Page 9 of Smoke Season

She lay back, finding the Big Dipper and Lyra and making a mental note to show them to Emmett tomorrow night, after their campfire ... assuming the smoke hadn’t caught up with them.

But if that was Lyra, where the hell had Aquila gone? She peered into the darkness, trying to spot the less prominent constellations in the gathering haze. It had been Sam who’d taught True how to find all these stars years ago, during her short stint on a trail-maintenance crew with the Forest Service and National Guard. She and the young Army vet fresh from Operation Enduring Freedom had bonded over a shared love of the outdoors and lack of tolerance for incompetency and general inaptitude among their peers, both of which had been in ample supply that summer. They’d been besties ever since. The only time True and Sam’s friendship had been tested—before now, she amended—had been the spring he’d met Mel.

Show her the ropes,Sam had said, when his new girlfriend had landed on True’s crew back when she’d guided for Paddle, Inc. It will be fun,he’d said. And was it ever. Mel had been twenty to True’s twenty-four, emerging from the bright-yellow Paddle bus with the other college employees as toned and tomboyishly athletic as a model stepping out of the pages of a Title IX catalog.

The moment True had laid eyes on her, she’d been a goner.

She’d fought it, of course, for Sam’s sake. She’d pretended the sight of Mel emerging from her sleeping bag each morning, hair tousled, smile radiant, didn’t warm every cell of True’s body. She’d tried to convince herself there was nothing to adore about Mel’s earnestness tolearn and her natural leadership style that drew people to her instead of setting them against her.

But throughout that one beautiful season they’d guided together, True had taken Mel under her wing. Sam had asked her to, hadn’t he? She’d started by showing her how to leverage a thousand-pound raft out of literal metric tons of rapidly flowing water with only the muscle of a woman’s forearms. “Forget diamonds,” True had told Mel, high-fiving her after a successful training exercise. “A Rapid Ditch Bag is a girl’struebest friend.”

She’d taught her the best line to navigate for every square inch of this river, had taught her how to put fretful clients at ease, had taught her the art of baking her famous blueberry breakfast scones in a Dutch oven over the fire (the trick was to reserve the bacon grease from the loaded baked potatoes the night before). And whenever they’d had a layover day in Boise or Bend for Paddle, Inc., restocks, she liked to think she’d taught Mel how to have a little fun, too.

“Ladies’ choice,” True had always said, smiling, half enjoying Mel’s uncertain expression, half not, when they planned their evenings out. She knew her reputation preceded her, suspected the other rafting guides had warned Mel about her, jokingly, of course.Careful, Mel, she’s a woman-eater.The ones who grew up in Carbon had fun ribbing Sam, too, by proxy.Bishop must feel pretty damned secure, letting you out on the town with Truitt.

“‘Letting’ me? Please,” Mel answered, and True had known right then and there: for better or worse, whether it about killed her or not, Mel would join Sam’s ranks, becoming True’s best friend for life.

During their nights under the stars, they’d confided their hopes for the future like middle schoolers at a slumber party, whispering to one another from their Paco Pads: True’s dream of having her own rafting charter, Mel’s envisioned life with Sam. She would have a river-rock fireplace one day to hang their future children’s Christmas stockings on the mantel. An herb garden in a shady patch of the yard. True had closed her eyes and pictured it with her: home, hearth, family. Did shewant these things, too? The way Mel wove it for her, she thought she just might.

True was a realist, however, so whenever she suffered from predictable surges of self-pity, she soothed herself with the only salve she knew: other women. Other women in bars; other women at whitewater-certification clinics or art shows, where True displayed the mosaic and metal sculptures she created from river glass and old mining scrap metal she found on the shores of the Outlaw; other women in her bed. Pretty women, beautiful women even, as toned and fit and sun-kissed from the river as she was. But never women she was serious about. What if another one tripped her up? True had seen Mel coming a mile away and had still fallen under her spell. She wasn’t eager to make the same mistake twice.

She gave up identifying the stars with a sigh, watching the faint orange smudge of fire on Flatiron slowly gain size instead. Usually, the rocking of the boat underneath her soothed her to sleep, but right now she felt tense. She thought of the metal ammo box of cash once again tucked into the boat, and then of Mel again, somewhere out in the wilderness by Flatiron, undoubtedly at the scene of this blaze.

