Page 2 of Bronx

We traveled another mile, all of us too worn out to share much conversation. Shade was at a minimum on this side of the mountain, but we finally turned a curve that was cool and protected from the sun's harsh rays by a steep, sheer side of rock.

"Check for rattlers before you set your sorry asses down on any of those boulders," Mixx reminded.

"Sure thing, ma," King said, adding in a weak salute.

"All right, someone give King some water," Mixx suggested. "He's getting the grumpies."

"Fuck off, Mixx. I'm not grumpy. Just how many times have we been up in these snake infested hills? We know there are damn rattlers up here. We probably know that better than anyone else on the whole fucking planet, including the snakes themselves."

Angus stomped over and shoved his canteen toward King. "Mixx is right. You're grumpy."

"You can fuck off too," King grumbled as he begrudgingly took hold of the canteen and gulped down the water.

I found my perch, a fallen log, snake and red ant free from my vantage point. I let the heavy pack slide off my shoulders. It landed with a thud, kicking up a fair amount of gritty dust. I could still taste the faint remnants of smoke in my charred throat. My shirt was plastered to my back with sweat. The faint breeze blew against my wet skin giving me a moment of relief from the brutal heat.

King trudged over with his pack and let out a loud groan as the heavy load fell off his shoulders. The sound sent several birds skittering from a nearby Manzanita shrub. He plopped down next to me and stretched out his legs. I followed. My legs felt like wet noodles, ready for a rest and ready to be off this damn mountainside. Like every other inch of us, our boots were caked with ashes and dirt.

Mixx pulled out his satellite phone for another text. "Yeah, we've got time, so we might as well rehydrate. I've still got trail mix in my pack if anyone needs some food energy."

King shifted his eyes my direction for a second. "He's like the world's most peppy camp counselor. How does he still have energy? I feel like I've got a pile of bricks connected to each ankle."

"Maybe it's all that trail mix," I muttered.

He elbowed me. "So are you going to the one year memorial?"

I leaned a little away from him, one, to show him I was annoyed and two, because he was beginning to reek like something that got dragged out of a swamp. "Why the hell wouldn't I go?" My tone could not have been interpreted as anything but pissed.

"Jeez, don't get yourself in a twist. It's a perfectly legitimate question. We all know that you and Bulldozer had—had differences. Or maybe you forgot the fist fight that left both of you with black eyes and you with three broken ribs."

"That was—just an off day." I thought about the day when Bulldozer and I came to blows. I hadn't seen it coming and I wasn't entirely sure I'd deserved it. Or maybe I had. He outweighed me by fifty pounds and had been a boxing champion in high school so I was on the losing end. He could be such an asshole. He had been a damn good firefighter and I trusted him as a teammate, but it didn't erase the fact that he was an asshole. "He treated Layla like shit, and it really tore me up. If I had a—"

King smiled. His skin was so dark from the ashes and dirt, his teeth looked neon white. "Ah ha, go ahead, buddy, spit it out."

"Forget it. Just forget it. I'm going to the memorial. Bulldozer, for all his faults, he was one of us. It hasn't been the same without him, and that day on the East Fork fire—fuck, none of us will ever forget it."

King kicked absently at some loose dirt. "Yeah, worst day of our careers."

I was relieved we'd dropped the subject of my contentious relationship with Adam Rafferty, or, Bulldozer, as we'd always called him. The guy could bulldoze through a cluster of burning trees, swinging his Pulsaki like fucking Paul Bunyan.

The topic had conjured up other memories, including one in particular. One I needed to get out of my head. "Hey, do you remember Millie Price? Robbie's mom?"

King chuckled. "Look who's bringing up our childhood. Sure I do. Poor thing was always late bringing Robbie to school. She'd be dragging him along, spitting on her finger and trying to tame down that spike of hair on the back of his head as she hurried him to class. What the heck brought her to mind?"

I shook my head as if it had just been random. Only it wasn't. "You know how those really shitty days stay with you, crystal clear, like the day Bulldozer died? Well, the opposite is true, you know?"

"Not following you but then I'm grumpy and dehydrated according to my crew mates."

I ignored the mix of sarcasm and self-deprecation and continued. "Admittedly, perfect moments are rare, but I can always recall, with detail, no matter how short the duration, whenever everything seemed amazingly right. Millie Price was part of one of those memories. It was one of those extra cold days in Westridge."

King scoffed. "When wasn't it extra cold?"

"Yeah, well this was the day of the fifth grade track meet, and even though the thermometer was dipping down to zero, the teachers decided not to cancel. I had those shitty secondhand running shoes. My toes were basically sitting in the wide open. That same week, my mom's car had to be repaired and the fridge was basically empty so no breakfast. Then I got in trouble in third period just before lunch—"

"Seemed to happen to you a lot," King commented.

"Looks who's talking. Principal Harrison used to tell you he was going to have your name painted on one of the chairs in detention."

"That's right, he did, didn't he?" King beamed with pride about it.

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