Torch

Chapter 10

Chapter Ten

Hunter

I open the cupboard and stare into it. Two days ago, we were fully stocked with every cereal under the sun, but today, we’re down to Grape Nuts and Raisin Bran.

I want to be annoyed at the other guys for eating the Lucky Charms like a bunch of children, but that’s what I wanted to eat, so I don’t have a leg to stand on.

I grab the Raisin Bran, pour some into a bowl, put milk in, then grab my coffee and head into the living room. There are guys sitting in almost every seat, all watching something on the TV, empty cereal bowls and mugs on the coffee table and the floor.

It feels like a frat house in here. At least, this is what I assume a frat house feels like. We’re older, probably a little less hungover, and quieter, but we’re still wearing nothing but boxers and openly scratching our balls.

I sit on an easy chair with my cereal, balance my cup of coffee on the floor, and take a bite of raisin bran. It’s gross, but I’m hungry, and to be honest, I eat worse most of the time.

We don’t talk much, but only because there’s nothing to say. I’m with these guys pretty much 24/7 for six months, so it’s not as if there’s a lot of new information for anyone to impart. Someone gets the hiccups, farts, or sneezes, everyone knows.

I’m just assuming they know something is up with me and Clementine, even though I’m not exactly sure there is. Not that we talk much about relationships.

There’s some movie on TV. Something with a lot of explosions, and one guy in particular seems to always be running away from them, then getting thrown forward dramatically. Every time he does, a couple of the guys in the room chuckle.

Explosions don’t work that way at all. Not even close. Take it from a bunch of guys who’ve seen it.

I try to concentrate on the movie, but it’s hard. Clementine gets back from Ashlake today, and I haven’t heard from her for two days, even though I almost texted her a thousand times.

She wanted a couple of days. I gave her a couple of days, even though I hate feeling like this, like I’m sitting around, waiting for someone to decide about me.

It’s not what I do. It’s not how I operate: I decide on a girl, and I get her. I don’t wait around, hoping she’ll decide she likes me.

Except, apparently, I do. For Clementine, I do.

Shit.

After a while, Silas comes in. He’s fully dressed, and stands in the doorway, arms crossed over his chest. We all look over at him.

“Utah’s on fire,” he says. “Might be big.”

“What part?”

“North of Salt Lake City, close to Idaho,” he says, and points at the TV. “Look at the Weather Channel, they’ve got it.”

Whoever has the remote flips the channel, but it’s on commercial.

“Where are we now?” someone else asks.

It sounds like a dumb question, but we’ve been traveling all summer from one place to another, and they start to look alike after a little while. Hell, in June I thought we were in Idaho for an entire week when we were actually in Oregon.

“Montana,” I say.

“Does that border Utah?” he asks.

“Nah, Wyoming’s in between,” I say.

“Right,” he says. “I thought there was something.”

The weather news comes back up, and we sit through the forecast to hear about the fire. We could go get our phones and look it up, but when we’re not working eighteen-hour days, we tend to be pretty lazy.

At last, they talk about the Wasatch fire. Started sometime yesterday, northeast of Salt Lake City, already thirty thousand acres. Zero percent contained.

Shit. I guess I know where we’re headed next, unless a miracle happens.

I’ve only been doing this for two fire seasons, but I keep hearing that this is the worst anyone can remember.

The western United States, and especially California, has been in a serious drought for ages, so the forests are pretty dried up.

There are places where you could drop a match and a thousand acres would be gone an hour later.

That’s probably what happened here, actually. Something like ninety percent of forest fires are started by humans. People who drop cigarettes, who leave campfires burning, that kind of shit. I wish they wouldn’t, but then I’d just be working at my parents’ ranch year round, and I like this job.

“We going?” I ask.

“Porter says not yet, but get ready,” Silas says. “A couple closer crews are working it, but it’s still up in the air.”

I look at the map of Utah on the TV. They’ve marked a bright orange splotch where the fire’s burning. I get a weird, bad feeling just looking at it.

Utah. That’s two states away, and Clementine is here. I just found her again, and even though I understand that this is my job, it’s my duty, and it’s fucking important, I don’t want to go to Utah.

I want to stay here. With her. As long as she wants me, anyway.

God, I hate uncertainty.

“Better be ready to move,” says Jeremy Dashell, Porter’s second-in-command who’s much cooler than Porter. “Looks like that thing could break bad any minute now.”

Everyone groans, but we get up. We take dishes to the kitchen, we take showers, we get dressed, and two hours later, there’s fire gear all over the living room, the kitchen, and the back yard.

I get my own kit together pretty quickly, because it’s not like I leave it unpacked. Sometimes we leave with twenty, thirty minutes of warning, so it pays to be ready.

Once that’s done, I head down to the kitchen, grab a checklist, and start going through boxes of camp stove fuel, MREs, and freeze-dried rations. In the backyard, I can see Silas and Daniel with a tent set up, examining a patch, arguing over whether it needs to be redone.

I’d re-do it, I think. You never know when your next chance to fix something is gonna be.

Something bangs through the open door, and I turn as Dashell walks into the kitchen, carrying a heavy-duty plastic box.

“Got the new fire shelters,” he says.

I look up from the checklist.

“I thought we weren’t getting those until next season,” I say.

He puts the box down on the table and cracks his knuckles, looking at it.

“After Kaibab, apparently the Department of the Interior decided better shelters were a priority,” he says.

