Hotshots (5 page)

“You're pursuing a risky activity with people you care about. The feeling of camaraderie must be similar.”

“It's very strong. When the wind is right I'm going back to Thunder Mountain. The Forest Service agreed to helicopter the families in. I can prove there's no way Joni could have escaped that fire even if she had dropped her pack or deployed her shelter, and I'm going to do it. They're not going to get away with blaming her for this. Do you want to come?”

“
Yeah,” I said.

5

W
E COULDN
'
T GO
on any ordinary day. It had to be a day that approximated the conditions of the fatal fire when the winds howled out of the South Canyon like a terrible red wolf and moved faster than a bird could fly. But the winds, which didn't want to stop in June, wouldn't return in August. At first I watched the weather forecast every night, waiting for the winds to pick up and for the Barkers to call, but then I stopped thinking about the Thunder Mountain Fire. Real estate and divorce were how I made my living. The Thunder Mountain suit had a lot of potential but it also had some major strikes against it. Feuding clients wasn't the only one. Negligence and personal responsibility are complex issues. I wasn't an ambulance chaser and I wasn't sure I wanted to be a liability lawyer either. Three weeks later when the winds finally rose I didn't notice; Mike's phone call came as a surprise.

“High winds tomorrow,” he said. “And we're going to Thunder Mountain. Wanna come?”

Yes, but could I rearrange my schedule to fit it in? I looked at my calendar. Nothing there that couldn't wait. “Okay,” I said.

“The Forest Service helicopter will pick you and the Barkers up at Kirtland at oh-nine hundred.”

“Where do we meet you?”

“The parking lot at the campground near the foot of Thunder Mountain. That was the loading field for the fire. Ramona and I are driving up together. The Forest Service's P.R. guy, Tom Hogue, will come with you and the Barkers. He's a smoke.”

“A smoke?”

“An asshole. He resents having women in the Forest Service and he's just putting in time until he retires. I don't want to spend any more time with that guy than I have to.”

And maybe Ramona was going with Mike because she didn't want to spend any more time with the Barkers than she had to. “See you at Thunder Mountain,” I said.

******

Eric and Nancy Barker were dressed for climbing in hiking shorts, T-shirts with green ribbons over their hearts, and matching bandannas. Eric carried a large backpack. His sunglasses were balanced on top of his head, staring at the sky. They both had the strong calf muscles of serious hikers. Hogue was dressed in a green Forest Service uniform. I wore jeans and running shoes myself, and carried my Aunt Joan's birding binoculars.

Hogue
and the Barkers were standing near the helicopter when I got to the airfield. Hogue saw me coming and glanced at his watch. What's this guy's problem? I wondered. I worked fifteen minutes from Kirtland. How late could I have been?

“Traffic,” I said, and was pissed at myself for having said anything at all. “I'm Neil Hamel.”

“Tom Hogue.” He was tall and thin with a white mustache that made his face look as if it had been brushed by frost. The chopper blade spun impatiently, but Hogue had some things to say first.

“Mike Marshall and Ramona Franklin are meeting us in the parking lot, correct?” he shouted.

“Yes,” Eric replied.

“I've arranged for the helicopter to come back for us at three. Will that present a problem for anyone?”

“Not for us,” Nancy said.

“Me neither,” I said.

“I've made several of these trips,” Hogue said. “I feel it's necessary to warn you that it can be difficult emotionally and physically.”

“We'll manage,” Eric said.

“All right then. Let's get going.” Hogue took a remote out of his pocket and clicked it next to each of his ears. He wore a hearing aid, I figured. This was his way of controlling the input and lowering the volume. If Hogue was the Forest Service's P.R. man I wouldn't want to meet their axman. On the other hand, it couldn't be easy to return to the fire scene time after time with grieving and angry parents.

Hogue motioned us inside the aircraft. We sat down and the chopper lifted off. This helicopter was used to carrying a larger load. There was plenty of space inside and Hogue sat down several feet from the Barkers and me.