They weren’t going to have a problem, were they? Fallows expected his handoff every Friday like clockwork, no exceptions. True would like to think acts of God might be exempt, but she doubted it. The Fallowses—John and his son, Chris—were shady motherfuckers, and she should know. One got to know one’s neighbors, after all, even if one didn’t want to. Chris had shit for brains, but his father was another matter.

She calculated the distance between where she lounged in her raft on the Outlaw and the fire, holding her thumb out in front of her face, measuring it against the forest of trees blanketing the peak ... At least five air miles from town. Which meant at least fifteen from where she and the Wus now camped on the shore of the river. She toyed with the dial of her sat phone, wondering belatedly if she should call Mel, then tried to laugh at her own paranoia. Like she’d told Emmett, the locallookout attendant had undoubtedly spotted this fire early. Mel’s crew was almost certainly on scene already, and it would be put out without much fanfare, same as all the ones that would follow in the coming weeks. If she wanted to worry about something, it should be about the poor air quality an early smoke season would produce. Two weeks from surgery D-Day, Annie couldn’t risk respiratory compromise.

Undoubtedly, the Bishop kids were with Sam right now. How was Annie managing in the rooms above the Eddy? True pictured Annie’s little smile—a spitting image of her mother’s—and bit her lip. She adored Astor for her gumption and, yes, even her sassiness of late. Mel wouldn’t admit it, but this, too, came from her maternal genes.

But Annie captured True’s heart in a different way. A way that made her wonder sometimes: What would having a child of her own, of being part of a family—not just as a beloved aunt-godmother but an actual, bona fide member—feel like?

Her mind was still snagged in this particular eddy when the sat phone buzzed to life in her hands, and True nearly dropped it in her sudden jonesing for an update. She chastised herself under her breath as she depressed the talk button. Usually, True was known for the ice water that ran through her veins.

“You got True.”

“True, it’s me.”

“Mel.” The single syllable escaped on a sigh as relief flooded her. She savored the feeling, closing her eyes tightly now that reassurance was on the other end of the line. Yeah, shewasgoing soft. “You looking at Flatiron?”

“Yeah, we’re staged near midmountain. So you can see the fire from where you are?”

“Saw it strike.” True gave her the coordinates. “Everyone okay in town? The girls are good?”

Mel paused, which automatically made True’s stomach tighten with ... not alarm, not quite that. Just trepidation. “I got called outbefore I could see the girls and Sam,” she admitted, “but this spot fire’s still a good ways from town.”

“Let’s just hope it stays that way.” And what about the smoke? “Maybe they should move up to Sam’s house on Highline.” The views across the Cascades were enviable from the castle he still seemed determined to erect from the wreckage of his childhood home, even after he and Mel had called it quits. Which meant the air quality was better, too.

Mel answered in the negative, but most of her words were cut out, thanks to static. Par for the course, when using the sat phone. All True got was “town” and “for now.”

“If you’re sure,” True said slowly. Sam was a great guy, but he had a hell of a blind spot when it came to that house. The result of a childhood that, to hear him tell it, had basically been feral. “Butisit just a spot fire, Mel?” She studied the blaze again from her vantage point on the boat; did it already seem bigger than just a few minutes before?

“You know as well as I do that’s what it is until it isn’t,” Mel said. She sounded testy. No, tired, True amended, as she heard her exhale. “Carbon Rural did a preliminary tonight, and trust me, True, this thing’s just a baby. We’ll start cutting a containment line in the morning.”

“They’re gonna let it burn?”

Mel paused again, or maybe they were experiencing another delay in their connection. “Yeah,” she said eventually, “so listen, True. It’s bound to get smoky out there, on the river. Wind’s going west. What if your clients panic and want to cut the trip short? The bigger operations probably will.”

True frowned. “They’ll be off the river by then, anyway.” She didn’t need the reminder that she and the Wus would soon be alone out here, or that, with the authorities on John Fallows like stink on shit—his words, ironically—it was crucial that she stick to her itinerary. Nothing new about that. Whatwasnew? She felt a surge of unexpected loyalty rise up within her, and not for Mel for a change. “This trip is really important to the Wus,” she heard herself say. “And they don’t scare easily.” After all, standing one’s ground—hell, just daring to exist—asa transgender kid and that trans kid’s parent and advocate was no walk in the park.

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