Smoke Season

CHAPTER 4

From the crew camp, Mel thought she’d try to connect with Sam again to say goodnight to the girls, only to realize it was already far too late. And now she’d been staring at her blank screen for at least thirty seconds. Sam had told her she’d seemed distracted of late, and with Annie’s surgery looming, was it any wonder?

Mel frowned as she made her way back toward camp, where her team loitered in “wait and see” mode until further instructions came down. She noted Lewis’s eager anticipation as he opened a case of MREs to dole out to the crew—that man could eat—and the cocky smile on José’s face as he slid discreetly behind Deklan to photobomb his selfie in front of the shallow blaze. She laughed, despite herself. If she couldn’t be with her kids tonight, she had to admit there was no place she’d rather be than with her team.

“We’re a team, too,” Sam always insisted. “You don’t have to come up with every solution yourself.”

Easy for you to say, she tended to think when ugly resentment rose within her. But she managed to bite this back, because first of all, he was right. It was her choice to take so much on, and Sam contributed what he could from each day’s profits at the Eddy. But second of all? There was a reason Mel didn’t lean on Sam more; at times, his self-doubt could be crushing. If Mel wasn’t careful, she’d get caught under the weight of it herself.

She had tried to keep the faith, she really had. In the early days, when she and Sam had been able to leverage this and loan that to pay for medical expenses, she’d been right there with him, trying to keep their heads above water. But they’d still been paying off Annie’s first surgery, at six months, when the cardiologist ordered the next, and, well, once a ball started rolling, it only gained speed, didn’t it?

Did Sam think it didn’t sting—no, sear—to know they’d made it this far, with only this final surgery for Annie to go, before they were bowled over? Annie’s presurgical protocols included a list of prescription meds longer than Mel’s arm, none of which Blue Cross covered in full. Add a surgical-center down payment higher than with most mortgages in Carbon, and, well, all Mel could say was she’d never felt helpless a day in her life until she’d become the mother of a child with tet.

By the time they both realized they were at an impasse, financially and maritally, even filing bankruptcy, which Sam absolutely refused to do anyway, wouldn’t have helped. He had his reasons, but that didn’t mean Mel had to forgive him for it.

“You didn’t fix this when you could have,” Mel had whispered, gutted the day she left him. He could have tried to sell the house, even in this economic and ecological climate. He could have filed for Chapter 11 .

Sam’s voice had sounded every bit as heart-wrenched as her own. “You never asked me to.”

How could Mel have? She loved him. She’d seen him claw his way up in this community, finally able to hold his head high after who knew how many generations of Bishops had dragged the name through the mud. To Sam, admitting to financial ruin was akin to admitting failure as a father, as a business owner. As a human. Of course Mel had shuffled asking this of him to last-resort status.

She’d barely made it a day before he’d asked her to come home. And she’d wanted to. She’d wanted to from the moment she drove away down Highline. But to Mel, it had been too late. Mel had Annie to think about, her job to do, Astor to parent ... She’d simply been too tired, too bone-weary exhausted, to fight for Sam, too.

But now you have a plan, she reminded herself as she took her ration of dinner and settled on the bumper of her rig, watching the fire continue to lick the hill. Maybe physical space from Sam had been required for her to make her way to it, but the plan would work. It had to. Someone had to ensure Annie got the care she needed, and for all his promises, that someone just wasn’t going to be Sam. It still broke Mel’s heart every damn day to admit it, but this summer, her real partnership lay with True. There was no other way.

God bless her best friend, who at this very minute carried out the weekly task that had become standard operating procedure all summer. Working for John Fallows was easy enough, Mel reminded herself, as long as they didn’t overcomplicate it. Step one: pick up the ammo box of cash at the grow site on the river. Step two: float it down to the end of the line. Step three: hand it off. Step four: get paid their cut, earmarked for Annie’s meds that kept her healthy enough for surgery.

