The Smoke Jumper

  ‘You’re sure?’

  ‘Oh yeah.’

  ‘Can they do anything about it?’

  ‘Not a thing.’

  Again, they were silent for a moment.

  ‘Have you told Julia?’

  ‘Not yet. I only found out at the end of last week. I just haven’t had the balls to do it yet. So to speak.’

  He laughed and felt Connor’s hand grasp his shoulder.

  ‘I mean, I know we can adopt and all, but . . . I guess it’s just the shock, you know.’ He paused. ‘Well, hey! There’s a party pooper if ever there was one. I’m sorry, man. I shouldn’t have—’

  ‘Don’t be sorry. I’m glad you told me.’

  Ed felt for his watch and pressed the button and the little robot voice told him it was ten-twenty-six-pee-em.

  ‘Sorry, Hal? What was that again?’

  It was a silly trick but it always got a laugh. He pressed the button again.

  ‘Ten-twenty-six-pee-em.’

  ‘That’s cool,’ Connor said.

  ‘Yeah. The kids I teach all want one. Hey, tell me. Can you see the moon?’

  ‘Uh-huh. It’s not much of one.’

  ‘Two days old. And now, ladies and gentlemen, for his next trick, The Amazing Tully is going to point right at it.’

  He reached out to his right and found the last post of the rope rail to get his bearings and make sure he was facing in the right direction. Then he pointed at the sky.

  ‘There. Am I right?’

  ‘Absolutely. That’s pretty good. How do you do that?’

  Ed touched his temple like a mystic. ‘Ah, my friend. These are powers vouchsafed only to the chosen few. Will you draw me a map of the stars?’

  ‘Sure. Where?’

  ‘On my back.’

  Connor knelt behind him and while the river rippled by charted with his finger every planet and star he could name, which was many. While he was doing so he saw a falling star and told Ed and described it and traced its arc on his shoulder blade. And in the darkened dome of his skull Ed could see it and see them all, bright and silver and shimmering and he secretly shaved from them a sliver of their light and stored it in his heart.

  17

  Julia stood back and watched them, marveling at how such a small number of six-year-olds could make such a vast volume of noise. They were spread out along the back wall of the playground, all wearing their red and blue painting smocks. There was more chalk on their faces and smocks than was on the wall. It wasn’t every day that law-abiding junior citizens were given license to deface state property and they were sure making the most of it.

  Julia had gotten the idea for the project after talking with Connor about her cave painting in the bedroom. The outside of the school was being redecorated and she asked Mrs Leitner, the principal, if her firstgrade class could do a little decorating of their own before the painters got there. They had spent the previous week talking about cave painting and looking at some reference books that Julia had found in the public library. She’d handed out photocopies of some Native American pictographs in Idaho and of some extraordinary rock paintings recently discovered in France.

  Today came the climax, with the kids being let loose on the playground wall. Julia had divided the wall into eight different ‘caves’ and the kids into eight ‘cave families.’ They had to imagine what they had been doing that day and depict it in colored chalk on their stretch of the wall.

  Mrs Leitner had said it was a great idea but had failed to realize that it would be taking place right outside the room where she taught fourth-grade math. Julia had told her cave kids that they should communicate with each other exclusively in cave language, which seemed mostly to consist of loud shrieks and grunts. This was a decision she was now coming to regret and, judging by her rueful glances through the window, so was Mrs Leitner.

  Some of the children’s pictures were impressive. Most had opted for hunting scenes, with deer and wolves and bears and woolly mammoths and lots of little human beings, though it was sometimes unclear who was hunting whom. Others had gotten a little more surreal. Julia had to point out to Lucy Kravitz that Batman and Robin probably weren’t around in those days and that cooking was generally done by fire, not by microwave.

  Now the noise was again reaching Mrs Leitner-alert level. Julia clapped her hands and called out and told everyone to gather around. She put a finger to her lips and spoke in an excited whisper.

