{"id":5834,"date":"2012-12-01T00:10:00","date_gmt":"2012-12-01T05:10:00","guid":{"rendered":"\/nashvillereview\/?p=5834"},"modified":"2015-03-13T16:44:27","modified_gmt":"2015-03-13T22:44:27","slug":"in-the-lava-tubes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/archives\/5834","title":{"rendered":"In the Lava Tubes"},"content":{"rendered":"

As crazy as it sounds now, the night the Thunder Mountain Fire outflanked us, we were digging furious line through the steep, rocky terrain north of Devil\u2019s Arch. A little brave and a lot stupid, it was our job to cut a trench ten across and a foot deep\u2014a dry moat the fire couldn\u2019t jump. That was all we could do to protect the wildland below us: scraggly juniper, prickly pear, the odd lace-leaf cedar. We dug parallel to the ridgetop and lipped our break with a berm to catch rolling logs. We\u2019d been spiked out up there for two days, chain-sawing, clearing duff down to the dirt, raking away mats of dead pine needles, slash, and cured weeds. Our headlamps cut shafts through the thick white smoke. I had a rusty taste in my mouth from the nosebleeds and turned to spit\u2014by that point, I was pretty much running on fumes\u2014and that\u2019s when I heard Justin. Blake!<\/em> He shouted. Quick as a clap. I spun around, then stood still, listening for the snap of a twig, the brush of a branch catching sleeve, the echo still zinging in my head. I hadn\u2019t heard my brother\u2019s voice in over a year.<\/p>\n

By that point in the season\u2014the season after we lost Justin\u2014our crew had worked fires in four states: cutting, back-burning, banking snags. A lot of the time we coyoted, slept out on the line, no bags, no buckets, nothing but what we carried\u2014Powerade, Cliff Bars, jerky, our 6,000 daily cals. A couple days of eating smoke, barely sleeping, and I\u2019d be wound so tight I\u2019d blow a fuse over a bent brush blade. That\u2019s when I\u2019d start seeing my brother. I tried to shake it off, clear my head, focus, <\/em>but Justin kept showing up.<\/p>\n

When Thunder Mountain started, we\u2019d just finished corralling six thousand howling acres near Jackson Hole, Wyoming, digging and clearing, keeping just ahead of the blaze.<\/p>\n

\u201cHand to hand combat,\u201d one of the rookies joked afterwards and Buzz, our squad boss, squeezed one eye and tipped his head back, like he\u2019d taken a punch in slow motion.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou don\u2019t fight a fire, you guide it,\u201d Buzz reminded him, scratching his beard, grown in coarse red hackles in contrast to his sandy thinning hair.<\/p>\n

Base camp had been set up on a golf course in Jackson Hole: showers, porta-potties, burgers that required both hands. The last night, I sat up alone tracing the nubs and ridges of Kara\u2019s back into the dirt, missing her. Dark evacuated houses hulked around the perimeter and that\u2019s where I spotted him, leaning over a porch railing. Something about the way my breathing snagged, he looked up too, then hopped the railing, disappeared. I\u2019d just pulled two shifts back-to-back and the weight in my limbs pretty much staked me to the ground, but I took off after him. I wanted to catch his sleeve, to yank him back, but I stumbled, my legs achy and weak, muscle gone to putty. I couldn\u2019t call out. Guys on the crew would have heard me.<\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

The time I broke my ankle playing paintball as a kid, Justin ripped the shoulder seam of his grey fleece pulling free from me. We were camping up near Hart\u2019s Prairie. I was scared he\u2019d get lost trying to lead Dad back to me, forget where to veer off the main trail and scramble up the hill into the aspen grove. My swollen ankle pulsed like my heart had slipped down my leg. Yellow aspen leaves rattled in the breeze, jangling as if cut from tinfoil. I was scared. Finally, Justin came tearing through the thicket of chalky trunks. \u201cFound him! I found Blake!\u201d he shouted. I cried I was so relieved. \u201cYou\u2019re okay,\u201d Dad said, helping me stand. His voice was even, like the ankle was no big deal. Probably, he was tired\u2014earlier, he\u2019d taken us down inside the lava tubes.<\/p>\n

Justin walked behind, sniffling and dragging our paintball guns, white crescent of t-shirt peeking through the torn armpit of his fleece. \u201cYou\u2019re okay,\u201d Dad kept saying until I realized he wasn\u2019t talking to me anymore, but to Justin. I leaned harder on Dad\u2019s shoulder, wanting his full attention; he struggled to take up the extra weight. Justin sucked in his snot and started to hum to himself. Soon he was reading the dark initials, the dates and crude hearts gashed into the white bark of the aspens along the trail, the way he announced bumperstickers: Bad cop, no donut<\/em>. Keep honking, I\u2019m re-loading<\/em>.<\/p>\n

