Here & There (17 page)

Now that I had all my tools, I was ready to go. “The trick is to drop us in when the fire is still small, just a few acres or so. You dig ditches, create a burn barrier, whatever you have to do.”

“And you’d never done this before?” Glitter Girl prodded.

“Funny thing was, our inexperience actually helped.” Like I said never refute an accusation. Take the ball, slide left, and run with it. “Most of the guys came from firefighting crews. They were experts at working in a unit. Group consciousness and all that. Thing is, smoke jumping just isn’t crew based. If you think with a crew mentality, you’re dead. You have to break free and think independently. That’s what we found out on our first fire, and it’s the only reason I can tell this story tonight.”

I lost myself in thought for effect. “It started on the south side of this place called Mann Gulch, which is in the Gates of the Mountains Wilderness. Some asshole hippie campers got lost on their way to Burning Man, set up camp, got high, and started jumping the campfire in some idiotic, made-up ritual. Until one of the uncoordinated shroomers didn’t clear it and kicked fire logs every which way. And that was that. Forest fire.

“We jumped in on the north side of the gulch. Our gear was dropped, we collected it. Being the newbies, I had to hump the extra Pulaskis, and Tyler had to hump the extra O
₂
tanks. Once that was done, we were all moving ‘sidehill’ toward the river.”

Another eyebrow raise from Toby. Sidehill. I was on a roll.

“That way we could fight the fire from behind it. The problem was while we were moving down gulch, the fire jumped from the south side to the north side. It’d blown up and was spreading fast.

“Course we didn’t know any of this. There were all these ridges running down the slope, and they obscured our view of the slope. It was only when we humped over a ridge that we saw the fire only a few hundred yards off. And it was coming right at us.

“Well, we all just stood there a moment. Stunned shitless, as the fire literally roared toward us. Weirdest thing in my life, ‘cause all I could think about was how it sounded like a waterfall, like the weight of millions of gallons of water flooding toward me. Like Niagara Falls.”

I swirled the absinthe around my glass, its clear tendrils trailing behind, and took a slow slip of the licorice elixir, while the irony washed over them.

Hilary wasn’t much for paradox and asked, “So what did you do?”

“We ran for it. Fast as we could in every direction. That’s how Tyler got separated from us. By the time I realized it, a jetty of flames had already surged alongside us. I yelled and yelled, but couldn’t even hear my own screaming above the roar of the fire.

“Don’t get me wrong. It wasn’t like some dramatic scene from a movie with me shouting down the fire and mourning the loss. The heat burnt off any sense of sentiment, and fear’s a high-octane fuel. All of this only lasted maybe eight seconds, and I was hightailing it after the guy in front of me. Six of us, blinded by smoke and stinging sweat, a tsunami of
hot roiling behind us, desperate to find a rockslide or whatever, just any place without vegetation to fuel the fire.

“That’s when one of the guys came across a crevice. We had no idea where it led, but we were short of breath and terrified of suffocating. In we went. Well, four of us. The two in front had run right by it and disappeared into smoke.

“Luckily it led through one of the ridges, bought us a little breathing room so to speak. We didn’t stop though, the fire was still bellowing just over the ridge we came through, and smoke was boiling over. So we kept hauling ass across the gulch, over another ridge, and into a clearing where we had to stop.”

“’Cause you were exhausted or because the clearing was safe?” Glitter asked, all big-eyed.

“’Cause we were face to face with a trio of Tec-9s. Intratec TEC-DC9s to be exact, which I know for a fact, because I tend not to forget anything that I read on the side of a loaded gun pointed in my face.”

Toby couldn’t even raise an eyebrow. At this point he was too into the story, and wondering what the hell gunslingers were doing smack in the middle of a forest fire.

“You’re probably wondering what the hell a gang of gunslingers was doing smack in the middle of a forest fire. Well, let me tell you, so were we, until we saw the shit-shack of a barn behind them and the palettes of anti-freeze, crates of phosphorous, vats of iodine, the commercial mixer, and the drying ovens. We had stumbled onto an industrial-sized meth lab!

