The next morning the mountains are hazy. A grey pall hangs in the air. Even inside I can smell the smoke. Nurse Betty assures me it’s from forest fires up north, which explains the distinctive odour — an earthy twang, bitter like a herb. Ground fire, burning moss. I feel like I’m playing hooky. Cindy and the kids spend an hour before lunch. The kids are full of energy, can’t sit still; the nurses have taken away their model airplanes. I’m restless too, the odour of smoke making me frantic, like a hunting dog that’s been forgotten in the truck.
“You okay, Porter? You look angry.”
“Fine Cin. I just want to get out of here. I can’t handle this much relaxing.”
“It’s not relaxing,” she says sternly. “It’s recuperating.”
“You sound like my nurse.”
She promises to come back in the afternoon. She’ll take the kids for a hike in the woods, tire them out. They’ll sit better when she comes back. She slips me a chocolate bar before she leaves, which I promptly use to spoil my lunch. Reconstituted eggs have lost their appeal. I turn on the tv, hope to distract myself. The newscaster updates the fire ban. The Forest Service is advising they have a Red Flag day here on the East Slopes. Winds from the west are bringing thick smoke from fires in British Columbia — nature’s smog is rolling in. Asthmatics are advised to stay indoors, close all windows. And there are fires down south in Montana and Oregon too. We’re surrounded by fire and I try not to think about it, but there isn’t much to do but think. And when I look outside, there it is, hanging in the air like a bad dream that won’t go away. A Red Flag day. Fires in the north. Fires in the west and south. Which is where most of the water bombers and firefighters will be. It makes me wonder. Makes me worry.
What if a fire were started here today?
With the wind and dry conditions it would get ugly fast — the rate of spread would be astronomical and it wouldn’t take a fire long to wipe out most of the timber between here and the mountains. Forget camping for a decade or two. Forget logging for a century. Then it occurs to me who does the logging around here and how pissed the Lorax must be that someone used his name for their own purposes — that a sawmill used his name in vain, and I get really worried.
For a few minutes I lie in my hospital bed, staring at the grey air outside, the odour of smoke in my nostrils, and wonder what to do. Should I call Carl and question him about my suspicions?
Ask him not to start any more fires? Or should I call the cops? The
Forest Service?
Could Carl really be the Lorax? Could he be Red Flag?
What about the bootprint? The seismic gel? The timing? The cigar?
There’s a phone on the nightstand, which a sticker proclaims is just for local calls. Good enough for my purposes. I’ll call Carl, just to see if he’s in the office today, chained to the duty desk. The receptionist at the ranger station tells me Carl is not at work today. He had a family emergency. His mother is ill. I thank her, hang up, try to call directory assistance but am intercepted by the hospital switchboard. No long distance calls permitted. I tell her it’s an emergency and she points out that I’m already in a hospital, tells me to call the nursing station, press the little red button by my bed. I lose her when I try to explain that it’s a different kind of emergency. I’ll call Cindy — she can find the phone number to Carl’s parents — but when I ring her motel room there’s no answer.
Then I remember she’s taking the kids for a hike. In the woods.
I call the ranger station again, hear radios and voices in the background. The receptionist sounds busy, isn’t thrilled when I ask her to dig up the number for Carl’s parents. Nothing on file and he didn’t leave her the number. She hangs up halfway through saying goodbye.
I pull out my IV line. There isn’t much I can do in here.
There are crutches in the closet, clothes on a shelf above. I use the local phone to call a cab and wait in my room until I see it pull into the lot. Betty at the nursing station isn’t happy to see me dressed and out of my room.
“Where are you going?”
“I’m checking out,” I say as I swivel past.
She chases after me. “You can’t do that. The doctor has to authorize it.”
The automatic doors part in front of me. “Sorry, I can’t wait.”
“Don’t make me call security.” She’s getting tough but I’ve seen security — a guy so old he should use a walker. A fight between the two of us would be pretty pathetic. I’d have to cane him with my crutch.
“This is a hospital,” I tell her. “You can’t keep me here.”
“Mr. Cassel ...” She’s hovering around me, clearly distressed.
“Keep my bed warm, I might be back.”
