Report from Engine Co. 82 (25 page)

The traffic is heavy, and I reprove myself for oversleeping. It is seven-thirty, and I’m just passing Stony Point. It was
near here that Benedict Arnold’s wife charmed Washington as her husband made off for London. It is beautiful country, made
more beautiful by the season. Normally, I would be passing Tappan by now, and the traffic would move freely. But the speedometer
reads first 50, then 30, then 45, then 25 and from a hilltop I can see the long parade of automobiles before me, marching
two by two and out of step toward the city. How I hate to drive. One of the luxuries of the very rich is that they don’t have
to drive their own cars, and they can watch the leaves turn as they go from place to place. The leaves are turning now, but
I can’t watch them. I begin to daydream.

“Oh Rodney, make a stop at Tiffany’s before we go on to the office. I want to pick up a little something for Mrs. Smith. Isn’t
it clever of the maple to shed his leaves in preparation for the cold winter ahead.”

It’s twenty minutes to nine as I park the car next to Pete’s Bodega, a Spanish grocery store across the street from the fire-house.
Like many industrious Puerto Ricans, Pete came to this country and opened up a small bodega. Eleven years later he found he
could buy his wife a new Cadillac with leather upholstery and wire wheels. Then he bought the frame building that housed his
bodega, and the two buildings adjoining it. He attached a garage to protect the Cadillac from the neighborhood kids, and he
double padlocked it, and built a mesh wire fence around it, and padlocked that. He never gets to drive the Cadillac though,
because he works the bodega fourteen hours a day, seven days a week. His wife doesn’t get to drive it much either, because
it takes two to run the store. The garage proved to be a good investment for them.

Charlie McCartty is in the firehouse kitchen munching an onion roll. Most of the day crew, and some of the night crew are
sitting around drinking coffee and talking idly. Charlie is standing with an elbow propped on top of the soda machine. He
spots me, and says in his deepest authoritarian voice, “It’s about time you got here, Dennis. I’m gettin’ sick an’ tired of
you minute men gettin’ in here just before the nine o’clock bells. The brothers are tired, and they need relief.”

“Up yours, Charlie,” I say dispassionately.

“Up mine, huh? Up your old lady’s.” He pauses, then adds, “That’s probably why you can’t get in here in time.”

“That’s probably why everyone is late around here,” Jerry Herbert says.

“Listen guys,” I say, not bothering to give an explanation, “it’s only a quarter to nine, and the book of regulations says
we don’t have to start until nine. Give me a break.”

“No breaks around here,” Charlie says. He puts his coffee cup on the soda machine, and throws his heavy powerful arms around
me.

“Lemme give ya a little hug,” he says.

I feel enveloped and crowded by his husky frame, like a plastic toy being pressure-wrapped in cellophane. He squeezes with
small effort, and I can feel a slight pain in the small of my back. Not a hurting pain, but one of relief, like when a chiropractor’s
at work.

“Listen Charlie,” I yell, “love me or leave me, but don’t go halfway.”

He releases his hold, and laughs, “But you know I love ya, Dennis.”

“So does that broad in Prospect Hills,” I return. Charlie lives in a small town called Prospect Hills.

Benny Carroll is sitting at the back table reading a newspaper. He looks up, and interjects, “That broad in Prospect Hills
loves everybody.”

Everyone but Charlie laughs.

“Ahh, turnin’ against me, huh?” Charlie says, mocking a surprised look. “At least I don’t have the long gray line around my
house everytime I go to work.”

Benny lives near the United States Military Academy at West Point.

“O.K., Charlie. Ya got me,” Benny says. “Now sit down and stop making a fool of yourself.”

Malachy McKeon walks into the kitchen. He worked last night, and has changed into his civilian clothes. Charlie’s expression
changes from surprise to one of concern. “Did you call the insurance company, Mai?” he asks.

“No, not yet,” McKeon answers. “Ill wait until after I have my coffee.” Mai is twenty-six, a handsome man, with penetrating
brown eyes. He is usually full of life, and giving away smiles to everyone he meets. Now though, I sense indifference as he
pours his coffee.

“Why, Mai?” I ask. “What happened?”

“They purloined his automobile last night,” Charlie answers. Even Malachy laughs as these words come from Charlie’s mouth.

