The Smoke Jumper (16 page)

And now, the following evening, they were coming up the shadowed side of the mountain toward the summit. It was a hike, not a real climb, and when they were only a little way off Glen told Skye that when they reached the top there would be someone waiting to meet them. Skye wanted to know who it was but all he and Julia would tell her was that it was someone she’d never met.

A few weeks ago Julia had called the number Connor had been given by his Blackfeet smoke jumper friend and found herself talking to John Standing Bird. He turned out to be a lawyer who had devoted his life to working with young people on the reservation, trying to give them a sense of belonging and to kindle in them an interest in Blackfeet history and culture. Julia had told him all about Skye and without even having to be asked, he said he would be happy to help in any way he could. When they decided to take Skye on a quest she called him again and together they came up with a plan. All day she had been excited about it but now she was feeling anxious, wondering if it was such a good idea after all.

The final slope to the summit was smooth and easy with a wellworn trail that curved up and around its southern side. And as they came around they saw the sun again, going down in a blaze of orange and red and purple and saw the silhouetted figure sitting on a rock staring west. John Standing Bird turned and saw them and he rose and came to meet them and Julia introduced Skye and they all shook hands. He was tall and broad-shouldered and had the sort of face that was difficult to age. Julia figured he was probably in his mid-forties. His hair was streaked with gray and he wore it in long braids. He had on a black hat with a wide, flat brim and a white shirt buttoned to the neck and a red and black blanket patterned with running buffalo was draped loosely over his shoulders. Skye shook his hand nervously, darting a sideways frown at Julia. John Standing Bird smiled and kept his kind black eyes fixed on her.

‘I’ve heard many good things about you, Skye,’ John Standing Bird said. ‘It’s good to meet you.’

Skye didn’t seem to know what to say but it didn’t matter. John Standing Bird suggested they join him on the rock to watch the sun set and by the time it had gone in a sudden last explosion of light, the mood among them was calm. John Standing Bird had gathered some wood and he asked Skye if she would light the fire and Skye got her bow-drill set from her pack and did so without any demur. Julia and Glen went down to the tree line to gather more wood while the other two made supper and when they returned Skye was chatting away as if the two of them were old friends.

Julia had given John Standing Bird the name of Skye’s mother and he had done some research and over supper he told Skye the line of her family and where they had come from. He told her about the Oglala and what a great and proud people they had once been and how one of the greatest warriors of all, Crazy Horse, was an Oglala. He asked Skye if she had heard of him and Skye said of course she had, every idiot had, but she’d had no idea that she belonged to the same tribe and she grinned at Julia and Glen and said how cool was that? John Standing Bird nodded gravely and said he thought it was pretty damn cool and Skye said he shouldn’t cuss and now he had to give twenty alternatives, which he duly did.

He went on to tell many stories about the Oglala and how they used to live and what had happened in the end to Crazy Horse, how he was betrayed by his own people and murdered. Nobody now knew what he looked like, John Standing Bird said, because he had never allowed his photograph to be taken. Not once did Skye take her eyes off him. She hung on his every word, her forehead puckered in a little frown and her mouth slightly open in a sort of subdued wonder.

After the last story and when the last piece of wood had burned they watched the distant red and green flicker of the aurora borealis streaking the northern sky. It was the first time Julia had seen it and the sight moved her to tears. Something inside her had been rubbed raw by the past two days and Skye saw her crying and put an arm around her and that only made her cry more.

The following morning the four of them walked down the mountain and two miles west to where John Standing Bird had left his truck. He drove them along logging roads back to within a couple of miles of where they knew the group would now be. He got out of the truck so they could say their goodbyes and Julia and Glen thanked him. He said he hoped he would see all of them again and he held Skye’s hand in both of his and said that maybe, when her time with WAY was over, she might like to come visit with him up in Glacier. She said she would like that. Then he handed her a book, saying he thought it might interest her. It was called
Black Elk Speaks
and was all about her people, he said. Skye muttered her thanks and seemed unable to look him in the eye. It was obvious that she hadn’t been given many gifts before.

