Smoke Season

CHAPTER 19

“ I should have brought the cash back to Carbon,” True confided to Mel in a hoarse whisper after filling her in on the past few hours in a rush, “protocol be damned.”

Mel shook her head swiftly, her ponytail flying back and forth. “You couldn’t have known.”

True weighed the validity of this statement against the shitstorm she’d found herself in twenty-five miles downriver from anyone who could have helped her, and nodded slowly. As a river guide, she had to make decisions on the fly, and she always stuck by them. She’d do the same now.

She glanced back at Fallows. “Then what’s our next move?”

Mel pulled back, allowing True the chance to assess her closely for the first time. Mel looked utterly exhausted, but True’s heart still caught for a beat in her throat, even with Vivian and the tense way they’d left things still at the back of her mind. Perhaps precisely because of that. Unrequited love was, by definition, no one’s fault, but sometimes, even after all these years, it still stung.

Standing outside the shuttle van at the drop-off point in Carbon, waiting for Don to liberate the Wus’ duffels from the back, True had searched her brain for something—anything—she could say to Vivian to make their parting better. But there had been nothing, of course. It was done. They were probably already on the interstate by now, all this drama in their rearview mirror. Regret still sat like a stone in her stomach, unmoved by the worry and stress all around her.

Mel offered a wan smile, brushing her hair out of her eyes, and as True stepped back, she noticed the Eddy had begun to clear out. As Sam shouted, “Last call!” those with homes to go to slowly filed out, the evacuated residents from Forest Service Road 7312 at the base of Flatiron last to leave, having only cots awaiting them at the temporary shelter in the Carbon High School gym.

When True glanced back across the Eddy, Fallows hadn’t budged, however. She made eye contact and made a beeline for him. She couldn’t afford to wait for him to cause a scene in the empty bar, in front of Sam.

She wove through several families gathering their gear, Mel on her heels, but by the time they had sidled past all the suitcases and duffels to confront Fallows, Sam had somehow beaten them there.

“Last call for you was about a decade ago,” he said, a thumb pointing in the direction of the door.

Fallows stood his ground by the door, evacuees squeezing around him like debris through river rocks. “I guess we’ll clear out when we’re good and ready,” he told Sam as several of his crew members gathered around him.

In other words, I still call the shots, kid.

They stood toe to toe for a long moment, and though Fallows was several inches shorter than Sam, it didn’t seem it, despite the gleam of something vulnerable around the whites of his eyes. Could it be fear?

A flush of red crept up Sam’s neck, reminding True that no matter how much she loathed dealing with this man, Sam couldn’t even be in the same room with him without having a visceral reaction. What must it have been like, growing up as a Bishop in Carbon, having to prove yourself to every adult, having to shake labels like white trash and redneck and criminal at every turn? Her protective instinct kicked into gear, and True stepped in front of Sam.

He didn’t appear to appreciate the gesture. “Everything’s under control,” he told her, frowning at her as if to say, What’s wrong with you? Get yourself and Mel out of here. Fat chance.

“That’s right,” True tagged on. For the benefit of the remaining customers at the bar, she attempted a bored scoff, adding in a raised voice, “Carbon, we’ve seen forest fires before, haven’t we?”

Fallows only smiled coldly. “Not like this one, sweetheart.” He pressed a finger into Sam’s chest, then flicked it up to flip the bill of his ball cap off his head. When Sam flailed to grab his hat before it flew to the ground, Fallows laughed loudly. “Jesus, junior, how are you still falling for that one?”

He kicked it across the bar floor for good measure. When Sam turned to retrieve it, Mel on his heels, Fallows rounded again on True. “Where the hell is it?”

“At Temple,” she hissed, with a sidelong look toward Sam to ensure he hadn’t heard. “Same as always.”

Now she was sure Fallows looked scared, for the first time True had ever seen, anyway. “Then you get that we’re fucked , right?”

True forced herself to remain calm. Icy calm. “Like Sam said, everything is under control.”

