The Smoke Jumper Read online

  Julia watched him from the wings with tears streaming down her face and clapping so hard that her hands hurt. He stood there in his smart black shirt, buttoned to the neck, smiling and bowing and spreading his arms to include the whole cast in the applause, cameras flashing in the lenses of his sunglasses. The cast was applauding him too.

  What a guy, Julia thought. What an amazing guy I married.

  Well, it might not have been Broadway, Ed thought, but it still felt pretty damn wonderful all the same. They wouldn’t stop clapping. He reached out and called for Amy and felt her hot little hand find his and everybody cheered even louder. He bent down and kissed her.

  ‘What a star,’ he whispered.

  ‘Did I do okay?’

  ‘Yeah. You did okay.’

  It took at least another hour before they could even think of going home. Ed felt himself in danger of being kissed to death, but it wasn’t a bad way to go if you had to. Everybody wanted to congratulate him. Someone gave him a bunch of flowers and even Mrs Leitner gave him a kiss. Julia’s mom became everybody’s best friend and his own mother almost had to drag her away to their taxi, which Ed had booked so that they didn’t have to hang around.

  Now, at last, the auditorium was almost clear and while Julia helped the last few kids into their coats and sent them off with their parents, Ed and Kay sat on the front of the stage, sipping water out of plastic cups and going over a few things that needed fixing for tomorrow’s performance.

  Now that he was allowed to, Ed was starting to wilt. Before the show Julia had made sure that he had his insulin shot and sent out for some steak sandwiches and milk shakes. During the show he’d had this odd, dull ache in his chest and it was still there now. It was probably just indigestion from the onion rings that had come with the sandwiches. Onions sometimes did that to him nowadays. The show had used up a lot of his energy and he knew that he should eat something because he was finding it hard to concentrate on what Kay was saying about how best to avoid another accident with the chipmunks. He’d found a candy bar in his bag but was having trouble unwrapping it.

  ‘Want me to help with that?’ Kay said at last.

  ‘Oh, yeah. Thanks. I’m all fingers and thumbs.’

  ‘Are you feeling all right?’

  ‘Just a little tired.’

  ‘Listen, we can talk about this in the morning.’

  ‘Maybe that’d be better.’

  She went to fetch his coat and when Ed stood up to put it on he felt weak at the knees and swayed a little.

  ‘Whoa there,’ Kay said, supporting him. ‘You sure you’re all right?’

  ‘I’m fine. It’s been a long day.’

  ‘You can say that again.’

  ‘It’s been a long day.’

  Kay laughed. By the time Julia and Amy came to find him, he felt steadier.

  Outside it was snowing again. Julia said the parking lot was icy and treacherous and made him wait just inside the door with Amy while she went to get the Jeep. They stood holding hands, saying goodnight to the last few parents and children who came past. The indigestion was still there in his chest and even after eating the candy bar he still felt a little weird. Kind of fuddled and detached. Maybe he was getting the flu or something. Never mind, he would soon be home. A good night’s sleep was all he needed.

  ‘Daddy, your hand’s so cold!’ Amy said.

  ‘Well, you know what they say - cold hand, warm heart.’

  ‘Mine’s hot. Does that mean I’ve got a cold heart?’

  ‘No. Doesn’t work that way. Hey, you were so good tonight.’

  ‘Could you hear me?’

  ‘Not at all.’

  ‘You could too!’

  ‘You sang like an angel. Like a logger-angel.’

  ‘Come on, here’s Mommy.’

  The snow was indeed treacherous. He slipped and almost fell while Amy led him the few yards to the truck. Julia got out and came hurrying around to help him. She didn’t often treat him like an invalid but when she did it annoyed the hell out of him.

  ‘I don’t need help.’

  ‘It’s slippy. You nearly fell. Ed? Look at me.’

  ‘I’m okay.’

  ‘You don’t look it. What’s going on? Ed, talk to me.’

  ‘Don’t fuss. I’m tired, that’s all. Let’s just get Shirley Temple here back to her bed.’

