Report from Engine Co. 82 (19 page)

“Ready for a long night?” I ask John Nixon.

He climbs down from the cab, slams the door, and says, “I’m ready if you are, Dennis.”

“But I only work ’til six, and you hafta go until midnight.”

“Well,” he says, “I’ll try my best to get along without you after six.” He smiles, appreciating the banter. Like many of the
men in the firehouse, John always has something pleasant to say, and his conversation is painted with humor or irony. When
he says he’ll try his best to get along without me, he really means that he is one of the senior men in the South Bronx, and
he can manage in any situation.

John is studying for the coming Lieutenant’s test. He has an armful of books as he walks up the stairs. On the third floor
of the firehouse there is a small locker room, and a table surrounded by a few chairs. John will sit there and read the Department
Regulations, the Department Training bulletins, the
Fire Chiefs Handbook,
the New York City Building Codes, the National Fire Prevention Association bulletins, the three-thousand page
Handbook of Fire Protection,
textbooks on personnel management, grammar, chemical reactions, building construction, occupational safety, and hydraulics.
The bells will come in, and John will slide the poles—from the third floor to the second, from the second to the apparatus
floor. When he returns he will climb the forty steps, and pick up another book. He may do that fifteen or twenty times a night,
but he doesn’t waste a minute of his time between fires. There is so much to know, so many books and magazines and pamphlets
to read. Yet, after all that effort it all depends on which hundred multiple-choice questions the examiner chooses to ask.

Arnold Toynbee said that before 1840 it was possible for one man to know all about all that was known. Today, however, it
is impossible for one man to know all about any one given subject. A man simply cannot remember all the facts about fire-fighting,
codes, construction, chemical formulas, hydraulic equations, and the rest. I wish John well. I hope the one hundred questions
are about facts he remembers.

The bells ring. Box 2733. John must have had just enough time to lay his books on the third floor table. The housewatch-man
yells. “Eighty-five and Seven twelve—get out.”

In the kitchen, I boil a pot of water for hot chocolate. Vinny Royce and Willy Knipps are playing chess, a game I learned
to play as a teenager. I watch them for a few moments, but Willy has captured the queen and both bishops, and it doesn’t look
like much of a contest. Charlie McCartty and Richie Rittman are talking about football, and about super-star quarterbacks.
I hear phrases like “he’s got the world by the balls,” and “that guy is so good he could ask for anything and get it.” The
conversation turns me off.

I try to sip the hot chocolate, but it is still scalding. There is a copy of
Playboy
magazine on the table. I thumb through the beginning section until I come to the interview. Playboy interviews Elliott Gould,
the actor. It doesn’t take much to shape opinion in this country. I start to read it, but once again I’m saved by the bells.
Two, then nine, five, and six. Stebbins Avenue and Freeman Street. That’s right around the corner. “Eighty-two and Thirty-one
goes. Chief goes too.” The house-watchman’s voice doesn’t seem as loud on the cold apparatus floor. He begins to yell again,
but the department phone rings. He answers it, then yells. “Forget it Thirty-one. Seven-twelve will take it in.”

We can see Ladder 712 racing up Intervale Avenue as we leave quarters. We are at the intersection of Stebbins and Freeman
in less than thirty seconds. The corner building is on fire, but it appears to be only one room on the ground floor. The hydrant
is right in front of the building, and well need just two lengths of hose. Piece of cake.

“Stretch the two-and-a-half,” Captain Albergray orders.

We could fight this fire easily with the smaller hose, but the regulations call for two-and-a-half for cellar and ground floor
fires. Like in the Army, it’s easier, in the end, to do it by the books.

I pull the nozzle off, while Kelsey and Knipps take the two lengths. The end of the second length is uncoupled and being connected
to the pumper as I walk up the three steps of the stoop. Captain Albergray and Lieutenant Coughlin watch as Nixon and Mike
Runyon force open the locked door. It is a simple lock, and snaps with one pull on the halligan tool. The door opens some,
and then shuts hard. Nixon puts his shoulder to the door, but there is someone on the other side pushing against him. A voice,
muffled and choking, begins to moan, “I want to die. I want to die.”

