zynball
by Sy Holmes
On this ridge near the Idaho border, which has a name I’ve already forgotten, the forward progress of time has stopped. Maybe just here. Maybe everywhere. Maybe back in Missoula, bartenders are stuck mid-pour. Maybe in Shanghai the traffic is stuck. Maybe nothing will ever happen again. Sure feels like it. This stoppage hasn’t brought any relief to the five of us stuck here, though. We’re bored. We’re pretty sure we’re reaching new frontiers in boredom. Wayne’s ripped his saw apart about three times now and he’s out of obscure parts to grease. Lane’s eaten a whole pound of Gardetto’s Snack Mix which he buys wholesale. Pablo, who got dumped via Instagram message yesterday, is writing haikus about eating ass. Jack, my assistant captain, is walking up and down the fireline, coming up with new contingency plans that have less and less to do with reality. Not even the fire is doing much, torching small stands of trees in the bowl beneath us in a brave effort to show us it could make a run if it wanted to.
We weren’t always doing nothing. We’ve been out here for eleven days out of our fourteen-day assignment. The first 8 days we spent busting ass: cutting fuel breaks, digging line, catching spot fires from embers the wind blew over the line. Then we ran out of area to prep and another higher-priority fire took most of our resources, and now we can’t really do anything. So we sit. We watch the fire. And if it does something, we call somebody. We pass the time bullshitting, boredom-eating, doing a couple push-ups to counter the eating. And we play Zynball.
Zynball is the white-trash lovechild of bowling and beer pong pioneered by Wayne and Pablo, but probably invented by someone else. You fill an empty can of Zyns, the nicotine delivery vehicle for discerning firefighters who are also trying to quit regular dip, with rocks. You scratch out a court. You put three sticks at each end and try to knock over your opponent’s before they knock over yours. The court is always uneven. There are always hurt feelings.
We do it for fun. To keep busy. To lower the volume in our heads. The whispering voice that starts in the night when a dream wakes me up and just whispers “you’re a piece of shit you’re a piece of shit you’re a piece shit.” The dull loneliness that sets in when the sun goes down and I bed down on the side of a road or a field that seems like the place where all the dew in the greater northwest settles. Wondering how I’m going to turn this into some sort of career when the federal government seems intent on keeping everyone under $20-an-hour base-rate. Wondering how the hell I can ever keep a girl or have a family when the seasons get longer and the assignments get more frequent as the earth keeps burning up. The fire season used to be about four months long around here, when upper management was doing this job. Now it’s edging on about 7-8. Every fire resource—from municipal departments to the federal land management agencies—is getting stretched thinner. Retention is getting worse on the federal side, too, so if you’re there, you’re probably going to wherever they need you to go, and, when you make your money off overtime and need to be a team player, you usually can’t afford not to.
Jack’s in charge now because Liam, our actual captain, had to go home early due to the fact that his wife, who’s a nurse, was getting overwhelmed raising two toddlers at home. We’re a district crew, too, tied to a specific area, so we’re actually one of the more stable options. If you’re on a national resource like a hotshot or smokejumper crew, you start going in March or April and don’t stop until October. You get two or three days off in between 14-day assignments, but it’s hard to keep relationships going or raise kids on that. All of my role models are, or have been, absentee fathers. I don’t have a relationship or kids right now, so I don’t know why I think about it as much as I do, other than the general feeling that if I keep doing this, I’m fucked.
Sometimes I wonder why anybody would do this job. Why I would do this job. I’ve met guys on the job who’d give Encino Man a run for his money but the vast majority of people I work with are smart, skilled, driven, and quick learners. I’ve worked with certified electricians, aircraft mechanics, law students, and a couple graduate degree holders. Why not just switch over to a trade, some sort of white collar thing, or just go to a structure department with better pay and benefits? Why just stay here and bitch as the months and years chug on by and the “somedays” come and go?
I do it because I enjoy the job. Like every job, about 90% of it ranges from the unremarkable to the shitty. Getting your ass kicked for a week and then having all of your work ruled redundant. Waiting for days on end. Having your friend get his leg shattered by a tree. Driving by an old man sitting in a lawn chair in front of the ruins of his house and knowing there’s nothing you can do or could have done. The 10% where you feel like maybe you actually did something is pretty cool, though: checking a fire before it destroys a retiree’s single-wide and his prized stand of weed plants. Standing on a ridge and watching an air tanker bomb through a canyon. Just shooting the shit with the best friends the federal government can give you. The methed-out insanity that seems to find you out in the far-flung reaches of American civilization. Even when you feel beat down, it’s nice to know what’s beaten you down.
Maybe it’s because I can’t think of anything else I want to do at this point in my life. Maybe it’s because, deep down, I’m afraid of living some sort of more settled life. Maybe because I need it to sustain an image of myself as some sort of hero. Mostly I just like busting my ass in the woods. I like getting to know people more than I ever wanted to. I like the chaos and doing my small part of trying to impose order on it. I like some sort of objective danger in my life, because when I don’t have it, I feel disconnected and alienated. I need something to push against.
So about two months into the off-season, after my joints have knit themselves back together, I get restless and want to be back. Bad things have happened to my friends & me, but maybe nothing bad enough yet. Maybe I just don’t think about it enough, or just don’t have the brains to care. Maybe I just lack the imagination to fill my free time. Maybe I don’t want to trade the fears I have now for ones I don’t know. I don’t know where any of this ends, for me, my friends, or the planet. Ask me in fifteen years. For right now, I’m just on a ridge, playing Zynball, because that’s all I really can do.
Sy Holmes is a writer from western North Carolina. He lives in the mountain West with other people's dogs.