Set Me Alight (3 page)

I had arrived at the forests service building. I convinced myself it was purely by accident. I was just "out for a walk." I started to snoop around the building, looking inside the window. It looked like there was only one person inside. I guess that kind of made sense, though. It's not like they're going to make everyone work in the God damned lobby viewable from the outside. This is it, I thought, I'm going in. I had five seconds to work up my courage. If I turned tail and ran, only one homely looking old lady was going to see me in my humiliation. Not a huge dint to my pride, but enough to have made it sting a little. I opened the door and stepped inside. I walked up to the old lady and said, “Hi, I'm here to see Paul. Is he in today?”

“Hold on one minute. Please have a seat over there.”

This was going to be just great. I was going to sit there and wait with my thumb up my ass only to find out she'd never heard of anyone named Paul. If there was one thing I could always count on, it was that nothing ever worked out for me. Regret and disappointment. That was all I'd ever have in my miserable life. Maybe one day I could experience hope and fulfillment and a sense of accomplishment. Probably at the same time I experienced the sweet release of death.

“Hey there, kid, have you decided to take up my offer?”

“Yes.”

Chapter 2

Paul was one tough bastard. Every day we'd be up by sunrise, every night we were up to nearly midnight. Three square meals a day, and absolutely, positively, no drinking. ‘Square meals’ might be a bit of an overstatement. I ate a bit of cornmeal sludge and some beans three times a day. Every now and then we threw in something green if we could find it. Well, mostly green with a decent amount of yellow and brown. There was even the rare occasion we'd get to eat some real meat. We just needed to hope we find something dead on the side of the road to do so. Certainly much better than what I was eating before Paul. Living with Paul had made me realize that I must have been getting around three quarters of my daily calories from alcohol. I no longer got to look forward to chugging some cheap whiskey that burns all the way down to my stomach as though I swallowed a lit acetylene torch. Three meager servings of over boiled cornmeal and mushy beans was what brought light to my days then. That's what I told myself anyway.

My life really had turned around since Paul took me in. I lived in a house. Well, as much as what you can call something a house in those days. When I was a kid we would've called Paul's home a ‘shack’, and a pretty run down one at that. There were four wooden walls, a roof, and a floor that was not made from dirt. It was pretty sturdy, or at least sturdy enough for us to suspend two narrow hammocks. There wasn't enough space in the place for the two of us to live in and also have beds. All of the furniture folded up, and in total there were two chairs and one small table. The only source of heat and ability to warm up our meals was a makeshift brazier. It looked like a 50 gallon steel drum that had been torn in half and then propped up on three cinder blocks. Every time I had to reach in to grab the food it became a tetanus risk, having to avoid cutting open my arms on some jagged rusty edge that was sticking out. Between the brazier and the insulation blankets Paul had nailed to the wall, the place stayed surprisingly warm, and was a huge fire risk. I guess having a trained firefighter and a firefighter-in-training helped to mitigate that risk somewhat. We were mostly through spring at that point, but I think that was the first winter where I was able to feel my toes at any point during it.

The training Paul had been giving me didn't seem to have a whole lot to do with actual firefighting, but then again, what the hell did I know? The first step he had me take was quitting all my vices. No drinking, no smoking, no whoring, no being a dumb ‘down on my luck’ kid who blamed the rest of the world for all of my problems. Paul hadn’t been all that successful at the last one, but I can't fault him for trying. Everything else though had worked. I tried to convince Paul that, if I'm going to be working around smoke, I should toughen up my lungs by smoking burning ash on a regular. Just a cigarette or two a day would suffice He didn't take too kindly to that. His ‘punishment’ for all of my grievances was a disappointed look on his face and silence for a day or two. I thought I was getting off easy at first. I was used to cane beatings that I'd get at the youth shelters I had hopped around to and from during my later adolescence. It was only a week before a day's long silence and the occasional cold, empty glare was enough to make me wish for the simplicity of corporal punishment.

