The Ides of Matt 2016 Read online

  7

  June slid into July then August. Ashley could only look out at the wilderness in wonder as each day dawned.

  How had she ever felt alone in the Montana Wilderness?

  Brent’s schedule had slowly slipped around until he flew in the mornings and then hiked back up in the afternoon to lie in her arms. Sometimes they’d sit out on the catwalk for hours, staring up at the stars as he told her the stories of heroes and gods in the constellations. Other nights he’d tell her about spectral colors, fusion byproducts, and Doppler effects.

  After feeling lost for so long—ever since the third day of her freshman year when she’d suddenly realized the small-town dead-end nature of Girard High School and Hepler, Kansas—she now felt as if the future was rushing toward her. She could practically hear it in the slow steadiness of Brent’s breathing as he slept wrapped around her on the narrow cot. It was there in the sweetest of wake-up kisses, and in the little treats he would carry up the mountain with him for their meals—even one-cup cartons milk for her lattes, bless his soul.

  On her alternate weekends down the mountain, he taught her to fly. She wasn’t ready to tackle Medicine Point, but she’d flown beside Brent for three hours on an amazing updraft finally landing in the University of Montana track field.

  She could feel him coming up the trail as she scanned the far hills to the south. Heard the slight clank as he dropped his packed glider at the foot of the tower and the vibrations as his feet climbed the wooden steps up to her.

  He slipped up behind her, wrapped his arms around her waist, and held her close as she finished the slow turn and fire scan. He’d learned not to interrupt her or she’d lose her place in scanning the hills. The fire season had heated up and it was a rare day that someone didn’t find a smoke. Her own count stood at twelve—in the upper third of the lookout pack, which didn’t do her ego any harm.

  But even his slightest touch left her needing all of her willpower to finish the job. When she did, and had turned and received a proper greeting, he pulled open his pack.

  “Fresh bread. Aged cheese. Chocolate. Bubbly,” he held up a bottle of sparkling cider. “I thought about bringing champagne, but I couldn’t figure out how to keep it cold enough.”

  “What’s the—” Then she stopped. She knew. Brent was such a romantic. It was three months today since he’d jumped off the cliff to get away from her. Of course he would celebrate their first meeting, even if it was an embarrassment to him, rather than their first dance or the first time they slept together. As she often told him, he really was too sweet for her own good.

  She thanked him a little more thoroughly this time.

  Then he held up a letter, “I checked your mail, like you asked.”

  8

  Ashley’s eyes went wide and then she looked aside and blushed.

  Over the last three months Brent had learned a great deal about Ashley. And one of the things he’d learned was that she was almost impossible to embarrass. Her heart was so generous that it had let him in and there wasn’t a sneaky bone in her body, but there was also a frank straightforwardness that didn’t flinch aside from anything.

  Yet here she was blushing bright red over a letter from his school. He’d wondered at it for the whole hike up. His summer was almost over. Hers would be too, whenever they closed the fire lookouts for the season, perhaps in another month.

  He didn’t know what he wanted to happen, but he couldn’t imagine a life without her in it. They hadn’t talked of the future, not a single word, too overwhelmed by how incredible the present felt. The return address on that slim envelope had suddenly dropped the future right into the center of his thoughts.

  “It’s…” she took it slowly from his nerveless fingers. “It’s just this crazy idea I had. I didn’t mean it to—” Then she tried again, but still wouldn’t meet his eyes. “I just kind of hoped—”

  Brent stopped her from wholly turning away by placing a hand on either shoulder. He tried not to hope that she’d done what he’d been praying for the entire hike up the mountain. He pulled out the pair of stools they had sat together on to watch the first of many firefighting air shows. He had to guide her onto one as he sat on the other.

  “Just open it. Then we’ll talk about what it means.”

  She nodded without looking up, her hair showering forward and hiding her face just as it had the first time he’d ever seen her. She fumbled at the envelope several times and then finally just shoved it into his hands.

  Ashley didn’t speak, didn’t look up as he worked the seal.

  Careful not to look at the contents, he tried to hand the open envelope back to her, but she refused.

  He rested a hand on hers and it was shaking.

  Unsure of what else to do, he pulled out the single sheet. He started reading it aloud.

  “Congratulations,” was as far as he got before she screamed just as loudly as that first time and then clapped both hands over her mouth.

  Now she looked up at him and he brushed back her hair so that he could see the most amazing eyes there ever were.

  “I hoped,” she mumbled. And now her eyes pleaded with him, awash with unfallen tears. “I hoped so hard.”

  He read on against the tightening in his own throat. “School of Physical Therapy and Rehab. Track and field scholarship. Late start authorized at end of fire lookout season.” He couldn’t believe it. She’d be at UM with him. Ashley Mason wanted to be—

  “I won’t take it if you don’t want me there,” she spoke in a rush. “I didn’t want to presume. But the way we—” she tried to hang her head again, but he stopped her with a finger on her chin. “I wanted,” she finally choked out as the first tears fell. “I so wanted.”

  Brent couldn’t help smiling. He too had hoped so much. And then in a fashion that he’d barely managed believe, he had taken action himself.

