Report from Engine Co. 82 (13 page)

“What’s the matter, Bill?” Knipps asks.

“I don’t know,” Kelsey answers. “I must have gotten something down my boot.”

“Did it burn ya?”

“I don’t know, but it hurts like hell.”

“Lemme take the line,” Knipps says, as he moves up.

“No, it’s all right. Let me make the next room.”

“C’mon take a blow. We have the whole goddam floor to go yet,” Knipps says, almost pulling the nozzle from Kelsey’s hands.

“Yeah, go take a blow Bill,” Lieutenant Welch says. “See how bad it’s burned.”

Kelsey has no choice now. He moves out, and I take my place behind Knipps. “Give me some more line,” Knipps yells. Carroll
and Royce struggle to hump the hose in. We pass through what is remaining of the last two rooms. The bulk of the fire is extinguished,
but there is still smoke coming from behind the walls by the window frames. A ladder company will have to rip holes in the
wall so that we can get to the source of the smoke.

We can back out of these rooms for the time being. There is still fire in the other apartments. Knipps hands the nozzle back,
and I hand it to Carroll. “It’s about time,” he smiles, and his teeth are emphasized against his smoke-darkened face. The
floor is burned through in places, and Lieutenant Welch cautions Benny and Royce to be careful.

Vinny Royce is saying “That’s it, Benny, that’s it. Move in, move in,” but Benny is a seasoned firefighter, and needs no words
of encouragement. He moves quickly in and out of rooms, over and under arched beams laying across their path, moving the nozzle
in a circular motion as he goes.

Vinny, Lieutenant Welch, and Benny return to the hall, and are about to enter the last set of rooms. “I’ll take it now Ben,”
I say.

“No, that’s okay. I can manage,” Benny replies. Benny is one of my closest friends, but he wouldn’t give the nozzle over to
his mother if it meant a free trip to Ireland.

There is only one tactic for me to employ, and if it fails I’ll be boxed out of any action at this fire completely. “Listen
Lou,” I say to Lieutenant Welch, “the easiest way to do this, probably, is to relieve each other on the nob.”

Lieutenant Welch smiles, and I can see he knows what’s going on. It doesn’t matter to him who has the nozzle, because he is
next to the man all the time, and anyone in Engine 82 can do the job. “Dennis is right, Benny,” he says. “Let’s not knock
ourselves out.”

“Say no more.” Benny says, as I take the nob. This is a game we play among ourselves, called “steal the nob,” and Benny understands.
We can play it at a fire like this, because we are not having great difficulty in breathing, and the job is relatively easy.
But, it is not a game we can play often.

The rooms before me are hotter than I anticipated. I am on my knees, and sitting on my heels. Lieutenant Welch is beside me
in the same position, and Knipps is behind feeding the line to us. We advance slowly, moving our knees forward, inch by inch,
as if we were on a holy pilgrimage. We can’t see the sky in this apartment, and the smoke has nowhere to go. We have extinguished
the remaining fire in three rooms, and there is only one more room to go. It is in a corner of the building, and the fallen
roof gives the impression of a cathedral ceiling. We have to creep along on our stomachs. The room has lit up completely,
and the fire is reaching out towards us. It seems to be dancing, and as it moves it makes me think of an animated film of
the sun I saw recently at a science fair—all about a moving fire, one hundred and ten times larger than the earth, holding
our solar system together. The room before me is only ten by twelve feet, but it’s the closest any of us will get to the heat
of the sun.

I have my head down now, and the nozzle is directed at the ceiling. I don’t have to look up. I know the fire is cooling because
the smoke is banking down. Lieutenant Welch is next to me, saying, “Beautiful, Dennis, beautiful. Keep the stream on the ceiling,
we’ve got it made. It’s a cup of tea. Let’s move in another foot.”

The fire is out now, but the smoke is still heavy. There must still be fire in the walls, or caught between the ceiling and
the roof. We will need a truckman here fast, before it lights up again.

“Hey, get a Ladder company up here to pull the ceilings,” Lieutenant Welch yells back to no one in particular.

The room is still hot, but we are kneeling again. The water from the nozzle is cooling the walls, and spraying back at us.
My body is wet with perspiration, and the spray feels good.