We’re outside now in the parking lot. The cabbie gives me a strange look as I fumble with the door handle, a nurse at my side wringing her hands. He reaches over, pushes open the passenger door, and I see why he didn’t bother getting up. The suspension must have extra heavy springs on his side. He can steer with his belly.
“Mr. Cassel, I really must protest —”
“You can come along if you want.”
She looks uncertainly back at the hospital. “I’m not allowed to leave the grounds.”
“Thanks for everything, Betty. Here, help me get this crutch inside.”
Betty hesitates, then sighs and hands me the crutch. “Bring them back,” she says.
“Ranger’s honour,” I tell her. “Ranger station,” I tell the cabbie.
When we arrive at the ranger station five blocks later, he assesses the minimal $2 charge but I only have 75 cents left in my jeans from my fugitive phone account. The cabbie can’t believe it, tries to grab my crutches as collateral. I wrestle them free, get out of the car. He sits inside and glares at me but decides the effort of getting out of the car isn’t worth $1.25. He’ll probably bill it to the Forest Service anyway, which suits me fine.
Inside the ranger station, I stagger up the stairs — thank God for handrails — and lean against the counter, catch my breath. Already, I miss nurse Betty — I could use a hit of morphine right now. The receptionist is the only one in sight, hunched over her desk, on the phone. She’s a shipping-lane-sized lady with curly hair. She sees me, smiles and waves. I grimace, wave back, motion her over. She takes a minute to finish her call, then faces me across the counter.
“Well if it isn’t Porter Cassel. The Fugitive.”
“Not any more,” I say, panting. “So Carl didn’t leave a phone number?”
“That was you on the phone?”
“That was me. Look, I really need to get a hold of Carl.”
“Well, he didn’t leave a number.”
“Could I use a phone to call directory assistance?”
“Sure.” She shrugs. “You don’t look so good. Kinda pale.”
With all the bruises, I’m surprised she can tell.
“I’ll live. Just show me where I can sit down.”
She lets me into the inner sanctum, points me to Carl’s office. I sit at Carl’s desk and call directory assistance, looking for his parents. They live in some small prairie town in southern Alberta, something that starts with a “B.” I play verbal charades with the operator until she comes up with an L. Mackey in Brooks. A man answers.
“Hello. Mr. Mackey?”
“Yeah?”
“Is this the Mackey whose son is a forest ranger?”
“Yeah.”
“Is Carl home?”
“He doesn’t live here anymore. We don’t have a lot of trees in Brooks.”
“I can appreciate that. Mr. Mackey, is your wife okay?”
A stony silence. “What?”
“Your wife — is she ill?”
“My wife died three years ago. Who the hell is this?”
“No one,” I mumble. “Sorry for disturbing you.”
After I hang up, I sit still for a few minutes, look around Carl’s office. Desk, file cabinets, pictures of forest fires, of Carl holding up a big fish. This could be any ranger’s office. This could be my office. I shake my head, gather my crutches, make my way into the duty room. Chief Ranger Gary Hanlon is manning the desk. He’s on the phone and is faxing something at the same time. He looks at the end of his rope, eyes twitchy, ball cap crooked, polyester shirt hanging half out of his pants. I stand by the door until he notices me.
“I’m on hold,” he says, punching numbers on the fax machine.
“Chief, do you know where Carl is?”
“Gone,” he says. “Hell of a time too.”
“His mother passed away years ago —”
“You look like shit,” he says, as if noticing for the first time. “You ready to work?”
I’m on crutches and he wants to know if I’m ready to work.
“We got a serious cross-over,” he says. “Wind out of the west at 40, gusting to 70. One active fire on the verge of going uc again. And to top it all off, half my standby resources just got commandeered to go to a fire near Slave Lake. Red Flag day is a fucking understatement. I need bodies. Can you fly a patrol?”
“Keep your resources here,” I tell him. “It’s going to get worse.”
“What?” he yells into the phone. “I don’t give a shit. Order more yourself.” And he hangs up. “I want to stick you in a fixed wing,”he says.“Fly the slopes.”He’s moving past me while he talks, crouching over the duty desk and staring at the screen, reaching for the radio at the same time. Like fighting a lynch mob, he’s taking shots in all directions.
“Listen to me Chief. You’ve got bigger problems.”
He stares at me, still crouched over the desk, the radio mike in his hand. A phone rings but he doesn’t answer, just looks at me. His brain is playing catch-up but it’s finally sinking in that I’m trying to tell him something.