While we lifted off I studied him. There wasn't much else to look at. Hogue struck me as a guy who'd been single for a long time. Maybe he'd been married once, maybe it didn't take. Guys who are long-term single seem to be surrounded by an invisible bubble. Single women could well have their own bubbles, but I'm not the one to notice that. I saw Hogue's bubble as hard, transparent, cold. Inside he'd keep the attitudes he wanted to protect, outside were the ones he'd prefer to ignore. A remote, older man appeals to a lot of women, but I have a built-in ice detector. I know that with a guy like that you can chop away with your ice pick forever and never get through.

Once we were in the air I turned my eyes away from Hogue and toward the ground. A lot of things are revealed from the air, and pilots are the ones to see them. The year I was a ski bum I knew a pilot who buzzed the town every morning to find out where his buddies had spent the night.

Our helicopter whirred over Sandia Indian Bingo, whose full parking lot was a stark contrast to the emptiness of the rest of the reservation. We followed the green thread of the Rio Grande Valley for a
while,
then crossed over Los Alamos and Abiquiu Dam. We flew over the Jicarilla Apache Reservation, and I spotted the blue jewels of Heron and El Vado lakes. The Carson National Forest was down below, and it was reassuring to see how much of it remained green. The Barkers sat together hip to hip and didn't say a word. It was difficult to communicate above the noise of the helicopter anyway.

It was obvious the minute we crossed the Colorado border. I saw long lines of condominium roofs and houses surrounded by acres of fields or backed up against the wilderness. Some were trophy sized, some were tiny hunting cabins, but those were remnants of a poorer era. Baja Colorado (lower Colorado) is a phrase you hear in New Mexico once developers start showing up. We have pockets of development among our mountains and deserts—ranchettes in the East Mountains, sprawl on the West Mesa, Santa Fe's million-dollar casitas—but you have to cross the border into Colorado and Arizona to find development big time. That's when I realize how close to the Third World the Land of Enchantment is. Once you cross the state line, “For Sale” signs sprout like weeds beside the highway. In southern Colorado everything seems to have a price; in New Mexico we still have the original Spanish land grants, where signs say that nothing is for sale ever.

The helicopter began its descent and Nancy gripped Eric's hand. Our range of vision became more limited and more precise. Cars and trucks rode a highway and beside it a brown ribbon of a river flowed. We crossed a valley where horses grazed. There were a couple of A-frames and a log cabin in the valley. People here must have gone about their business while the fire raged several miles away. We were approaching Thunder Mountain. The piñon and juniper on its western slope churned like surf in the wind. The chopper crossed a ridge and we were looking into the heart of devastation. Hogue fumbled with his remote and cleared his throat. Nancy buried her face in her hands. Eric pulled his dark glasses down.

The ground was the color of pink skin. Tree trunks were black stubble on a face that had been scraped raw. The steep walls of the South Canyon were burned bare. There was a dry arroyo at the bottom, but often it was hidden by the shape of the canyon walls. I could understand how a lookout on the ridge might miss a fire in the arroyo, though from the air it should have been easy enough to spot the smoke.

The pilot negotiated the chopper through the high winds. We passed the helipad at the top of the ridge, the place the hotshots had been dropped in, the place from which their bodies had to be lifted out, the place we would return to once we had picked up Mike and Ramona.

“I don't think I can go down there, Eric.” The pain in Nancy's voice cut through the roar of the chopper. “You go if you want to. I'll wait below.” Eric squeezed her hand and said nothing.

We descended along the eastern slope, which was as heavily forested as the western slope had been except for some dark patches where the fire had spotted. I could see a serpentine dirt road curving up the far side of this canyon. About halfway up stood a massive wooden house with a cedar-shake roof. It
was
clear from here how close this trophy had come to being kindling. Standing on the deck watching the smoke rise, who wouldn't have reached for the phone and called anyone with influence?

The pilot negotiated the parking lot landing. Mike was visible waiting next to a red car, but there was no sign of Ramona. We landed, escaped for a minute from the noise of the whirling bird, and went to talk to Mike. He gave Nancy and Eric an awkward hug. He carried a large backpack and a radio, and wore a green hard hat, wool pants, a bumble-bee yellow shirt with long sleeves, and a red bandanna around his neck. It had to be an uncomfortably hot outfit, and we were a long way from a live fire. It must have been the same outfit he and Joni were wearing the day she died.

