Things You Save in a Fire

by Katherine Center

  I wasn’t going to do that, either.

  But how bad did things have to get before he got it?

  I worried about it constantly.

  Until the captain gave us something else to worry about.

  Twenty

  ONE EVENING, AFTER we’d cleaned up from supper, the captain called us all to order at the dining table.

  “I just had the strangest phone call of my career,” he said.

  We all waited.

  “Apparently, the city’s got a budget shortfall. Nobody’s exactly sure what happened, but there was some graft, some corruption—some bad investments made. Somehow, the projected city budget is not what it should be, and not what it was last year. There’s an investigation, blah, blah, blah—but the long and the short of it is, they’re cutting city services.”

  We waited.

  “Cutting staff on city services, is what I mean.” He cleared his throat. “I’ve never seen anything like it. They hired some planning consultant to come in and advise them on how to make up the gap, and his recommendation is to cut two percent of teachers, police, and firefighters in the city. Among many other things.”

  The captain looked down at the floor and shifted his weight.

  “They’re retiring some old-timers early,” he continued, and just as I glanced over at DeStasio, who was the oldest guy on the crew, the captain went on, “and they’re suspending the contracts of some of the newest hires.”

  Everybody looked over at Owen and me.

  “What I’m saying,” the captain went on, “is that two of the city’s newest contracts are on our shift, and it looks like we’re not going to get to keep both of them.”

  “You’re letting them go?” Case asked.

  “Just one,” the captain said, like that was an upside.

  “Which one?” Tiny asked.

  Before the captain could answer, the guys all started shouting out their suggestions.

  “Keep the girl!” DeStasio shouted, just as most of the others shouted to keep the rookie, and I felt a spark of gratitude toward him before I wondered if he was being sarcastic. Also: Really? The girl? I’d been working here for five months. Didn’t I get a name?

  “He can’t sack the rookie!” Case was shouting. “That’s Big Robby’s kid.”

  “Well, there’s no way he’s keeping the girl.” That was Tiny.

  The guys all started debating our various merits and drawbacks, all at once, everybody talking and nobody listening. My upsides were, apparently, competence and skill, while pro-rookie arguments seemed to stress that he was “a good guy.” The captain let everybody vocalize for a few minutes before shutting us up again.

  “It’s a tough situation,” he went on. “I don’t know who I’m letting go, but I do know it’s going to mean we’ll have a reduced crew on this shift and several others. That’s unsafe for us, and it’s bad for the community—but there’s nothing to do about it right now. We’ve just got to roll with it until they get this thing sorted out. Nobody here is a stranger to hardship. We’ll handle it.”

  “But who are you firing?” Tiny wanted to know.

  “Normally, I’d just fire the newest guy, but these two”—he gestured between us—“started on the same day. The chief’s given me a few weeks to decide—and despite what you might be thinking, my mind is not yet made up. It’ll be a hell of a decision.”

  For a second, I found myself wondering if the captain was the stalker, and he was just making this all up as a ruse to get rid of me, but then he showed us the letter from the chief laying the whole situation out. I had to admit it seemed pretty official.

  The captain didn’t seem as mad at me lately, anyway. Despite the scene he’d made about the cyanide kits, in the end, he’d put one on each apparatus—the engine and the box. Other things had arrived, too—the gear dryer, three infrared cameras, a voucher for seven new mattresses at a local store—and he’d kept them all.

  As gruff as he was, I knew he liked his new mattress.

  That might work in my favor.

  The captain shifted his weight, looking not too happy about the situation.

  “What happens to the one you let go?” Tiny asked.

  “He or she,” the captain said carefully, “will have to find another position. You can bet I’ll write ’em one hell of a recommendation letter.”

  The captain looked up and met my eyes for the first time, then Owen’s. “I hate to have to do it, but I’ve got no choice. I’m putting you two on notice. From now on, every choice you make, every patient you interact with—it’s all being monitored and evaluated. So bring your A-game. When the time comes, I’ll make the call. But I’ll tell you something straight. I wish like hell I didn’t have to.”

  * * *

  AS I WALKED out to my truck to head home after shift, I had the worst feeling about what was going to happen.

  The captain was going to pick Owen. I tried to imagine being Captain Murphy and making his choice between Owen—a young, fit, friendly hard worker, son of a captain from Boston FD, sired from a long line of heroes, a local boy with the exact same Massachusetts accent as the captain himself—and me.

  What did the captain see when he looked at me? A Texan, a foreigner, a newbie.

  But mostly, a girl.

  And we all knew how awful girls were.

  I just knew. I was going to lose my job.

  I’d been so stupid. This moment was just a crystallization of what I’d known all along. The rookie would be my downfall, one way or another.

  For so many months it had been my job to train him, to break him in, to bring him up to speed. I’d been helping him. I’d let myself think of us as being on the same team. In theory, it only helped the crew for him to be stronger, and it helped the patients, too. He was a good guy. I wanted him to succeed.

  But not in place of me.

