Report from Engine Co. 82 (17 page)

It is twenty after nine as I enter the kitchen for a cup of coffee. Charlie McCartty, as usual, is the center of attention.
He is telling a story about bouncing around last night on Westchester Avenue. The men are sitting, or standing, coffee cups
in hand as Charlie talks.

“So I end up in this joint there by 174th Street. There’s a beauty behind the bar, almost naked, big boobs, but she had pasties
on. A cheater, ya know. So I had a drink, and looked the place over. There were a lot of good-lookin’ Puerto Rican girls,
but they were all with guys, so I figured I’d have a few and look at the chick behind the bar. Then in came these three guys,
and you could tell they were cops, sports jackets on, shined shoes, and all. This one guy stood at the bar, and cased the
joint like he was gonna buy it. He pushed his jacket back, and put his hand on his hip, so that his gun was showing, and I
don’t know why, but I thought that was a shitty thing to do. So, I said to myself, screw him, and I didn’t even ask him to
dance.”

The guys chuckle, but nobody is floored with laughter. Billy-o throws his newspaper on the table, and says, “Is that all there
is to that story, Charlie?” Charlie backs against the wall, as if ready for an attack.

“I don’t know,” Charlie replies. “I left my notes up in my locker.”

“Well ya better go and reread them, ’cause that was not a very funny story.”

“Listen to Billy-o, the Don Rickles of Intervale,” Charlie retorts.

“I may not be the funniest guy in the world,” Billy-o says, “but I know you long enough to rate your stories, and you get
a zero on that one. Zip.”

“That’s how much you know, Billy. You wouldn’t know a funny story if you were locked in a room with it. Anyway, it’s nine-thirty,
so you can take your
New York Times
upstairs and sweep the floor with it.”

The nine-thirty test signal comes over the bell system. Eleven bells, and eleven bells. It is time for committee work. We
all agree to do an extra thorough housecleaning job, so that the firehouse will be clean for those who eat their Easter meal
here tomorrow. Also, if we do a good job today, there won’t be much for tomorrow’s crew to do. You can’t ask a guy to mop
floors on Easter Sunday.

The members start splitting up, each knowing their assigned duties. Billy-o heads for the locker room, and I grab a broom
and go towards the cellar stairs. As I leave the kitchen, I can hear Charlie say, as he puts the chairs on top of the tables,
“No wonder he can’t tell what a funny story is. Nobody who reads
The New York Times
has a sense of humor.” I laugh to myself as I walk down the stairs.

In the firehouse cellar there is a full-sized pool table, a small bumper-pool table, and a ping-pong table. We paid for them,
but we don’t get to use them very much. At least, I don’t. Every time I start to play a game of pool or ping-pong the bells
ring, and by the time I get back I’ve lost interest. Some of the men, though, are not as easily frustrated as I, and they
spend most of the time between fires in the damp, dingy cellar. I spend most of my time in the kitchen, reading magazines,
or watching the television, or just talking with the guys on the apparatus floor.

I am standing in the middle of the cellar floor. There is a big oil burner, and an oil tank that takes up a good part of the
room, a table, a few wooden benches that were liberated from a school, and about three dozen standing jacks that were recently
put there to support the aged apparatus floor above. The oil-stained concrete floor around the pool tables is covered with
squashed cigarette butts. I start to push the broom around the floor. As I near the oil burner I notice the grating cover
of the sump pump is moved to one side, leaving a gaping hole in the floor. Some of the men urinate here instead of walking
upstairs to the bathroom. I stop pushing the broom. I take the hose connected to the oil burner water system, and hose the
floor around the sump pump. I kick the cover over the hole, and hose that down. It looks a little cleaner now.

The cellar swept, I return to the kitchen. Billy-o is there tacking a notice on the bulletin board. He tells me that Chief
Lany, the Chief who works opposite Chief Niebrock and us, has come down with hepatitis.

“I don’t know for sure, but I bet he got it here,” Billy-o says, “and there is only one way to make sure it doesn’t spread.
Read this.”