Step five, their circumspect employer had growled, his breath hot on the back of Mel’s neck, ask no questions, make no enemies, and make damned sure nothing goes sideways.

Mel swallowed hard at the memory as she washed down the god-awful freeze-dried food with a swig of water from her bottle. Shaking out her sleep kit from her pack, she fought a sudden trepidation. What exactly might breaking step five lead to? Drug traffickers, even small-time backwoods ones, weren’t exactly the reasonable type. Just ask poor Zack Murphy.

His arrest last spring had given Mel the idea in the first place.

“My Zack knew Fallows was trouble,” Kim had insisted between sobs, confiding in Mel outside the Eddy. “But he was no drug mule. It was why he was about to quit. ‘I won’t work for some wannabe cartel boss,’ he said.”

Mel had just nodded in sympathy. Cartels, drug-trafficking operations ... She’d heard the rumors, too. Black-market distributors and investors were always looking for grow sites to leech from. The ones with property owners who didn’t shy away from the shady side of the law were their favorite partners. Who fit the bill better than Fallows?

Kim looked up, her face still tear-streaked. “The cops, they implied that Zack should have known, should have at least suspected that, going south, over state lines, he was carrying contraband of some kind, given who he worked for, but you know Fallows! He never gets his hands dirty enough to leave his own prints. They interrogated Zack for hours, but he simply didn’t know the answers to their questions. Didn’t want to know.”

“Of course not.”

“It’s why Fallows planted the fentanyl, along with the cash Zack was found with. Insurance. No way was Zack not going down for this.”

Mel had sworn under her breath. She knew Fallows was a first-rate asshole, but fentanyl ?

Kim wiped her eyes. “At least Fallows can’t make any other Carbon kids his scapegoat. Not with the Feds still watching I-5 so closely.”

Mel had laid a hand on Kim’s shoulder in comfort, thinking of poor Zack. Thinking, too, of young Sam, tormented by this man when he was too small to have any agency. Maybe it’s time Fallows picked on someone his own size. The thought sprang into Mel’s mind from nowhere, but once there, it proved impossible to banish. With the troopers aware of the I-5 distribution route, Fallows would need a new way to transport his monthly tithe to his black-market investors, or whomever he was paying off. And Mel had one.

“Are you crazy?” True had blurted when Mel had cornered her for a clandestine meeting the very next day. “You want me to float product for John Fallows down the Outlaw River ?” She’d said each word slowly, like Mel did to Astor when she wanted to be sure Astor had heard her own outlandish suggestions.

“Not product,” Mel had said swiftly. “What he needs moved is money. Payoffs.” And with True’s help, right under the noses of the Feds, without using a single road.

“All you have to do is take the cash, weekly, from Fallows’s place next to your property downriver to Temple Bar,” Mel had said. “Just that one quick stop along the river route. That’s it. And then you hand it off to one of Fallows’s guys at Temple.” She’d spoken in a breathy rush, afraid True would cut her off. “Everyone knows he fishes the bar every Friday with his favorite crew members. Everyone knows about his weekend cabin down there. No one will think a thing of it.”

She wasn’t proud of this idea—it turned her stomach, actually, and she couldn’t allow herself to think about Sam at all as she weighed it in her mind, but Annie’s surgeon’s office had called just the day before to prescribe the latest batch of presurgical meds, the sum of which had exceeded Mel’s monthly car payment. With Mel’s bank account at $97.42 and her savings nonexistent, with Sam heartbroken and both of them close to giving up, what else could she do? She pictured Annie, listless on the couch in Mel’s rented apartment, her heart failing her at age five. Each beat pumping blood throughout her little body was the tick of a clock. Where would Annie be at age six? Seven? Mel knew where ... the doctors told her. In her head, she recited the litany of medications currently monopolizing all their combined income: morphine, beta-blockers, inhalers, oxygen, sodium bicarbonate. And the list went on.

True had narrowed her eyes. “What does Sam say?”

Mel had dropped her gaze. “Sam won’t come within spitting distance of Fallows, and you know it.”

