![]() ![]() Well, me and my brother Mike got razzed, but he was still on leave after that scary, near-suicidal accident he’d had at a warehouse fire in December. And when it happened, I always got razzed about it. It wasn’t often our Gridley fire station worked a blaze alongside Pa’s station, which was in Oroville. His voice was all neutral, but I heard the implication. “Who’s pulling us out? Was that your dad, Donny?” asked Jordy. The haze of smoke that’d been there when we’d come down was now thick and the dark tan color of burning wood. Tall pine trees towered on both sides of the power-line break we followed. The grass was brown thanks to a dry California spring. Walking up a steep hill with all my gear, axe, and pack would have been a good workout if I wasn’t already trashed from busting ass on the fire line for the past two hours. “Did it jump?” Brian asked through our headsets. We abandoned the work we’d been doing to establish a fire line to the west of the outermost houses of Sierra City and headed back up the steep hill where we’d come down. It was freakishly hot today-in the high 80s in fucking March thanks to another heat inversion, or heat bomb, or whatever the talking heads were calling it these days. ![]() I straightened up, sweat dripping down my face and blurring the lenses of my goggles. The barking voice was my father’s, and it came over the speaker in my SCBA helmet as I hacked at the foundation of a dead bush with an axe. ![]()
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