Sometimes it’s hard to remember the differences between fires, what you did, who you worked with.
The last time I saw Colton alive was on the day after our first party. Every year we have a party at this old horse camp a few miles up the logging road from the guard station. The horse camp is an unremarkable composite of scraggy pondos, hitching posts, and trailer-sculpted mud. It’s quiet at the end of May, before the burn ban hits and the air still smells like snow. I remember that party because someone needed to DD. I insist on chauffeuring people up and down from the bonfire. Chris calls me crew mom and tells me that I’m really bringing down the maturity level around here. But at this party, nothing bad or unpredictable happened. We hauled up coolers stuffed with beer and hotdogs and built a bonfire and Garrett fired a shotgun into the air until Colton pulled the gun out of Garrett’s hands and locked it in the backseat of Colton’s Jeep. Melanie and Lizzie passed a bottle of Jaeger between them and Lizzie threw up in the trees behind the bonfire. There’s a photo on my phone of me standing with Colton, Garret, and Lizzie. I’m holding a cigarette between my thumb and index finger with my hand upturned. Everyone else’s dangle from their teeth.
A few days after our party, Colton flips his Jeep on the drive down from the same horse camp. When this happens, I’m back at my college dorm for the weekend packing up my things to move to the guard station. When I’m not doing laundry or cleaning, I spend most of my time lying flat on my back on the floor. Whenever I try to sit up, I get this piercing pain in my lower back. I’ve been exercising more than usual. The floor is cool and helps me to feel alert and more relaxed.
Those of us who have better things to do usually don’t start the crew until the end of May or beginning of June. But the fires are already burning. My dad is on a dispatch right now, somewhere in northern California, on a FOBS assignment. He turned 70 last winter. FOBS is a sweet gig. He maps the perimeter of the containment line with a GPS. Mostly this entails crawling the dozer line in four-wheel drive. Sometimes he hikes up a handline where some Shots had to dig a tie-in. Other times he spends the days playing horseshoes with this or that contractor. He collects uniform patches from the crews he works with. He texts me photos of flame fronts and videos of VLATs dropping lines of Phos-Chek.
There’s plenty of work to go around. So much work that the crew was able to bring a full squad’s worth of seasonals on payroll a month early, including Colton and Garrett. The crew was the best thing that Colton had going for him, and Garrett started early because he thought Colton was a badass. Colton was from Bakersfield and his dad is in Hell’s Angels and is currently serving time. Colton chewed wintergreen so Garrett chewed wintergreen. Colton liked NASCAR so Garrett, who grew up in a gated community in the hills above the orchards, liked NASCAR. That summer was the first fire season for both of them.
Whenever someone asks me if I’m ever afraid of fire I tell them that as long as you stay close to the fire, you’re probably okay. If there’s fire, there’s black; if there’s black, you’re safe. The key is to not be afraid of fire. Fire keeps you alive. Rookies get scared of fire. They like to stand way back and squirt water. Stick around long enough and you learn that the flames are on your side. Fire pays the bills, fire carves out safety zones, fire forges solid containment line. First we dig, then we burn. It’s a famous story, but on August 5, 1949, Wag Dodge had the presence of mind, when Mann Gulch blew up behind him, to put a match to the ground and lie down in the flames.
On wheatfield fires in the Palouse, you get rabbit spot fires. Turns out that fire causes rabbits to become confused. They dart in and out of the flames. If there’s not much going on, we try to herd them into the green or deep into the black. But they never stay; they always dive back into the fire. This can only go on for so long. You might have a rock-solid containment line and then a bright flaming rabbit barrels across into the green.
I’m scared of the off-season. I’m scared of driving cars. I’m scared of checking Facebook. Personally, I don’t know any firefighters who have been seriously injured during fire operations. Personally, I know four firefighters who died in vehicle accidents during the off-season. I discover each death on Facebook.
On the morning after that first party, a fire pops. The call comes in at about four in the morning. I remember waking to the radio squawking squaddies, you up. Most of us had been drinking the night before. I watch Chris fumble out of his sleeping bag and knock his radio onto the floor. He sits up, bare feet on the speckled linoleum, and reaches for the radio. Alpha copies he says into the radio, then, lick my balls. He turns on the lights and yells they sent up the motherfucking bat signal. He throws a balled-up sock at Colton. Kid, I’m expecting coffee stat. I say you got it boss and pull my pants out from under the bed. Wheels turning in 30 says the radio. It’s too early for fine motor skills. I stuff my laces into my boots and jump down the stairs.
