The Smoke Jumper by Nicholas Evans Read Free Book Online

summer-vacation job. The young men and women whom it attracted came from many different backgrounds. But whether for the rest of the year they were cowhands, students or ski bums, they all had that same itch to find something with a little more adventure than washing dishes or waiting table.
    Connor and Ed had found themselves side by side, cutting line on the same crew, and Connor, who already had a season of pounding under his belt, had gone along with the tradition of giving the college-kid rookies a hard time.
    In the macho world of firefighting Edward Cavendish Tully was an easy target. He was from a wealthy family in Lexington, Kentucky, and was studying music and, at first, for both these facts, along with his slight southern drawl, the round gold-rimmed spectacles and aristocratic good looks, he was mercilessly teased. But he was as fit and tough as the best of them and took the taunts with such good humor that soon he was liked by the whole crew.
    Connor was even more impressed when he found out that since the age of six, Ed had been diabetic and needed to inject himself with insulin before every meal. On top of all this, it turned out that this classical music scholar also played lead guitar in a college band and could do more than passable impressions of anyone from Van Halen to Hendrix. Getting to know him taught Connor the fallacy of judging people by their background or wealth or whatever other label happened to hang around their necks.
    It was a classic attraction of opposites: Ed the extrovert intellectual, always ready with a joke or a story or an opinion on anything and Connor the level, laconic one. Connor wasn’t a great one for analyzing these things, but he recalled Trudy Barratt once saying that he and Ed each had those traits that the other lacked and aspired to and that if you could forge one person from the two of them, the result would be a really great guy. Connor wondered if that was supposed to be a compliment and concluded that it probably wasn’t.
    What they undoubtedly did share was a passion for the outdoors. On their days off they would go climbing or fly-fishing or canoeing. The fires they fought that first summer forged a deep and durable friendship. They even invented their own private ritual. It came about when they were cutting line one day and the wind changed and the fire blew up and they suddenly found themselves, just the two of them, surrounded by flame.
    ‘Hey, man!’ Ed called. ‘We’re in the heart of the fire!’
    And for some weird reason, without any kind of rehearsal, they had both put their clenched right fists to their chests and solemnly declaimed ‘Hearts of fire!’ and then given each other a high-five. It was only a kind of mock macho joke and they laughed about it afterward. But they’d done it ever since before every fire they’d fought.
    Connor had other friends, of course, mostly around Augusta and Choteau and a few in Great Falls, kids he’d grown up with and been with at high school. Then there were his climbing and skiing buddies and one or two other firefighters he met up with from time to time. But there wasn’t one among them he could call close. As an only child he’d always been something of a loner. His mother used to call him The Watcher. Once, only half joking, she’d said that he was happier looking at life through a camera than actually living it. The truth was, Ed was the only real friend he’d ever had.
    After he graduated, Ed had moved back east, to grad school in Boston where he’d stayed ever since. Yet every summer he still somehow managed to come back to Montana and the two of them would spend some months together, fighting fires and having fun. Ed loved to help out on the ranch. It was only a small spread and since Connor’s father died, mother and son had had to handle pretty much everything on their own. It was the main reason Connor had never gone to college.
    Ed’s family raised thoroughbreds and he would tease Connor’s