Page 80 of The Goat Next Door

The line goes quiet for a second. “Brooks? What’s wrong? Is it Sophie?”

“Sophie’s fine. She’s at the school extension,” I say. “But the forestry division just called out a subterranean fire up on the north ridge spur. The peat’s smoldering. I have to go up with the tools and map the perimeter before the wind shifts tonight, and I don’t know when I’m getting back down.”

“I’ll get her,” Ember says immediately. “Where do I go?”

“The primary wing at the elementary school. Tell the monitor at the desk that you’re on the authorization card,” I say, my throat feeling dry. “Just… keep her away from the ridge lane if the smoke starts drifting down.”

“Brooks, hey,” she says. “I’ve got her. She’s going to eat three danishes and help me count the goats. Just go do your job.”

“Thank you, city girl,” I mutter, and kill the call before I can say something stupid like be careful.

⋆ ✦ ⋆

By seven in the evening, the sun has turned into a long, bloody streak over the western ridge, the light cutting through the pine needles in sharp, red spikes that look like embers themselves.

The utility truck is bouncing over the old log sleepers of the abandoned railway track, the suspension groaning as the oil pan clears the high rocks in the center of the lane. I’ve got the window down, my left arm resting on the metal sill, my eyes fixed on the gray line of the horizon where the hemlocks turn into black shadows against the sky.

It’s completely quiet up here. No birds, no wind yet, just the steady thrum of the engine and the click of the thermal probe sliding around in the metal box behind my seat.

I pull the truck into a small clearing where the old timber loading platform used to sit. The wood has rotted down into a gray mound of pulp covered in wild blackberry brambles, but the ground is clear enough to park.

I step out into the dirt, my boots sinking into two inches of dry pine needles.

Thirty yards into the tree line, a thick column of pale, blue-gray smoke is rising straight up from the roots of an old, dead white pine.

It doesn’t look like much—just a lazy curl of vapor like someone dropped a cigarette into the moss—but when I walk closer, the bottom of my boots can feel the vibration of the heat through the leather soles.

The ground under the pine is slightly sunken, the moss turned into a fine, gray ash that falls away into black powder when I poke it with the tip of my shovel.

I kneel down, keeping my weight on a solid hemlock root, and slide the long stainless steel needle of the thermal probe down into the gray crust. The digital display on the handle blinks twice, the red numbers rolling up past one hundred, then two hundred, before settling at two hundred and forty degrees.

Four feet down, I think, sighing heavily as I sketch the numbers onto my log sheet. It’s already into the deep peat.

The fire is eating the floor from the inside out. It’s a slow, invisible bastard that doesn’t show its face until the wind gives it enough oxygen to burst through the surface. If that cold front from the lake hits this ridge at midnight, the whole slope will be a chimney by two in the morning.

I spend two hours moving through the brush, mapping the line of the heat.

My shirt is soaked through with sweat by the time I finish the secondary trench, my shoulders aching from digging a two-foot firebreak through the tangled roots of the wild mustard.

I stop to take a drink from my canteen, leaning my back against the rusted fender of the utility truck, my eyes fixed on the small, flickering yellow lights of the town down in the valley floor.

From up here, Suncrest Hollow looks like a toy village—a handful of white dots scattered along the gray ribbon of the river.

I can see the green roof of the municipal building, the silver cylinder of the water tower, and right at the edge of the bend, the single, warm yellow light of the farmhouse shining through the dark cedar lane.

She’s down there right now. With Sophie. Probably teaching her some ridiculous city song, or letting her eat too much sugar while they watch the goats.

The thought gives my chest a strange, tight squeeze that has nothing to do with the physical strain of the shovel work. It’s a heavy, protective ache that feels entirely too loud for the quiet of the mountain.

A sharp, sudden gust of wind hits my face, carrying the cold, wet scent of the lake from the northern gap.

The leaves of the poplars above me let out a loud, papery rattle, turning their pale undersides to the sky as the pressure drops. The lazy blue smoke from the dead pine jerks to the side, flattening out against the ground before it begins to boil, the gray vapor turning darker, thicker, and smelling instantly of fresh carbon.

The wind has shifted. It’s forty minutes ahead of the forecast.

“Damn it,” I mutter, throwing the canteen into the cab and grabbing the radio mic from the dashboard bracket. “Station One, this is Chief Lawson. Davis, do you copy?”

Nothing comes back but the loud buzz of the dead spot.