Page 17 of Smoke Season

Fifteen years ... shit. True never loved the reminder that she was forty-two years old. She’d always thought she’d have years to figure outher future, plenty of time before societal norms would expect her to work a nine-to-five with benefits and a 401(k). But it couldn’t be denied that everyone she’d started out rafting with had long since exited the industry, leaving the lifestyle for relationships, responsibility, “real jobs” that didn’t take them away from their families for twelve weeks every summer. True had been the one to stubbornly remain, rising through the ranks of Paddle, Inc., each summer, welding in the offseason, before finally realizing that long-ago dream of embarking on her own guide business. She’d earned respect, sure, but also more than one nickname that hinted at her age and years of outdoor exposure. Sunbaked came to mind, a favorite of the college kids and single-seasoners thanks to her near-permanent tan lines, the skin across her shoulders a constant bronze tone against her blond hair. And, admittedly, probably also for that one night the newbies had discovered the stash of indica she enjoyed from time to time. She far preferred the other nickname, TrueBlue, which she liked to think she’d earned for her loyalty to the job and her love of the water she couldn’t seem to leave.

Well, she had her own exit plan, she’d have them all know. And it had nothing to do with this fresh hell she and Mel had managed to get themselves into this summer. Automatically, she glanced back over her shoulder toward Flatiron, where, somewhere in the haze of the smoke upriver, her Pinterest-perfect yurt, with its rainwater-collection barrels and drought-resistant garden, sat at the end of her private, rough gravel drive just off the river road. She hadn’t so much as unloaded her first load of solar panels before a caravan of trucks,Don’t Tread on Meand MAGA flags billowing behind them in a wash of yellow, red, white, and blue, had churned up the dust around True’s Chacos. Immediately, the hair on her arms had stood on end as intuition kicked into overdrive. At least ten men stared back at her through the dirty windshields of their rigs.

“Welcome to the hood,” John Fallows had drawled, alighting from the last truck to spit on the ground at his feet. “We got our own little neighborhood watch out here, seeing as we’re so far off the grid.”

“All right,” True had said carefully, looking from Fallows to his son, Chris, always in his shadow.

Additional men had emerged from their vehicles one by one, until a half circle of unwashed humanity framed her in. The closest guy offered her a wink. “So, you know, consider yourself ... watched.”

True had refused to be intimidated. At least, that was what she hoped she’d projected. She’d refused to run directly back to town and give up on homesteading, anyway. She’d known John and his crew grew illegal weed, under cover of their legal grow. Everyone knew. And a whole handful of property owners out here farmed similarly. Most kept to themselves. Most didn’t mind a quiet, non-nosy neighbor. What she hadn’t known—Because you didn’t ask,Sam had pointed out later—was just what league she’d leveled up to.

She’d worked on the Outsider yurt in the following months with her head down, determination fueling her. Laying a foundation, wrapping the canvas around the frame, constructing the yurt’s deck solo from a blueprint. Knowing that it would serve not only as her escape but as her professional art and welding studio for when she gave up the river for good. She could live out her days there, with very little overhead. She’d thought it all through. As a gay woman who wasn’t the marrying type, she’d had to. No one else stood in the wings, waiting to take care of her in her old age.

She wouldn’t let John Fallows, or anyone else, rob her of that.

She sighed, glancing away from the Wus and the nuclear-family coziness they represented. She’d almost convinced herself she didn’t want that life by the time she’d seen the Outsider through Mel’s eyes for the first time and had to admit that her subconscious, at least, felt differently. Showing off her homestead to the Bishops, she’d watched Mel’s face slowly shift from admiration to confusion to realization. The river-rock fireplace she’d said she’d always wanted? Check. The herb garden out front, complete with a wraparound fence to keep out the deer? Yep. Shit. Even after working day after day in the Oregonsunshine, True hadn’t realized she’d been building her retreat to Mel’s exact specifications.

“You’ll be set here for life,” Sam had declared, startling True while she tried to wrap her head around her own self-sabotage, clapping a hand on her sun-warmed shoulder.

“You’ll put your own spin on it,” Mel had added softly before darting away to prevent Astor, just a toddler, from climbing up the deer fence.