I’m the first person into the kitchen except for Kyle, who had the good sense to not drink last night. Kyle’s wearing sunglasses indoors and making a PB&J. Without looking at me he says we getting coffee or what. I say good morning sunshine and lift the percolator into the sink and turn on the faucet. Kyle stuffs half the PB&J into his mouth and says Kid you’re in charge today. I say ok and Kyle chews his sandwich. Kyle tells me that he doesn’t mind being foreman except it means he’s gotta ride with Greg. Kyle reaches for the other half of his sandwich. I know what comes next. You stop driving for any reason, says Kyle, water chew whatever and then bam out comes Greg’s phone and there’s dick slamming into ass on repeat. Like dude I don’t want to see your collection.
I fill the filter with Folgers.
What a sick fuck. Kid, you play aide de camp today. Kyle sets his glasses on the kitchen counter. Interested? Easy promotion, okay?
Andrew is out on a detail with Helitack, and that leaves Kyle as the next in line for foreman. There’s Chris but Chris almost dropped a tree on the division supervisor so he’s taking a break. Kyle taps his fingers against his coffee mug. I guess I’ll see you there, he says. We’re about to leave for a long drive to god knows where. Andrew would say that we’re headed to bumfuckegypt but he says that about everywhere that’s more than ten miles from College Town. We could be going to Danny’s vacation house with the pool and hot tub and satellite TV and Andrew would say hell yes we’re going to party in bumfuckegypt. I think bumfuckegypt might be more of a state of mind than a physical location. It’s the outer limits of polite society, where we live for months out of the year. It’s the would-you-rather game we play. Some embrace bumfuckegypt more than others. Chris told us that on day one the shots clean shave their heads and faces and then just let it fucking go for the season. That’s bumfuckegypt. I choose the other route and in fire camp I shave staring into a dirty mirror at the shower trailer. I bring a comb and a blue shirt with a collar. When September hits, the crew, half-feral, runs in and out of Wal-Mart coated in dirt and oil like some landfill coyotes. That’s bumfuckegypt. And then there’s me in my Wrangler shirt, smoking a rollie and reading a book about the New Wave. Andrew calls me professor and asks me how I stay so clean out here with us animals.
He looks at me and Colton and asks us how we like firefighting. I twist my boot-heel into the ground. Highlight of my life, I say.
Where we’re headed today probably isn’t in bumfuckegypt. Radio chatter indicates commercial property and residences threatened. I fill a mug in a lethargic frenzy. Coffee slops over. The rest of the crew files into the kitchen. Last time I looked at my watch it was about 4:15. Greg’s truck sits outside the kitchen and he’s yelling for Kyle to get on in, the crew will catch up. Across from me, Garrett stands in the door of the walk-in facing the cold. I ask him what he’s doing and he replies that he’s trying to cool down before it gets too hot. Chris pushes past Garrett and grabs a Red Bull and a handful of plastic-wrapped cheese. Move it people.
Greg’s taillights disappear through the trees. Chris stalks around the kitchen, spits into the trash bin, snaps his chew can, twists the antennae out from his radio and back in. We file out of the backdoor towards the buggies. The grass breaks under our boots.
With Andrew and Kyle gone, I climb into the front of Alpha buggy. Chris dumps the clutch and coffee hits my pants. Someone pounds on the window behind our heads and I can make out fuck you Chris. I reach for the radio. Alpha to soop on tac. Go for soop on tac Kyle replies. I tell him wheels turning and that I’m ready to copy a legal. The buggy winds down the highway. In the atlas I find the legal. It’s an area close to the valley highway, a little south, across what’s probably Yakama or BLM land. Last year, we drove along the same highway headed south to a complex fire on a military training facility in Arizona where we picked our way through unexploded ordnance and used our tools to turn over piles of clothes and melted tents. On the crest of a ridge we looked over into Mexico. Border agents escorted us. But what I’m thinking of right now, at this moment, is driving south on the valley highway looking out onto the fields, the sun rising, and a lone black bear galloping through the grass, headed not to the hills but parallel to us.
Sometimes it’s hard to remember the differences between fires, what you did, who you worked with. Fires are too boring or too exciting to remember. I’ve blocked them from my mind because we spent five days gridding a wheatfield fire with no shade, grasshoppers bombing into our helmets, or because we dug heads-down along the uphill flank only for the fire to hop our line on the back and cut us from the road. I was lookout and I glanced downhill in time to see the first sage torch in the green and then jump towards us. I forget the former thanks to boredom-induced braindeadness and the latter because it all blurs together, the yelling, the coughing, the smoke, the running. Running through an active burn is sort of like getting teargassed.