The message, typed in bold letters, reads:

TO ALL MEMBERS OF THE BIG HOUSE

Due to the recent discovery of a case of hepatitis to one of the members, the second such case in a year, a consensus was
taken from the members on ways to improve the sanitary conditions in the kitchen, and elsewhere in the house. One CD. [cave
or cellar dweller] suggested a bidet to be put over the sump pump. Another suggested a delousing machine, or a personal flit
gun for everyone so they could spray themselves and their old lady before and after work. But, the serious-minded among us
prevailed, and the consensus was to purchase a dishwashing machine or two. This costs money, so one dollar per payday will
be collected until we have $700.00 (7 pay days). This, of course, is voluntary, but the alternative is leprosy, syphilis,
gonorrhea, common cold, etc.

Thank you,

Billy O’Mann

“It’ll never work Bill,” I say. “I like the way you presented your case, but as long as there are probies around here to wash
dishes you’ll never get the guys to part with seven bucks.”

“That’s the point. As long as the probies wash the dishes, the dishes never get done right. They don’t have their heart in
the work.”

Billy-o is right. The dishes and the silverware in the firehouse are always greasy, and we do need a dishwasher, but we just
went for three hundred for a meat slicing machine, and few firefighters will be willing to cough up the dough for a machine
that is not absolutely necessary. Inflation is hurting all of us.

It is a quarter after ten as the bells signal Box 2743. First run of the day. Charlotte and 170th streets. A day never passes
that 2743 does not come in.

I can feel the cold penetrate my feet as I kick my shoes off and climb into my boots. Marty Hannon of Engine 85 is on housewatch,
wearing his heavy rubber coat, and a scarf wrapped around his neck. He pulls back the canvas, and the pumper turns up Intervale
Avenue.

There is a young girl waiting in the cold for us. She is about twenty-one or two, thin and sickly. She wears fur fringed slippers,
and her cotton housecoat flaps in the wind. “My husband,” she says, “he took an O.D.”

“What’s the address?” Captain Albergray asks.

“811 Seabury Place, Apartment 6,” she answers.

The pumper takes off, leaving her to walk the short block to Seabury Place. We reach 8n. Someone has painted a sign on the
marble wall of the vestibule: “
NO JUNKIES ALLOWED—ENTER AT YOUH OWN RISK.
” How ironic. We climb the stairs to the second floor. Captain Albergray and I, followed by Danny Gainful, Billy-o, and the
other members of Ladder 31. The door of Apartment 6 is open, and there is a young man and a girl standing over the sprawled
body of a handsome Puerto Rican. He is lying on the kitchen floor.

“Get us some ice,” Danny says to the girL She is high, and doesn’t seem to comprehend what is happening. “ICE,” Danny yells,
but the girl still stares at him.

The young man moves to the refrigerator. Danny and I kneel at either side of the strapping hulk on the floor. Danny has a
handful of ice in his hand, and places it under the guy’s testicles. I take some ice and place it on the back of his neck.
Danny slaps and pinches his cheeks, as I shake his shoulders as hard as I can. Chief Niebrock enters and orders Lieutenant
Lierly to send one of the men from Ladder 31 down for the resuscitator, but Billy-o has already gone for it.

“What’s his name?” Danny says to the girl.

She understands, and responds, “Peter.”

I check his pupils—not dilated yet. The pulse is very weak. “C’mon Peter, wake up. Get up. Talk to me. Tell me how you feel.
The dope is gonna kill ya if you don’t wake up. C’mon.”

Billy-o enters with the resuscitator, checks to make sure it is on the inhalator position, and puts the facepiece over the
guy’s nose and mouth. The pure oxygen helps. His wife is there now, and whimpering, “He’s not a junky, he’s not.”

Danny asks, “Then why did you turn him on?”

“He turned himself on—he took too much,” she cries.

Danny looks at me. “Yeah, he turned himself on. He almost turned himself off.”

I know what he means. Danny has a look of disgust on his face. He understands the misery—the guy on the floor, his nodding
friends, his helpless wife—caused by drugs, but he has seen so much he is convinced that nothing can be done about it. The
ambulance attendant comes with a rolling chair, and the men carry the guy out. As we leave the apartment, Danny says, “This
is some shithouse.” I take a quick look around, and nod in agreement. “A shame,” he says.

As we walk down the stairs I think of the muckraking novels of the beginning of this century. Things were bad then. Jews without
money were ill-used, the Irish and Germans and Serbs and Italians were without money and ill-used. But that was fifty and
seventy years ago. The people of the South Bronx are without money, and they aren’t used at all. They are left to pine in
lethargy while their children put needles in their arms.