True sighed at the memory, then glanced through the smoke again at Vivian, giving in to a moment of speculation before coming back down to earth. She should have named her yurt the Lost Cause.

“Ready?” she said, signaling to the Wus to begin rowing again as the hum of Buckshot Falls increased to a more insistent rumble from around the next bend.

Emmett lowered his Buff to flash a quick smile, but Vivian just lifted her eyebrows at True, as if to ask,Are you?

CHAPTER 9

By 9:00 a.m., Mel worked alongside her Carbon Rural crew in a long line of ground pounders, all local agencies now on hand. A sense of urgency prevailed as Pulaskis bit into the parched dirt with muted thuds, the labored breathing of the crew’s combined efforts the only sound not drowned out by the wildfire. They were as close to the flames as they could get, close enough to feel the heat through their flame-retardant shirts, close enough to stomp out embers that smoldered under their feet.

“At least we’ve got a breeze,” Deklan called out from down the line, tugging his Buff back off his face for some relief.

A chorus of firefighters instantly gave him shit. “Yeah,windis exactly what we need, dumbass,” Ryan lobbed at him, while Lewis coughed out a bark of a laugh.

“Ow, what? At least I can breathe while I kill myself on this chain gang.”

“Put your Buff back on,” Mel called to him. “Your ears are already burning.”

“What can I say, Chief? I’m a delicate flower.”

More muted laughter. Deklan was good for breaking the tension, at least. Mel was glad he still had the energy to be cocky, which was more than she could say for herself. She bent back down to her task, feeling more like thirty-eight going on sixty, her Pulaski seeming to gain weight in her gloved palm with every upswing, the sweat that formedwith alarming volume on her neck and head dripping between her shoulder blades to slide down her back and stick to her shirt on every chop through the dense underbrush.

Up and down the line, every other veteran firefighter bent equally to the task, knowing the stakes, understanding they all raced a clock. A secondary stopwatch ran in a blur of numbers in Mel’s head, too. How long until the smoke in town proved too risky for Annie? How many hours could she breathe poor-quality air before she compromised her health too much for surgery? How many liters of oxygen did Sam have at his disposal in the portable tank at his place? Did Mel have time to break away to call him?

She refocused on the task at hand, the task she could actually tackle, or she risked going crazy with worry. Cutting this containment line was crucial; this “moat” would serve as a first defense between Carbon and the rapidly growing Flatiron Fire. They sure as hell didn’t want it to reach all the way down to the rutted Forest Service roads at the lower mountain: while excellent firebreaks in their own right, roads came with a serious downfall ... of the civilization sort. Mel had already taken inventory: along FS 7312 sat five houses, two small ranches, and a veterinary clinic. And just off FS 7312? The access road to True’s place by the river.

If the Outsider was lost, what would that do to True? She’d done a lot to the place in the years since she’d erected it. Mel had been relieved to see it was no longer a placeholder for what could have been, in some alternate reality. True had made sure of that, adding an art studio off her welding workshop and building a little bunk setup for Astor and Annie, despite the fact that to date, Mel’s younger daughter had been unable to spend a night away from her parents.

At least Sam’s house still sat in safety. The wind whipped west, sparing his ridge, and Mel imagined the air quality had to be better at elevation. He should take the girls there now, she thought—the irony, given that she had wanted him to sell it, not lost on her.

With a determined grunt, she renewed her efforts with her axe. She worked steadily and slowly, ignoring the scream of her muscles, denying herself more than the occasional water break at the hasty rig staged on the road.

Every few minutes, White, accompanied by a supervisor from Outlaw County, swept the line, pointing out needs for improvement. “Let’s double the width at the turn,” he shouted at Janet and Lewis at one point. Then: “You call this containment?”

This criticism was directed at Ryan and Deklan, who’d left a layer of roots and pine scraps under their boots. Denying the blaze the fuel it needed meant scraping this stretch of forest clean, all the way down to mineral soil, at least two feet wide. The fire line had to be barren enough to prevent smoldering, burning, or spotting by embers blowing or rolling across the line. It had to suck the oxygen right out of this beast that breathed down their necks.

She heard Deklan mutter a curse as he tackled the shoddy stretch with renewed vigor.

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