On long trips, Dad always woke us at the Mongollon Rim. \u201cThis is it,\u201d he\u2019d say, pointing out the invisible line. \u201cHere\u2019s where all the rivers stop flowing east and start flowing west.\u201d<\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

That night on the golf course, I unlaced my boots and crawled head first into my tent. I lay on my back, tent flap swelling and sagging in the drowsy breeze. By the time enough adrenaline leached out of me to actually close my eyes, it was dawn, Buzz already up, calling our names.<\/p>\n

We flew home from Jackson Hole the next day. We\u2019d just got to our summer barracks at the base of the Peaks, north of Flagstaff, and I was looking forward to sleeping it off for a day or two when we got the Thunder Mountain call. We were the last hand crew; they already had hotshots in from California. Buzz laid it out: the ignition point was a dry strike, about halfway up the slope. It had smoldered a couple days, but as long as it hadn\u2019t spread into the foothill McMansions or the trailers around Chimney Rock, which torch like bales of straw, it hadn\u2019t been much of a priority. Then, in the space of an hour, wind gusts rose and split it, swept it east toward Soldier\u2019s Pass and north as far as Devil\u2019s Arch, a two-header. I talked to Kara on the phone that morning. She said smoke was snaking up into the canyon, hanging over the creek like fog.<\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve lived within ten miles of Thunder Mountain all my life, first with my folks in Sedona, then with Kara, in the cabin behind the trout farm, in the deep, hidden shade of Oak Creek Canyon. Justin had ridden with me out to the quarry in Ash Fork for the flagstone we faced the cabin with, load after load.<\/p>\n

\u201cThick as mashed potatoes, Kid,\u201d I coached while he mixed mortar.<\/p>\n

\u201cYeah, yeah,\u201d he said, humming under his breath.<\/p>\n

We wrapped the cabin\u2019s exterior with wire mesh, then worked stones around horizontally from the bottom, keeping the joints narrow. He was good at judging fits.<\/p>\n

\u201cTry this one,\u201d he said, when I struggled to make a flat chunk I\u2019d chosen line up. \u201cSee? Better, right?\u201d he asked, taking the one I\u2019d been trying from my hand. He leaned in, wiped a mortar smear with a wet rag, admiring how close his piece fit, humming still. I had five seasons under my belt by the time Justin joined our squad. Buzz didn\u2019t do favors\u2014I was proud my brother made the cut. I was four years older and the season and a half he worked the crew with us I hassled him plenty, right up to the end, almost to the moment I saw his head resting in the crook of Ricardo\u2019s arm. When I plunged down the slope toward him that day, Justin\u2019s cuticles were still stained from the grout work. A head weighs eight pounds, as much as a gallon of water.<\/p>\n

Thunder Mountain was close to home: a tall, red plug of rock skirted by crooked Manzanita, alligator juniper, prickly pear, and cured brush. But, at first, it was just another fire. Buzz would tell us what to do and we\u2019d do it. This was before South Canyon, back when the last fire to kill a crew was Mann Gulch. Men older than my dad died working that fire. I didn\u2019t think about it; none of us did. It seemed like ancient history.<\/p>\n

We traded out gear and piled into the crummies. With Justin gone, nobody on the crew read out the church marquees anymore. They passed by silently: Stop, drop & roll with the Lord.<\/em> Eternal fire insurance: apply within<\/em>. Sometimes, simply: Pray for rain<\/em>.<\/p>\n

We headed down 89A, hemmed in on both sides by close-grown ponderosas, thick as telephone poles. A cop waved us through at the overlook. Normally, from there, the switchbacks carve down into the canyon, steep enough to spit and hit bottom, but that day the road disappeared around the first curve. We fell silent, controlling our breathing, as if the conserved oxygen might clear a passage. Smoke drifted and swelled in the headlights. We must have passed the spring, then the trout farm, where, a few days earlier, tourists had been laying out five bucks a pound to cast into silver funnels of half-starved fish in an old swimming pool. Even the cliff-diving ledges around Grasshopper Point were invisible in the haze, spots Justin had climbed four stories up, resurfacing in the bubbling froth inches from car-sized red creek boulders. I\u2019d quit diving; it scared Kara. I\u2019d stopped going down there at all. I blamed that on Kara too, but the truth was seeing Justin step off the edge gave me the same pang in my gut as she must have felt, watching me.<\/p>\n

Where the canyon widened out into Sedona, we saw it: the smokecloud its own mountain\u2014it made its own shadow. We bore right at the Y and the air cleared as we hooked around south of the fire. We passed the scorched nub of Thunder Mountain, crummies pitching up FS 152 to the Devil\u2019s Arch trailhead. Sixty pounds of Gatorade, tools, fire shelter, and enough gorp and jerky to power through a week gripped my back through the stiff yellow Nomex. I had ten years on some of the rookies, but I still loved the soreness, the pull in my limbs at the end of a shift, like some kind of tide.<\/p>\n

