Page 49 of Stuck With the Smokejumper

“Hale!” Someone's calling my name from the truck. “We're moving.”

I don't get to watch it go through. I shove the phone in my pocket and go. I tried to reach Ivy. That's what I hold onto as we pull out.

The new section is as remote as advertised. Steep terrain, heavy timber, nothing around us but fire crews and the work in front of us. It's demanding in the way remote assignments are, longer hours, harder logistics, everyone stretched a little thinner because there's more ground to cover and fewer people to cover it. Even the radio traffic sounds different out here, more clipped, more essential, nobody wasting words.

I'm not thinking about my phone most of the time. Between the physical work and the operational tempo, my attention stays where it needs to be. But whenever there's a lull, even a short one, Ivy crosses my mind, unbidden.

Before things get too deep into our new assignment, Reid and I make sure our status gets passed back through the right channels. Not a personal message. An operational update, relocated within the incident, remaining with Granite Creek, limited personal communication expected, otherwise fine. Someone confirms they'll pass it along to Blackpine.

That's the appropriate way to handle it. But I know it doesn't move as fast as I'd like it to, not on a busy incident where everyone's juggling a dozen things at once.

It's well past dark, before I get a real break. I pull my phone out mostly on reflex. Still nothing. No bars. No service icon at all. I check the message I sent to Ivy earlier.

Not Delivered.

It never went through. She never got the warning. I try to resend it. Nothing happens. I walk a few yards in either direction, phone held up like that's ever solved anything. I get the same result both times. No signal. No explanation the phone can give me beyond a small, useless spinning icon.

There's nothing dramatic about this. No emergency. No danger. Just geography and timing working against me at the worst possible moment, and nothing I can do about it from here.

I know Ivy understands wildfire work. She's spent years around this kind of unpredictable silence, watching Reid disappear for days at a time with no explanation beyond the job itself. Logically, she knows all the reasons this happens.

But I also remember her on the porch, rain coming down around us, telling me this felt different. I remember what she told me right before that. At pretending not to worry. I know what that means now, in a way I didn't fully understand until this moment. It means she's good at looking calm. It doesn't mean the worry isn't there underneath it.

I don't have a way to fix that from where I'm standing. Radios exist for the job, not for calling home, and I'm not going to be the guy who ties up an operational channel because he wants to hear his girlfriend's voice. Reid and I did what we could. Blackpine will get the update. Eventually.

I hit send one more time, mostly out of stubbornness. Nothing.

seventeen

Ivy

Main Street smells like funnel cake and cut grass, and somewhere up ahead a brass band is playing a John Philip Sousa march with more enthusiasm than accuracy.

“This is incredible,” Nolan says, turning in a slow circle, trying to look at everything at once. “There are, like, three separate flag displays.”

“Four,” Dani says. “You missed the one on the gazebo.”

Silver Creek does the Fourth of July properly. Bigger than Timber Creek, but still small enough that half the crowd seems to know each other, kids darting between booths with flags painted on their cheeks, somebody's dog wearing a tiny star-spangled bandana.

We come every year the fire calendar allows it. This year Beck and Reid were supposed to be here too, before Elk Ridge called. I don't dwell on it. I'm getting reasonably good at the not-dwelling part.

Nolan starts drifting toward a food truck advertising loaded fries the size of his forearm.

“Nope,” Dani says, catching his arm. “Church booths first.”

“Is that a rule?”

“Yes.”

Nolan looks at the rest of us for backup. Nobody gives him any, so he follows us.

“Silver Creek's churches do this every year as a fundraiser,” I tell him as we walk. “A lot of the families cooking today go back generations. When Silver Bell's mine started failing, a bunch of families moved down here instead of scattering completely. Norwegian, German, Irish, mostly. The food traditions stuck around.”

Nolan glances back over his shoulder like he's trying to connect the ghost town we hiked around a couple weeks ago to the smell of bratwurst currently filling the air. “That's kind of cool.”

We hit the Norwegian booth first, because I've been thinking about this stop since I arrived at the crew house for the season. Lefse, warm off the griddle, brushed with real butter and a generous dusting of cinnamon sugar, rolled up and handed over in wax paper that's already going translucent with grease.

I take a bite and close my eyes. “That’s so good.”