  ‘Okay, listen up. Here’s the deal. I’ve just been up the hill and there’s this big, hairy saber-tooth tiger up there. And he looked really, really hungry.’

  ‘You should be telling us this in cave language.’

  ‘Lucy, I know. But this is an emergency, okay?’

  ‘No, ’cos you wouldn’t be able to say that either.’

  ‘Well, let’s just pretend I’m more highly evolved.’

  ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘Smarter. Okay, that’s enough already. So we keep on with the drawing but now we have to be really quiet. Quiet as cave mice. Because I think he’s out there now, prowling around outside the caves. And, boy, is he hungry.’

  Of course, she’d forgotten, as one easily could, about Kane Feldman. He was a taciturn, sensitive boy with a permanently runny nose and he promptly burst into tears. Julia bent down and gave him a hug. She asked him if he would like to be the tiger and he sniffed and nodded and at once stopped crying.

  ‘Okay. And, heck, these guys look pretty tasty, so I’ll be a tiger too.’

  The others went back to work and she held Kane’s limp little hand and they started to prowl.

  But even while she prowled, half her mind returned to what had been preoccupying her all morning and all through the night. She thought about Ed and his astonishing suggestion.

  They had spent the previous evening with Connor at The Karmic Moose, where Ed occasionally played piano and sang. It was a smarter place than Henry’s but not much. It was a Thursday evening and there weren’t too many people there and things got off to a rocky start when Ed introduced himself as Missoula’s answer to Stevie Wonder.

  It was the kind of self-deprecating joke to which he seemed more and more prone nowadays and it went down like a lead balloon. Julia was sitting at the bar with Connor and they heard someone beside them mutter that if that wasn’t racist, it was in darned poor taste. But things picked up. Ed played all his best numbers, from Cole Porter to Dolly Parton, and by the end of the last set the crowd had grown and was calling for more.

  The two weeks that had passed since Connor’s party had been an emotional roller-coaster ride. Ed had told her about his sterility immediately after Connor left that Sunday evening and they spent that night and almost every waking hour since talking about it. Together they went to see Ed’s doctor who solemnly confirmed the diagnosis and when they got home, Ed broke down and cried. Since then, however, he had been strong and positive and so had Julia. It was sad, she told herself, more than sad. But there was no point drowning in it. And the solution was simple. They would adopt. After school each day, she researched it. Dr Rumbold told her about an agency in Helena who arranged these matters. Julia called them and fixed an appointment.

  Ed had intended to cancel his gig at The Karmic Moose, but when the time came their feelings had calmed and they agreed that a night out would do them both good. They called Connor. He drove over from Augusta and after the gig took them both around the corner for supper at The Depot.

  It was almost like old times. Connor was in good spirits. He looked less strung out and said that his leg was as good as mended. He’d already been riding and said he was ready to do that climb whenever they wanted. Ed was still on a high from his gig. He had them and the waitresses and all the people at the surrounding tables in fits of laughter. Flushed and happy, they said goodbye to Connor in the parking lot and agreed that, weather permitting, they would do the climb a week this coming Saturday.

  For the first few miles of the drive back home, Ed didn’t spea
k, and for a while Julia thought he had fallen asleep. Then, out of the blue, he said it.

  ‘How would you feel if we asked Connor?’

  ‘Asked him what?’

  Ed paused. ‘If we asked him to . . . If he’d be prepared to father a child for us.’

  Julia almost drove off the road in shock.

  ‘What?! You’re kidding. Are you serious?’

  One look at him told her that he was.

  ‘Jesus, Ed.’

  ‘No, hang on a minute. Listen. Stop the car here.’

  ‘Ed, come on. Really.’

  ‘Please. Julia, stop the car.’

  ‘I think I’d better.’

  She pulled off the road and turned off the engine but left the headlights on. Ed reached for her hand and held it in both of his.

  ‘Ed, I can’t believe you mean this.’

  ‘Hang on. Just listen to me for a moment.’

