"firebreak"

[sonreir]

Breaker



I get the call at ten to midnight.

"Fire," barks Jess, before I can even say "hello". His voice is rough, ragged with smoke. "Bad one. We need your help."

"Text me the address," I reply automatically. "I'll be there as soon as I can."

I hang up; pull off my pajamas and pull on my gear before grabbing the keys for the truck.

My phone buzzes in my hand as I drop it onto the driver's seat -- Jess, with the address, somewhere residential.

Be there in ten, I text back, and turn the key, throw the truck into gear.


I smell it before I can see it. House fires have a strange, chemical smell to the burning.

Jess is waiting for me, standing well back from the fire. He's got his gear on. No one is moving, something that surprises me. I'm used to action, scenes where everyone is busy, where Jess is yelling orders and I'm doing my best to help but mostly to stay out of the way.

"What's going on?" I ask, by way of hello.

"Bad house fire, maybe arson," says Jess. "We think. It's not moving how we'd expect."

I appraise the building quietly. "Ah."

"'s why we called you in," he continues, as if I didn't say anything. "Because we can't..."

They can't control it, he means. It's not a normal fire. Everyone got out all right -- I can see them being treated by EMS, standing across the street and staring at the remains of the house in their pajamas, bare feet on the wet sidewalk.

"Okay," I say. "I'll do what I can."

One of his men snorts. He's hanging back with his mask in his hands, listening to what we say, but his eyes never leave the building. Here's one who thinks I'm useless, I think, and I don't say anything.

I stride toward the house, purposefully -- toward the blaze.

"Stay back!" shouts one of the firefighters.

I ignore him, take a step forward, toward the orange light of the burning remains of the house, close enough that the heat and sound nearly overwhelm me.

"You don't know what you're doing here, do you?" I whisper to the blaze. It leaps up at the sound of my voice; jumping up and twirling. Not arson, I think. It's too friendly. It wants to be seen and praised for what it is, for the job it has done. It doesn't have a mission; it doesn't know why it's here. Definitely not arson.

"I don't quite know what I'm doing here either," I admit to it, and it dies back. "Come on -- I know somewhere better you can go. They don't want you here. They'll get you wet."

The fire hisses, and follows me.

It always does.

I lead it from the house, to the pile of fuel that Jess has carefully stacked in a newly-dug fire pit, the edges ringed with sandbags.

The fire settles happily on the fuel, burning bright and cheerful, no longer smoky and sullen, but clean and beautiful, licking around the edges of the kerosene-soaked logs that Jess put down.

I wait until I know that it's happy in its new home, that it's not going to follow me anywhere unless I coax it, and I walk back to Jess.

"That'll do it," I say, my voice hoarse with the smoke. "Neighbor's houses should be safe now. You were wrong -- it wasn't arson. Electrical, probably, from the feel."

He shakes his head slowly. "Fucking hell."

"Everyone make it out all right?"

"Yeah," Jess says. "You all right?"

I fight the urge to cough. "Yeah."

"No, you're not," he pushes back, exasperated. How many times have we done this? his expression reads. "Hold still."

He mutters something, moves his hands over my chest, presses them hard against the welder's jacket I'm wearing to protect against sparks. I cough, hard, and spit a glob of black onto the lawn.

"Thanks," I say, my voice suddenly ordinary again.

"You need to wear a mask, Lena."

I shrug. I want to point out that his men -- his crew -- resent me enough already, without setting aside gear for me, but I can't. "You fix me fine every time."

He shakes his head again. "It won't always be me," he warns.

"Yes," I say, "but it's you now."

And anyway, I want to say, when it's not you, no one will call me.


I'm a firebreak. It runs in the family. Dad was one, and his dad before him, and his dad before him, all the way back to before they kept records. My granddad was the captain of the fire department in the next town over. Dad didn't want to go into it, but he occasionally intervened when necessary.

It's supposed to be a talent that's spread along the male line, but, well.

Dad must have been disappointed, at least at first, when he thought the skill would die with me. All the firebreaks before me had been men. There were stories of women with the talent, but they weren't pleasant stories. We can't control the fire, they go, and so the fire overwhelms us. There's a famous ballad about just that, an arrogant woman who thought she could beat the fire back, and who lost her one true love in the process.

I begged Dad to teach me to be a firebreak. He'd heard the stories, too, and the song -- he knew what the risks were, real or perceived. He knew.

He taught me anyway.

Firebreak. It's an official title. There's tests they do for it, and licensure. I'm not licensed, because they won't license women.


