The Smoke Jumper (17 page)

The Larry Burrows book was on the table and she picked it up and started asking him about it. As she flicked slowly through the pictures, Connor waited to see if she would say anything about the one that had most affected him, but she only looked at it awhile and moved on. She stopped at one in which a young girl was crouched over the body of her mother and howling distraught at the camera.

‘Do you think it’s heartless to take a picture like that?’ she said.

‘You mean rather than help her?’

Julia nodded, still staring at the child.

‘No. A picture never tells what happened next. A lot of photographers help people when they can. Burrows almost adopted one of the kids he photographed. But the most important thing, I guess, is to show the world what’s going on.’

‘I guess.’

She asked if she could borrow the book and Connor said sure, and then she asked about his own photography and whether she could see some of his work. He mostly kept it at the ranch and hardly had any pictures with him except those he’d taken of his mother at the rodeo, which he’d processed only last week. A couple of them weren’t bad and he got them out and Julia studied them carefully. He could see she was impressed.

‘Wow, Connor. You’re really good. I had no idea.’

‘Thanks.’

‘No, I mean . . . Oh, that sounds so rude, doesn’t it? All I meant was, I hadn’t seen anything before - except that terrible one of the elk on fire. When I say terrible, I mean, it was really good, you know. I just ...’

Connor let her dig herself deeper. She was blushing under her tan and he grinned and said it was okay, he knew what she meant. The phone rang and Julia reached for it like a drowning man for a life belt. It was Ed.

Connor stood up and started clearing the dishes. He listened to her telling Ed some of the same things and found himself trying to detect any difference in her tone of voice, some greater intimacy perhaps, but he couldn’t.

Julia handed him the phone and said she was going to have a bath, always her great treat after eight days in the backcountry. Connor sat down on the couch and listened while Ed told him about the fire and tried to wind him up with more overtime bullshit, saying he couldn’t decide whether to go for a Merc or a Lexus. Finally they got serious and talked about the arrangements for the following day. The idea was to put the canoes in the river at a little town called Stanley. One of the Idaho firefighters with whom Ed had gotten friendly lived near there and was going to give him a lift from Boise airport. He figured they would get to Stanley around two o’clock.

As he undressed in his room, Connor could hear Julia in the bathroom humming a little tune and he could hear the splash of the water as she washed herself in the tub and he had to try hard to censor his thoughts. He heard her brushing her teeth and then opening the bathroom door and switching off the light.

‘Connor?’

‘Yeah?’

‘Thanks for a great supper.’

‘You’re welcome.’

‘Goodnight.’

‘Goodnight.’

 

The town of Stanley sprawled in a broad green bowl of a valley some six thousand feet above sea level, guarded to the north by the White Cloud Mountains and to the south by the Sawtooth whose daggered peaks were sheathed all year in snow. The river curled through meadow flats where cattle grazed alongside deer and elk to the hum of bumblebees and the lazy flap of a heron’s wing. Here and there among the buttercups hot springs gurgled and steamed and Connor had always thought they were a kind of whispered hint that the idyll on show was not to be trusted and that the river’s true nature lay in the seething rapids and thundering gorges that were to come and for which the Salmon was revered.

Stanley was a five-hour drive from Missoula and they arrived an hour early and pulled up close by the river and unloaded the canoes and all the gear onto the grassy bank that sloped down to the water. The canoes were Old Town fifteen footers, both in good condition, one red, the other green.

The camping gear and food were stowed in black waterproof duffel bags.

Julia got out the Burrows book which weighed about a ton and a half and wasn’t exactly the best kind of book to bring on a canoe trip. Connor teased her for it and she laughed and settled herself on the grass to read while he took the truck around to the parking lot behind the Mountain Village Mercantile where they had arranged to meet Ed.

Connor was wearing only shorts and a pale gray T-shirt but in the thin mountain air the midday sun felt hot. He watched it shimmering along the blacktop as he walked around to the front and up the steps of the store. It was built of logs and had a long porch with an ice machine on it and a pay phone. Going inside was like stepping into an age gone by. There were old guns hanging on the wall and an ax and an ancient ox collar and the place seemed to sell anything a man might need, from a pair of pants to a pastrami sandwich. What Connor needed right now was a couple of cold sodas.

