The Smoke Jumper

  The plane made another pass over the fire while the spotter and assistant spotter squatted by the open door, hooked in for safety, trying to figure out a likely jump spot. The spotter’s name was Frank Bird though everyone called him Big Bird or Bigs because he was the smallest man on the base. He was also, at fifty-five, one of the oldest and wisest and had his name on the hundred-jump list back at the base. Ed always found it comforting to have Bigs as spotter.

  The pilot dipped a wing and started to circle back and Ed, quietly chewing a power bar to top up his blood sugar level, found himself looking directly down on the fire. It looked like a large arrowhead chasing the slow drift of white smoke up the west flank of the mountain. The terrain was difficult, all steep ravines and jutting crags and barely a space between the trees. Wherever Bigs chose for the jump spot, it was going to be tight.

  They were flying at about a hundred and ten miles an hour at fifteen hundred feet and Bigs had to yell to make himself heard over the noise of the engines when he showed them the jump spot. It was a thin clearing that ran down the mountainside in a crooked green scar. At its widest it was no more than thirty feet across and on all sides it was guarded by tall lodgepole pine. They passed over it three more times, dropping a pair of crepe-paper streamers on each pass to measure the wind drift. The streamers were in combinations of pink and blue and yellow and weighted with sand and Ed watched them snake and flutter away below him toward the trees.

  ‘Looks like we’ve got about three hundred yards of wind drift,’ Bigs shouted. ‘Everybody see the spot? Okay, let’s do it.’

  The jumpers were all putting on their gloves and helmets and personal gear bags and going through their final buddy checks. Ed and Connor were jumping first stick, which meant that Ed was going to be the first man out of the plane. Once they’d landed, that made him the incident commander. The last time that he’d gone first, he missed the jump spot and landed in a creek. He could feel the adrenaline begin to course through his veins and he took some long deep breaths to calm himself. There was a flash and he looked around startled and saw Connor grinning as he lowered his camera. Ed raised his middle finger. Connor stepped close so that their helmets touched.

  ‘You okay?’

  ‘Yeah, I’m fine.’

  ‘Want me to go first?’

  ‘No way. You couldn’t hack it.’

  Connor cuffed him on the helmet.

  ‘Leave some space for me down there, okay?’

  Bigs, kneeling by the door, called over to them asking if they were ready.

  ‘Yessir!’ Ed yelled.

  He turned to face Connor and they put their fists to their chests and looked each other in the eye.

  ‘Hearts of fire!’

  They said it together then gave each other a high-five.

  ‘Go for it, man,’ Connor said.

  ‘You too.’

  ‘Okay, fellas,’ Bigs yelled. ‘Hook up!’

  Ed hooked his static line to the cable and inserted the locking pin into the clip and asked if he was clear. The assistant spotter confirmed that he was.

  ‘Okay, we’re going to come around on final now. Get in the door!’

  Ed stepped forward and squatted in the door, putting his left foot out onto the step and flexing his right leg and foot behind him. With both hands he took a firm grasp of the sides of the doorway. The rush of the slipstream ripped in around him. He felt its cold blast compressing his face through the lattice of his face guard. He looked down at the toe of his left boot and then looked beyond it to the reeling green blanket of forest below. It was hard not to stare at it but he knew it was wrong to do so and wrenched his eyes away and locked them on the horizon.

  Bigs yelled to ask him if he’d seen the streamers and gotten a good look at the jump spot. Ed looked him in the eye and said he had. He felt the plane tilt and watched the forest rotate below him as the plane came around and steadied into its final approach.

  ‘See that first ravine? Could be a little squirrelly just as you come over there. Watch out for it, okay?’

  ‘Got you.’

  ‘Okay, we’re on final!’

  Ed was still taking his long, deep breaths. He flexed his knees and the muscles at the back of his neck and he closed his eyes for a moment to center himself and to summon calm and strength and luck. It was crucial to get thrust when the spotter gave you the signal to jump. Unless you made a good, clean, vigorous exit, you could find yourself plunging head-first with your lines tangled around your feet and when your chute opened your whole body would get cracked like a bull-whip and knock every ounce of air from your lungs.

