Smoke Season

CHAPTER 18

To say it was a tense ride back to Carbon would be an understatement. Only Emmett seemed oblivious to the tension in the air between Vivian and True; several times during the winding journey through the mountains, their driver, Don, a retired trucker from Carbon, caught True’s gaze in the rearview mirror and lifted his eyebrows as if to ask, What the fuck?

True just shrugged at him, hoping he’d assume the out-of-town mom was just stressed about the fire and smoke. It would certainly be warranted. She leaned back against the seat of the shuttle van, trying to keep her eyes open in the dark. Usually, once the sun went down in the mountains, the summer heat disappeared with it, but tonight it was still unusually hot, the interior of the van stuffy and unforgiving.

She dug into one of the coolers at her feet and offered the two cans she grabbed at random to Emmett and Vivian: a Dr Pepper and a Sprite, respectively. Vivian had informed True of a strict no-high-fructose-corn-syrup-or-caffeine rule for Emmett at the start of their trip, but tonight she handed over the Dr Pepper with a quiet sigh. The sound of Emmett popping the top sounded unnaturally loud in the van.

She refused the Sprite, and True handed it up to Don. “I hope you folks will come back,” he said toward the back seat. “I’m not sure our little slice of paradise showed you her best side this week.”

True appreciated the attempt to win her back some business but knew Don shouldn’t bother.

“Can we, Mom?” Emmett asked, slurping at his can of soda as it foamed out of the opening. “Come back?”

“We’ll see,” Vivian said quietly, mom-speak for Not a chance, but we’re not talking about this right now , and Emmett slumped in his seat.

True smiled at him. It was either that or give in to the lump in her throat again. “If she says no, I just might have to put you to work as my rafting employee,” she threatened. “You’re a natural river rafter, bud.”

“Really?” Emmett asked, lowering his soda. “You think so?”

True nodded, and even Vivian’s expression softened at the look of cautious pride on his face. His mother had been right: bringing Emmett out into the wilderness had been exactly what he’d needed to help him find his stride, and True was honored to have played a role in it, no matter how things had ended up.

Don glanced back again and gave Emmett a thumbs-up. He was driving uncharacteristically cautiously tonight, wiping his brow repeatedly as the flatbed trailer pulling their raft bounced behind them along the ruts of the road, and though it would further lengthen what was already destined to feel like an interminable drive, True was grateful. With one hand, he played with the dial of the radio, tuning it to a fire update, and, resting her head back against the seat, she listened in.

“This is bullshit,” Don said as the DJ reported a 12 percent containment rate. “What were we doing watching it grow? We shoulda started fighting it sooner, you know?”

“Why didn’t they?” Emmett asked, leaning forward again across the middle row.

“The forests need to burn every once in a while, Emmett,” True told him. “It’s good for the undergrowth to get cleared away, so we don’t have bigger fires, with lots more fuel, later.”

“But this is a big fire.”

Yes, they all are now, aren’t they?

Don grunted again in agreement. “Damn straight. It’s the big one. You watch.”

Vivian shot True another look, the warmth from earlier gone again in an instant. True frowned at Don, hoping he’d get the hint and stop with the alarming talk. But she knew what he meant: over 60 percent of their national forest lands in the Outlaw Basin were overgrown to the point of irresponsibility. They were due for a big one, no doubt about it, their wildlands a perfect tinderbox primed for what forest-management professionals called a megafire. True had sat in a conference room at the Outlaw Motor Inn just this past spring, surrounded by fellow outdoor industry leaders and business owners, listening to a panel of experts, Sam included, explain to them how their livelihoods could so easily disappear in a puff of smoke.

It had been a packed house, even the climate-change deniers among them drawn to attend the forum thanks to the very un deniable decline of their bottom line as the tourist season shortened by a few more weeks each year. Her favorite fishing guide had sat next to her, sharing his notes, and she’d spent the first fifteen-minute break trying to avoid an ex-girlfriend who now worked for the Pacific Crest Trail Association. Tension and emotions had run high, even without adding personal drama to the mix. One big fire— the big one, as Don called it—so early in the summer season could be the final nail in the coffin for most of them. And the solution, outlined by the BLM rep who’d come down from Portland, had caused the room to erupt in uproar: setting 60 percent of their forest ablaze in a series of controlled burns, intended to get the undergrowth back to a manageable level, would produce ten times the amount of smoke from an average fire, spread out over the entirety of a summer. No one could afford to close shop for an entire May–September season.