I don't stick around to see the aftermath. I make sure the fire in the firepit burns down safely, quietly, and then I climb into the truck and drive myself home. I strip off my outerwear in the yard -- all of it reeks of smoke -- and drop it on the porch, then crawl into bed without even bothering to shower. I'll regret it in the morning, I know. The charm that Jess used cleansed my lungs, and nothing else. I smell like smoke, and my hair has flakes of ash in it, but I'm too tired to care. It's not quite 5AM. House fires never seem to happen during the day.

"Perils of the job," Dad had always said.

I'm asleep before I can fully regret not at least rinsing off. I'm going to have to wash these sheets, I think, and that's it -- I'm out like a light.


"The fire doesn't respect you," the Breaker's Guild leader said, when I asked about the possibility of testing, licensing. "You coax it, but you can't control it. You can't force it to go where you will. You lack the strength of will."

He was, at least, kind enough to never say that it was because I was a woman, but rather because it was a personal failing -- the same way he told certain timid apprentices that they would never become a real firebreak, not the way that he was.

They were allowed to test, though -- to fail and go out to find other jobs, away from fire.

He refused to test me. Based on his refusal, the county licensing board refused to test me, too. "We defer to the judgment of the Breakers' Guild," read the official refusal letter, when I got it.

I'd fought back, but they were careful: I was never denied on the basis of gender, but on my (supposed) lack of skill.


I wake up at 2PM, from a half-remembered dream about fire.

"Ugh," I say, smelling the scent of smoke still clinging to my skin and hair, and now to the sheets, as well. "Fuck."

My phone is ringing, its quiet buzzing what woke me. I pick it up and swipe to answer. "Yeah?"

"Hello, Lena," says Jess.

I grimace. "Yeah?"

"There's a fire, out in the forest. Campfire that didn't get put out properly, spread. Few acres are on fire." He pauses for a moment. "It's not a bad one yet, but..."

I resist the urge to ask why he's calling, if it's not a bad one, yet.

"But?" I prompt.

"It's fire season, Lena," says Jess promptly. "It hasn't rained since April. The entire valley is a tinderbox. You know that, you have to have heard the news."

"Yeah, I have," I admit. I pay attention to the news the Forest Service releases -- information about wildfires and how likely it is that anything will happen to us. Dad taught me to pay attention. "Have they got it under control?"

"For now," says Jess. He hesitates again. "The winds are supposed to pick up later today, though, and, well..."

I suddenly understand what he's getting at. "No, Jess. No."

"There's no one else," he pleads. "The Forest Service called me -- all of theirs are away, tending to the big wildfire near the border. The only one who's not is Clark's apprentice, and Clark himself has said that he's going to have to fail him, because he can't control shit. It's got to be you."

"They've got it under control, Jess," I say. "I can't get involved. This is Guild business -- call them."

"I did," says Jess quietly. "They don't have anyone available either. They advised us to keep an eye on the winds and prepare to evacuate." Meaning, we know you've got someone unlicensed working for you, and we refuse to get involved. Call on them and see how well it does you. I recognized Guild politics when I saw them. They'd send someone if it got bad, but in the meantime, they wanted to make Jess squirm.

"Good," I say. "Do that."

I hang up before he can say anything else. There's a lot else I want to tell him -- about politics and licensure and how having me help will only hurt the cause -- but all of it's things I pointedly don't talk to Jess about, things I won't tell him, because it's not a conversation either of us is willing to have.

He calls back, immediately, and I don't answer.


Living in the valley, we got used to living with a certain level of danger. The woods dried out every summer, and every summer, come July or August, it felt like lightning or a campfire that wasn't put out, or a cigarette flicked from a car, would start a wildfire.

Dad always controlled these. He let a little burn, every time -- he had to, he said, it was important to clear out the old and dead undergrowth -- but once it started looking as though it was going to spread, break beyond the control of the wildland fire fighters, he'd get a few men from the Guild together, and they'd go out and push it back, reign it in.

He was good at what he did.

The summer I was 27 was hotter than any I could remember, before or after. Temperatures routinely spiked into triple digits -- unusual for us. Everything was dry as bone after a winter without the usual snowpack, scorched yellow and brown by the sun. I went into the woods with Dad at one point -- he wanted to show me something, talk with me about the importance of one thing or another.

"Look," he said, pointing out the way the ferns had mostly died. "That's from the heat."

