Page 36 of Smoke Season

She refused the Sprite, and True handed it up to Don. “I hope you folks will come back,” he said toward the back seat. “I’m not sure our little slice of paradise showed you her best side this week.”

True appreciated the attempt to win her back some business but knew Don shouldn’t bother.

“Can we, Mom?” Emmett asked, slurping at his can of soda as it foamed out of the opening. “Come back?”

“We’ll see,” Vivian said quietly, mom-speak forNot a chance, but we’re not talking about this right now, and Emmett slumped in his seat.

True smiled at him. It was either that or give in to the lump in her throat again. “If she says no, I just might have to put you to work as my rafting employee,” she threatened. “You’re a natural river rafter, bud.”

“Really?” Emmett asked, lowering his soda. “You think so?”

True nodded, and even Vivian’s expression softened at the look of cautious pride on his face. His mother had been right: bringing Emmett out into the wilderness had been exactly what he’d needed to help him find his stride, and True was honored to have played a role in it, no matter how things had ended up.

Don glanced back again and gave Emmett a thumbs-up. He was driving uncharacteristically cautiously tonight, wiping his brow repeatedly as the flatbed trailer pulling their raft bounced behind them along the ruts of the road, and though it would further lengthen what was already destined to feel like an interminable drive, True was grateful. With one hand, he played with the dial of the radio, tuning it to a fire update, and, resting her head back against the seat, she listened in.

“This is bullshit,” Don said as the DJ reported a 12 percent containment rate. “What were we doing watching it grow? We shoulda started fighting it sooner, you know?”

“Why didn’t they?” Emmett asked, leaning forward again across the middle row.

“The forests need to burn every once in a while, Emmett,” True told him. “It’s good for the undergrowth to get cleared away, so we don’t have bigger fires, with lots more fuel, later.”

“But thisisa big fire.”

Yes, they all are now, aren’t they?

Don grunted again in agreement. “Damn straight. It’sthebig one. You watch.”

Vivian shot True another look, the warmth from earlier gone again in an instant. True frowned at Don, hoping he’d get the hint and stop with the alarming talk. But she knew what he meant: over 60 percent of their national forest lands in the Outlaw Basin were overgrown to the point of irresponsibility. They were due for a big one, no doubt about it, their wildlands a perfect tinderbox primed for what forest-management professionals called a megafire. True had sat in a conference room at the Outlaw Motor Inn just this past spring, surrounded by fellow outdoor industry leaders and business owners, listening to a panel of experts, Sam included, explain to them how their livelihoods could so easily disappear in a puff of smoke.

It had been a packed house, even the climate-change deniers among them drawn to attend the forum thanks to the veryundeniable decline of their bottom line as the tourist season shortened by a few more weeks each year. Her favorite fishing guide had sat next to her, sharing his notes, and she’d spent the first fifteen-minute break trying to avoid an ex-girlfriend who now worked for the Pacific Crest Trail Association. Tension and emotions had run high, even without adding personal drama to the mix. One big fire—thebig one, as Don called it—so early in the summer season could be the final nail in the coffin for most of them. And the solution, outlined by the BLM rep who’d come down from Portland, had caused the room to erupt in uproar: setting 60 percent of their forest ablaze in a series of controlled burns, intended to get the undergrowth back to a manageable level, would produce ten times the amount of smoke from an average fire, spread out over the entirety of a summer. No one could afford to close shop for an entire May–September season.

“What about selective logging?” someone had yelled over the din. “We need to bring it back!”

“You wanna do it, Bart?” someone had shot back.

A colleague of Sam’s from the Forest Service had raised his hands, standing up from his place at the panel table to interject. “Yeah, clearing the undergrowth by hand would work,” he shouted, and the roomhad quieted by degrees. “But two problems.” He’d ticked them off on his fingers. “First, it’s not profitable. No logging company is coming in here to clear your kindling. Big trees sell, and big trees are not what we want gone, guys. Our spruce, our Jeffrey pine, our ponderosa? Even our madrone and oaks? They’re not falling in a forest fire. It’s the sage, the scrub oak, the saplings that are choking out the forest floor, and guess what, geniuses? Simpson Lumber, out of Roseburg? Even the biggies, Columbia Lumber? Puget? They’re not buying scrub-oak logs.”

A muttering had broken out across the crowd as this truth sank in, but the rep wasn’t done. “And reason number two,” he continued. “You know how many boots on the ground we’d need for a forest cleanup like that? Shit, I can’t even get enough hires for trail cutting and maintenance, and that’s a national database of good-paying, government jobs.”

“We need to reimplement the CCC!” someone yelled.

“We need government aid, FEMA or something,” someone else suggested.

True remembered how Sam had scoffed, sitting up there on the panel, and she’d known what he was thinking, but in the end, the meeting had gone like all the others True had attended over the past few years, with no solutions and only increased frustration. They’d all filed out of the conference room in the same way: with their heads down and their fingers crossed that this, at least, wouldn’t be the year. That they’d all get at least one more during which to make profit, save up, increase their insurance, and pray.

So much for prayers, and so much for crossed fingers. “You can say you were here when it happened,” True told Emmett now with a sigh, turning in her seat to smile tiredly at the kid. “Just think,” she added, trying desperately not to think about Annie, or Mel, or her Outsider yurt sitting like the proverbial duck on the urban-wildland interface. “You saw the big one ignite.”

He nodded solemnly while Don huffed again, and True swiveled back in her seat to stare out the windshield at the black, smoky night,their headlights reaching only a matter of yards to illuminate the thick forest on either side of them.

Despite trying to convince Astor otherwise, Mel was starting to think she didn’t have a handle on anything at all. The atmosphere in the bar had grown heavier by the minute, and not just because so many warm, sweaty bodies pressed in close. It was nearly 8:00 p.m., but no one was leaving, including her. She itched to take the drive up Highline to check on Annie before getting a few precious hours of shut-eye, but Chris Fallows still loitered by the bar, pinning her in place. Why was he here? He sat with several of his father’s seasonal workers, presumably to get the latest updates like everyone else, but what if he was really serving as his father’s eyes and ears? What if his presence had less to do with the Flatiron Fire and more to do with her and True?

Mel swallowed tightly, wishing she could glean whatever intel Chris hid behind his poker face. Had Fallows decided to get his own hands dirty for a change, risking the river road? For that matter, was True still on the Outlaw, as planned? She’d tried to call her, to no avail. Which had made her wonder: Was she off course? The reception, even via satellite, was usually fine by Wonderland Lodge, but notoriously bad at Temple Bar.

Mel couldn’t decide which location would be better: current radio chatter informed her that the Flatiron Fire had been contained at the Forest Service road at the base of its namesake peak, but it could be only a matter of time before wind pushed the blaze further to the southwest.

Leaving the fire with nowhere to go but the river valley.

The young media liaison for Outlaw County, Keith Bonaparte, must have gotten the same update on his cell phone, because he rose from his seat, where he’d been nursing a beer now that the press conference was over, gesturing to Sam to quiet the crowd.

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