“What about selective logging?” someone had yelled over the din. “We need to bring it back!”

“You wanna do it, Bart?” someone had shot back.

A colleague of Sam’s from the Forest Service had raised his hands, standing up from his place at the panel table to interject. “Yeah, clearing the undergrowth by hand would work,” he shouted, and the room had quieted by degrees. “But two problems.” He’d ticked them off on his fingers. “First, it’s not profitable. No logging company is coming in here to clear your kindling. Big trees sell, and big trees are not what we want gone, guys. Our spruce, our Jeffrey pine, our ponderosa? Even our madrone and oaks? They’re not falling in a forest fire. It’s the sage, the scrub oak, the saplings that are choking out the forest floor, and guess what, geniuses? Simpson Lumber, out of Roseburg? Even the biggies, Columbia Lumber? Puget? They’re not buying scrub-oak logs.”

A muttering had broken out across the crowd as this truth sank in, but the rep wasn’t done. “And reason number two,” he continued. “You know how many boots on the ground we’d need for a forest cleanup like that? Shit, I can’t even get enough hires for trail cutting and maintenance, and that’s a national database of good-paying, government jobs.”

“We need to reimplement the CCC!” someone yelled.

“We need government aid, FEMA or something,” someone else suggested.

True remembered how Sam had scoffed, sitting up there on the panel, and she’d known what he was thinking, but in the end, the meeting had gone like all the others True had attended over the past few years, with no solutions and only increased frustration. They’d all filed out of the conference room in the same way: with their heads down and their fingers crossed that this, at least, wouldn’t be the year. That they’d all get at least one more during which to make profit, save up, increase their insurance, and pray.

So much for prayers, and so much for crossed fingers. “You can say you were here when it happened,” True told Emmett now with a sigh, turning in her seat to smile tiredly at the kid. “Just think,” she added, trying desperately not to think about Annie, or Mel, or her Outsider yurt sitting like the proverbial duck on the urban-wildland interface. “You saw the big one ignite.”

He nodded solemnly while Don huffed again, and True swiveled back in her seat to stare out the windshield at the black, smoky night, their headlights reaching only a matter of yards to illuminate the thick forest on either side of them.

Despite trying to convince Astor otherwise, Mel was starting to think she didn’t have a handle on anything at all. The atmosphere in the bar had grown heavier by the minute, and not just because so many warm, sweaty bodies pressed in close. It was nearly 8:00 p.m., but no one was leaving, including her. She itched to take the drive up Highline to check on Annie before getting a few precious hours of shut-eye, but Chris Fallows still loitered by the bar, pinning her in place. Why was he here? He sat with several of his father’s seasonal workers, presumably to get the latest updates like everyone else, but what if he was really serving as his father’s eyes and ears? What if his presence had less to do with the Flatiron Fire and more to do with her and True?

Mel swallowed tightly, wishing she could glean whatever intel Chris hid behind his poker face. Had Fallows decided to get his own hands dirty for a change, risking the river road? For that matter, was True still on the Outlaw, as planned? She’d tried to call her, to no avail. Which had made her wonder: Was she off course? The reception, even via satellite, was usually fine by Wonderland Lodge, but notoriously bad at Temple Bar.

Mel couldn’t decide which location would be better: current radio chatter informed her that the Flatiron Fire had been contained at the Forest Service road at the base of its namesake peak, but it could be only a matter of time before wind pushed the blaze further to the southwest.

Leaving the fire with nowhere to go but the river valley.

The young media liaison for Outlaw County, Keith Bonaparte, must have gotten the same update on his cell phone, because he rose from his seat, where he’d been nursing a beer now that the press conference was over, gesturing to Sam to quiet the crowd.

He started with the good news. “Word just in, people. We have containment on the urban interface line.”

A thunder of applause accompanied this announcement, but underneath it, Mel heard the low rumble of murmuring from the more fire-science-savvy of the community.

“If it’s not heading Carbon and Highline way, what’s that mean for the Outlaw?” someone called out.

Mel pinched her eyes shut as her prediction of a moment before was confirmed. “I’m told efforts will need to be redirected there,” Keith admitted as the clapping died down to a smattering. It ceased altogether as the prospect of the Outlaw—Carbon’s prime recreational hot spot and tourism draw—becoming a ravaged wasteland sank in. If the worst came to pass and the river corridor was consumed, a full-on public outcry would follow in its wake, drawing complaints from locals and environmentalists alike.

