8. Beck
eight
Beck
Idrive the edge of the Pulaski into the ground, drag it back, and expose a strip of bare mineral soil where a minute ago there was duff and pine needles and everything else that would happily carry fire another twenty feet.
Sweat runs into my eyes. I wipe it with the back of my glove, which does almost nothing, and keep moving down the line.
The lightning from last night found something to burn.
Nobody spotted it until this morning, smoke rising thin and lazy over a ridge a few miles outside town, already five acres by the time the first resources rolled in.
It's not a big fire. Not yet. The problem isn't what it is right now.
It's what it could become if the wind that's supposed to show up this afternoon arrives before we finish tying in the line around it.
Catch it now, or chase it tomorrow. That's the job.
Around me, the crew works in the rhythm fire line work settles into once everyone's found their place and pace.
Cut brush gets pulled clear. Slash gets tossed to the black side.
Someone widens a section that's too narrow to hold.
Somebody else calls out a root they nearly tripped over.
It's not dramatic. It's just constant, methodical work, removing anything the fire could use to cross the line before it gets the chance.
Russ is a different man out here than the one who complains about being offered help with the grill. Calm. Fast on the radio. Three moves ahead of where the fire is.
“Beck. Reid. Strengthen that section past the rock outcrop. Fuels get heavier there.”
“Widen or reroute?” Reid asks.
“Widen. There's a natural break past the rocks we can tie into.”
Neither of us discusses it further. Six years of fighting fires together does that. We split the section without discussing who takes which half. We just fall into it the way we always have and start cutting line.
Cedar Ridge, the district's other seasonal crew, is working a section farther along, people I don't know but who Ivy does based on the wave she gave someone in a yellow shirt an hour ago.
A couple engines sit where the road allows, crews doing what they can from there.
It's not a huge operation. But it's coordinated, everyone slotted into a piece of the puzzle.
Everyone trusting the pieces they can't see.
Nolan's working near me for a stretch, moving slower than the rest of us, thinking hard about every step, the way someone does the first time a training scenario turns into the real thing.
“You're gripping that too tight,” I tell him, nodding at his Pulaski. “Let it do the work. You'll burn out your forearms by noon otherwise.”
He adjusts his grip. Tries it. Keeps moving. I go back to my section, and that's most of how today goes. Small corrections. Nobody making a production out of anyone else's inexperience.
I catch sight of Ivy working a stretch of line with Tessa, both of them scraping down to soil with the kind of skill that comes from doing this every summer for years.
Ivy's not trying to keep pace with anyone.
She's not trying to prove she belongs out here.
She just moves through the work like it's simply one more workday, except it's Saturday, and the crew was supposed to have the day off.
Somewhere around the midmorning water break, Tessa mentions Ivy was going to spend the day on her thesis.
“This is a lot more relaxing,” Ivy says, deadpan, gesturing at the line.
“So much more relaxing,” Tessa says, and drinks half her water bottle in one go.
The morning stretches into afternoon. When I lift my arm, it's heavier than it was three hours ago.
Sweat's soaked through everything. Dirt's ground into every crease of skin the gloves don't cover.
My water bottle's nearly empty, and I don't remember drinking most of it.
Nobody talks much anymore. Talking costs energy nobody has to spare.
By late afternoon, the line's mostly tied together. We can all feel it. We’re near the end. Then the wind arrives.
I feel it before I really register it. A shift in the treetops above us, needles moving that weren't moving five minutes ago. The smoke changes direction. The fire responds almost immediately, flaring in a pocket of heavier fuel it hadn't bothered with all morning.
Reid looks at me. I look at him.
“There it is,” he says.
Russ's voice comes over the radio, calm but faster than before. Move. Finish the section. The wind's here early.
Nobody panics. But we don’t need to be told twice, either.
The last stretch of line goes fast, adrenaline covering for muscles that would otherwise refuse.
I catch sight of Ivy working just ahead, sleeves pushed up, moving with everything she's got left.
She's tired. It shows in the set of her shoulders, the way she's stopped talking. But she doesn't stop working.
The wind pushes harder. The fire pushes with it, testing the edges we've built. But section by section, the last gaps close. Cedar Ridge ties in from one direction. We tie in from ours.
“That's it,” Russ says over the radio. “Line's complete. Holding.”
Nobody cheers. We're too tired, and the job isn't actually over. But you can see it move through the crew. Shoulders dropping, someone exhaling like they'd forgotten to all day.
