Time Book

The time book is already open when I get to records.

Monday. Quartz Bench is the fire. Dry Line 21 took the window at 04:10 and I was in the lot at 04:25 with the book under my arm and the red pen clipped to the cover. Peach Rivas is on the desk with a radio and a stack of meal tickets that smell like cardboard. Wynn Soler is in the cage, counting sleeves. The paved street outside the cache is still empty except for two dirty-white crew trucks and a county pickup that does not belong to us.

The red pen skips on the first line. I shake it. A bead of ink on the cover cloth. I wipe it with my thumb. Toner from Peach’s copier is already under the nail.

Soren Watt’s name is already on Saturday’s page in someone else’s pencil. Sixteen. Hazard. A sit he claims he walked on the west bench after the rest of the module rolled to the road. The handwriting is not his. It is Ivo Trent’s block print, the saw-boss hand that wants the sheet to look full before the contractor asks why a Type 2 crew billed a short day on a fire that is still making runs.

I put my finger on the sixteen and do not move it.

Peach looks over the radio. “Watt’s going to come in hot.”

“He can come in any temperature he wants,” I say. “I was on the bench until 18:10. I saw him walk off at 18:00 with the bar cover on and the saw on his shoulder. That is not a sixteen.”

“Ivo put it in.”

“Ivo can put a novel in. I initial what I saw.”

The records room is a rectangle with a folding table, a metal cabinet, and a window that looks at the cache lot. Toner smell leaks from the county annex next door. Ash is in the light. Copper in the dust. Haskett in August is a dry throat and a grocery that closes at eight. I live six blocks from this table. I have lived here three seasons. I am twenty-nine and I keep time for people who would rather I kept stories.

I flip back one page. Sunday’s sheet is clean because Sunday we were in the lot on a hold. Saturday is Bench adjacent, a patrol, ten hours I can stand in and a sixteen I will not. Friday is a travel day I already initialed. The book is a week of paper. I do not invent a second week to make a contractor comfortable.

Wynn knocks the cage grate with a wrench. “Hose is short if they want another progressive on the east finger.”

“They can want it,” I say. “Nessa writes the window. I write the hours. You write the issue. Nobody writes a sixteen because the hill looked long.”

Wynn grunts. That is as close as she gets to agreement. She does not like sawyers who treat the cage like a vending machine. I do not like sawyers who treat the book like a suggestion.

The lot fills at 07:40. Engines. A crummy. Ivo’s truck with the saw boxes already open. I stand in the doorway of records with the book against my ribs and watch faces. I know who was where. I keep a second list in my head that does not go in the book until I have seen it. Roan Pettit is on a line Nessa wrote; his year is still a medical question and I do not put him on a sixteen either. Lark Pender is not here. Hollis Bray is in the county lot talking to a man in a clean shirt. The clean shirt is Gid Barrow. I do not have time for Barrow this morning.

Soren Watt gets out of a dirty-white pickup that has a cracked side mirror and a saw scabbard bolted to the bed. Thirty-two. Tall in the way of men who carry a saw uphill for a living. Dark hair that does not stay under a hard hat. He has chain oil on his left wrist and a look that has already decided I am the problem.

He comes straight to the records door.

“You held my sixteen,” he says.

No hello. No badge number. He stands too close to the threshold like the room is a sit he intends to walk.

“I held a number I did not see,” I say. “You walked off at 18:00. I was on the bench. The book is not a wish.”

“Ivo put me on a sit after the module left. West bench. Two hours. Hazard. I walked it.”

“I did not see a sit. I saw you at the trucks with the bar cover on.”

“You left before I went back up.”

“I left at 18:10. If you went back up, you did it without a witness I trust and without a radio call I can find. I will not initial a ghost.”

The word hits him. I see it. His mouth goes flat. He hates that word. I do not take it back. Ghost time is the word because that is what it is. Hours that happened in a story. Hours that get billed to a fire that did not hold them.

“I am not a ghost,” he says.

“Then bring me a sheet I can see. Radio log. A second name. A photograph of a clock I did not ask for. Something that is not Ivo’s pencil and your pride.”

Peach turns the radio down. She does not leave. Wynn has gone quiet in the cage. The lot is full of people who can hear a fight if it gets loud enough. I keep my voice at the table. He does not.

“You sit in a room and decide what a day was,” he says. “I cut the west bench. I cut it again when the rest of them rolled. You want a photograph of a clock.”

