Chapter 19
MAX
The alarm is at five.
I am already awake. I have been awake since four-forty, lying on my side with my hand flat on the small of her back, and I am counting her breath in fours and not moving.
The cabin is warm. The fire in the front room burned itself out at some point in the night and the air has cooled at the edge of the quilt, but under the quilt it is warm, and her skin against mine is warm, and I do not want to put my feet on the boards.
I put my feet on the boards.
I get out from under the quilt without waking her. She makes a small sound at the back of her throat and turns her face into the pillow. I kiss her hair. I look at her in the grey light at the edge of the curtain and I make myself stand. Evangeline. God, she takes my breath away.
Five o'clock.
I am at the kitchen counter at five-oh-four with the kettle on, and the brass key is on the counter, and I look at it without picking it up. I drink the coffee black. I eat half a piece of bread standing at the sink. I rinse the cup.
I write her a note on the back of the receipt from the gas station Tuesday.
Back tonight. Lock the door behind me. M.
I put the note on the table by the brass key. I put my boots on at the door. I put my coat on.
I look at the bedroom door.
I do not open it.
I go out into the dark.
---
The drive in is forty-two minutes. I do not put the radio on.
I count the mile markers between the cabin road and the highway and then I count the lights at the on-ramp and then I do not count anything for a while, and I think about her on her back in the bed with her hand under her cheek, and I think about her saying I love you in the lamp-warm bedroom, and I think about my own mouth on her neck saying I have known I love you since I first saw you, and I think about Val.
Val is a fact.
Val is a fact at the end of the road I am driving.
I have not slept enough. I have slept four hours, and the four hours were good, but I have not slept enough since Tuesday and now I have to go to work and respond to fires.
I am going to have to be Val's firefighter today.
I pull into the lot at five-fifty-two. The bay door is up. The lights in the apparatus floor are on. Captain Doyle's truck is in the second slot. Val's pickup is in the chief's space.
Val is here at five-fifty-two.
Val is here at five-fifty-two on a day she does not have to be here until seven.
I sit in the truck with my hands on the wheel and I count to four, and I count to four again, and I get out.
---
She is at the coffee pot in the bay kitchen.
She does not look at me when I come in. She is in her uniform shirt with the chief's bars and her hair is tied up the way she wears it when she is going to be at the station all day.
She pours coffee into the white mug with the chip on the rim.
She sets the pot back on the burner. She looks at the wall.
"Hale."
"Chief."
"Drills at six-thirty."
"Yes, Chief."
"You are on the line."
"Yes, Chief."
"All day."
"Yes, Chief."
She takes her mug and she walks past me out of the bay kitchen, and she does not look at me, and her shoulder does not touch mine in the doorway.
I stand at the coffee pot.
I pour a cup.
I drink it black at the counter.
I am on the line all day. I am on the line all day where she can see me from the office window.
I am on the line all day where she can watch me run the rookies through the standpipe drill and the search drill and the ladder drill and the SCBA drill and the forcible-entry drill, and she will watch me, and she will not call me into the office, and she will not say a word to me, and she will let me feel her eyes on the back of my neck for ten hours.
This is the punishment.
The punishment is that she has not put me on a bus to Boise. The punishment is that she has put me on the line.
I drink the coffee.
I go to the locker room.
I put my turnouts on at the bench the way I have put my turnouts on three thousand times.
Boots. Pants. Suspenders. Coat over the chair.
Helmet on the shelf. Hood folded inside the helmet.
Gloves on top of the hood. I sit on the bench in my undershirt with my hands on my knees, and I count to four, and I breathe through a second count.
Doyle comes through the locker room door behind me. "Hale."
"Captain."
"You all right?”
"Yes."
"You look like hell."
"I am all right."
She stops at the doorway. She looks at me for a count. She does not say anything else. She goes through to the bay.
I put my coat on.
I put my helmet on the shelf.
I go to the line.
---
I run the standpipe drill at six-thirty with the four rookies.
The big rookie with the cowlick is fast on the hose deployment and slow on the coupling, and I make her do the coupling six times until she is fast on it.
The small rookie with the undercut does the search drill in the smoke trailer with one hand on the wall and one hand on the rope and she is good, and I tell her she is good, and I do not say anything else.
I run them through the ladder drill at eight.
I run them through the SCBA drill at nine-thirty.
I do not look at the office window.
The office window is on the second floor at the far end of the bay. The blinds are open. Val is in there at a desk with the door open and the radio low and the file on her desk that I know is the arson file. Sometimes she works on the second floor when she wants to be seen.
I do not look at the window.
I feel the window.
I feel it the way I feel a fire at my back in a structure I do not know. I feel the heat without turning my head.
She is watching me.
I run the rookies through the forcible-entry drill at eleven.