  ‘Get ready!’

  Ed raised himself up on his left leg a little and raised his right knee off the floor to give his foot more spring. The forest seemed to be calling him, tempting him to look down at it, like a siren luring him to the rocks, but he resisted and kept his eyes on the horizon. Then it came. A sharp slap on his left shoulder from Bigs and he launched himself with all his might through the doorway and out into the thin blue air.

  ‘One-one-thousand . . .’

  He didn’t know if he was counting aloud or not for the rush of air seemed to suck the words from his head.

  ‘Two-one-thousand . . .’

  He’d given himself such a thrust from the door that his body had twisted. He was staring up at the roaring white belly of the plane that was swimming away from him like a shark with the sun masked behind it.

  ‘Three-one-thousand . . .’

  And then he saw Connor jump after him and suddenly the sun flared out from the tail and he was blinded and knew nothing but the craving pull of the earth as he plunged at ninety miles per hour toward it.

  ‘Four-one-thousand . . .’

  He braced himself and an instant later he heard a whoosh and a crack and he was jerked like a fish on a line. His body skewed and straightened and he looked up and saw the white and blue and yellow dome of his canopy billowing above him. And there was Connor, higher and to his right, the lines of his chute streaming out and then the chute filling and holding and Connor’s body swinging in a long curve until he was upright and steady and floating. And the plane was gone and its roar was gone and the only sound in the clear vault of air was the whisper and flutter of the two parachutes.

  They circled and Connor whooped and Ed felt himself grinning like an idiot at the forest kaleidoscoping below him. He pulled on the toggles and steadied himself and steered the chute around so that he was facing the fire. And with Connor out of sight behind him he began to ride the wind down in a lazy sequence of S turns toward the jump spot and the drift of white smoke beyond.

  Connor called out and told him to look to his left and he saw a herd of elk, about a dozen females and their young, crossing a ridge. The last one stopped and looked back and Ed couldn’t be sure if she was looking up at them but he thought she was. And then she turned and disappeared over the ridge and all that was left were the shadows of the chutes gliding silently, a darker green on the green of the forest.

  He reached the first ravine and, just as Bigs had said it would, the air around him suddenly whirled and his chute riffled and lurched and he felt himself swing to one side and then swing back again and he used his toggles and steadied himself onto a new course. He looked down into the ravine and saw a gash of white water maybe three hundred feet below him and then he was over the ridge on the other side. The wind had risen and seemed to have shifted south and the jump spot was coming up fast and Ed had to toggle hard to hold the right line.

  The trees were only about a hundred feet below him now and they were taller than he’d thought they would be. They were mostly lodgepole but there were Douglas firs among them too. His heart was thumping. Hanging up in a tree was embarrassing at the best of times, but if you were first man it was downright galling and he was determined that it wasn’t going happen. The idea was to fly over the spot and turn upwind then drop gently into it. At the moment he seemed well set to do just that.

  No soon
er had the thought passed, however, when the wind dropped and his chute flapped and he lost a good fifteen feet that he badly needed. Shit, he thought. He wasn’t going to make it.

  Coming up fast now, some fifty yards ahead, he could see the tops of the trees that edged the near side of the clearcut and he was so sure he was going to land in them that he started trying to pick the most friendly looking one. To hang up was bad enough without getting skewered on a branch. Then suddenly the wind whipped itself up again and he managed to get some lift, maybe just enough to make it. He could see the pale green brush of the clearcut revealing itself before him now but he still didn’t think he was going to clear the final line of trees. There were a couple there that were bigger than the others and he was heading straight at them. He toggled hard to the left and saw a lower place and aimed for it. He was surfing the treetops now. His boots caught a branch and then another and he hoisted his knees but then his knees were crashing through the branches too and he started to yell and curse himself for a fool . . .

