Report from Engine Co. 82 (18 page)

“Do ya think those guys set the place up to create the confusion?” Vinny asks, looking back as he drags the limp hose down
the stairs.

“Probably,” I answer. It doesn’t make sense to say any more about it. “We were lucky,” I continue, “that we got here as fast
as we did. A few more minutes and we would have had a second alarm on our hands.”

“Yeah,” Vinny replies. “Lucky.”

We are back in the firehouse, and it is twelve-thirty. The sausages are popping in the oven, the peppers and onions sizzle
in a frying pan. We are all dirty, faces blackened and greasy, mucus hardened under noses, ears filled with grimy dust. I
head towards the bathroom to wash up. Billy-o climbs down from the back wheel—the tiller of the truck. He takes his glove
off. His hand is covered with a bloodied handkerchief. Vinny, Knipps, and I take a look, joined by Rittman and McCartty.

“It’s nothin’,” Billy-o says, looking at the gash across the back of his thumb. “A piece of glass must have gone down my glove
when I took the windows out.”

“Nothin’ hell,” Rittman says, “I’ll bet you need ten stitches.”

“How much you wanna bet?” Vinny says looking at the thumb.

“Two dollars, for ten stitches,” Richie says.

“I’ll take two dollars for eight stitches,” Vinny replies.

“I’ll take two for seven stitches,” Knipps says. “It doesn’t look like it will take ten.”

“Okay, nine stitches is open,” Vinny says looking at me. “Do you want to take nine, Dennis?”

“I’ll take nine,” McCartty says, before I have a chance to answer.

“Holy Christ,” Billy-o says, “I can’t get you guys to give a dollar a payday for a dishwasher—”

“All right,” I interrupt, “I’ll take a deuce for six stitches. That’s ten bucks all together, right?”

Everyone agrees. Billy-o leaves us to report the injury to Lieutenant Lierly, mumbling to himself as he walks. Vinny chalks
the stitch projections on the kitchen blackboard, so there won’t be any disagreement later.

His injury reported, Billy-o drives his car to the emergency room of Bronx Hospital. His name will now be incorporated into
the average of 5,000 injuries N.Y.C. firefighters suffer in the line of duty each year.

“I hope he remembers to bring back some bandages,” Lieutenant Lierly says as Billy-o drives away. “Our first-aid kit is getting
low.”

Jerry Herbert has served lunch. The sandwiches are great, but I have an unsettled feeling in my stomach. I am not sure if
it is because of the fire we have just come from, or because with every bite I expect an alarm to come in.

We eat the meal without interruption.

I put sixty cents into the collection bowl, and then boil some water for tea. I make tea the Irish way—half tea, half milk.
There is a magazine on the table. The television is noising the nonsense of an afternoon show that sends the winners on weekend
dates to Europe. The bells come in, but they are not for me. Engine 85, only. They hustle, half skipping, half running, out
of the kitchen. I pick up the magazine and start to read. The Park Avenue rich, it seems, have concerned themselves with raising
money to get a group of Black Panthers out of jail. A splendiferous party is given high above the boulevard gardens of Park
Avenue, and the Pucci-clad chic and the dashiki-clad Panthers are exposed to each other. The story annoys me because I keep
thinking of those two kids who haven’t a television set to watch any longer. Come away from Park Avenue. Stop dealing with
abstractions—the philosophic-cultural-social implications of high bail for media exploiters. Look at the real world. Take
Simpson Street for example.

“Ping. Ping.” The bells are hammered. Box 2558. I throw my tea bag into the garbage can on the way out. Intervale Avenue and
165th Street. Captain Albergray presses hard on the siren. Thirty decibels over rock sound. Hard rock. In an empty auditorium.
I can feel the wailing going through both ears, and meeting at the auditory nerve. I wonder what damage is being done.

Ladder 31 and the Chief are behind us, red lights flashing, sirens squealing, jerking and jumping over the rough cobblestone
surface of Intervale Avenue. The cold is biting, and I pull the corduroy collar of my rubber coat closer to my neck.

The pumper stops in front of a three-story, wooden frame building. The top floor is on fire, and the heat has already blown
out the windows. This is a job for the big, two-and-a-half-inch hose. I take the nozzle, and three folds of hose, and begin
the stretch into the building. The men of Ladder 31 pass me. Willy Knipps is behind me, and Bill Kelsey behind him, all dragging
hose. Vinny Royce takes a mask case from the side compartment of the apparatus, opens it, and starts to don the mask. Cosmo
Posculo helps the chauffeur to hook into the hydrant.