They watched him drive off and stood staring after him until the dust drifted away.

‘Shall we go join the others?’ Glen asked.

Skye nodded.

9

H
enry’s was a murky corridor of a bar at the far end of North Higgins. It was one of those mysterious places whose parts didn’t add up to its whole and whose whole wasn’t to everyone’s taste anyhow. What it lacked in decor it more than made up for in what some called atmosphere and others just plain noise, much of which was generated on any given summer’s night by smoke jumpers.

There were signed pictures of legendary ‘Zoolies’ behind the bar that ran along the right-hand wall and served just about every variety of microbrew beer known to man. For those who for one reason or another (mostly one reason) found it hard to stand, along the left-hand wall was a row of tall wooden tables where you could lean or perch precariously on stools. And it was at one of these, this particular summer’s night, that Connor Ford and Chuck Hamer sat staring morosely up at the TV news, counting all the money they weren’t earning.

There were helicopter shots of a blazing mountainside and a plane flying in low and dumping a red cloud of retardant. Chuck Hamer called for quiet.

‘Firefighters from all over northern California have been unable to put out the blaze that has now been burning for five days,’ the reporter was saying. ‘And so today saw the arrival at Redding airfield of sixteen smoke jumpers from Missoula, Montana.’

There was a raucous cheer from the bar. And there they were, stepping down from the plane and coming toward the camera and there was Ed among them. He had on his best movie-star face, a kind of shy but resolute grin and Connor noted that there was a touch of war-hero swagger in his walk. As they filed past, the reporter called them ‘this elite corps’ and there were more cheers in the bar. Then there was a little interview with Hank Thomas, who said something modest and meaningful about there being a job to be done and they were just glad to be able to help. Everyone cheered again.

‘A man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do,’ Chuck declaimed.

‘Glad to help,’ someone else mocked. ‘And gladder still to get the overtime.’

Connor had done his best to persuade the personnel officer that his ankle was good enough for him to go with them. It was ten days since his fall and the swelling was almost gone, leaving a violent purple and yellow bruise. He’d spent all that time doing tedious maintenance work, mainly repairing torn parachutes and he was getting bored and restless. He’d had physical therapy every day for the last week and managed to cajole a reluctant fitness release from his doctor. But yesterday he’d taken the mandatory P.T. test at the base which involved running one and a half miles in eleven minutes and when the foreman saw him hobbling off he called him back and said sorry, the leg clearly wasn’t yet mended and there was no way he was going to Redding.

The news moved on to another story and everyone in the bar started talking again. Connor took the last swig from his bottle of soda. He hadn’t touched alcohol since the night of Donna’s party and still felt embarrassed that he’d made a fool of himself. He couldn’t remember too much about it except being carried up the stairs and then going on about how beautiful Julia was. It was nothing but the truth, but he wished he hadn’t said it and hoped he hadn’t said more. Chuck Hamer cuffed him gently on the shoulder.

‘Cheer up, old buddy. Doesn’t look like much of a fire anyhow. Those Californian firefighters are just a bunch of wusses. Why don’t you let me get you a proper drink?’

‘Thanks, Chuck, but I think I’ll be heading home.’

‘Cowboy, I’m worried about you. Early to bed, no booze. You’re not even chasing women this year. What in hell’s name’s the matter with you, boy? Turning into a monk or something?’

Connor smiled and stood up and put on his hat.

‘It’s called enlightenment, man. Pure enlightenment.’

Outside the night air was balmy and felt wholesome to his lungs after the smoke of the bar. Apart from a beggar who often hung around the corner of Broadway, the street was deserted. Connor walked across to Worden’s Market and bought himself a chicken sandwich and some apples and a carton of milk and then strolled down toward the bridge, looking idly into the store windows. There was a little place that sold used books and magazines and never seemed to shut and on impulse Connor went inside. He’d occasionally found interesting books on photography here. The guy who ran it knew him and said hello.

