Ezra Azra--Rescued By The Past

Ivie was an only child. Her Dad worked in the City’s Roads Construction and Maintenance Department. Summer and Winter were forest fire season throughout the Province. When there was a fire anywhere in the Province, Roads Construction and Maintenance workers of all Cities served as fire fighters. When the exhausted fire-fighters returned, they spent the next two days in a hotel at their City’s expense.

Ivie’s Mom was a Primary School teacher in an all-girls school. Ivie grew up in a happy family. When Ivie graduated from Secondary School, she insisted on working alongside her Dad for the City. Because he wanted to protect her from forest-fire fighting duties, her Dad persuaded her to work for the City in another Department as a librarian.

When Ivie was twenty-four, her good and happy life took a turn for the worse.

She fell in love with Crossley, and he with her. Within a year they were married, and moved to another City within the Province.

Crossley’s family were gangsters, a fact he kept hidden from Ivie for a few years, until Crossley was murdered by a rival gangster family.

Crossley’s family’s secret was out; Ivie was in shock. She was thankful she and Crossley did not have children. She thought it would be expected she would leave the family. When she brought up the matter, Crossley’s Mother, while supporting Ivie’s intention, pointed out to Ivie that the other gangster family, probably, would not allow Ivie that freedom.

For the next two years Ivie kept in touch with her parents by phone only. She continued to live in the City where Crossley’s family lived, but she seldom visited them. The feud between the families worsened.

One day when Ivie was at work as a City librarian, she received an anonymous phone text to not return home that evening. The warning arrived at a most appropriate time in her life.

It was wild-fire season. At her place of work there were posters on notice boards appealing for volunteer fire-fighters.

The thought had been running around intermittently and aimlessly in her if only because of the possibility, as remote as it was, that she could meet her Dad at one of the fires. The warning text to not return home that evening, galvanized her into action.

She went to an office to volunteer her services for minimum wages and all the best food one could eat.

Within the hour she was on a bus with eight other volunteers on the way to the nearest wild fire beyond the City.

Outside the City, the bus turned off the road onto wilderness terrain.

It was an ordinary summer day. The sun was high up shining bright and hot.

They headed towards the dry mountainous hills in the far distance. Within minutes there was the smell of burning vegetation, and the sight of dark smoke. The bus stopped at a temporary field station assembled around an eighteen-wheeled truck. A ranger welcomed the volunteers. He would lead them to the fire, and work alongside them.

The volunteers were outfitted with flame-resistant work clothes, voluminous kerchiefs, boots, socks, gloves. And canteens they had to fill with water from a tank attached to the truck. And yellow helmets.

Each volunteer had a choice of implement. Various implements were spread out on tables. At least two volunteers had to work side-by-side with the same kind of implement.

At the sight of the tables of implements Ivie welcomed an overwhelming feeling of familiarity. She recognized the implements from when her Dad had them around at home.

Goggles. Axes. Heavy gloves. Shovels. Metal buckled thick broad belts. Axe-shovel at either end. Rake-hoe at either end.

Within the hour they were ready to head out on foot. The increase in dark cloud cover, the intermittent disappearances of the sun, and the increase in the burning smell and sting of smoke were all indications of the approaching fire they would approach.

The ranger took the lead and signaled. All of them removed their kerchiefs and soaked them with water from their canteens. They tied their kerchiefs around their necks again, this time loosely enough to enable them to fold some of the kerchief over the nose to make breathing easier in the accumulating dark smoke pollution.

Goggles were donned. The ranger led the group to the fire.

Within seconds the burning brush and grass became visible through the gusting dark polluted air. The workers teamed up and lined up.

The brutal work began, always a few steps from the fire, and working towards it. The workers worked in cut-lines, a few inches at a time, towards the fire, continually taking visual-cued instructions from the ranger. Safe speaking was impossible. Goggles had to be wiped every few minutes.

Branches chopped. Shallow roots dug up and raked-scraped away with other debris until bare ground showed. Extra care in seconds everywhere when chopped-off branches had to be tossed to the side against gusts of burning wind dark-polluted with splintering exploding cinders. No fire-fighter, ranger included, exempt from violent reactions: coughing, sneezing, brushing off/ducking flaming bits, screaming in disgust.

Worst of all, perhaps, compassion had to be forcefully rejected when burning bodies of dead animals were encountered. By the time the fire-fighters came onto the scene, the animal had succumbed to smoke inhalation before catching on fire. The corpses would be so stuck to the ground that only vigorous digging-scraping-raking earth to cover them doused the fire on them.

It was nothing short of miraculous that order was maintained and purposes achieved in all that naturally-driven violently aggressive chaos.

The work had begun in the late afternoon. The fire had been, more-or-less, completely doused at nearly the top of the hill late at night.

Every face was covered in stinging soot and grime. Three of the volunteers had collapsed in exhaustion long before the end at the top of the hill had been reached.

Ivie was among those who returned to the eighteen-wheeler late that night. She was so exhausted she couldn’t care less if bloody-minded gangsters were waiting to ambush her.

On the bus back, none of the passengers spoke. All were too exhausted.

None of the thoughts that occurred to Ivie had enough energy to complete itself. Of all her incomplete thoughts, Ivie encouraged the one that kept trying to establish that now she was determined to work in the City’s Roads Construction and Maintenance Department, alongside Dad.