Nixon gives a hard shove, and the door opens wide. There is a man, middle-aged, about forty, running down the long, narrow
hallway of the apartment. Toward the back. Away from the fire.

The smoke is heavy enough, but the front windows are vented, and it lifts nicely. I am on my knees, Captain Albergray beside
me, and Royce behind with a mask, just in case. But, it’s only one room, and I make it easily.

Nixon and the “super-probie” have followed the man. That’s their job—search and rescue. Mike Runyon has begun to open the
windows of the other rooms. The man has run into the kitchen, and stands like a cornered animal, with a carving knife in his
hands. The “super-probie” tries to approach him, gently. But the man leaps out at him, and swings the knife. Its edge opens
the super-probie’s cheek. The man springs back into the comer as John pulls the bleeding super-probie out of the room.

“Go out and get that taken care of,” John says as he pulls the kitchen door shut. “Have the Chief call the cops. I’ll keep
this maniac locked in here.”

John pulls on the handle of the door, but the man does not try to open it. He begins yelling again, passionately, “I want
to die. I want to die. Let me die.”

The fire is out. Knipps has relieved me on the nozzle. Chief Niebrock divides his attention between controlling the fire,
and making sure that Nixon is all right. The other members of Ladder 712 have begun to put holes in the ceilings and sidewalls.
The Chief shines his lamp on each hole and studies them carefully, until he is sure that the fire has not extended.

Two policemen enter the hall, guns drawn. “Where is he?” one of them asks.

“That way,” the Chief says, gesturing toward the end of the hall.

John releases the doorknob, and says, “Watch out for him—he’s psycho.”

A policeman kicks the door open. The man is still in the corner, still yelling that he wants to die. Both cops are cautious
as they enter the room, stepping slowly and gingerly. One of them commands, in a strong, direct voice, “Come on, drop that
knife.”

The man releases an insane, diabolical scream, and runs at the policemen, the knife poised above his shoulder. A cop shoots.
The man trips to the ground, dropping the knife as he falls. The man is still screaming, but he lies in a fetal position on
the kitchen floor grabbing at his leg. The bullet hit him just above the knee. One cop picks up the knife from the floor,
while the other puts his gun back in its holster, satisfied that he just saved the man’s life.

Nixon cuts the man’s pant leg, as Runyon places the first-aid kit down beside him. The man is quiet now, except for intermittent
sobs. John bandages the wound, taping it lightly in consideration of the nurse who will have to cut it away. One of the policemen
writes about the incident, as he remembers it, in his logbook. Bill Finch, Chief Niebrock’s aide, writes the information in
his notebook.
“John Wilkes, Age 42, attacked fireman Arthur Mazarak, shot in left leg by patrolman Hillery of 41 Precinct.”

“That’s all the information I need,” Finch says to the patrolmen. “Thanks.”

The policemen decide to take their prisoner to the hospital in the squad car, rather than wait for an ambulance. The man is
handcuffed and has stopped sobbing. He is quiet now—almost catatonic. We lift him onto a kitchen chair, and carry him out.
A crowd has gathered in front of the building. Tired, worn, unhappy black faces, talking amongst themselves, and wondering
what the problem was.

The “super-probie” is sitting in the Chiefs car, his face bandaged, waiting for an ambulance. The Chief says a few words to
him, he climbs out of the car, and walks resignedly to the squad car. The squad car wails away, the “super-probie” in the
front seat, his attacker in the rear.

The hose taken up, our job finished, we start back to the fire-house. As the pumper begins to turn the comer, I notice the
glazed blue and white street sign attached to the lamppost. Freeman Street, it says. I think about just how inappropriate
that name is as the apparatus rolls down Intervale Avenue.

It is five-thirty. Eddy Penan walks across the apparatus floor. He has his rubber coat and helmet in one hand, and his boots
in the other. He reaches the back end of the fire engine, and puts his boots on the floor. He lifts my helmet and coat with
his free hand, and throws his own gear on the hose where mine had been. I am standing at the kitchen doorway, drinking a cup
of coffee. He sees me, and says, “You’re relieved, Dennis.”

“Thanks Ed,” I say taking my gear from him, and hanging the coat on the wall rack. I place my helmet on the shelf above.

