Bad kids don't light good fires
A short story for Earth Day and the The Future of Nature writing project
“The Future of Nature” is an Earth Day community writing project for fiction writers to explore the human-nature relationship in a short story or poem. It was organized by and , and supported with brilliant advice from scientists and . The story you’re about to read is from this project. You can find all the stories as a special Disruption edition, with thanks to publisher
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The burn crew had reached the heart of the forest, but sounds of liquid sloshing against plastic and the toxic aroma of gasoline reminded Robbie of the day that Reese’s older cousin took them out onto the lake in his shabby dinghy. Robbie couldn’t swim, and had been terrified of falling into the water without a lifejacket. The older boys had called him a pussy for clinging to the ropes.
He felt just as vulnerable now, as he trailed behind the rest of the burn crew, staggering over knobbly roots, off-balance because of the clunky rake that he carried with both hands. The chatter of the all-female group amplified his disorientation. They didn’t exclude him intentionally, but between the fire lingo, intermittent Karuk, and the talk about boyfriends, husbands, wives, and sisters, he could hardly follow the threads of conversation. Unlike the others, he wasn’t a strong hiker or tree-hugger, but he had elected to join the burn crew rather than spend the remainder of his required service hours in a government office building, shredding paper and milling about the filing cabinets. It was his fault then, that he was back in the Klamath forest, this time, with the intention to set it ablaze.
Robbie felt a buzz in the front pocket of his heavy yellow Nomex coat, and then a second buzz. Guessing that it was Reese getting back to him about the plan for tonight, he rested the metal head of the rake on the ground and slipped off his gloves to check his texts.
“Hey man. Nah, I’m chillin at home tonight. See you round soon?”
Robbie gritted his teeth. This was the third time in a row that Reese had blown him off. Between the trial and the weeks of all-day fire training, he hadn’t seen his friend in almost two months. The legendary summer after high school, the one that they’d talked about since they were fourteen, had come and gone, and instead of going on a roadtrip to Mexico or getting high every day in the junkyard, Robbie had spent it locked up in his house, and then once his court-mandated service began, at the ranger station for training. In a few weeks, Reese would be working at the shop with his brothers, and Robbie, with a felony on his record, would be…who the hell knew?
He punched out a reply: “All good. You free tomorrow night?” but a second later, the exclamation point and “Not Delivered” message popped up beneath it.
Robbie jabbed the send button again and raised the phone above his head. Not delivered. He glared at the dense tree canopy, which was probably the reason that his text wasn’t going through. On his home screen, there was still a red notification bubble above the Instagram icon.
Don’t click it, warned a small voice in the back of his mind. Ignoring his better instincts, Robbie tapped on the app icon. He half-hoped that the signal was too choppy to load anything, but the inbox must have refreshed while they were still in range. In his messages, there were DM requests from dozens of unfamiliar accounts. He had made his account private weeks ago, but someone from school had leaked his name and profiles, and now hundreds of messages from strangers poured in every day.
@darlindianne: There’s nothing you can do to make up for your actions.
@iggy88046: You will burn in hell. It is only fair.
@timberwolves20: Plz do us a favor and kill urself before u can kill anything else.
Sweat dampened his back and chest. He was flailing, flailing out on the lake again, without anything to grab onto, drowning amid a chorus of jeers.
He slipped his phone back into his pocket and turned his attention back to the forest trail. To Robbie’s surprise, Charlene, the Incident Commander in charge of the day’s burn, stood a few meters away with her hands on her hips and head cocked.
Everyone called her Char, which Robbie thought was funny considering her occupation. She was an impressive woman, with a strong jaw and three vertical lines tattooed on her chin. Her Nomex was properly filled out while his own hung from his skinny shoulders and arms. They hadn’t spoken much throughout his weeks of training or back at HQ this morning, but he knew that the other crew members straightened their hats when she was nearby.
“Texting your girlfriend, Rivers?”
He knew the rules: no phones on the line. But he wasn’t on the line yet, so there was no need to be apologetic, he told himself.