“Shut down the line. I’m comin' in, and I don’t wanna get wet,” comes a voice from behind.

“It’s too damn cold out to get wet.”

I had forgotten about the cold. Big Van from Ladder 42 has come with a six-foot hook. The long wooden handle with its spiked
end looks like a broom handle next to Big Van. He is two heads taller than I, and when he reached 260 pounds he quit drinking
beer. He drinks scotch now, by the glassful, like we would drink beer, or a Frenchman his wine.

“What’s the problem here? Whadda ya want me to do?” he asks in that sincere way peculiar to big men. The smoke doesn’t seem
to affect him at all.

“Pull the ceilings Van,” Lieutenant Welch says. “See where all that smoke is coming from at the corner.”

Van pushes his hook up at the ceiling, and it goes through the plaster and lathe like a pin through a sponge. He pulls the
ceiling down in huge chunks, and we can see the fire. He backs out of the room so I can hit the fire, and when he returns
to pull more of the ceiling he complains about the drops of water falling on him.

Our job in this apartment is finished. The ceilings and walls are opened. The fire is out. We return to the other rooms to
let loose a final bath. Big Van works with his hook, and Vinny Royce, who has usurped the nob, takes care not to get him wet.

Chief Marks thunders into the room. He directs his portable lamp around the comers, and carefully checks for signs of living
fire. “How are you due here, Lieutenant?” he roars.

Lieutenant Welch answers quickly, “Second due on the second alarm, Chief.”

Since we are the second engine company assigned on the second alarm, Lieutenant Welch knows that there is not much left for
us to do here, and he waits for the order that relieves us. The first alarm companies will give the building a final wash
down.

Chief Marks moves from room to room, apartment to apartment, looking at every cranny and comer, fallen beam and ceiling. He
moves past us, and without looking in our direction, says, ’Take up, 82.” Those are the words we want to hear. We will be
back in the firehouse soon, and with dry clothing on we will sip coffee in the warmth and security of the kitchen.

Again in the street, the cold attacks me. The wet clothes stick to me. Chills run up and down my back. There is still a lot
of work to be done here, but it’s not our work this time. The wind and the cold won’t bother us any longer. The first alarm
companies will have to fight it out. We’re going home.

Chief Marks’ aide is standing in front of the burned-out building, a walkie-talkie strapped over his shoulders. The thing
is blaring out the Chiefs orders, and Carroll has to yell over the high screeching sound, “Hey, what happened to Bill Kelsey?”

“Who’s Bill Kelsey?” the aide yells back.

“The guy from Engine 82 who got something down his boot.”

“Oh, him,” the aide returns. “They brought him to Fulton Hospital in the Chiefs car. He’s got a nasty bum on his thigh, you
know?”

“Anybody else hurt?” Carroll asks.

“Yeah, a guy from Engine 50 fell through the floor—a guy named Roberti, or Roberto, or something like that.”

It’s all very impersonal. When a guy gets hurt at a fire, it’s easier to remember the injury than the man’s name. There are
many names, but the injuries are all about the same—a guy got burned, he fell through the roof or a floor, he got cut by falling
glass, the ceiling or a wall fell on him, or he was overcome by heat or smoke. These injuries can’t be prevented, not as long
as the best way to put out a fire is to get close to it.

The hose couplings are frozen, and we have to hoist them over the exhaust pipe again. Billy Valenzio, the company chauffeur,
leans down from the top of the engine, grabs the hose with one hand, and lifts it over the steaming pipe. I can see the strain
in his handsome Italian face, and say, “I’d help you, Billy, but I know that a good-looking guy with muscles like yours can
handle the job by himself.”

“Yeah,” Benny Carroll says, “if I had arms like you Bill, I’d pick the hose up two by two.”

“Anyway,” Royce interrupts, “you’d probably get mad at us if we tried to help ya. Every time ya pick the hose up ya say to
yourself ‘Man, this is good for my arms. I can just feel the muscles gettin’ bigger and bigger.’”

“C’mon guys, what did I do?” Valenzio laughs. “Just because God gifted me with strength and beauty is no reason to take this
abuse from guys like you.”

