by Sean Flynn
She was his little sister, twenty-six now, married. Paul and Denise had raised her from the age of ten, when their parents died, George Brotherton from cancer in May of 1983, Helen from a broken heart two months later. They weren't married yet, Paul and Denise. In fact, Helen died the day after Paul told her he was going to marry Denise. “That's nice,” she said. “But I'm afraid I won't be there.” She had a massive coronary the next morning, dead before the paramedics got her to Worcester City Hospital. After that, Denise would spend the night when Paul worked an overnight tour, make sure Kim ate dinner and brushed her teeth and went to bed on time. She moved the wedding up, too, so she'd set a better example for Kim.
Paul parked behind the station, in a blacktopped lot surrounded by a rusting chain-link fence. The big overhead doors, four of them that mirrored the four fronting Central Street, were closed against the December chill, so he walked to the corner of the building and gave the pedestrian door a hard tug. It hesitated, then opened with a scrape. Damn door never fit quite right. Paul didn't even notice anymore. After five years living half his life in this station—two days on, two days off, two nights on, three days off—he'd gotten used to the quirks, the loose tiles and peeling paint and wobbly doorknobs. The smell didn't bother him, either, an industrial perfume of fresh diesel and stale smoke. It used to be worse, the diesel stink, before the city finally sprang for the exhaust vacuums, long, flexible tubes that clamped onto the tailpipes of the trucks when they backed into the station after a run. But the smoke stink lingered, always would. Part of it was residue from triple-deckers and tenements, carbonized molecules that had bonded with the gear, fused with the fireproof fibers of the coats hanging on the trucks and in the canvas sheathing of the hoses. The rest of it came from the cigarettes and cigars that no one was supposed to be smoking anyway. Paul wished the bosses would crack down. He'd already quit smoking in the house, in the car, and in front of his boys. If the chief made him light up outside, forced him to stand in the sleet, maybe he'd finally give it up for good. He patted his breast pocket, made sure his Merits were there. Firemen weren't sticklers for a smoke-free workplace.
Paul turned right just inside the door, tromped up a dim stairwell to the second floor, then took a quick right and a quick left down a dingy hallway painted an institutional beige that matched the worn-out linoleum floor. The locker room was halfway down the corridor, set into the middle of the building. The walls in there were brighter. For twenty years, ever since Central Street opened, men had been pasting cheesecake pinups and raunchy centerfolds on the cinderblock. It was a museum of soft-core pornography, faded foldouts of soft-bodied Playmates from the seventies half-covered by siliconed and shaved Pets from the nineties. No one ever complained. All of the firefighters in Worcester were men, and God help the pansy who whined about naked broads on the walls.
In front of his locker, Paul tugged off his jeans, removed his shirt, and hung them on hooks inside. Then he pulled on his work clothes, dark blue trousers and a dark blue sweatshirt with a denim collar and the department shield screened over the heart. He put his badge inside his wallet, and then put his wallet on the shelf inside the locker. Paul never carried his badge on duty. It was sacred, a silver-toned scarab. He would never risk losing it in the frenzy of a fire, dropping it into the ashes. And if his number came up, if God turned to the page where his name was embossed, he didn't want his badge melting in the heat. The dog tags around his neck, the ones the air force gave him when they stranded him in Valdosta, Georgia, for four gnat-infested years, would tell the searchers whose corpse it was.
He had other things in his wallet, important things he didn't want getting burned or soaked. In the center compartment, where the folding money was supposed to go, he had his season ticket for the Massachusetts state lottery. Couldn't lose that—odds were the state would call his number before the good Lord would. And there was a laminated Get Out of Jail Free card from an old Monopoly game, a gag gift that had become a good luck charm of sorts. Couldn't lose that, either.
He also had two pale blue slips of paper, each about the size of a business card, that announced the premiere Worcester performance of the Bobby Watson Band. “This card good for one free drink!” each read across the bottom. He'd gotten them when he'd paid the cover at the door of a downtown nightclub called Tammany Hall on June 16, 1983. That was the first night he'd gone out with Denise. It wasn't a date, couldn't have been, since they were both engaged to other people. He'd thought about cashing in the chits at the bar. He tucked them in his wallet instead, paid the bartender cash. He couldn't explain why. Just a feeling.