That morning’s fire isn’t completely dead, but definitely licked. The fire is next to an orchard and the landowner freelanced in a line with his tractor. We park parallel to rows of apple trees. I jump out of the cab and open the door to the box. Chris walks around and whips my arm with his radio antennae. He spits into the grass. Just another day in paradise, he says. We’re in the public eye and we gear up and line-out in silence, partially to put on a show and partially to get out of sight. I think we probably punch in some line to tie together whatever the landowner put in, but it’s hard to say. At some point, dispatch gets on the radio and tells us that a westside STL and his strike team are on their way to relieve us. We know then that we’re going to be here all day. Relieve us? Not a chance. There’s nothing pencil-whipped westside desk jockey’s like more than babysitting dead fires. Plus, some of us are hungover.
Here’s the thing with desk-jockeys—they’re not all bad. A lot of times they’re older guys who retired into writing environmental policy or whatever after 20 years in the field. Those desk-jockeys are okay. They get it. They get that standing around the bed of a truck is part of the job. They get that gloves are a fucking pain unless you’re putting fire on the ground. They get that half this job is making it through the day, and week, the 14, the burn season. These good desk jockeys understand that they’re only on the line because of bureaucracy, and they let us work and stay out of our business except to toss cold gatos to us from their trucks. My dad is a desk-jockey, now, and he gets it. But he also spent the entirety of the 70s and 80s stomping around in the trees, and this was before FEMA turned wildland firefighting into something resembling a profession. Back then, when there was a fire some guys from the local office with basically no quals jumped into an engine and tried to put it out. If things got hairy, they might call a crew, another assemblage of out-of-shape desk jockeys nudging chainsaws at brush like they’re trying to staple together a legal brief. The work still got done. The old desk jockeys are okay. The problem desk jockeys are younger: they run marathons and drive Subarus. They hold graduate degrees in ecology and monologue about forest management practices and habitat trees. They breathe down our necks.
On this, our first fire of the season, we get a desk jockey who is one of the latter. Apart from his style there’s nothing we like about this particular desk jockey. He drives around in a red truck and puts on his white calfskin gloves every time he steps out of the cab and expects everyone else to do the same. His style though. This guy looks fresh. Not a speck of dirt anywhere. Crisp yellow, crisp old school cowboy-style pants. Kyle tells me look, this guy’s rocking cowboys. Kyle and I both have our hearts set on liberating some cowboys from the cache. The first day of the season is usually the day that we steal as much stuff from the cache as possible without it actually amounting to stealing and seeming instead like we’re a little forgetful. An adept forgetter can make off with three to five MREs, at least six fusees, four bombs, and a ton of glow sticks. If you’re really good at forgetting, then maybe a pair of Nomex. This year, I plan to forget about a pair of what we call “cowboys,” which are Nomex that look like Levi’s Sta-Prest, which are pants that your grandfather probably wore, or at least both of mine did. We’re not technically allowed to wear cowboys on the line anymore so Kyle and I feel that this is a victimless crime. Sometimes the warehouse will sign out a pair of cowboys to a desk-jockey, along with one of those old yellows that look starched and fresh-pressed all the time. Starched is what we call a yellow that’s become rigid with dirt and dried sweat. The sweat leaves color-faded bands. The old yellows look this way all the time, regardless of cleanliness. Thus outfitted, a typical desk jockey also unironically wears a radio bra over his yellow. He talks into it by pressing his chin flat against his neck and twisting up the radio.
Kyle, Colton, and I are standing on the line, leaning on our tools when today’s desk jockey comes bouncing along the line in a cloud of dirt. Garrett is hiding, probably off sick in the bushes. Desk jockey pulls off into the green, a hundred yards down like he thinks he’s sneaky. He steps out and puts on his white gloves and his shiny blue pack. We watch desk jockey from inside the black. Desk jockey carries his combi-tool like a bag of groceries. I’m standing next to Kyle who says he can see his reflection in desk jockey’s gloves. Desk jockey marches towards us. He’s staying in the green, which is smart because the line is like walking on a soft beach, but uphill. The cloud of dirt from desk jockey’s truck drifts past. Kyle spits and says I guess I’ll go talk to him; look busy. Doing what, I ask. Fucking anything, says Kyle.
Kyle steps onto the line and more or less slides down to desk jockey. Colton stands over a stump hole with his tool in one hand, scraping some cold black from the edge of the hole. Asses and elbows Colton I say and worm headfirst into the stump hole until my pack catches on the roots. I yell to Colton that I’m all hung up on the stump. He tells me that’s what I get for working. Colton loops his Pulaski into my pack straps and pulls until I’m able to stand up. I’m covered in grey paste.
