Page 67 of Stuck With the Smokejumper

I've got the same two bags I arrived with, but packing them feels harder than it should for a guy who's done this a hundred times.

Gear goes in one. Clothes in the other. Things that spread out over eight weeks into drawers and shelves and the space under my bed, consolidating back down into what they were before I got here. Two bags. That's all this ever technically was.

It doesn't feel like that now.

Reid's in the next room doing the same thing, faster than me, already on the phone with someone from our old crew getting details about what's burning. He sounds good. Sharp. Ready. I recognize that voice because it used to be mine every single time an assignment came through, no complications, just forward motion toward the next fire.

I still feel some of that. I'm a smokejumper. Fire activity's up. My crew needs bodies, and there's a part of me that's been coiled all summer waiting for this call. That part isn't gone. It's just not the only part anymore.

The rest of the crew's getting ready for their normal Friday out in the kitchen, boots and coffee and the usual morning noise. It's strange standing here packing instead of joining them. First time all summer I'm not part of that morning chaos.

Ivy finds me before she leaves, catching me in the hallway with her pack already on her shoulder. “See you tonight,” she says, like it's any other morning, and kisses me quick before I can make it into something bigger than it needs to be right now.

“Tonight,” I agree.

Then she's gone, out the door with the rest of them. I stand here longer than necessary, listening to the trucks pull away on the gravel.

Reid and I spend the day handling the practical end of leaving. Making sure nothing that belongs to the district ends up mixed into our bags by accident. Turning in Blackpine-specific gear. Confirming travel arrangements with our unit. Russ finds us mid-afternoon, then says the kind of thing Russ says instead of a speech.

“You two did good work here. Appreciate you filling in.”

“Appreciate you having us,” I say.

“You're welcome back anytime.” He means it, plainly, the way he means most things. I don't have a quick response ready.

The house is quiet most of the day with everyone out working. I notice it more than I thought I would. This place was never technically mine. Temporary assignment, same as every other one I've had. I've packed up out of dozens of places just like this without a second thought.

This one's different. I understand why even more fully in late afternoon, when I hear trucks pulling back in, and the whole house comes back to life at once.

Boots. Voices. Somebody complaining about the day's heat. Mabel appearing from wherever she disappears to during daylight hours. And Ivy. Seeing her walk through the door does the same thing it's done every evening for weeks. I stop thinking about anything else.

Except tonight it's our last one.

Tessa's got a pot of spaghetti going by the time everyone's cleaned up, big enough to feed the whole crew, garlic bread knots lined up on a baking sheet that Nolan is supervising with far more seriousness than the task requires.

“It's bread, Nolan,” Tessa says, looking at whatever he's produced. “Not a rescue knot.”

“Structural integrity matters.”

“We're supposed to be able to eat it.”

“It'll taste fine.”

“It looks like something you'd use to secure a tarp.”

Nolan defends his technique the whole way to the table, and nobody's convinced, but the bread does, in fact, taste fine, structural concerns aside.

Dinner's loud, easy, everyone crowded around the table the way we always are, not enough chairs, someone standing, someone stealing food off someone else's plate. Trevor tells a story about something that happened on the trail when Reid and I were with Elk Ridge. Cassidy and Dani argue about whose turn it is to do the shopping run for next week. Reid steals the last garlic knot directly off Nolan's plate.

I look around the table at some point and realize how familiar I am with all of this now. I know Trevor talks with his hands when he's excited. I know Tessa's the one who'll actually clean up without anyone asking. I know Cassidy's quiet until she's not, and when she's not, she's usually right. I know who Mabel's going to bother for scraps, currently working her way toward Dani with real determination.

Eight weeks ago these were mostly strangers. Tonight they're not.

Toward the end of dinner, Nolan brings up the Bigfoot caller, some joke about needing it for tomorrow's trail assessment.

“Keep it,” I tell him.

He looks up, actually delighted. “Seriously?”