  ‘Who’s Shirley Temple?’ Amy asked.

  He was just starting to tell her when suddenly the pain in his chest exploded. It was as if someone had shot him or stabbed him or jabbed him with a cattle prod. He reeled backward and heard Amy cry out in alarm.

  He must have blacked out for a few moments because the next thing he knew, Julia was shaking him by his coat lapels and slapping his face and yelling at him. The pain in his chest wasn’t so bad now. Just a weird flooding feeling. He seemed to be lying on his back in the snow because he could feel it all cold on the back of his head and on the palms of his hands beside him and could feel the flakes landing soft and wet on his face. He imagined what they must look like, floating down at him out of the sky and for some reason he remembered as a child being driven by his father one night through a snow-storm and the sight of the snowflakes in the headlights and imagining that he was traveling through space, with all the stars and planets and asteroids gliding past. Man, did he feel sleepy. The snow seemed to be drifting over him, burying him . . .

  Julia was calling him from somewhere far away. He could only just hear her. And he could hear Amy crying and Julia shouting for her to go get help and suddenly there were several pairs of hands grabbing him and hoisting his shoulders and he was being dragged backward, his feet trailing after him through the snow. One of his shoes came off and he felt the cold of the snow on his heel above his sock. Nobody seemed to have noticed. Damn, they were his best shoes too. He tried to call out to tell them about it but he couldn’t find his voice. What the hell were they playing at? It was all such a pain in the ass. All he wanted to do was sleep. If they would just leave him alone and let him sleep, he’d be fine.

  They didn’t have to say it. Julia already knew. She knew he was dead even before the ambulance pulled up outside the hospital and the emergency team medics came running out into the snow to meet them. Huddled in the corner of the ambulance, she’d watched the paramedics battling to start his heart, thumping his pale chest and injecting him and yelling instructions to each other over his limp body and his face fading a ghostly gray beneath the oxygen mask. She’d told them about his diabetes and dialysis as soon as they arrived at the school and in the ambulance occasionally they’d fired questions at her which she did her best to answer in a steady voice. And all the while she was praying:

  Dear Lord, no more. Please, no more. Hasn’t the poor guy suffered enough? Just give him a break, please. Even Job got a break in the end.

  Kay Neumark had arrived with Amy just as they were wheeling him in through the doors and Julia ran and gathered the girl up and hugged her and told her, stupidly, not to worry, Daddy was going to be all right, he’d be all right.

  Julia had wanted to follow the stretcher into the emergency room but one of the nurses stopped her and said it would be better if she waited here with Amy and so they’d sat with Kay and several strangers in the cold fluorescent light, holding onto each other and watching the green figures moving to and fro behind the frosted glass of the doors through which they had taken him.

  And now one of the medics had emerged and was speaking to the nurse at the desk and she nodded across the room toward Julia and Amy and he turned and started to walk toward them. And Julia thought, how do I do this? No one’s told me how to do this. She stood up and made Amy wait with Kay and she swallowed hard and walked toward him.

  He was sorry, he said. They’d done all they could. He was so, so sorry.

  They buried him the Tuesday before Christmas on a crisp and clear morning with fresh snow frosted to the branches of the cottonwoods that circled the graveyard. More than two hundred
people came, crowding shoulder to shoulder into the little white clapboard church with the sun streaming in upon them through the windows. Beside the pulpit there was a tall Christmas tree strewn with silver tinsel and winking with hundreds of tiny white lights.

  Ed’s father and brothers and their wives and children had all flown in from Kentucky and there were doctors, nurses, smoke jumpers, old college friends, pupils and their parents and many others Julia didn’t recognize. Almost everyone who loved him. Except Connor.

  She had tried to reach him and left messages everywhere she could think of, asking him to call. No one seemed to know where he was or how to contact him, not even his own mother, who was here now, sitting next to Ed’s parents. Julia had called the photo agency and was put through to a man with a kind voice who told her that he had no idea where Connor was. He was a law unto himself these days, the man said with a sigh, always secretive about his projects. There was no way of contacting him for he had long ago ditched his satellite phone and scanner; he didn’t even have an e-mail address; sometimes he would send back film or call in but mostly he didn’t; often he went missing for months.