“Sam doesn’t know shit. And clearly neither do you, given that I am here and my delivery is not .”

“I don’t know shit about what?” Sam’s tone was hard as he returned, cap clenched tightly in one hand, the other in a fist against his thigh. True flinched. She was standing at Temple Bar with Vivian all over again, her reputation on the line.

Fallows attempted a hearty, cold laugh. “Take your pick, son.”

Sam lunged at him. “How many times do I have to tell you to leave?”

True piled on, hoping to continue the redirect of Sam’s focus. “And what exactly is your problem with me, anyway?”

“This asshole’s always a problem,” Sam answered.

Fallows reserved his smirk for True this time. “But I’m never too much for you to handle, right, honey?”

“That’s it.” Sam lunged, dropping his hat again to snag a handful of Fallows’s shirt.

“Stop it,” Mel said from behind True. She tugged Sam away, muttering something about Fallows not being worth Sam’s time or the energy it would require to mop his blood from the Eddy floor. True was only half listening, eyes still trained on Fallows like he might dart away any minute, snake in the grass, one of the rattlers that disappeared into the granite lining Whiskey Creek.

Fallows broke eye contact first, a significant victory, True decided, with a grunted order to his men to stay put. “We’ll finish this outside,” he told True, then sauntered out of the Eddy without a backward glance.

She didn’t follow him, not with Sam’s eyes burning a hole in her back. She waited until Mel could draw his gaze back to her face, as only Mel could, imploring him to give his attention to what mattered. “Our daughters,” she heard Mel say, then, “Highline” and “time to go.” True chanced a glance back toward the bar to see Sam nod, turning to finish closing up, and only then did she slip out the Eddy door to continue what she’d started with Fallows.

Once outside, she faced him square on, feet planted firmly, just like when riding out Quartz Canyon from her perch at the bow, ready to take a hit against a river rock, a wall of water, or both.

“Knew I never should’ve given a chick a man’s job,” Fallows threw at her.

“At least I anticipated the river road closing in the smoke, genius.”

Fallows stepped forward, bringing them chest to chest, his breath hot on her face. “I don’t have to do a goddamned thing but sit on my ass and wait for my fucking will to be done. You should know by now: my operation does not have a cleanup crew. There is no Plan B. Ever. So I’m only going to ask this one more time. Where? Is it? Exactly.”

True forced herself to stand her ground. If she acquiesced to every dude who wanted to claim her personal space in this world, where would she be?

Fallows gripped her arm. Hard. “Spill, sister.”

True bit down a cry of surprise as her eyes smarted. The fucker was shockingly strong for a man in his late sixties. All that weed trimming, she supposed. It toned the biceps. Through clenched teeth she described the spruce tree in the Temple Bar parking lot. “No one can see it; no one will go looking there.”

“You better hope you’re right,” Fallows told her, bumping her shoulder roughly as he strode toward his truck. “Because the way I see it? Your job’s only half finished.”

Sam never thought he’d live to see the day when Kristina Truitt possessed the look of a cornered animal. But by the time he caught up with her on the Eddy deck, she was braced against the railing, staring out across the darkened parking lot and rubbing her left bicep.

“What the hell did he want with you tonight, True?”

True lifted her head and shrugged in what she was clearly trying to pass off as a lack of concern. She didn’t have to feign the fatigue that radiated from her, though. “I’m a grown woman, Sam,” she said tiredly. In other words, my business is my business.

He lifted a hand in acknowledgment. Yes, True demanded respect and positively radiated badassery, and no, she didn’t need him to sweep in and save the day. But this was his damned bar, was it not? And for a moment there, Sam had felt sure there was something more going on here than just a scuffle between very opposite-minded people on a bad day. Something that did concern him. Fallows never could resist reminding Sam when he was not in on the joke.

He tried a different tack. “You know I don’t associate with that man,” he said, just as Mel rejoined them on the deck. Because maybe True needed the reminder. Fallows hadn’t darkened the door of the Eddy in ages before this week.

