Read Online On the Burning Edge by Kyle Dickman - Free Book Online

always makes me feel better anyways,” Grant said.
    Meanwhile, in Bravo’s buggy, Brandon Bunch, a former bull rider and fourth-year sawyer, and Wade Parker, his swamper, had pulled the type of move hotshots would talk about for years to come. That morning before their shift, Wade had bought twenty steaks, and Bunch had thrown a propane grill beneath his seat in the buggy. He knew the hotshots always camped after their training day, and that meant Meals Ready to Eat, the pre-packaged military breakfasts, lunches, and dinners that crews eat on fires. The veterans didn’t need practice eating MREs.
    MREs have been a staple of the hotshot diet since they were developed, during the Vietnam War. Over the years, the variety and quality of the food has come a long way from “Ham Slice” and “Frankfurter and Beans.” Wars tend to increase the variety of MREs in circulation, and since 1993, more than 241 new items have been approved. Some, like Chicken Pesto Pasta with Patriotic Cookies, are decent. But the meals, which are heated by a water-triggered chemical reaction, always produce a nauseating stench. Granite Mountain would have plenty of opportunities to compare tasting notes on the variety of MRE flavors. Bunch and Wade knew as much. Steaks were a rare gift—one they were happy to give.
    “For everybody, but the rookies gotta eat their MREs first,” Bunch said, sparking up the propane grill. “Sorry, fellas.” He happily ensured that this year’s rookies went through the same traditions he had: The veterans picked the rookies’ meals.
    Anthony Rose, a second-year hotshot originally from Illinois, ripped into the boxes and started sorting through the flavors. He’d come to Granite Mountain via a firefighting position on an engine in Crown King, a 164-person community east of Prescott. He’d been picked on regularly in his rookie year. The memory of the hazing he’d weathered was still fresh, maybe even magnified by his own marginal position of power.
    “Dig in, Grant,” Tony said as he tossed him an MRE.
    After a long day of swinging a tool, hunger usually makes it possible to forget that MREs are little miracles of science more than they are food. But that night, Grant couldn’t get excited about eighteen-month-old,deoxygenated meat when the men he’d worked with shoulder-to-shoulder all day were celebrating the end of their training with steak.
    Grant took up a spot by the campfire, where he tore into the package and chewed through powdery biscuits while Tony, Bunch, and the veterans laughed over the grilling meat.
    Grant was used to being treated with a certain level of respect. He could agree to play the hotshots’ reindeer games while on the crew, but only if it gained him entry into the club. A charismatic kid who’d been an athlete in high school, Grant was the well-dressed and earnest one who moved with ease between all social groups. He didn’t hold grudges and didn’t see a reason for social hierarchy. When he’d first moved to Prescott, he used to join his aunt Linda and a group of her friends on morning walks, on which he was the only man and the youngest person by twenty years. Not surprisingly, the women loved it when Grant joined them, but his charms fell short on Granite Mountain. None of the hotshots cared how somebody was used to being treated. Respect had to be earned on the fire line. That took time.

CHAPTER 4
   FIRST FIRE   
    A fter the crew passed its two-week critical, Granite Mountain was available to fight fires anywhere in the country. At a moment’s notice, even if rain was dousing Prescott, the hotshots could be loaded into an airplane and shipped to a fire fifteen hundred miles away. Trouble was, few fires were burning anywhere in the country, and that meant Granite Mountain stayed put in Prescott. By early May, the crew had spent weeks working in and around the station, and stagnation wasn’t good for anybody. The men wanted to do the job they’d been training to