“A handful of Mexicans, two bikers from California, and the four of us just stood there, staring at each other. Finally, one of the Mexicans turns to a Biker and asks
, ‘policía?’
”

“Before the Biker guy could answer, I was already spouting off, ‘No.
No somos policía. Somos bomberos. No hay ningún policía aquí. No, no se preocupen.
’”

Reading the looks on my audience’s faces, I reminded them of my privileged upbringing and let them in on the fact that I got a five on my Spanish Language AP.

“The Bikers confirmed my assertion that we were firefighters, not policemen, but they still weren’t sure whether to shoot us or not. That’s when I started explaining that shooting us would be overkill because in a few minutes the Diablo was going to be riding over that ridge on hell itself and kill us all if we didn’t haul ass.

“In spite of our urgings and the constant smell of smoke, they were pretty resistant to letting us just pass through, and even more stubborn about leaving themselves. That’s until one of the Bikers accompanied me for a brisk jaunt up the ridge for a nicer view.

“The conflagration had picked up speed and was surging across the gulch. He took one look, turned to me, and asked if we could get them out.

“See, all they had was their two bikes. But the Mexicans had the guns. The trucks only came for pickups and delivery, i.e. no escape truck. It was set up this way to incentivize production and minimize distraction.

“They had built this dirt road, however. The bikers were trying to map out an escape route. It seemed like our best out, except for the fact that it still ran right through the forest and was lined with the biggest fucking conifers the dealers could twist the road under. It had been built for cover, not convenience. They had been more worried about helicopter and satellite surveillance than speed. If we went that way, it’d be like running ‘round the rim of nature’s Roman candle.”

“So what did you do?” Glitter asked.

“I suggested we light an escape fire. The Plains Indians used to use this technique to escape grass fires. Before the wildfire gets to you, burn a wide swath of land yourself. Once it’s burned out, you huddle in the center of your razed piece of ground, and fire flows right around you. Can’t burn what’s already burnt.”

Toby’s hand slipped down to Glitter Girl’s sparkling ass.

“The bunch of them thought that was the funniest thing they had heard all week. Thought I was joking—starting a fire to escape a fire—until they saw the look on my face. Then went off on how there’s no way in hell they were lighting anything on fire. The whole place had been built to keep shit from blowing up, and they’d be fucked if they were going to burn down anything, not with all the ice they had made just sitting there, and certainly not the factory where they do all their cooking,
pendejo
!

“I pointed out it was either going to be us, or the wildfire, the only question was whether we were in the barbeque or not. Far as we were concerned, who ‘lit the match’ could be our little secret.

“Well, they just blinked at us a few moments. One of my buddies pointed out that the fire would slow down a little at the top of this last ridge, give us a little time, but that we had to move fast.

“Finally, the Biker who’d gone with me to the top of the ridge asked, ‘Will it work?’”

I sipped my absinthe, enjoyed the licorice-flavored burn.

“I told him it beat the hell out of me, but it was our only option. A little creative destruction might just save our collective asses.

“That’s when another jumper, a dude called Dodge Wags, let slip that escape fires were only really used in grasslands ‘cause timber burns too slowly to consume the fuel before the main fire shows up.

“Well, the Mexicans and Bikers all turn toward me, in one collective motion like some comedic relief moment in an action flick, and glare.

“’Yeah,’ I said, ‘But that’s only because no one in a forest fire has ever had a thousand pounds of white phosphorous!’ and I pointed to the sealed plastic industrial buckets piled inside the barn.

“Apparently, the Bikers and their partners had evolved beyond their old tried and true methods using Adam’s Catalyst as a reducing agent. Probably ‘cause the DEA slapped down all these restrictions on the necessary chemicals. Nope, these boys had gone patriotic and implemented the ‘Red, White, and Blue Process’: red phosphorus, white pseudoephedrine, and blue iodine.”

“I thought you said white phosphorous,” Glitter Girl interrupted.

