Chapter 12
Dispatched
Autumn
The first hour in the tower alone was filled with every emotion I didn’t know I was capable of.
After Kerry drove away, I laughed. Ten minutes passed, and I went out on the porch and screamed.
I could have done it inside, sure, but there was something about hollering as loud as you can in nature with no one hearing you that was as good as one of those rooms where they hand you a baseball bat and lay out cheap lamps and broken pottery for you to smash.
It’s the releasing of emotions that make us feel better sometimes.
Two hours had passed, and I had already walked the perimeter of the room a handful of times, inspected all of the books in the small library, and tested out the satellite phone by calling my own number.
It went straight to voicemail, of course, which was very satisfying to know for those trying to reach me, that I was unreachable.
Never mind the fact that the chances of Ray trying to reach me were slim to none.
None to zero, more like. The last I heard, he was getting some sort of family heirloom ring from his rich grandma in Montana and having it sized for Suzie.
I had no idea if that was true, but the thought alone made me want to cry for hours until I was dry heaving.
Made me feel so jealous that I wanted to shave my head.
So sad, that I could take a job as a fire watch and move into a lookout tower where no one would be able to reach me for the rest of the long, hot summer, into autumn.
Kerry had explained to me, during our phone interview, that the person who had committed to the season had a medical emergency.
I never did ask what that was, but being here now, I wondered if it was related to a fear of heights.
Though being inside my new home felt safe, there was something about looking out over the edge that made me feel very uneasy.
I blamed it on seeing too many thriller movies in my youth.
After three hours in the tower, I had already cried.
I had already reached for my phone a dozen times.
Eaten half of a bag of jerky, and I couldn’t say I was even hungry.
Before reaching for my emergency stash of chocolate, which was huge—but clearly not going to last long—I reached for my suitcases to unpack.
To distract me. Mostly, to keep my hands busy so I’d stop eating.
I put all of my clothes away in a small set of drawers that were under the wooden bed, built in.
Then, I took my books and cleared a shelf for them, reserving my Bible for the small nightstand.
I stared at the cover made with worn, lavender-colored leather and felt a pang of guilt.
I hadn’t spoken to God much these last few months.
When things were good. When things were bad.
He was the farthest thing from my mind, aside from daily prayers and a few moments of pleading to Him when I thought that the scenarios of my life could really not be real.
It was only after my sudden breakup that He moved up on the ladder of importance.
At first, instead of relying on Him, I had let myself be swallowed in the hole of self-pity.
Let myself get lost in my own grieving for a man that was no longer mine.
I was ashamed at the realization that it took me a few days to lean on Jesus.
I returned to the idea of self-pity, looking at my surroundings.
Self-pity and complete isolation, more like.
No matter the choices I made, this was what I’d done.
This was where I was. And I’d committed to this job.
I was not going to give up. I was going to do it to the best of my ability.
So, I decided that I was going to start right away, and I created a designated spot for my Bible on my nightstand.
First, I started with looking out as far as I could in every possible direction.
I had the binoculars in my hands—they were heavier than they looked, and within a few minutes, my arms were feeling heavy.
I saw no sign of smoke. No sign of fire.
The sky today was clear. Bluer than I’d ever seen, in fact.
A chirp of the radio scared me out of my focus.
“Dispatch, Tower Three, copy?” A woman’s voice was on the other end of the line. I picked up the handheld radio, thinking it was Kerry, but the voice was a little different.
“Yes, this is Tower Three, over.” The lingo felt a little unnatural since this was my first radio call, but from what I read in the handbook at Kerry’s office, there was an official dialect to radio calls.
“Tower Three, you missed your first check-in this morning, considering you weren’t there yet, so I’m calling now for the report.
Over.” Only a few hours into my new job, and I’d already missed something.
Kerry had told me not to worry about the first report, but I was guessing this person thought otherwise. Thankfully, I had a report to give.
“Dispatch to Tower Three… All clear.” Silence for a moment filled the line.
“Thank you, Tower Three.” There was a sharp radio frequency noise filling up my ear for a moment. “I’m Stephanie, by the way.” A softness came over the radio. It looked like I was making a new friend.
“Autumn. Nice to meet you, Stephanie.” I smiled as I spoke. This was the perfect amount of social interaction for the day.
“You’ll be checking in with us twice a day. And if you are late for a call, we call you after fifteen minutes, so keep that in mind when coordinating showers and bathroom breaks,” Stephanie said with a giggle, her laughter being cut-off by the radio chatter.
“Will do. Where are you stationed?” Something in me felt like keeping the conversation alive. But several seconds turned into minutes, and Stephanie did not answer me. I was starting to feel silly for such a question, when she finally came back on.
“Tower Three, Autumn?” Her voice filled the room.
“This is Autumn, over,” I said, with confidence.
“Sorry for the delay. Tower Two thought they saw smoke. It was a very ill-shaped cloud.” Humor in her voice let me know that there were fun people on this job. Fire was a serious business, but something about Stephanie made me smile.
“Oh no. All my clouds up here look like dinosaurs practicing ballet.”
“When the pirouettes start to look like a plume, call me. I’m stationed down the mountain.
A few miles as the crow flies. In a car, quite a ways.
” Stephanie and I continued to chat back and forth as the day went on.
By the time for the evening check-in, she told me she was logging off for the evening.
There was always someone available for an emergency, but she was leaving the dispatch center for the night.
After we said our goodbyes, I clipped the radio back into its charger, connected to a small solar panel that was on the railing of the deck.
The cord ran through the wood and fed into the side of the building, and up the wall, to where the few pieces of electronic equipment sat.
In my previous employment and schedule, I never paid much attention to the rhythm of the clouds.
I always had the chance to look, of course but I never enjoyed a sunset, or a sunrise, for that matter.
So, I decided then and there, I would take it upon myself to be sure I watched both every day I was here.
We were past the summer equinox, so the days just kept getting shorter and shorter, which meant less time for dealing with the emotions I had.
As the sun started to dip lower in the sky, I realized I couldn’t put off using the bathroom any longer.
I opened the door of my lookout and glanced down at the set of steep stairs.
Oh, how I wished these were at a better angle!
But my bladder motivated me in ways that I hadn’t felt this morning.
I moved faster than I ever thought possible, holding a can of bear spray on my belt, with an old headlamp strapped to my forehead.
I had thrown on a flannel top over my old Smokey the Bear t-shirt.
If the mirror upstairs had been a full-body length, I probably would have felt self-conscious.
As I reached the outhouse at the end of the stairs, I considered that it was probably a good thing that I couldn't see myself right now. Not only for the way I was dressed, but because I wasn’t ready.
My first day in the lookout felt as long as it could have possibly been.
It felt like five days had passed when I finally changed into my pajamas.
Kerry was right; the bathroom situation wasn’t that bad.
Tomorrow, I would rise early and use the sun shower, though it would probably be freezing.
I had a few towels folded and set aside, my toiletries ready to go.
I found myself looking forward to the next day as I pulled the sleeping bag zipper up to my chest, while my thoughts turned to Jesus for the second time today.