Page 2 of Into the Fire

The loft housed the parachutes. It smelled of canvas and sewing-machine oil. Nash Coyle stood at the long bench with one laid out its full length, running his hands down the lines. He was forty-six, lean, with gray hair brushing his collar.

Nash was our loft foreman, which meant every chute that left Silvertip had his name on it. He was the only man left at Silvertip who’d known Dante as long as I had.

“Plane’s fueled,” he said without looking up. “Cargo chutes are staged. We get a call, I’m spotting.”

The spotter is the man in the plane’s door who picks the spot and says go. There were two other men on the base qualified to do it.

“Good.”

“Unless you want somebody else.”

“I don’t.”

He nodded. “Regional sent Vega’s requalification packet. I need to see him on Thursday for gear. Do I handle it the same as anybody else?”

I looked at him. He waited.

“Same as anybody else.”

Marty Keene had run Operations for twelve years and might as well have been installed with the wiring. Every call came through him. He had his reading glasses pushed up into what was left of his hair and a phone against his shoulder.

“No. No. Tuesday. No, Ray.” He hung up. “Fuel delivery. They had us down for today.”

“We don’t need it.”

“I know that. Ray knows that. Tuesday apparently means something different in Helena.” He handed me a page from the printer. “Dry lightning on the west side after two. Wind picking up around three.”

Dry lightning is a storm that throws strikes and doesn’t bring enough rain to put them out. In August, with the timber so dry, one strike in the wrong patch could have us on the plane before dinner.

“Keep everyone close.”

“Already told them. I’ve got the plane on standby from noon.” He turned back to the printer. “Nash gets his manifest when Gus Hollis stops changing the saw teams every time he has a feeling. I sent you an email about it.”

“I’ll read it.”

“Preferably before September.” The printer finished. He stapled the pages. “I cleaned out Dante’s old locker last night. Forty-one. Same as before. Figured he’d want it.”

Forty-one. I hadn’t forgotten.

“You didn’t have to do that.”

“No.” He dropped the pages in a tray. “Did it anyway.”

The phone rang. He picked it up. “Silvertip, Keene.” Then, to me, with his hand over the mouthpiece: “Go away. I’m too busy to talk.”

I left, checking everything I’d already checked. At ten minutes to ten, I was in the ready room, waiting.

It was the oldest building on the base, cinder block painted green, with a corkboard by the window holding five years of crew photos. A board on the far wall had today’s rotation in my handwriting. It listed who goes out first if the phone rings. My name was at the top.

The table under the window was the same table.

I remembered Dante laughing when I kissed him. We’d spent two seasons being friends and nearly as long pretending that was all it was. The night before Carson Ridge, we’d stopped pretending. He said we’d figure the rest out when we got home.

He came home concussed, with our crew boss dead and a story about the fire that nobody could make fit. He asked me to believe him. I asked him a question instead.

He was gone before that fall’s snow. I’d run the base since.

I straightened a clipboard on the table that didn’t need straightening. A truck came up the base road. I knew the sound of every truck of ours, and that one was different.