The Smoking Mountain, Part II

By the time I returned to the doorway, Doug had drafted another employee into the crusade.

Mark was a wilderness volunteer, which meant that he earned room, board and ten dollars a week doing whatever Doug told him to do.  This usually involved hiking, giving information to tourists on the trails and pretty much trying to look official in olive drab while not earning any money.  That entire summer I was perplexed as to why anyone would accept such a job with the federal government when they paid such ridiculous amounts to a hopeless individual like me.

One evening in June, out in the barracks we shared, Mark told me that he had been a personal injury lawyer in New York.  He tried to explain why he was in Sedona working for ten bucks a week.

“I’ve earned plenty of money in my life, Tim.” He said, one hand patting down the graying hair that he swept over his enormous bald spot every morning before spraying it stiff.  “Now I’m looking for something more.”

“Well, if you’re after the harmonic convergence,” I said, “you missed it.  That was years ago.”

Mark chuckled politely.  We had already exchanged stories of the middle-aged, white-collar types who pestered us while we worked with questions about the locations of vortexes and healing wheels.  They looked a little bit like Mark, but usually had a kind of lost look in their empty eyes.  I didn’t see as many of these characters as he did, since they devoted much more of their time to trails than to toilets.

I joined him and Doug in the workroom wordlessly.  Mark was listening to Doug’s spiel about the fire, nodding solemnly in total contrast to my open-mouthed enthusiasm.

“So¼get you’re fire gear on.” Doug said, unconsciously imitating Mark’s nod.  Mark turned and gave me a nod, which I returned, noting that for a moment we were all nodding simultaneously.  Then he sauntered nodlessly out of the room, going down the one passageway that led to the front room and then the lockers. 

I was about to ask Doug (who was still nodding vaguely) where the rest of the fire crew was when I heard the roar of a service truck and an exaggerated slew of gravel being thrown against the side of the station.  I startled and moved suddenly away from the wall.  Doug simply cursed and strutted out the door.

“Goddamn it, Manny!”

I composed myself and followed him. 

The rest of the crew had arrived pulling a horse trailer with one horse inside.  They boiled out of the truck’s cab into the swirling dust, big, stupid smiles on their child-like faces.

“Helen!” Doug barked. “I told you not to let the Mexican drive!”

“Fuck you.” Manny said.  “I’m not Mexican.  I’m an American.  I don’t even speak Spanish.”

Doug grumbled as he stomped over to the trailer to inspect the cargo.  The rest of the crew ignored him and, seeing me in my fire gear for the first time, began to congratulate me.  The powerful hammer blows of their slab-like appendages on my back made my rib cage shudder.  I was relieved when Mark stepped out and was targeted for their brutal displays of approval.  Wanting to make good my escape I staggered over to where Doug was gloomily inspecting the horse.

Once Mark cleared the gauntlet, one hand securing his hair flap tightly against his head, I assumed that the great adventure was about to begin.  It was, however, to be put off a little longer.

Doug directed Manny and Helen to remove the horse and tie him to a tree in the yard.  Brian and Chad, the other two firefighters, were sent to the workroom for extra tools.

“You two.” Doug said to Mark and I, gesturing toward the horse.  “Stow your gear in the back of the truck and hide behind the animal so your bosses don’t try and take you off my crew.”

I did so gratefully, fearing that my big fat boss, whom everyone referred to affectionately as Smacky, might spy me out among people infinitely more useful than him and send me scurrying back to “the shit holes”.

Mark and I took up our positions.  I began nervously eyeing all the entrances and exits of the various buildings scattered over the station, hoping that we finished before Smacky realized that the toilet truck was still sitting in the yard.

People who have spent most of their life in the city are either terrified of large domesticated animals or think that they are all immediately taken in by tender gestures and sing-song voices.  Mark was one of the latter. 

“He’s beautiful.” Mark said, eyes wide.  “I wonder what his name is?”

Before I could say “who gives a fuck, shut up, they might hear you” he tried to pet the horse’s face while making kissy noises and saying “what’s you name, horsey? Huh? What’s you namey?”  The horse lunged and snapped at his fingers, missing by a fraction of an inch.

“Jesus Christ!” Mark screamed, clutching his fingers to his chest.  An electric thrill passed through my body and I leapt with fright for the second time in only a matter of minutes.

“Don’t touch that animal!” Doug shouted, walking over to us.  The station secretary, a thirtyish woman named Ana Dominguez, accompanied him.  She was also in fire gear. They stepped around the horse’s rear at a respectful distance. 