He double-checked his wallet, made sure it was properly stored in his locker. He started to shut the door, stopped, looked at the photo taped inside. Paul and all six of his boys, lined up on a beach with their backsides to the camera, their trunks pulled down enough to show the tops of their ass cracks. “Beach Bums,” he called it. He chuckled to himself again, then swung the door shut. He'd get to the bedroom next week.
The trucks were lined up in their proper bays, four of them, each pointed toward the doors that, when the alarm went off, would open onto Central Street. From the back, which is where most of the men spent most of their time, Engine 1 was on the right, next to the watch room where one man monitored the phone and the radio chatter. Left of the engine was Rescue 1, a boxy van of red enamel and chromed compartments, shorter than any engine or ladder but wide enough to hold five men and all their gear comfortably in the back. Next over was Ladder 1, long as a semitrailer with 110 feet of high-tensile aluminum rungs folded across the back. Against the far wall, near the alcove where the free weights and secondhand Nautilus were set up, was Car 3, a white Ford Expedition with the words “Worcester Fire Department” and “Dial 911” painted on the side. Car 3 was reserved for the north end district chief, which for Paul's shift, Group II, was Mike McNamee.
The entire shift was in the station by five o'clock. Most of them gathered behind Engine 1, where there was a conference table with a wood-grain laminate top, chipped and cracked, and a handful of mismatched chairs, a couple with doubled-over sections of the Worcester Telegram & Gazette laid over the springs that stabbed through the upholstery. Secondhand stuff, most of it picked out of the Dumpster behind Commonwealth Stationers. Fraternity house basements had better furnishings.
Paul looked around, took stock of who was on that night. Capt. Robert A. Johnson, a stocky ex-marine with well-creased crow's-feet around his eyes, leaned both elbows on the table, flicking ashes from a generic menthol into a Styrofoam cup that had a splash of cold coffee in the bottom. Three of his regular men—Bob McCann, Jon Davies, Charlie Murphy—were in; the fourth, John King, was on a vacation day, but he'd swapped shifts with another guy to cover for him. His name was Jerry Lucey, a rescue man by trade.
Ladder 1 was all set. Capt. Mike Coakley and his four firefighters were all in, a tight crew of veterans who'd worked together for well more than a decade: his junior man, Bert Davis, had been on the ladder for fourteen years. John Casello, a swarthy fellow who played a mean game of pinochle, and A.C. Davidson, tall with a sandy mustache, were loitering near the kitchen. The fifth ladder man, Steve Connole, was dropping coins in one of the soda machines next to the kitchen. He'd been on Ladder 1 for seventeen years, starting when it was still Aerial Scope 1, an aging truck that was replaced in 1994. “Hey, Yogi, what's up?” Paul said as he passed him. Most people called Connole Yogi, on account of his bearish girth and bottomless gut, which once got him booted out of an all-you-can-eat restaurant before he'd had all that he could, in fact, eat. Yogi grunted back.
On Rescue 1, Lt. Dave Halvorsen, broad-beamed with a military crew cut who looked ten years younger than his early fifties, was missing four of his regular men. Two were on vacation, one was out sick, and another, Gary Williams, had swapped a shift so he could go to a Christmas party with his wife. Craig Boisvert, who normally worked Engine 1 in a different tour group, was filling in for Williams. Halvorsen pulled in an
other man on overtime, Charlie Rogacz, from a Group III engine. Paul could hear him before he saw him, Charlie's voice like branches grinding through a low-speed wood chipper. Except for Paul and the lieutenant, the only other regular working that night was Tommy Dwyer, a fireplug of a man with white hair and an elaborate mustache that draped like raw wool to his jaw line.