  ‘Jesus, Ed.’

  ‘Listen. I’ve thought about it a lot and—’

  ‘Great. Well, don’t waste any more time on it, okay?’

  She pulled her hand away and folded her arms.

  ‘Julia, will you just shut up and let me speak? We’ve got a choice here. We both want a child, right? So. We can either adopt, the child of two total strangers. And - don’t get me wrong - if that’s what you want, that’s fine. Or we could have a child who is much more truly ours, a child who’d at least have the genes of one of us.’ He lifted his hand and stroked her face. ‘Yours.’

  Julia sighed and looked away down the beam of the headlights along the empty road ahead.

  ‘And this is a child who could grow inside you. We could share all that and watch him, or her, grow. Share all the things that couples share. It’d be our child, Julia. In a way an adopted child could never be. Don’t you see that?’

  She didn’t reply. She was too shocked to think straight. A car went by and she watched its taillights until they disappeared around the bend ahead. Ed went on, calmly.

  ‘And then the only question is, who would be the biological father?’

  ‘And you want it to be Connor. Jesus, Ed! What gives you the right to choose? Do I get a say? Or is this just some kind of buddy thing between you and Connor?’

  ‘Come on, Julia. I’m not saying it’s my choice. If you hate the idea, we can go to some sperm bank or whatever the hell they’re called and you can pick a flask. Pick some hunky quarterback for the Grizzlies. Or, hell, let’s just adopt.’

  ‘Have you and Connor talked about this?’

  ‘Of course not.’

  ‘You promise me?’

  ‘Julia, for godsake, what do you think I am?’

  ‘Ed, drop it. The answer’s no, okay?’

  She started the engine again.

  ‘Fine.’

  She pulled out onto the highway.

  ‘I mean, seeing as this all sounds like a done deal, you know, a good-ol’-buddy smoke-jumper thing, hell, forget the sperm banks and flasks and things, let’s just get him over and he can jump on me and get the damn thing done properly.’

  Ed didn’t reply and she drove for a while in silence, stunned at what she had just said, wondering what deranged part of her had spat out those words.

  ‘Sorry,’ she said at last. ‘I didn’t mean that.’

  ‘I’m sorry too. Let’s just forget it. It was a bad idea.’

  They didn’t speak again, not even after they reached home and went upstairs to bed, not even to say goodnight. Julia must have slept, but if she did it was sleep of only the thinnest kind, a fitful, skimming semi-sleep in which Connor and Ed and the knowing faces of unborn infants flitted like phantoms.

  They were still flitting in her head while she drove wide awake to work and still there now despite the renewed din of the children.

  At last the bell rang to signal the end of school.

  When the kids had dumped their smocks and disappeared, Julia returned to the playground to clear up the chalk. She saw Mrs Leitner heading out toward her and braced herself for a reprimand. Sally Leitner was a small, tidy woman of about fifty with steel-rimmed spectacles and an allegedly formidable temper which Julia might soon be able to verify.

  ‘Sorry about the noise,’ she said.

  ‘That’s all right, honey. I could see they were having fun.’

  They walked together beside the wall, Mrs Leitner looking over her glasses at the cave families’ efforts.

  ‘Hmm,’ she said at last. ‘They’re good. I think we’ll leave them there.’

  As she drove home, with the sun lowering itself toward the mountains, Julia went through it all again for the umpteenth time.

  What she had been trying to figure out was why she had reacted with such vehemence to Ed’s proposal. It was clearly something to do with her secret feelings for Connor, which only seemed to grow stronger every time she saw him and which she still considered a shameful betrayal of Ed. In some illogical way, she had taken what he said as if it were an accusation, as if he knew all about it and she had responded with the instinctive, defensive violence of a woman charged with adultery.

  But, dear Lord, to have Connor’s child . . .

  Would that not seal the betrayal in blood, make it many times worse? Or was it simply that she didn’t trust herself? That she feared how the world might change if she were to have his seed within her, to feel it stir, to give it life and bring it forth into the world and nourish and protect it. Julia started to shake.