  “I have just two questions, Ashley Mason.”

  She nodded furiously and covered her eyes in alarm and then uncovered them again without speaking.

  “I know that it’s too soon, but I couldn’t stand the thought of you not being in my life.” He pulled the last thing from his pack, a small velvet ring box. He opened it to reveal the small sapphire. “It was the closest I could find to the incredible color of your eyes. I want to look at them every day for the rest of my life. Please say yes.”

  She looked from his eyes, down to the ring box, and back. She opened her mouth, but nothing came out. After her third attempt, she just nodded. He had to hold her hand steady so that he could slip the ring on it. It looked far better there than he’d imagined possible.

  He had to duck to kiss her as she kept staring down at it.

  When at last she looked up at him, he had to struggle to find his own voice.

  “My second question, and this is the important one…”

  A look of worry slipped into her eyes and she clamped down her grip on his hands.

  “We both learned so much this summer,” he rubbed a thumb over the ring on her finger. “How, my beloved Ashley, do you feel about learning river rafting next summer?”

  Her laughter, as sparkling bright as the sky above the Montana Wilderness, told him that he’d learned how to do this exactly right.

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  Road to the Fire’s Heart

  My sister once introduced me to a good friend of hers who was partnered with a top urban firefighter. This was decades ago. Though they’ve been together for all this time, they’ve only recently gotten married—now that it’s legal.

  I also met their three-year-old (at the time) daughter.

  This story comes from two sources.

  First, the assistant superintendent of my Leavenworth Hotshot team from my first two Hotshot stories: Fire Light, Fire Bright and The Firelights of Christmas. It seemed to me that he was gettin
g lonely what with his supervisor and his fellow assistant both finding true love in those previous stories.

  Second, wondering what my sister’s friends’ daughter was up to. She was in her mid-twenties by the time her moms were allowed to be married.

  Rather than asking my sister, I wrote this story to find out. (I finally did ask and it turns out she’s doing great, by the way.)

  1

  Squinting her eyes didn’t help.

  “Driving through pea soup would be easier.”

  As usual, Trent made no comment. Instead, he leaned closer to the wheel and also squinted out at the wildfire’s thick smoke. He was trying to turn strong-silent type into a lifestyle as if that was a good thing. He also didn’t deal well with abstract things like metaphors. He was a reliable enough partner, just not the most flexible.

  A decent enough person, just kind of clueless and…such a guy. Despite his being two years older than her, she’d taken to thinking of herself as his big sister, taking care of him when he was being particularly ridiculous or pitiable without his even realizing it. His fire skills were good, so she didn’t have to fix that, he was simply a social train wreck and needed a bit of a buffer from the world at large.

  Jill Conway-Jones looked back out the windshield of their heavy-duty Type 4 wildfire engine—the big truck was only a year old and still shone despite her and Trent driving to several fires already this season. She wished she knew more about paintings so that she could say one of those educated sounding phrases about how the raging, fiery hell was so awful that only Matisse could have done it justice. But even as she thought it, she knew it was wrong. Her best friend from childhood was the hotshot New York City artist. Jill was just a hotshot.

  Actually, that’s what she wanted to be. At the moment she was a wildland firefighter and engine driver lost deep in the Cascade wilderness of who-knew-where central Washington. A wildfire engine driver, but it wasn’t even her turn to drive. Trent was at the wheel and all she could do was try to figure out where they were.

  US Forest Service fire road FS-273E was invisible, if that’s what they were still on. Smoke was pouring across the road in thick black billows. Showers of brilliant orange sparks lit ash swirls from within as they blew by in vast clouds like the Monarch butterflies she’d once seen rising from a field of milkweed—a cloud of orange and black so thick that they seemed to block the sun.

  Not that the sun was still aloft. She double-checked her watch, sunset should still be purpling the sky, but being deep within the steep mountains to all sides and the heavy smoke filling the valley, it was full night here. Wherever here was.

  The headlights punched only a few feet into the smoke before reflecting back like high beams in fog.

  They’d left the Stehekin River Valley Road what seemed hours ago. They were supposed to be delivering their seven hundred and fifty gallons of water to a beleaguered crew high up on Tolo Mountain. The one-lane dirt track had meandered up into the hills. The road’s edge was sometimes carved out by rushing streams and at other times the entire lane was blocked by fallen trees. More than once they’d had to stop, pull out their chainsaws, and chop up eighty feet of flaming tree so that they could tug it out of the way with the truck’s winch.

  There was no turning around. No spot in the road to do so even if the hotshot crew hadn’t needed their water. The wildfire engine was the only ground vehicle with a chance of making it out to them. The front cab looked like one of those heavy-duty delivery trucks and had the big growling diesel engine to match. The rear had slab sides covered with doors for tools and supplies. On the main bed was three tons of water and twice the firehose that any city firetruck could carry. They could even drive slow along a fire’s perimeter and pump at the same time, a wildfire engine specialty that no city engine could match.

  Jill loved this machine for its raw brute strength, but still wanted to test herself against the fire with the Interagency Hotshot Crews—the IHCs were the elite wildfire fighters, along with the smokejumpers, and she wanted to be a part of that.