Kyle and desk jockey walk up the line. Kyle crosses the line and desk jockey follows him. Kyle takes long strides and when he reaches us, he turns to face downhill. Desk jockey is red-faced. He sucks on a plastic water bottle that he pulls from a belt pouch. Water spills down his chin, onto his yellow and the dirt sticks there. Kyle tells desk jockey that we’re securing the area. Desk jockey nods and wipes his brow with his white glove. He looks at me and Colton and asks us how we like firefighting. I twist my boot-heel into the ground. Highlight of my life, I say. Colton shifts his chew from left to right, says it’s fucking hella badass. Desk jockey says awesome and turns back down the hill. He walks like a horse in snow.
At the bottom of the hill, desk jockey gets into his truck. We don’t hear it start but we see the tires spin in the loose dirt as desk jockey tries to turn uphill. The truck pauses. The dust starts to blow towards us and the truck creeps backwards. The back tire sinks into the berm. The truck stops again. I backhand a bottle from the side of my pack and take a sip. Desk jockey steps out and walks around the truck and stands by the back tires. Oh, he’s just gonna go for it, says Kyle. The tires spin again and the truck drifts backwards and sideways, dirt flying from both axles. I tell Colton that desk jockey’s got my outfit. Colton says he doesn’t get why I’m obsessed with the old uniform. Kyle tells Colton that he doubts his NASCAR shirts are gonna get him laid. I only did this job for the boots and the uniform, says Kyle, if we’re gonna look like shit all summer, we might as well look like hot shit. We hear something behind us and turn and there’s Garrett doubled over in the bushes, retching out last night’s Keystone Ice into an ash pile.
I remember the dumbest things.
In a 1952 film dramatization of the Mann Gulch fire, a radio operator calls for Cliff Mason. Missoula to Cliff Mason. Cliff Mason do you copy? When Cliff Mason doesn’t copy, and after two fire lookouts call in a second lightning fire encircling the smokejumper’s original drop zone, the supervisor of the Missoula Jumpers takes a helicopter to find his crew. In the film, we watch the helicopter approach from a vantage within the burn. The helicopter disappears behind the smoldering husk of a tree. From the helicopter the supervisor spots a body in the white ash. The helicopter lands, and the supervisor walks to the body. It’s not a man but a deer. He continues through the burn. Smoke obscures the picture and flames shimmer on the edges of the screen. After a while he finds the sole of a boot. This part isn’t strictly accurate. Why would the leather upper burn, leaving behind the rubber sole? And why no body attached to the boot? A few steps later he finds a Smith-Indian backpack pump. Then, a Pulaski head, the handle burned clean away.
Colton flips his Jeep while hot-rodding around a corner by the ORV park and even in four-wheel he hit the edge and the tires sink in and pivot him around and over down the embankment. Or so I heard. It’s the same road that we take up to our party spot, where we’d all been on the night before our first fire call. Garrett likes to drive up in his silver Acura with the blacked-out windows and Colton gave Lizzie a ride because I guess he was in love with her. Garrett swears he drives better after a few drinks. He drove up sober and drove back after consuming the better part of a gallon of Carlo, which he carried looped on his pinky and when he drank it, he cradled the bottle on the top of his elbow and lifted from his shoulder. I remember Colton didn’t drink a thing because he’d driven up with Lizzie and I think he knew better. I sat next to Colton, and he tried to tell me about NASCAR. He had a huge dip in and whenever he spoke, I smelled mint and salt.
Some people on horses call in the wreck. Colton had dusted out these people and spooked the horses, who danced around on the road. Maybe then Colton twisted against his seatbelt and yelled sorry dude didn’t see you and maybe then he turned further and saw the horses shimmying in the dust, the long shadows, and tapped the brakes. And maybe one of the riders yelled fuck you and then oh fuck as the jeep rolled over its front axle and the horses raised their heads and bared their teeth and spun the riders away. Then the horses went still and the riders dismounted and walked to the edge.
I see the notification on my screen while laying on my dorm room floor and all I can think is something stupid like why him and not me. I hear the details from Garrett, who wasn’t there but heard it all from his dad, the county sheriff. A few weeks later I find a YouTube video of Lizzie wearing one of Colton’s NASCAR shirts and see in the description that she’s singing a song that she wrote for him. I exit the window and close my laptop without clicking play.
Harrison F. Dietzman worked for six years as a wildland firefighter with the Washington State Department of Natural Resources. He lives in Portland, Oregon with his partner, the poet Alisha Dietzman, and their two rescue cats, Frank Stanford and Ishmael. His writing appears in or is forthcoming from SARKA, The Point, Guernica, Soft Union, and elsewhere.
Header photo by Enrique, courtesy Pixabay.
