The Smoke Jumper Read online

  And then, three days after Julia’s twelfth birthday, he dropped the bombshell and vanished from their lives. Her mother almost went crazy with grief and had never really gotten over it. She loved him to this day, even though it turned out that the woman for whom he’d left her was only the latest in a string of them, stretching back almost to the year they’d gotten married. Her mourning for her dead marriage was so intense and crippling that in some odd way the roles of mother and daughter seemed to get swapped around. Julia spent the next two or three years comforting and looking after her and in the process managed to ignore the fact that she too had suffered a bereavement just as shocking.

  As to the effect this might have had on her subsequent attitude to men in general, she had something of a blind spot. It didn’t seem to make her either hate them or mistrust them. If anything, she just pitied them a little for the primitive waves that seemed to surge uncontrollably through their lives, particularly when they reached what her mother called ‘a certain age.’ She knew, in an academic way, the classic effect that paternal desertions were supposed to have on a young woman: by rights she would end up marrying some boring, recycled fifty-year-old father figure trying to suck in his stomach and hide his bald patch. Luckily (knock on wood), the allure of such men still eluded her, though sometimes she wondered if her engagement to the prematurely middle-aged Michael was a first scary symptom.

  She had been thinking a lot about her father lately and mainly because of Skye who, she knew, had suffered a similar desertion. Julia had tried on a couple of occasions casually to broach the subject. But it was clearly as taboo as every other subject. Skye didn’t talk about anything. She had reached rock bottom and the time had come to do something about it.

  Julia was lying on her back in her sleeping bag, looking at the moon and listening. For the last hour or so a pair of owls had been talking to each other, one behind her up in the forest and the other somewhere away across the valley. It was starting to get on her nerves. Earlier she’d heard coyotes yipping and a few minutes ago something heavy, a bear maybe (at night everything was a bear) moving through the brush down by the creek. She had toyed with the idea of going to check that the bear bags had been hoisted high enough, but then thought better of it. For the fifth time in half an hour, she looked at her watch. It was twenty past three.

  He was late.

  The moon was three nights short of full and the air was so limpid she could see every blemish and ripple of its surface. It cast a pale gray light on the shoulders of the Douglas firs below the campsite and sent long arrowed shadows from them across the dry grass of the clearing where the group had camped. They lay side by side, staff and students alike, like a row of giant larvae. Their sleeping bags were wrapped in blue tarpaulins to keep off the dew which already glistened in the moonlight. The owls stopped and as if on cue, Lester started talking in his sleep.

  ‘You do it,’ he said. ‘No, you do it! Come on, man. It’s your turn.’

  He talked in his sleep almost every night. During the first couple of weeks, he used to sit up and shriek and wake everyone up but now his dreams seemed to have calmed a little. Sometimes another student who was awake would talk back to him in surreal conversation. But tonight nobody else spoke and his monologue subsided to a mumble and then to silence.

  Julia was lying between Byron and Skye and by the sound of their breathing, both seemed to be asleep, though with Skye you never could tell. Sometimes Julia would wake in the middle of the night and find her staring into space with tears rolling down her cheeks. The first time she had reached out and touched Skye on the shoulder and asked if she was all right and Skye had quickly turned her back without replying.

  Julia had seen that kind of crying before with other kids she knew had been abused. They didn’t sob or wail or sniff, the way ordinary kids cried, kids who had parents who would hear it and immediately come and put their arms around them and comfort them and make the pain go away. Abused kids cried silently. Because if you didn’t, all you got was another beating. So you learned to cry in private, in the dark, at the dead of night, when nobody could see or hear you. And you kept absolutely still, just let the tears empty out of you in a stream of silent sorrow.

  Over the years both in her regular job at the institute in Boston and during her summers with WAY in Colorado, Julia had worked with hundreds of children. In their several ways all had known more than a fair share of misery and misfortune. And if you let it get to you, as a teacher, if you embraced their pain too deeply and made it your own, you were in trouble. That didn’t mean you couldn’t understand or comfort them. But if you were going to be of any real use, you had to keep yourself strong and centered and slightly separate. And Julia had always managed to do that. Until she met Skye.

