AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Uh, it is?” I couldn’t help but prompt.
She nodded, her ponytail bouncing. “Absolutely. Yesterday I took a call for the police department about someone who was trying to steal a shed. A whole shed! Only in Alaska.” She rolled her eyes. “And then, there are always the moose calls.”
Just then, her headset chimed. “I have to take this. Just fill that paperwork out sometime soon and bring it up to me. I’ll turn everything in to HR in Juneau for you. You won’t have to do a thing.”
After she hurried off, I sat down at the table, ignoring the familiar and annoying frustration that started to rise inside me. I hated paperwork. There was the typical dread of paperwork, and then there was what I experienced. It was better than it used to be, much better, but even now, whenever I began reading something it always took a minute or more for my brain to orient. It started with a jumble of words. I had reminded myself how to look at them. I would never be one of those people who could quickly scan documents.
It wasn’t until I was halfway through middle school that a more observant than average teacher noticed I was having trouble reading. I had dyslexia and letters tended to cluster together for me, or my brain would mix letters up. Before they figured out the issue for me, school was incredibly frustrating.
To this day, I remembered the meeting with that teacher and my mom. At that point, it was just my mom taking care of us. Our dad had passed away when I was barely old enough to remember him. Our parents had wanted a big family because they’d both been only children. Except they never planned for our mom to be a single mom. To this day, I sometimes wondered if my father had been there, if someone might’ve noticed sooner how much I was struggling with school. I loved my mom deeply and never doubted she loved all of us, but she’d definitely been overwhelmed. School had felt almost painful at times.
I had started to feel stupid even though I was pretty sure I wasn’t actually stupid. I was really good at math, but trying to read left me feeling confused and muddled. Wyatt had helped me. Although I never explicitly told him I was struggling, he’d seemed to know. Thanks to Miss Julie, I’d gotten the help I needed and learned how to compensate.
I still saw Miss Julie around town. Even now, years later as a grown ass man and a firefighter, she still babied me a little bit. Blessedly, I didn’t have much to fill out with the paperwork and got it done. Just as I slid the papers back into the file folder, Jack, my sister’s husband, came walking into the office. “Hey, hey!”
I glanced up. “Hey, yourself. How’s it going?”
Jack’s dark hair was damp from a shower. “Doing well. Are you ready to officially start?”
“I am.” I tapped two fingers on the file folder. “Managed to get the paperwork done. How do things roll around here? I understand from the local crew that you guys do town stuff, and training exercises in the winter. I heard the other superintendent is shifting over from the town crew. Hudson, right?” I prompted.
“Oh, yeah. You’ll like Hudson. Solid guy.” He paused and studied me quietly for a beat. “So you’re not jumping into the family business?”
It was a natural question, and I understood it. “For now, this is what I want. I like being outside. I like being in the wilderness. I don’t fit too well in an office. I’m sure I’ll reach an age where this isn’t what I want because it’ll be too hard on me. Until then, I help out when they asked me to do projects and the like, but that’s enough.”
Jack eyed me before nodding. “Makes sense. McKenna keeps telling me she doesn’t want to have to worry about me for too long. As you could probably guess, I have mixed feelings about working for your family.”
I smiled wryly. “Makes sense. McKenna will worry, no matter what you do.”
Jack chuckled. “Probably true.”
The sound of footsteps approaching reached us before Hudson Fox appeared in the doorway. He and I were the newest members of the hotshot crew. His experience with hotshot firefighting came from working on a local crew, while I was more familiar with Alaska’s landscape.
“Hey there.” He hooked his hand on the back of a chair and spun it around before he sat down and rested his elbows on the back of the chair. “We’re still short a few people, but I’m glad you’re starting next week. There are a few training things we can do, and we’re already getting some calls to help with some fires out of state,” he commented.
“With winter on the way, the snow and cold help us out up here,” Jack offered.
“On the crew up in Fairbanks, we usually did two runs down to the lower 48 to help with other fires during winter,” I said.
Hudson was quiet as he studied me. Although there was an intentness to him, he carried himself with a relaxed ease. I didn’t get any of the vibes that could occasionally pop up with men in the world of firefighting. There were those guys who were constantly jostling for dominance and trying to be in charge regardless of their role.
Hotshot crews typically had twenty-five firefighters with two superintendents and team leads. Once you were out in the wild, we had to fan out and a clear chain of command was necessary to manage the situation. Anyone who did the work had to have nerves of steel and enough confidence to put themselves in the line of fire, literally at times.
“There you guys are!” Sassy’s voice reached us as she appeared in the doorway.
Hudson glanced over his shoulder. “What’s up?” he asked.
“Well, there’s a car accident out near the glacier due to a rock slide. The town crew could use some extra help. I was hoping –” she began.
Jack, Hudson, and I were standing before she could finish. “Headed out that way,” I said.
Hudson clapped me on the shoulder as we walked down the hallway. “Welcome.”
I’d dropped my gear off yesterday, so it was a matter of minutes before we were hustling out to a truck. A few hours later, after we helped a very scared couple navigate their way up a cliff and checked them out to make sure they were okay, I headed home. Aside from a few scrapes and bruises, the rock slide had been unremarkable for the couple in the car. Their car didn’t survive, but they did because their vehicle only rolled once before landing on a conveniently located ledge.
After a quick shower back at the station, I began my walk home. I decided to stop in at the offices. I could check in with any of my siblings who happened to be around.
Or Tish, my mind taunted me lightly.