“But you will?” True had sounded incredulous.

Mel had lifted her head. “I’ll do whatever it takes!”

And because they both knew this was true, True had sworn loudly. “Fuck, I hate this.” She’d paced for a moment, wrestling, Mel knew, to justify this against her loyalty to Sam, same as Mel had, coming ultimately to the same conclusion. “Sam can’t know,” she’d whispered.

“No.” On that, True and Mel agreed. She and True were on their own.

Did she have eyes on this blaze from where she camped tonight on the Outlaw? As her team rolled out their own bags and settled into a restless night of semi-sleep around her, Mel decided she had better call True, too, though on the sat phone instead of her cell, and make sure she was still on course.

True lay stretched out on the floor of her oar raft, back braced against her Paco Pad, her long lean legs resting on the front inflated tube that had served as Emmett Wu’s seat all day, after beating his mom to “shotgun” after every dip in the river.

There was a time she’d stare up at the stars in wonder on clear nights like this, after her clients had turned in. This summer she’d mostly just stared blankly, worrying about the damned ammo box and the money inside it. Tonight, however, her gaze remained on the shadowy outline of the Wus’ tent, her mind still abuzz, her body still energized by the electrical storm. Campfire circles lent themselves to deep conversation in short order, and even though they had skipped the ritual tonight, she had learned a lot about Vivian as they’d lounged in their camp chairs after dinner, sipping wine and hot cocoa.

“I bet you’re underestimated all the time,” True had mused after they’d compared professional careers. “When you’re not being hit on by guys,” she’d thrown in as a test of sorts, just to be sure, after Emmett had embarked on a mission to unearth the Hershey’s bars in the cooler. True’s instincts could not always be trusted, and falling for straight women was a cliché she was tired of falling prey to.

But Vivian had shaken her head, gesturing toward Emmett, now carefully building a s’more to roast on the stovetop. “Single mom, remember? It’s the ideal male deterrent. Female, too, for that matter.”

True’s eyes had shot to hers, and Vivian had held her gaze, the confidence in that look saying volumes. Speaking True’s language.

Which left True wrestling with cliché number two: sabotaging potential happiness out of the fear of being burned. Again, as it happened. And so, despite the chance of more rain—Mother Nature willing—she’d left her one-person tent empty tonight, too, needing a bit more space. The storm clouds that had come in hot and heavy this afternoon had all but burned off, leaving the mountain air as thin and brittle as usual for southern Oregon in July, as poor a buffer as always against the heat of the night that absorbed into every pore of her bare arms and legs.

She lay back, finding the Big Dipper and Lyra and making a mental note to show them to Emmett tomorrow night, after their campfire ... assuming the smoke hadn’t caught up with them.

But if that was Lyra, where the hell had Aquila gone? She peered into the darkness, trying to spot the less prominent constellations in the gathering haze. It had been Sam who’d taught True how to find all these stars years ago, during her short stint on a trail-maintenance crew with the Forest Service and National Guard. She and the young Army vet fresh from Operation Enduring Freedom had bonded over a shared love of the outdoors and lack of tolerance for incompetency and general inaptitude among their peers, both of which had been in ample supply that summer. They’d been besties ever since. The only time True and Sam’s friendship had been tested—before now, she amended—had been the spring he’d met Mel.

Show her the ropes, Sam had said, when his new girlfriend had landed on True’s crew back when she’d guided for Paddle, Inc . It will be fun, he’d said. And was it ever. Mel had been twenty to True’s twenty-four, emerging from the bright-yellow Paddle bus with the other college employees as toned and tomboyishly athletic as a model stepping out of the pages of a Title IX catalog.

The moment True had laid eyes on her, she’d been a goner.

She’d fought it, of course, for Sam’s sake. She’d pretended the sight of Mel emerging from her sleeping bag each morning, hair tousled, smile radiant, didn’t warm every cell of True’s body. She’d tried to convince herself there was nothing to adore about Mel’s earnestness to learn and her natural leadership style that drew people to her instead of setting them against her.