Ivy wipes her forehead with the back of a filthy glove and only makes things worse, leaving a streak of dirt across her hairline she has no idea is there.
Nolan looks over, hopeful. “So we're done?”
“Sure,” Dani says. “Soon as we mop up.”
Mop-up takes another couple hours. Walking the line, checking for heat, digging out anything still smoldering, making sure what we built this morning holds through the night.
It's less urgent than the fire line work but no less tiring, the kind of task that eats the last reserves everyone has left.
By the time another crew arrives to handle patrol duty and we're cleared to head back, I don't think anyone in the truck says more than a few words the whole drive.
The crew house smells like smoke after we walk in, all of us carrying it in our hair and clothes and skin.
Boots come off in a pile by the door. Someone starts the shower rotation without any of the usual negotiating.
Food happens in the loosest possible sense of the word.
Whatever's fastest. Leftover pizza, cereal, a box of crackers someone finds and passes around without comment.
I shower, change, and come downstairs, legs heavy, forearms sore, everything in me finally registering how long the day was.
The common room fills up slowly and, later, empties out even slower. Nolan talks more than anyone else, processing the day out loud in the way people do the first time something like this happens to them.
“I've never felt fire change like that,” he says. “One second it's just there and then it's not.”
Tessa's half asleep in an armchair, eyes closed, still technically part of the conversation, until she isn't. She peels herself up a few minutes later without a word, gives a small wave that might be goodnight, and heads for the stairs.
Dani gives up next, mutters something about needing a bed, and disappears up after her. Nolan follows not long after, still talking about the fire, his voice trailing off down the hallway before the sound of a door closing cuts it short.
Reid stretches, groans, and hauls himself off the couch. “I regret every decision that led me to this profession.”
“You say that every fire.”
“I mean it more each time.” He heads up the stairs.
Which leaves Ivy and me on the couch. She's quiet next to me. I ask if Mabel's eaten yet, and she answers with a sound that isn't really a word. A few minutes later her head tips forward. She catches it, straightens.
A few minutes after that, it tips again. This time it doesn't come back up. It settles against my shoulder and stays there.
I go still. Not because I mind. The opposite actually. I look down. She's asleep. Completely gone. The kind of sleep that comes after a day like today. She trusts the couch, the quiet, whatever's keeping her upright, without knowing or caring that it happens to be me.
A few minutes later, Mabel lands on my lap. She circles twice, considers her options, and settles in like she's been invited. Which means I'm pinned between a sleeping woman on one shoulder and a sleeping cat on my legs, with no way to extract myself without disturbing either.
The house is quiet around us. Somewhere upstairs, water runs, then stops. A door closes. Then nothing. It’s just the two of us, the cat, and the settling creak of an old house cooling down for the night.
I should be exhausted enough to fall asleep sitting up.
Instead, I'm wide awake, watching the room, aware of the weight of Ivy against my shoulder.
She looks peaceful. Unguarded in a way she isn't usually, always half a step ahead of everyone, always working something out.
Right now she's asleep, and I'm here, and neither of those facts feels like something I want to change.
I'm not going to pretend I understand everything about that, but I don't move. Not when my arm starts to fall asleep along with everything else. Not when Mabel resettles and digs a claw briefly into my leg. Not for the better part of an hour, until Ivy stirs on her own.
She wakes up slowly, confused about where she is. Then she registers the shoulder under her cheek and sits up fast enough Mabel gives an offended meow at the disruption.
“Did I fall asleep on you?”
“Little bit.”
She looks around, taking in the empty room, the dark windows, the general sense that a lot of time has passed without her permission. “Why didn't you wake me?”
“Didn't want to disturb you.” I glance down at Mabel, glaring at both of us for the inconvenience. “Or her.”
That gets a small, tired laugh out of Ivy, enough to take the edge off whatever embarrassment she was working up to. “Sorry. I didn't mean to just pass out on you.”
“I didn't mind.”
She gets to her feet, stretching out a day's worth of stiffness. I scoop Mabel off my lap, setting her down in the warm spot Ivy just left, and stand up too.
If the cat had been the reason I stayed, I could have moved her an hour ago. I didn't. Ivy doesn't say anything about that.
We stand here a few moments longer in the mostly dark room. There's something different in the air between us that wasn't there this morning.
“Night, Beck.”
“Night.”