Walk Me Home

by Liza Kendall

  How could she?

  Jake sat there still half-stupefied as Mayor Fisk called the next item on the agenda: the review of Silverlake Fire and Rescue’s budget.

  Charlie remained frozen in place for a moment, and then she got up slowly with a notebook and headed for the podium. Her blond hair was up in a twist, her face was pale, and she wore a navy skirt with a plain white blouse. She looked like a lawyer, not a lover.

  Mick nudged him. “Didn’t you just, uh . . . ?”

  Hunter raised an eyebrow.

  Jake said nothing.

  Tommy leaned forward, too. “Wasn’t she your date last night, dude?”

  “Jayzus,” muttered Grady.

  The expression on Jake’s face must have alarmed all of them, because they fell silent.

  Blood began to pound a steady rhythm in his head as Charlie adjusted the microphone to her height and opened her notebook. She glanced out vaguely at the audience—anywhere but at him—and cleared her throat.

  “I’m Charlotte, uh, Charlie, uh, Nash. Most of you know my grandfather, Kingston Nash, a longtime resident of Silverlake. He can’t be here today, since he’s had surgery and is busy terrorizing the Mercy Hospital staff . . .”

  This elicited a few chuckles.

  “So he asked me to come in his place.” She paused and looked down, compressing her lips. Then she looked up again, searching the crowd for Jake’s face. Her next words were clearly addressed to him.

  “I’d like everyone here to know that these statistics and opinions are my grandfather’s, and not my own. I don’t agree with him. Again, I am only here at his request, as his, uh, his proxy.”

  Jake eviscerated her with a glance. Make any joke, any excuse you want, sweetheart. There isn’t one that will get you off the hook with me. It doesn’t exist.

  She averted her gaze. Then she began to speak again, her voice shaking. “It’s no secret that a full twenty-four percent of the Silverlake municipal budget is spent on our firefighters. Yes, twenty-four percent. While we are, of course, very grateful to the brave men and women who protect our town, this percentage is simply not—” She looked hesitantly at Jake again.

  He gave her his best dead-eyed stare.

  “Not sustainable from an economic standpoint, and leaves less—if not no—money for equally important things like teachers, nurses, police, hospitals and health clinics, administration, parks, libraries, community events, and historic preservation.”

  Murmurs arose in the audience.

  Charlie continued. “I think you will all agree that teaching the next generation, healing the sick among us, protecting those who can’t protect themselves—none of these things can be neglected or ignored.” She paused, unscrewing the cap from a bottle of water and holding it up with a shaking hand to her lips.

  There were more murmurs, some fidgeting, some shaking of heads.

  “This doesn’t have to be an either-or situation!” Mick said.

  “Please refrain from comment, Mr. Halladay,” said Mayor Fisk. “Miss Nash has the floor. You will have a chance to respond.”

  “The huge costs of our fire department,” Charlie continued, “are in large part due to the firefighters’ union, which makes negotiating lower numbers difficult, if not impossible. The cost and maintenance of firefighting equipment alone is astronomical. When you add to that the cost of the salaries we pay to our firefighters; the maintenance, mortgage, and taxes on the firehouse; the taxes on the land . . .”

  Jake watched Charlie’s lips move, his sense of betrayal rising, almost choking him. He tuned out the actual words—after all, he’d heard many of them before, out of the mouth of Kingston Nash.

  “Most towns the size of Silverlake have all-volunteer firefighting departments, and there is good reason for that. The reasoning gets even better when we look at some statistics. Because of the use of higher-quality flame-resistant building materials and much stiffer safety regulations and inspections, the number of fires in the last decade has actually fallen by over forty-one percent. But the number of firefighters in the region has increased by thirty-seven percent . . .”

  She was good. Jake had to hand her that. She presented the facts baldly, professionally, in a detached, almost apologetic way.

  “And their salaries have increased by over nine percent. The cost of their benefits has also risen, and the town has to pay for all of this somehow. The firefighters’ union routinely ignores the ability of small towns like ours to come up with the money . . .”