But throughout that one beautiful season they’d guided together, True had taken Mel under her wing. Sam had asked her to, hadn’t he? She’d started by showing her how to leverage a thousand-pound raft out of literal metric tons of rapidly flowing water with only the muscle of a woman’s forearms. “Forget diamonds,” True had told Mel, high-fiving her after a successful training exercise. “A Rapid Ditch Bag is a girl’s true best friend.”

She’d taught her the best line to navigate for every square inch of this river, had taught her how to put fretful clients at ease, had taught her the art of baking her famous blueberry breakfast scones in a Dutch oven over the fire (the trick was to reserve the bacon grease from the loaded baked potatoes the night before). And whenever they’d had a layover day in Boise or Bend for Paddle, Inc., restocks, she liked to think she’d taught Mel how to have a little fun, too.

“Ladies’ choice,” True had always said, smiling, half enjoying Mel’s uncertain expression, half not, when they planned their evenings out. She knew her reputation preceded her, suspected the other rafting guides had warned Mel about her, jokingly, of course. Careful, Mel, she’s a woman-eater. The ones who grew up in Carbon had fun ribbing Sam, too, by proxy. Bishop must feel pretty damned secure, letting you out on the town with Truitt.

“‘ Letting ’ me? Please,” Mel answered, and True had known right then and there: for better or worse, whether it about killed her or not, Mel would join Sam’s ranks, becoming True’s best friend for life.

During their nights under the stars, they’d confided their hopes for the future like middle schoolers at a slumber party, whispering to one another from their Paco Pads: True’s dream of having her own rafting charter, Mel’s envisioned life with Sam. She would have a river-rock fireplace one day to hang their future children’s Christmas stockings on the mantel. An herb garden in a shady patch of the yard. True had closed her eyes and pictured it with her: home, hearth, family. Did she want these things, too? The way Mel wove it for her, she thought she just might.

True was a realist, however, so whenever she suffered from predictable surges of self-pity, she soothed herself with the only salve she knew: other women. Other women in bars; other women at whitewater-certification clinics or art shows, where True displayed the mosaic and metal sculptures she created from river glass and old mining scrap metal she found on the shores of the Outlaw; other women in her bed. Pretty women, beautiful women even, as toned and fit and sun-kissed from the river as she was. But never women she was serious about. What if another one tripped her up? True had seen Mel coming a mile away and had still fallen under her spell. She wasn’t eager to make the same mistake twice.

She gave up identifying the stars with a sigh, watching the faint orange smudge of fire on Flatiron slowly gain size instead. Usually, the rocking of the boat underneath her soothed her to sleep, but right now she felt tense. She thought of the metal ammo box of cash once again tucked into the boat, and then of Mel again, somewhere out in the wilderness by Flatiron, undoubtedly at the scene of this blaze.

They weren’t going to have a problem, were they? Fallows expected his handoff every Friday like clockwork, no exceptions. True would like to think acts of God might be exempt, but she doubted it. The Fallowses—John and his son, Chris—were shady motherfuckers, and she should know. One got to know one’s neighbors, after all, even if one didn’t want to. Chris had shit for brains, but his father was another matter.

She calculated the distance between where she lounged in her raft on the Outlaw and the fire, holding her thumb out in front of her face, measuring it against the forest of trees blanketing the peak ... At least five air miles from town. Which meant at least fifteen from where she and the Wus now camped on the shore of the river. She toyed with the dial of her sat phone, wondering belatedly if she should call Mel, then tried to laugh at her own paranoia. Like she’d told Emmett, the local lookout attendant had undoubtedly spotted this fire early. Mel’s crew was almost certainly on scene already, and it would be put out without much fanfare, same as all the ones that would follow in the coming weeks. If she wanted to worry about something, it should be about the poor air quality an early smoke season would produce. Two weeks from surgery D-Day, Annie couldn’t risk respiratory compromise.

