Hotshot Love: a short story about love and fire, Part 4

DogCanyon will post this story serially, in four parts.

To read Part 1, click here. To read Part 2, click here. To read Part 3, click here.

{Bill Clinton meets Mary Lowry--and the rest of the Pikers.}

When the cheers finally died down, Bill Clinton walked onstage and shook the firefighter’s hand and then stood in front of the microphone himself. The cheering and clapping were loud, but not like it’d been for that firefighter. When Clinton started talking something went zinging from him all around the room, something that made me understand why he was President of the whole United States instead of some other guy.

All of the women in the room, all of those hothouse flowers with their classy clothes, stood up straighter and looked at Clinton as if that zinging went straight to them. As if that poofy gray hair and bulby nose and carefully covered paunch meant nothing. Where the firefighter had looked down and stumbled through careful sentences, Big Bill spoke easily. And his voice rang out like the things he said were sure and true. Even I felt like he was talking just to me. There was more to him than the short-sleeved shirt and the pressed slacks let on. Under all the lights and show, under all that trained-up politician bullshit, there was something strong and raw. So that when he was done I was clapping in spite of myself.

more at the jump….

Clinton stepped down from the stage into the audience and started pressing the flesh. I climbed onto the low-rise bleachers set up along the side of the tent, so I could see all of the worthless Pikers push and shove and grovel and scrape to touch him themselves. I could see a shrimpy Piker posing for a picture with him before being sucked back into the crowd. And then I saw Clinton’s eyes fall on Sasha. She wasn’t pushing to get close to him; she was just standing still and quiet, the crowd throbbing around her with the energy coming off of that one man. Slick Willy reached through the crowd for her hand. Then she was standing next to him and Lee raised his camera to take the picture.

The Prez wasn’t looking at the camera, though. His eyes had snagged on Sasha’s cheekbones and even with all of the jostling crowd and the reporters surrounding them and the secret servicemen scowling, it was clear he couldn’t look away. And then I could tell Lee called out “Cheese,” because Sasha and Clinton looked up together. He moved in close to her and from up on the bleacher I could see the leader of the free world sneak his arm around Sasha’s waist and rest his hand on the perfect swell of her hip. The two of them smiled, Sasha’s smile nervous and Clinton’s genuine-looking.

That’s when I realized, along with everyone else, that Hinky had climbed up on the stage at the far corner of the tent. He was running across the stage with a cry coming out of him like the Green Goblin howling the agony of every jilted lover. We all turned, the people whose houses had been saved and the Pikers and the Indian crew and the rolling cameras and the reporters with their eyes wide like they couldn’t get over their luck, and all the suits. And the secret service men turned too, and they moved faster even than Hinky.

Hinky launched himself of off the stage looking for all the world like a rabid flying squirrel trying to take out the President of the United States of America and right then Lee’s flashbulb popped.

One secret serviceman caught onto an outstretched arm and another grabbed the opposite ankle. One moved between Hinky and President Clinton’s back. They plucked Hinky from the air mid-flight. A fourth knelt on Hinky’s back as he hit the ground. Clinton and Sasha turned around as panic broke. More secret servicemen whisked the President away. The tent filled up with policemen waving their nightsticks–a shit sandwich all around–and the tent was evacuated. Everyone except the Pike that is, we were all corralled into the center of the tent. Hinky they took away in handcuffs. He looked sullen, but at least he wasn’t crying or anything.

{After Hinky's attack on Clinton, Pikers prepare to load up on the bus.}

The police frisked us and the secret servicemen asked us a million questions. When they finally let us go it’d been dark for a long time. The bus driver snored against the steering wheel. Back at the hotel, I felt glad that my room was empty as I packed up my red bag. We stopped by firecamp the next morning so that Doug could go through demob. That’s right, demobilization. The Forest Service had received official orders to send us back to Monument. Do not pass go. Do not collect a fat twenty-one-days-of-overtime-and-hazard-pay-fire-check.

{Back in CO, a Piker ponders the damage done by one woman.}

Like I said before, the West wasn’t burning, not for shit, and it was clear we weren’t going to be making up that lost money, not any time soon. On the bus ride to the airport nobody said anything about it. Tan didn’t mention his truck payment or the bill for his hernia operation. Rock Star didn’t say a word about the fishing trip to Alaska he’d been planning for the fall. Hinky was gone again and we knew this time he wasn’t coming back.

Sasha sat by herself in the seat she’d shared with Hinky. She looked out the window at the swampland the highway cut clean through. Even Lee knew better than to sit by her. He stayed in his regular seat, one row behind and across the aisle from her. It was plain to see it was over between them and we were glad for that, at least.

A few days later we were still kicking around the work center doing project work, getting straight pay for a measly forty-hour workweek. Sometimes Rock Star would re-enact Hinky’s flying leap. But besides that, wasn’t nothing cheerful going on.

{Rock Star re-enacts Hinky's flying leap at Clinton}

Without saying anything to anyone about it, Sasha went into Doug’s office at the end of the day and resigned. I saw her driving down the dirt road alone, dust blowing into her open windows.

That night a few of us went down to O’Shea’s Pub to drink over our lost fire cash. Tan said, “That’s what Hotshot love comes to. All it takes to blow a guaranteed twenty-one day tour is one splittail.” And we all nodded gravely, a little pleased to have such a truth to live by.

THE END

{Done with another tall tale about the Pike, Mary Lowry walks away.}

Big thanks to John Markalunas for photos of the Pike Hotshot Crew. And, as always, big love to my boys on the Pike.

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