I paid attention to what he had to say. Forest fires were the last thing he had to teach me about. Everything else -- the house fires, the industrial stuff -- was scary, but it was scary in a manageable way. He could tell me what to expect. They mostly didn't spread, he taught me, except in a few cases. There were scary things, but as a firebreak, it was my job to prevent things from getting out of hand.

Dad never stopped believing that I'd be licensed one day. He hammered home what it was my job to do.

It was his job, too, I knew, and he accepted it and the risks that came with it. When fire broke out that summer, he saved the town -- but he exhausted himself, doing it. He overworked himself. He was never quite the same, after that.

"I love you, and I'm proud of you," he told me on the phone, a few weeks after fire season ended. "I have more to teach you. Next summer?"

"Next summer," I agreed. "Love you too, old man."

It was the last conversation we'd ever have. He died in his sleep two days later, from a massive heart attack.

"Stress," they said, later. "It's amazing that he didn't die earlier. Stressful job, the effects of smoke on the body..."

I took it all in, numb, as they told me. Mom wasn't up to the task of dealing with the coroner and the funeral director. The business of finding out what happened and making plans for the funeral was left up to me.

"Just don't burn him, Lena," Mom said. "After everything else..."

I knew how she felt. We had an open-casket funeral and buried him in the plot with the rest of the firebreakers from our family.

After Dad died, I started attending to house fires, whenever Jess called. Our town couldn't afford a real firebreak, I knew -- all of Dad's work had been unpaid -- and so everyone quietly turned a blind eye to my lack of licensure.

The volunteers in the fire department understood it. The few paid members didn't -- but they eyed me warily and didn't say anything. Jess had chosen me, and they deferred to him.

It wasn't perfect -- they never gave me gear, the way they'd given it to Dad, and they didn't trust my skills fully, always wanting to try putting it out themselves even when it was past the point where a firebreak was needed to intervene -- but Jess called me, for the bad fires, the ones they thought would spread, or that they couldn't get under control. He enlisted a few other men to help dig a makeshift fire pit every time, and I came out, driving Dad's truck, and coaxed the fire away from the house or business or factory or whatever it was, into the firepit, where it could burn down in peace.

Come on, I always told the fires. Come with me. If you stay here, you'll get wet. And they followed me.

I was good at it. Jess accepted that.

The Guild mostly turned a blind eye to it, because I didn't claim to be a firebreak. Sometimes, when Jess had to hire a real one, for one reason or another (training, usually), they would stall and tell him that there wasn't anyone available, or send one of the apprentices that everyone recognized would fail when they went in for their licensure exam, but mostly we left one another alone. I didn't antagonize them anymore -- I hadn't tried to force them to test me since I was 24 -- and they didn't say anything to me.

I put out fires. Jess admired that I could, and the Guild pretended that I couldn't.

The world went on.


I go back to bed, after the phone call, and sleep until 6. Jess tries calling again, but I have my phone on Do Not Disturb, and it doesn't wake me.

The sound of someone banging on the door does.

I live on the edge of town, near the forest (but not very near).

I know my neighbors well. I know what this means.

I yank on a pair of jeans. "Coming!"

I sprint out to the living room, nearly skidding on the hall carpeting, and fumble with the lock before opening the door. I'm expecting it to be one of my neighbors, telling me that there's an evacuation order and get out now -- it's happened before -- or one of the town police, doing much the same.

Instead, it's Jess -- looking utterly exhausted.

"Turn on the TV," he snaps at me.

I think about saying something pithy, like, hello to you, too, but I don't.

I flip on the TV, punch in the number for the local station.

"Mandatory evacuations?" I blink, reading the scrolling text. "You said they had it under control!"

"They did, until about half an hour ago, when the winds picked up," says Jess. "I've got gear for you in the truck. Get your boots on."

"Jess, I can't -- I'm not -- "

"No one gives a damn that you're not licensed," he says, his voice bitter. "Maybe the Guild, but no one else. Get your boots on and get in the truck, unless you want the entire town to burn."

I shake my head. "No, I -- okay. Let me get some socks."

I run back to the bedroom, rummage through the basket of clean clothes until I find a pair of the woolen socks I wear with my boots. I try to find them, then remember last night's decision to ditch them on the porch, and head back out to the living room. "I'm ready."

Jess looks me up and down, and I tell him: "The rest of my shit's on the porch."

"Fine," he says. "Grab it and let's go."

I hesitate a moment. "Should I grab the important things, just in case...?"

Jess sighs. "Do you believe in yourself so little that you think you'll let your own house burn? Come on."

