Smoke Jumper

It was nigh on noon when the smoke jumpers came. They plummeted in pairs on each pass of the plane, their bodies jolting as the parachutes cracked open and filled and left them floating like medusas in an ocean of sky. Now and then the chutes masked the sun that flared harsh and white and unforgiving behind them, making shadows of their downward drift on the veil of smoke that shrouded the mountainside. They were a crew of six men and two women and every one of them landed safely in the jump spot, a narrow clearing not forty yards wide. They shed their parachutes and jumpsuits and stowed them, then unpacked their chainsaws and pulaskis and shovels from bags that were dropped separately and soon they were ready to start cutting a fire line. The peak that watched over them while they worked was called Iron Mountain. Its western shoulder was thickly forested and had no ready access by road. The fire had been spotted by a ranger that morning and, fanned by a strengthening westerly, had already taken out more than a hundred acres. If it continued to head east or switched to the north there was little risk. But to the south and west there were ranches and cabins and if the wind shifted they would be in grave danger, which was why the call had come for the smoke jumpers. They cut their line along a limestone ridge that ran along its southern flank. The line was a yard wide and half a mile long. They worked in waves, keeping a good ten feet apart, sawyers first, then the swampers to clear the felled trees and branches, then the diggers. They sawed and hacked and scraped and dug until the ground was cleared to the mineral earth so that when the fire arrived it would be starved of fuel. By the time it was done, they were soaked in sweat and their yellow flameproof shirts and green pants were blotched like camouflage with earth and ash and debris. Now they were resting, each in his or her own space, some squatting, some standing, strung along the ridge like weary infantry. None spoke and but for the rumble of the fire beyond the ridge the only sound was the harsh staccato babble of their shortwave radios. Last in line, some twenty feet below the others, stood a young man with straw-colored hair that was matted and tangled with sweat. He was tall and lean and his ash-covered face was striped black like an animal's where the sweat had run. Even his pale blue eyes looked somehow feral. He had set his pack and hardhat beside him on a slab of rock and was carefully wiping clean the steel head of his pulaski. When he had it gleaming he leaned the shaft against the pack and took off his fire gloves and laid them on the rock too, then dragged his hands through his hair and wiped his brow and unhitched his canteen. He was twenty-six years old and his name was Connor Ford and though he was tired and sweaty and dirty and his lungs were sore from the smoke, there was nowhere in the world he would rather have been. It was his first jump of the season. Squatting in the doorway of the DHC-6 Twin Otter a few hours earlier, watching forest and mountain and canyon tilt as if unhinged from the earth fifteen hundred feet below and seeing the blue and white and yellow canopy tops of those who had jumped before him drifting down and away, he had felt something not far short of ecstasy. And then the slap on his left shoulder from the spotter telling him to go and the leap into blue infinity, tucking himself in and counting to five and then the jolt as the chute snapped open and there he was, suspended in that wondrous arc of silence, neither man nor bird but something of sky and flesh and earth combined. The water in his canteen tasted warm and metallic. It was only the end of May but it felt like high summer and Connor figured the temperature had to be well into the nineties. It had barely rained all year and the air was as dry as tomb dust. If things kept on this way it was going to be one hell of aEvans, Nicholas is the author of 'Smoke Jumper' with ISBN 9780385334037 and ISBN 0385334036.