We’re both silent for a moment, just looking at the thick plastic box on the table. I’ve been trying not to think too much about Kaibab ever since it happened a month ago. At least, I’ve been trying not to think about the details. I think about twelve dead firefighters plenty.

“These are better than the old ones?” I ask.

Dashell half nods, half shrugs.

“That’s what they say,” he tells me. “Apparently some kid at MIT invented an adhesive that can withstand up to seven-fifty degrees, and that’s what’s holding these together.”

“That’s better,” I say.

The adhesive is always the weak point on fire shelters. The combination of aluminum, silica and fiberglass can protect you up to a thousand degrees or so, but the glue only goes up to five hundred degrees. Or, seven-fifty, now. Allegedly.

“Yeah,” he says, grabbing the box by the handles, yanking it from the table with a grunt. “It’s a nice gesture. Seven-fifty wasn’t gonna save the guys at Kaibab either.”

Dashell leaves the kitchen with the box, and I go back to my checklist, even though my mind is elsewhere.

The Kaibab fire is named after Kaibab, Arizona, where it started. It’s hot and dry in the summer, and this summer, it’s been hotter and drier than normal. Way hotter and drier, which means that fires catch faster, they heat up faster, and they move faster.

To make a long story short, a dozen men were on a ridge line when the wind suddenly changed direction, and they were trapped.

They deployed their shelters, but they didn’t make it. An hour later, another crew finally got there and found twelve bodies wrapped in scorched aluminum foil.

I go down the list mechanically: provisions, check; batteries, check; flashlights, check. I try to keep myself from thinking about what it must have been like in one of those shelters: your body flat on the ground, breathing in dirt, heat pressing in. How loud the fire must have been.

How it must feel to know you’re trapped.

I shake my head and look out the window. There are some nasty clouds in the distance, but Silas and Daniel are still discussing whether or not to re-patch the tent, even though they could have done it twice since they started this argument.

Most people who do this go twenty years without ever using a shelter, I remind myself. Kaibab was a freak accident.

I’m not afraid of dying. I spent too long fighting in the desert to be afraid of that. But the idea of being trapped, helpless, in a tiny confined space as a wildfire bears down, with nothing I can do?

That makes me a little uneasy.

By late that afternoon we’re back to doing nothing. It doesn’t take us very long to get prepared, and everything is packed, sitting around the house in crates. We could be out of here and on the road in ten minutes, maybe even five.

It’s my fourth day in a row off, and I’m starting to get antsy. One day off is great. Two is fun, three starts to get boring, but by now I’m about ready to climb the walls.

Plus, no Clementine. I’m trying to be patient, but it doesn’t come naturally. She can’t keep me on the hook like this forever.

If she doesn’t want me, that sucks, but I’ll live. But she’s gotta fucking tell me that.

I try to read a book for a while, some murder mystery that I found on a bookshelf downstairs, but I can’t concentrate for more than a page or two at a time, so I wander back into the kitchen to the sound of a girl laughing.

It’s not Clementine, but it’s Mandy, her roommate, plus another girl I don’t recognize. They’re sitting at the kitchen table with Silas, playing some board game. Mandy sits up straighter when I walk in.

“Hey, Hunter,” she says, tucking one foot underneath her. “How’s it going?”

I give her a quick glance as I open the cabinet to get a water glass.

“Well, Utah’s on fire, so I’ve still got a job,” I say, mostly kidding. “How are you?”

She laughs, a nice, bubbly sound. Mandy’s no knockout, but she’s cute, and she seems nice.

“Oh, you know,” she says, shrugging, her hands clasped on the table. “The usual. Kids go back to school next week, so this week we’re flooded with everyone who suddenly remembered to get their vacation activities done before that.”

She told me Saturday that she works at the Visitor Center for the Big Sky National Forest, though she’s not a ranger like Clementine is, just an employee. I want to ask her whether Clementine is back yet, but I don’t.

I walk to the table, and I’m about to say something else, but then I look down at the game they’re playing and realize I recognize it.

“You guys are playing Candyland?” I ask.

The girls both laugh. The one who isn’t Mandy takes a long drink from a bottle of beer, blushing.

“We already played Chutes and Ladders, so it was this or Monopoly,” Mandy admits. “This is my other roommate Lucy, by the way.”

Lucy and I shake hands. She’s cute too, even though she’s not bubbly like Mandy. Silas is already making subtle faces at me, trying to get my attention, like we’re gonna split the girls up right now and each take one.

I’m beyond uninterested.

“Wanna play?” Lucy asks, her voice quiet and dry. “If you can pull cards off a deck, you’ll be great at it.”

I look at it. The box says it’s for kids three years old and up, and technically, that does include me. Plus, I have no idea what the fuck else I’m gonna do besides mope around, not get laid, and see if Clementine calls.

God, I feel like an idiot, just waiting.

“Sure,” I say. “How?”

Mandy moves all the cardboard pieces back to the beginning.

“Hey!” says Silas. “I was winning.”

“I believe in you,” Lucy says to him, sounding slightly sarcastic, leaning on one hand. “I bet you can do it again.”

“It’s just luck,” Silas says. “I can believe in myself until the cows come home and it won’t help.”

Lucy just laughs, pats his arm, and puts another piece on the board.

“Okay, here are the rules,” Mandy says. “You draw a card, then you move to the next space of that color. The end. You don’t even have to know how to read.”

I nod, looking at the board seriously.

“Ready to get your asses kicked?” I ask.

The girls both laugh. Silas and I smile.