“Is that right? That’s the third one in the last few months.”

The third? Who else besides me and Freddy Schoan?”

“Eddy Montaign. About two months ago. Poor bastardl It was the first new car he ever owned.”

Billy O’Mann gets up to pour another cup of coffee, and says, “Well it’s the goddam city’s fault. They could fence off that
whole area across the street, there by Pete’s Bodega. It’s city property, and we could fit fifteen cars there, but instead
they fence off all the vacant lots so people won’t dump garbage. They must have spent half a million bucks fencing off vacant
lots in the last year. So the people throw the garbage over the fence, and it makes it twice, three times as hard for us to
put out rubbish fires.”

A probationary fireman was on the back step with Benny Carroll and me not so long ago. As we were pulling out of quarters,
the probie noticed three youths sitting on the fender of his car. It was a new car, and the moonlight shone on its fenders.
“Get off the car. Whatsa matter with you?” the probie yelled over the loudness of the siren, and the pumper raced out of view
of the sneering youths. It was a bad move, and I told the probie that it was a bad move. After he has worked in the South
Bronx for a while he will leam that it never pays to say anything to anyone on the street unless the words are kind, or unless
someone is going to get locked up. And if someone is going to get locked up it makes even less sense to say anything to him.
If a guy refuses to move his double-parked car as we respond to an alarm, give him a ticket. If someone interferes with us
as we try to fight a fire, have him locked up. It never pays to be less than polite, and there is no such thing as verbal
satisfaction. When we returned from the alarm the youths were not sitting on the probie’s car anymore, and neither was his
radio antenna. And the antennas of twelve cars in front of the firehouse were broken. See, it never pays. The probie understood.

“What we really need,” Billy-o continues, “is armored protection like Pete has around his Cadillac over there. A steel garage
and a chain-link fence. But I’d even settle for chicken wire if the city would give us the space. But they won’t, and we all
know it.”

“Yeah, but what can you do about it?” mumbles George Hieg-man. A short, stocky man, Hiegman is a sixteen-year veteran of the
job, and an Engine 85 chauffeur. He’s been around the fires and the firehouses, and his opinion is respected. He continues,
“The firemen always end up with the brown part of the stick. You know, the part that was dipped in human excrement.” Some
of the younger firemen laugh, but the older guys are used to the way Hiegman talks.

“What department,” he asks, “does the mayor call on to cut its budget from year to year? The Fire Department. The traditional
budget cutters. And it’s our own fault. We’re the dopes who paint our own kitchen to make it livable. The city buys television
sets for every police precinct in the city so the cops can watch closed-circuit training films. We have to watch training
films too, but does the city buy television sets for us? Damn right they don’t. The firemen like to watch television between
fires so let them buy their own. And we have to pay for a subscription to a department magazine so the bosses can feed us
technical information that we have to memorize if we want to pass the next Lieutenant’s examination. We write in the department
journals with our own pens, and we take up collections to buy an air conditioner, or a new stove, or supplies to build a decent
sitting room in a damp cellar. We never make calls on the department telephone. Instead we pay a monthly bill for a pay phone.
When we need paper towels, we go shake down a school custodian. When we need bandages for the first-aid kits, which we paid
for, we have to con some nurse at a hospital.”

I remember as George says this, Billy O’Mann walking, helmet in hand, into the emergency room at Bronx Hospital. The nurse
there was having a bad day.

“Listen ma’am,” he said, “do you think you could give us some gauze pads and bandages?”

“Dammit, you firemen are always coming in here and bothering us. Why don’t you go to a drug store?”

“O.K., lady, you can shove the bandages,” snapped Billy.

George continues, “… and the most important tool we use we pay for ourselves—the halligan tool. Why should the city pay for
it when the firemen go out and buy it themselves?”

The companies were operating at Home and Simpson Streets. A car was on fire, and Charlie McCartty dropped his halligan tool
on the street as he went to open the hood. When he turned around again, the halligan was gone. Back at the firehouse later
in the afternoon, the Captain gives a kid two dollars. The kid tells the Captain that he’ll find the halligan under the stairs
at 987 Simpson Street. It was there.

“Why didn’t ya arrest the kid, Cap?” someone asked.

“Look at it this way,” he answered, “we just saved ourselves a sawbuck.”