The air was so dry, if I\u2019d snapped my fingers, the friction would have sparked, lit. I felt the itch, then blood worming. I rubbed my nose, sniffed. Yazzie saw and called up to Ricardo, our squad medic: \u201cHeads up, Bloody Mary\u2019s on the rag again.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cShit, Blake,\u201d Ricardo called back. \u201cSave some of that blood, you might need it.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Bloody Mary dig started back when we were GS-3s, temporaries. Buzz had a gift for feeling out soft spots. Ricardo was Elvis, since the first thing he did when we came in off a fire was shave and gel his hair, slicking and sculpting. I made like I didn\u2019t hear, let the blood dry in two rusty lines.<\/p>\n

As a kid, I got them all the time in winter. I\u2019d snuff my nose with fresh powder, pack red snow in a ball.<\/p>\n

\u201cHey, Just,\u201d I\u2019d ask, \u201cwant a cherry snow cone?\u201d<\/p>\n

He\u2019d take off toward the house and I\u2019d lob it, smacking the back of his coat. The morning after a big storm, Mom brought down her vials of food coloring. Justin and I jostled, watching veins of blue dye feather through bowls of clean breakfast snow. Only then were we quiet, eying each other\u2019s bowls. Stuff like that, sometimes it just comes back to me.<\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

Guys shot the breeze, hiking in to Devil\u2019s Arch. On a twenty-two-man crew, six were rookies, divvied up, two to each squad. Losing Justin had reminded us that life has a valve that lets the air out. Guys had found reasons to transfer or take a gig in an uncle\u2019s landscaping business. The rookies hiked in front, raising knee-high clouds of dust. For them it was all still a crazy rush, waking blurry-eyed from deep, fire-chasing sleep, always volunteering. I steered clear of them as best I could, since I lived in one world, where Justin still existed, still worked the lines with us, and they lived in another. Hiking in, I kept looking around for him and stumbling.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou okay?\u201d Ricardo asked, offering a hand up. \u201cYou seeing shit again? Man, you need to talk to Buzz if you\u2019re seeing shit.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cNaw,\u201d I said. \u201cI just need to sleep.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve got stuff for that,\u201d Ricardo said, taking off his helmet to check the crispy wave of his hair. \u201cAsk me later.\u201d<\/p>\n

Where the trail ended, our squad split off. The other two squads headed out to clear a helispot. Meanwhile, we would hike north and start digging back toward them. We\u2019d meet somewhere in the middle, encircle the fire\u2019s west head, starving it off from new fuel. This was the quiet side of the fire. Most of the smoke swept off east, towards Brins Mesa. Thunder Mountain stood at our backs, along with the scorched hills the fire had already passed through.<\/p>\n

Buzz checked the topo map and his GPS. Hiking up the rise, skirting ravines, we didn\u2019t see it yet, but we were getting closer, red plumes of slurry blooming from the tankers, backlit by blazing sun. Ricardo climbed fast and I pushed to keep up, slipping, catching a crush of gravel in the heel of my palm. Suddenly, Ricardo swung around 180, off the trail, hands up. I stopped short. A rookie bumped into my pack and the guy behind smacked into him. We stared at the diamondback coiled on the trail. The flaky stub of its zebra tail, where the chewed-off rattle should have been, flicked in silent warning.<\/p>\n

After that, Ricardo tossed rocks up ahead of us.<\/p>\n

The terrain was too steep to drive in a dozer, too far to run a hose lay. We rose out of red rock, juniper,, and pi\u00f1on into ponderosa and scrub oak, straining against our packs. We crested a hill, ridge visible beyond it and beyond that, the fire\u2019s edge, nothing but blackened poles. Wind gusted and flames leapt up in the east, dark smoke rising as new trees torched and crowned.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat shit is moving,\u201d Ricardo said.<\/p>\n

I dug a pebble out of my boot and caught up behind one of the rookies, a college kid. He kept looking off toward the fire and stumbling.<\/p>\n

\u201cWatch your feet, Kid,\u201d I told him.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m not your fucking kid,\u201d Justin had said, the first time I called him that in front of the guys. We were out on a controlled burn and he was standing too close to a pile of lit slash, singeing his pants.<\/p>\n

\u201cMan, Blake, you going to take that from this kid<\/em>?\u201d Ricardo had asked.<\/p>\n

\u201cYeah, Kid<\/em>\u2019s asking for it,\u201d Buzz had joined in.<\/p>\n

Ricardo turned around when I said it to the rookie, but the rookie really was a kid. Halfway through the season, still scared shitless. He\u2019d burned and peeled all summer, skin raw pink above his beard, neck sprayed with freckles.<\/p>\n