  There was something about the girl that moved her more than any child she had ever worked with. And Julia didn’t understand why. In Colorado there had been three or four students, one of them a girl about the same age as Skye, who had started off just as hostile and uncooperative. But not one of them had kept it up as long as Skye. One of the basic ideas of the program was to let peer pressure work on such attitudes. Those who caused difficulty for the others soon learned the consequences of their actions. Many of these children had been so assaulted by the world in which they had grown up that simply to survive they had built walls around themselves and placed on the ramparts all sorts of subtle weaponry. And to watch these walls crumble and the weapons fall silent and to witness instead a dawning of empathy and trust was almost magical. And it was happening with this group already. Even Mitch, the one who considered himself so hard, even he was showing signs of softening.

  But not Skye. For more than six weeks now the girl had kept her defenses in place, even strengthened them. She seemed to have figured out the minimum level of cooperation and stuck to it. She spoke only when spoken to and with no elaboration. She was now an exile, a stranger among friends.

  Not once had Julia seen her smile, except early on, in mirthless sarcasm. But now even that had passed and her face was locked into a mask of haughty indifference. Only on those rare occasions when she couldn’t avoid looking you in the eye, only then could you glimpse the pain.

  The one time that students had to look you in the eye was when they needed a knife. It was a rule. All knives were kept by the staff and when students needed one, to cut wood or prepare the food, they had to ask you, look you in the eye as they took it and thank you. The previous week Skye had asked for a knife to make a new wooden spoon and Julia had given her one. Someone else came to ask a question and Julia got distracted and when she looked around she saw Skye had gone to one side and was sitting on the ground cutting off her hair.

  ‘Skye!’

  Julia ran to her and asked for the knife and Skye wearily handed it over and sat there squinting up at her.

  ‘What’s the big deal?’

  For a moment Julia was so appalled she was lost for words. Hanks of glossy black hair lay on the ground. She had hacked away most of one side and there were jagged gaps at the back where you could see her scalp.

  ‘What . . . why are you doing this?’

  ‘It’s my hair, I can do what I like.’

  ‘You said you wanted to make a spoon.’

  ‘You wouldn’t have given me the knife if I’d told you the real reason.’

  ‘You lied to me.’

  ‘Oh, give me a break.’

  ‘No, Skye. It’s important.’

  Skye looked away. Julia became aware that everyone was staring at them. She sighed.

  ‘Listen, we’ve got scissors. If you’d asked, I’d have cut your hair.’

  ‘Why would I want you to cut my hair?’

  Later that day she reluctantly allowed Julia to try making the best of a bad job with the scissors. While she was doing it, Julia told her that her mother was a hairdresser and joked about how her mom used to practice on her when she was a kid. But Skye didn’t respond at all. Her hair was now cropped like a boy�
��s.

  The students all kept journals in which they had to write at least a page a day. At first almost all the entries were brief and stilted but as time went by most students would loosen up and some would begin to write searchingly about their life and their feelings. But not Skye. Her entries were sparse and coldly factual and gave nothing away. Julia had raised the issue two days ago during their daily one-to-one session. It was evening and they were sitting on some rocks above a small clearing where they’d made camp.

  ‘You know, Skye, what we do out here doesn’t change too much each day, does it? I mean, the basic things.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘I mean, every night - well, almost every night—we have campfire and group and so on. And we eat and wash out cups and brush our teeth and drink our water. And every day that’s what you write in your journal, which is fine. But maybe you could try writing about one or two things that don’t happen every day. You know? Unusual, interesting things—’

  Skye gave a little scornful laugh. ‘Yeah, right. Like what?’