“What?”
“You know that arsonist I’ve been investigating?”
He gives me a blank look, then nods.
“Well, I’m pretty sure he’s here and he’s planning something big.”
“If this is a joke,” he says, reaching for the phone, “you’ve got a sick sense of humor.”
“This is the only part of the province he hasn’t hit,” I tell him. Hanlon has the phone to his ear and I’m not sure he’s listening but I keep going anyway. “You got a Red Flag day and no resources to speak of. This guy knows fire weather and is probably monitoring the resource allocation. If I wanted to start a devastating fire, I’d do it now. Light up the East Slopes.”
He sets the phone back in its cradle. “You’re sure about this?”
“Think about it. It’s a perfect set-up.”
He doesn’t want to think about it but like a good dispatcher is weighing the options.
“Nothing we can do about it,” he says.
“What?”
“We don’t know if he’s here. And the fires up north are real.”
Tough call. “Look, I know he’s here. I can virtually guarantee it.”
“You can guarantee it?” He’s understandably sceptical but I don’t want to tell him about Carl. I’m thinking maybe no one ever has to know. If I could just talk to Carl —
“And if you’re wrong?” he says.
“I want to be wrong. I just don’t think I am.”
Hanlon takes a minute, which, for a busy dispatcher, is a long time.
“Jesus Christ Cassel — this I do not fucking need. A fire under these conditions —” He shakes his head, stares at the wall map. “There are people out there camping — half the fucking city. What do we do about them?”
“My sister and her kids are out there too. Evacuate.”
He stares at me. “Evacuate the fucking West Country? Do you know what that’ll take? Two million acres. Every damn helicopter in the province is on a fire or sitting in the bush waiting for one. We don’t have the resources.”
Would Carl endanger that many people?
“Well, you’ve gotta do something Gary. Warn them. Put it on the radio.”
Hanlon paces the confines of the small room then suddenly sits behind the duty desk, his ball cap in his hands like he’s praying. For a few minutes he doesn’t move, just stares blankly at the floor. I’m not sure if he’s thinking or is just frozen. Stress can do funny things. Personalities change. Tempers get short. People don’t think straight. It’s a sort of a psychosis and it hits everyone differently.
“Gary, I need a helicopter. I think I can find him.”
Another minute of lethargy before he looks up at me. “What?”
“If you let me use the fire growth model on the dispatch computer I think I can figure out where he’ll hit. I’m pretty sure this guy has been using something like that to plan his fires.”
A look of hope dawns on Hanlon’s face. “You think we can stop him?”
“It’s worth a try.”
Hanlon stares at me but doesn’t move.
“I’ll need to sit there, Gary.”
“Oh, sorry.” He gets up. “I’ll call headquarters, plead for more helicopters.”
I take a seat behind the dispatch desk. There’s a computer and battery of phones, radios and microphones in front of me. This is the first time in three years I’ve been in the hot seat but it doesn’t take long to slip back into the role. Stress is like falling off a bike — it hurts but you get used to it. I start up the fire growth model, find it’s a different version from the one I used to work with. Abacus to calculus different. The tool I used was simple, monochrome and two-dimensional. This one is interactive, spatial, like a video game. I look around for Hanlon but he’s nowhere in sight — probably in his office trying to panic the regional and provincial dispatchers. I look for an option to replay the last simulation, hoping Carl didn’t erase it, but find nothing.
Okay, think this through.
Bring up the vegetation inventory, themed by fbp Fuel Type. Punch in present and predicted weather. The growth model is almost as easy to use as a video game. Factor in slope and aspect ...
With the parameters set, it’s obvious the entire area is at extreme hazard. I need to find the areas which would result in the most dramatic fire growth because that’s where Carl will set his devices. Wind is predominately from the west so I click on an icon of a little flame, initiate a few spot fires in gullies along the toe of the mountains, watch them grow eastward across the screen. Even considering the condensed time frame of the simulation, the rate the pixels on the screen turn black is frightening.
“Holy shit.” Hanlon is breathing down my neck. “That’s fast.”
“See these areas here ...” I smudge the screen with my fingertips. “These areas show the most rapid fire growth. If I was the arsonist, this is where I’d start my burn.”