“What? No, just a friend,” Robbie muttered, hoisting the rake back onto his shoulder and continuing down the trail. He wished that the motion was smoother, but he had never been the athletic type.
“Is this the same friend that left you stranded in the forest?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Robbie tried to keep cool. Like the rest of the higher-ups within the Klamath Prescribed Fire Training Exchanges team, Char knew all about his conviction and mandated service hours. The entire world knew, it seemed. But after the first police interrogation, no one questioned why he was found alone, without a car. No matter that the details that weren’t adding up; all they cared about was punishing the piece-of-shit kid responsible for starting the fire.
“They were awfully quiet the whole time you were on trial. Seems to me they can wait a few more hours to chit chat.”
Perspiration trickled down the dip of Robbie’s upper lip. “Like I said, I was alone.” He could hear indignation ringing through every word.
“I’m not trying to make you snitch on your friends, Rivers. I get it: you’re loyal. That’s an important quality in a crew member, too. But you should think about picking your crew more wisely.” Char looked at him intently and added, “And put your damn phone away until we’re back in town.”
Robbie’s temper flared, but he kept his mouth shut this time. They walked at a brisk pace until they caught up with the others. The women stood at the edge of the trail, overlooking a ravine dense with growth— fuel, as the crew members called it. The casual chatter had subsided, and each woman was setting up her tools or digging through packs for supplies: water bladders, radios, axes, drip torches.
“IC, this is the section we marked off,” called the line boss, Kory. “Weather’s cooperating, so let’s not dally. Final radio check and then everyone to their places.”
Char nodded and spoke into her walkie-talkie to the crews on the other edges of the burn zone. With everyone’s eyes on her, Char lifted a smoldering bundle of wormwood and waved it so that the smoke rose to the tree canopy.
The Incident Commander lifted her chin high and spoke in a lyrical but solemn voice: “Grandfather and Grandmother, these are the lands that you lived off of. Help us to be proper stewards of it so that our own children and their children can walk on it, harvest materials, and gather medicine, just as you did since time immemorial. Help us to restore it to its healthy state through this good fire.”
Even after a month of training, the concepts still clashed with Robbie’s intuition. He had learned that half of the women in the fire crew were part of the Karuk Tribe, like Char, but the rest were like him, white, with ancestors that had settled in the Klamath area during the lumber boom. Fire was a logger’s worst enemy, and yet, a hundred years later, their granddaughters were out here starting them. In his head, he heard Pop's voice from earlier this morning, saying, “You already burned down half the goddamn forest, I don’t understand these treefucker libs making you go out there to finish the job.” What upset Pop more than Robbie setting the fire or the felony conviction was that his punishment involved spending time around “those people”.
Char crouched low and blew on the wormwood bundle, once, twice, three times. It pulsed and glowed with each deep exhale. She buried it into the pile of dried leaves and twigs.
Robbie could smell it before he spotted it. This wasn’t like the smoke that wafted from bonfires the other kids lit at parties, fueled by heaps of ripped up cardboard, food wrappers, and random wood scraps from the junkyard. This smoke smelled as clean as rain. It made his eyes water and sting, but he kept them open to see the first flicker of it: a living flame. Everyone watched reverently for a moment before launching into action, some lighting their own wormwood bundles with Char’s flame, some walking the perimeter and adding to the fire with their drip torches, and others still breaking up or tamping down the fuel with the end of a hoe or rake, just as they had been trained to do. Everyone except for Robbie, who was rooted to the spot.
Fuel crackled underfoot. The flames grew; they consumed more and more debris, growing hungrier and hotter with each passing second. Even if he looked away or squeezed his eyelids shut, he could see the dancing shapes burned into his retinas and feel the sting of smoke. Robbie shivered, despite the warmth of the flames caressing every exposed bit of his skin. He realized that he feared fire as much as open water.
“Rivers, pull back a few feet,” a voice called out.
