Page 4 of Protect

“You’re gonna head back up the other side and start a line there,” Cal, my captain, calls to us over the noise of the ship we’re riding in.

We’re about to be dropped deeper up the mountains, a higher point than we’ve been working the last few days and I’m already exhausted. We’ve been at it sixty-five hours of the last eighty on the back end of almost a month away from home. The start to this season has been rough. It was 4 a.m. when our spike camp came alive for those of us who were sleeping, and the bosses told us we were moving up the mountain. Cal and Xander—my captain and sup—are smart as hell. I swear to Christ; Sup has a sixth sense with the weather. We say he can command the wind to work in his favor half the time, but this bitch of a blaze is mighty. It’s burned up over nine thousand acres already.

“They’re fighting me, want us to head northwest,” Sup calls to Cal, talking about the federal powers that be. It’s easy to guess the best course of action when you aren't the one on the ground. We aren’t the only ones here either. There are two other hotshot crews working with us from out of state. Bitching about territory and protocol is always a thing. Sometimes it’s easy to work with other crews, sometimes it’s not.

Sup fiddles with the chin strap on his helmet as the part of the forest we’re about to be dumped into comes into view. I can almost feel the heat from here.

“They want us up here for a reason. This blaze is acting a lot like the one in Oregon,” Cal says, and we all nod, remembering.

I watch Sup as he nods and analyzes below.

“I just know it’s gonna crown that ridge and head toward town,” he says, looking out the window assessing the enemy.

“We’ll burn out this side of the mountain so when she comes over that ridge like a bat outta hell, there’s no fuel for her to hang on to,” Sup says.

We nod, the other part of our crew is in the chopper behind us, and they’ll have to be filled in when we land.

“You good and ready?” Cal asks. He’s asking me specifically because he expects me to keep the guys with me on task. I’m our lead sawyer today.

At twenty-eight, I don’t have an official title yet, but that’s my fault entirely. I’ve prolonged my promotion as long as I can. I’ve had my Firefighter Type 1 qualification to become a squad boss since the red card committee approved my task book in April. Becoming qualified isn’t easy, so I should be proud, but I just haven’t taken the plunge yet. Everybody knows it’s a terrible middle management position, but it’s a stepping stone.

Trouble is, the idea of being responsible for anyone but myself still torments me.

I lean my head back against the seat. The intense smell of smoke hits me as the ground gets closer. I reach my arms out in front of me, interlocking my fingers in a good stretch, willing my Nomex shirt to loosen. It feels like it’s sticking to me already. The temperature will be 104 degrees today on the ground, and it’s already hot at sunrise.

The choppers hit the earth and our boots are immediately on the ground, crunching the still roots and debris of the forest floor under them. Sometimes, the silence in the green—the area the fire hasn’t touched yet—is deafening. Almost peaceful. The weight of knowing it’s our job to keep it this way and live tosee the other side rests on every single one of us. I look around and assess our surroundings. The sounds of wildlife are almost nonexistent, anything living was smart enough to get the hell out of here a long time ago.

“Let’s get on it, boys, we’ll start the line a hundred yards south. Anchor in the creek bed,” Sup calls to us.

“Fucking rights,”and “let’s fucking do this,”mixed with standard chatter ensues as we all begin our hike to location. The mood is always high energy but laser focused.

Twenty minutes later we’re spread out and settling in to get our fireline going. I start pulling out my Pulsaki ax and my STIHL saw, so I can begin cutting brush. The embroidered patches that are sewn into all our packs catch my eye.

In memory – Jacob “Big T” Taylor.I reach back to pat it and nod reassuringly.

“We’ve got this one, brother,” I mutter to Jacob, as if he can hear me while I start to work.

Some days it’s less difficult to go up against the unpredictable flames of a wildfire than it is to battle the five years of blame and regret in my gut.

I fire up my STIHL and the adrenaline I chase fills my veins with the rumbling sound. I look to my left, facing the beast we’re here to take on and smile wide.

Do your best, motherfucker.

“The blaze just…wasn’t laying down. There was wide open grassland andtall dense junipers as far as we could see. Jacob went up to the ridge to look out. We were talking to him as hewent on the walkie…” Xander, my sup swipes a tear from his face as all seventeen of us sit in the hospital waiting room with Jack and Mae Taylor.

Every one of us except Jacob. What’s left of him is down the hall. A reminder that I failed. I couldn’t protect him, and I couldn’t save him.

Grief, disbelief, shame. It all weighs inside me, fighting a losing battle. Twisting and turning in a never-ending nauseating cycle. I’ve thrown up twice. Once when we pulled Jacob’s body out of the ash pit he fell into, and once when they got him loaded up in the medevac.

Mae is a brick wall sitting beside her husband. She’s either on the verge of a breakdown or in total disbelief that her son is being worked on and near death down the hall. His twin sister, Violette, is encircled in the arms of Jacob’s girlfriend, Laney, as they cry.

I feel my chest tighten. It takes everything in me not to go to Violette and take her in my arms, but I know this isn’t the time or place for that, nor would she let me. Hell, I can barely even get her to talk to me.

None of this is right. He was just supposed to be looking out, then a brutal wind none of us saw coming carried a tsunami of flames toward him. In the blink of an eye, it covered the entire ridge Jacob had gone up to. We assume he was running back down the ridge, to us in the black, when he fell into the pit. Medics said they thought it was a badger or coyote den. Jacob must not have seen its telltale signs, he just went through it, and it took us too long to get to him.

“You owe me a beer for this,” he had said, looking over his shoulder at me as he started his climb up the side of the ridge. I had laughed and called him a cheap fucker.

I owed him a beer. BecauseIwas supposed to be the one to go to lookout. But I wasn’t quite done chipping a burning birch tree apart, so when he offered, I let him go.

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