  Charlie had settled into a dry monotone, which was a far cry from her grandfather’s usual theatrics. Unfortunately, it was far more effective, since the old man’s drama revealed his bias. And everyone who saw him at the podium both pitied him and wrote him off because of the past.

  Charlie was hard to write off. She continued to list damning sets of numbers that made the fire department seem overfunded and even superfluous.

  “I will leave you,” she said finally, “with the disturbing example of what happened in a neighboring county: the municipality that resisted the demands of the firefighters’ union and took the matter to arbitration, as required by law. Not only did they not win, but the firefighters were awarded a retroactive ten percent raise, and the city had to pay their legal fees—which ended up bankrupting it. Do we want that to happen here in Silverlake?”

  Jake’s sense of betrayal mounted again. Last night he’d been kissing the lips that were spewing this poison.

  “Can we afford to have that happen here?” Charlie read aloud from her grandfather’s report. “My grandfather doesn’t think we can. We must act swiftly and decisively, once and for all, to create an all-volunteer firefighting force that is staffed by people who put our community first, and not their own—”

  She stopped, her color rising.

  “Miss Nash?” prompted Mayor Fisk.

  “Not their own personal agendas, salaries, and pensions,” she whispered, head bowed.

  Jake erupted out of his seat and stalked to the doors. Mick followed him, setting a hand on his shoulder as he threw open the right door and stormed into the hallway. “Bro, you gotta—”

  “You have to give the rebuttal, Mick. I’m too angry. And I never want to see that woman again.”

  “Wha—but—I’m not much for public speaking. You know that!”

  True.

  Jake stood in the hallway clenching and unclenching his fists like a bad cartoon character, almost levitating by fury alone. He fought for control over his temper. Storming out of the council meeting wouldn’t do the firehouse any good—in fact, quite possibly the opposite. He had to go back in. He had to make their case and rebut Charlie’s. The survival of the firehouse was at stake: their home and their livelihoods.

  Jake didn’t run from a fire, and he didn’t run from a fight. No matter how angry he was, he wasn’t going to run from this one—even if Charlie had betrayed him.

  The Nash family, once his haven, had become his curse.

  Jake took several deep breaths and told himself to focus as Mick stood there anxiously. He was a great guy, but meatballs were his strength, not public speaking. This was on Jake. So he pulled open the door and went back in.

  Charlie had gathered her notes and made her way back to her chair. Her face was pale and drawn. She tried to catch his eye; she mouthed the words I’m sorry, but he refused to acknowledge her in any way. Charlie Nash was officially dead to him. He would cut her out of his life as cleanly as her family had once cut him out of theirs.

  Mayor Fisk nodded at him. “Mr. Braddock, would you like to respond on behalf of Silverlake’s fire department?”

  “Yes, I would,” Jake said as he walked to the podium and looked out at the audience. “And it’s Silverlake Fire and Rescue, by the way.”

  “Duly noted. Please proceed, Mr. Braddock.”

  “Miss Nash has just
spouted a lot of numbers at you all,” Jake began. “And she is free to do that. But I’m not going to talk to you about numbers. I’m going to talk to you about our community and what we do, which is much more than rescue cats from trees or knock hornets’ nests off garages. There’s a common misperception that we’re paid only to sleep and watch TV when we’re on shift. Nothing could be further from the truth. We maintain our equipment, first of all—and there’s a lot of it. We teach fire safety in the schools, we study the schematics of public buildings so that we’re familiar with how to save lives should a fire or other disaster occur in them. We check hydrants, hoses, and sprinkler systems all over the town. We do auto-extrication training, swift-water rescue training, and high-rope rescue training. We maintain our EMS certifications and help in all kinds of emergencies . . .”

  Jake looked out at the faces in the audience. Most were attentive and sympathetic. He had their attention. His words were effective. He relaxed a little. Made sure the edge was gone from his voice. Anger would only alienate folks and make him look unapproachable and arrogant. He needed to be one with the people, or better yet, their hero.