He steps outside, and I follow him, locking the door behind me.

I don't realize until I'm in the truck and we're on the way to the perimeter that I've locked my keys inside.


Jess drives me in silence, to the edge of the fire, then turns me over to the man who's apparently in charge of making sure that the entire town doesn't burn, one of the wildland fighters who looks as though he wishes he was anywhere but here.

"Is she licensed?" he asks, and I bristle, a little, at the question. He knows the answer as well as I do: the Guild doesn't license women.

"Her dad was Dan Anderson," snaps Jess. "Good enough for you?"

Dad's name still carries weight, even years after the fact.

"Shit," says the man. He extends a hand to me. "Sorry. I'm Pat -- Pat Lewis. Can you...did you...?"

I recognize the unasked question. "I'm Lena," I say, clasping his hand in mine. "Maybe. Jess can tell you -- I've mostly dealt with housefires. Dad was training me in wildland firefighting, before..."

The pause hangs between us for a moment.

"Okay," he says. "Yeah. Right. Um. The winds are picking up; this is going to get nasty. The entire town is a tinderbox. Honestly, anything you can do to whip it back on itself..."

"It won't want to burn anything it's burned before," I tell him, my voice steadier than it has any right to be. "I need some kind of fuel."

"I've got fuel in the truck," says Jess quickly. "Wood, and kerosene."

Pat looks at me. "Well?"

"That'll do," I say, trying to keep my voice steady. "I can...try."

"You can do more than try," says Pat. "He says you can put it out, or the entire town will burn." He nods his head at Jess, who bristles, visibly, at the gesture.

"Okay," I say. It's my house that'll burn, too, and I didn't recover anything..., I think. Aloud, I continue: "I'll need, um. To get close to it."

"Be my guest," says Pat, his voice oddly clipped. "We've cut a break, but gods know how long it'll last..."

"Okay," I repeat, and walk into the woods.


Dad had tried to teach me, before he died.

I had never quite believed in the magic enough to assert myself, to will myself to control the fire. That was what he said, anyway.

"You have to believe," he told me. "You have to control it, tell it who's the boss."

I walk up to the fire in the woods, and I don't tell it, I'm the boss of you.

Instead, I look at it, I draw a deep breath (deeper than I mean to, and it hurts like hell), and I whisper to it: "Wouldn't you rather be somewhere else? They're going to douse you, if you're here. They'll hurt you."

The fire almost seems to sit up, as I say it, to sit up and listen to me.

"Come on," I tell it, forcing myself to keep my voice gentle, despite the glaring, intense heat. "I know somewhere safe for both of us."

I lead it, out of the woods and into the firepit that Jess has dug, which is already lined with kerosene-soaked logs.


Dad had told me I had to control it, I had to assert my will over it, force it to go where I wanted to. He treated fire as an adversary, something to be beaten back and tamed.

I treated it as a friend. It was part of why the Guild never wanted to test me. Why admit that their way didn't work, when mine did?


The fire in the woods dies back almost instantly, following me.

"Fucking Hell," mutters one of the wildland fire fighters, watching it docilely die back, following me.

I concentrate on what I'm doing, lead it to the pit.

"Here's somewhere safe for you," I croon at it. "You can stay here as long as you like, but don't leave here, or they'll try to hurt you again."

I stand and watch, with Jess and Pat and a small knot of the firefighters, as the blaze dies back. There are still hotspots in the woods, here and there -- hotspots that will blaze up unless they're attended to -- but the worst is over. The town is safe, probably.

"So..." Jess starts. "About licensing..."

I shake my head. "I don't want to hear it."

"The head of the Guild is stepping down next year," he says, quietly. "The new man that's been elected has nothing against licensing women. You're not the only one that's interested in it, Lena."

"Not now," I tell him. "Just...not now."

"Not now," echoes Jess. "Soon, though."

"Someday," I agree.

He reaches over and squeezes my hand. "Dan would be proud."

I watch as the fire in the firepit dies down, and wonder how he can say that. Perhaps, and perhaps not. Being a firebreak was everything to my dad, and I've succeeded, in some way, where he failed. The stress of this will never kill me, because it doesn't take all of me to bend a fire to my will.

"Thank you," I say, after a moment.

It's the only thing I can say.


A year later, when they offer me the licensing exam, I take it and pass.

"Dan would be proud," Jess repeats, but I wonder -- would it have taken licensing for Dad to be proud?

No, I think, and that's enough.