Captain Albergray is waiting for us on the third floor. The smoke is heavy, almost viscous. Dark brown waves with nowhere
to go until one of the truckmen cuts a hole in the roof. The hose starts to bulge as I reach Captain Albergray. I crack the
nozzle a little. The air flows out, sounding like someone has opened a valve on an oxygen bottle. Then the water comes, hitting
the floor in front of me.

“Ready?” Captain Albergray asks.

“Ready.”

“Let’s go.”

The fire is in the front two rooms, and probably in the cockloft, the space between the ceiling of the rooms and the wood
of the roof. We have to make a hard bend around the hallway banister rail. “Give us about ten more feet,” I yell back to Knipps
and Kelsey. They hump the hose as I advance the line to the threshold of the fire. I am on my stomach, Captain Albergray at
my side. Knipps comes and supports the surging hose from behind. Fluid runs from our noses and mouths as we work. I am starting
to cough a lot, but I keep the nozzle moving—up, down, and around. Royce climbs over Knipps and taps my shoulder. “I got it,
Dennis,” I can hear his muffled voice through the face piece of the mask. Cosmo also arrives with a mask, and Knipps and I
bail out.

In the street again. Kelsey is donning a mask, and a mask for Captain Albergray lies on the sidewalk beside him. But he won’t
need it now. We look up at the third floor. The fire is extinguished, and only smoke from smoldering cinders comes from the
windows. The members of Engine 73 and Engine 94 are standing in front of the building, waiting anxiously for an order to go
to work. But they are told to stand fast. In a few minutes they will be told to take up.

I am sapped of any vitality as I sit next to Knipps on the back step of the pumper. I would smoke a cigarette if I thought
my lungs would take it, but I know I couldn’t hack it. Knipps and I don’t speak. We just sit there limp and satisfied, knowing
that we did our job.

Kelsey returns from the building, carrying the two masks. “We need a length of inch-and-a-half to wash down,” he says. I feel
a little recouped, so I go to the side compartment for a rolled up length of the smaller hose. Kelsey takes it from my hands.
It only weighs forty pounds, but that’s forty pounds I don’t have to carry up the stairs.

Vinny and Cosmo have their masks off, and are resting in the hall. The men of Ladder 31 are overhauling, or ripping apart,
the burnt rooms. Chief Niebrock keeps his eyes on the ceiling as the men hook down the plaster and lathe. The fire has not
extended to the cockloft.

A young black man, about twenty-two, walks through the rooms, shaking his head. A mild looking man, small-framed, he appears
shaken by what he sees. He is modishly dressed, with flared pants and a wet-look plastic jacket, and he is careful not to
soil the bottoms of his pants as he steps over the debris on the floor.

“Do you live here?” Chief Niebrock asks him.

“Yeah, this is all mine, man. What’s left of it.”

The Chief writes his name down, and asks him if he knows how the fire started. The man replies that he doesn’t know, that
he was sitting in a bar down the street when he heard the fire engines come by.

Suddenly, a big woman steams past us in the hall. “Where is that sonovabitch!” she screams. “Where is that sonovabitchl” She
has a two-foot machete in her hand. A machete. Her eyes wide, and violent. “Where is that sonovabitch!” Not a question. A
statement. She knows who she is looking for, and that she will find him. A huge woman, but not fat. About 200 pounds. Appearing
out of nowhere, like a wild woman from a sugar cane field.

The machete is high in the air as she lunges forward. “Look out Chief.” The Chief turns just as McCartty grabs the woman.
The knife is still free, and she swings it crazily, missing the Chief by inches.

“I’ll kill you you sonovabitch,” she cries, tears falling from her eyes. “I’ll kill you.”

The young man who was standing next to the Chief runs to the next room. The woman struggles, and it takes three firefighters
to control her. McCartty finally gets her to loosen her grip on the knife, and he pulls it, throwing it to the floor. The
woman collapses in hysterical sobbing.

The young man is yelling, “That woman’s crazy. Get her outa here.” He peers out at her, and sees that the violence is subdued.
Feeling safer, he re-enters the room. A light mist of smoke is still rising from the burnt contents.

McCartty and Rittman, two big men, have a firm grip on her. She sees the young man, her anger rises, and she attempts to free
herself. But Charlie and Richie are too powerful for her. She realizes now the futility of struggling, and calms herself.
She looks directly at the young man, and says with vengeance, “You did this, and I’ll kill you for this.”

The man throws his hands up in despair, and turns away from her. He turns again, and says to her quietly, but nervously, his
lips twitching, “I did this?”