Thirty yards downhill from the backbone of the ridge, Buzz found the end of the other division\u2019s line. The trench was a good ten feet across, ponderosas notched and felled to separate the crown. The ladder fuel\u2014dead limbs and slash\u2014had all been pulled, needles raked. Just over the ridge was the Black, the zone that had already burned out. If the wind changed, the fire could still double back around, come over the ridge. Buzz paced off, marking trees to continue the trench south and we started eating light smoke. Mostly a fire is something you breathe.<\/p>\n

The saw team worked in front, Yazzie notching pines, calling \u201cclear,\u201d and a rookie pulling and hauling off cuts. The rest of us followed, digging up shallow roots that jerked free like extension cords and levering out deeper ones or chopping them with the axe heads on our Pulaskis, then flipping the handle, kicking up dirt to bury them. Buzz inspected the line, calling, \u201cBump up,\u201d when we finished a section and we\u2019d pace off fifteen more feet each and start over.<\/p>\n

\u201cDrink. Your brain\u2019ll fry in your head,\u201d he told the rookies. \u201cMore you drink, less you carry.\u201d<\/p>\n

Later, we sat on our packs and salted up on jerky. Our faces were sweat-slicked, hair soaked under our helmets. Sun glinted off our shades. A tanker droned overhead, led by a spotter. We hit a rhythm, pines tipping, chainsaw revving, the break a wide brown line. I wiped my nose with the back of my hand and rusty scabs flaked off. I could make out the rookie\u2019s clumsy bushwhacking behind me, the sound Dad made, knocking dead limbs off for kindling with an old driver he kept on the floor of his truck.<\/p>\n

When I went home after my first season, Dad had a permit for elk. Justin and I went out with him, terrain a lot like that ridge. Justin dunked donuts into baked beans. He was still in high school then, but already girls followed him upstairs at parties\u2014tourist girls whose glossy hair fell down their backs. His own hair was sun-streaked from cliff-diving. Dad took a 5X5 up near Kendrick Mountain that trip, lucky shot. It stumbled, then sank. We dragged it back to the truck, straining against the elk\u2019s bulk. Justin held up fine, never would have known. All those pick-up games, kick-the-can, paintball, in a way, looking back, we were lucky.<\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

In front of me, Ricardo tore through his stretch of line. I caught a blur, up near the top of the ridge. A coyote dove past, tongue hanging out the side of its mouth. Ricardo turned in time to watch it disappear down into the trees.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat was that?\u201d The rookie asked.<\/p>\n

\u201cKy-oat,\u201d Ricardo said.<\/p>\n

\u201cAren\u2019t coyotes nocturnal?\u201d<\/p>\n

I shrugged. We\u2019d seen some crazy shit. Putting out hotspots after a big fire near Bozeman, we\u2019d come across a herd of scorched elk. Their eyeballs had melted, run out of their sockets.<\/p>\n

We bumped up again, and I saw tracks where the coyote\u2019s pads had sunk into fresh-turned earth. White smoke drifted through the trees, blanketing the forest like the beginning of a snow. About that time, the chain on the saw busted and Yazzie replaced it. The motor sputtered, then caught. A giant ponderosa whooshed, then crashed, bringing down a smaller tree; I felt the tremor in my feet.<\/p>\n

\u201cBeaut,\u201d Ricardo called, stopping to breathe. He squatted in the shade, mopped his face, took off his helmet, and did his best to comb his fingers through his dripping, flattened hair. The day of PT, the ten seconds it took me to tear down the hillside, Justin\u2019s eyes were already rolled back. It was Ricardo who turned in time to brace Justin\u2019s fall, Ricardo who\u2019d crouched there, absorbing the shudder, the long, shallow exhale.<\/p>\n

\u201cHey,\u201d Ricardo said, snapping back into his helmet. \u201cYou okay?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYeah,\u201d I said, shaking it off, clearing my head.<\/p>\n

We started eating heavy smoke. Buzz radioed to make sure the fire wasn\u2019t blowing back at us. The helispot was finally cleared, but high winds had grounded air support. Buzz sent me up to the ridgeline with the rookie to scout. I hiked first, fighting to breathe, blood gunked between my teeth. Suddenly, there was Justin, limping along the ridge. I swung up faster through the trees toward him, the rookie\u2019s ragged breathing falling off behind me.<\/p>\n

Justin had been hiking in front of me up Elden. Our annual PT: forty-five-pound packs, three miles vertical in forty-five or less.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t feel right,\u201d he\u2019d said, slowing.<\/p>\n