“Where's Ramona?” Eric asked.

“She's hiking in. She wanted to face the mountain in her own way,” Mike said.

“That's the way Ramona does everything, isn't it? Her own way.” Nancy looked across the canyon to where the trophy house was making a loud statement. “My daughter died trying to save that house,” she cried, shaking like an aspen in the strong wind.

“Come here, Nancy,” Eric said. He took her hand and they walked to the edge of the parking lot, where they stood under the shade of a large cottonwood. He'd hitched up his pack, and red sticks that resembled dynamite were sticking out of it. The Barkers appeared to be engaged in the mixture of negotiation, argument, and understanding that comes with a long-term relationship. The arms of a cottonwood are a good place to hide and think. Tom Hogue watched them from where he stood near the helicopter. Mike and I were far enough away from the noise that we could talk without shouting.

“Disappearing into the shade of a tree is a firefighter's trick.” Mike said. “You'd be amazed how many firefighters can hide under the shade of one tree.”

“That gear you're wearing looks
muy
hot,” I said.

“After a while you hardly notice. How do you like my pants?”

“They're okay.”

“They're women's. All the guys bitched when they started making special pants for the women, but one by one they started wearing them.”

“Why?”

“Better fit. They've got more room. Joni used to joke about my getting into her pants.” The wind danced a dust devil around the parking lot. Mike looked up the mountain at the rippling piñon and juniper. “I'd like to get going. The updrafts increase at this time of day.”

“This is the time of the fire?”

“Getting close. The sky was like this then, so clear and blue that everybody miscalculated the strength of the cold front that was moving in.”

I was curious about the absent Ramona. “Would a Navajo woman go back to the place where
someone
she cared for died? Navajos are known to be suspicious about death.”

“She'll have to make her own decision about that when she gets nearby. She wants to leave a tribute to Joni somewhere on the mountain. The Native American firefighters like to leave something at a fire. She didn't have a chance to do it before.”

“When did she leave here?”

“About an hour ago.”

“Will she meet us on the mountain?''

“That's up to her. You guys ready?” Mike yelled at Eric and Nancy. Nancy shook her head, sat down, and leaned against the tree. Eric walked over to us, and then so did Hogue, who was clicking on his hearing aid and looking at his watch.

“She doesn't want to go?” Hogue asked Eric.

“No.”

“The mothers never do,” he said. “Where's Ramona Franklin? We can't wait here for her all day.”

“You don't have to wait for Ramona. She's already on the mountain,” Mike answered.

“I don't want to leave Nancy here alone,” Eric said. “You guys go, let us know everything you see. Okay?” He punched Mike's shoulder lightly with his fist.

“Will do,” Mike said.

6

I
N THE HELICOPTER
Mike and Hogue tried to ignore each other, but their body language indicated they were all too aware. From this side of the mountain the burned area looked like a pink conch shell floating on a green sea. The pilot dropped us off at the helipad. The helicopter was creating its own weather system, a tempest within the cold front. The sky was a calm, deep blue, but the winds were churning on top of the ridge and the temperature felt fifteen degrees cooler than it had below. Hogue told the pilot that he was thinking about walking out and having someone from the Forest Service pick him up in the parking lot later; he wanted to check the condition of the forest on the east side of the mountain. The pilot confirmed that he would come back for Mike and me at three.

The South Canyon looked even more desolate up close than it had from the air. The devastation was absolute. Downed trees, twisted by fire, resembled black lizards crawling over the canyon walls. The remaining trees had burned down to stumps. At my feet lay a handful of empty, white snail shells. The only signs of life I noticed in the canyon came from the base of the Gambel oaks, where pale green leaves sprouted. The restless wind seemed hell-bent on making it to Kansas for dinner; then it spun around and whipped the loose pink soil into billowing shapes of clouds and flame. Hogue clicked his remote near his right ear, then his left, turning down the wind's volume. I could see why; I was hearing voices in the wind.