The Smoke Jumper Page 13

  ‘Firefighters from all over northern California have been unable to put out the blaze that has now been burning for five days,’ the reporter was saying. ‘And so today saw the arrival at Redding airfield of sixteen smoke jumpers from Missoula, Montana.’

  There was a raucous cheer from the bar. And there they were, stepping down from the plane and coming toward the camera and there was Ed among them. He had on his best movie-star face, a kind of shy but resolute grin and Connor noted that there was a touch of war-hero swagger in his walk. As they filed past, the reporter called them ‘this elite corps’ and there were more cheers in the bar. Then there was a little interview with Hank Thomas, who said something modest and meaningful about there being a job to be done and they were just glad to be able to help. Everyone cheered again.

  ‘A man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do,’ Chuck declaimed.

  ‘Glad to help,’ someone else mocked. ‘And gladder still to get the overtime.’

  Connor had done his best to persuade the personnel officer that his ankle was good enough for him to go with them. It was ten days since his fall and the swelling was almost gone, leaving a violent purple and yellow bruise. He’d spent all that time doing tedious maintenance work, mainly repairing torn parachutes and he was getting bored and restless. He’d had physical therapy every day for the last week and managed to cajole a reluctant fitness release from his doctor. But yesterday he’d taken the mandatory P.T. test at the base which involved running one and a half miles in eleven minutes and when the foreman saw him hobbling off he called him back and said sorry, the leg clearly wasn’t yet mended and there was no way he was going to Redding.

  The news moved on to another story and everyone in the bar started talking again. Connor took the last swig from his bottle of soda. He hadn’t touched alcohol since the night of Donna’s party and still felt embarrassed that he’d made a fool of himself. He couldn’t remember too much about it except being carried up the stairs and then going on about how beautiful Julia was. It was nothing but the truth, but he wished he hadn’t said it and hoped he hadn’t said more. Chuck Hamer cuffed him gently on the shoulder.

  ‘Cheer up, old buddy. Doesn’t look like much of a fire anyhow. Those Californian firefighters are just a bunch of wusses. Why don’t you let me get you a proper drink?’

  ‘Thanks, Chuck, but I think I’ll be heading home.’

  ‘Cowboy, I’m worried about you. Early to bed, no booze. You’re not even chasing women this year. What in hell’s name’s the matter with you, boy? Turning into a monk or something?’

  Connor smiled and stood up and put on his hat.

  ‘It’s called enlightenment, man. Pure enlightenment.’

  Outside the night air was balmy and felt wholesome to his lungs after the smoke of the bar. Apart from a beggar who often hung around the corner of Broadway, the street was deserted. Connor walked across to Worden’s Market and bought himself a chicken sandwich and some apples and a carton of milk and then strolled down toward the bridge, looking idly into the store windows. There was a little place that sold used books and magazines and never seemed to shut and on impulse Connor went inside. He’d occasionally found interesting books on photography here. The guy who ran it knew him and said hello.

  He spent about ten minutes browsing the shelves and finding nothing and he was about to leave when a book caught his eye. It was about an English photographer called Larry Burrows who had taken some of the most famous and powerful pictures of the Vietnam War and lost his life doing so. The book had full-plate color pictures, some of which Connor hadn’t seen before. He bought the book for five dollars and would have paid a lot more.

  The beggar on Broadway was a young man about Connor’s age. He had torn pants and no shoes and a straggly beard decorated with crumbs from his last meal. Connor asked how he was doing, which he realized straight away was a pretty dumb thing to say. He gave him the chicken sandwich and the guy, who would no doubt have preferred cash, looked so disappointed that Connor handed over the apples too.

  The apartment seemed oddly quiet without Ed, who was always yacking on about something or singing when he wasn’t yacking. Connor undressed and took a glass of milk and the Burrows book to bed.