\u201cMan up, Kid,\u201d I\u2019d said. I don\u2019t even remember looking at him, I was so focused on beating my time from the year before.<\/p>\n

\u201cNo, like I really\u2014\u201d He stopped walking.<\/p>\n

\u201cCan\u2019t take the heat, get out of the kitchen.\u201d I stepped around him, not wanting to add to my time. That might have been the last thing he heard me say. He sank to his knees on the trail, a punching bag cut loose from a beam, and I crashed through the brush, plunging down the slope toward him, my voice hurtling out across the valley. Maybe he heard me, maybe he was already gone.<\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

With the rookie behind me, I took the last ten yards to the ridgeline and stared through the haze at the craggy foothills, searching for movement. The closest trees appeared dark, trees behind greyer, fading into smoke.<\/p>\n

\u201cBack a hundred years ago, we didn\u2019t get these monsters,\u201d I told him. I was buying time, waiting to see if Justin would double back. \u201cLetting fuel ladder up to the crown like this, it\u2019s all us.\u201d I surveyed the charred stumps, the glow at the base of the smokecloud obscuring the rise of Brin\u2019s Mesa.<\/p>\n

The rookie took off his helmet and wiped his pink face on his sleeve. I smelled mesquite, the campfires we\u2019d built up at Hart\u2019s Prairie.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf it\u2019d just rain,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Woozy, I braced my arm against a ponderosa\u2019s rough bark. In my head, I was shambling along the ridge, chasing Justin.\u00a0 I hadn\u2019t slept since Jackson Hole. I needed to lie down.<\/p>\n

\u201cHere,\u201d the rookie said, offering his canteen.<\/p>\n

Back down on the line, I filled Buzz in: perimeter burned out, no danger of sneaking up on us. During breathers, Ricardo argued with Yazzie over what was a tougher dog.<\/p>\n

\u201cRez dogs eat rocks,\u201d Yazzie said.<\/p>\n

\u201cBullshit,\u201d Ricardo said.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve seen it, fool,\u201d Yazzie said.<\/p>\n

\u201cYeah, fool,\u201d I said.<\/p>\n

\u201cRez dog ain\u2019t a breed,\u201d Ricardo dismissed, his face filmed with grime.<\/p>\n

We pushed through, following the ridge. Swollen veins snaked around my forearms under my Nomex, the stiff yellow cloth browned with dirt and bark. By that time in the season, calluses had built up so I wore them, gloves under my gloves.<\/p>\n

Close to dusk, the pressure dropped, air roiling: electric. Smoke swept over the ridge, down the slope into us. On the radio, we heard crews working the split between the fireheads get called back, but our orders were to stay put. The thwhack of rotors headed for the helispot got Yazzie on the subject of his girlfriend, a smokejumper named Jessie. She\u2019d parachuted into Yellowstone once; three guys with her broke legs, true story.<\/p>\n

\u201cI didn\u2019t know they let chicks do that,\u201d the rookie said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhatever, she could kick your ass,\u201d Yazzie said.<\/p>\n

\u201cI know, right? Chick\u2019s ripped. Play those abs like a piano,\u201d Ricardo said, bouncing his leg. Back when he was into Ritalin, Ricardo would get so hyped up he was like a dog chasing his own tail, but the Modafinil just made him jumpy.<\/p>\n

Buzz radioed Incident Command again to double-check the forecast.<\/p>\n

Ricardo squatted next to me. \u201cCome on, Blake, you\u2019re dragging,\u201d he said, holding out two tabs. \u201cTrust me. Stuff\u2019s good. Pilots use it.\u201d<\/p>\n

I swatted the air between us.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhatever, man,\u201d Ricardo said, unscrewing his canteen and swallowing both pills. Uppers made my heart race, an anxious, painful throbbing.<\/p>\n

Thunder clapped overhead and wind whooshed through the trees, sky darkening, reflecting the glare of the fire. We sat and watched the strikes.<\/p>\n

\u201cRain, you sonofabitch,\u201d Ricardo cursed under his breath.<\/p>\n

After sunset, the wind tapered off. We picked up the line, headlamps slashing Zs through the dark woods. Past midnight that first night, the chain brake on the saw went out, so Buzz told us to sleep. Yazzie stayed up with him to repair the saw. I lay on the duff with the others, but my brain wouldn\u2019t turn off.<\/p>\n

I listened to Buzz tell Yazzie about Elden burning in the seventies.<\/p>\n

\u201cLit up like a Christmas tree, the whole mountain,\u201d Buzz said. Even Yazzie, who went whole shifts without talking, loved hearing about it. Dad had some stories, but none like that\u2014he\u2019d given up wildland when Justin and I were kids. Funny how what made Dad quit\u2014wanting to be near us\u2014is the same thing that made me stay. Out on the line was the only place I still saw Justin, the only place I still felt him close by.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey were using B-24s,\u201d Buzz told Yazzie. \u201cThose things flew over, you thought the world was ending.\u201d<\/p>\n

