When We Were Wolves by Jon Billman Read Free Book Online Page B

a point of being dangerous to themselves and others, quickly tried his patience, and for Strain the assignment became a painful endurance event. The
next time I’m mobilized as a crew rep
, he wrote in his post-incident evaluation,
I’d better be in charge of real firefighters or a company of sorority pledges from Michigan.
    The all-white crews he led approached forest fires as if in war. It had occurred to Strain years before that the white people would never live with the West the way natives could before the advent of the reservations. They would always be battling droughts, floods, snow, cold, heat, infestations, wildfire. He realized he was more like the Indians, in it for different reasons than saving the West’s precious timber resources for Boise Cascade and Georgia Pacific shareholders to get richer. Given the choice between summer camp and all-out war, he’d be roasting marshmallows. Call it selfish.

    The government policy of suppressing Indians like they suppressed fire was simple on paper, but it went against every natural law, and in turn cost the taxpayers billions. But fire is fire and Strain was indispensable in a tight spot; the men who worked with him knew it.
    By October things had cooled considerably and he began a series of controlled burns, pyratory exercises that burned tracts of heavy fuels to improve vegetation and lessen the chances of an uncontrolled, unpredictable fire later. It was doing Gods work inhasty catch-up fashion. The Forest Service had dipped into Smokey Bear funds to run a multimillion-dollar ad campaign to inform the public about the need for these controlled fires. As he sorted beadhead nymphs and stoneflies and tucked the aluminum fly box into his redpack, Strain remembered thinking a good idea would be to wait for an easterly wind, run a hot line from southern Oregon to Mexico, and burn out the entire state of California. In November his mucus turned from black back to clear. He flew back to Dubois, where he thought he’d have a winter season of fly tying and reading.

    A man in a Stetson rancher, jeans, and green Forest Service shirt arrived for Strain in a mint-green pickup. They were headed to the blue-and-orange Bell Jet Ranger on the grass tarmac in a pasture at the edge of town. The chopper was taking Strain to South Dakota to the ghost fire.
    In the pickup, Strain studied the faxed incident report. The driver briefed Strain as they drove.
    “Where are my resources?” asked Strain.
    “Right now? My guess is the casino bar. Initial resources have been ordered. Looks like you’re getting reservation handline crews from Pine Ridge, Rosebud, and Standing Rock. They’ll be there as soon as they can sober up and get on the bus, I guess. The pilot’s name is Sherman Two Crows. We call him Mayday. He’s been flying fire all summer. Knows what he’s doing.”
    The tail of the chopper read: TOMAHAWK CHARTERS AND HELI-SKI. Mayday was a mercenary. The belly of the craft was smoked black. The Forest Service cowboy walked up to the bubbled window and banged on it with his fist. Mayday started awake. “Yeah, okay,” he said. He had long, oil-black hair and a sparse goatee of long, threadlike whiskers, like a catfish. He wore his headset over aSpokane Indians baseball cap, a Nomex jumpsuit, bright orange like a prisoner’s, and logging boots. Mayday gestured for Strain to throw his redpack in the back and get in the other side.
    “Good luck,” said the cowboy.
    The big turbine whined and struggled to take. Mayday smelled of garlic and Jet-A fuel. Mud-caked floor panels. Strain had seen cleaner bulldozer cabs. The windows were scarred and the insides covered with the hulls of sunflower seeds. Between the front seats stuck the battered, oily twenty-eight-inch bar of a Stihl 044 chain saw, stained red with slurry or blood. A couple of grasshoppers caromed off the insides of the windows, “What’s the chain saw for?”
    “To cut trees with,” Mayday said. “Why do you have