  ‘Well, like yesterday, when we saw that incredible sunset. Or today, when we had to get across the creek and we hitched up the rope and swung across. Or last week, when you cut your hair.’

  ‘That wasn’t interesting. Why was that interesting?’

  Julia took a deep breath.

  ‘Okay. So, maybe then you could try writing about why you don’t find any of these things interesting. About why it’s all so boring to you.’

  ‘I’d have thought that was pretty obvious.’

  ‘I don’t think so. Tell me.’

  Skye made a little snorting sound and looked away, shaking her head.

  ‘Skye?’

  Suddenly Skye turned to face her, anger flashing in her eyes.

  ‘Listen. You’re trying to be my friend. But I don’t want to be yours, okay? So give me a break.’

  And she got up and walked away. That same evening it had been her turn again to make the campfire and as usual she’d refused to do it and the whole group circled and spent two hours talking about it to no avail.

  The nightly campfire was the heart of the program. Julia had seen it cast its spell upon group after group, infecting the students with light and warmth. It was where they ate and laughed and told stories, where they discussed what had happened during the day and where even the hardest kids seemed able to open their hearts. But on every night that it was Skye’s turn to make the fire, the group sat in darkness, ate their cold cornmeal or oatmeal in silence and turned in early. They resented it, some of them deeply, but they had grown tired of telling her so. Apart from the staff, the only friend she had by now was Byron. Skye had rejected him many times but still he stuck by her and defended her.

  Julia had spent many hours discussing Skye with the program therapy team and spent many more on the phone back at base, during her breaks, talking with Skye’s probation officer and case manager and various psychologists and counselors who had worked with her. Several times she had also tried calling Skye’s mother. The woman sounded disconcerted and vague, as if it were difficult to remember who Skye was. She was obviously on some sort of medication. Once she had started sobbing and another time hung up. The last time Julia called, it was Skye’s stepfather who answered the phone. When Julia said who she was, he started shouting and said no, she fucking well couldn’t talk to Skye’s mother and who the fuck did she think she was calling up and upsetting everyone like this?

  During her last break, after Donna Kiamoto’s party, Julia had spent a whole day with Glen Nielsen, discussing what was to be done. They agreed that it was time for something radical. They would take Skye on a ‘quest.’

  The quest was the program’s ultimate tool, used only when there was some sort of deadlock that normal techniques seemed unable to break. The student was removed from the group and taken by two staff members on a two-day journey that was both physically and psychologically grueling. Its effects could be dramatic and so, deliberately, was its initiation. Which was why Glen was coming out now, at the dead of night, to join them.

  At least, he was supposed to be. He’d said he would be there at three and it was now after three-thirty. Then Julia heard the snap of a branch down by the creek and she peered through the shadows and saw a figure. She eased herself silently out of her sleeping bag, put on her boots and made her way down the slope toward him. The air smelled sweet and resinous.

  ‘Hey, I’m sorry. I got lost.’

  ‘“Wilderness Director Gets Lost.” That’s a good story.’

  ‘Tell a soul and you’re fired.’

  They stood awhile, talking in whispers about what Glen was going to say to the group. The owls had started hooting again. Julia was feeling nervous.

  ‘Boy, I hope this doesn’t freak her out.’

  ‘It will, a little. And that’s good. Are you ready?’

  Skye was riding. She had never been on a horse in her life, but without any fear or effort or anything, she was riding and going fast. She was on a shiny black horse and they were going at a lope across a hillside. The hill was smooth and rounded and velvety, a curve of long green grass that rippled and flurried with the wind. The sky was an immense arc of clear blue and she put her head back and felt the sun warm on her face and felt her hair streaming out behind her. There wasn’t a saddle, there weren’t even any reins, she was just holding onto the horse’s mane and she didn’t really have to do that, she could let go, she knew she could, and so she did and spread her arms and it felt like she was a plane and she could turn the horse just by leaning one way or the other.