As he stepped backwards, however, a long branch twisted beneath his foot and then came crashing down like a seesaw, raining a shower of sparks and glowing coals. Startled, Robbie, lost his footing and landed on his back with a—
Crash. He was suddenly there again, with Reese and Schmitty in the forest. The smoke bomb had gone off in two parts; he could hear it again. The first was a quick pop that lulled Schmitty into a false sense of security. The other boy was approaching the frankensteined explosive with a plastic lighter in hand to relight the fuse when the thing exploded with a boom, taking a piece of his finger with it. Reese and Robbie stood around, mouths open, while Schmitty hollered and wailed like an infant, holding his blackened stump of an index finger out in front of his face. When they came to their senses, the embers that had landed in the dry shrubs had already begun to catch fire. Robbie vaguely remembered Reese yelling, “Let’s get the fuck outta here!” and yanking Schmitty off of the ground. Robbie had whipped off his flannel and whipped it at the brush again and again, desperate to smother the flames. By the time Cal Fire arrived with the helicopter, the skin from his hands was pink and raw, but no one took much pity on the kid that had started the Klamath fire.
“Rivers!”
Robbie felt firm hands hoist him upward and backward, away from the fire line. He tensed, waiting for the yell or heavy blow. Instead, it was Char looking at him with concern wrinkling her brow. Her voice was kind, and she spoke low so only he could hear. “It’s natural to be afraid. That’s how we’re all conditioned, until we come out here a few times and see the fire for ourselves. Take it slow today. Watch closely how the others do it and keep an eye on that spot there,” she instructed, gesturing toward the other crew members nearby holding hoes and rakes and a patch of fire a few yards away.
I’m not afraid, Robbie wanted to say, but there was barely time for the truth when a live fire was burning, let alone a blatant lie.
“I can help hold the line,” he said instead.
Char clapped her hand on his back and said, “When the fire boss calls for more supplies, I want you to fetch them from the truck.”
For the next few hours, he was at the command of the Karuk women, running extra jugs of fuel and water from truck to fire lines. When instructed, he picked up his rake and helped them control the direction and level of the blaze. Robbie was glad to take on the simple tasks they needed done. The women on the crew moved fluidly as one, their eyes bright with purpose. They were energized by the crackling flames, just as the flames themselves were fueled by the overgrowth.
When the fire burned through the remaining fuel and reached the blackened area they’d cleared at the start of the day, the flames gradually diminished, just as the crew had intended. They whooped and clapped and embraced, some shedding joyful tears. Robbie felt a tap on his shoulder, and was taken aback when one of the oldest women on the line pulled him into a huddle of elated crew members. In the net of arms and soft shoulders, his discomfort dissipated. When they all parted, he saw that a crew member around his age was smiling at him. She didn’t offer him a hug, but she drew closer to him, lifted onto her toes, and whispered her name in his ear. She smelled like smoked fir and witch hazel, and if Robbie had not been so exhausted in that moment, he might have remembered to tell her his and ask for her phone number.
After the crew hiked back to the road and began to leave in carpool groups, Robbie looked around. He didn’t see the white pickup that had given him a ride on the way in. The ugly thought that he had been abandoned again crossed his mind, but the next second, a Rav4 pulled up next to him.
“I told your group to go on without you. Want to show you something.” It was Char leaning out of the rolled-down window, and she was examining him closely, as if she knew what he was thinking without him saying a single word.
Wary but still riding the high of the day’s successful burn, Robbie shrugged and hopped into her passenger seat. As Char pulled onto the highway, Robbie dug his phone out of his jacket pocket. He had no new text messages, but 57 notifications from Instagram. Probably 57 direct message requests from strangers. He could only guess what these ones said.
“What are you hoping that thing will tell you?” asked Char.
He snorted. “Just checking my texts, you know, like a normal person? Are you like some sort of technology-hating caveman?”
“Not at all.”
“Then why are you on my ass about it?”
Char tore her eyes away from the road just long enough to give him a look that said “Really?” and then shot back, “On your ass? Kid, I watch the news. I have the Internet. More importantly, I know how mean people get when they want to make an example outta you. I’ve been in your position before.”
“Oh yeah? What’s that?”
“Drowning. In guilt, shame, fear. After a huge fuck-up.”