Normally, after the PT run up and down Elden, we sat around on our packs in the shade, red-faced, light-headed, staring at the mountain\u2019s scarred face, listening to Buzz retell that old war story. That year though, he\u2019d skipped it, said a few words about Justin instead. I\u2019d felt guys stealing looks at me, but when I looked back, their eyes slid away.<\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

The temperature had dropped. I dug a blanket out of my pack and pulled it around me, burrito-style. Smoke drifted over us, small, whirling disturbances caused by our breathing.<\/p>\n

\u201cWant some Ambien?\u201d Ricardo offered.<\/p>\n

\u201cNaw, I\u2019m good.\u201d I burrowed into the blanket, tried picturing Kara doing her raindance in the parking lot the night I met her, thunder cracking, rain drilling down on the hood. Kara had ducked into my truck, thin fabric of her dress transparent, plastered to her pale, freckled legs.<\/p>\n

\u201cI made us some rain,\u201d she said, like she knew us. Justin looked at me, a double-take, then back at Kara, then back at me, amused.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhere we going?\u201d Justin asked her.<\/p>\n

\u201cSomeplace dry,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou started it, can\u2019t you stop it?\u201d Justin asked.<\/p>\n

\u201cNo such thing as too much rain,\u201d Kara said, twisting water out of her hair. Rainwater beaded on the navy blue seat vinyl, patched with duct tape.<\/p>\n

Justin pretended to study the windshield, knocked his knee against mine.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re building a cabin,\u201d I said.<\/p>\n

\u201cOkay,\u201d Kara said, as if this were a normal conversation.<\/p>\n

Justin\u2019s face contorted, grin collapsing the surface as we drove. The cabin was nothing more than a shell then. I\u2019d just got the roof on in time for the monsoons.<\/p>\n

\u201cI hear the creek,\u201d Kara said. The rain had pretty much stopped by then. She dragged her hand along the cabin\u2019s frame like she could already feel the drywall, the skim coat, the paint.<\/p>\n

We walked over to the trout farm. Light from the owner\u2019s porch wove through the chain link fence, illuminating the pool, reflecting off the curved silver pouches of fish. Justin kept quiet, hummed under his breath, let me think of things to say. Talking came easy to him, like fitting the flagstone. Something he just looked at and understood how to do.<\/p>\n

\u201cPretty, huh?\u201d I\u2019d asked, staring at the trout: toothy, ugly, dumb.<\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

Around dawn, Buzz got the saw working. I woke up choking exhaust. Most of what I remember about that second day is the drone of tankers, the thickening haze, smoke washing over the ridge, recoiling. It was a tough stretch, crossing a ravine. By dusk, we were a half-mile from our other squads. We should have hiked back down to the anchor point for the night, since we were eating a lot of smoke, but Buzz decided to go ahead and push through. Normally, a fire lies down overnight, when humidity rises. The division above us had already been reassigned to the east head, leaving the line north of us undefended. The east head was jumping trenches, so we expected to get sent there too, as soon as we finished.<\/p>\n

We broke to eat, the night more smoke than air. The first fistful of gorp tasted like blood, even after I swished and spat. Buzz sat across from me, working a chewed-down stick of jerky. He\u2019d walked wide of me all season, like he owed me something, like Justin\u2019s coronary arteries were a knot he\u2019d mis-tied, feeding the heart from the same side so that, if one failed, so did the other\u2014a defect, one in a million. The day of PT, they got pinched between the pulmonary artery and the aorta, his blood backing up, furious and contained. We\u2019d struggled to balance Justin\u2019s weight between us, sliding down the steep slope. At the bottom, I braced my arm against the crummy and wept, sobs choking to the surface from a great depth. Buzz laid a hand on my shoulder and let it course up his arm, the electricity of grief.<\/p>\n

Justin could have died any day of his life\u2014as if the same isn\u2019t true for all of us.<\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

By midnight, we only had a quarter mile to go, so Buzz told one rookie to sleep. \u201cYou too, Yaz.\u201d<\/p>\n

Yazzie had scraped his knuckles pretty good earlier in the day and Ricardo had cleaned and bandaged them. He slept with the gauzed paw cradled in the crook of his good arm. Buzz hit the dirt too. The other rookie continued the line, then me, then Ricardo, all of us past tired, breathing shallow to avoid drawing in smoke. My slack arms tore away at the weave of pine needles, revealing a darker layer where the needles had started to decompose, and, below that, soil. I tasted blood, looked up the dark ridge and spotted Justin dodging through the trees. Spit caught in my throat. I\u2019d been checked, everything normal, but still I felt blood building up in my chest, pressurizing.<\/p>\n