Neither woman argued with him, and maybe he’d imagined it, but had he just caught a quick glance between them? Despite the sticky heat that still clung after the sun had disappeared over the horizon in a fiery show of crimson, something icy slid under his skin. A prickle of foreboding.

He hadn’t imagined it. A sheen of fear hung in the air between the two women he cared about most in this world. Was it just the fire? Their worry about Annie? Doubt sluiced through him. PTSD could make him paranoid, he knew this. His childhood could cause him to second-guess the motives of others. He’d spent the better part of his boyhood fighting this feeling, the one that had him cowering in the dark of his bedroom closet as his dad and John hit the lights to duck from the cops, that had him evading teachers’ inquisitiveness when he’d shown up at school without sleep, circles of fatigue under his eyes. From the time of his earliest memories, Sam had been the only one, it seemed, waiting perpetually for the other shoe to drop, anxiously listening for the knock on the door, or the phone call that would give bad news, for CPS or the sheriff or the principal. And he was beyond done with all that.

“You’d tell me,” he said to them both, hating the weakness he heard in his voice and the vulnerability he felt, “if something was truly wrong here? With ... him?” Feeling impotent like this always caused shame to burn through him like oil slicking the streets of Kabul.

True shook her head, but didn’t glance at Mel again. It felt like a deliberate choice. The sense of foreboding positively ballooned in Sam, prickling every nerve ending. And to think that Mel had just been second-guessing his decisions.

“Mel?” Was she protecting True? If so, from what?

He wouldn’t be cast back into that place he hated, playing the victim, too weak and small to stand up and walk out of the dark closet that was his childhood. After a decade of trying to make a new name for himself in Carbon, he was finally making some headway. No way was he going to let anyone—even Truitt—drag the Bishop name back into the dirt.

He told himself it couldn’t even be a possibility, but that didn’t stop the invasive feelings of disloyalty from coming. He was still wrestling with them when Mel’s radio on her hip squawked to life.

“Hernandez,” she said after glancing at the receiver. A second later, her phone was at her ear. When she lowered it, she looked between True and Sam, anguish written all over her face. “Briefing ASAP at the station. I need to go directly.”

Which meant she’d run out of time to see Annie, all because of this mess with Fallows. More confusion wound its way around an echoing regret in Sam. How had she allowed that to happen? How could he have? As always, it was hard to know who had dropped the ball, him or Mel. “I’ll lock up right now,” he told her. “Grab the Goal Zero, and Astor and I will head back.”

The lack of smoke shocked his senses as they reentered the now empty Eddy, the tightness in his lungs giving way to an almost painful sense of release.

True cleared her throat loudly. “Listen, you should know, I hate that creep every bit as much as you do.” She looked like she meant it. She looked outright miserable, now that Sam really took notice.

“That may not be possible,” Mel said quietly.

Sam turned to study her, too. Maybe they were right and it wasn’t his place, maybe he was just overreacting again, but something still nagged at him about tonight, and protectiveness prevailed. “You know that old saying ‘Keep your friends close, and your enemies closer’?” he asked True earnestly.

She nodded.

“Well, Fallows has no friends.”

“I have no interest in being his friend.”

The solemn promise in her tone settled some of the turmoil in Sam’s belly. Still. “The only way to keep your hands clean is to stay far away from that man, True. Mel.” Another idiom surfaced. Lie down with dogs, get up with fleas.

Before he could recite it, Hernandez interrupted again on the walkie, his voice cutting back through the bar against a background of heavy static. Mel reached quickly to turn down the volume on her radio. She depressed her speak button, requesting a reconfirmation of the latest order.

“I’ve really got to leave,” she said. “I’ll just say goodbye to Astor.”

But a minute later, when the two of them entered the office, Astor lay curled into Sam’s desk chair like a snail in its shell, fast asleep. Her cheek pressed awkwardly into the armrest, puckering her lips into an open-mouthed O , and a soft little snore escaped on every exhale. For the first time in days, she looked so childlike, so at peace, that Sam had to stifle a pained sigh.

