real fucking catch, I was. Not that I was looking, after the way things ended with Josh.
So, I really didn’t know how I felt about the infusions. My neurologist had outlined several treatment options that ranged from low efficacy with minimal risk to high efficacy with increased risk, and asked which I’d prefer.
“You can take a few days to think about it, don’t rush a decision,” she’d said.
In the end, I didn’t need to think about it. I was a fucking risk factor. My lottery ticket from Hell had already been cashed in. “Give me the effective stuff,” I’d said, decision-fatigued and weary.
Actually, I knew exactly how I felt about all of it.
Resentful.
I resented that I was forced to accept an increased risk of cancer and an impaired immune system in exchange for the hope my disease progression would slow down.
I resented the appointments and the phone calls and the well-intentioned but invasive as fuck advice from everyone I knew.
I resented that I couldn’t work late into the evening like I used to, when my brain felt most alive, because I was so exhausted I couldn’t keep my eyes open.
I resented the fight with my insurance company, and that I’d had to convince them my doctor and I should be the ones who made decisions for my own health, not some medical-malpractice-ridden gremlin squatting in a windowless office somewhere, hitting the deny button over and over.