The rest of my training consisted of reading some books and trying to entertain myself while Paul was at the office. The Forestry Department had no office jobs available at that moment, and certainly not enough work to warrant paying another person, so I had to wait until fire season to get a real job with them. In the mean time I had been looking for ad-hoc work maybe once or twice a week to help contribute to the food costs for Paul and myself. He could easily pay for it all with what he made, but he was beginning to rub off on me and I didn't want to feel like too much of a mooch. Anyway, there was only one book that Paul gave me that was actually about how to fight fires. It was a whole bunch of high level stuff that I didn't really understand at the time. Different technologies that were used, like airplanes and helicopters, how to dig the trenches to create fire lines, and how to survive in extreme environmental conditions. It was all great to read about, but I still wouldn't know what the hell to do if I got thrown out there right then. The book also mentioned that firefighters would work in teams, called hotshots. There would typically be about twenty people to a team, with hundreds of teams positioned all across the US. According to Paul, it would be remarkable to have a team as large as ten back then, and there were maybe fifty total spread around the country. The rest of the books were all memoirs of firefighters who I assumed were long dead, or some outdoors fantasy crap like ‘Call of the Wild’ or ‘Hatchet’. Those had been by far the most enjoyable books to waste my time reading. I was supposed to learn ‘what it takes’, mentally and physically, to be a firefighter. From what I'd read in these memoirs, the main thing I needed to learn was to become accustomed to loss.

Paul just walked through the door, back from work. He was there a bit earlier than usual.

“Office life as titillating as usual today?”

“I didn't go into the office today. I took a personal day.”

“Why's that?”

“I had to buy all of the equipment for your training”

“Great. Presents. What did you get me, some more dog-eared books?”

“No. Up to this point, I've just been slowly trying to detox you from the crap life you've been living. Now it’s time for the hard work. I've got you a good pair of boots, some toughly built clothing, a backpack, a tent, and other various tools for the outdoors.”

“What are we going to be doing?”

“We're going to be living off the land for the next few weeks. They don't really need me at the office until fire season starts, so I can manage to take the time off without affecting the department. I'm going to be teaching you survival skills. How to fish, hunt, and forage for food. How to make a fire without a lighter or match, how to build your own shelter, and how to do it all with minimal effect on Mother Nature.”

“I'm nothing but an ignorant city boy. How do you expect me to learn all that?”

“You'll have to learn, kid. If you don't, I'll let you be taken by the elements.”

“Doubtful. You’re too much of a softie for me to take that threat seriously.”

“Don't try me. You need to know all of this stuff when you're out there in the wilderness doing actual firefighting work. I've spent entire seasons without ever returning to HQ. This isn't hard stuff, kid. It's what they taught ten year olds in cub scouts for crying out loud. I think a halfway put together twenty-something can handle it.”

“Alright, alright. Calm yourself down, old man, before you have an aneurysm. You're just hitting me with a lot of stuff right now, ok?”

“Good. Get yourself ready. We leave tomorrow at dawn.”

“Not like I have anything to 'get ready'. You're the one who has all of my equipment.”

“I meant mentally kid. Get yourself a good meal, a good night's sleep, and prepare yourself for a month of physical hardship.”

“I spend my days half frozen and shoveling shit into barrels. I think I'm properly prepared for a little bit of physical hardship.”

I should have heeded the old man's advice. Begrudgingly shoveling some mining waste a few days a week hadn't done anything to prepare me for what was to come. While it was light outside, we never stopped moving. Paul always had me foraging for something. Trying to find firewood for the night, looking for plants that are edible, learning how to spot the poisonous ones, finding a fresh water source, looking for animal habitats. All the while I was carrying a pack that weighed more than I did. That wouldn’t have been so bad if the pack was full of equipment to aid in my survival, but half the weight was coming from rocks Paul put in. The extra weight from the rocks was supposed to help with my physical conditioning, and to help ‘toughen me up’ or some other nonsense Paul seemed to have made up. We never slept in the same spot either. Every day, a new location, which meant I needed to find a suitable campsite, clear it out, make sure we weren't going to accidentally light the whole forest on fire when we built the campfire, and try and find a place with natural surroundings to utilize when building our shelters. We had a tent, but Paul tried to make me construct our shelter with nothing more than a single piece of rope, and if there isn't much to work with in the area, a canvas sheet. I made lean-to's by stacking branches and leaves and moss and any other wilderness debris against the rope tied between two tress, makeshift tepees made from a couple of long branches I found lying about, and Paul even had me try to rig up this hammock between two trees with the rope and canvas. I think we made it to three in the morning before my knots gave way and we both nearly broke our tailbones after we crashed to the ground.

