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“Surrender,” he called.
“I did,” she replied, not caring if anyone heard their exchange.
“I’ll be back,” he said, holding his bags up.
Their three-day workweek would begin with a bang when Jake reached his locker and the tones sounded.
“Fudge,” Leon grumbled. “We just got back.”
“I brought you food from Ma,” Jake said. “Tony’s bringing it in.”
They slid down the pole and jumped into their turnout gear as the dispatcher’s voice called out information. It was a two-alarm fire so far, a brush fire along a mountain road that would ensure they would be out for the entire day. When the third and fourth alarms went off, all hands working, Geri learned the first lesson in female firefighting; sometimes you had to ask a guy for assistance when it was time to pee.
She’d been working for over six hours when the urge came over her. She kept swinging the pickax over her head when she couldn’t ignore it any longer. The crew she was with was familiar men, but the only one she felt comfortable asking was Big Mike, who was acting as crew chief.
“Sir,” she called out, running to him in the smoke and dust, “I need to go behind that tree. Could you watch out for me?”
Later, Big Mike said her request did take him by surprise. At first, he didn’t get it because he’d never been asked to do that before. But then he figured it out. Men had to go and they just went. He was ill-prepared.
“I’ll watch out,” he said, nodding at her. With his back to the tree, he couldn’t hear her, thankfully. It didn’t take her long.
“Thank you, sir,” she said.
She didn’t fuss with her clothes, didn’t look any different than she had when she went behind the tree.
They worked through the night, volunteers coming with water. Charlie appeared, coming up to her. “Go take a break.” She did so without arguing, tiredness in every bone in her body, the only fear was that she wouldn’t be able to start going again.
The sun eked up over the mountaintop. She hadn’t seen Jake all night, and although she worried a little, she knew someone would have mentioned injuries among their crew, and there were none. As exhausted as she was, it was impossible to relax. The line of firefighters resting against a natural rock wall was visible from a helicopter that appeared overhead, and the next evening her mother would call her, crying. “I saw you on television!”
Twenty-four hours later, the fire was contained. Another battalion would stay to mop up, and Station #34 was relieved of duty. Riding in the back of a ladder truck, Geri was so tired she was beyond speech. No one talked much. The dilemma for her was where to go now—Charlie was probably in his office where her belongings were stashed.
A little obsessiveness crept in and she worried about that until the truck backed into the garage. She was one of the first down. Taking off her turnout gear, she hung it on a rack outside to air out, the smell of smoke almost putrid after permeating the fabric. It wasn’t the smoke of a fire burning in a fireplace.
This smell was rank and raw, a fire scorching earth, burning everything in its path, including the flesh of any animal not able to escape. Discovering a mangled carcass in the debris the fire left behind would haunt her for days and weeks to come, and only staying busy and the knowledge that it probably didn’t suffer for long helped her to move beyond it.
That was the day before Thanksgiving. Everyone managed to get a nap in, including Geri when Charlie insisted she rest along with the others. The new shift arriving that morning could clean up the rigs and equipment.
Later, after a few hours of sleep, she dressed in workout clothes and went to the gym. The families of the crew and members of the community, including several popular restaurants, had brought in food in support of the fire they’d fought, so instead of cooking, she’d work out some of the tension she had in her arms and legs from hours of physical labor.
“Do you need a spotter?”
She was sitting on the bench, putting her gloves on, preparing to do bicep curls when Big Mike walked in, ready to work out.
“I will,” she said, eyes wide. “Are you offering?”
“Don’t look so surprised,” he cackled. “I still lift. It’s just the aerobics that I can’t do because of my knees.”
“After yesterday, I can barely walk. My back’s killing me.”
“That digging is hard on your back. How are your legs?”
“Not bad. I’m going to do squats and deadlifts today.”
“I can’t squat because of my knees,” he explained.
“Have you considered getting them replaced?”
“Oh no, I’m too afraid,” he said confidentially. “Now don’t repeat that.”
