Lining out in marching order: Saw teams up front behind him and Paul and Nando, then us scrapers. He turns and starts heading up the hill, and for an old guy he can hike. The jokes and small talk ending quick. Just breathing, creaking pack-straps, banging fuel bottles, whispered cursing. Up through the ash, dusting out guys in back. Hitting the fire-line where it ends at a patch of green junipers.
Bob stops and sends Nando to scout while we pound water. Joseph punches me in the arm. —Ready to dig line, rookie?
An air tanker roars over, low. Old orange and white two-prop plane. A helicopter somewhere. Rotors echoing through canyons.
Nando radios all clear. The sawyers start their chainsaws, letting them warm up, putting in earplugs, wiping sunglasses, tightening leather gloves. CK first, gunning it, making it scream, starting fifteen feet off the fire edge, Lucky Charms swamping. Schmitt and Buckner the next five, Roo and George last, plus anything else in the black needing clearing. When they move enough ahead Yolie tells Joseph to start digging.
He lifts his pulaski and swings, gouging a chunk of oak brush at the root. Moving two steps and taking another. I take a chunk of my own, hitting and moving, hitting and moving, Cat behind me with her chingadera. Both of us have cut line before, on Type II crews, but this, a Type I hotshot crew, is faster, more efficient. Yolie walking with us keeping everyone working and not talking too much. Ace the other squadie and the only black man on the fire, if not New Mexico, walks by on his way a good lookout spot. —Asses and elbows people! That’s all I want to see!
The fire at first just smoldering in juniper needles but the warming sun and increasing winds create dark columns of smoke. Hot wood crackle, flames in gamble oak. Ten square mile mountain bonfire. Helicopter with huge orange bucket hanging from a cable, stray drops of water on the dirt and my shoulders, dropping on a hotspot up ahead by Nando and Bob.
Hard to pace, shoulders aching, pack not fitting well but no time to adjust. Sweat dripping off my nose. Joseph a digging machine, grub, step, grub, step, but the rest of the crew looking how I feel: Faces red, sweatsoaked hair.
The tanker flying over again, belly doors open. Yolie yelling, —Heads up!
A heavy red cloud pours down. I duck, closing my eyes. Cool slimy liquid on my shoulders and neck, rattling on my hardhat. My arms covered in red. The ground red. Joseph punches me in the arm again. —Woo-hoo Singer! First tanker drop! Thanks for the beer!
Yolie yelling again from the back of the line. —Come on! Back to work!
By noon working up to a high rocky ridge, Ace’s lookout spot, and stopping for lunch. Paul wants us to stay put, to see what the fire would do with the hot part of the day rolling around. I eat jerky, offering some to Cat.
Bob calls Ace on the radio, needing a gazelle squad, saw team and a couple scrapers, in shape enough to get out quick if needed, for putting in check line. Ace points at Schmitt and Buckner, telling them to get going, and looks at me. —Singer? You’re a good runner.
I stand and grab my pulaski.
He looks at Cat and jerked his head. —Go ahead marathon runner.
She gets up and we follow the saw team down off the ridge. Bob waiting at the side of a steep open bowl. —Alright, just check line. If the fire burns through here we won’t have to cut line uphill and around it later. Don’t worry, I’m your eyes. Let’s get it done quick.
He and the saw team bump ahead to the thicker brush and Cat and I start to dig, taking more with only two of us, me the first half foot and Cat taking the other. I yell back, —You good with this pace?!
She nods, not looking up. —Hell yeah!
We catch up to Schmidt standing knee-deep in cut piñon branches yelling at Buckner. —Swamp that shit!
Bob standing watching. Paul radioes about winds picking up, that we might want to come back. Smoke blowing up below us, getting darker. I look at Cat and raise my eyebrows. She shrugs.
Bob turning to us. —You heard him. Head on back. I’ll stay down here.
Everyone still kicking back at the ridge. A type II crew had come in, bunched up behind us in our safety zone. The wind stronger, Paul having to cup a hand over his radio. —Bobby, you’d better come up, the winds are getting squirrely!
—Doesn’t seem so bad down here.
—Well, it is up here!
A huge gust came in and trees below the ridge started to torch. The type IIs nervous, looking at us crazy hotshots sitting around joking. Ace looking at them, then me, smiling, slowly pulling out a cigar from his front pocket and lighting it, puffing softly, letting the smoke drift over to them. Joseph gets out a can of chew, taking a huge gob and putting it behind his lower lip. —Don’t know nothing, do they Ace of Spades?
—Hell no, Injun Joe. Fucking deucers.
Joseph punches me in the arm again. Basically every time he talks to me he punches me in the arm. —Used to be you, huh Singer?
I nod and shrug. —Yeah, I guess.
—Not no more though, huh? This ain’t no trail crew. I wasn’t so sure about you with that long hair and shit, but you work hard.
I smiled. —Thanks.
—For a hippie.
—I’m not a hippie. I hate the Grateful Dead. I’m a metalhead.
He punches me again and laughs. —Fucking Metallica and all that shit, huh?
Smoking pouring over us. Heat on our faces. Fire whirls. The type II’s retreated back down the line, saying nothing, but the fire finishes surging, smoke vanishing and flames dying down. Paul tells us to get ready to get back to work.
Cat and I lean on our tools, waiting, looking out on the valley to Taos way down below, talking about how people there probably couldn’t even imagine what we were doing. She takes a drink of water. —It is cool being on a hotshot crew instead of a deucer crew. I like being in the action.
Paul looks down off the ridge for Bob, worried, but Bob’s voice comes over the radios. —Where are you guys? Let’s get moving!
We line out. Ace comes by Cat and me, smiling. –Goddamn my rookies, you’re starting to look like hotshots!
Our check-line held. The saws start back up and we keep cutting and digging for hours. My arms and shoulders and back almost numb, but I don’t complain, no one does, and we tie into a rock cliff by the end of the day.
Then the long hike back out, but with the setting sun turning the valley purple below. I am tired and covered in sweat and dirt, which makes the view that much better.
Back to our buggies, 13-1 and 13-2, SNAKE MOUNTAIN HOTSHOTS on the sides. Sharpening tools and saws, milking another hour of overtime. I doze on the drive back down, even with all the bumps. Back to camp, exhausted, off the buggies and lining up for dinner. We check out other crews, who looks the filthiest, meaning who worked the hardest.
Bird and potatoes for dinner, which we eat quick because of chores to do: Cases of water and Gatorade to get. Saw parts, medical supplies (sunscreen, lipbalm, bandaids). Cat and I fill the five gallon water jugs for each of our buggies.
After dinner I wander around camp. Pickup trucks and green Forest Service engines. Hotshot buggies. Even two horses tied to a trailer. Diesel fumes. Showers on the back of a semi. Clustered single-person pop-up tents, big khaki. Brown canvas caterer tents. Old green army tents for medics, human resources, Incident Command personnel, with light shining out of open flaps and light-green glow-sticks hanging outside entrances. Laughter, shouting, joking. A carnival. The Forest Circus.
I’m hoping to see her, remembering that first day of work she pulled into the parking lot in her old blue Toyota pickup, getting out with her black hair pulled back in a pony tail. Old jeans, black t-shirt, catwoman sunglasses and a barbed wire tattoo around her left bicep. I find her at the information board reading a local newspaper article about the fire. She smiles. —Hey Singer, I was hoping I’d see you.
I summoned the courage to ask if she’d like to take a walk. She hesitates, but then says sure.