\u201cBump up,\u201d Ricardo called. \u201cHey, Bloody Mary, bump it up already.\u201d<\/p>\n

I heard my brother scrambling through the whooshing, swaying trees, their trunks creaking. My lamp cut jagged lines through the forest. A hand clamped down on my shoulder, huff of breath in my ear.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat\u2019s the matter with you?\u201d<\/p>\n

I spun around, light reflecting off the tiny, gold cross nestled in the curly hairs at the base of Ricardo\u2019s throat.<\/p>\n

\u201cI said, bump up.\u201d Ricardo shook his head at the fresh lines of blood running over my lips. \u201cBlake, man, you\u2019re bad news. Bears can smell that shit.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s no bears up here.\u201d I kept digging, stealing glances through the trees.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat do you see?\u201d Ricardo asked, an edge in his voice like he\u2019d been thinking about bears since he\u2019d mentioned them.<\/p>\n

\u201cNothing.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cMan, you should have taken the Ambien,\u201d Ricardo said.<\/p>\n

Right then came the whoops, the zagging shafts of light: the other squad, up closer to the ridgeline. Right away, we started digging diagonally uphill to join our line to theirs. Mentally, I was already packing up, hiking down to the anchor point, draining and wrapping my blisters. Maybe they\u2019d even let us catch a few in our bags before reporting to the east head.<\/p>\n

I remember the breeze rising, churning through the trees, and then Buzz was up shaking hands with the other squad boss, the third squad already back down at the anchor point. The gauze wrapped around Yazzie\u2019s knuckles came free and Ricardo hefted off his pack to dig out another clasp. Static fizzed from the radio.<\/p>\n

I remember Buzz\u2019s voice carried for a moment: \u201cLoad up. Bump out. Move!\u201d Wind gusted, howling from below, crashing over us. I heard the fire then; it had jumped the line north of us, spread along the ravine and raced up on us from below, flames torching sixty feet in the air. Headlamps scattered. Buzz was shouting, but his voice didn\u2019t reach. A wall of heat almost knocked me over. Ricardo dropped his Pulaski and took off up the ridge.<\/p>\n

The rookie knelt over, digging through his pack. I grabbed the neck of his shirt, but he yanked away, fumbling with his fire shelter.<\/p>\n

\u201cCome on!\u201d I yelled. I felt the vibration of my voice in my chest, but the sound was sucked out into the roar. I dragged him up toward the ridgeline until he fell against me, taking us both down. He pulled free, scrambled back to his shelter. I stumbled after him, ground heaving and sloping, until Ricardo grabbed me, hauled me up. We ducked under the smoke, over the ridge, the weight of my pack hurtling me forward. Logs crashed and rolled as we ran down into the Black, where there was nothing left for the fire to burn. Our feet sank into the ashy ground so that I had to jerk my knees up to free my boots, as from deep snow. Smoke baked in my lungs, but I felt them, two grey bags, inflating in my chest.<\/p>\n

\u201cBlake!\u201d Ricardo yelled.<\/p>\n

The rest of the squad was crouched behind me. I\u2019d walked right through their shelters, a tinfoil camp. Buzz shouted into the radio, accounting for us, trying to confirm the coordinates of the other squad.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019s up there,\u201d I said, but Buzz shook me off, digging for his own shelter.<\/p>\n

The line we\u2019d dug held until the fire found the gap between the unjoined lines. Flames tore through, crested the ridge. I crawled into my crinkled shelter. The fire roared down the hill toward us until it hit the burned-out edge of the Black. Even from that distance, we felt the heat. It can get so hot, your lungs cook in your chest, or get flecked with ash, like you swallowed a lit cigarette. I tried to focus, to imagine the glossy brown creek closing over my head, my stomach resting against the slick, cool silt.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019s up there,\u201d I kept insisting, after we crawled out from our shelters.<\/p>\n

\u201cStop, man,\u201d Ricardo said finally. \u201cDidn\u2019t you hear Buzz? Other squad\u2019s got him. He ate some smoke, that\u2019s all.\u201d Ricardo shook me by the shoulders, my heavy head lolling. \u201cHey, you\u2019re bleeding again.\u201d Ricardo held out his canteen. I cupped my hands under it. \u201cYou okay?\u201d he asked.<\/p>\n

I snuffed water over my nostrils, tilted my head back, waited for it to clot. Day was breaking, sky low and overcast. The thwack of the medevac chopper\u2019s rotors swept over the smoldering flank of the ridge, bringing rain. Sudden, drilling rain; it ran down our beards, washed away sheets of charred soil.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s strange, what burns. The way the creek forks around shelves of dry land. When the fire tore up the ridge, it parted around an island of forest where I\u2019d dropped my canteen. Later, I found it. There was still warm water inside.<\/p>\n