“What kind of a day you have? Busy?”

“Yeah, we had a couple of jobs,” I say, picking up my boots.

“Oh yeah? How are the masks?”

“They were used,” I say, putting my boots on the boot rack, “but, Cosmo and Vinny cleaned them and changed the cylinders.”

“Good,” Eddy says as he walks into the kitchen. “See ya.” He stops, and asks, “You working tomorrow?”

“No, I’m off.”

“Have a nice day,” he says.

I’ll take a shower now, and then go home and help Pat prepare for the company tomorrow. Easter will be a nice day for me.
It will be a civilized day.

I
’
LL
never escape from tenements and cockroaches. The names and the geography may change, but conditions are universal when people
are without money. Mrs. Hanratty who lived down the hall from us in my youth is now Mrs. Sanchez; the O’Dwyer For Mayor sticker
in the vestibule wall now reads Father Gigante For Congress; and the cry “Tueres animal, Rodrego” now airs through the courtyard
in place of “Jesus, Barney, can’t ya ever come home ta me sober?” The smell of dried garbage and urine haven’t changed, but
the vomit on the unwashed marble stairs is now mixed with heroin instead of ten-cents-a-shot Third Avenue whiskey. Each apartment
still houses an unwanted cousin, or aunt, and the family members try to be kind and considerate, but it never works out, because
there are too many people in too few rooms.

Like chalk to a teacher, roaches are part of my past, and now part of my work. They are under me or on me as I crawl down
long smoke-filled halls. They scurry helter-skelter as I lift a smoldering mattress, just as they scurried between the tin
soldiers on the battlefield of my living-room oilcloth. As a child, I would shiver and run from them as I do now, but I was
just fearful of them then; now, I resent them. More than anything, they represent poverty to me. More than anything, they
are the one aspect of my youth that I was forced to accept—the ugly, brown, quick-darting companions of the poor. My mother
would whisper that she cleaned and sprayed, but it didn’t help much because they were put in the walls by the builders many
years ago, because they had a grudge against the Irish and the Italians. And, anyway, no matter what she sprayed around, the
little creatures would learn to enjoy it. I learned that they could be fought, but not defeated. I, as they, adapted.

The July sun is now directly over the firehouse, and it seems as if it is as close to the earth as it has ever been. It is
almost noon, and I am lying on a bed thinking of the fire we have just come from. The tenement on Fox Street was recently
abandoned, and the day’s heat penetrated the garbage piled in the center hall so that the odor was worse than I had ever experienced.
I couldn’t hold my breath long enough as I climbed over it, dragging the hose behind, and the smell made my stomach turn.
The fire was on the fourth floor, and routine. Only two rooms were going, and Willy Knipps advanced the nozzle easily. When
the fire was out, and the smoke cleared from the apartment, I noticed the roaches on every wall of every room but the burned
ones. They were on the floor and the walls of the long, narrow hallway. I told Willy, and Benny, and Lieutenant Welch that
since there was not much to do I would wait in the street until Chief Niebrock gave us the word to take up.

The garbage smell rose through the stairwell, and there was no escaping it on the trip down. In the street again, I felt a
strange sense of freedom, like being released from years of penal servitude. I stood in front of the building, not knowing
where to go or what to do, yet profoundly relieved, and happy that I was no longer where I had been. I felt curiously fresh
in the hot, muggy air of Fox Street.

The air ducts above me purr smoothly, and the cool air blankets the sixteen beds in the bunkroom. The floors are clean, the
walls newly painted, and the beds tightly made and lined symmetrically. The second floor of the firehouse reminds me of an
army barracks—it’s a place to rest. But even as I lie here I think of the tenements of Fox Street. The fire we just fought
tired me, and the sucking temperature exhausted me as I uncoupled, drained, and repacked the hose. I want to rest. Relax.
I light a cigarette, and choke on the first drag. If I were a policeman, a plumber, a schoolteacher, or a businessman I would
quit the ugly habit. But why quit smoking when each fire I fight is more deadly than a thousand cartons of Pall Mall’s. Smoke.
Relax. The day is half over. But, I can’t relax. I think instead about the tenements of Fox Street, the people of Fox Street,
and Tina deVega.