The woman behind the counter served him with a smile and asked where he was headed and Connor said they were going to canoe down to Challis and would it be okay to leave his truck out back in the lot and she said that was fine. She had just baked some chocolate-chip cookies and they smelled so good that Connor bought some and he bought some oranges too and thanked her.

When he got back to the river he saw Julia had taken off her T-shirt and was wearing a black swimsuit which she must have had on underneath. She was wearing sunglasses and had taken off her sandals and rolled up her shorts. Her legs were long and tanned but her ankles and feet were pale from wearing hiking boots all the time.

‘I see you like sun,’ he said.

‘Love it. They say it’s bad for your skin, but I don’t care. It’s my Italian blood. My mom’s the same. Ed says I’ll wind up looking like a handbag.’

‘Does your mom look like a handbag?’

‘Yeah, but a really classy one, you know?’

Connor laughed. He sat down beside her and they drank the sodas and ate the cookies and watched the sun spangle on the water. Connor told her that as a young man his father used to come down to these parts to fish for sockeye.

‘They used to come upstream to spawn. They go this bright red color. I remember Dad saying there were so many, the water looked like blood.’

‘They don’t come anymore?’

‘No. They built these dams downstream to make electricity and though they help some fish get up here, it’s nothing like what it was.’

‘Why do people allow that kind of thing?’

‘I guess they figure electricity’s more important than fish.’

He peeled an orange and gave her half and she said what a beautiful place it was, and Connor pointed out some of the peaks he and Ed had climbed over the years.

‘You know what they call this river?’

‘You mean apart from the Salmon?’

‘Yeah. It’s called the River of No Return.’

‘Because the salmon never came back?’

Connor smiled. ‘Because when Lewis and Clark reached here, they got stuck and ended up eating their own horses.’

‘So it was the horses who never came back.’

Two o’clock came and went and they sat waiting and talking for another hour and Ed still didn’t arrive. They’d agreed that he would call the Mercantile if there were any problems and Connor walked over there a couple of times but there were no messages. Every now and then a car would appear in the distance and he and Julia would stop talking and watch it come wavering and wobbling toward them through the liquid blacktop mirage, thinking it might be Ed, but it never was. A little after three they walked over to the Mercantile and stood in the shade of the porch and there they waited another hour, talking all the time and drinking more soda. And still he didn’t come.

Though she tried not to show it, Connor could tell Julia was worried and he was wondering himself why Ed hadn’t called or gotten someone else to. He went over to the pay phone and called the smoke jumper base in Missoula. The operations office told him that the California fire had flared up again overnight and that Ed and the others were still needed. Julia was listening and had gathered what had happened but they didn’t have time to talk about it because as soon as Connor hung up, the woman came out of the store and said there was a call for him inside.

‘Connor?’

‘Hey, Ed. I just called the base and heard.’

‘Man, I’m so sorry. I’d have called sooner but things have gone crazy down here.’

‘You okay?’

‘Yeah, I’m fine. Just pissed as hell I can’t come with you guys.’

‘Well, the river isn’t going anyplace. We’ll do it another time. We’ll just head home.’

‘Are you kidding? Do it. You’ll have a ball. How’s the water looking?’

‘Good.’

‘Then go for it, man. Julia’ll love it.’

Connor hesitated. He wasn’t sure Julia would want to if it was just going to be the two of them. She was standing beside him.

‘Listen, Ed. Talk to Julia, she’s right here.’

He handed over the phone and while they talked he wandered around the store, pretending to look at things but really just listening. She asked how Ed was and if he was being careful and he was obviously telling her how sorry he was not to have made it to Stanley and how much he missed her. She said she missed him too.

‘You bet we’re going to do it,’ she said, looking at Connor. ‘Connor says it’s called the River of No Return, so he’s not allowed to quit.’

They said their fond goodbyes and told each other to take care and then Julia called Connor to the phone again.

‘Ed?’