  That was the downside to helping him. My place here had never been safe, and that fact was just hitting me as I reached my truck and saw that the tires had been slashed.

  All four of them.

  There was a note under a windshield wiper in Sharpie with some simple advice: Just quit you bitch.

  It was hard not to get judgy with the grammar, and the comma that should have been there. Not to mention the handwriting. It looked like a preschooler had written it. Once again, the T looked like an X: Just quix.

  Still, I got the message.

  I crumpled the note up in my hand and stared at the tires. Totally flat, all four. That would be a hundred dollars apiece, at least—money I did not have. But the immediate problem was how was I getting home.

  Like with the locker, I had no intention of telling the crew about this. No way was I going to self-identify as the weakest of the herd—especially not now. Luckily, most of them had gone home already, and because Owen and I were the two newest members of the crew, we had the two farthest parking spaces.

  Maybe no one had noticed.

  I was counting that particular blessing when I heard footsteps behind me.

  The rookie.

  “What the hell happened?” he demanded, staring at the tires.

  I had no idea what to say. I just shrugged.

  “Somebody did this?”

  It was a funny question. Of course somebody did it. “Looks like it,” I said.

  “Who?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Someone from the neighborhood, I bet,” he said. “Some dumb kid.”

  “I don’t think so,” I said.

  He turned to me. “What do you mean?”

  I gave him the crumpled note and watched him uncrumple it.

  As soon as he read it, he looked up at me. “What the hell?” he demanded.

  I shrugged.

  “Who wrote this?”

  I shrugged again. “I found it under my windshield wiper.”

  He was so shocked, it made me wonder if he was faking. “Someone put this under your wiper?”

  I nodded.

  “You
have to tell the captain.”

  “I am not telling the captain. Ever. And neither are you.”

  The rookie walked over to my truck, studying it for other clues and thinking. Then he came back to study my face. “This isn’t the first time.”

  “For what?” I said, stalling, knowing full well.

  “The first time someone’s messed with you like this.”

  I shook my head.

  “What else? What else has happened?”

  I sighed. No sense hiding it now. “Somebody wrote the word ‘slut’ in my locker.”

  Owen frowned and took a few steps closer. “When?”

  “The first shift after your parents’ party.”

  I watched that sink in. I saw him click the pieces into place. “That’s what happened. Somebody scared you.”

  “Nobody scares me,” I said. “It was a good reminder, that’s all.”

  “Of what?”

  “That I’m here to work. Not to”—but then I couldn’t think of a good word. “Do whatever that was we were doing.”

  “What we do or don’t do,” Owen said, holding up the note, “has nothing to do with this asshole.”

  “I think the asshole sees it differently.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” He was angry. I could see it in his eyes and the tension in his shoulders.

  I, in contrast, was doing that thing where I decide I’m not going to have any feelings. “I felt my best option at the time was distance.” I sounded like a robot, even to myself.

  “We need to figure out who this is.”

  “What do you think I’ve been trying to do?”

  But his mind was racing. “We need to check security camera footage. We need to set some kind of trap. We need to question all the guys—”

  “No. We’re not questioning anybody.”

  “But how can we find him if we—”

  “I don’t know. But the last thing I’m doing is telling the whole crew.”

  “But we—”

  “And stop saying ‘we’! This is not your problem. This is my problem.”

  “But I—”

  “Cut it out!” I snapped. “Stop trying to rescue me! I can rescue my own damn self.”

  Owen blinked. Then closed his mouth. Then nodded. “Okay,” he said. Then he handed the note back to me. “I won’t rescue you,” he said.

  “Great. Perfect. Thank you.”

  “Just let me point out one thing.”

  “What?”

  “You’re going to need a ride home.”

  * * *

  ON THE DRIVE, Owen told me he had a cousin with a wrecker service. “He’ll handle it for you,” he said.

  “What does that mean?” I asked.

  “He’ll pick up your car, and get you some new tires, and bring it to you. I already texted him.”

  “I’m not sure I can afford new tires.”

  “He’s not going to charge you.”

  “For the tires?”

  “For any of it.”

  “Why wouldn’t he charge me?”

  Owen smiled. “He owes me a few favors. More than a few.”

  I didn’t respond to that, just leaned back against the seat, trying not to let my mind drift back to the last time I’d been in the rookie’s truck with him.

  “Let’s talk about something else,” I said, when the silence had gone on too long.

  “Like what?”

  “Anything. Anything distracting.”

  “There is actually something I need to share with you.”

  “Share?” I asked. That would be distracting. Firemen didn’t share.

  “It’s relevant to our positions here.”

  “Our positions?” I didn’t look back. “You mean me, the desperately overqualified and yet somehow underrated newcomer—and you, the rookie who wants my job?”

  “Yes.”

  I looked out the window. “Bring it on, pal.”

  “First of all,” he went on, “I want you to know that I know that you are a better firefighter than I am.”

  That caught my attention.

  “I know it,” he went on. “Everybody knows it. If it were up to me, I’d just back out of this whole situation and let you have your rightful place.”

  “Great,” I said.

  “But I can’t.”