  And then he was out and clear and over the trees and floating down into the pale green calm of the clearcut with the grace of an angel.

  He hit the ground with both feet and rolled and was standing again before his chute had time to settle and he half expected the watching forest to burst into spontaneous applause. He felt like taking a bow.

  He looked up, expecting to see Connor, but there was no sign of him. He took off his harness and was just climbing out of his jumpsuit when he heard Connor’s voice.

  ‘Shit! Ow! OW! Goddam it!’

  There was a loud cracking and splintering of timber and then Connor’s boots appeared through the branches of one of the big lodgepoles, followed by the rest of him. His parachute billowed out above the tree and slowly settled, swallowing both tree and man. Then something gave and Connor appeared again and fell and for a bad moment Ed thought he was going to fall all the way down. But after about ten feet his lines snagged and held and Connor hung there, swinging gently to and fro about seventy feet above the ground.

  Suddenly everything was silent again. Ed stood looking up at him and Connor lifted his face guard and just hung there, looking back down at him. Ed was trying to keep a straight face.

  ‘Hi,’ he said.

  ‘Fuck.’

  ‘You okay?’

  ‘Yeah, I’m terrific.’

  ‘I bet the view’s really great up there, huh? You know, I looked at that tree and said to myself, is that a good place to land? And then I said, no, I think it might be better down here in the jump spot.’

  ‘Fuck you, Tully.’

  ‘Need any help?’

  ‘Not from you, asshole.’

  Ed laughed and started gathering his chute. Connor found a foothold on a branch and gently tugged on his lines to test how securely they were snagged. Then he reached into his pants pocket for his letdown rope and tied himself off to the tree. The Twin Otter passed overhead and a few moments later Chuck Harner and Phil Wheatley came gliding into the jump spot. Both made perfect landings.

  ‘Hey, Connor,’ Chuck said. ‘You picking apples up there? You’re out of luck, man, that there’s a pine tree.’

  Connor didn’t reply. He was trying to disentangle his chute. Chuck and Phil got out of their harnesses and jumpsuits and set about stowing their chutes and while they did so, Chuck kept up the ragging.

  ‘Boy, was that an easy jump spot. What d’you reckon, Ed?’

  ‘Yep. Piece of cake.’

  ‘How was it for you, Pee-Wee? Wasn’t that a piece of cake?’

  ‘I guess it was okay.’ He grinned but, as a rookie who didn’t know Connor too well, seemed a little uneasy about joining in the fun.

  By the time Connor was ready to lower himself out of the tree, he had a full audience. All the other seven jumpers had landed and every one of them hit the spot, looked up at him and made some smart remark. Connor gave as good as he got and, knowing him so well, Ed could tell that he saw the funny side of it and was pretending to be angrier than he was. As Connor slid down the rope they all cheered. He waved a finger at them.

  ‘Thank you. Thank you all so much. Bunch of assholes.’

  When he was only two or three feet from the ground he let go of the rope and jumped and as he hit the ground his right leg buckled and he cried out and fell over. A couple of the jumpers laughed, thinking he was just fooling but Ed knew something had happened and he ran over.

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘My ankle. I landed on a rock or something. Shit.’

  He sat up and hoisted the bottom of his jumpsuit. He undid the laces of his boot and pulled down his sock and Ed saw the leg was already swelling fast.

  ‘Hell, Connor. You’re such a goddamn attention-seeker.’

  ‘I know. I just want to be loved.’

  They radioed for a helicopter and Connor was lifted out and the seven remaining jumpers set about putting out the fire. It wasn’t too much of a contest. They got the tail under control first, then cut line along the north and south flanks. The wind dropped and with the night came air that was cool and moist and the fire lay down like a lamb. The following day they starved the head with a burnout. The lines held and the night was spent mopping up. By the second dawn it was done and dusted.

