Page 83 of Air Force One
“Feels like.” He nodded toward the windows he’d sat with his back to. Outside, March was coming in just like the proverbial lion. Freezing rain slashing down out of the Bitterroots that would turn to snow in the next couple hours. “Parts for that worn retardant pump came in.”
“And you couldn’t wait for clear weather to fix it, could ya?” She tossed a coaster on the stone bar top and set a pint of Ivan the Terrible Russian-style Imperial stout on it. Patting his hand, she winked at him. “Always were a good boy, Timmy.” She made him feel about twelve, but the beer tasted just fine.
“Usual buffalo burger?” Wasn’t a local she didn’t know down to their bones.
“Maybe in a bit.”
She eased on down the bar to tease a couple of the old timers—they’d been holding down those stools since long before he’d had that first brew. Doug fir paneling, dark with age, covered the walls. Behind the bar were photos of planes new and old that had flown to fires from the nearby airport. Some t-shirts commemorating the worst fires. Even a few hardhats and fire axes hung there. But mostly were framed pictures of each summer’s team all the way back to the very first in 1940. Photos of folks he’d fought fire with and ones long buried and forgotten—except by folks like him and Jenny.
Tim closed his eyes and let the quiet seep in. The rain had pounded on his slicks all damn day until the drumming was the only sound in the whole world. But he’d gotten the damn pump running. Wouldn’t need it until June, July if they were lucky, May if they weren’t. Or sooner. There was no predicting the firefighting season anymore. That big Colorado burn where they couldn’t get water because all the lakes and rivers had frozen over. Pacific Northwest was a mess all down the Cascades for six, seven, eight months a year now. Alaska had started their first burn in April last year, not July. California never stopped burning at all.
He didn’t have time to move slowly. It was his job to make sure the Zulies’ air tankers, smokejumpers, and hotshots were ready when the first burn hit.
Tim shook his head to clear it and focused on the sounds of the bar. In here, there was talk, laughter, stories, and the smell of good food. This was the right speed to wind down on a cold, wet, winter’s day. For now he was warm and dry, and that felt plenty good.
“Retardant pump?” Woman’s voice. Odd accent, not much, but nowhere near Montana.
He looked over two stools. Two stools and six inches down. Had she been sitting there when he came in? If so, he musta been blind. Not a whole lot of Asian women hanging out in Missoula, Montana. Her black hair fell in lazy curls to the shoulders of her fleece vest, like she was just letting it grow. A thin slick hung on the hook under the edge of the bar. Good gear, though not much of it for a Montana March. She didn’t look like she was cold though her damp hair showed she’d been out in it.
“Yeah. Stuff we use to fight fires. A couple hundred thousand gallons of that sludge will wear a pump plenty fast. Parts were back-ordered to hell; was half afraid I’d start the season with a wonky pump.”
She was drinking a Big Sky IPA by the color. Turning half to face him, she propped her elbow on the bar and her cheek on a raised fist. “You their fix-it guy?”
“Chief cook and bottle-washer, too. At least in the off-season. Run the outfit when the season’s on.”
She widened those up-turned narrow eyes for just long enough to see they were darkest brown, not black like he’d first thought. “When are tryouts?”
He laughed.
She didn’t. A slight smile tugged at her lips, like she wasn’t laughing with him or at him but found something else entirely different kinda funny. It made a man notice her face; her damn nice face that went fine with that nice hair. He couldn’t pin her age but there was something in that gaze that made him revise his estimate well upward. It was a look he’d seen in some of his best crew.
“Did you serve?” He himself hadn’t, but he’d learned to appreciate the skills and drive that a person picked up from doing military time.
“Long time. Done now.”
Didn’t look old enough for that long time to be true. Except maybe those eyes.
“You got a card?”
She fished out a wallet and set her card on the bar top. It was a simple white Incident Qualification Card that everyone called a Red Card because of the red letters on the section headings. Under Qualified Positions it had just one entry: FFT2.
“Firefighter Type 2? You a newbie? The Zulies aren’t a beginner’s outfit. Top crew in the US all battle for a slot with us.”
She tucked the card away, sipped her beer, then rested her cheek back on her raised fist. “So teach me.”
This time when he laughed, she smiled along at the joke. Steady. Didn’t take offense easily. That was one key factor. “You got sticking power?” That was another.
“Till the end.” It was a voice that said she knew exactly what that meant and reminded him of the chill rain slashing against the windows. The hardest thing to teach a civilian was that you didn’t stop until the fire was beat—no matter how many days or weeks it fought back, you did not stop. He couldn’t doubt her words, not with that tone.
“Why forest fire?”
She stared somewhere way beyond the beer taps before answering. “I was up in remote mountains one time—not like these, really remote. Didn’t understand that too much of my life had been in the city until that moment.”
More remote that the Bitterroot Wilderness? That seemed unlikely. Then he noticed how her expression shifted and knew he’d just picked up a trainee. Every wildland firefighter knew that look. It had a lot of different names: Nature’s Call, Call of the Wild, Tree Lover, Earth Warrior. Didn’t matter what you called it; it was the key factor in any wildland firefighter because the pay certainly didn’t compensate for the risk and pain. But she had it—the mad passion for the wilderness.
“Got a lot of gear needs sorting and fixing.”
Her shrug said that menial work didn’t bother her.