“Jesus, George,” Billy-o says, “all I want is an eight-hundred-dollar parking lot across the street. You just increased the
Fire Department budget a couple a million dollars with those complaints.”

“Yeah,” George says, “it’s amazin' what wonders you can do with a flip o' the tongue, isn’t it?” The bells start to come in,
and everyone is silent for a moment. The first round of eleven came through. It’s nine o’clock, and the men in the kitchen
talk over the second half of the 11-n nine o’clock test signal.

George is right, I think. Especially about the television set. I wish the hell we could get rid of it. Ill never forget sitting
in the kitchen, waiting expectantly for Humphrey Bogart to fondle those steel balls in the greatest courtroom scene to be
put on film. Here he comes. He’s walking down the hall. He passes his junior officers waiting outside the court. He stops.
Good old Bogey, he never lets the enemy get the edge on him. “Good morning, gentlemen,” he says in that cool, polished way.
He opens the door, and enters the court. I wait. He salutes the court. I am about to be rewarded for being a loyal Bogart
fan. Then—then the bells toll.

I wouldn’t have minded if it was a fire. But it was a false alarm. Yes, get rid of the television. I wasn’t even interested
in seeing Jose Ferrer throw a glass of champagne in Fred Mac-Murray’s face. If the administration wants us to watch television
training films, let them buy us a television set.

The room is quiet, but the conversation interests me so, that I do not want to see it die.

“The real sad thing about it though,” I say dogmatically, stressing the
real
, “is that we know the system will never change unless the firemen in this city reabze they are being duped.”

“That’s a grammatical redundancy,” says George. “Duped and firemen mean the same thing. It’s oxymoronic to say that a fireman
realizes reality. Two opposite things don’t match up—if we did realize reality we would not be doing this kind of work for
a living. Ya gotta be nuts to go into a fire, and crazy people don’t recognize reality. Ergo, ‘firemen can’t realize they
are being duped’ is a grammatical redundancy ta begin wit’.”

The kitchen is filled with laughter as George washes his cup in the sink. George’s hands are wet as he turns around. Cagey
Dulland is at the coffee urn, and his back is towards George. “Kerchoo,” George yells, and shakes off the excess water on
Cagey’s neck.

“God bless you,” says Billy-o.

“Goddammit, George,” says Cagey, wiping the back of his neck. The laughter increases as unsuspecting Dulland pulls a handkerchief
from his back pocket.

The bells start ringing, and the laughter stops. Box 2295 comes in. Engine 73 and Ladder 42 are first due there. We’re safe.

Billy-o returns to
The New York Times.
George makes a motion to me as if to say “Watch this.”

“Listen Billy,” he says, “I bet you didn’t think I knew all of those big words. You know, even us guys who read the
Daily News
got some smarts.”

Billy-o lays the
Times
on the table, smiles, and says, “George pal, there is nothing you could say that would surprise me. You are an idol in my
eyes. But that ‘oxy-something’ really threw me.”

“Yeah,” says George, “you don’t find words like that in the
Times.
Ya gotta read those little Dell books with the pictures in ’em.”

Billy-o laughs in agreement as the bells come in again. Box 2404.

“Engine Eighty-five only,” yells the housewatchman. George, Bill Robbie, Marty Hannon, and the other members of 85 hustle
out to the apparatus floor.

The time passes quickly, and Engine 85 returns to quarters. It was the first false alarm of the day. I am drinking another
cup of coffee as the nine-thirty signal comes in—two rounds of eleven bells. It’s time to start our daily committee work,
wash the floors, clean the tables, change the linen, make the beds, shine the poles, wash the windows, clean the toilets,
sweep the cellar. It reminds me of a song from
Cinderella.

Billy-o, McCartty, and I go to the second floor. Billy and Charlie begin to strip the sheets from the beds as I grab a toilet
brush and a pail and head into the bathroom. The smell is terrible, and I open the only window. I can see someone’s feet beneath
the commode stall door. “Give us a courtesy flush, will yaP” I say.

“Dennis? Is that you?” a harsh voice comes from the stall.

“Yeah. Is that you Milsaw? What the hell did you eat last night?”

“I’m sorry, Dennis,” Milsaw says as the water flushes down the drain. He continues, “I’m just trying to live up to what they
wrote about me there over the urinal.”