Undoubtedly, the Bishop kids were with Sam right now. How was Annie managing in the rooms above the Eddy? True pictured Annie’s little smile—a spitting image of her mother’s—and bit her lip. She adored Astor for her gumption and, yes, even her sassiness of late. Mel wouldn’t admit it, but this, too, came from her maternal genes.

But Annie captured True’s heart in a different way. A way that made her wonder sometimes: What would having a child of her own, of being part of a family—not just as a beloved aunt-godmother but an actual, bona fide member—feel like?

Her mind was still snagged in this particular eddy when the sat phone buzzed to life in her hands, and True nearly dropped it in her sudden jonesing for an update. She chastised herself under her breath as she depressed the talk button. Usually, True was known for the ice water that ran through her veins.

“You got True.”

“True, it’s me.”

“Mel.” The single syllable escaped on a sigh as relief flooded her. She savored the feeling, closing her eyes tightly now that reassurance was on the other end of the line. Yeah, she was going soft. “You looking at Flatiron?”

“Yeah, we’re staged near midmountain. So you can see the fire from where you are?”

“Saw it strike.” True gave her the coordinates. “Everyone okay in town? The girls are good?”

Mel paused, which automatically made True’s stomach tighten with ... not alarm, not quite that. Just trepidation. “I got called out before I could see the girls and Sam,” she admitted, “but this spot fire’s still a good ways from town.”

“Let’s just hope it stays that way.” And what about the smoke? “Maybe they should move up to Sam’s house on Highline.” The views across the Cascades were enviable from the castle he still seemed determined to erect from the wreckage of his childhood home, even after he and Mel had called it quits. Which meant the air quality was better, too.

Mel answered in the negative, but most of her words were cut out, thanks to static. Par for the course, when using the sat phone. All True got was “town” and “for now.”

“If you’re sure,” True said slowly. Sam was a great guy, but he had a hell of a blind spot when it came to that house. The result of a childhood that, to hear him tell it, had basically been feral. “But is it just a spot fire, Mel?” She studied the blaze again from her vantage point on the boat; did it already seem bigger than just a few minutes before?

“You know as well as I do that’s what it is until it isn’t,” Mel said. She sounded testy. No, tired, True amended, as she heard her exhale. “Carbon Rural did a preliminary tonight, and trust me, True, this thing’s just a baby. We’ll start cutting a containment line in the morning.”

“They’re gonna let it burn?”

Mel paused again, or maybe they were experiencing another delay in their connection. “Yeah,” she said eventually, “so listen, True. It’s bound to get smoky out there, on the river. Wind’s going west. What if your clients panic and want to cut the trip short? The bigger operations probably will.”

True frowned. “They’ll be off the river by then, anyway.” She didn’t need the reminder that she and the Wus would soon be alone out here, or that, with the authorities on John Fallows like stink on shit—his words, ironically—it was crucial that she stick to her itinerary. Nothing new about that. What was new? She felt a surge of unexpected loyalty rise up within her, and not for Mel for a change. “This trip is really important to the Wus,” she heard herself say. “And they don’t scare easily.” After all, standing one’s ground—hell, just daring to exist—as a transgender kid and that trans kid’s parent and advocate was no walk in the park.

But Mel wasn’t privy to any of this. “What day are you supposed to hit Quartz?” she asked.

Quartz Canyon, the highlight of the trip, and by far the most technical Class IV rapids True tackled, still sat a good distance west, two days’ float from where they camped tonight. Quartz required a scouting trip to survey the rapids and give guests a preview of the whitewater to come. Boats tended to bottleneck there ... a river traffic jam of sorts, and even though True’s river colleagues should be through by now, it was imperative she hit the canyon at the right time to ensure they stayed on schedule.