The big rookie with the cowlick swings the halligan and her shoulder is wrong and she glances at me, and I show her the angle without speaking, and she does it again, and her shoulder is right, and she hits the door at the lock plate and the door goes, and she looks at me, and I nod once, and I do not look up at the window, and I feel her watching me.
She is watching me run drills.
She is watching me run drills like she has already lost me.
---
Lunch is at noon in the kitchen.
I do not go to the kitchen.
I go out to the lot. I sit on the bumper of the truck in the sun. The air is cold and clean and the sky over the foothills is the colour of the inside of a shell. I eat the half sandwich I made earlier. I drink water. I look at my phone.
There is no message from her.
Of course not. She doesn’t have a phone.
She is fine.
She is fine until she is not fine.
I close my eyes against the sun.
I see her in the upper window.
I see her in the upper window of the burning house with the satin nightgown and the bare feet, and I see her saying I love you, and I see myself at the kitchen table at the cabin tonight with her across from me, and I see her at the cabin a year from now with her hair longer and her hand on the post. That is all I let myself see.
I open my eyes.
The sky is the colour of the inside of a shell.
The radio on my belt clicks once. Doyle's voice. Hale. Second floor Office. Fifteen.
I sit on the bumper of the truck for a count of four.
I sit on the bumper for another count of four.
I get up.
---
The office is at the top of the stairs at the far end of the bay.
The blinds are open. Val is at her desk.
The arson file is open in front of her. There is a yellow legal pad on the desk beside the file, and there are four pages of her handwriting on it, and there are tabs in the file at six different places.
She does not look up when I come in.
"Shut the door."
I shut the door.
"Sit."
I sit.
She writes a line on the legal pad. She does not look up. The light from the window is on the side of her face. Val has been my chief for seventeen years and my friend for fourteen.
She finishes the line.
She caps the pen.
She slides a stack of forms across the desk to me.
"Incident report. Long form."
"Chief."
"For the house fire."
"Chief, I do not."
"You witnessed it."
"Chief."
"From the cabin road. At four in the morning.
Driving home from a wellness check at the chief's residence.
" She does not look at me. "You called it in at four-oh-six.
You arrived on scene at four-twenty-one in your personal vehicle.
You assisted in the rescue of a civilian from the upper window.
You provided initial witness statements on scene to Captain Doyle.
You provided a follow-up statement to Detective Warren on Wednesday.
You will now complete the long-form incident report for the file. "
I sit.
"Long form," she says. "Every form. Every page. Every signature line. Witness narrative. Timeline. Apparatus deployment. Civilian rescue. Medical handoff. Chain of custody on the civilian's effects. Your hand-written statement on the supplementary page. All of it."
I look at the stack.
It is six inches.
"Chief, this is a week of paperwork."
"You have until midnight."
I look up.
She is looking at me for the first time today.
Her face is the chief's face. Her face is the chief's face the way it was at the chopping block last night with the two fingers against my jaw, and her face is the chief's face the way it was at the academy in 2007 when she pulled me out of the broken-nose drill in week three and put a wet towel on my face and said you are mine now, kid, and her face is the chief's face the way it has been every Christmas at her house often just me and her.
Sometimes another woman. And recently with Lena, and her face is the chief's face, and her face is the chief's face, and she is looking at me today, and her eyes are the colour of slate.
"You will sit at this desk," she says, "and you will fill out every page of this report, and every page will be correct, and every page will be on my desk before midnight, and you will not leave this office until it is."
"Chief."
"You will not be at the cabin tonight."
I do not say anything.
"You will be at this desk."
"Chief."
"And I will be down the hall at my desk, and I will be checking your work."
"Chief."
"And tomorrow at oh-six-hundred you will be on the line, and we will go through the same drills, and you will run them clean, and you will not look up at the window, and you will do this until I tell you to stop."
I look at the stack of forms.
I look at the chief.
I look back at the stack.
"Yes, Chief."
She picks up her pen.
She uncaps it.
She writes the next line on her legal pad.
I am dismissed without being dismissed.
I take the stack of forms.
I get up.
I go down the hall to the small office at the corner, the one with no window and the single desk and the one chair and the lamp and I shut the door, and I put the stack on the desk, and I sit, and I look at the first form, and the first form is the witness narrative, the first form is the page that wants me to write, in my own hand, I, Maxine Hale, on the night of ___, and I look at the page, and I think of Evangeline at the cabin and I think of her saying I love you in the lamp-warm bedroom last night, and I think of myself at this desk for the next ten hours writing a witness narrative about a fire I lit.
I think of the date I am going to write in that blank: the night of October fourteenth.
I think of the time beside it: zero-three-fifty.
I think of the line of black ink that will put my own night on the page. I close my eyes.
I count to four.
I open my eyes.
I pick up the pen.
I write the first line.
The lamp is on. The door is shut. The chief is down the hall. The fire is in me. Evangeline is at the cabin. Evangeline loves me. The pen is in my hand. The page is in front of me.
I write.