“Getting all pissy won’t work, Samantha.” That was the last thing he’d said to his dead girlfriend before he left for the annual smokejumper’s training in the Boise National Forest of Idaho. It was his first invite and if he actually passed the class, which was unlikely, he’d go for the coveted position few rarely achieved.
She did nothing but try to hold him back from the first day they’d met and he’d told her of his dreams. Whines of That’s such a dangerous job; my dad can get you in construction or, his least favorite, if you loved me…you’d stop acting like a cowboy and do something serious...
Matthew always found himself shaking his head and muttering the words for the acronym WTF? They were crazy in love not long after they’d met; those first few months were magical. He could barely wait to breathe her in again once they’d parted for any length of time. She’d always brighten before his eyes with this electric smile when they met up at the end of the day, but as time wore on, something changed. He couldn’t really explain what it was at first, only that he was beginning to resent her. He’d never felt this way about someone before. Never thought it possible either. He’d chased her and claimed her as his own and then, after about six months, things seemed to turn for them. And not in a good way.
It turned out her rich daddy certainly could get him a job in construction. A good, well-paying job with insurance and benefits and without all the life-ending risk-taking. He’d sat him down and told him so, even offered him a cigar. Said it was the ‘responsible’ thing to do if he intended to start a family with his little girl. It wasn’t hard to see where this was all going to end up. Sans the girlfriend, a few silent months later, he packed his gear and left her standing in the doorway of the apartment they’d shared for over a year.
It was early May, and he remembered looking at her in the rearview mirror of his truck as he left. The image tore at his heart, but he had to do this. She’d never understand. She had her arms crossed over her chest, leaning against the doorjamb with a scowl on her face. Those last details were etched in his mind forever now. She’d pulled her shoulder length, honey-colored hair up, though it tumbled down all over in lazy waves. She wore salmon pink cutoffs and had one tan leg hiked up on the other with her tanned bare foot bracing against her inner thigh. She had on one of those blue and white button-up shirts with the sleeves rolled up halfway and a white ribbed tank top on underneath. A pretty gold chain rounded her slender neck and draped across her collarbones in a wave, and he caught gleams of the metal in the soft sunlight that morning.
Her beauty stung his heart the first time he’d laid eyes on her. Things started out perfect. Insanely perfect. She was beautiful in a delicate sort of way. Matthew was a big man and when she’d first allowed him to touch her…he was scared he might accidentally break her. Down the road, he’d learned Samantha had a way of getting what she wanted. Though she was kind, and he did truly love her, he found himself more and more resenting her for maligning his lifelong dreams of becoming a smokejumper. Their lives pulled them apart in the end.
The world was going to hell, mostly due to their own nonsense, but Matthew found meaning in fighting the good fight. The one that mattered. Mother Nature was a formidable enemy when she wanted to be. War had no upper hand to the utter destruction Mother Nature doled out from the heavens to the seas, or the winds to the earth. No man stood a chance alone against her.
Matthew’s father once told him, An honorable man must pick his battles. And he chose her. The rest of the battles were man-caused. They weren’t worth his honor.
Samantha never understood this. She was brought up to value things differently, like master’s degrees, sports cars and nice houses, or the next pretty dress.
That was never a battle he was going to wage, and in the end, he decided she was better off with someone who could provide those things for her. The things she valued. A different kind of man than Matthew would ever be, because he knew they’d both wake up someday down the road and wish they weren’t hugging opposite sides of the same tired bed anymore, and he didn’t want that for this delicate, sweet girl or for himself in years to come. He wasn’t good enough for her in the way he needed to be, and she’d finally convinced him of that, though she’d never say those words.
Except that his heart shredded as he took one last look in his rear-view mirror, where he’d last seen her sulking on that spring morning.
Something he never fathomed, though, happened later that night. It wasn’t supposed to happen. That’s why he’d left her…to make things right in her life. Right after he’d arrived at camp, her brother called saying she’d been hit in an accident. “Come quick,” Bill said, but even in those two words his voice had cracked. “They say…she’s not going to make it.”
There wasn’t a question then. Without thought, he forfeited his chances at smokejumper qualifications that year…he grabbed his gear, without a moment’s hesitation, and left that night. But he never made it in time to say his goodbyes to Samantha. She’d died somewhere along his rush to get there as he raced against beaming headlights in the night. He knew she would. But he didn’t feel the exact moment, the moment of her death, like he always thought he would. And that bothered him still. Perhaps her spirit even still held a grudge.
That sweet girl that smarted off to him as he walked over the threshold that morning died in the ICU that night. All because he’d left her. The story he’d heard later was that her girlfriend wanted to take her out and cheer her up. One of those breakup-lady’s-night-out sorts of things.
Carmen was her name. Samantha’s girlfriend drove a fast car and blew through a red light on their way through town to the next nightclub with the radio blaring. A mother of three, coming home off her double shift at the hospital, barreled right into the passenger side, critically injuring Samantha and killing the nurse instantly. There wasn’t a scratch on Carmen.
It always happened that way, he thought, after the shock wore off. The scratchless were the ones to blame. Not a mark on either of them but they both set Death into motion that day. He’d blame himself entirely but then again, he wasn’t driving the damn car. So in his mind, he made Carmen the accomplice to the crime of Samantha’s ruin.
He did become a smokejumper a year later, though not in the way he’d imagined. Man’s war caused more mayhem and destruction than anyone thought possible in the time between. That summer, death and fighting over something or nothing took new meaning in the country’s hot city streets and even America’s small towns. It was everywhere. No one could escape. Fires set on purpose. Hate and viruses unleashed. Some called it a justified war of civil disobedience or a civilization reset. That was the new term. To him, it only meant every man, woman and child had a valid excuse to lose their shit.
Matthew just thought everyone had collectively lost their minds. But Mother Nature matched and surpassed the might of man’s best efforts to tear itself apart and Matthew put down the guilt and grieving and took up his quest once again.