Chapter 14: Thunder

I gave the investigator a copy of the photo I'd taken at the feed store.

Lowell, a truck bed full of red cans, the torch strapped down behind them.

He looked at it for a long time.

"Your camera does good work," he said.

He had no idea.

He put the sign-out sheet and my picture in his folder together and said it would all go to the council in September.

Lowell's name, in Lowell's hand.

I was glad.

I hated that I was glad.

That afternoon, Abel found me sitting on the bottom step of the lookout stairs, staring at nothing.

He dropped a pair of binoculars in my lap.

"Up," he said. "Lesson."

"I know how to look through binoculars."

"You know how to look at weddings. Up."

We stood on the catwalk with our elbows on the rail.

The valley was hazy and gold. Every peak to the west had a gray smudge hanging over it.

"Fires in Idaho," Abel said. "That's not ours. Ours is close and it moves."

He pointed with two fingers.

"White smoke is grass. It's light and it burns fast and dies fast."

"Brown is timber. That's the one that sits and grows."

"Black?"

"Black is something somebody built. Tires, a roof, a truck."

"Or a cabin."

He showed me how a column leans toward where it's going.

He showed me how smoke lies flat in the valley at dawn and stands up at noon.

He made me guess distances off the fire finder's ring until I got three in a row.

"You're bossy when you teach," I said.

"I'm bossy all the time. I just usually don't talk."

"Gran said you once went eleven days without saying a word."

"She exaggerated."

"How many was it?"

"Nine."

I laughed so hard I had to put the binoculars down.

He watched me do it.

He'd been doing that a lot lately, watching me laugh.

By evening, the air had gone thick and yellow.

At nine, the first thunder rolled up the valley.

It rolled again, closer, and every hair on my arms stood up.

"Inside," Abel said. "Stool."

In the middle of the cab, next to the fire finder, stood Gran's lightning stool.

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