  He didn’t know much about Burrows except that he’d taken many extraordinary pictures for Life magazine and that he’d died when a helicopter in which he and some other photographers and journalists were traveling was shot down in Laos. The book described him as diffident, modest and brave, a man of integrity whose heart was touched deeply by the suffering that he sought out and recorded for the world to see. Connor read it from cover to cover in a couple of hours and was greatly moved. There was one picture he kept turning back to.

  A group of South Vietnamese soldiers were standing around a young Viet Cong who was on his knees. He had a rope around his neck and his black shirt had been ripped off and hung around his waist and his hands were tied behind him. You could see from the marks on his face and his body and from the way the soldiers were holding their rifles that he had already taken a severe beating. Technically, like all Burrows’s work, the photograph was flawless. The composition was immaculate. But it was the young man’s eyes that gave the picture its power. There was fear there for sure but there was courage too, as if he had somehow managed to transcend the pain of torture and the certainty of imminent death.

  Long after Connor had put the book down and turned out the light, the image stayed in his mind and he wondered whether he himself could summon that kind of courage or the kind that Burrows must have had to look horror in the face again and again without fear or flinching. And somehow, for the first time, he knew with absolute clarity that one day he would find out.

  Another week went by and Connor spent most of it doing odd jobs around the base, trying not to let the boredom gnaw at him too badly. Ed was still down in Redding with the other lucky sonsofbitches, earning a ton of overtime and hazard pay. But on Tuesday evening he called to say the fire was under control and the word was that they’d be back for the weekend. He asked how Connor’s ankle was and Connor told him it was okay and Ed said good because he had a plan which he’d already talked over with Julia: a canoe trip in Idaho, on a stretch of the Salmon River that he and Connor had done a couple of times before. Connor thought it sure sounded better than sewing parachutes. Ed said he’d try to hitch a ride with a fire crew from Boise who were heading home on Friday.

  By the time Julia got back to Missoula on Thursday evening Connor had it all sorted out. He’d borrowed a pair of canoes and a second tent, gotten the camping gear ready and bought food. Julia was tired but in good spirits and he poured her a glass of the red wine that he’d bought specially that afternoon and made her sit down while he cooked supper. And while he busied himself in the cramped kitchen area, she sat back with one leg hooked over the arm of the couch and told him all that had happened, about the quest and how Skye had broken down and then the walk to the mountain and how ‘utterly amazing’ John Standing Bird had been.

  Julia’s face was tanned and dirty from all her hiking and her hair had gone all straggly and she’d tied it up with a pale green bandanna. Connor had never seen her looking so lovely. And he tried not to, but he couldn’t help thinking how like a couple they were, her talking about her work and him cooking supper just for the two of them. It was such a simple domestic scene and he knew it meant nothing, but the feelings it stirred in him were new and powerful. He wondered if he would ever find someone like Julia and doubted he would but he didn’t allow the thought to sadden him or spoil the moment.

  He’d bought a fillet of salmon and panfried it so that the skin was seared but the flesh was still moist inside. They ate it with salad and some baby potatoes, and Julia said it was the best salmon she’d ever tasted. Then they had blueberries and cream and coffee and sat talking and drinking their wine. Connor took it easy because he didn’t want to make a fool of himself again. They sat talking a long time, although Julia did most of it. Connor
listened, half hearing what she said but mostly enjoying just watching her.

  The Larry Burrows book was on the table and she picked it up and started asking him about it. As she flicked slowly through the pictures, Connor waited to see if she would say anything about the one that had most affected him, but she only looked at it awhile and moved on. She stopped at one in which a young girl was crouched over the body of her mother and howling distraught at the camera.

  ‘Do you think it’s heartless to take a picture like that?’ she said.

  ‘You mean rather than help her?’

  Julia nodded, still staring at the child.

  ‘No. A picture never tells what happened next. A lot of photographers help people when they can. Burrows almost adopted one of the kids he photographed. But the most important thing, I guess, is to show the world what’s going on.’

  ‘I guess.’

