Page 4 of Smoke and Roses

The light is on in her workroom.

I have a weird sensation part of me is back there too. Like I left something of myself.

“That’s a fire,” Rob says after he whistles as we leave town behind.

A column of smoke is rising straight up. It’s a dirty brown color at the bottom.

“Well, shit,” Clint says from the front. “That’s moving.”

“Hollister place is all hay,” Rob says. “Nobody’s cut it in ten years. Old lady Hollister died and the kids are in California.”

Clint glances at me. “Small town. You’ll learn everything too.”

“I’m learning plenty,” I reply, looking at the smoke, but I can feel Rob grinning next to me. He knows exactly what I mean, and he’s enjoying it way too much.

Chief Caleb Strong comes over the radio. He always sounds calm and regulated. “Engine 1, Brush 1, Command. Fire is approximately thirty acres, running east toward the outbuildings. Engine 1, you’ve got structure protection on the barns. Brush 1, anchor at the county road and work the left flank. Wallace, Raines, peel off and join Brush 1.”

“Copy,” Rob answers.

I check my gloves and canteen, then the strap on my helmet, testing the clasp twice.

Rob watches me do it, but he doesn’t say anything. He was nineteen the last time we rode into danger together, and I was the one checking his straps.

“You good, Sarge?” he asks.

“Yeah.”

“Fire’s just fire,” he says. “It doesn’t shoot back.”

Well, there’s that.

Chapter Two

I’m staring at the front door. “Somebody fixed my bell.”

My friend from the bank, Helen, stops halfway inside with a paper bag from Marlene’s. “It’s early, you’ll have to explain. But I brought muffins.”

She came by to talk about the chamber mixer and the arrangement she wants me to make.

“The bell over the door was hanging crooked for a month, and now it’s straight. And the back door doesn’t squeak anymore. I just realized that too.”

I smell pumpkin muffins above the scent of the flowers as Helen sets them on the front counter.

“Who has a key to your shop?”

“Me. And the guy who lives upstairs. He has one so he can access the fuse box.”

“The Army guy?” She wiggles her brows.

“Travis. And listen to this, he talked this morning.” My face is getting hot, so I busy myself with the muffins. “He came down to complain about my singing and I gave him coffee and he carried the snapdragons.”

“That man carried the snapdragons?” she asks as if that’s the weirdest idea in the world.

“They’re heavy.”

“Oh my gosh, that’s a picture.” Helen leans both elbows on the counter and props her chin in her hands. “And then sometime in the middle of the night he came down here and fixed your bell and your squeaky door and didn’t say a word about it.”

“I didn’t say it was him.”