C. Box - Free Fire

“So that’s what brought you out here,” Joe asked, “the geysers?”

Cutler nodded. “I originally wanted to join for the Park Service,but that didn’t work out.”

“Why not?” Demming asked, a little defensively.

Cutler stopped, smiled gently. “This is the most active, unique, and fascinating geothermal area in North America. Everything is visible here because the center of the earth is closer to the surface than anywhere else. It’s like a doctor meetingsomeone who has all his organs on the outside of his body-everything is right there to study. Do you know how many geologists are employed by the National Park Service in Yellowstone?”

Joe and Demming shook their heads.

Cutler raised a finger. “One. And he’s too busy to get out in the field. Not his fault, just the structure of the bureaucracy. So,” Cutler said, spinning on his heel and continuing to lead the way to a cabin compound where he lived, “without volunteers, withoutthe Geyser Gazers, there would be no ongoing study of the caldera in the park. But it’s not a chore, it’s a passion. I love what I do, both at Old Faithful and especially out here in the field.”

“Are you married?” Joe asked. “Kids?”

“Engaged, sort of,” Cutler said. “It’s hard to convince some ladies to live here, believe it or not.”

“Kids would love it,” Joe said, smiling. “Imagine being raised in this place. I wanted to live here, once.”

Cutler nodded with instant kinship. “Takes a special kind of person,” he said. “Or an outright fool.”

“Which are you?”

“I straddle the line.”

Joe said he’d met Dr. Keaton the night before.

“Doomsayer?” Cutler asked, squinting.

“Is it true what he says?”

“He never stops talking,” Cutler said, “so that’s a hard one to answer.”

“That Yellowstone could blow up in a super volcano any minute?”

“Oh sure, that part’s true,” Cutler said cheerfully, pausing outside his cabin. “Give me a minute to change and we can go.”

Joe and Demming looked at each other. Joe thought she looked pale.

“You haven’t heard this before?” he asked.

“I’ve heard it,” she said. “I just didn’t believe it.”

“Doomsayer says drink up, for tomorrow we die.”

While cutler changed clothes and gathered his equipment,Joe and Demming looked idly through five-gallon plastic buckets filled with tourist debris Cutler had fished out of geysersand hot springs. Most of the collection was of coins, tossed in, no doubt, to bring luck. There were American coins by the thousands, but also Euros, yen, pence, pesos, Canadian coins. Another bucket contained nails, hats, bullets, batteries, lug nuts, and, interestingly, a 1932 New York City Police Department badge and an engagement ring.

“I’d love to know the story behind that ring,” Demming said, holding it up.

“I want to know who walks around with lug nuts in their pocket,” Joe said.

Cutler emerged in ranger green with a radio on his belt. He loaded a long aluminum pole with a slotted spoon on the end into a pickup, along with metal boxes containing electronics.

“Thermisters,” Cutler explained when Joe looked at the boxes. “We hide them in geyser and hot springs runoff channels to track the temperature of the water. We learn a lot about which geysers are getting active and which ones are shutting down by the temps.”

“What’s with the pole and spoon?” Demming asked.

“I use that to pick the coins and crap out of the geysers to keep them clean.”

Joe and Demming climbed into the truck and Cutler roared off.

“Hoening, McCaleb, and Olig were all proud members of the Gopher State Five,” Cutler said. “Since I’m from Minnesota,we hit it off right away. They were just big old Midwesterners.They worked hard, loved their beer, loved the park. They used to come along with me sometimes to check geysers and clean out hot springs, like we’re doing now. They’d come on their days off, when they could be screwing around. When Ranger Layborn came around to ask me about them, it was as if he was describing entirely different people. He seemed to think they were big into drugs and crime, that they were some kind of gang. I never saw that side of them.”

“Were they illegal hot-potters?” Joe asked.

Cutler smiled. “I’m sure they were. We frown on it when it’s our employees, but it’s just about impossible to stop. We can’t watch everyone twenty-four/seven, even though the rangers think we should. No offense, ma’am,” he said to Demming.

“None taken,” Demming said, tight-lipped.

“Any other problems with them? What about the drug allegations?”

“Nothing I know of, and I mean that. That’s not to say all of my people are clean. It’s like any other work situation; there’s a percentage of bad apples. But no more than any workplace in the outside world and less than some. Hell, I went to school in Madison, at the University of Wisconsin. Ranger Layborn could really ply his craft there.”

“Not even marijuana?” Joe asked. “There seemed to be drug references in the e-mails he sent. ‘Flamers,’ he called them.”

Cutler shrugged. “Again, I can’t swear he wasn’t smoking, but I never saw or heard anything that would confirm it. As you know, there’s a certain attitude and culture that goes with drug use, and he didn’t seem to be a part of it. He was pretty tightly wound at times-kind of naively idealistic about environmental issues. But drugs, that would surprise me.”

Cutler turned the pickup off the highway at the Upper Geyser Basin and parked it in the empty lot. Joe trailed him while Demming remained in the pickup to report to the Pagoda on the truck radio. The smell of hot sulfur and water was overwhelming.Cutler explained that the pools on either side of the boardwalk were 190 degrees, and the water temperature could be gauged by the color of the bacteria in the runoff-white beinghottest, green and blue cooler but still too hot to touch. Usingthe slotted spoon, he carefully picked up coins that had been tossed into the thermals and handed them back to Joe, who juggled them from hand to hand until they cooled off enough to inspect. Three pennies and a dime. The pennies were already gray with a buildup of manganese and zinc from the water, Cutlersaid, but the dime, being silver, was unblemished.

Cutler swung over the side of the railing and landed with a thump on the white-crust surface. He urged Joe to follow him.

“What about the ‘Stay on the Boardwalk’ signs?” Joe asked, knowing the ground was unstable near geysers and the crust was brittle. Horror stories abounded of pets and visitors who wandered off the pathway.

“And if I break through?” Joe asked.

“Third-degree burns at the minimum,” Cutler said, businesslike.“Excruciating pain and skin grafts for the rest of your life. If you live, I mean. Worse, you’ll deface the thermal. But it would be nothing like if you actually fell into a hot springs or geyser.”

“What would happen?”

“You’d die instantly, of course; then your body would be boiled. I’ve seen elk and buffalo fall in over the years. Within a couple of hours, their hair comes off in clumps and the flesh separates from the bone. The skeleton sinks and the meat and fat cooks and it smells like beef stew. Sometimes, an animal body affects the stability of the thermal and it erupts and spits all that meat back out. Not pretty.”

“Maybe I should stay up here,” Joe said.

“Just step where I step,” Cutler said. “Not an inch either way and you’ll be fine. I’ve done this for years and I know where to walk and where not to walk.”

Joe felt a thrill being allowed to go where millions of tourists couldn’t go, and stepped over the railing. He wished Demming-or Marybeth-could see him now.