  She asked if she could borrow the book and Connor said sure, and then she asked about his own photography and whether she could see some of his work. He mostly kept it at the ranch and hardly had any pictures with him except those he’d taken of his mother at the rodeo, which he’d processed only last week. A couple of them weren’t bad and he got them out and Julia studied them carefully. He could see she was impressed.

  ‘Wow, Connor. You’re really good. I had no idea.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘No, I mean . . . Oh, that sounds so rude, doesn’t it? All I meant was, I hadn’t seen anything before - except that terrible one of the elk on fire. When I say terrible, I mean, it was really good, you know. I just ...’

  Connor let her dig herself deeper. She was blushing under her tan and he grinned and said it was okay, he knew what she meant. The phone rang and Julia reached for it like a drowning man for a life belt. It was Ed.

  Connor stood up and started clearing the dishes. He listened to her telling Ed some of the same things and found himself trying to detect any difference in her tone of voice, some greater intimacy perhaps, but he couldn’t.

  Julia handed him the phone and said she was going to have a bath, always her great treat after eight days in the backcountry. Connor sat down on the couch and listened while Ed told him about the fire and tried to wind him up with more overtime bullshit, saying he couldn’t decide whether to go for a Merc or a Lexus. Finally they got serious and talked about the arrangements for the following day. The idea was to put the canoes in the river at a little town called Stanley. One of the Idaho firefighters with whom Ed had gotten friendly lived near there and was going to give him a lift from Boise airport. He figured they would get to Stanley around two o’clock.

  As he undressed in his room, Connor could hear Julia in the bathroom humming a little tune and he could hear the splash of the water as she washed herself in the tub and he had to try hard to censor his thoughts. He heard her brushing her teeth and then opening the bathroom door and switching off the light.

  ‘Connor?’

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘Thanks for a great supper.’

  ‘You’re welcome.’

  ‘Goodnight.’

  ‘Goodnight.’

  The town of Stanley sprawled in a broad green bowl of a valley some six thousand feet above sea level, guarded to the north by the White Cloud Mountains and to the south by the Sawtooth whose daggered peaks were sheathed all year in snow. The river curled through meadow flats where cattle grazed alongside deer and elk to the hum of bumblebees and the lazy flap of a heron’s wing. Here and there among the buttercups hot springs gurgled and steamed and Connor had always thought they were a kind of whispered hint that the idyll on show was not to be trusted and that the river’s true nature lay in the seething rapids and thundering gorges that were to come and for which the Salmon was revered.

  Stanley was a five-hour drive from Missoula and they arrived an hour early and pulled up close by the river and unloaded the canoes and all the gear onto the grassy bank that sloped down to the water. The canoes were Old Town fifteen footers, both in good condition, one red, the other green.

  The camping gear and food were stowed in black waterproof duffel bags.

  Julia got out the Burrows book which weighed about a ton and a half and wasn’t exactly the best kind of book to bring on a canoe trip. Connor teased her for it and she laughed and settled herself on the grass to read while he took the truck around to the parking lot behind the Mountain Village Mercantile where they had arranged to meet Ed.

  Connor was wearing only shorts and a pale gray T-shirt but in the thin mountain air the midday sun felt hot. He watched it shimmering along the blacktop as he walked around to the front and up the steps of the store. It was built of logs and had a long porch with an ice machine on it and a pay phone. Going inside was like stepping into an age gone by. There were old guns hanging on the wall and an ax and an ancient ox collar and the place seemed to sell anything a man might need, from a pair of pants to a pastrami sandwich. What Connor needed right now was a couple of cold sodas.

  The woman behind the counter served him with a smile and asked where he was headed and Connor said they were going to canoe down to Challis and would it be okay to leave his truck out back in the lot and she said that was fine. She had just baked some chocolate-chip cookies and they smelled so good that Connor bought some and he bought some oranges too and thanked her.