“At least the Wild and Scenic Act will kick in some federal funds,” Sam reminded the crowd. Mel nodded. Saving the protected river would take higher priority to the federal government than saving dot-on-the-map Carbon. And that boded well for True.

But before Mel could parse the nuances of environmentalism versus local jobs, Keith had a second announcement, one that was news to Mel. “As a result, as of twenty-one hundred this evening, ODOT has ordered the Outlaw River Road from Carbon all the way to the coast officially closed.”

River. Road. Closed. In less than an hour’s time. The words detonated in Mel’s brain like shards of shrapnel. Forget the uproar forthcoming from those who relied on the river to fund their outdoor recreation businesses. Forget even the generalized fear of the flames progressing west. The closing of the river road would seal off Temple Bar completely. To everyone . And seal in anyone who hadn’t gotten out already. Her thoughts swung wildly back to True, somewhere in the wilderness with her clients, undoubtedly unaware of this update. They could become stuck, put in the path of the fire. Put at risk, all because of Mel.

Don’t. Fucking. Panic. With the fire on a new trajectory, Highline Road would almost certainly remain at Level 1. She heard the liaison: the firefighting focus would now shift, Mel’s team along with it. She could focus almost entirely on helping True. New assignments would come down the line, and she’d be back out in the field, able to be proactive, by morning.

Which seemed impossibly far away.

So when she saw Chris Fallows slip through the crowd and out of the Eddy, several but not all of his cronies on his heels, it was all she could do to keep from leaping up from her chair immediately to follow him. Were they headed west to Temple Bar before the closure became official? The timing of their exit couldn’t be coincidence. Did they think True might use the river-road closure as a way to disappear with their cash? And what would they do to her if so?

Think, she ordered herself instead. Be smart. Surely the sheriff’s department personnel tasked with enforcing the road closure would turn Chris and his friends around if they attempted to travel west, though the Department of Transportation did always give rafting traffic the courtesy of a couple hours, at the very least, in which to pull stakes and get folks off the water.

Which only opened her mind up to further threats. If True secured one of these last-minute rides for her clients, her absence on the river would only confirm Chris’s suspicions. Or worse, she could arrive at Temple Bar only to be met by someone in Fallows’s back pocket. A local or even a Fish and Wildlife employee, ready to hold her for questioning, just for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Fallows knows people everywhere, Sam had always told Mel. He’d set up Zack Murphy to take the fall for him for far less. God, if True was arrested, if the truth came out ... Mel couldn’t even go there. Money-laundering and drug-smuggling charges would ruin far more than just Annie’s chance at surgery.

She was still turning over each awful possibility in her mind when the only one she hadn’t allowed herself to conjure suddenly presented itself: True herself, walking right into the Eddy, cool as anything.

Mel nearly spilled the water glass she’d been gripping too tightly. “True!”

She looked exhausted, her damp tank top hanging limply on her muscular frame, her trucker cap low over her tanned but drawn face. She hadn’t changed out of her board shorts and Chacos, and Mel could smell the smoke and dried sweat from here, but none of this stopped Mel from practically flinging herself at her as she walked through the door.

“Thank God,” she breathed. “What happened at Temple?” she whispered.

The crowd jostled them, a local or two angling to greet True, too, and Mel caught a barely discernible shake of her head as she released her. They had an audience.

“You’re ripe,” True joked loudly, brushing soot off her torso after contact with Mel’s stained shirt.

“ I’m ripe? Well, you weren’t the only one out in the smoke all day, sleeping on the ground last night.”

“Auntie True!” Astor wormed her way through the crowd, not satisfied until she was pressed close to True’s side, regaling her with the tale of barricading the house from smoke. Sam trailed behind with a gruff “Glad to see you back in one piece.”

Mel wasn’t sure if it was the feeling of being watched or women’s intuition that had her and True glancing up at the same time, but they both caught sight of Chris Fallows’s return to the Eddy in the same instant. And behind him, framing the doorway, stood his father.

Guess his purpose at the bar had been to gather intel, after all.

And by the looks of it, Fallows hadn’t liked what he’d heard. He stared Mel and True down stonily, his eyes hard, and then very deliberately rubbed the fingers of one raised hand together in a gesture for cash. There was really no mistaking his meaning, but he mouthed his message anyway: Where the fuck is my money?

But Mel was still staring at his face. Sam had told her more than once: When John Fallows gets scared, he’s a mean motherfucker.

Which invited the question: What are you so afraid of, John?