DogCanyon will publish this short story serially, in 4 parts.
“Get this, Hawg,” Rock Star said to me. “Doug hired Hinky’s girlfriend on the crew this year.” I broke the horrified silence that ensued with a belch followed by a hearty breaking of wind. I’d just arrived at the Pike Hotshot crew work center from Wyoming and was sitting out on the picnic tables drinking with Rock Star and Tan, catching up on what had happened in the long cold months between fire seasons, and this news I’d just received was not heartening. There hadn’t been a woman on the Pike Hotshot crew in years. Our crew boss Doug should’ve known better than to hire Hinky’s girlfriend Sasha. But I could imagine her in a tight sweater, walking into the office to pick up an application. Sasha with the cheekbones. Doug didn’t stand a chance.
“What the fuck was Hinky thinking?” Tan wanted to know. “The Green Goblin’s going to eat him up for sure.” I’m not the brainiest motherfucker on the planet, but even I know it doesn’t serve anyone to put a crew of twenty forest firefighters out in the woods for six months with one beautiful woman among them, especially if one of the twenty is already her boyfriend. It’s bound to go bad.
Hinky was the crew paramedic, he’d always been a little jerky and strange, talking too often and with too much enthusiasm about car wrecks, but for the most part he kept his head down and the rest of us tried to forget about him as best we could.
During the two weeks of crew training his girlfriend Sasha didn’t say much. She didn’t live in the bunkhouse with the rest of us. Instead she lived a few miles away in Monument, her house just a couple of miles from Hinky; they left the work center together at 5:30 every afternoon. But it wasn’t long before Sasha started flirting. At first she didn’t pay special attention to any particular hotshot. There were just lots of guys around her always, lots of grab ass, and she was always giggling.
Hinky got real busy all of a sudden, doing projects around the work center. He was digging rain ditches and hauling rocks like he had a fire under his ass. Like he thought if he just worked hard enough it’d wear the Green Goblin out. By the time we finished our training and went on the board, Hinky and Sasha had started driving to the work center in separate cars.
more short story at the jump….
Hinky started talking a lot after that, like a man alone so much he has to get his words out while there’re people around to hear them, but always his yapping was about EMT disasters. He blinked a lot when he talked, and too hard. When we were called to our first fire, he seemed disappointed. I heard him mutter, “What if I miss a big car crash while we’re gone?”
Sasha surprised me on that fire, a little two hundred acre thing north of Denver. Surprised us all, I think. She wasn’t tough or fit, but she kept up on hikes. She never worked as lead tool, and she wasn’t much of a digger. She flailed away at the ground with her combi without managing to move much dirt, but she worked steady.
When we hit the fireline, about half the guys on the crew bailed out on the Sasha competition. There was work to be done and all that grab ass was undignified. So it’s not to say that the lust for Sasha infested the whole crew. It was mostly the super lonely that strutted around her like scraggly peacocks, the guys who jack off to characters in the video games they play.
Pretty soon after we went on the boards, Florida started burning. Uncle Sam flew us there to save us the drive time. None of us had ever fought fire anywhere but in the West, where the air was dry and thin, even on the hottest days. Weren’t none of us prepared for North Florida. The mosquitoes were big enough to stand flat-footed and fuck a turkey. The air was so hot and the dried-out swamps where we fought the fire were so full of snakes and poisonous spiders that the mucky mucks put us up in a hotel. Guess they figured the liability for us sleeping out wasn’t worth the risk. Every morning the bus picked us up just after 5a.m. and it drove us back in the evenings, grumpy and covered with bug bites and Florida Swamp Rot. None of us fought fire to sleep in a No-tell Motel. We were in it for the mountains and the stars, really.
The thing was, there wasn’t much for us to do on the fires. A Hotshot crew can’t exactly dig fireline through the jungle–that’s work for one man and a dozer. So mostly we just sat on the bus all day and itched. Sasha and Hinky sat next to each other, I think to show themselves and everyone else things were okay between them. It seemed to go alright for a couple of days, but then Sasha started swiveling around more and more often to talk to Lee, who sat across the aisle and one seat back from her. Lee was a lumbering rookie who was always saying he wanted to become a cop so that he could shoot people–not someone my boys and I spent anymore time with than we had to.
Hinky started getting paler by the day and we all noticed that at meals he wasn’t eating. His head started jerking to the side a little and he talked more and more about the I-25 wrecks he was missing out on back in Monument. I had the bad luck to be rooming with Hinky, but if I asked him how he was doing when we were in our room in the evenings he’d snap, “Fine, just fine,” so that finally I quit asking.
Every morning when Hinky climbed up the stairs of the bus, we all hoped he’d sit somewhere else. Or that Sasha would. Or even that Lee would. But they sat in the seats they’d sat in on our first day in Florida, just like the rest of us.
When I walked back into my room after going downstairs to the vending machines for a soda one night, I heard Hinky dry heaving over the toilet. It wasn’t a drunk puking. It was that the Green Goblin had him by the innards and there was nothing we could do for him. I told Hinky I was going over to Rock Star and Tan’s to play spades. I even asked Hinky did he want to come. He said no thanks and I told him to suit himself.
That night I woke myself up with my snoring and there was Hinky, walking up and down our room. When I’d thought Hinky went to bed after me I slept fine, but once I knew he was up doing that creepy pacing all night I couldn’t get it out of my head. I started showing up for breakfast feeling sort of haggard.
On the night of day 10, I couldn’t sleep until 3 a.m., what with Hinky pacing up and down the length of the room and running into the bathroom every once in a while to drive the porcelain bus. I finally dropped off and woke up to the alarm beeping at four-fifteen. I sat up to turn on the TV, figuring I’d watch the news while Hinky shit, shower and shaved. When I reached for the knob, the top of the TV was wet. So were the sides of the TV and the carpet around it. I didn’t even want to know. Not even.
As stood in the dark parking lot before dawn, waiting for the bus to pick us up, Tan walked up to me. “I heard from Hinky you pissed on the TV last night,” he said.
“The TV was wet this morning, alright, but it wasn’t me did the pissing,” I said.
“Hinky’s mind must be going now, too,” Tan said. “The Green Goblin tore it right out of his head. That’s what he gets for getting his girlfriend hired onto a Hotshot crew.”
“Fucking pathetic,” I agreed.
To be continued…..
Mary,
Wonderful stuff. Flow is sick. Story is healthy. Keep it coming. I like all that ya’ll are doing here at Dog Canyon. Keep up the great work.
Thanks, Matt! Love having you as a reader.
It is fun being drawn into that world. Like walking among ghosts. I found myself wondering again how long I would last as a hot shot knowing all too well the answer.
It’s even better the 2nd time through!!! You are very talented! Please keep sharing your work with us.