  When he got back to the river he saw Julia had taken off her T-shirt and was wearing a black swimsuit which she must have had on underneath. She was wearing sunglasses and had taken off her sandals and rolled up her shorts. Her legs were long and tanned but her ankles and feet were pale from wearing hiking boots all the time.

  ‘I see you like sun,’ he said.

  ‘Love it. They say it’s bad for your skin, but I don’t care. It’s my Italian blood. My mom’s the same. Ed says I’ll wind up looking like a handbag.’

  ‘Does your mom look like a handbag?’

  ‘Yeah, but a really classy one, you know?’

  Connor laughed. He sat down beside her and they drank the sodas and ate the cookies and watched the sun spangle on the water. Connor told her that as a young man his father used to come down to these parts to fish for sockeye.

  ‘They used to come upstream to spawn. They go this bright red color. I remember Dad saying there were so many, the water looked like blood.’

  ‘They don’t come anymore?’

  ‘No. They built these dams downstream to make electricity and though they help some fish get up here, it’s nothing like what it was.’

  ‘Why do people allow that kind of thing?’

  ‘I guess they figure electricity’s more important than fish.’

  He peeled an orange and gave her half and she said what a beautiful place it was, and Connor pointed out some of the peaks he and Ed had climbed over the years.

  ‘You know what they call this river?’

  ‘You mean apart from the Salmon?’

  ‘Yeah. It’s called the River of No Return.’

  ‘Because the salmon never came back?’

  Connor smiled. ‘Because when Lewis and Clark reached here, they got stuck and ended up eating their own horses.’

  ‘So it was the horses who never came back.’

  Two o’clock came and went and they sat waiting and talking for another hour and Ed still didn’t arrive. They’d agreed that he would call the Mercantile if there were any problems and Connor walked over there a couple of times but there were no messages. Every now and then a car would appear in the distance and he and Julia would stop talking and watch it come wavering and wobbling toward them through the liquid blacktop mirage, thinking it might be Ed, but it never was. A little after three they walked over to the Mercantile and stood in the shade of the porch and there they waited another hour, talking all the time and drinking more soda. And still he didn’t come.

  Though she tried not to show it, Connor could tell Julia was worried and he was wondering himself why Ed hadn’t called or gotten someone else to. He went over to
the pay phone and called the smoke jumper base in Missoula. The operations office told him that the California fire had flared up again overnight and that Ed and the others were still needed. Julia was listening and had gathered what had happened but they didn’t have time to talk about it because as soon as Connor hung up, the woman came out of the store and said there was a call for him inside.

  ‘Connor?’

  ‘Hey, Ed. I just called the base and heard.’

  ‘Man, I’m so sorry. I’d have called sooner but things have gone crazy down here.’

  ‘You okay?’

  ‘Yeah, I’m fine. Just pissed as hell I can’t come with you guys.’

  ‘Well, the river isn’t going anyplace. We’ll do it another time. We’ll just head home.’

  ‘Are you kidding? Do it. You’ll have a ball. How’s the water looking?’

  ‘Good.’

  ‘Then go for it, man. Julia’ll love it.’

  Connor hesitated. He wasn’t sure Julia would want to if it was just going to be the two of them. She was standing beside him.

  ‘Listen, Ed. Talk to Julia, she’s right here.’

  He handed over the phone and while they talked he wandered around the store, pretending to look at things but really just listening. She asked how Ed was and if he was being careful and he was obviously telling her how sorry he was not to have made it to Stanley and how much he missed her. She said she missed him too.

  ‘You bet we’re going to do it,’ she said, looking at Connor. ‘Connor says it’s called the River of No Return, so he’s not allowed to quit.’

  They said their fond goodbyes and told each other to take care and then Julia called Connor to the phone again.

  ‘Ed?’

  ‘So you’re going to do it, okay?’

  ‘Well, if Julia wants to—’

  ‘Of course she does. What’s the matter with you, man? I know I’m the one with all the paddling skills, but you’ll get by.’