Mel came to a halt just shy of rousing her. “She never falls asleep this easily.”

Sam agreed. It could take Astor hours to settle down on a bad night, and how was tonight anything but? “We should let her rest.”

They locked eyes, for the moment in sync again. The nagging doubt faded, and Sam felt just as he had when Mel stepped through the door of the Eddy this evening, enfolded in the comfort of their partnership. It felt right, but ... “I guess we do have to—”

“I’ll stay with her.” They both turned at the sound of True’s voice; she shifted from foot to foot in her grimy river sandals. “That way you can get back to Annie, Sam.” She turned to Mel. “And you can get to the station.”

The gesture, so typical of True, snuffed out the lingering uncertainty Sam had felt earlier. He’d been wrong, of course he had. True was as TrueBlue as always. Stepping up once again as a crucial part of their family’s team. He nodded as Mel did the same. “If you’re sure you’ll be okay?”

True’s eyes flicked to his, and she didn’t reprimand him for trying to play the “knight in shining armor” card this time. On the contrary, her gaze entreated him ever so briefly before flicking away again. For a moment, he thought she was about to ask him something. But then the stalwart woman-against-the-world confidence that he’d learned to expect from her since their Forest Service days returned, and she straightened her shoulders. “Yeah, of course. Just need some shut eye, same as the rest of us.”

Near 10:00 p.m., he finally made his way back up Highline through the dark, the flow of traffic that had been trickling down in the afternoon now eerily absent. Anyone who’d planned to leave already had, and anyone remaining would be settling in for the duration, taking comfort in the Level 1 order. All Sam wanted to do was to get home now to his younger daughter.

He walked in the door and set down the heavy power cube to see Annie still on the couch, cradled by Claude.

The old man held out a hand in greeting. Or maybe in supplication. “Now, don’t worry,” he said, “but our kleines fr?ulein isn’t doing all that well.”

The little miss . Sam’s heart always gave a little lurch of tenderness at Claude’s use of his favorite nickname for Annie, but now it walloped with instantly ramped-up anxiety. He should have been home hours ago. He shouldn’t have allowed himself to get distracted, not even by Mel. Because Annie looked an ashen shade of pale blue ... the telltale sign of an impending tet spell.

He rushed over despite Claude’s continued assurances, tugging Ingrid’s homemade quilt down from her body to assess her. She protested weakly, popping her thumb out long enough to ask, “Where is Astor, Daddy?”

“She’s with True, peanut.”

“But I wanna be with True,” Annie protested.

Of course she did. And thinking of True made Sam’s heart lurch again, though it was hard to tell in which direction. That happened to him sometimes; familial obligations and promises entangling hopelessly. He leaned in to kiss Annie’s forehead, stealthily attempting to listen for any rasp to her breathing at the same time. Rapid.

She was coughing, too. He did his damnedest to not flinch every time, but it was a losing battle. Had been, actually, from the very first time poor air quality had wreaked havoc on his daughter’s fragile respiratory system, several years ago during the Briggs Fire. Watching a three-year-old nearly hack up a lung wasn’t a sight Sam wished on anybody, and that fire hadn’t gotten within fifty miles of Highline. Tonight was worse. Far worse.

“Maybe we should get the hell out of here,” he said to Claude in an undertone. Because doubt gripped him, per usual when it came to this parenting gig. Should he evacuate? Had he made a mistake leaving Astor at the Eddy? At what point did the risk of lung damage outweigh the risk of travel?

“Maybe tomorrow,” Claude countered softly, with a pointed look at Annie’s pulse oximeter on the side table. His message was clear: Annie’s vitals did not warrant a road trip. At least not tonight.

But Sam had to see for himself. How else could he possibly make the impossible decisions that were thrust at him every waking moment during this fire? With a nod of understanding, Claude turned the oximeter on and waited for the beep that would indicate it was ready to measure Annie’s oxygen levels again. Opening and closing its little jaws, he made a path through the air toward Annie’s finger while Sam paced the living room, trying to peer out the windows.

