‘King’ Lear is this year’s part-timer sent up from the University of Northern British Columbia’s forestry management program to fill out the crew. He’s not the worst that Miles has seen, a physically strong boy who obviously loves the bush and, like Miles, sees firefighting as a way to get paid for living in it. But there’s an absence about King that made Miles at first suspect the kid was on drugs of some sort, one of the new kinds that make you rapturously amazed by everything. Now, he has come to believe that this is simply King’s nature. What’s worrying is that, on a burn site, it’s not exactly the optimum mental state for your men to be in. Crookedhead may not be any better on the raw intelligence side of the ledger, and Jerry is always looking for a way out of the hottest or heaviest work, but at least their defects are predictable. With King, you can’t tell when he might stop clearing deadwood or hacking out a fireline, hypnotized by the beauty of embers floating through a stand of aspens. Miles can only thank Christ that there hasn’t been a fire of any substance for the length of his tenure as supervisor. They’re good men. He cares for them more than he’s comfortable admitting. But Miles would prefer to not see them tested by anything bigger than the bonfires of discarded mattresses they practise on out at the dump on Sundays.
‘King,’ Miles says.
‘Hey there, boss.’
‘You looked at the morning spotter reports?’
‘Nothing.’
‘Not a thing?’
‘It’s almost weird. There’s smokers in every district but ours.’
‘And the towers—?’
‘Aren’t seeing anything but a sunny day.’
‘How nice.’
Miles looks at King and, for the first time, sees a younger version of himself in the hard brow, the blue, elsewhere eyes. He wishes he hadn’t. And in a sense, he hadn’t—King doesn’t really look like Miles, not in the way you would ever confuse the two. It’s only that King’s self-containment, his distracted temperament that disguised something you might not want to get too close to, makes Miles think that those may well be the same impressions he leaves with others.
‘I sent Mungo to check on you last night,’ Miles says.
‘Three sheets to the wind, and he’s checking to see if I’m awake.’
‘I wanted to get him out of the bar more than anything else. I was hoping that once he’d said hello to you, he’d find his way home to say hello to Jackie.’
‘You’re a man with a plan.’
‘Always.’
Miles says this and hears its emptiness in his chest.
‘Speaking of plans, I was looking for you yesterday,’ King says.
‘What for?’
Wanted a sign-off on the pumper to do a training session. But you weren’t around. The pumper was gone, too.’
‘I went for a drive.’
‘A drive?’
‘That’s right.’
‘It’s just strange. It’s a strange thing to—’
‘Don’t do this. It’s not the right day.’
King raises his hands in surrender.
‘I’ll be back in an hour,’ Miles says. ‘In the meantime, do me a favour and call the crew, get them out of bed so they can be here by the time I get back. Start with Mungo. He takes the longest.’
‘Absolutely,’ King says, returning his attention to the coffee mug on the table. ‘But there might not be anything for them to do when they get here.’
‘You never know in this business,’ Miles says, and slaps the kid on the back hard enough to make them both wonder if it was a friendly gesture or something else.
The Welcome Inn Lounge is empty except for Bonnie, who slams beer bottles into cases behind the bar, and Miles regrets coming in this way to look for Earl, the innkeeper. Bonnie pops her head up, a you’re-not-going-anywhere grin on her face, and he knows he’s about to be carpet-bombed with questions that a sour, bronchitic Earl would never trouble himself to ask.
‘And how are you doing today, Bonnie?’
‘Livin’ the dream,’ she says, wiping her hands on her sweatshirt. ‘Any fires this morning?’
‘Haven’t you heard? We’re a smoke-free environment up here.’
‘A good one up in Dawson, a couple little farts down in Haines Junction, and nothing for us. That just isn’t fair.’
‘It’s a bitch, it’s true.’
‘We don’t get something soon and your boys are going to be under my feet next year even more than usual, asking to put it all on their tab. And you know something? I won’t be able to do it. Those chuckleheads don’t blow a candle out before winter and it’ll leave you and Terry Gray as my only paying customers.’
‘We’ll get our fire.’
‘It’s not just me.’
‘I know all about—’
‘It’s like dominoes. You fellas lose your jobs and we’ll all come falling after you.’
‘Don’t worry, Bonnie. You’ve heard of a rain dance? Well, I did a little fire dance for us this morning.’
‘You did?’
‘Oh yeah. Had smoke coming out my ass. You should’ve seen it.’
‘Maybe next time.’
Miles glances toward the open back door, down the hallway that leads to the motel outbuilding. If he made a run for it right now he may not have to answer a single awkward inquiry. But he’ll have to act quickly. Bonnie has placed her hands on her hips, elbows out. A gunslinger ready to fire.
‘Is Earl around?’ Miles asks instead of making a move, his boots stuck to the gummy floor.
‘Need their room number?’
‘You could at least make a show of minding your own business.’
‘Friends visiting?’ she asks, pretending not to have heard him.
‘They’re people I know.’
‘Now that’s a funny thing. When people I know come to town I have them stay at my place.’
One night. That’s all it takes. One night for not only Miles’s life to take a serious turn toward the complicated, but for every citizen of Ross River to have heard about it. He can see this in Bonnie’s bosom, of all things. Her breasts swelling high against the cotton in the pride of a job well done.
‘It’s a different situation from that,’ Miles says.
‘Different how?’
‘Listen—’
‘I like her. Just so you know. I like the look of the woman. Sensible. And tougher than you’d guess, seems to me.’
‘Is that your female intuition talking?’
‘Better. That’s my bartender’s intuition talking.’
Miles laughs a genuine laugh, and suspects that his lack of sleep has left him giddy and vulnerable. But to his astonishment, Bonnie decides to let him off the hook.
‘Go see Earl. You can talk to me about your fascinating life any old time.’
‘It’s not fascinating,’ Miles says. ‘But one of these days, I’ll tell you my whole boring story. You’ll just have to promise to keep it between you and me.’
‘I’ll