Page 7 of Smoke Season

So here he was, still at the rail of the deck, a.k.a. the helm of his sinking ship. At least he had gotten Fallows the hell out of his bar. He exhaled long and hard, the way he’d been taught by the meditation app he’d downloaded to help calm his nerves. It had come in handy just tonight, as he played one of the sleep stories for the girls. Astor had had a hard time settling down; she was prone to nightmares when Mel was out in the field. Hell, so was Sam. He stared back at the fire, trying to read it, wondering what Mel saw in it from where she stood right now.

Thinking of her in the field, his mind hopped from Mel to True with a guilty pang. It was probably too late to try her on her sat phone by now. Did she have a view of this fire tonight, too? She sure wouldn’t welcome it, this early in the summer. The rafting season got shorter and shorter in Oregon every year, it seemed, as the watershed got drier and the rivers got lower.

It was a hell of a way to make a living.

For all of them. Without the rafters and anglers, Sam’s bar would be empty all August, Carbon a ghost town. Even his Highline house, sitting as close as it did to the urban-wildland line, had depreciated in value in today’s ecological climate.

And then what he feared the most in his darkest moments would come true, if it wasn’t already: he’d turn out to be no better a provider than his father. According to the Army psychologist he’d been required to see before each deployment, a childhood of neglect with regular, healthy servings of verbal abuse would do that to a person.

He knew better than to let his past dictate his future, but it was easier said than done. The ending of his marriage still felt more abstract than real. Mel had initiated it but hadn’t yet followed through on the formalities of a legal divorce. On good days, this gave Sam hope. It had to mean something, didn’t it, that Mel hadn’t signed on the dotted line? But then on bad days:

“It’s not like we need the extra paperwork,” Mel would quip as they sifted through medical forms. Their finances were complicated enough as it was, she said.

Should Sam have taken Fallows’s money, had it been offered those years ago? It was probably a moot point: Fallows, like Mark, never owned up to responsibility, at least not without the threat of a bat to his knees.

He envisioned his half-finished house perched on the ridge, still fighting the tight feeling in his throat that always arose with this kind of self-talk. Memory of his father’s mockery echoing through the tinny payphone at Pendleton seeped through the cracks.What? You think if you build it, they will come ...back?His laugh had crackled from the connection, splintering as it hit Sam’s ears.

It hurt because it held a ring of truth. Wasn’t that what they said? No, that wasn’t it. It wasfunnybecause it was true. Sam bit back his own bitter laugh. Somewhere in the back of his mind, did he really hold out hope that if he finally made the house on Highline into the sanctuary he envisioned, he and his young family could break generations of toxic patterns?

Sure. And a fairy godmother would wave a wand and Annie’s heart would magically heal, too.

How pathetic.

Thank goodness for True, who’d practically adopted the Bishop girls from birth.

At least there’s one man of the house around for your kids.

Another of Mark Bishop’s observations. He’d told his father to shut the fuck up, though he might as well have saved his breath; offensive statements were one of Mark’s favorite ways to get under Sam’s skin. He pushed the memory aside now, determined not to let his old man hijack his brain for one more second.

True was the girls’ godmother. Astor looked up to her and Annie adored her, always pressing in close to True when she came over for their weekly dinners together, perching herself on True’s knee like she wassome sort of river-goddess Santa Claus. Which she was, Sam conceded, in her faded board shorts and worn sandals, always bearing gifts ... beaded things she’d made the girls at camp in the evenings, whitewashed river rocks shaped like hearts and stars, welded sculptures of wolves and river otters made from scrap metal in her shop on that acreage she had by the river.

Up on Flatiron, the fire gave a little spurt of a flare-up as it consumed one of the tallest ponderosa pines near the ridgeline, and Sam sat up straighter, swallowing his beer in a quick gulp.Shit.That edginess was back. Should he worry, like,seriouslyworry, about Mel? And what about Annie? Nothing, not even smoke, could be allowed to compromise her health right now. He went inside the Eddy to retrieve the portable radio he kept on the bar, turning the dial to 93.2, the station that alerted him to every snow day, every delayed start at Carbon Elementary, and every traffic incident. If he needed to know anything about this fire that Mel couldn’t tell him, this local channel would deliver the news.

Every summer brings forest fires,he reminded himself again as he returned to the deck rail to study the pulsing line of heat in the distance. This one was close, sure, but it was tiny, and Mel’s whole team was out there somewhere, on the job. He finished off his PBR in one last, long swallow and turned to go inside, leaving the orange glow of the spot fire at his back.

CHAPTER 4

From the crew camp, Mel thought she’d try to connect with Sam again to say goodnight to the girls, only to realize it was already far too late. And now she’d been staring at her blank screen for at least thirty seconds. Sam had told her she’d seemed distracted of late, and with Annie’s surgery looming, was it any wonder?

Mel frowned as she made her way back toward camp, where her team loitered in “wait and see” mode until further instructions came down. She noted Lewis’s eager anticipation as he opened a case of MREs to dole out to the crew—that man could eat—and the cocky smile on José’s face as he slid discreetly behind Deklan to photobomb his selfie in front of the shallow blaze. She laughed, despite herself. If she couldn’t be with her kids tonight, she had to admit there was no place she’d rather be than with her team.

“We’re a team, too,” Sam always insisted. “You don’t have to come up with every solution yourself.”

Easy for you to say,she tended to think when ugly resentment rose within her. But she managed to bite this back, because first of all, he was right. It was her choice to take so much on, and Sam contributed what he could from each day’s profits at the Eddy. But second of all? There was a reason Mel didn’t lean on Sam more; at times, his self-doubt could be crushing. If Mel wasn’t careful, she’d get caught under the weight of it herself.

She had tried to keep the faith, she really had. In the early days, when she and Sam had been able to leverage this and loan that to pay for medical expenses, she’d been right there with him, trying to keep their heads above water. But they’d still been paying off Annie’s first surgery, at six months, when the cardiologist ordered the next, and, well, once a ball started rolling, it only gained speed, didn’t it?

Did Sam think it didn’t sting—no, sear—to know they’d made it this far, with only this final surgery for Annie to go, before they were bowled over? Annie’s presurgical protocols included a list of prescription meds longer than Mel’s arm, none of which Blue Cross covered in full. Add a surgical-center down payment higher than with most mortgages in Carbon, and, well, all Mel could say was she’d never felt helpless a day in her life until she’d become the mother of a child with tet.

By the time they both realized they were at an impasse, financially and maritally, even filing bankruptcy, which Sam absolutely refused to do anyway, wouldn’t have helped. He had his reasons, but that didn’t mean Mel had to forgive him for it.

“You didn’t fix this when you could have,” Mel had whispered, gutted the day she left him. He could have tried to sell the house, even in this economic and ecological climate. He could have filed for Chapter 11.

Sam’s voice had sounded every bit as heart-wrenched as her own. “You never asked me to.”

How could Mel have? She loved him. She’d seen him claw his way up in this community, finally able to hold his head high after who knew how many generations of Bishops had dragged the name through the mud. To Sam, admitting to financial ruin was akin to admitting failure as a father, as a business owner. As a human. OfcourseMel had shuffled asking this of him to last-resort status.

She’d barely made it a day before he’d asked her to come home. And she’d wanted to. She’d wanted to from the moment she drove away down Highline. But to Mel, it had been too late. Mel had Annieto think about, her job to do, Astor to parent ... She’d simply been too tired, too bone-weary exhausted, to fight for Sam, too.

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