“You've been doing well with the shelter building, Pete. It’s about time I showed you how to make a fire without a match.”

“Shouldn't you be showing me how to put out fires, not how to start them?”

“Cut out the sass, kid. I need you to find your tools now. You're going to need a relatively thin stick. Get one as straight as you can manage. You're also going to need a big, flat piece of wood, or at least something you can make flat with your hatchet. It’s important that you get something as dry as bone. Collect some dry grass and brush for the kindling as well, then get back to me.”

The old man's instructions always got to me. It seemed simple enough, find two pieces of wood and some grass, and then bring them back. I couldn't help but think he meant something more than that. Every time I ended spending three times as much time as needed to perform the simplest of tasks he asked for. Screw it, I thought. I was going to get this task over with quickly and without any fuss. Right by our camp there was a stick, a piece of wood, and some dead grass. Done. All within a few steps from the camp.

“Good job Pete. Now, take the stick, and on one end use your knife to scrap off the bark and whittle it down to a point. Don't worry too much about making it pretty and precise. Then, take the flat piece of wood and carve a notch or a long groove into it. With the notch, put the point of the stick in it, and rub it between your hands. Keep the kindling nearby to catch any embers. With the groove, put the kindling at one end of the groove, and then start scraping up and down the groove with the pointed stick. Do whatever method suites you. It doesn’t matter. The end result should be the same. It might take a while to get anything going.”

Hours. I was at it for hours and hours and hours. My hands were blistered, and all I had accomplished was making my pieces of wood a slightly darker color of brown. ‘It might take a while.’ Thanks for the heads up Paul. He forgot to mention the constant thoughts of: “Why am I so inept? Have I become a new species that has devolved from Paleolithic man? How many boy scouts are out there right now laughing their asses off at the thought of someone with the audacity to call himself a 'man' who can't even start a fire without the use of man-made chemicals.” I gave up. I thought I wasn't made for all that survival crap. I just needed Paul to come over there and tell me what a pathetic little parasite I was. How I was never going to amount to anything in life. Once a bum, always a bum, no matter how many kind, benevolent souls like Paul and Jon tried and reach out to help me.

“Having some trouble there, kid?”

“You think?”

“You're not going to like to hear this, but this is the 'hard' way to start a fire. It's the way you see it done in movies and TV shows, except they never show you the patience and determination required to get it to work. To be honest, it’s not a method I'd ever use unless I absolutely had to, or if I'm feeling particularly masochistic that day. There are a few, somewhat easier ways to do it.”

“You’ve got to be kidding me. You're a God damned asshole, you know that Paul?”

“At the very least you learned a valuable lesson in futility, kid. Now, do you want to learn any of the other methods I know?”

“Yes, and right after that, show me how to kill an old man in his sleep without alerting him.”

“The latter's fairly simple. We're in the middle of nowhere so just do whatever you want once I pass out for the night. Now, for the fire, if you're going to rely on friction to start a fire, I'd suggest using a bow.”

“Go on, old man.”

“You already have some of the tools you need. The flat piece of wood and the stick. Now what you need is a flexible stick about as long as your arm, some string or rope, and a small flat rock or another piece of wood, preferably not that dry.”

“And what exactly am I to do with these items?”

“Take the long, flexible stick, and tie the string to either end to make a crescent shaped bow. You can use one of your shoelaces for this if you want. Then, take the stick you were using earlier to start a fire and loop it through the string of the bow. Then set the pointed end of the stick in the notch you made before, and use the flat rock to push down on the top of the stick to put pressure down into the notch. Make a sawing motion with the bow to get the stick spinning in the notch. Soon enough, you'll get an ember, and then you'll have yourself a fire. Now hurry up, you've only got about an hour of daylight left. Fortunately for you I've been collecting firewood throughout the day, so just worry about starting one for us, ok?”

“I'll do what I can, but don't expect much from me. I hope for both our sake's you have a backup plan for warmth tonight.”

Maybe it was because my expectations were already so low, but using the bow was surprisingly not that soul-crushingly difficult. It wasn't exactly what my novice self would call 'easy', but it was better than spending hours jamming and ramming and rubbing a stick against another piece of wood to no end. Finally, I had accomplished something. I had a small little glowing ember that looked like it was about to go out.