  “When Mr. Sanchez got T-boned at the intersection of Ninth and Main, it was me and Mick here”—he pointed to his buddy—“who pried him out of his ’98 Oldsmobile with the Jaws of Life. When the floodwaters swept away Mrs. McGowan’s Honda with her and her grandchildren inside, it was us who went after them and got them out. And when, in his infinite sixteen-year-old wisdom, Teddy Flint climbed the old water tower on a dare and punctured his thigh on a rusty bolt, it was Grady and Tommy who went up after him, got him down, and took him to the hospital.”

  Jake paused. “These are the kinds of things we do for the community without question, no matter what time of day or night. We also do a lot of other things, taking time away from our families, just so that people around here won’t wonder if we’re really earning our pay. Christmas lights? Check. Volunteer work at the hospital? Check. Volunteering at the animal shelter? Check.”

  His audience was quiet but approving. “Now, you’ve just listened to a bunch of statistics researched by Kingston Nash, a man who’s clearly biased against Silverlake Fire and Rescue because of a tragedy in his past. A terrible tragedy, it’s true—but one that happened over a decade ago, one we’ve all got to get beyond.

  “I’m very, very sorry for his loss. But funding or defunding Silverlake Fire and Rescue should be about more than a personal grudge. It’s about your security, about life and death to you, your friends, and your neighbors. Let me ask you a question, folks. Would you ever dream of asking people in this town to be happy with a volunteer-only police force? I’ll leave you to think about that. Thank you for your time and consideration today.” Jake stepped back from the podium, confident that he’d defended himself and the boys quite adequately.

  “Hold up there, Jake,” called old Billy Hodgkins from the back row. He’d played pool with Kingston Nash on Thursday nights for as long as anyone could remember. “When exactly was the last fire in Silverlake? I mean, one of any significance?”

  “Well,” Jake said, rubbing the back of his neck. “I’m not sure what you mean by ‘significance’ . . . ”

  “’Scuse my five-dollar word,” Willy said dryly. “I guess I mean big-ass. As in, requires seven guys and a large red truck to put it out. When was the last one? Answer me that, will you?”

  Jake searched his brain. “Just because there hasn’t been one doesn’t mean—”

  “’Cause it seems to me that the last big-ass fire requiring you guys was the one at the Nash mansion, twelve years ago. And there are a lot of questions about that fire still.”

  Jake felt the blood drain from his face. Then a hard pulse kicked up in the left side of his neck, powered by anger. Would the suspicion and speculation ever end? Could no one cut him a break, give him the benefit of the doubt, after all of his years of service here in Silverlake? He opened his mouth to respond, but Willy pressed his advantage before he could.

  “Twelve years. For twelve years, we’ve been paying hundreds of thousands of dollars in salaries and bennies to keep you and your boys in style at that downtown firehouse. So you’ve done a rescue or two, removed a hornets’ nest from an old lady’s garage, and you keep your red truck all clean and shiny. Like she says”—Willy jerked a thumb at Charlie—“the numbers don’t add up. Sorry. Nothing against you guys personally. But where do we draw the line?”

  “Our jobs are just as much about fire prevention, Willy,” Jake ground out. “So if you look at our track record that way, it’s phenomenal.”

  Willy guffawed. “You takin’ credit for stuff that hasn’t burned down now?” The old man stood up, his bushy-bearded chin jutting forward, his hands on his hips. “Folks, am I the only one in here who smells the BS?”

  Too late, Jake saw the trap he’d laid for himself, all in the name of defending the firehouse. How in the hell could he recover now? He searched for a way, but the blood pounding in his ears and the fresh wave of anger at Willy’s dig, on top of Charlie’s betrayal, made it impossible to think.

  He saw red for a hazy moment, then white—Charlie’s miserable white face looking right back at him. He hadn’t even realized he was staring at her, trying to burn a hole through her with his gaze. He averted it now.

  The council meeting disintegrated around him, and still he couldn’t think. Couldn’t find a way to sway the audience. Mayor Fisk finally pounded her gavel to call the meeting back to order, but the damage was done.

  Jake walked on leaden legs back to his seat, where Mick, Hunter, Grady, and Tommy said not a word. They all sat in tense silence as Mayor Fisk called for a vote.

