I saw him again at the armory

They called us out the second week of August. I was up on the forklift with a pallet of mandarins in the air and my phone going off in my back pocket, and you don't check your phone with a pallet in the air, so it just went. Four missed from the readiness NCO by the time I got to break.

Hector runs the shed and he's known my mom since before I was born. He signed the paperwork that same morning and told me to bring him back a t-shirt.

Weaverville's eight hours from Bakersfield if you don't stop. We stopped. We sat at a fairgrounds a day and a half before anybody put us anywhere.

They hand me the small gear. Nomex small regular, and the pack still rides on me like it got cut for a taller guy, so I'd run the shoulder straps all the way down and the extra webbing slapped my arm the whole time.

Specialist Hurst had the saw. Dylan. He's six two and from out past Taft somewhere, and the way a saw team works is he cuts and I throw what he cuts, so it's you and him from the time you step off the buggy until they call it.

Nineteen days. Handline, mostly. Up at 0430 and on the line by 0615. The dirt up there is more rock than dirt. My hands were done by day four and then they got used to it.

The sack lunch had a foil packet of mustard in it every single day and there was never one item in that bag a person would put mustard on. I started keeping them. Had eleven in my pack pocket by the end and Dylan found them and asked what the plan was, and I told him I hadn't gotten that far.

Dylan started counting one morning and told me at lunch he had me at twenty-two thank-yous. The guy running the shower trailer got three of them. I said thank you, and he had to get up and walk off.

We spiked out most nights. You kick a spot flat with your boot and lay the tarp down and that's your night. It gets cold up there after midnight, in August, which nobody tells you before you go. Second week his bag and my bag started out maybe a foot apart and weren't by morning.

Nothing happened up there. Eighteen hours a day six feet from a guy and the closest it ever got was him falling asleep on the bus coming down to camp with his head coming over onto my shoulder, and me not moving for forty minutes so he'd stay asleep. Everybody on that bus was out.

My mom texted every morning of those nineteen days. Same four words. Que Dios te cuide. I'd get them all in a block whenever we came back into service coming down the hill.

He talked about his truck. He's got an '04 Tundra he's been putting money into for six years and I know the whole history of it now, the rear main seal, a guy in Shafter who did him dirty on a transmission.

We came home the thirtieth. Karina met me at my mom's and she'd cut her hair and I didn't say one word about it for ten minutes because I did not see it. Three years in October. Her mom's done a whole thing at Christmas since the first year and I was mijo over there before I'd met both her brothers.

I washed the Nomex twice and hung it in the garage and in October it still smelled like the fire.

September I was back in the shed. Mandarins are done by then so it's navels, same building. My Cal Fire packet went in the first week of October, and my mom's the one who caught the deadline because she still opens my mail. There's a line on there for wildland experience and I've got exactly one, 8/12 to 8/30, Trinity County. Testing's in the spring.

November drill. Second weekend, same as always. Formation 0700 Saturday in the lot behind the armory and it was forty-one degrees, which around here gets talked about like weather.

He'd picked up sergeant in October. Board was in September and I didn't know about it. So it's Sergeant Hurst now. Half the platoon still calls him Dylan to his face.

Saturday was weapons maintenance and a class on the new packing list. Lunch is the tray thing they bring in from a caterer over on Union and the rice comes out where you can see every grain is separate from every other grain. I made the joke I always make about that rice. He laughed. That was Saturday.

Released at 2100. I had the truck running because the heater in it takes about four minutes and the clock said 9:04. He came across the lot with his bag on his shoulder and knocked on the glass with one knuckle. Then he got in the passenger side.

He asked about the packet, whether they'd sent anything back yet. Then he brought up the night the wind came up on us and they pulled us back to the road, and he said, you didn't say anything that night either. I said there wasn't anything to say. He said right.

My cousin Ruben came out the side door at about 9:08 with his bag and I watched him the entire way across to his Tacoma. Dylan was watching me. Ruben knocked on my hood going past and put a hand up, and I put mine up, and he pulled out onto Mount Vernon.

Then he leaned over and kissed me. I let him.

He said, you can call me Dylan. I said okay, Sergeant. He got out and shut it quiet.

9:15 on the clock. I sat there a while with it running.

Sunday was 0700 again and everything was normal. I was normal too. Nobody's said a word about any of it and I don't expect anybody's going to.

Karina's brother is getting his sleeve finished and she wants me at the last session. Her mom asked me two weeks ago how many I'm bringing to the tamalada. Just me, I said. She said good, because I'm the one who does the ones with no chile for the kids, and that's mine now apparently, for life.

I've been getting up at 0430 on days I don't have to. Canal road past the shed, forty-five pounds in the pack, three miles.

He texted me that Thursday about the range date and I told him the eighteenth and he said thanks, brother.