  She was approaching the place where she and Ed had stopped to talk last night and now she stopped again. She got out and crossed the road and stood for a long time staring down at the river. Some of the trees were starting to turn.

  And slowly, in the golden light, she began to understand. Like a storm passing, all the doubts and fears that had swirled for so many hours in her head stilled and dispelled and she knew, calmly and with utter clarity, what she wanted.

  She couldn’t have Connor, but she could, if he agreed, have his child. A child that would be part him, part her and, for Ed, the greatest gift imaginable.

  Connor scrambled up into the sunlight and onto the ledge and as he did so he heard a croak and a flap of wings and saw the raven he had disturbed launch itself into the void. He secured himself to the anchor point that was already wedged in a crevice.

  ‘Taking in!’ he called.

  He peered down into the shadow of the chimney and saw Ed on another thinner ledge some thirty feet below taking the rope from his belay system and saw Julia a little lower and to one side watching him too. Connor began hauling in the loose rope hand over hand until he felt it go tight.

  ‘That’s me!’ Ed called.

  ‘Climb when ready!’

  There was a short pause and he saw Ed preparing himself and saying something to Julia that Connor couldn’t catch, then he pointed his face up at Connor and called.

  ‘Climbing!’

  ‘Okay!’

  Connor began to take in the slack, watching Ed all the while in awed silence. No stranger would ever have guessed that he was blind. He had done the climb several times, but there was a lot of mountain here, far too much for a man to remember every crack and crevice. He was literally feeling his way and only twice had they had to call out to help him find a perversely placed handhold or foothold. The part of the climb that had so far posed the most difficulties was oddly the most flat, the field of boulders that looked like dinosaurs. But even there Ed had done it by himself, guiding himself among them with a special collapsible cane, a kind of long ski-pole made out of flexible carbon fiber. He had stumbled a few times and fallen once quite badly, but he made it across without help from either of them. The climb had taken longer than last time, but not much. And now they had just one more pitch to the summit.

  It was one of those perfect early fall days that Connor sometimes shot for tourist brochures, the sky vast and cloudless, a limpid lazuline blue and the air blood-warm without a whisper of wind to chill it. The green ocean of the forest w
as dotted with islands of amber and rust and here and there a yellow splash of cottonwood or quakin’ asp. The higher peaks around them and others far away had their first sprinkling of snow.

  Connor had driven over the previous evening to stay the night at Ed’s place so that they could get an early start. And as soon as he arrived he’d sensed something different in them, a slightly strained atmosphere and he wondered for a while if he had interrupted some kind of dispute. Ed was much quieter than usual and over supper there were even moments when no one seemed to have anything to say. Connor put it down to it being the end of a busy week. Maybe they were both simply tired. Or worried about the climb.

  Julia had turned in first, leaving Connor and Ed to finish their wine by the fire, and they had chatted for a while about nothing in particular. Connor wanted to ask if he had told Julia about the results of his tests, because it had occurred to him that this might be the cause of the tension, but the moment didn’t seem right.

  He imagined that by morning the mood might have changed. But it didn’t. Driving down and on the hike to the rock face and ever since, during the climb, the three of them had hardly spoken except to utter the routine climbing calls. But as far as Connor was concerned that was fine. It was good sometimes for friends to be silent together, especially on a day like this. He just hoped that the two of them were okay.

  Half an hour later they reached the top. And watching Ed’s beaming face as he stepped up onto the platform of rock, Connor felt greatly moved. He hugged him and congratulated him and they did their Hearts of Fire routine. Ed asked him to take him over to the little pinnacle and he placed his palms on it, then turned and stood with his back pressed to the rock as if surveying the horizon. Connor looked at Julia. She was watching Ed and wiping away tears and grinning all at the same time. She turned to look at Connor and he smiled and she made a face and he could tell that she was cross with herself for crying.