  “It’s not up to you?” I asked.

  “Not entirely.”

  “Who’s it up to?”

  “That’s what I want to talk to you about.”

  “Okay,” I said. “Talk.”

  But he hesitated. “I’m about to tell you something I’ve never told anybody.”

  “Maybe you shouldn’t,” I said.

  “I think I want to. Have wanted to for a while, actually,” he said.

  “You’ve been wanting to tell me your biggest secret for a while?”

  “Someone, at least. But when I started thinking about who I could trust—you were at the top of the list. Actually, you were the list. Just the whole list.”

  The whole list? I squinted at him. “Parents?”

  “Not for this.”

  “Sisters?”

  “Nope.”

  “Friends?”

  “You’re my friend, aren’t you?”

  “Friend-slash-enemy.”

  “Fair enough.”

  He was stalling. “Out with it, then.”

  “Okay,” he said. He adjusted his hands on the wheel. “When I was a kid, I used to hang out with these two boys from my neighborhood. I was the youngest of a bunch of kids, and all our parents worked, and these kids and I just kind of ran around all summer pretty much unsupervised. We didn’t misbehave, we just did kid stuff. Looked for bottle caps. Collected sticks. Set up toy soldiers. But our favorite thing to do was set little fires and put them out—and it was especially my favorite thing to do because my dad was a firefighter and so the other boys, even though they were older, totally deferred to my expertise.”

  “Okay,” I said, wondering what any of this might have to do with me.

  “Anyway, there was a warehouse district just past our neighborhood with lots of abandoned buildings. We weren’t supposed to go there. Our moms had drawn a line at Battle Street that we were never, ever supposed to cross. So of course we crossed it all the time.”

  “Of course.”

  “And one day, one of us—and I’m not even sure, honestly, who it was—decided we should set a matchbox on fire and toss it through the window of one of the empty warehouses.”

  I felt a tightness in my chest. This was not going to end well.

  “I was eight,” Owen went on. “My details are really fuzzy, but we slid open the drawer of a matchbox, and then we tilted the matches up out of it and closed it again just enough to hold the matchsticks out, in a spray. And then we lit them. And then one of us tossed the whole thing through a broken window, and we took off running.”

  This was starting to ring some bells for me. This story sounded familiar.

  “What were we thinking? What were we expecting? What were our goals? I think we hoped the building would shoot up like a Fourth of July firework.

  “We’d played in that warehouse before, lots of times,” he went on. “The ground floor was empty, for the most part. I’ve thought about it so often, and I can’t imagine how the matches didn’t just burn themselves out on the concrete floor.”

  “But they didn’t.”

  He shook his head. “They didn’t. Turns out, it was an old paper factory.”

  I turned to look at him.

  Oh God. I knew that fire. Everybody knew that fire.

  I turned to him and met his eyes. As soon as I did, he knew I knew.

  I lowered my voice—for no reason. “We’re talking about the Boston Paper Company fire?”

  He nodded.

  “You started the Boston Paper Company fire?” I asked.

  He nodded again, then went on. “Walking home at sunset, we saw it. There was fire coming out of every window, black
smoke everywhere, and a funnel-shaped tornado of fire rising from the roof. Every company in the city was called to that fire. The streets were closed off. They had to turn off the electricity to ten city blocks. It was unstoppable. The upper stories were all filled with reams of paper—dry, brittle paper. We watched it burn. We could feel the heat. It sounded like a freight train—so loud, I could feel the roar on my skin.”

  “I remember. It was too hot for water. It had to burn itself out.”

  He nodded. “And when the walls finally collapsed, they took the surrounding buildings down with them.”

  “A firefighter was killed by one of the falling walls.”

  The rookie nodded. “But not just any firefighter,” he said. “My uncle.”

  A long sigh seeped out of me. Not just any firefighter. His uncle.

  He ran a hand through his hair. “An eyewitness said she’d seen two boys running from the warehouse—not three, two. The other boys were brothers, and their mother watched them staring endlessly at the coverage and somehow, in that way moms have, she just knew. She got them to confess, but they never ratted me out. Nobody looked for a third kid. The official story was ‘two boys.’ The media circus was so insane, they wound up moving away—down to Florida, I think.”

  “And you never told anybody you’d been there.”

  He shook his head.

  “That’s why it took you so long to join up. Even with your dad pushing.”

  He tapped on the steering wheel. “It was like that day sealed me into an impossible fate. To spend the rest of my life avoiding everything about fires—and to be duty-bound to join the fire service.”

  “Why are you duty-bound to join?”

  A little shrug. “My dad wants me to.”

  “It’s your apology,” I said.

  “It’s the shittiest apology ever, but it’s all I’ve got.”

  I studied him a second. “You just want to bake cookies.”

  “Pretty much.”

  “But you can’t. Or you think you can’t.”

  “I brought my dad indescribable grief.”

  “Are you atoning for the fire?”

  He gave the tiniest shrug. “He’s still grieving, in a way, my dad. Even now. If there’s anything I can do, I have to do it.”