Chasing Fire
Page 41

“Oh, sorry. Ah, I’ll have a beer. A Rolling Rock.”
“I’ll get those right out to you. Anything else? An appetizer?”
“You know what I’d love? Some of those sweet potato skins. They’re amazing,” she told Lucas. “You have to share some with me.”
“Sure. Okay. Great.”
“I’ll be right back with your drinks.”
“I so appreciate you taking the time to come in,” Ella began. “It gives me an excuse to sit in a pretty bar, have a summer drink and some sinful food.”
“It’s a nice place.”
“I like coming here, when I have an excuse. I’ve come to feel at home in Missoula in a fairly short time. I love the town, the countryside, my work. It’s hard to ask for more.”
“You’re not from here. From Montana.” He knew that. Hadn’t he known that?
“Born in Virginia, transplanted to Pennsylvania when I went to college, where I met my ex-husband.”
“That’s a ways from Montana.”
“I got closer as time went by. We moved to Denver when the kids were ten and twelve, when my husband—ex—got a difficult-to-refuse job offer. We were there about a dozen years before we moved to Washington State, another job offer. My son moved here, got married, started his family, and my girl settled in California, so after the divorce I wanted fresh. Since I like the mountains, I decided to try here. I get fresh, the mountains, and my son and his family, with my daughter close enough by air I can see her several times a year.”
He couldn’t imagine the picking up and going, going then picking it all up again. Though his work had taken him all over the West, he’d lived in Missoula all his life.
“That’s a lot of country, a lot of moving around.”
“Yes, and I’m happy to be done with it. You’re a native?”
“That’s right. Born and bred in Missoula. I’ve been east a few times. We get hired off season to work controlled burns, or insect eradication.”
“Exterminating bugs?”
He grinned. “Bugs that live up in tall trees,” he explained, jerking a thumb at the ceiling. “We—smoke jumpers, I mean—are trained to climb. But most of my life’s been spent west of St. Louis.”
The waitress served their drinks, and Ella lifted hers. “Here’s to roots—maintaining them and setting them down.”
“Washington State, that’s pretty country. I jumped some fires there. Colorado, too.”
“A lot of country.” Ella smiled at him. “You’ve seen the most pristine, and the most devastated. Alaska, too, right? I read you fought wildfires there.”
“Sure.”
She leaned forward. “Is it fantastic? I’ve always wanted to see it, to visit there.”
For a minute, he lost the rhythm of small talk in her eyes. “Ah... I’ve only seen it in the summer, and it’s fantastic. The green, the white, the water, the miles and miles of open. All that water’s a hazard for jumping fire, but they don’t have the trees like we do here, so it’s a trade-off.”
“Which is more hazardous? Water or trees?”
“Land in the water with all your gear, you’re going to go down, maybe not get up again. Land in the trees, land wrong, maybe you just get hung up, maybe you break your neck. The best thing to do is not land in either.”
“Have you?”
“Yeah. I hit my share of both. The worst part’s knowing you’re going to, and trying to correct enough so you’ll walk away from it. Any jump you walk away from is a good jump.”
She sat back. “I knew it. I knew you’d be perfect for what I’d like to do.”
“Ah—”
“I know they give tours of the base, and groups can see the operation, ask some questions. But I had this idea, specifically for students. Something more intimate, more in-depth. Hearing firsthand, from the source, what it takes, what you do, what you’ve done. Personal experiences of the work, the life, the risks, the rewards.”
“You want me to talk to kids?”
“Yes. I want you to talk to them. I want you to teach them. Hear me out,” she added when he just stared at her. “A lot of our students come from privilege, from parents who can afford to send them to a top-rated private school like ours. Everyone knows about the Zulies. The base is right here. But I’ll guarantee few, if any, unless they have a connection, understand what it really means to be what you are, do what you do.”
“I’m not a jumper anymore.”
“Lucas.” The soft smile teased out the dimples. “You’ll always be one. In any case, you gave it half of your life. You’ve seen the changes in the process, the equipment. You’ve fought wilderness fires all over the West. You’ve seen the beauty and the horror. You’ve felt it.”
She laid a fisted hand on her heart. “Some of these kids, the ones I’d especially like to reach with this, have attitudes. The hard work, the dirty work, that’s for somebody else—somebody who doesn’t have the money or brains to go to college, launch a lucrative career. The wilderness? What’s the big deal? Let somebody else worry about it.”
She’d tripped something in him the minute she’d said he’d always be a jumper. The minute he saw she understood that.
“I don’t know how me talking to them’s going to change that.”
“I think listening to you, being able to ask you questions, having you take them through, from training to fire, will open some of those young minds.”
“And that’s what your work is. Even though you don’t teach anymore, you’ll always be a teacher.”
“Yes. We understand that about each other.” She watched him as she sipped her drink. “I intend to talk to the operations officer at base. I’d like to, with parental permission, have a group, or groups, go through training. A shortened version obviously. Maybe over a weekend after the fire season.”
“You want to put them through the wringer,” he said with a glimmer of a smile.
“I want to show them, teach them, bring it home to them that the men and women who dedicate themselves to protecting our wilderness put themselves through the wringer. I have ideas about photographs and videos, and... I have ideas,” she said with a laugh. “And we’d have all summer to put the project together.”