Page 20 of Into the Fire

Shep: Tell me this man didn’t hang 2 hrs in a tree at Meridian making jokes. Hollis says the Okafor part is real

It was Shep’s way of inviting me. I shoved the phone in my pocket and grabbed my boots.

The bar was the Sawtooth. It had a massive round blade over the front door. Tourists swamped it in July, but the rest of the year it belonged to those who lived and worked in the area.

When I stepped inside, I smelled fryer grease and stale beer. Denny, the bartender, had a Rockies baseball game on with the sound off. He lifted his chin at me and placed a glass under a tap before I said anything.

Shep was telling a story at the long table under the window, using his hands to illustrate his points. Fellhauer sat across from him with a root beer. He’d stopped drinking a month after Carson when his truck ended up in a creek.

Hollis had his back to the door, and Dante sat sideways to it, one boot up on the rail of an empty chair beside him. He was laughing.

Dante had his head back, throat bare under the bar light, Adam’s apple rising and falling. He hadn’t seen me yet. I got to watch him with no one who mattered seeing me do it.

He hadn’t decided about his beard. It had about a week’s worth of growth. He had one arm hooked over the back of his chair, chest open to the entire table, taking up space.

Fellhauer said something out of the side of his mouth, and Dante turned to answer him. He saw me, and he didn’t stop laughing. The once-over took about two seconds, and then he returned his attention to the table.

Shep finished his story. I took my beer off the bar, left Denny a bill, and headed for the table.

Shep spotted me and hauled the empty chair out from under Dante’s boot.

“Boone.” He patted the chair. “Sit. Dante was using this as an ottoman, but he can put his feet on the floor.”

I sat. Dante moved his boot about four inches and looked at me across the table.

“Did you count the exits?” he asked.

“Two.”

Fellhauer tipped his root beer at me. “He’s counting exits now, too, boys. Everybody behave.”

Off the base after dark, everybody was about ten percent looser with me than they’d be in the yard tomorrow. Dante watched to see how much of it I’d take. I let the crew have the bar. Dutch used to sit in the same space and let men who’d salute him at six a.m. tell him his truck was ugly.

“So the Okafor thing is true,” Shep said to me. “Two hours in the tree. You were there.”

“I was on the ground with Okafor, listening to him.” I nodded at Dante. “He requested that lunch be sent up. Twice.”

“Once,” Dante said.

“You asked twice. You got it once.”

Shep launched into follow-up questions, and the table drifted. Shep’s truck came up, and then it mercifully went away.

Dante told a story about being denied proper payment for work by a bookkeeper in Wyoming. He had his forearms on the table, peeling the corner of his beer bottle’s label with a thumbnail. I watched his hands the whole time.

He talked with them the same as ever. I had a sudden, clear memory of one of them gripping my collar with his body pushed against mine along the ready room wall. I set my beer down and made myself listen to the story.

Then Hollis, who’d been quiet a while, tapped his bottle against the table. “Can I ask you something?”

“Go,” Dante said.

“Timber landings. I’ve got Teller doing letdowns next month, and the book teaches him that the tree’s the failure. If you land in the trees, you did something wrong.” He tipped the bottle slightly. “I’ve had two spots this season where the meadow was the trap. I’d have taken the green timber. You jumped more heavy timber than anybody I know. How’d you call it?”

It wasn’t small talk. Hollis wanted the answer. Shep shut up for once.

Dante gave a serious answer. “You pick the tree on the way down if that’s the best choice. A green fir that takes your canopy can be a ladder.”

“Makes sense,” Hollis said.