“What do you think? Should we let Pac-Man gobble you up again?”

Annie giggled, a weak little sound. When the oximeter beeped again, he turned around.

Claude shook his head. “As I said.”

Please, Sam thought, don’t let this turn into a tet spell. Though if it did, they had power to run her O2 here at the house, he reminded himself. They still had refrigerated meds and syringes. And now they had the Goal Zero. Claude was right. Keeping Annie here, where all her medical gear stood at the ready, remained the right move.

Annie coughed again, right on cue, and Claude retrieved the N95 mask she hated so from the table. “When she’s not on the O2, this should help some,” he said, still frowning.

After he fit it on her little face, Annie stared back at them with wide brown eyes—her mother’s eyes.

“Better, right?” Sam asked, and Annie nodded gamely enough, offering a clumsy thumbs-up. She was such an obedient, optimistic kid. Even while fighting for breath. Even at midnight. Did all the surgeries and doctor’s visits instinctively cause his younger daughter to be more pliant, Sam wondered? Take the smoother path? Choose the least resistance? Sam scoffed at himself—what a bunch of psychobabble—but still, overhearing so much gloom and doom, even though he and Mel tried to keep it from her, had to impact a five-year-old’s malleable psyche.

Claude doled out Annie’s prescriptions and helped her swallow the syrupy liquid while Sam eyed the remaining medication left in each plastic bottle. They were due for a refill, but when he’d noticed earlier this week, he hadn’t called it in. No point in asking for refills when you couldn’t pay.

“Cuddle with me, Daddy,” Annie interrupted, offering him a corner of her quilt.

Sam exchanged one last pointed look with Claude, then leaned down to scoop her up.

“I’ll do you one better,” he told her as Claude saw himself out with a promise to return at first light. “How about you sleep with me in Daddy’s big bed tonight?”

“Like . . . a slumber party?”

“Exactly.”

Setting her onto the king bed, Sam lay down on top of the comforter Mel had bought half a decade ago, trying to allow Annie’s presence to ground him. His daughters were his stability, as crazy as that sounded, given Annie’s condition. His magnetic north, pointing him toward a sense of purpose. And knowing his purpose usually calmed Sam.

Tonight, this calm was short-lived, as Annie tugged away her O2 mask and succumbed to another fit of coughing. Sam patted her back softly, just as he’d done for her as an infant and as a toddler. Just as he’d seen Claude do. It never got easier.

It would forever feel unnervingly unnatural to him, watching a small child catch her breath after only a few minutes of play, watching her seek out a seat to sit quietly while the world spun along without her participation.

“It’s to be expected, nothing out of the ordinary in her condition,” all the specialists told them. They educated the Bishops with graphs and maps of the human heart, illustrated the path of oxygenated blood through the network of arteries and veins spanning throughout Annie’s body. “You see how much more effort it takes?” they all pointed out. “You see how much harder her heart has to work? Normal for her. All normal.”

Yes, Sam saw. And there was nothing normal about it. Becoming educated on the anatomy of the human heart made it intrinsically worse, somehow, knowing exactly why Annie felt so winded. Knowing exactly what was broken inside her.

Only True seemed immune from coddling Annie. Picking her up without a care in the world, she tossed her on her back like a sack of potatoes, not like the fragile specimen everyone else saw, and gave her a piggyback ride to whatever next activity eluded her. She said things like “C’mon, kid, let’s go,” not “Do you need another rest, Annie?” She expected her to keep up with Astor, to take on both hiding and seeking when they played, to get her oar in the water whenever she took them out on the river for a day trip. If anyone was pampered by True, it was Mel, not Annie. Oh, Sam suspected why, but not a day went by that True didn’t act classy about it. Besides, could Sam blame her?

Was Mel finally getting some sleep at the station tonight? As Annie’s breathing grew more rhythmic, he checked his phone. Two missed calls. He texted Mel back with a thumbs-up and an Annie okay for the night , too tired and frustrated to do more before falling into a dreamless sleep.