Tommy was Paul's usual partner, the man who crawled next to him into the boiling black of a fire and sat next to him in the quiet hours at the station, flipping through the television channels until they found Jerry Springer refereeing a white-trash brawl. It was odd, in a way, that Tom and Paul were close, that the two men not only liked each other but routinely placed their lives in each other's hands. Five years earlier, Tom hadn't wanted Paul working Rescue 1. It was nothing personal. Rescue guys, by the nature of their job, were an exceptionally tight bunch. They saw more action than anyone else, for the simple reason that they were dispatched to every working fire in the city. An engine in one of the quieter neighborhoods might go six weeks without catching a whiff of smoke. And on the fire ground, rescue work seemed more dangerous, or at least more daring. Engine companies extinguished the fire, actually put the wet stuff on the red stuff. Ladder guys opened the building—bashed doors, smashed windows, chopped holes in the roof—to let the engine men in and to let the smoke and the heat out. While that was going on, the rescue men plunged inside, searching for flames that might have spread or people who might be trapped. They carried only rudimentary tools—a flat-head ax or a medieval-looking truncheon called a Haligan—but never a hose that could beat back a sudden blowup or wash a retreat through a fast-sprouting forest of orange. Their job wasn't necessarily more important and wasn't even always more perilous. But if fighting fire was a war, and some nights it was, the rescue men would be walking point.
That's where Paul had always wanted to be, on point. He'd logged eleven years on engines and ladders, learning the rudiments, all the basic skills required to control and conquer fire. Partly, he figured he'd need to know all that to be a good rescue man. Mostly, he needed a decade under his belt before he had enough seniority to force his way onto the truck. That finally happened in 1994. There was one open slot on Rescue 1, which for a few months had been temporarily filled by a fireman named Jimmy. He expected to get the official appointment, become a permanent rescue man, and was so sure of it he had the Rescue 1 shield bolted to his helmet. He was good at the job, and the other men liked him. They wanted to keep him on the team.
Then Paul asked to be transferred. Tom Dwyer called him at home, tried to discourage him. “Look, I'm not telling you what to do,” he said. “I mean, it's your right. You've got the seniority. But I'm just saying, the guys like Jimmy. Nobody wants to see him go.”
“Too bad,” Paul said. “I've waited ten years for this. I want it.”
“Hey, you do what you want. I'm just telling you, the guys like Jimmy. A lot.”
“Tough.”
Jimmy was sent to an engine. Paul transferred in, got a chilly reception. He started hearing whispers through the department grapevine, secondhand grumblings, nothing directly to his face. You never know what can happen in a fire. Guys can get lost, get left behind. All kinds of things can happen. Station house grousing. All bluffs, too, because no man worth his badge would leave a brother in trouble. The whole point of being a fireman is to save people. But Paul was rattled enough to mention it to his chief, Mike. “Let it go,” Mike told him. “They'll get over it. You'll be fine.”
Which he was. It didn't take long, either. It was hard not to like Paul. He was a chronic smart-ass, an ever-flowing fountain of wisecracks. Even in the shower, standing buck naked, he'd pop off. He eyeballed a bald guy once, staring at his scalp, then at his furry back, then up to the head, down to the black-haired shoulders. “Jesus,” he said, as if he'd discovered an enormous bug under a rock. “God sure has a weird sense of humor, huh?” In the station house, being funny, even viciously so, was a survival skill. So was being able to take it. The patter was a cacophony of taunts and put-downs, vicious verbal jabs and savage parries, the sharp squish of balls getting busted. And that was among guys who liked each other. The outcasts, the handful of men marked as cowards or cretins or ass-kissers, were either mercilessly harassed or completely ignored. It was hard to tell which was worse: a fire-house is a miserable place if no one likes you, and an awfully lonely place if no one will talk to you. But everyone talked to Paul. Everyone liked Paul.
5
MIKE MCNAMEE CROSSED THE APPARATUS FLOOR A FEW MIN-utes before five-thirty, coming from the far side, where Car 3 was parked, toward the kitchen. He saw Paul Brotherton heading his way, stocky legs taking deliberate strides, solid arms swinging from wide shoulders. He heard Paul say something— not the words, only the tone. A wisecrack. Had to be, because it always was.
Mike let out a low laugh on cue, shook his head, grinned. Didn't matter what the joke was. It was probably harmless and probably funny. “Evenin', Paul,” he said.
“Chief.” Paul kept walking, disappeared around the far side of Rescue 1.
Mike was distracted, his mind wandering, thinking about his father. Dead two years today, almost to the hour. The last time Mike saw him was a Monday night, December 1, 1997, the night William V. McNamee started driving south to Florida. Mike gave him a bear hug, stepped back, poked him gently in the chest. “If you get tired, you pull over,” Mike told his father. Mock stern. “Got it?”