  Listening to this, Julia felt a confusion of anger and guilt rise within her. How could Connor have become like this? How could she - how could they all - have allowed this to happen? And when the man finally asked if there was any message if he did happen to call in, she let her feelings spill.

  ‘Just tell him his best friend died.’

  The service started with everyone singing ‘Silent Night,’ Ed’s favorite carol. Then Amy and a choir of others from the school show sang the angels’ song unaccompanied, with Kay Neumark conducting.

  Julia watched her daughter’s face and marveled at her strength and courage, for she herself felt neither. Linda, sitting beside her, was squeezing her hand hard and both of them were trying not to cry, though almost everybody else was. Julia knew that if she started she wouldn’t be able to stop. There had been enough crying already and anyhow she knew from Ed’s letter that he wanted a celebration not a mourning.

  The letter had arrived from his lawyer in Missoula three days ago. The lawyer explained that Ed had lodged it with him last fall with instructions that it be given to her in the event of his death. Julia made sure that she was alone when she opened it.

  My darling Julia,

  It may strike you as strange that I should have done this, but, as Forrest Gump might put it, life is a tightrope and you never know when you’re going to topple off. I didn’t want to hit the floor without saying a few things that need to be said. And, although it sounds dumb, I guess what I feel most needs saying is: Thank You.

  Since that rainy night all those years ago when you stole my parking space - and my heart - I’ve never stopped thinking how incredibly lucky I was to meet such a remarkable woman. To list the million things I have to thank you for would take too long, so I’ll just stick to the Big Ones.

  Thank you for being my eyes, for being my guardian angel, for being the light of my life and the inspiration of my every good thought. For being the wondrous mother of a wondrous child. For being beautiful and loving and sexy and for smelling and feeling so good (mmm, pause for reflection . . . MMM. Okay, Tully, that’s enough of that!). Thank you too for being so bighearted and generous and forgiving and patient and positive and so full of energy . . . are you blushing? I do hope so, you look so gorgeous when you blush.

  I guess what I’m saying, to wrap it all up, is simply thank you for being who you are and for allowing me to share your life.

  So those are the thank-yous.

  That just leaves the things I want to say sorry for. So here goes.

  I’m sorry for not having achieved in my work what maybe you once thought I would. I had it all worked out - the palace in the Hollywood Hills, arriving in my tux at the Oscars with you on my arm in some fabulous gold creation by Armani or whoever, smiling glamorously at the cameras. And all you ended up with was a little log cabin and a pair of muddy hiking boots. As one tree said to the other: ain’t life a beech?

  I’m sorry too for being such a pain in the ass, so impatient and demanding and grouchy and for getting mad at you for fussing over me when all you were trying to do was keep this poor ungrateful jerk alive. I’m sorry for being manic and telling so many bad jokes you’d already heard a hundred times over and for all those dreadful ideas for musicals - tbough now I come to think of it, that one about . . . just kidding. And I’m sorry I haven’t been able to DO more with you, to travel more, to climb more mountains and canoe more rivers and ski more powder. Okay, under the circumstances, we’ve done a lot, but not as much as I know you’d have liked.

  Most of all, I’m sorry I wasn’t able to give you all those children we should have had. I had in mind at least a dozen. Well, okay, three or four. But maybe the fact that I couldn’t has made Amy even more special. (What a dork! As if that were possible!)

  While we’re on the subject, I’m sorry that I deprived you of Connor. I know you loved him and probably still do. I may be blind but not to that. I always knew. I tried so hard not to be jealous, but jealousy is such a goddamned tenacious creature, like a terrier that locks its jaws on your ankle and won’t be shaken off. And I’m sorry that I wasn’t able to be a bigger man and to get my head around it, for all of us have lost out through my driving him away.

