Chapter 8-1
1043 Words
Chapter 8
Macy sat at the bar in French Pete’s and did her best to ignore the ongoing silence from her portable radio. She’d already called the BLM post clerk at Ladd Airfield twice on her cell phone.
“Your boy doesn’t waste a whole lot of words on the air,” he’d told her. “But he thinks he’ll contain it sometime overnight without calling up any additional support. Hank Hammond says to trust him and I rang his boss down at Mount Hood Aviation. A Mark Henderson said that Tim is almost as good at reading a fire as their dedicated Fire Behavior Analyst. ‘Course I knew he was lying through his teeth, they’ve got the Fire Witch reading fires for them. Still, it’s high praise.”
And Macy had to accept it whether or not she wanted to. Without a call-up, no one was going to pay her expenses up to the fire and once she got there, she wouldn’t be authorized to fight the fire anyway.
Macy had the National Geographic folded up in her back pocket, the one with Tim and Akbar’s photo in it. No wonder she hadn’t recognized them, two tiny men staring up at a two-page spread of roaring inferno. But their presence totally made the image, showing the overwhelming scale they faced and battled. And Tim really was two Akbars tall. Even in their tiny corner of the photo, their height discrepancy was dramatic.
The article had also talked about the “Fire Witch,” the best FBAN working the West Coast fires. She was the fire analyst who’d beaten the New Tillamook Burn.
“You’re not playing very well.”
Macy blinked and looked down at the chess board on Carl’s bar, up at Natalie, then back down at the board. She had been playing, hadn’t she?
According to the positioning of the pieces on the board, she wouldn’t be beating any ten-year olds today.
“Sorry, Short Stuff.”
“Do you have to keep calling me that?” Natty wiped out one of Macy’s bishops. The other one was…already taken. Crap. She liked bishops—they were sly and sneaky, doing strange attacks at odd angles.
“Have to. It’s the law. I gotta do it while I can. You’re already taller than I was at your age, and way prettier.” Macy struck back with a mighty pawn move that, in retrospect, achieved nothing but put her one step closer to defeat.
“I’m pretty?” Natty looked up in surprise.
“Gorgeous,” Macy’s dad came up and kissed Natty on top the bright blond curls that shone even in French Pete’s dim interior.
“You too,” and he kissed Macy on the forehead.
“Biased,” she told him as she did every time he said something like that.
“Absolutely. You’re my gal.”
Natty finished cremating Macy’s pieces before Carl could even finish drawing a beer for her dad.
“Maybe I’ll do some homework,” then she shot a wicked grin at Macy, “I mean algebra has to be harder than beating you, doesn’t it?”
“Next time, Short Stuff.”
“Not for much longer, Stick Girl.”
“That Ms. Stick Girl to you.”
They stuck out their tongues at each other, but Macy had to work to find the smile. If Natalie took after her mom, she’d end up pretty in more than just her hair and face. Whereas the nicest thing that could be said about her own figure was “sleek.” “Stick Girl” would have been an apt nickname, as much now as back in high school, if she hadn’t gained a reputation early on for beating the crap out of anyone who used it.
She followed her father over to one of the booths, the one she’d been in with Tim just this morning. Then, when Natalie called to her, Macy had to double back to fetch her painfully silent radio and barely touched Coke.
“What has you so snarled up, sweetheart? Anything bad happen with Brett?”
“What? Brett?” What was he doing in this conversation? Oh, last night’s date. “Oh, no. He was fine.”
“It was good to see you dating again.”
“It wasn’t—” she gave it up. “Okay, it was, but it wasn’t. I aimed him at Linda Lee.”
“Always wondered why they didn’t get together.”
Macy had long ago learned that her dad saw far more than was comfortable.
“It’s from spending so much time with your mom,” he’d explain every time she whined about it. Josh Tyler saw who was pairing up and who was breaking up in Macy’s high school years, usually weeks before she did. Of course, he’d been everyone’s favorite teacher—he’d totally rocked third grade, even for her once she got over the stigma of being the teacher’s kid—so that probably gave him an inside track.
Once, when she’d been much younger, he’d made the mistake of pointing out some things about Tim Harada and Sally Kirkman, and then they’d gotten together; the hot item for all four years of high school. She hadn’t talked to her father for months after that. Ever since, Tim, Stephen, and her own relationships had been strictly off-limits between them.
“Did you see him this morning?”
“You’re doing it again, Dad,” she sighed. No need to ask who “him” was. Macy was twenty-five and still fighting a lost cause. Fine, there were only so many fronts she could be contrary on at once. “Yeah, I did. We spent a couple hours together.”
“Where is he? I haven’t seen him since last night.”
“Arctic Village.”
He looked at her in surprise.
“Fighting a forest fire.” On his vacation, rather than spending time with her…no, she wasn’t going to think about what they’d be doing if they were together. Partly because she hadn’t a clue; fighting or— And she definitely wasn’t going to think about that in front of her father.
“You don’t want me to say it, so I won’t.”
“Grown women are not supposed to be so transparent to their fathers.”
“It’s only because I love you so much, sweetheart.”
Macy sighed, glared at her silent radio for putting her in this predicament.
Her father sat silently.
“Say it.”
Now it was her father’s turn to study his beer, shift it around in little twists until he’d turned it through a full three-sixty.
“Go on!” Macy clamped her tongue in her teeth against the tone. Her father smiled rather than being put off.
“You two always had something special together.”
“Yeah, I kept dragging him into trouble and he kept me from getting in too deep.”
Her father nodded, then sipped his beer. “Yep. That’s about right. He always did love you.”
She was still gaping at him when Mom slid in beside him.
“I killed him gloriously,” she crowed as she waved at Carl for a pint.
“You killed the hero?” Then that smile of his started. “Does he get resurrected later in the book?”
“Not a chance, Mister. His a*s was vaporized, across six dimensions and three timelines,” she kissed her husband on the cheek. “Besides, I never agreed he was the hero of this story.”
Macy closed her eyes and tried not to think about the man facing a fire three hundred miles over the horizon.
- Writer