It rained the next day too. We had the option to demob, but we coldtrailed with another crew instead, checking wet boles for heat. Later, Buzz sat on a bench at the demob station talking to the rookie\u2019s mom on the phone\u2014they were fixing him up. Yazzie unwrapped his hand, exposing the raw knuckles to the air. Ricardo fingered his dull, patchy beard. I called Kara. My voice cracked. I smothered the receiver.<\/p>\n

We drove the crummies back to barracks to pick up our cars.\u00a0 My body lurched with the others, bumping knees around the curves, nobody talking, all thinking about the rookie, or a sore rib, or home. Once we got there, I sat in my truck in the parking lot. Buzz cranked his wrist in a circle until I rolled down the window.<\/p>\n

\u201cKara okay?\u201d he asked. \u201cYou\u2019re not quitting on me, are you?\u201d He lowered his head, level with mine. \u201cI\u2019d really hate to lose you, Blake.\u201d<\/p>\n

I tried clearing my throat, but I was still too choked up.<\/p>\n

\u201cHey,\u201d Buzz said, squeezing my shoulder. \u201cGet some rest. Give it a couple days.\u201d He held on for a moment. \u201cLet us hear from you. Okay?\u201d He smacked the truck door, hesitating before he pushed off.<\/p>\n

89A needed re-paving and the pitted grey surface exposed a darker underlayer. At the overlook, chunks of red rock bluff dipped into sweeps of pines. I pulled off the switchbacks at the spring, filled the jugs at the spigot, tightened the caps. The creek was high. Wind swelled in the trees, warm coins of sun swept away by brown runoff. Farther upstream, up near the mouth of the canyon, is where we spread Justin\u2019s ashes.<\/p>\n

Kara was waiting on the porch, arms crossed, rocking from her toes back onto the balls of her feet. \u201cI did my raindance,\u201d she said. She was smiling, tears collecting at the rims of her nostrils until she wiped them with the inside of her wrist. \u201cThere\u2019s a buttload of flies inside.\u201d Later, she trapped one against my bare shoulder blade. I felt it brushing my skin, buzzing there in the clam of her cupped hand.<\/p>\n

After that, I pretty much slept for three months. It took that long for me to get my head on straight. Every few days, Kara wiped dead flies off the dusty windowsills with a paper towel. It\u2019s the fish guts that attract them. On a good day, the farm\u2019s owner slits open two hundred trout on a narrow wooden slab balanced between two sawhorses. There are wild fish in the creek, smaller than these bloated meal-fed fish, quick, slippery flashes of silver.<\/p>\n

This time of year, the creek is completely hidden by trees, but the sound of it still carries. The contractor I work for now is an early bird. We get out to the building sites by dawn and quit by four-thirty. I\u2019m almost always home before Kara. It\u2019s good work, physical; it tires you out.\u00a0 In my spare time, I\u2019m training myself to reproduce the sound of the creek from memory, to tune out the radio and concentrate no matter how loud the highway or the whoosh and stir of the cement mixer.\u00a0 I say the creek because we spent so much time down there, horsing around, diving, floating on our backs, letting the current carry us. It makes sense, even if it\u2019s just a way to trick the brain.<\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

Scraggly brown grasses had been hacked back from our campsite at Hart\u2019s Prairie. We had a fire pit ringed by blackened rocks, some old aspen stumps we sat on to wolf down our eggs.<\/p>\n

After breakfast, Dad showed us a short cut, leaving the trail, hiking down through the woods. From time to time, he threw back his head to get his bearings. It was still early when we reached the lava tubes. Dad ducked under the stone overhang into the mouth of the cave and we followed his flashlight, walking first, then crouching, belly-crawling along the tunnel. Justin kept grabbing my ankle so we wouldn\u2019t get separated\u2014I hadn\u2019t broken it yet; all that would happen later. It was cold in the tubes and the sleeves of our fleeces caught on the porous volcanic rock. When we came to the inner amphitheater, Dad switched off his flashlight, the cavern air dank, still. I remember listening to my brother breathe in the dark; I didn\u2019t have to reach out to him to know how near he stood to me.<\/p>\n

Ashley Rose Davidson<\/a><\/h6>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As crazy as it sounds now, the night the Thunder Mountain Fire outflanked us, we were digging furious line through the steep, rocky terrain north of Devil\u2019s Arch. A little brave and a lot stupid, it was our job to cut a trench ten across and a foot deep\u2014a dry moat the fire couldn\u2019t jump. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false},"categories":[5],"tags":[20],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6Jypy-1w6","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5834"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/22"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5834"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5834\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10457,"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5834\/revisions\/10457"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5834"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5834"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5834"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}