“How strict are you with the rules?”
“You’re gonna get cold,” he said, and flashed a smile. “Thanks for bringing dinner. I was about to eat something sealed in plastic three years ago.”
“The enchiladas need to be heated.”
“Follow me.” He led her past the fire line, carrying the ice chest into the black, toward the smoldering limbs of a downed ponderosa. He dug out the foil-wrapped enchiladas and buried them in coals. “Shouldn’t take long.” He stood and new pains jolted through his back. “Hammered again by that canyon wall. Add a little stress and I feel just perfect.”
“What can I do?”
“I’ll live.” He stretched, then relaxed, and took in the view around them. Plateaus falling away to canyons. Open flame in slow march on stands of trees, columns of smoke rising from distant layers of landscape. “I wish my days were more filled with this, and less with the things I had to deal with today. Look at that.” He pointed at a nearby ridge and flames moving upslope.
“You’re really into this, aren’t you?”
“It can be one of the most important ecological processes with which we deal, and yet, most people are afraid to try to understand it. But this doesn’t scare me. What scares me comes from people. The games they play. The politics they thrive on.”
“What happened?”
“Hard to know. Maybe I’m overreacting.”
“Something to do with this fire?”
“Indirectly. We sent a firefighter home, for reasons too numerous to list. He’s an ass, for one thing, but he has connections. Because of those connections, Joe’s on his way to D.C. to meet with the Director. My luck’s not good when things get elevated to the Director.”
“Did you do something wrong?”
“No.”
“Then why are you worried?”
“Because I’ve learned that things aren’t always fair. It doesn’t matter if you’ve been right or wrong. What matters is who you know.”
“Joe will take care of you. Quit worrying.”
“Hope you’re right.”
Kelly knelt and dug into the ice chest. “Pacifico or Carta Blanca? Wait! You still working?”
“For awhile. You go ahead,” he said, then, “follow me.” He led her back to the fire line, then the other way, in the direction of less active flame. “Think of the good that fire does. Fuel reduction, nutrient cycling, nature’s housekeeping, fresh start in succession. Those sorts of things.”
She popped the cap on a Pacifico and took a sip. “Yeah. Are you rehearsing a sound-bite? If so, you’re still a bit long.” She smiled.
He groaned. “I don’t do sound-bites.”
“I’ve noticed.”
“Now think about political games. Think there’s people out there who look at political games in the same way I look at fire? Comfortable, they can see a purpose, knowing they can get burned, but with the right perspective they can put those processes to use? Are there things equivalent to fire that play out in the organizational ecosystem? That blow up on occasion, burn hot, make it necessary to start over? Can it be good, or is it always bad?”
“Are you okay?”
“I’m not sure.”
“You’re worrying me. You’re sounding crazy, not like you.”
“Believe me, I’m fine. I’ll worry later, but I feel better with you being here. The gibberish was me thinking aloud, a moment of intellectual curiosity, wondering how other people tick, wondering if my biggest problem is being intimidated by something others thrive on, something others might be able to turn into good.”
“Intellectual curiosity?”
“Yeah. Rather I mangle a sound bite?”
“Hurry and finish working, you need a drink. How’s your back?”
“Hurts.”
“Tonight I’ll give you a back rub,” she said. “I wonder how banged up Thomas is?”
Jack stopped on a shaly outcropping, looking out over black as far as he could see. Only small wisps of smoke. “Saw him today. Came to my office. Wants me to take him on a hike. Wants to find another way up to Sipapu Falls.”
“You taking him?”
“I guess, but I don’t get it. He won’t tell me why he wants to go there, yet he comes to me to find a way.”
“So, he still didn’t tell you.”
“No.” He turned her way. “I talked to an ethnographer in Santa Fe. She said it might be a sacred site, or something to do with a clan or religious society, but she couldn’t say much more than that, or wouldn’t. Told me I had no idea what the consequences of digging into it might be.” He shook his head. “What is the big deal?”
Kelly took a sip. “Their society is different than ours. Listen to her.”
“Tell me about clans.”
She sighed. “I don’t know that much. Just that they’re like orders in their culture. Each has a role, and it takes all of them to make the society whole. If something happens to one, its effects can run through the whole of their society.”
“That’s very much what Chloe Bell said, but it doesn’t sound like a reason to keep a secret from the guy who saves your life.”
“No offense, but who are you? What’s special about you that should make him not worry about consequences?”
“What consequences?”
“They have reasons to be secretive. Probably good reasons. It’s not just today’s pot hunters. When the Spanish priests came and asserted their religion on them, they destroyed kivas, fetishes, anything they associated with the religions of the pueblos. They associated fetishes with idolatry, destroying them with great zeal. Even those who embraced the new religion remained tied to the culture and traditional ways. They began practicing traditions in secret to avoid the wrath of the priests, and they made new kivas and kept their ceremonial items in places where priests couldn’t find them. They became very secretive. They had to. Even among clans there are secrets. Why? I don’t know. But I’m not one of them, so I don’t need to.”
“You mentioned kivas. So did the ethnographer.” He watched her eyes. “So does that place have anything to do with the sipapu? I mean the true meaning of the word sipapu?”
She threw up her hands. “You’re not listening to me.”
“I am.”
“You’re not.” She glared back. “It’s not the sipapu. Not that I know. I don’t know much, but what I do, I’m not supposed to know. And, I don’t understand any of it.” She glared. “It’s none of my business. Or yours!”
“Let’s go to camp,” he said, turning back the other way. “Someone risks their neck to get him off that ledge, and now he wants ’em to risk it again, and his own.”
“Then don’t go.”
This is getting nowhere. “I have to. I told him I would. Actually, I was kind of trapped, but I promised.”
“Trapped. That doesn’t sound like Thomas.”
“It wasn’t. A woman visiting from the regional office suggested it. Thomas locked on. I couldn’t get out of it. She even invited herself along.”
“Why was it any of her business?”
“It