Burn Season novel · Chapter 17 of 24

Chapter 17: Orange Glass

I had my jeans on before I had the radio in my hand.

"Dispatch, Cinder Peak. Fire, east ridge, bearing zero-nine-five. Running upslope in the dark. Wind from the west at fifteen and rising."

"Copy, Cinder Peak. Confirm. There's no lightning on the board tonight."

"I don't care what's on the board. I'm looking at it."

Walker stood behind me, buttoning his shirt, and I felt him look where I was looking.

"That's a human start," he said. "Or a downed line."

"Either way, it's coming this way."

Dispatch told me nobody could jump into that ridge until first light.

Moss would bring a bucket at dawn.

Until then it was the tower and the dark.

Verna came up through the trapdoor in her flannel coat, with her white braid down her back and the rifle in her hand.

"I could smell it from my bed," she said.

"You should go down to the meadow," Walker said.

"I've watched four fires from this cab. I'll watch the fifth."

She set the rifle in the corner and sat on the floor against the desk with her tin cup.

For three hours the fire climbed the east ridge, and the glass turned orange from corner to corner.

Embers drifted past the windows in long slow streams.

I called it in every twenty minutes.

Walker took the second radio and kept the line open to the camp, and he did not say much.

Around two, the wind swung south and then dropped.

The flames ran down into the old burn on the slope below the tower, where there was nothing left to eat, and lay down.

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