Page 97 of Into the Fire

Shep sat down the bench with the streamer bags on his lap. He caught my eye and held up one bag. “Rated these myself,” he shouted over the engines. “Top-quality crepe paper. Nothing but the best for—” The plane dropped through a pocket and he quit talking.

Boone hadn’t said anything since the runway. He sat with his forearms on his knees.

Carson Ridge appeared ahead of us, long and broken, running east to west with smoke rising off its north side.

I leaned forward enough to look out the door. The saddle was obvious: a low notch near the middle. The south face fell away toward Carson Creek.

I saw the crest where I’d stood. Five years had changed the south face. The old burn had gone green at the bottom, waist-high lodgepole pine coming up through it, with dead snags still standing over the fresh growth in patches.

“Coming up on it,” Fellhauer called. “First pass is mine.”

Lancaster banked, and the North Fork was visible: timber, benches, and smoke lifting out of it in more than one place. Fellhauer went to the door and hung there in the wind with his hand on the frame, reading it.

The Park was below us, a broad meadow on the bench below the saddle. It wasn’t an actual park, just what jumpers had called the clearing for longer than anyone remembered.

“Jump spot’s the Park,” Fellhauer shouted back to us. “Wind’s out of the southwest across it. We’ll run the streamers and see what’s really happening.”

I leaned to see past Teller’s helmet. The smoke broke out of the timber in separate places. Boone watched me.

The Otter banked, and Fellhauer threw the first streamers. The weighted paper unspooled color down toward the meadow where we’d landed the last time.

“First stick,” Fellhauer called. “Hatcher, Vega. Get in the door.”

Five years ago I’d left Carson Ridge strapped to a litter. This time I was going back through the door.

Boone stepped out and was gone.

I shuffled into the space he’d left, boots on the sill. The prop blast took whatever I was thinking and scattered it across Montana. I wasn’t thinking about a chute that didn’t open. There was the door, noise, and Fellhauer’s hand on my shoulder, holding me there.

He watched the streamers and where they’d died in the grass. The meadow came around under the wing, and he was doing the math a spotter does with his whole body. Fellhauer leaned into my ear.

“Drift’s pushing everything at the south end. Give it room. There’s a row of snags at the timber’s edge that wasn’t there for your last jump here. Land in the middle and be boring.”

I looked at the horizon. The wing came level. Fellhauer’s hand came down flat on my shoulder. I stepped out. The blast rolled me, and I held the arched position, feet and knees together—one thousand, two thousand, three thousand, four.

The initial shock pushed against my shoulders and thighs and stood me up in the sky. The canopy unfolded cleanly above me.

The lines were clear. I was flying, and the roar of the plane pulled away, leaving the sound of my breathing inside my helmet.

Boone was below me, a quarter turn to my right, heading toward the middle of the meadow.

From the Otter, Carson Ridge had looked like a picture. From under my chute, it was a place. The Park lay below me, its grass autumn gold. The saddle stood above the meadow with the crest running away from it east and west, and past the crest, where I couldn’t see the ground, smoke rose out of the North Fork.

It came from three places.

I marked them against the skyline—one low, one midslope, and one I lost as the canopy turned me. The drift was real. It carried me toward the south end the whole way down, and I crabbed across it, trading altitude for the middle of the meadow, the same as I’d done on a hundred spots in the past. At three hundred feet, the grass gained texture. At one-fifty, I could see the wind moving through it.

I turned into the wind and landed on my feet, letting the momentum carry me onto my side. My hip complained, and I rolled through it. The canopy collapsed downwind of me as I stood on Carson Ridge.

The grass smelled like every dry meadow in Montana. Somewhere upslope a squirrel chattered.

I hauled in the canopy, daisy-chained the lines, and bagged my gear. It was good, honest work. I stacked my jump gear at the north edge of the meadow, clear of the timber, and marked where it sat.

Boone was doing the same fifty yards off. He glanced up the meadow at me and went back to his gear.

The Otter came around and put out the second stick. Teller landed on his feet and appeared startled by the ease of it. Ramirez landed on top of the streamers.

On the next pass, Shep flared late, stayed upright, and looked around to see who’d witnessed it. Hollis came in like a man stepping off a curb.