Burn Season novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Forty-One Summers

Verna Hatch hands Rory the rules of the Cinder Peak tower and tells her the last three lookouts quit; at midnight a voice on the radio says: Rory, don't hang up.

Verna Hatch was waiting on the top step of the tower stairs at dawn with a tin cup in one hand and an unloaded rifle in the other.

Bea and I had hiked eleven miles in the dark with headlamps and two full packs.

Bea set my gear down on the grass and looked up at the woman.

"Mrs. Hatch, this is Rory. She's the best jumper on my squad. Please don't shoot her."

"It's Verna," the old woman said. "And I never load it."

She turned her cup and studied me.

"MacLaren. You're the one the base manager called about."

"Yes, ma'am."

"I don't need a roommate."

"I know," I said. "I won't be one."

Her eyes flicked to my hands, to the scars across the palms, and she stepped aside to let me pass.

Bea hugged me hard at the bottom of the stairs.

"If he comes up here, I will personally push him off the mountain."

"Don't. He'll make a mess."

"I'm serious, Rory."

"I know you are."

She cried a little, which was against her rules, and then she wiped her face on her sleeve and started back down the trail.

Verna gave me the rules before I had put my boots down.

There was one stove, and I could use it after she had made her coffee.

There was one tin cup, and it was hers.

I could have a mug from the shelf.

Radio check was at eight in the morning and four in the afternoon, and I took the afternoon one.

"The morning one is mine," she said. "I've given it every day for forty-one summers."

"Forty-one?"

"The last three they sent me quit before the fourth day. One said the quiet gave him ideas."

"I'm not quitting."

"Everybody says that on the first morning."

She pointed up.

"Cab's yours until dark. Look at the whole mountain. Then look again."

The glass room at the top of the tower sat thirty feet above the trees.

I climbed the stairs and pushed the trapdoor open and stood up into the light.

The Bitterroot ran off in every direction, blue ridge behind blue ridge, with one bare slope below where a burn had gone through years ago.

It was so quiet I could hear the wind on the glass.

For two hours I scanned it with the binoculars, one ridge at a time, the way Verna showed me.

Then I called in my first radio check, and the dispatcher said, "Cinder Peak, you sound tired."

"I'm fine," I said.

"Copy. Stay safe up there."

I sat on the stool with its glass feet and stared at the empty horizon, and my eyes finally stopped working.

I didn't cry for Walker.

I cried because the one letter that was mine alone had vanished out of a zipped bag, and I couldn't think of who.

Maybe it had fallen out in the truck.

Maybe it was on the floor of the loft, under a table.

I wiped my face and picked the binoculars up again.

That afternoon Verna handed me a sandwich, set a plate on the rail, and said nothing about my eyes.

"The logbook's on the shelf," she said. "Every lookout writes the day's weather and anything they saw."

I opened it that night by the lamp.

The last three entries were each a single line.

The first said, Too quiet.

The second said, Not for me.

The third said, Sorry, Verna.

I wrote my date and the weather under them: Clear, wind west at six, no smoke.

Then I wrote, Rory MacLaren, and sat looking at my own name for a long time.

Verna was asleep in the cabin below.

The stove ticked as it cooled.

I put my head down on my arms on the little desk and listened to the radio's low static.

A voice came through at midnight, low and tired.

It was not dispatch.

"Cinder Peak lookout, this is Dunleavy."

I didn't move.

"Rory. I know you can hear me. Don't hang up."

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