  There was a figure in the distance ahead of her, standing there, waiting, where the rim of the hill met the sky. She was too far away to see who it was, but she knew it was a man. He seemed to be wearing some kind of long dark coat. Then, as she got nearer, he lifted his arms and opened them toward her and she saw that it was her father. She hadn’t seen him for many years and she could hardly remember what he looked like but she was certain it was him. He was calling out to her.

  ‘Skye? Skye!’

  Then suddenly his face changed and she was looking up and there were two faces staring down at her out of the night sky and neither one of them was her father and she screamed.

  ‘Skye? It’s me, Julia. And Glen. It’s okay.’

  Skye sat up, rubbing her eyes.

  ‘What’s going on?’

  ‘You were dreaming.’

  Skye looked around her. The other kids were sitting up and looking at her.

  ‘We’re going to do something special,’ Glen said. ‘Can we have some light here?’

  Julia had a flashlight and Katie, Laura and Scott switched theirs on too. Skye shielded her eyes. Her head was still swirling with dream and she felt bewildered by all these people who’d suddenly appeared.

  ‘What’s going on? What time is it?’

  ‘Okay, everybody,’ Glen announced. ‘I’d like everyone to circle up here, please. Quick as you can.’

  There were murmurs and groans, but in a minute everyone was standing in a circle. At night they all had to hand in their boots and pants to deter them from running away, so some, like Skye, now stood with their sleeping bags around them and some were just bare-legged. When everyone was silent, Glen went on.

  ‘Okay. I’m sorry to wake you up like this, but I’ve come out here tonight for a very important reason. Can anyone tell me what that reason might be?’

  There was silence.

  ‘Anyone like to guess?’

  Mitch put up a hand.

  ‘Mitch?’

  ‘Skye. It’s gotta be something to do with Skye.’

  ‘Good. That’s right. I’m here because of Skye.’

  Skye stared at the ground. She was shocked but damned if she was going to show it.

  ‘Can anyone tell me more?’ Glen went on. ‘Mitch?’

  ‘Because she’s spoiling things for everyone else.’

  ‘She’s not!’ Byron said. ‘She just won’t p
lay their game that’s all. People do things their own way and I figure it’s, like, up to her, you know? And it’s tough sometimes, for all of us. But specially her.’ He seemed to run out of steam and stopped a moment. ‘Anyhow, she’s not spoiling things for me.’

  ‘That’s ’cos you’ve got the hots for her.’

  ‘Mitch, that’s inappropriate,’ Scott said.

  ‘I agree,’ Glen said.

  He asked Mitch to apologize and then thanked Byron and asked if anyone else wanted to speak but nobody did. Then he announced that he and Julia were going to take Skye away on a ‘quest’ and he asked if anyone had any idea what that might be. Wayne put up a finger.

  ‘Like, looking for something? Like Dragon Quest or something.’ There was laughter. Wayne grinned at Mitch and Paul. ‘It’s a video game. You have to find, like, this sacred key.’

  ‘Uh-huh,’ Glen nodded. ‘That’s exactly it. We’re going on a journey of our own for a couple of days to help Skye find a key.’

  Skye raised her eyes to the stars. Jesus, she just couldn’t believe these guys. They never knew when to quit. It was all so embarrassing and stupid.

  ‘A key?’ she said. ‘A key to what?’

  ‘What do you think?’ Glen asked.

  ‘I haven’t the faintest idea. And you know what? Tell you the truth, I don’t give a—’ She looked down. ‘I don’t care.’

  Glen nodded thoughtfully.

  ‘Okay, Skye. Then, we’ll have to try and find the key to that too. So, if you and Julia would get dressed and gather all your gear, we’ll be setting off in five minutes. Thank you all. I’m sorry we’ve disturbed your sleep, but this is an important moment for Skye and we wanted to share it with you. Maybe you would like to wish her well.’

  The only ones who did were Byron and the staff. The rest just shuffled their feet and muttered, which as far as Skye was concerned was fine. They could all go screw themselves.