Summer of Fire - Linda Jacobs [26]
The sight of their adversary reminded her of the night she’d made her decision to fight the summer battles of the West.
It was at Frank’s wake in a popular Irish bar, and she’d been pretty well into the Guinness Stout. Raucous male laughter surrounded her as the acne-scarred young man tending bar turned on the television. Male swimmers backstroked, competing with honed bodies for spots in the October Seoul Olympics. Clare paid attention, for she had swum competitively in college and kept up with the new generation of men and women in the sport.
The bartender changed channels, flipping past local news and the MacNeil-Lehrer Report. Behind Lehrer’s shoulder, a forest fire raged.
“Hold it there,” Clare ordered.
Lehrer read his copy. “Wildfires have burned over fifty thousand acres in five western states. In this driest summer in park history, several fires are burning out of control in Yellowstone under the Park Service’s let burn policy. This allows fires started by lightning to run unless they threaten life or private property.”
“I heard they’re gonna be bringing in help from all over the country.” Javier Fuentes set his brew on the table littered with dead soldiers.
The TV showed a line of firefighters walking up a forest road. Dressed in olive trousers and yellow shirts, they wore hard hats with bandannas tied around their foreheads as sweatbands. Clare recognized their heavy tools as Pulaskis, a combination axe and hoe, heavier than her crash axe at the station. Smoke swirled around them.
She drew a deep breath. Fire was sweeping across the land of her ancestors. She felt as though she could smell the smoky tang of pine forest and feel the comfortable heft of the fire tool. The decision that her job with HFD could go on hold hit her with the swiftness of a blow. Devon could stay with her father for a while.
“I’m going out there,” she told Javier.
“Count me in,” he had agreed. The miraculous thing was that after they had slept on it, neither they nor the other guys who’d sworn aboard had changed their minds. After her mandatory consultation with the department psychologist, the station chief had agreed to let her go. She and the Houston crew had worked the line together only a few days before she was called to be a trainer.
Clare snapped out of her reverie when the truck driver cut the engine. The only sounds were that of a crow’s caw and the brisk crackling of the North Fork. Then the firefighters moved, piling off the tailgate, their boots making hollow sounds on the metal. Voices rose and they passed tools.
Clare felt the odd person out, having come to observe so she could direct others later.
The hotshots’ assignment for the day was to cut a three-mile line along the southeast flank of the North Fork, while aerial bombardment with retardant liquid was used on the most active front. Before they got to the place where they were to work, Clare felt the first trickle of sweat between her shoulder blades.
To build a fire line, the sawyers started, revving up their chainsaws and felling trees over a fifteen-foot wide corridor. Afterward, the hotshots with Pulaskis cleared a two-foot wide swath, careful to hack out every vestige of roots that could keep a fire smouldering.
Clare had thought she was in shape, but the crew had been digging line since mid-June. As the morning wore on, she found that she was only able do about fifty feet an hour, while the others managed to clear at least a full chain, or sixty-six feet.
Toward noon, she fell farther behind. Her back and arms ached from bending and wielding the heavy Pulaski. She stopped frequently for water breaks, figuring that if she got dehydrated, she would be worse than useless. When lunch was finally called, she was torn between whether to sit and risk stiffening or to stand and eat. The sight of the crew lolling on the ground decided her.
With a care for her aching back, she sat and took off her hard hat. Dampening her sweat soaked bandanna in fresh water