Hilary nodded in agreement with her.

“I did. But you can’t really go around and buy a ton of red phosphorous without raising some eyebrows. So you use white phosphorous to make red. Just heat it up to about five hundred degrees, and it transmogrifies nicely. What you got to realize is that white phosphorous is not just an incendiary. It’s like a weapons-grade-the-military-has-been-using-since-World-War-I incendiary. Reacts with oxygen and once it’s ignited, it burns quick and fierce.

“And they fucking knew it. The Biker tossed a glance at their sealed buckets of phosphorous and nodded with a
yeah, that’ll work
. And that was that. We all put on protective gloves, grabbed a bucket, and as quickly and as carefully as we could, we started dusting the place with it like we were laying out flour for a three-hundred-yard cookie.

“To light it off, though, we needed to get upwind, ‘cause it smokes like a green puppy on a bonfire. Upwind, however, put us right between the factory we were about to blow up, and the wildfire now at the top of the ridge. We were between a molten-lava rock and a hot place. But what else could we do?”

At that, Toby gave Glitter’s ass a nice squeeze for comfort.

“Halfway up the ridge we hid behind some random boulders, staring up at the burning ridge, lit a couple Molotov cocktails, tossed them downhill, leaned back, and stared up at the burning ridge.

“It sounded like a million bottle rockets going off at first, and then came the thunder when the ether detonated. No shit, the heat and shockwave from the explosion actually pushed the wildfire back . . . for a moment. It only turned the wildfire on, and as soon as it pulled back, that thing surged down the ridge ready to play.

“Leaning around the boulder we watched this thick blob of smoke roll downwind. In its wake was a circle of scorched earth three hundred yards in diameter. No barn, no machinery, just blackness where there had been white. It was the sweetest, most beautiful oasis any of us had ever seen.

“We hunkered down right in the center of it. Laid down our aluminum and fiberglass fire shelters like blankets, and had a picnic by the light of hell rising up around us and burning the rest of the gulch down.

“I’d say we had jumped in a little after four in the afternoon. We had gathered our scattered cargo by five. Probably wasn’t till about quarter to six that we had seen the fire coming. By six thirty we were sitting inside our charcoal circle.

“Apparently, the fire had caught up with our other two guys, the ones who had gone on ahead and missed the crevice, at around six fifteen. At least that’s how we judged it. That’s when their wristwatches were stopped by the heat.”

I took another sip of absinthe. Cupped in my tongue and inhaled tightly, making it bubble. Toby taught me this a while back, called it “smoking” vodka. It burned like orange juice on a canker sore, but the buzz just flew to your head. I let it flutter around a little, while my audience took a breather from my Promethean tale.

Finally, one of the girls, I have no idea which one, but one of them I’m sure, asked about Tyler. I swallowed down the mouthful of licorice liquid and let my buzz settle down on a branch of thought. I had laid the bait, and I had waited, and my moment rose to the surface and bit hard.

“Either of you bought a ski jacket recently?” They didn’t know what to do with this seemingly random question, but finally Toby’s ornament nodded yes and said something or other about Aspen. Of course.

“A nice one or just some puffer coat?” I already knew the answer, but I figured I’d play a little with the Aspen ski bunny. She assured me it was high end, Spyder and what not. Latest Gore-Tex coating, blah blah. I nodded and finally interrupted, asking if she had noticed a piece of hardware sewn into the lining of a pocket.

She cocked her head at an angle, a beagle with glitter eye shadow.

I didn’t wait for an answer. Went right on about how all the newest jackets have an avalanche rescue system sewn into them now. A small transponder that’s easily detected by a rescue team in case you happen to get buried under eight feet of snow.

“That’s what that is?” the beagle barked. “I just thought it was some, you know, store security tags they staple to clothes so you don’t steal them.”

“Anyhow,” I went on, “we had the exact same device sewn into our fireman’s jackets. That’s how we found the first two guys. Finding Tyler took us a little more time. We backtracked to where we separated and started walking around in circles until our devices started pinging.