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Taking to the skies with no fear for what looms below.
Wind roars through my ears and batters against my belly, but it’s almost the same as floating in a bathtub. Freeing. All-consuming. Suffocating if done wrong, but almost orgasmic when the conditions are exactly right.
I use air streams to steer my progress, working my body as close to the fire as I can get without singeing the hair from my skin, but when O’Toole shouts in my ear to pull my chuteor else, I consider my ride over, yank on the cord, and send my parachute shooting into the sky to catch on the wind and tug my descent to a snail’s crawl that tempts me to the brink of insanity with boredom.
While I fly, I’m thinking about flying.
But when the chute slows everything down and forces me to be present in my mind, I think of things I’d rather not. Like home. And Nicole. Like the house I miss, and the town that feels like one giant family. I miss my old firehouse, and I especially miss my old crew.
I miss Ainsley Cootes, who will never come back to us, and I miss seeing the Oriane hotel, standing proud like a beacon in the center of town.
Most of all, I miss Juniper’s Bakery. Stopping in every single afternoon to get my serving of sugar and cake and Hannah Sullivan.
I couldn’t honestly say which tastes sweeter on my tongue.
“Fuck.” I close my eyes and loathe the fact the float has caught me out again. Too much thinking time. Too much to think about.
“Pay attention, Feeney!” Ruiz’s bright orange parachute tugs at my peripherals, but I don’t turn my head and look. I don’t meet his eyes. Or his hatred.
Neither of us has forgotten that, if I was on duty the night his girlfriend died, she’d still be here, and I’d be as absent from Nicole and Hannah’s life as I currently am, anyway.
Cootes deserved better, and a stupid mistake on the job days before the Oriane is the reason I’m here and she’s not.
“Bring her in on the western perimeter,” he orders. “Set her down and pack it up. Watch those trees at your eleven o’clock. If you hit ‘em, you break your legs again. Break your legs again, and I’m leaving you out here to die.”
“Yes, sir.” I bite my lips closed and say nothing more.
Ruiz is still a lieutenant, but too soft to command his own team anymore. That’s why O’Toole is here… to do it for him. So Ruiz is rank, but without the pay or authority that comes with it.
He’ssirto me purely because of his title. But everyone knows he’s lost his edge. He’s lost the hunger to drown a fire. He’s just a body with a chainsaw these days.
It’s too bad, really. Because hell if he doesn’t have the skill to be something great.
“Touching down in ten.” I lift my legs and skim across the top of a pine. Then finally, I catch sight of an open area, just big enough not to impale myself on a tree. “Eight,” I announce for the team. “Seven.”
“Stop talking and start doing.” Ruiz glides in under me and risks our chutes tangling. But he’s good at what he does; he commands his parachute as easily as the rest of us use our hands and feet. So he touches down at a run and begins bundling the fabric. “Let’s go, kid!”
I slam to the ground, tucked so my shoulder hits the hard-packed earth with athud, and the momentum of my roll means I shoot back to my feet before I can slow enough to skid to my knees and twist back to pack. “I’m down, Lieutenant. Bundling my chute now.”
“I want you both on the western front,” O’Toole commands from the Casa 212, while six more firefighters float toward the earth. “Jones and Flannery, head straight to the line and stop her from jumping across. Davis and Tweed, head to the east and make sure she doesn’t backtrack. Wind will be in your favor, but don’t think she won’t piss all over you.”
“Hey!” Ruiz charges my way before I have a chance to stand. “This ain’t a fucking picnic in the Rockies, kid. Get up, show up, and prove you’re an asset to the team. Or fuck right off back to town and leave us be.”
I wanna square up. Tell him to swallow my axe. But he’s my superior, and I’d rather not tank my career in my first summer out here. So I finish packing my chute and push up to stand instead.
“I’m ready…” I grit my teeth and stare through the dense smoke the wind pushes around. “Sir.”
“Good. Let’s circle around and send this bitch to sleep.”
* * *
I don’t know if it’s a smoke jumper thing or justthisgroup of jumpers, but we name each fire we attend, and then ride her until she’s dead.
Which meansAstridis now nothing more than a soggy patch about five hundred miles east of the base we fly back to.
We land somewhere around four in the morning, and though I slept for no more than an hour on the plane, I disembark with enough energy to promise I won’t get any more shuteye for the night.
So I head toward the supply room and work on my chute instead. Inspecting. Repairing. I sew any defects, and tag the bag when I’m done to let everyone know it’s safe for the next guy who’ll take it out.
