Page 82 of Stuck With the Smokejumper

Back at the crew house, there's no drawn-out goodbye to get through. Bags are already packed, truck already loaded. I'm grateful for that. Waiting for someone to leave is sometimes worse than the actual leaving.

I hug Reid, tell him to be careful. Then Beck. “Call me when you can,” I say.

“I will.” He kisses me, and then, easy, like it's the simplest thing in the world now: “Love you.”

“Love you too.” It doesn't feel ceremonial. It's just true, plain as anything.

They climb in. The engine starts. Everyone waves from the porch. Just as they pull out, Nolan raises the Bigfoot caller one last time and lets it rip, a final, ridiculous honk trailing them down the road. He looks thoroughly satisfied with himself.

The others start drifting back toward the house, laughing about it, but I stay where I am, watching the truck get smaller, until it disappears around the bend.

I don't know when I'll see him again. Maybe he'll get another break. Maybe fire season will finally settle down. Maybe the next time really will be October ninth, in a room full of people who came to watch me finish something I've worked years toward.

I don't know.

But it’s okay.

Because there's nothing I wish I'd said. No question left about whether any of this is real. I love him. He loves me. Whatever happens between now and when he comes back, we'll keep trying.

thirty-two

Beck

October

By late September, I stopped believing anyone who said fire season was almost over.

August ended. September started. Everyone kept predicting things would wind down soon, dry conditions easing, resources getting released. Instead, September just kept going, hot and dry enough that new starts kept popping up right when it seemed like things might finally slow. Every time somebody said “should be wrapping up soon,” another assignment came through, and Reid and I packed up and went wherever we were needed next.

I'm tired in a way that’s not about any single day but instead is about an entire season stacked on top of itself. Reid's the same. Everybody on our crew is running on fumes at this point, counting down toward release like it's the only thing keeping anyone upright.

Ivy and I have made it through two months of this. Not easily. Texts when I've had service, sometimes a whole string of them all at once after days of nothing. Phone calls when the timing lined up, usually short, usually me half-asleep and her mid-thesis-crisis, both of us just glad to hear the other's voice. Photos. Updates. A few nights when I got back to base with enough energy left to actually talk, and she told me everything, her committee, her revisions, whatever she was agonizing over.

It hasn't been easy. It's also never once been in question. We're two people in love figuring out how to stay that way through an inconvenient set of circumstances.

I know more about her fall than I probably should, given how little actual time we've spent together. Blackpine's season ended for her back in early September. She's been in Missoula since, buried in thesis revisions, prepping her defense, practicing the same section of her presentation on the phone with me more than once, even though I understood maybe sixty percent of the actual science. I listened anyway. I know how hard she's worked for this.

October ninth has been sitting in my head since that Sunday lunch at the Grangers'. I told her I'd try. I meant it. But as the season stretched further into fall with no clear end in sight, trying started looking less and less like something within my control.

Ivy never made me feel guilty about that. A couple weeks ago she told me, plainly, “It's okay if you can't make it.” She meant it too. She'd be disappointed. So would I. But she understands the job better than most people ever will.

Then, three days ago, our supervisor gave us the news. Season's done. Released as of the eighth.

My first thought wasn't sleep, though I need it. Wasn't Colorado, wasn't gear, wasn't anything practical at all.

I found Reid loading gear a few minutes later. “We can make it.”

He didn't ask what I meant. Just looked at me for a second, something knowing in his expression. “You weren't the only one invited, you know.”

“I'm aware.”

“Just checking.”

We didn't call Ivy. Until three days ago, I didn't know if I could make it, and there wasn't much point telling her something that might not hold. Now it’s holding, and something about showing up unannounced feels better than a phone call that couldn't do the moment justice. We coordinate the practical details through Reid and Ivy’s parents, make sure we know where to be and when.

Ivy has no idea we’re coming.

The landscape has changed completely since early August. Gold and rust instead of green, cottonwoods along the rivers already half-bare, snow visible on the higher peaks we pass. The summer that brought me to Blackpine is genuinely, unmistakably over. I think about the last time I saw Ivy in person, standing outside the crew house watching us pull away, neither of us knowing when we'd see each other again.