Page 142 of The Fire Line

“You’re thinking it too,” Priya said.

“Yeah.”

“Then ask.”

They found Harris beside the barn with a map spread across his truck hood. Evan spoke into his radio while tracing a route along the south pasture. Della stood nearby packing bottled water into a cooler with the furious concentration of somebody personally offended by natural disaster.

“Harris.”

He looked up immediately.

Jay gestured toward the camera hanging at Eli’s side. “Do you want us filming this?”

Harris looked at the camera, then past it toward the ranch.

The question could not be separated from everything between them. That was why Jay had asked in front of Priya and Eli rather than finding Harris alone. Whatever answer Harris gave needed to belong to the ranch and the film, not to the man he had slept beside that morning.

“Nobody gets a camera shoved in their face,” Jay said. “We stay out of the way. Anyone asks us to stop, we stop. If you want none of this filmed, none of it gets filmed.”

Harris watched cattle being pushed into a temporary pen, then looked toward the lodge, the waiting trailers, and the smoke covering more of the western sky.

“Film it.”

“You sure?”

“Yup.”

“Everything?”

Harris met his eyes. “Trust your instincts.”

The answer caught Jay for half a second. Harris had spent weeks questioning what the camera noticed, what it omitted, and what Jay might turn his family into once the footage left Montana. Now, with his ranch preparing to evacuate, he was giving that judgment to Jay.

Not unlimited access. Trust.

“I will.”

Jay turned toward the crew. “Long lens whenever possible. Nobody interrupts work for a shot, and nobody gets followed after they ask us to stop. Priya, main yard and evacuation prep. Eli, livestock and trailers. I’ll move between them.”

“And if one of you starts thinking cinematography matters more than leaving,” Harris said, “I take the camera away.”

“Understood.”

For the next two hours, the ranch divided itself into images Jay knew he would remember without footage. Eli filmed cattle moving through smoke-flattened light, their hooves throwing dust that hung above the pasture. Priya documented hands checking trailer hitches, portable tanks filling, and hoses being laid around the barn and lodge. Neither asked anyone to repeat an action or move toward better light.

Jay followed Harris and Evan. The brothers worked over maps, radio reports, and rapidly changing priorities, half their information passing through gestures: Evan pointing toward a pasture, Harris shaking his head once, both turning toward a trailer before either said where it should go.

Jay filmed the results as much as the decisions—the empty guest cabins with their doors standing open, the vehicles gone from the lane, gates propped wide for cattle and trailers. A sprinkler swept across the lodge lawn, each glittering arc briefly beautiful beneath the ruined sky before vanishing into dry grass.

Della crossed the frame carrying another cooler.

Jay lowered the camera. “How many of those have you made?”

“Four.”

“Four coolers?”

“Four so far.”