He spent about ten minutes browsing the shelves and finding nothing and he was about to leave when a book caught his eye. It was about an English photographer called Larry Burrows who had taken some of the most famous and powerful pictures of the Vietnam War and lost his life doing so. The book had full-plate color pictures, some of which Connor hadn’t seen before. He bought the book for five dollars and would have paid a lot more.

The beggar on Broadway was a young man about Connor’s age. He had torn pants and no shoes and a straggly beard decorated with crumbs from his last meal. Connor asked how he was doing, which he realized straight away was a pretty dumb thing to say. He gave him the chicken sandwich and the guy, who would no doubt have preferred cash, looked so disappointed that Connor handed over the apples too.

The apartment seemed oddly quiet without Ed, who was always yacking on about something or singing when he wasn’t yacking. Connor undressed and took a glass of milk and the Burrows book to bed.

He didn’t know much about Burrows except that he’d taken many extraordinary pictures for
Life
magazine and that he’d died when a helicopter in which he and some other photographers and journalists were traveling was shot down in Laos. The book described him as diffident, modest and brave, a man of integrity whose heart was touched deeply by the suffering that he sought out and recorded for the world to see. Connor read it from cover to cover in a couple of hours and was greatly moved. There was one picture he kept turning back to.

A group of South Vietnamese soldiers were standing around a young Viet Cong who was on his knees. He had a rope around his neck and his black shirt had been ripped off and hung around his waist and his hands were tied behind him. You could see from the marks on his face and his body and from the way the soldiers were holding their rifles that he had already taken a severe beating. Technically, like all Burrows’s work, the photograph was flawless. The composition was immaculate. But it was the young man’s eyes that gave the picture its power. There was fear there for sure but there was courage too, as if he had somehow managed to transcend the pain of torture and the certainty of imminent death.

Long after Connor had put the book down and turned out the light, the image stayed in his mind and he wondered whether he himself could summon that kind of courage or the kind that Burrows must have had to look horror in the face again and again without fear or flinching. And somehow, for the first time, he knew with absolute clarity that one day he would find out.

 

Another week went by and Connor spent most of it doing odd jobs around the base, trying not to let the boredom gnaw at him too badly. Ed was still down in Redding with the other lucky sonsofbitches, earning a ton of overtime and hazard pay. But on Tuesday evening he called to say the fire was under control and the word was that they’d be back for the weekend. He asked how Connor’s ankle was and Connor told him it was okay and Ed said good because he had a plan which he’d already talked over with Julia: a canoe trip in Idaho, on a stretch of the Salmon River that he and Connor had done a couple of times before. Connor thought it sure sounded better than sewing parachutes. Ed said he’d try to hitch a ride with a fire crew from Boise who were heading home on Friday.

By the time Julia got back to Missoula on Thursday evening Connor had it all sorted out. He’d borrowed a pair of canoes and a second tent, gotten the camping gear ready and bought food. Julia was tired but in good spirits and he poured her a glass of the red wine that he’d bought specially that afternoon and made her sit down while he cooked supper. And while he busied himself in the cramped kitchen area, she sat back with one leg hooked over the arm of the couch and told him all that had happened, about the quest and how Skye had broken down and then the walk to the mountain and how ‘utterly amazing’ John Standing Bird had been.

Julia’s face was tanned and dirty from all her hiking and her hair had gone all straggly and she’d tied it up with a pale green bandanna. Connor had never seen her looking so lovely. And he tried not to, but he couldn’t help thinking how like a couple they were, her talking about her work and him cooking supper just for the two of them. It was such a simple domestic scene and he knew it meant nothing, but the feelings it stirred in him were new and powerful. He wondered if he would ever find someone like Julia and doubted he would but he didn’t allow the thought to sadden him or spoil the moment.

He’d bought a fillet of salmon and panfried it so that the skin was seared but the flesh was still moist inside. They ate it with salad and some baby potatoes, and Julia said it was the best salmon she’d ever tasted. Then they had blueberries and cream and coffee and sat talking and drinking their wine. Connor took it easy because he didn’t want to make a fool of himself again. They sat talking a long time, although Julia did most of it. Connor listened, half hearing what she said but mostly enjoying just watching her.