“Here’s the story, fellas.”  He said, glaring at each of us in turn.  “Ana just got a telephone call.  We might get taken up in a helicopter to the fire.  So just stay here for a few minutes.  I’ll find out if it’s true.”  He turned and walked back to his office.  Ana stayed with us.

I gave her the once over twice.  I had lusted for Ana all summer, had the typical adolescent fantasies about her visiting me in the barracks one night, traipsing over the dirty clothes and empty cans of Keystone in diaphanous lingerie and throwing herself into my brawny grasp.  She was a divorcee and looked great in nomex pants.  Of course, I was kind of starved in that environment.  The only other potential target for my depraved mind was Helen, a tough, butch woman who, in a just world, would not be allowed to interrupt my fantasies, wading through the refuse on my floor in a black teddy and lunging roughly into my bunk.

“So.” I said. “They recruited you, too?”

“Yes!” She said.  I mistook the enthusiasm in her voice as being directed at me.  “What a beautiful horse!” 

She began to stroke the horse’s mane before I could ward her off.  Mark retreated, knocking the back of his head on the tree trunk.  But there was no reaction from the horse.  He stood still, tail twitching.

          Then I remembered the old saying that all women love horses.  Was the reverse true?

“You’ve uh¼soothed the savage beast.” I said, hoping to jumpstart the conversation.

“What?” She said without looking back at me.

“Are you familiar with horses?”

“My parents own a ranch down near Nogales.  I grew up with all sorts of animals.”

I didn’t know where to go with that one so I took a new tack.

“Helicopter, huh? That’ll be pretty cool.  I’ve never ridden in a helicopter.”

“Well, that mountain looks pretty tall.  I certainly don’t want to climb it.  I’m not sure I’m up to it.”

I was thinking the same thing but didn’t say so.  Before I could continue seducing her Doug returned with the bad news.

“No helicopter. We’ll have to hike it.”

I was stunned.  My pack weighed thirty pounds. The temperature would be ninety-five degrees by noon.  Doug saw the look on my face and tried to be reassuring. 

“We’ll start out at Midgley bridge.  It’s only another three thousand feet from there to the top of Wilson Mountain.”

“Oh. Okay.”

Now it was time to put the horse back in the trailer.  Why we had the horse I didn’t know and felt it better not to ask.  The task should have taken less than a minute but it soon became clear that the horse, whose name Helen revealed as Bailey, didn’t want to get back inside the trailer.

“C’mon, Bailey.  C’mon.” Doug chanted soothingly, walking the horse in circles around the truck and trailer.  Every few orbits he jerked the reins toward the lowered gate of the trailer, but the horse always resisted successfully. Doug tried using a whip on its flanks.  Then, with no warning or pause, Doug dropped the whip and began to slap the stubborn gelding on the snout while he shouted “C’mon, Bailey!  C’mon!”  Again and again he thrashed the snorting, lurching beast.  Still, Doug could not drag him even an inch nearer the trailer.

It was time for teamwork.  Brian and Chad helped Doug move Bailey into a position just before the gate, which lay like a ramp on the ground.  Bailey dug his hooves into the ground and though Doug pulled and Brian and Chad pushed and Manny assaulted the poor animal with frenzied whippings he did not move.  I flinched every time the braided leather struck and the horse flesh rippled away from the blow.  Glancing over at Ana I noticed that she watched indifferently.

Finally, she suggested a new strategy.  While the others pushed, and Manny restrained himself, she tried to coax the animal by leaning into the front of the trailer through an opening and holding out half an apple.  “C’mon, Bailey.  C’mon.”  She took a small bite out of the apple every time she called to him and murmured the pleasure it gave her.  “Mmmm.  Mmm.  C’mon, Bailey.  C’mon.  Mmmm.”

Bailey slowly clambered into the trailer while the rest of us listened, spellbound to Ana’s throaty hum.  It was Doug who eventually raised the gate and closed it behind Bailey, who accepted his incarceration with placid ruminations while Ana stroked the entire length of his nose.

“Let’s go!” Doug shouted.  “I want Helen to pull the trailer with Manny, Brian and Chad.  Mark, Tim and Ana will come with me in my truck.”

I made sure that I sat next to Ana in the cramped truck cab before we drove away, toward the smoking mountain.

The Smoking Mountain, Part I
The Smoking Mountain, Part III
The Smoking Mountain, Part IV