  If it’s not too late and if it makes you and Amy happy, perhaps you and Connor will find each other again one day. If so, you have my blessing. Your happiness - and Amy’s - is all l pray for.

  I love you so much, Julia.

  Ed

  Amy had finished singing now and when she came back Julia kissed her and settled her between herself and Linda and they all held hands while the preacher spoke about Ed. He was a tall man in his mid-fifties with white hair and a craggy brow that gave him the look of an Old Testament prophet. Ed had occasionally helped out with the music for church services and the two of them had gotten along well and even done some hiking together. He told the congregation that Ed was one of the finest, bravest souls that he’d ever had the honor of knowing and had touched the lives of all he met with light and joy.

  One of Ed’s pupils then played a piano piece that Ed had once composed for him as a birthday present. And then it was Julia’s turn. She walked to the solitary sound of her own footsteps to the lectern at the front of the church and unfolded the sheet of paper that had been enclosed with Ed’s letter.

  The title of the poem was ‘Walk Within You,’ and whether Ed had written it himself or had found it somewhere and copied it down, there was no indication. The tone and sensibility seemed like his but there were certain things in it that suggested whoever wrote it had not been blind. She had worried whether it was appropriate to read it out to everyone. But Amy wanted her to, so she was going to try. Julia raised her head and looked out at all the faces watching and waiting, half lit by the angling sun. There was perfect silence. She cleared her throat and began.

  If I be the first of us to die,

  Let grief not blacken long your sky.

  Be bold yet modest in your grieving.

  There is a change but not a leaving.

  For just as death is part of life,

  The dead live on forever in the living.

  And all the gathered riches of our journey,

  The moments shared, the mysteries explored,

  The steady layering of intimacy stored,

  The things that made us laugh or weep or sing,

  The joy of sunlit snow or first unfurling of the spring,

  The wordless language of look and touch,

  The knowing,

  Each giving and each taking,

  These are not flowers that fade,

  Nor trees that fall and crumble,

  Nor are they stone,

  For even stone cannot the wind and rain withstand

  And mighty mountain peaks in time reduce to sand.

  What we were, we are.

  What we had, we have.<
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  A conjoined past imperishably present.

  So when you walk the woods where once we walked together

  And scan in vain the dappled bank beside you for my shadow,

  Or pause where we always did upon the hill to gaze across the

  land,

  And spotting something, reach by habit for my hand,

  And finding none, feel sorrow start to steal upon you,

  Be still.

  Close your eyes.

  Breathe.

  Listen for my footfall in your heart.

  I am not gone but merely walk within you.

  24

  They gathered driftwood from along the shore and carried or dragged it back to the hollow that they had made for the fire. The wood was mostly stripped of bark and bleached by sun and salt to the color of bone and once when Connor bent to lift what he thought was a branch he found instead that he had chanced upon the skeleton of some great creature half buried in the sand. He asked Kocha what it was and the old man said it was a whale. Sometimes they lost their bearings and beached themselves, he said, and sometimes they died at sea and were washed ashore, though it wasn’t for these bones, but for those of shipwrecked sailors that the place was named the Skeleton Coast.

  They built the fire but didn’t light it, and the two of them sat on the sand with the great dunes aglow behind them and watched the sun sink vast and trembling through the salt haze and into the slate-gray ocean. Connor watched the glow of the horizon fade and one by one the stars puncture the indigo sky.

  With the darkness came a cold breeze from the ocean and Kocha lit the fire. The wood was dry and burned with a hunger and they stood clear, watching the fanned flames dance and flatten and dance again, sending sparks whirling away into the heavens. When the fire had settled, they spitted the fish that Kocha had caught and ate it with the last of the rice.

  They had known each other for barely a week but it seemed much longer. Heading slowly north in the car he had rented in Cape Town, Connor had stopped at a roadside store for water. He had never been to Namibia before but had long ago heard of the Skeleton Coast and wanted to see it. For reasons that he hadn’t stopped to analyze, he wanted to reach it on foot. He asked the storekeeper if he knew of anyone who might act as his guide and the man said he did and told him to come back the next day.