Billy, in fact, has large muscular arms, that go with his large muscular chest, and he has every reason to be vain. But he
isn’t. It is because he is such a humble guy that we give him the business every once in a while. “You’re all jealous,” he
says, as he strains with the next coupling.

“I’m not jealous,” Knipps says, climbing up the side of the apparatus. He helps Billy with the hose until the coupling thaws,
and loosens. “I figure if I do what you do, maybe some day 111 have arms like you.”

The laughing is over, and the hose is laid on the bed of the apparatus. The wind blows even harder as the apparatus moves
down the street toward the firehouse. It’s almost 5:30
AM.
as the truck backs into the firehouse. The stillness of the early morning hour is broken by the harsh sound of a siren as
a police car speeds down Intervale Avenue, but we don’t pay any attention to it. All we care about is sitting in the warm
kitchen and relaxing for a while.

I am changing into a dry pair of pants as the bells come in. “Damn it, give me a break,” I think as I slide down the pole
from the second floor to the apparatus floor. Fortunately, the box that has been pulled is only five blocks away, on Boston
Road. It is a false alarm. In ten minutes we have responded, made a search of the neighborhood, and returned to the firehouse.
We have two more false alarms before the day crew begins arriving at eight o’clock. It is nine o’clock before I start the
sixty-mile drive home to a good day’s sleep.

T
HE
night is balmy, unlike anything I remember of past March nights. There is an easy wind blowing over the South Bronx from
the Hunts Point Bay, bringing with it a peculiar garbage-smell of spring. The doors of the firehouse are open, and standing
about in the front of our quarters we watch a small pack of boys ride their bicycles aimlessly up and down Home Street, stopping
occasionally in front of Pete’s Bodega to talk with a group of girls gathered there. The bicycle rims shine in the twilight,
and foxtails hang casually from rear fenders. I count the circling boys and their bicycles. There are eight in the pack, dungareed
and polo-shirted, healthy black or tan faces smiling, satisfied and happy on the first warm night of the year. Five of them
ride sleek English racers, their backs arched over as they control the low half-moon handle bars, and the click-clicking sounds
of sprockets are heard intermittently through the din of traffic as they coast down the street. The other three ride the heavier-type
American bike—like the formidable Schwinn I dreamed about as a boy, but never owned. How hard their fathers must have worked
to buy these bicycles, and how their mothers must have saved, for there is never an excess of money for people who live on
Home Street.

As I watch the boys ride down the darkening street, I remember begging Bobby Walsh for a ride on his bicycle. “Cmon Bob, just
a little ride, down to Jasper’s candy store and back. Cmon Bob.” How different this poverty of today is from the poverty of
my childhood. Kids ride new, gleaming, expensive bicycles, mothers watch television between telephone calls, and fathers drive
automobiles. Yet, the poverty is just as real, just as hurting, and the ignominy of being without money—being poor in a country
where there is gold mixed with the street’s concrete—is as obvious to the people of Home Street as it was to me on East Fifty-sixth
Street twenty years ago.

I was twelve years old when our first television set was given to us. My uncle was working for the railroad, and his track
boss bought a new set. He gave the old one to my uncle, and my uncle gave it to us. It had a ten inch screen encased in a
wooden cabinet. I don’t remember the cabinet style, or the shape of the control knobs, just that the reception was never very
clear. My uncle delivered the set on a summer weekend, and I remember that my mother worried about how she would hide it from
the welfare investigator. Television sets weren’t allowed then, nor were telephones. I never understood that. Why should we
hide a television set that was given to us? It was the rules. If one welfare family had a television set, even if it were
given to them, then everybody on the dole would expect one. The set was covered with an old bedspread. It sat in the corner
of our living room looking like a square box covered with an old bedspread. My mother would occasionally put a vase on top
of it to make it appear that it had a purpose, but it still looked like a square box covered with an old bedspread. In the
afternoon, the bedspread could be removed, because the welfare investigator only visited in the mornings. Either the afternoons
were his own, or he spent the time in his office writing reports about suspicious-looking objects covered with old bedspreads.
I don’t know. But, that was during the McCarthy era, and everyone and everything was suspect.