His father nodded patiently, the way men do when they're being lectured by the children they've raised. But he kept his word. Two days later, just after six o'clock in the evening, he turned off the interstate in Maryland, looking for a hotel he used to stay in with his wife before she died. He made a couple of wrong turns, took his eye off the road, and drove into the back end of a tractor trailer. He died instantly.
Mike had to tell two of his three sisters. Hardest calls he'd ever made, his fingers trembling when he dialed, his voice weak, cracking when he said the words. He tried not to dwell on it, usually didn't. But the anniversary was tough.
He passed behind Engine 1 and veered sharply to the right, aiming for the coffeepot. At the table, sitting on the mismatched chairs, he saw Jerry Lucey and Craig Boisvert. He knew them well enough to recognize their faces, remember their names. Craig was fairly new, only a couple years on the job, and assigned to a different tour group. Promising kid. Jerry was more familiar. He worked on the HazMat team with Mike, but unless a tanker flipped on I-290 or a chlorine tank sprung a leak, he didn't see him much. Mike knew his reputation, though. Driven, aggressive, one of those guys who was born with soot in his blood, a fireman long before he ever took the test or drove an engine or climbed a ladder. Jerry wanted the job so bad that he quit driving a truck for Coca-Cola and took a seat among the doomed recruits of 1991; the city had already announced layoffs for the following year. Last in, first out, which meant Jerry and the rest of the recruits would be laid off as soon as they finished their training. He stuck it out for a year, supporting his wife and two boys with odd jobs, until he was recalled in July 1992. Nine months later, he was riding Rescue 1. A rookie working rescue was unheard of, but Jerry wanted it so bad, drove so hard, the captain took him on anyway. Now a seven-year veteran, he taught at the Massachusetts Firefighting Academy, marched in the color guard.
“A fireman's fireman,” the other guys said about Jerry. “A good fireman,” the highest compliment anyone could ever hear in the station. Oh, there might be slightly more effusive praise. If, say, a man snatched a baby from a melting crib, he might have been told “Good save.” But only in a gruff mumble. Firemen were low-key with praise, reflexively averse to fawning, which was fine since most of them tended toward humility, almost as if they feared taunting the fire gods with any giddy display of bravado. Better to do the job quietly, professionally.
“Hello, gentlemen,” Mike said as he passed. “So, who are you two supposed to be tonight?”
“I swapped on for John King,”
Jerry said.
“And I'm in for Gary Williams,” Craig said.
Mike nodded, pulled a Styrofoam cup from the stack, lifted the black lever on the silver pot.
“Uh, Chief?”
Mike looked over his shoulder. Jerry was talking. Except for his slightly elfin ears, he bore a striking resemblance to Tom Hanks, or what Hanks would look like after the wardrobe and makeup people got him ready to walk onto a firehouse set: dark Celtic eyes and jet-black hair, a thick, almost Victorian, mustache.
“Would you mind if we worked our own trucks?”
Mike stared at them blankly. He aligned their faces with their trucks, Jerry on the rescue, Craig on the engine. “Why would we want to do that?” he deadpanned. “That makes sense.” He waited for a laugh, or at least a chuckle. Jerry and Craig looked at him, as though they weren't sure if the chief was serious. “Yeah, of course,” Mike said. “Go ahead.”
He finished filling his cup from the pot, then started walking back across the floor. He did a quick head count. Only one truck was running short out of Central tonight. Not bad. Better than a lot of other nights, truth be told. It used to be much worse, the short-staffing. Back in the eighties, after the budget got so badly squeezed, more than half the trucks were going out with only three men on them, the equivalent of fielding a football team without an offensive line. Guys were doing solo rescues, stumbling into black passages alone, no one to back them up, bail them out if things went bad. There was one night a lady jumped from a flaming fifth-floor window because the ladder truck didn't have enough men to raise the fifty-five footer in time. They had to recruit a civilian—a freaking civilian—to hoist it up. They missed Constance Walker by fifteen seconds. When she jumped, she bounced off the ladder man climbing up to get her. She died when she hit the pavement.
