26. Beck
twenty-six
Beck
The aircraft's too loud for conversation, which is fine, because there's nothing to say that hasn't already been covered in the briefing.
Reid's across from me, checking his gear one more time out of habit rather than necessity.
Beyond him, three other jumpers from our regular crew sit, faces I haven't seen in two months but bodies that still know how to sit in a plane like this, economical, braced, ready.
Below us, northwestern Montana unrolls in ridgelines and timber, rugged enough that no road gets anywhere close to where we're headed. That's the whole reason we're in the air instead of driving.
Smoke rises thin against the horizon ahead. Lightning strike, probably two or three days old, smoldering unnoticed until yesterday, when someone spotted it from a lookout and called it in. Small right now. A handful of acres. Remote enough we're the fastest way anybody's putting boots on it today.
Catch it small. That's the whole job.
I've spent most of this summer waiting to feel this kind of focus. Now it's here, sharpening the way it does right before a jump, everything narrowing down to only what needs to happen next. Gear check. Spot check. Wind.
The spotter leans out, reads the terrain below, drops streamers to check wind drift, calls out adjustments over the noise. I watch the fabric ribbons twist and drift. Good spot. Manageable approach. Steep enough terrain we'll need to be precise, not so steep it's unreasonable.
“Two minutes,” the spotter calls.
Reid catches my eye across the aircraft. We've done this together enough times a look covers it.
The door opens. Wind roars in, replacing the engine noise with something more raw. I move into position, watching the ground get more detailed, trees resolving into specific shapes, the jump spot below.
“Go!”
I jump.
The aircraft noise disappears the second I'm out, replaced by wind and the silence of freefall before the canopy deploys, a hard jolt upward that means everything's working the way it's supposed to.
I steer, adjusting for the wind the spotter clocked, watching the jump spot come up to meet me faster than it feels like it should.
Then I'm down, feet hitting ground, rolling with the impact the way training carves into your body until it's not even a conscious decision.
I'm up and clear in seconds, canopy gathered, scanning for the others.
Reid's down thirty yards off, already moving, unhurt. The rest of the crew follows in sequence, clean landings, everyone accounted for within a few minutes.
Paracargo comes down separate from us, tools and supplies drifting down under their own canopies, and we spend some time locating and organizing everything.
Chainsaw, fuel, Pulaskis, food and water enough to get us through however long this takes.
We're not walking back to anything tonight.
Wherever we end up, that's where we'll be.
The hike to the fire eats twenty minutes of hard walking through timber and undergrowth, packs loaded heavy, smoke growing stronger the closer we get.
By the time we reach the edge of it, I can hear the fire before I see it, that low, active crackle working through dry fuels, smoke curling up gray-white through the canopy.
This isn't the recreational version of hiking I've been doing all summer. This is different work, tools instead of conversation, focus instead of easy talk, everyone moving with a purpose that doesn't leave room for anything else.
We go to work.
Cutting line. Clearing fuel ahead of the fire's edge.
The chainsaw takes down what needs taking down; the rest of us clear brush and dig down to mineral soil, building the kind of barrier that gives fire nothing left to burn across.
Reid works a section a few yards from me, a nod here, a gesture there, both of us reading the same terrain and reaching the same conclusions without discussing it.
Hours pass in the compressed, physical way they do out here.
Sweat through the shirt. Ash falling in a slow, constant drift, the kind you stop noticing until you wipe your face and your glove comes away gray.
Water bottles emptying fast. We eat protein bars and jerky when there's a lull, standing up, not sitting down, because sitting down makes it harder to get moving again.
I missed this. Not the fire itself, not the danger, but this combination of clear purpose and hard-earned exhaustion, the trust required to work a line beside people who know what they're doing, the satisfaction of watching a problem get smaller because of work you did with your own hands.
By late afternoon, the line's holding. We've got enough of the perimeter secured the fire's stopped growing, contained in the sense that matters, even if there's still plenty of work ahead.
The pace shifts from aggressive initial attack into the slower, more careful work of mop-up.
Checking hot spots. Digging out smoldering root systems. Making sure what looks out is out.
“Nice work today,” says Marcus, dropping down beside me during a water break, one of the crew I haven't worked alongside in a couple months. “Almost like you didn't spend the whole summer on a Timber Creek vacation.”
“It wasn't a vacation.”
“Sure looked like one from the group chat.”
I don't argue the point, mostly because there's nothing about Blackpine I want to defend to Marcus right now, not the parts that would make sense to him anyway.
By evening, we're staying put. No road access, no reason to hike back out tonight when there's still mop-up work to finish tomorrow.
We set up a basic camp in a cleared area, packs for pillows, sky overhead instead of a roof.
It's a life I've lived a hundred times, familiar down to the ache in my shoulders and the smell of smoke that's worked itself into everything I'm wearing.
Months ago I wouldn't have thought twice about any of this.
Now, sitting here with my back against a downed log, I think about the crew-house porch.
The kitchen, Ivy leaning against the counter while I make coffee.
My bed, two weeks unslept in now. And Ivy herself, somewhere I can't picture with any specificity, because I don't know what her evening looks like tonight.
I check my phone out of habit.
No service. Not even close. We're too far into the backcountry for anything. I knew that going in, knew it the way I know most things about this job. But knowing doesn't stop the disappointment when the screen confirms it.
I wanted to send her something. Even just, long day, I'm fine. Wanted to hear how her day went, whether she got more thesis work done. Whether Nolan's found new ways to misuse the Bigfoot caller I handed off to him.
This is the first real test of what we agreed to when I left. We try. Except sometimes the job decides when trying is possible. Tonight it's decided it’s not.
I pull up her pedicure picture, the one still saved from the day I left Timber Creek, and smile at it the same way I did the first time. Freshly painted toes. Her calves angled into the frame with an intent I recognized immediately. It's not enough tonight, though. Her face isn’t in it.
I scroll back further until I find the one from Silver Bell, the photo Tessa took of us standing in front of the old general store, shoulders touching, both of us smiling for a camera neither of us was thinking much about at the time.
This was before the mine trail, before the overlook, before our first kiss.
Looking at it now, I can't figure out how we managed to pretend, even for another hour after this photo was taken, that nothing was happening between us. It's right there in the picture, plain as anything, something neither of us had named yet, but both of us were clearly feeling.
I don't just want to see her legs, or even her smile in a photograph. I want to hear her voice. I want to know what she did today, whether she's thought about me half as much as I've thought about her.
I want all of her. Not the highlight reel. Just Ivy, telling me about her day, the way she has been for weeks, before this pulled me out here.
I look around the camp, at Reid a few yards off half asleep, at the rest of the crew settling in for whatever rest we can manage before another full day tomorrow.
This is the job I chose and trained for and still believe in.
But being where I'm supposed to be doesn't stop me from wishing I were somewhere else too.
I leave the Silver Bell photo up a little longer, Ivy's face lit up on the small screen, and then I close my eyes and try to sleep. No signal, no way to reach her, nothing to do but wait until circumstances let me try again.