Chapter 1 #2
By the time the storefronts start closing and the light goes amber on the mountains, I’ve walked the town end to end, and my legs have run out of streets.
The Watershed sits on Main Street and looks exactly like what it is: a hardware store that woke up one morning, decided to start serving beer, and never bothered to remodel.
The shelves behind the bar are lined with Mason jars.
Vintage fire department photographs hang on the walls, next to one mounted fish that has clearly been here longer than anyone currently alive.
The tables are solid wood. The stools are upholstered in what appears to be repurposed saddle leather, and a jukebox, the one Cal was explaining to me, is in the corner doing something mournful with a steel guitar.
A giant of a man works the bar. He makes a room feel smaller by standing in it, tall, wide through the shoulders, gray beard, hands that could probably open a jar that’s been sealed since the last administration.
His name tag says Big Jim, and I don’t see a small version of him anywhere, so I’m going to assume the adjective is permanent.
I sit at the bar. “Can I get a—”
He’s already pouring. A pint of something amber slides across the wood toward me before I finish the sentence. He looks at me the way Beck looked at the fire weather briefing earlier: assessing, calculating, not sharing the results.
“You’re with the hotshot crew.” He says it like a fact he’s confirming for the record.
“Yes, sir.”
Big Jim nods. One nod. It’s the second most efficient piece of communication I’ve encountered today, and I spent an afternoon with Cal Larsen. “You eat yet?” He doesn’t wait for an answer. He turns to the kitchen window and says, “Burger.”
A woman two stools down mutters, “Don’t answer.”
“Why?”
“Because he’s already decided for you,” she says, reading something on her phone.
I’ve been in Copper Ridge for less than a day and I understand the town’s operating system: other people decide what you eat and drink, Micah controls the flow of information by withholding it, Cal controls the flow of information by drowning you in it, and Big Jim communicates primarily through his face.
On a fire line, I make decisions that affect the lives of my entire crew.
In Copper Ridge, I can’t order my own dinner.
The woman at the end of the bar catches my eye again. “He does this with new people,” she says. “It’s adoption. You can’t fight it.”
Big Jim ignores her. Big Jim, I’m learning, hears exactly what he wants to hear and politely discards the rest. The burger, when it arrives, is exceptional.
The beer is cold. The jukebox has moved on to something equally mournful but in a different key, and the mounted fish watches me eat with an expression I’d describe as resigned.
On my way back through town to Station 7, a pickup slows beside the curb. The passenger window comes down and a woman in her seventies, at least, leans across the seat.
“You’re one of the wildfire boys.”
Not a question.
“That’s me.” I wave to her.
“Good.” The window goes up and the truck pulls away.
Three seconds later it stops again and the window comes down again. “Don’t buy tomatoes from the market.”
“Um, okay?”
“They’re terrible.” She makes a disgusted face, and the truck leaves.
I stand there watching her drive away. Some kind of test just happened, and I think I passed. I didn’t get her name. I also don’t buy tomatoes. A woman that decisive about produce has earned the benefit of the doubt.
The rest of the walk back to the station is longer than it needs to be because I pick the route with the most distance in it.
Past the closed storefronts. Along the river, where the water sounds like something you’d pay money to hear on a sleep app.
Up the hill toward the station, where the crew quarters are lit and somebody’s laughter is echoing.
My phone buzzes in my pocket.
Maren: How’s the new town?
Maren: Scale of 1 to ceiling.
She means the motel ceiling in Bend. The one I memorized because the alternative was closing my eyes, and closing my eyes means the quiet sneaks in, and the quiet has a sound I don’t want to hear.
She doesn’t say any of this. She doesn’t have to.
Maren speaks in Grady shorthand because she’s been watching me run from the same thing long enough to stop counting and she’s given up trying to name it directly.
Me: Town’s got good coffee and a bar with a fish that judges you. I’m fine.
The lie comes automatically. So automatically I don’t even feel it leave my thumbs anymore.
Maren: You’re always fine.
Me: See? Consistent.
Maren: That’s not the selling point you think it is, big brother.
She sends a heart emoji, and I put the phone away, stand on the sidewalk, and just breathe.
In through the nose. Out through the mouth.
The trick the department counselor taught me before I stopped going because talking about it was worse than carrying it, and carrying it was already plenty.
I don’t think about why the quiet is loud.
I’ve gotten good at not thinking about it, the way you get good at anything: practice and repetition and refusing to let the thing you’re avoiding sit still long enough to become a shape you have to name.
The air smells like pine, dust, and river water.
And underneath all of it, barely noticeable, dry brush.
The ridge above town is golden and brittle in the fading light, and somewhere up there the fuel loads are waiting for a spark—patient, inevitable, a season’s worth of kindling pretending to be scenery.
The firehouse porch is cool and empty. The bench is overbuilt the way firehouse furniture always is, designed to survive the same events the crew does. Inside, the station is settling: laughter through the walls, boots on the stairs, the particular sound of a place where people belong.
Diaz comes out to the porch and stands at the railing. Looking at the same ridge I’m looking at.
“Scanner has something east of town,” he says. “Small. Brush fire. Probably nothing.”
My shoulders come forward and my weight shifts to the balls of my feet. Somewhere between the river and the ridge, something is burning, and my whole body knows it before my brain catches up.