‘So you’re going to do it, okay?’

‘Well, if Julia wants to—’

‘Of course she does. What’s the matter with you, man? I know I’m the one with all the paddling skills, but you’ll get by.’

‘As I recall, you’re the capsize king.’

‘Listen, I’ve got to go. You have fun, you hear? And take good care of my girl, okay?’

Connor promised he would.

They were on the river within half an hour. He gave Julia the choice of which canoe they would take and she chose the red one. They put the green one back on the truck along with some of the gear they now wouldn’t need. The woman at the Mercantile said she would keep an eye on it until they came back on the bus on Sunday night. They bought a bag of cherries and the last of her cookies and thanked her and headed for the river.

They were almost there when they heard the woman calling after them. Connor went back. She was holding something out to him.

‘Your girlfriend left her sunglasses.’

Connor nearly corrected her but didn’t. He took them and thanked her again.

They put on their life vests and took off their shoes and stowed the two black duffel bags between the two seats. Then Julia climbed in and took the forward seat and when she was settled Connor pointed the canoe out into the stream and pushed off and stepped aboard. And they slipped slowly out into the body of the river and let the current take them.

The water was clear and cool and swifter than it had looked from the bank. Dark fronds of weed undulated like mermaid’s hair and darker shapes of fish darted and skewed away in panic as the canoe and its shadow upon the riverbed slid by. The sun had lost its brazen heat and as it angled lower it lit the back edges of the grass and flowers along the western bank and turned to gold the clouds of newly hatched flies that pirouetted above the moving glass of the water. Along the bank cattle lifted their heads from their drinking to watch them pass, the water falling in sunlit drops from their glistening pink noses.

They had talked for many hours and it was good now to be silent and to listen to the swoosh of the paddles and the sounds of the wilderness around them. Julia paddled in smooth, strong strokes and he could tell she was no novice. She had tied up her hair again with the bandanna, and no matter where Connor looked his eyes kept coming back to the nape of her neck and the little brown smudge of a birthmark that showed above the sunbleached red of her life vest.

They left the lushness of the valley pastureland and the river narrowed and ran faster and the banks grew steeper until soon they were passing through a winding canyon of stone crested with serried ranks of Douglas and alpine fir and the fading blue of the sky above. Only when the river twisted west did they see the sun and when they did, the water before them was turned to molten gold.

They watched an osprey hanging high in the gorge and saw it tuck its wings and fall like a rock to the river and scoop a fish writhing fat and silver in its talons then fly away downstream. Once, rounding a bend, they came across a family of river otters tumbling in the shallows and when the cubs saw them they splashed for safety to their mother who didn’t move, just lifted her chin and showed the paler fur of her neck and watched the canoe go by. Julia turned around and smiled at him and Connor smiled back and neither of them spoke.

They came to a place where the river spread and ran in a long curve of breaks and pools. There was a bench of rock that ran along the southern bank some ten or twelve feet above the water and Connor recognized it as a place he and Ed had camped before. They dragged the canoe from the water and hauled the bags up to the bench and while Julia gathered wood and made a fire Connor took his fishing rod and a couple of flies and waded into the shallows.

There were flies skitting over the water and fish rising all around him and on only his second cast he hooked one and Julia, watching from above, let out a whoop and he looked up at her and grinned and the fish jumped and shook its head and he almost lost it. It was a fine west-slope trout of around two pounds and they cooked it on a spit of wood over the fire and its flesh was as pink as the gathering night sky and tasted pure as the river itself.

They ate the rest of the cookies and some cherries and Julia challenged him to a pit-spitting contest, claiming she was the world champion pit-spitter. She bet him a dollar that he couldn’t hit a particular rock down by the river in three goes and he took her on and missed every time. Then she bet him another dollar that she could hit it three out of three and she did. So Connor took her on again, with a different target this time, and twice more she beat him. By now he was laughing so much that he couldn’t arrange his mouth to spit properly but even so he challenged her again, double-or-quits, to a long distance pit-spit which he was sure he’d win. But even though she was laughing as much as he was, she beat him again and at eight dollars down Connor called it a day.