In the kitchen again. It is eleven o’clock. Billy-o and Jerry Herbert are cooking lunch. Two two-foot pans are on the chrome
counter, and Billy-o is filling them with sausage—the long, thin breakfast type. Jerry is cutting green peppers to mix with
the already cut onions. Fourteen loaves of Italian bread wait slicing in the corner of the counter, enough for twenty-eight
sandwiches. It will be a good lunch for sixty cents.

Three short rings on the department phone interrupt the business of the cooks. The housewatchman yells, “Eighty-two and Thirty-one.
1335 Simpson Street. Third floor.” He yells it again, and adds, “Chief goes too.” The pumper leaves quarters, followed by
the truck and Chiefs car. Up 169th Street. To Simpson. There is smoke seeping through the frame of a third floor window.

“Stretch three lengths,” Captain Albergray says as he hurries by. We drop three lengths, and the pumper takes off to a hydrant,
leaving a tail of hose in the street as it moves away. Vinny Royce has the nozzle, and he enters the building. Willy Knipps
and I follow, dragging the folds of empty hose.

The stairway is filled with exiting Puerto Ricans—old men trying to walk faster than they should, young girls with babies
in their arms screaming back to still more young girls, old ladies being guided by pretty teenagers. There is much confusion
as the parade moves by. An old man trips, a woman sobs uncontrollably, a toddler is lost by a hysterical mother. The rapid
sound of Spanish seems even quicker in the excitement, and higher in the echoing halls. Sharp series of shrill noises bounce
from the walls, making the exodus seem even more desperate than it is. On the third floor, three teenage boys squeeze past
us. Two are carrying either ends of a television set, the other carries a portable phonograph. There is fire in the building,
and the poor try to protect their most expensive possessions.

We wait in the hall for Bill to connect the pumper to the hydrant, and open the discharge gate. The men of Ladder 31 have
made a search of the apartment. It is vacant and unoccupied. Richie Rittman is on his knees, his face stained, his nose flowing.
“It’s only one room,” he says to Royce, “nothing to it—a cup ’a tea.”

The water comes, and Royce braces himself for the hardening of the hose.

“Let’s go, Vinny,” Captain Albergray says.

They crawl into the apartment, and I hump the hose behind. It’s a long hall—a snotty hall. Vinny reaches the end room, and
opens the nozzle. At the ceiling. All around. In circles. One hundred and fifty gallons per minute. The fire is out in a minute.
Sixty seconds of water, and the building is saved. A perfect job. Minimum water damage. The apartments below will not have
to be vacated because of waterlogged and fallen ceilings.

Knipps takes the nozzle as Vinny goes for a blow to an open window and clean air. We wait for the smoke to lift. Chief Nie-brock
takes a thorough look, and leaves for the floor above where he will check for fire extension. McCartty and Billy-o are in
the room, hooking down the charred and blistered ceiling. The minutes pass quickly. We give the room a slight and final bath.
Take up. The job’s done.

There is a commotion in the hall. A woman screams. “I’ve been robbed. I’ve been robbed.” Two small boys huddle at her side.
“My television set. My phonograph. They are gone.”

I look at the boys. Two pre-schoolers, handsome in their little pea-coats. But their faces are dull. The adventure of the
fire next door to them is gone. Dull, and unhappy, as if they realize that there will be no more Saturday morning cartoons
for a while. No more
Sesame Street,
or
Mister Rogers.

Chief Niebrock investigates. Writes the name and the apartment number in his notebook for the fire report. The police will
come to investigate also.

I can remember Sister Mary Jean telling us that it was a much more serious sin to steal from our neighbors than it was to
steal from a place like Macy’s. I was in the fifth grade then, and I believed it. I still believe it.

My childhood home was on East Fifty-sixth Street one block west of Sutton Place. One block. A black and white contrast I’ll
always remember. Even then, Sutton Place was reserved only for millionaires. Winter-tanned boys in camel’s-hair coats would
wait on the corner for a taxi, or for their school car. They had plenty of money in their pockets, lunch money at least, but
we never thought of roughing them up for it. They were people. Instead, we walked to Bloomingdale’s. Three blocks up, and
two over. Leather gloves, baseball mits, pocket knives, shirts, ties, cuff links—we took anything we could sell. Bloomingdale’s
wasn’t people. We never stole from people.