As much as he wanted to shut this conversation down, he had another question on his mind. “How did you know I didn’t do it alone?” he whispered.
“I told you: you gotta pick your crew wisely. I ran with the rotten sort too, once upon a time. The ones that leave you when the wind changes. Got into some bad shit with them. I was lucky that an elder saw past my B.S. and invited me to one of these burns. He said he saw a future leader in me. Changed my life, and I can never repay him for it. I’ve watched you, Rivers, seen how you are with the forest and with the crew. You think I’d have let you anywhere near the burn if I didn’t know you were a good kid?”
Robbie fought with everything he had as his eyes began to water. He stared determinedly out the window and dug his nails into his palms, refusing to cry at the first kind word tossed in his direction. Thankfully, Char backed off when she saw him slumped in the chair, eyes locked on the passing trees.
“You did well out there today,” she said after a few silent minutes cruising down the highway. “Maybe in a couple burns, I’ll let you hold a torch.”
“No. I never want to cause another fire.”
Char made a humming noise that was as close to music as you could get without singing. She didn’t argue with him, only tapped the wheel lightly as she steered, to a song he couldn’t hear. After a few minutes, she pulled over at what seemed like a random spot on the highway. She said nothing, but unclipped her seatbelt and walked away from the road, down the hill and into the forest.
Robbie found her in a clearing, standing before a plant with long, skinny leaves that reminded him of a giant grass clump, and from a stem protruding from its center, an explosion of creamy white flowers. Char was bent over the cluster of flowers, inhaling their scent.
Looking around the clearing, there were dozens more just like it. Robbie reached out to the nearest one and gently ran his fingers over the silky soft petals.
“Bear grass,” Char explained as if he had asked. “And that over there is hazel.”
The area looked familiar to Robbie, but he didn’t know the forests well enough to have his bearings. “Where are we?”
“We’re in a zone that our unit burned last year.”
It looked so different from the one they had just come from. After only a year since the burn, Robbie was not expecting it to be so…alive.
As if reading his mind for what seemed like the dozenth time, Char said, “Good fire brings back the plants and medicines we need, what would have otherwise been suffocated and lost forever.”
“Is this what…the other side of the forest will look like one day?” They both knew he was talking about the section of the Klamath forest that he had reduced to an ashy wasteland.
“Possibly,” Char said. “Wildfire is different. It’s what happens when the land and the people are out of touch with one another. The Karuk people have been in communion with our land since the beginning, taking care of it, shaping it, not neglecting it.”
“And what about me? I’m not Karuk.”
“No,” she agreed, “You aren’t. And still, the land watched over you that day, and again today. Sometimes, you need good fire to clear out old debris for a forest— or a person— to thrive. If you let it, I believe the forest will return the favor. Maybe it already has.”
I acknowledge the real-life efforts of the Karuk and Yurok tribes to restore and protect Northern California’s Klamath Forest through indigenous burning practices. I reference these practices in this story as well as the Klamath Prescribed Fire Training Exchanges (KTREX) and Women-in-Fire Prescribed Fire Training Exchanges (WTREX), a women-led unit of the TREX model. The characters and scenarios mentioned are 100% fictional, but human-caused catastrophic wildfires are unfortunately 100% real, and inspired by the Eagle Creek Fire of 2017. For more information about indigenous burning practices, here are a few additional readings and video resources:
Karuk Tribe: Good Fire I and Good Fire II Reports
If you would like to donate to support the efforts of indigenous people reclaiming their right to maintain forests through cultural burns, please follow this link to the Karuk Tribe’s Eco-Cultural Revitalization Fund.
Thank you so much for reading, and Happy Earth Day !
-Devon
Really nice story, Devon. Great verisimilitude. Have you done burns yourself or is this just good research (or both) (and imagination, of course)? Thanks for this well-written story.
Devon, I loved your story. It's really well written and smooth reading. Loved your MC and Char.
The ending got me in the feels a little. Nice work!
PS - Love the title and learning more about this stuff. Great job bringing the real world into the craft of storytelling.