“We’re not supposed to run Quartz until Thursday,” she said slowly. She had intended to take the Wus only as far as the Nugget, an old historical landmark halfway along their course, before camping again for the night. “So that we end at Temple Bar on Friday, per usual.” She always disembarked at Temple on Fridays. Not a day earlier. Not a day later.

No exceptions. It robbed her of half the joy of being on the river, letting the current guide her, but True could mourn that later, when Annie was post-surgery. Mel needed the cash from only one more river run to refill the prescriptions that ensured Annie’s eligibility to go under the knife, which meant this nightmare summer project was just about over.

“If your clients spook,” Mel pressed, “you may not have until Thursday.”

They won’t spook, True wanted to shout, but Mel’s paranoia had ballooned in her own chest, expanding there, holding her words captive. God, she hated this shit.

Mel carried right on, making contingency plans. “Worst-case scenario? You talk them into stopping over at Wonderland. Get relief from the smoke, stage a full day. Then you can still end on Friday, on schedule.” Or at least that was what True thought Mel said ... She had begun to cut out again, her familiar voice crackling with static.

But Wonderland Lodge sat below Quartz Canyon, and it wasn’t open to unexpected smoke refugees. The longtime owners of the isolated and rustic smattering of cabins and aging outbuildings weren’t exactly the warm and fuzzy type. Henry and Sue Martin regarded rafting guides as the unwashed and unwanted, True perhaps the worst among them, for no more reason than perhaps her “unconventional” hairstyle (that would be Sue) and “bossy ways” (True preferred “leadership style,” thank you).

“That’s a crapshoot at best,” she reminded Mel now. “Anyway, we can’t rush the canyon. My clients aren’t ready.” There was that protective tug for the Wus again, but this time, True had logic on her side. They would need at least another day on the water before Vivian and Emmett felt comfortable enough to tackle such a technically difficult slot canyon. And it was crucial they were ready, because if anything went wrong, if they failed to navigate between the narrow rocks and True missed the deadline with Fallows ... She swallowed hard, the idea of being caught between a rock and a hard place taking on secondary meaning.

“Like I said, you might not have a choice,” Mel pressed, her voice still tight with stress despite her assurances that they were dealing with a “baby” fire. “Be proactive. Push to Wonderland. Stage twenty-four hours.”

True frowned into the receiver. It never sat well with her when Mel gave orders. Save that for the station, she usually told her. Tonight, she remained quiet, prompting Mel to fill the silence. “I’m sorry to ask this of you,” she said. “I’m sorry to ask any of it.”

True shuffled through several retorts in her mind, but bit back all of them. Yes, Mel had the ability to press an unfair advantage, but what mother wouldn’t do anything to protect her kid? Besides, True was a big girl, and she’d made her own choices.

“I know,” she assured her, pinching her eyes shut tightly to ward off another swell of nerves. “I just hate this, Mel. It wasn’t supposed to be like this. This complicated.”

“What’s that?” Mel said. “You’re cutting out.”

I hate feeling edgy all the time. This is supposed to be my safe space, where my life is simplified to just the flow of the current, without distributaries channeling me toward unrequited feelings I cannot entertain in families I cannot have. “Nothing,” True answered. “I’ll keep them on the river. Whatever it takes.”

She swallowed the hard lump of misgiving that arose in her throat, one hand resting on her stomach as if to calm the butterflies that danced there practically all the time these days. She went to switch off the sat phone—it was pointless prolonging a call with a bad connection—then hesitated. “But Mel? Try Sam one more time, will you? Just ... I’ll feel better, knowing the kids are okay.”

A long pause, while the connection seemed to cut and paste on itself in repeated spurts of the same gravelly white noise. “Yep,” Mel’s voice sounded eventually. A delay, this time upward of ten seconds. “Feel better,” she added, which let True know she’d misheard her. She said something more, her voice warbling in and out like a country-western singer on an old radio program.

“I can’t ... I can’t hear you,” True answered, frustration rising, causing her voice to rise pathetically. “Bye, Mel,” she managed. “Stay safe.”

Please.