“Command, Seventeen, what is your location?” Colm was now on the radio.
Static broke over the line again, the wind blew against Dean’s receiver, and from the sounds that did carry I could tell he was still on foot. There were different voices. And then Dean’s. “We’ve got smoke coming up out of the east. Over.”
“Command, Seventeen, copy.”
And then, “Command, Seventeen and Dispatch, do you have a read on Seventeen’s location?”
“Seventeen, Command and Dispatch, we’re maybe a quarter mile northeast of last location. Smoke is coming in out of the canyon. We’re heading back to our vehicles.”
Static.
Joseph’s voice came over the radio. He was telling Dean something.
“Come on, boys. Get out of there,” I said out loud to myself. Had their fireworks started a fire?
“Seventeen”—static—“Jesus Christ”—static, and then silence.
“Command, Seventeen, do you read me?” Colm said. “Command, Seventeen,” again. “Deputy Scholtz, do you read me?”
I was certain I had heard Joseph’s voice. “Joseph, can you hear me? Joseph, if you’re there, pick up the radio.”
—
She pulled out the small canister of matches, flipped off the lid, swiped the match against the thin strike pad, and lit the edge of her jacket sleeve. And the thick wick saturated with the mixture of crude oil and waste exploded into a ball of flames. She did not know how long it would burn, and she had not anticipated the sparks flying. She moved as quickly as she could from the pit and to the opening where the flimsy gate flopped over on the ground, but she had not had practice running without her crutch, and her left leg was at least two inches shorter from the break, and she had not foreseen dropping her boot, or the worn stitching of her wool sock catching on the wire and tripping her, and more sparks flying from the tied jacket as she fell to her knees and caught herself with her right hand, holding the torch six inches from the ground, but it was too close, and the jacket was melting fast, larger pieces of fabric breaking away, hot swaths of thread floating and being tossed like ashen leaves. She looked back only long enough to pull her foot out of her sock that was still snagged and to see the trail of light blossom into orange and red as the entire pit went up in flames. Before she was on her feet, intense heat pushed her forward like an explosive. She scrambled to pull herself upright and to run, and as she tried to run, she felt the bone of her left ankle cutting into tissue and tendon with each step, felt stones and brush burning against her bare skin. Smoke and ash like a parapet around her coated her eyes, making it more difficult to see. She dropped the torch when its heat had begun to melt her shirt and sear the hairs on her arm and blister her skin. And what once had been patches of snow was now mud, and twice she slipped, a sharp branch tearing down her left sleeve, warm liquid collecting in her palm. And somewhere in front of her another flare, faintly lighting her path, exposing another landmark, the large rounded boulder that only hours before she had thought looked like a meteorite that had dropped from the sky. The mile seemed shorter, her gait like that of a broken deer, her body stumbling forward, away from the direction of the flames, the direction of the wind, and toward the voices from where the fireworks had come.
A steep face of sandstone was to her left. The smoke smelled sweeter, a mixture of ash and explosives like the Fourth of July. And there were voices somewhere far above her. She called out again, the effort leaving her dizzy and weak, so that she leaned over for a moment, resting her hands on her knees. Her legs quivered. Her head still felt light. She would need to climb. She was too far below the ridge for anyone to notice her. And what if they had left? She did not see any more fireworks. “Help me,” she said again, her voice not much louder than the night wind. She reached for the rock wall, lifted her right leg against the stone. But her boot was heavy and slick on the bottom and covered in mud. She bent over, unlaced and removed it, removed her sock. She raised her torso and looked up the cliff wall again, and as she did, the blood drained from her face, the ground seemed to shift beneath her, and her balance faltered. Her fingers gripped a small ledge in the rock face to steady her; the toes of her right foot dug into the only crevice she could find. She pulled and pushed herself upward and over the narrow edge, maybe six inches of sandstone that jutted out, a ringing in her ears. She reached for another handhold, tucked her right foot beneath her, pulled and pushed again, and then sweat and cold and nausea, and somewhere in the distance she might have heard voices like those from her childhood, and the night air closed in on her, the sky around her a blur as if everything were spinning, and the sensation of falling, and something as sweet as sleep.