“I want a true hour,” I say. “I will initial ten. I will initial twelve if the travel holds. I will not initial sixteen. Hazard is a class, not a feeling you had on a slope.”

He looks at the book in my hands like he wants to take it. He does not. He is not stupid. Taking the book would be a different kind of theft.

“Ivo already turned the sheet toward the contractor.”

“Then Ivo can unturn it. My initials are the ones that make the line payable. Without them it is a draft. Tell him I said so.”

Soren’s jaw works. He has a scar at the edge of his mouth that looks like a bar kick. I do not ask. I do not care. I care about the sixteen.

“You don’t like saws,” he says.

“I like saws that cut what they claim. I do not like names that arrive already filled.”

He laughs once, no humor. “Ida Breck. Timekeeper. Red pen. I heard you were a problem before I took the contract.”

“Good,” I say. “Then you were warned. The book is on the table at 18:00 tonight. If you have a true sheet, you can set it next to my hand. If you have Ivo’s fiction, you can keep it in the truck.”

He looks at me for a long second. I do not look away. Enemies are easy if you do not decorate them. He wants money for hours I will not invent. I want a book I can defend in a county room when Barrow calls the crew expensive. Those are not the same want.

He turns. The lot takes him. The saw boxes slam. Ivo is already talking with both hands. I close the book on my finger and go back to the table.

I write what I saw.

Watt, Soren. Sawyer. Quartz Bench. Start 06:00. Off 18:00. Travel :30. I do not write hazard. I do not write sixteen. I initial the line in red: IB. The ink is wet and then it is not.

Peach comes in with coffee I did not ask for and sets it on a meal-ticket stack so it will not ring the table.

“He is going to be a week of this,” she says.

“Then it is a week of this.”

“Barrow was in the annex at seven. He asked Hollis how many hours a Type 2 bills when the fire is ‘just a bench.’”

“Hollis can tell him to read a book. This one.”

I tap the cover. The time book is not pretty. Black board. Cloth spine that has started to fray. A rubber band that holds yesterday’s loose sheets. I have used the same red pen for eleven months. When it dies I will buy the same one. I do not romanticize the object. I keep it because the alternative is a spreadsheet someone can edit after I leave.

The radio coughs. Quartz Bench is making a run on the east finger. Nessa will write a window or she will sit the move. That is her job. Mine is the page in front of me.

I audit the morning names as they load. Bram Kest. Noll Reeve. A swamper I have only seen twice. Ivo. Soren again, now with a saw that is already running in the lot, which is against the rule and exactly like him. I write start times I can see from the door. I do not write the ones I cannot.

At 08:05 the crummy leaves. Dust. Copper. The lookout on Quartz is a steel box that does not care who is angry in records.

I sit. I flip the book to a blank page and rule the columns the way I always do. Name. Position. Fire. Start. Off. Travel. Class. Initials. The ruling is a habit. The habit is the job.

Soren’s sixteen is still sitting on Ivo’s draft sheet like a dare. I clip the draft to the inside cover with a binder clip and write NO in red across the hazard line. Not a speech. A mark.

Peach watches me do it. “You could have written ‘pending.’”

“Pending is how ghosts get born,” I say. “No is a word. I am using it.”

The county annex door opens and closes. Toner. A copier that never dies. I drink the coffee. It is bad. I keep drinking it because the morning is long and Quartz Bench is not going to call itself in at noon.

I think about the west bench. I was there. I walked the same two-track Soren claims he sat. I saw the black. I saw the hose lay. I saw him put the bar cover on. If he went back up, he went back up into a story. Stories do not get my initials.

At 09:20 Wynn comes out of the cage with a clipboard and a look that means the contractor asked for a count.

“They want Saturday’s hours by eleven,” she says. “Ivo already sent a photo of his sheet.”

“Then they have a photo of a draft,” I say. “They can wait for the book.”

“Soren is going to tell them you have a personal problem with him.”

“I have a personal problem with theft. He can stand in that line with anyone else.”

Wynn almost smiles. She goes back to the sleeves.

I stay with the book. I write three more names. I correct a travel that someone padded by forty minutes because the grocery is on the way and they think I do not know the map. I do know the map. I live here. The paved street is one street. The rest is gravel and timber and a fire that has a name I did not choose.

Quartz Bench.

I will not sign a sixteen I did not see.

The red pen clicks. I put it back on the cover. The book stays open. The morning keeps coming. Soren Watt can come in hot every hour until Saturday. The answer will be the same until the hours are true.