  Their silence turned to disbelief as the vote went against them by three. Once the new year arrived, they’d all be officially unemployed.

  Chapter 22

  From the back of the room came a feminine noise of distress, somewhere between a cough and a wail. Jake knew instinctively that it was Charlie but didn’t turn to investigate.

  He got up on legs that didn’t feel like his own, that seemed to walk of their own accord to the double doors. He just followed Mick and the other firemen, feeling numb. The blood rushing through his head, the pulsating anger, the viciousness of Charlie’s unexpected betrayal—all of it had vanished and been replaced by this yawning pit of nothing. He wasn’t sure he’d ever feel anything again. He was conscious of breathing, conscious of having a heartbeat, but he didn’t feel human.

  He didn’t register or remember anything about the drive back to the firehouse. All he could think about, as he turned into the familiar circular driveway, was that this would no longer be his home—the house he had lived in for more than a decade. The guys—Old George, Mick, Grady, Tommy, Hunter, and Rafael—would no longer be his brothers. They’d no longer share a purpose in the community, or even have a role here. What in the hell were they all going to do?

  Despite the presence of Mick and the other guys next to him as they entered the firehouse, Jake hadn’t felt this lost and alone since he’d been kicked out by Dave and Maria Nash twelve years ago.

  Not-Spot came bounding over to greet them, his entire body wagging in enthusiasm, his tongue spilling out the side of his mouth like extra glee. You’re home! You’re home! Except this was no longer home. The dog’s excitement seemed almost obscene, given the circumstances. Jake had let them all down. Why would anyone or anything be glad to see him?

  Jake sank to his knees, ostensibly to hug Not-Spot, to pat him and scratch him behind the ears, but in reality it was because he didn’t feel that his legs would hold him up any longer. The dog licked his face and wriggled with joy, tail whipping anything within reach.

  Jake leaned his forehead briefly against the dog’s neck and breathed in the comforting scent of his fur: canine love mixed with earth and leaves. But Not-Spot squirmed free to get to Mick, Tommy, Hunter, and Grady, just as excited to see them.
Jake wasn’t special, and now that he wouldn’t have a job or a title or a paycheck, he’d better get used to that.

  He stayed down on his knees as the other guys gave the dog his due affection. It seemed a monumental, if not impossible, effort to get up. Stand tall. Like a man. But without a job, without a home, without a purpose in life, he didn’t feel that he qualified as a man.

  “Hey.” Mick’s tone was gruff.

  Jake looked up to find him holding out a hand. He wanted to take it but found that he couldn’t. “I . . . let you down. I let all of us down today.”

  “No. You didn’t,” Mick said. “Now get the hell up off the floor. I’ve got something to say, but I’m only gonna say it once, which means we’ve all gotta be in the same room. So let’s go upstairs.”

  Jake nodded, but he still couldn’t take Mick’s hand. So Mick grabbed his instead. He damn near dragged Jake up the stairs.

  Rafael and Old George sat at the kitchen table, looking sweaty and beat-up. “Man, you wouldn’t believe—”

  “We probably would,” Mick said. “Listen, there’s no easy way to say this: We lost the vote today. The town council decided that as of the new year, Silverlake has an all-volunteer fire department. No salary. No benefits. Kingston Nash—courtesy of his granddaughter—has finally won. We’re . . . done.”

  Old George gaped. “What?”

  “You’re kidding me,” Rafael said.

  Jake stared wordlessly at them.

  “No joke, gentlemen,” Grady said. “Sorry to say. Jake here put up the good fight. But the numbers are a problem, and we know that and we’ve known it for years. Charlie Nash, reading from her granddad’s script, made it sound like we’re money hogs. We’re the death of police and schoolteachers and Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny, too.”

  Old George finally closed his mouth. “But . . . what the hell are we going to do?”

  “That’s a damn good question. If we want to stay in this burg, we’ll need to find other jobs. We’ve all got EMS training. We’re practically professional PR guys, with all the work we do for the community . . .”