  Ed and his friends played at Donna Kiamoto’s party at Henry’s and played so well they weren’t allowed to stop. ‘Great Balls of Fire’ got three encores. He hadn’t expected Julia to be there, but it was her staff changeover day and somehow she’d managed to slip away a little early. Ed kept his eyes locked on her while he sang. She danced with just about everyone, except poor old Connor who sat at a front table, watching and drinking too many beers, his bandaged leg propped up on a chair and his crutches propped behind him. The ankle had turned out not to be broken, just sprained, but badly enough to stop him jumping for a while.

  Ed and Julia helped him home, one on either side, his arms draped around their shoulders and Ed carrying the crutches. It was nearly dawn and the birds were starting to sing in the cottonwoods along the river. Connor was singing ‘Great Balls of Fire,’ slurring the same words over and over again, while Ed and Julia laughed and teased him. A police car cruised by and stopped and the cop rolled down his window. Julia turned on the charm and explained that they were smoke jumpers and that Connor had been wounded in action and the cop smiled and wished them goodnight and drove on.

  They helped Connor up the stairs and he was going on about what a beautiful couple they made. He said they were the most beautiful couple in the whole world. Julia was laughing so much they all nearly fell.

  ‘It’s true, man,’ he slurred. ‘You’re just . . . beautiful Julia, you’re . . .’

  ‘Beautiful?’

  ‘Yeah. That’s right. You’re beautiful. I don’t mean like, to look at ...’

  ‘Hey, thanks, Connor.’

  ‘No, I mean . . . You are, of course you are. God, you are. But, hell, you know what I mean. Ed, you’re real lucky, man, to have a woman like this. And Julia, you’re lucky too, to have this . . . ugly old sonofabitch.’

  They lowered him onto his bed and Ed pulled the boot off his left foot. Connor held up his bandaged foot which had no boot and Julia began to laugh again so that she had to sit down on the bed.

  ‘You’re not wearing one on that foot,’ Ed said.

  ‘What? Oh.’

  ‘You go to sleep now.’

  Connor suddenly reached out and held onto them both. He’d lifted his head off the pillow and even allowing for the drink there was a sad urgency in those pale blue eyes that Ed had never seen before and didn’t understand.

  ‘I love you guys. I really love you, you know?’

  Ed ruffled his hair and Julia leaned over him and gently kissed his forehead.

  ‘We love you too, cowboy,’ Ed said. ‘Now sleep.’

  8

  Julia had once heard someone at an educational psychology conference make a joke about how the first half of your life was wrecked by you
r parents and the second half wrecked by your children. She couldn’t yet attest to the truth or otherwise of the second part of this, but after seeing so many damaged young lives in the course of her work, she had no doubt about the first. Counselors and therapists of almost every variety were encouraged to look at themselves in order better to help their clients, and in most matters Julia felt she had a pretty good handle on herself and what had made her the way she was. The one exception was her father.

  When Connor had asked her about him that night, driving back from the rodeo, she had come close to tears. It was strange, for she could go for months without ever giving her dad a thought and then suddenly, out of nowhere, the loss of him all those years ago would hit her like a punch in the solar plexus. It was only later that it occurred to her that there was something about Connor that reminded her of her dad.

  She had friends whose parents had been in such a perpetual state of war that when one of them left, it came almost as a relief. But with her parents it had never been like that. As far as she was concerned, they were completely happy, more than happy. Unlike other people’s parents, they actually seemed to be in love. And then one day, out of the blue, her father announced that he had fallen in love with someone else and he packed his bags and went.

  Julia had always adored him. He was her hero, a fine-looking man, blond and tall, with a great sense of fun, the kind of dad a young girl’s school friends envied. When you told him something, even some silly, trivial thing that had happened at school, or gave him an opinion on something, he always made you feel that what you said was interesting and important.

  He often used to come home late from work (Julia later discovered why) and she would lie awake until she heard his car pulling up outside and then the click of the front door and his footsteps on the stairs. He would tiptoe to her door and peep in to see if she was still awake and she would say hi, Daddy, and he would come and sit on her bed and talk with her and ask her to tell him all about her day.