  Trent was hugging the cliff to her right on the inside edge of the lane, which was all they could do. After the third time a branch had slapped her rearview mirror flat against the side of the engine, she gave up readjusting it. Opening the window invariably filled the cabin with smoke and there wasn’t anyone crazy enough to be behind them anyway.

  Jill looked up at the cliff and tried to see any dips or ridges. Maybe by the topography she’d be able to locate some similar shape on the map spread across her lap.

  Then she saw it coming toward her. She barely had time to scream—

  “Log!”

  —before the tree tumbled down the hill and slammed into the side of the engine. It was three feet in diameter and at least thirty feet long. And it was alive with flame down its entire length.

  The tree slammed into the engine and knocked it sideways as if it weighed nothing. The Type 4 engine weighed eight tons. Between fuel, the water, and crew, the engine was loaded with an extra five tons. Despite all of their mass and the grip of the rear dualies, they were swept sideways across the road like a dust bunny trying to escape a flaming broom.

  They tumbled off the other side of the road. Even as they rolled down the steep slope, she could see Trent trying to steer. At the moment they were upside down, the engine roaring; he must also be trying the gas.

  Jill nearly strangled when the throttle-hold of adrenaline fear clamped her throat closed at the same moment she had the urge to giggle. The image of the truck lying on its back and waving its little four-wheel drive in the air wouldn’t go away even as the cab’s roof crumpled dangerously low making them both duck.

  The engine continued to roll, one side per panicked gasp until she was nearly hyperventilating. Once right side up, the spinning tires slammed them forward only for a second. The engine stalled hard then they continued once more onto their back with a resounding crash.

  They finally came to a rest with the driver’s side door down.

  She dangled above Trent, suspended by her seatbelt.

  “Nice driving there, Ace.” It was either laugh or scream, and she struggled to avoid the latter.

  Trent didn’t answer. Nor did he offer one of his trademark grunts.

  Ahead of them, out the shattered windshield, there was nothing but the pitch dark of night. There was light coming in through the back window—dark, orange light that flickered ominously. She twisted around to look. The massive burning log lay in the back of the engine, at least one end of it. It was still burning which only added to the bad. Looking up and out her door, another massive branch lay across the remains of her window; the mirror was nowhere to be seen.

  Her headlamp was still on her helmet which by some miracle was still on her head. She clicked it on. Trent was still breathing, but out cold. And his arm was at an angle that didn’t look good at all.

  Twisting herself around, she kicked at what was left of the windshield a few times with her boots until it broke free. The air outside the truck was marginally cooler than inside, which she took as a good sign.

  Careful to brace herself so that she didn’t fall on Trent, who still wasn’t moving, she released her seatbelt. She crawled out to assess the situation. They were at the bottom of a dry ravine that hadn’t been on fire. Parts of it now were, though, due to the log that had brought them here and it was bound to get worse shortly.

  She leaned back in to extract Trent. Unable to release his seatbelt, she pulled out a knife and cut the straps, but it didn’t help much. She weighed about one-twenty-five, and he weighed more like two-twenty-five.

  “Great. We’re alone, a bajillion miles from no one knows where,” she told Trent’s still form. “All the training drills in the world don’t make me Supergirl.”

  “You sure?” A man’s voice spoke close behind her.

  2

  The woman would have
fallen over backward if Jess hadn’t grabbed her about the waist. She wasn’t a bad imitation of Supergirl at all. A blond ponytail hung out below her helmet. She stood two or three inches shorter than his own five-eight—he was still taller than Tom Cruise no matter how much he was teased on the fire line. And she was clad in full fire gear—which was always a turn-on. Firefighting women weren’t as rare as they used to be, but ones fighting forest wildfires were still a very rare commodity.

  He let go of her as soon as he was sure she had her balance once again.

  “No, if I was Supergirl, I’d be able to lift my partner out by myself.”

  Jess tried not to sigh at the way she said partner. It sounded possessive. Bad luck for him, good luck for the dude still in the truck. Which was now on fire and they’d better get a move on.

  He nudged Supergirl out of the way and ducked in to look at the situation. Her partner wasn’t pinned but he had a busted arm. No way to assess anything else in this position, not in the time allowed. When Jess tucked the guy’s bad arm into his half-open jacket, it didn’t even elicit a grunt. Out cold. Jess grabbed the guy’s lapels and gave a hard yank. He was big, but he slithered free like a sack of potatoes.

  The woman ducked back into the truck through the windshield and emerged moments later with her gloves, a pair of burnover shelters, and the first aid kit. Keeping her head after what must have been a terrifying experience. Full points for that.

  Jess had been scouting the edge of the fire. His hotshot crew was up the slope of the ravine trying to cut a line ahead of the blaze and he’d come down just in time to see the engine they’d been waiting for take the hit and tumble down into the ravine.

  They’d both dragged the injured driver well clear, then he eyed the truck. There were a lot of supplies on there that they really needed. The flames weren’t near the gas tanks yet and it seemed like a reasonable risk.

  “Let’s do some salvage.”