Page 30 of Into the Fire

Wind out of the south-southwest, upvalley, eight to twelve, gusts to eighteen. The RAWS agreed with the forecast, and the forecast matched the wind I’d felt on my face all afternoon. Slope falling away northeast toward the creek. The band of rock and the shelf above it.

I drew the shelf on a scrap of paper and put the crew where we’d been standing. I marked where the crowns lit and the direction the run had moved. I sat looking at an arrow that pointed downhill, into the wind. Nothing explained it.

Dante had seen it first. He hadn’t asked anyone what they thought. He’d told us what it was.

A shadow crossed the window. It was Dante heading away from the bunkhouse toward the wash rack.

I got up, turned off the lights, and left the building.

The wash rack sat behind the gear shed, a concrete pad with a hose bib and a drain, lit by the security light on the shed’s corner. Dante had his line gear laid out on the pad with the hose running. He was working the ash out of his gloves with a stiff brush, sleeves shoved up. There was a piece of meadow grass caught in the laces of his left boot.

He didn’t turn around. He’d have heard my boots on the gravel.

“You missed a spot,” I said.

“I was saving it for you.”

He wrung the gloves out and set them on the rail. The water kept running, spreading in a thin layer across the concrete until it found the drain. He picked up his helmet and started on the chin strap.

“It’s midnight,” I said. “Why are you doing this now?”

“I didn’t want to sleep smelling like Whitmore Creek.”

“The bunkhouse has showers.”

“My gear doesn’t fit in the bunkhouse showers.”

“I believe you,” I said.

He stopped scrubbing the helmet.

“What?”

“Carson Ridge. What you told us afterward. The man you saw. The fire running wrong. I believe you.”

He turned toward me. “You saw Whitmore,” he said.

“That’s not what I’m telling you. I was at Whitmore. I don’t need to believe Whitmore. I watched it. I’m saying I believe you and what you saw at Carson Ridge.”

He laughed. “Guess it’s five years late.”

“I know.”

He turned back to the rack and shut the water off. He stood with his back to me, hands on the edge of the wash rack, and for a few seconds I thought the conversation was over. Then his shoulders lowered, not sagging, landing.

He looked back over his shoulder at my face, and then straightened and turned around.

“I was wrong,” I said.

He was close, maybe a foot away, and neither of us stepped back. I looked at his mouth.

He noticed.

“Don’t kiss me because you feel guilty,” he said.

“That’s not why I want to kiss you.”

“Are you sure?”