Page 28 of Stuck With the Smokejumper

“Widen. There's a natural break past the rocks we can tie into.”

Neither of us discusses it further. Six years of fighting fires together does that. We split the section without discussing who takes which half. We just fall into it the way we always have and start cutting line.

Cedar Ridge, the district's other seasonal crew, is working a section farther along, people I don't know but who Ivy does based on the wave she gave someone in a yellow shirt an hour ago. A couple engines sit where the road allows, crews doing what they can from there. It's not a huge operation. But it's coordinated, everyone slotted into a piece of the puzzle. Everyone trusting the pieces they can't see.

Nolan's working near me for a stretch, moving slower than the rest of us, thinking hard about every step, the way someone does the first time a training scenario turns into the real thing.

“You're gripping that too tight,” I tell him, nodding at his Pulaski. “Let it do the work. You'll burn out your forearms by noon otherwise.”

He adjusts his grip. Tries it. Keeps moving. I go back to my section, and that's most of how today goes. Small corrections. Nobody making a production out of anyone else's inexperience.

I catch sight of Ivy working a stretch of line with Tessa, both of them scraping down to soil with the kind of skill that comes from doing this every summer for years. Ivy's not trying to keep pace with anyone. She's not trying to prove she belongs out here. She just moves through the work like it's simply one more workday, except it's Saturday, and the crew was supposed to have the day off.

Somewhere around the midmorning water break, Tessa mentions Ivy was going to spend the day on her thesis.

“This is a lot more relaxing,” Ivy says, deadpan, gesturing at the line.

“So much more relaxing,” Tessa says, and drinks half her water bottle in one go.

The morning stretches into afternoon. When I lift my arm, it's heavier than it was three hours ago. Sweat's soaked through everything. Dirt's ground into every crease of skin the gloves don't cover. My water bottle's nearly empty, and I don't remember drinking most of it. Nobody talks much anymore. Talking costs energy nobody has to spare.

By late afternoon, the line's mostly tied together. We can all feel it. We’re near the end. Then the wind arrives.

I feel it before I really register it. A shift in the treetops above us, needles moving that weren't moving five minutes ago. The smoke changes direction. The fire responds almost immediately, flaring in a pocket of heavier fuel it hadn't bothered with all morning.

Reid looks at me. I look at him.

“There it is,” he says.

Russ's voice comes over the radio, calm but faster than before. Move. Finish the section. The wind's here early.

Nobody panics. But we don’t need to be told twice, either.

The last stretch of line goes fast, adrenaline covering for muscles that would otherwise refuse. I catch sight of Ivy working just ahead, sleeves pushed up, moving with everything she's got left. She's tired. It shows in the set of her shoulders, the way she's stopped talking. But she doesn't stop working.

The wind pushes harder. The fire pushes with it, testing the edges we've built. But section by section, the last gaps close. Cedar Ridge ties in from one direction. We tie in from ours.

“That's it,” Russ says over the radio. “Line's complete. Holding.”

Nobody cheers. We're too tired, and the job isn't actually over. But you can see it move through the crew. Shoulders dropping, someone exhaling like they'd forgotten to all day.

Ivy wipes her forehead with the back of a filthy glove and only makes things worse, leaving a streak of dirt across her hairline she has no idea is there.

Nolan looks over, hopeful. “So we're done?”

“Sure,” Dani says. “Soon as we mop up.”

Mop-up takes another couple hours. Walking the line, checking for heat, digging out anything still smoldering, making sure what we built this morning holds through the night. It's less urgent than the fire line work but no less tiring, the kind of task that eats the last reserves everyone has left. By the time another crew arrives to handle patrol duty and we're cleared to head back, I don't think anyone in the truck says more than a few words the whole drive.

The crew house smells like smoke after we walk in, all of us carrying it in our hair and clothes and skin. Boots come off in a pile by the door. Someone starts the shower rotation without any of the usual negotiating. Food happens in the loosest possible sense of the word. Whatever's fastest. Leftover pizza, cereal, a box of crackers someone finds and passes around without comment.

I shower, change, and come downstairs, legs heavy, forearms sore, everything in me finally registering how long the day was.

The common room fills up slowly and, later, empties out even slower. Nolan talks more than anyone else, processing the day out loud in the way people do the first time something like this happens to them.

“I've never felt fire change like that,” he says. “One second it's just there and then it's not.”

Tessa's half asleep in an armchair, eyes closed, still technically part of the conversation, until she isn't. She peels herself up a few minutes later without a word, gives a small wave that might be goodnight, and heads for the stairs.