Page 106 of Protect

“Hmmm?”

“Thanks,” he says, shutting the door. I almost believe him.

I walk up the steps, waving to Hollie as they drive off. Once I’m inside the safety of my house I close the door behind me, and leaning on it, I blow out a breath.

Troy wants to take Hollie two days in a row? Why?

Troy isn’t the jealous type, but he is the type that lives for the way things look. My guess is the idea of me having a boyfriendwho knows he’s barely shown up, would bother him more than the act of not showing up.

One of two reasons come to mind regarding his sudden interest in spending time with Hollie. One: he’s trying to dig a little further into my relationship with Rowan, or two: hell has frozen over. Since it’s Troy I’m dealing with—I’m betting on one.

When a forest fire is at its worst the sound is unmistakable. It’s almost like a rushing river. You never get it out of your head when you’re in the field. Not when you’re working, not when you’re sleeping. You simply live with it, knowing it’s the kind of river that can swallow you whole. We knew this fire was going to be bad, but it has been a hundred times worse than we expected.

For ten days we haven’t showered—at best we’ve been hosed off when we needed relief from the heat—we’ve barely had time to eat, barely slept, barely had time to talk. For days, we’ve dug, we’ve chopped, we’ve sawed, we’ve climbed this damn mountain foot by foot, digging down to mineral soil while our arms ached, then we kept fucking climbing. Thing is, I would be lying if I said I didn’t love it. There’s no greater high than going up against nature and redirecting its carnage.

Even with all our work, more than two thousand properties on the west side are under an evacuation order, and more thana thousand more are under an evacuation alert. This mammoth has grown to almost twelve thousand acres and the only thing between it and the homes and businesses of our town and the neighboring ones, is us. Crews from Utah and Oregon have worked alongside us tirelessly, and finally, the air cooled and the wind died down for the first time in over a week. We’re seeing flames turn to black, and the lines we’ve dug in are doing their jobs, and I’m finally sitting to eat and take a proper break for the first time in ten days.

“Holdin’ that thing up in the air isn’t going to make it work any better.” Sup winks as I hold my cell to the sky hoping for service. I don’t know why I’m still trying. I haven’t been able to get any since I got here, I don’t know why I’d think I would today. We’re too deep in the woods. We’re sitting in the black eating beef jerky and trail mix. Lunch of fucking champions.

“Fuck this is depressing.” I chuckle, taking another bite. Sup grins.

“The secret ingredient is misery.”

“Pretty much.”

“You’ll get dinner. Probably stir fry again, but it’s hot food,” Sup says, scrubbing his dirty face with his hand.

“Hey, at least this caterer is better than Pickler Mountain.” Caleb chuckles, ripping open an Uncrustable peanut butter and jelly sandwich. The thing looks like it got run over by a truck.

“What happened on Pickler Mountain?” Roycie asks, taking a seat. He wipes his face with the back of his sleeve, and it turns his black soot and ash covered face to a lighter, smudgy gray.

“We all got food poisoning,” I tell him. “We were all excited because they said they had a caterer for us, it wasn’t a very big fire so that’s abnormal. Someone from town wanted to be kind.”

“Plain boiled chicken with a bit of teriyaki. Fucking traumatizing.” Caleb says.

“Fuckkk,” Roycie says, opening a bag of Skittles.

“We all saw it again later that day…in various ways,” Sup adds. Our entire small group starts to laugh.

“Double fuck,” Roycie says. “Then I’m not complaining about our sixth night of stir fry then.”

“Right?” I say, dumping my trail mix into my mouth.

The group quiets for a minute, everyone in their own exhausted thoughts.

“With any luck, we’ll be heading out tomorrow,” Sup says. “Y’all outdid yourselves. That first night was?—"

“A hundred fuckin’ years of fightin’ fires in one night?” Roycie asks, and the rest of us laugh.

“Yeah,” Sup says. “But you killed it.”

I swallow my last bite of shit jerky and lay down in the black, looking up at where the sky should be. We did it. We kept the county safe. Of course, I still can’t see it, all I see is smoke but, fuck I know it’s there somewhere. I hold my phone up trying to get a signal again. Nada.

If I could just talk to her, hear her voice. I’d give just about anything right now.

I look to my left where the smoke is the thickest.I own the rest of you, bitch,I tell the flames. Not long now. I’m ready to go home.

The sound of thick mud under my boots is comforting as we make our way down Knox Mountain, through the last of the foothills into the clearing where the site is a frenzy of packing and loading. This is the first green I’ve seen in days, and afterlast night’s rain it’s soaked. The sun is out and the skyis actually blue. My eyes burn after almost two weeks in the thick smoke.

---