The woman does not answer, but continues her deadly stare. The man asks the question again, but this time his voice is loud
and angry. “I did this? Man, why would I do this to all my own stuff? Why would I burn my own place down?”

“Because you told my daughter you was gonna do it,” the woman retorts. “You told her this morning when she threw you out that
you was gonna do it.” I can see the hatred building up in her, and the need to strike. She attempts again to lunge at the
young man, and the young man runs into the adjoining room, fearful that the firefighters will lose their grip. The woman screams,
“And I’m gonna kill you for it, you sonovabitch.”

Chief Niebrock orders Charlie and Richie to lead the woman out, and down the stairs. He speaks into his transistorized walkie-talkie,
and orders his aide to radio for police assistance. “The police are already on the scene, Chief,” the walkie-talkie blares.

Two policemen arrive on the floor. The Chief says a few words to them, and they go into the adjoining room to talk to the
young man. Captain Albergray enters the room, and asks them if they would kindly move out to the hall, for we still have work
to do. They leave, and Cosmo opens the nozzle for a final wash down. “You can take up when you’re finished,” the Chief says
to our Captain. He also tells Lieutenant Lierly and the men of Ladder 31 to take up, but they will stick around to help us
with the hose. They are always ready to give us a hand with the uncoupling, draining, and repacking.

The young man, the woman, and the police are not in sight when we return to the street. Charlie tells us that they have left
in a police car. It seems to me that the man was genuinely affronted when accused of setting the fire, but making judgments
about crimes is a cop’s job.

The hose is repacked after some trouble with frozen connections. We work fast, because that is the best way to keep warm.
On the way back to the firehouse I wonder if there is an engineer back in Illinois or somewhere working on a way to manufacture
hose couplings that will not freeze. It would save us a lot of hard work.

Billy-o is in the kitchen. It is almost three o’clock. He is sitting at a table reading the afternoon
Post.
Billy-o reads more newspapers than anyone I know. His hand is gauzed and taped. “How ya feeling, Bill-o?” I ask.

“Not bad,” he answers, “but just a little annoyed. Tomorrow is the first Easter I’ve had off in four years, but now I’m on
medical leave. But do you think I would be on medical leave if I were scheduled to work tomorrow? No such luck.”

I am laughing as McCartty and Royce burst into the kitchen. “Well, how many stitches?” they ask simultaneously.

“What do you mean, how many stitches?” Billy-o asks, feigning anger. “At least Dennis had the decency to ask me how I feel
first.”

“You’re walkin' aren’t ya?” Charlie says, “what difference does it make how ya feel? Tell us how many stitches—and the truth.”

“You’re not gonna believe this, Charlie,” Billy-o says, laughingly. He points to the blackboard where Vinny chalked the bets,
and says, “I see you have six to ten stitches covered. Well, you should’ve asked a few more guys to bet, because I got twelve.”

“Twelve?” Charlie says in surprise.

“I don’t believe it,” Vinny says. “Take the bandage off and show us.”

“Listen,” Billy-o says, “you’ll have to take my word for it. The doctor put twelve sutures in, and promised that it wouldn’t
leave a scar.”

“Sutures!” Charlie exclaims. “Just because you read
The New York Times
ya gotta say sutures? Don’t give us that crap. Just take the bandage off an' show us the stitches.”

Billy-o laughs, folds the newspaper under his arm, and starts to leave the kitchen. “I give up on you guys,” he says, “I’m
going home.” He pauses at the door, and adds, “I hope you catch a fourth alarm this afternoon.” He smiles as he closes the
door.

Charlie, though, will not let him get the last word. He goes to the door, and yells, “See ya, Billy-o. Have a nice accident
on the way home.” He closes the door, and returns laughing. He remembers something, and opens the door again. “Happy Easter,
Bill,” his voice echoes through the apparatus floor.

It is three o’clock as John Nixon backs Ladder 712’s apparatus into quarters. Lieutenant Coughlin directs him through the
too-narrow doorway, as the “super-probie” holds the makeshift canvas door back. The “super-probie” was so named because one
night a few months ago he refused to help Engine 85 with their hose. The fire was out, and the other members of 712 helped
with the long stretch of hose, but the “super-probie” said that he was a truckman, and if he wanted to work with hose he would
transfer to an Engine company. It was a little presumptuous of him to say that, since he had been a firefighter for less than
a year at the time. He learned quickly that veterans like John Nixon would not support his position. Now, he goes out of his
way to help with the hose, to peel potatoes or onions, to wash the dishes or pots—anything to show he is part of the team.