Chapter Six

Talking about Kevin always makes me think about how life is too short to waste it on mistakes, you know?

There are a lot of mistakes a person can make over the course of a lifetime that don't really seem to make too much of a difference when you look at them individually. But when you get to be in your forties, you start looking back at the little chunks of time, parts and pieces of your life, and you realize that it all adds up.

That's not particularly profound, but I'm telling you, when you're in your twenties and even thirties and still immortal, none of this really falls into place.

It's when you're around 45 and realize that you are at the halfway mark (and that's only if you're lucky; how many people live to be 90 or over) that you start looking back and saying, "Wow. That person, that experience, that period of time represents a substantial chunk of my life."

For instance, you may have known a person since you were in your mid-twenties. That's not too remarkable, right? Lots of us have old college pals or first-job cronies with whom we still stay in touch.

But think about it. Say you've known someone twenty years. That's almost half your life, and it's at least twenty percent of your overall span. And as I was saying, that's if you're phenomenally lucky and live to be a hundred.

So I was thinking about some of the people I've known, things I've done, and about percentages. I've been on this job for twenty years. There's nearly fifty percent of the ticket. Forty-five percent, something like that. I was always shit at math. Anyway.

I've known Derrico for 18 years. That's about forty percent of my life and an overall percent of about fifteen- eighteen, provided I live damn near forever like my Ma's side does.

Is this a guy I want to say is involved in fifteen percent of my life span?

Well, to look at him he's just your average shithead fireman, just like me, just like Costello, just like Cullen-the-Cadet will grow up to be if he doesn't get his dumb ass killed. Derrico is a loudmouth and a little of a braggart and he's really got the macho Italian guy thing going on, but he is also a man who would die for his kids, would risk his life for a friend (and, maybe more tellingly, for a guy he doesn't even like -- more about that later) and who would rather keep his mouth shut and be thought a fool than look smart at someone else's expense. He also knows more about ice hockey than anyone I know (he has a brother and two cousins who play in the AHL, his brother for Rochester and the cousins right here in Cleveland), can remember people's names for years after meeting them once, and owns everything Neil Young ever recorded. His wife is godmother to one of my sister's kids and I am godfather to his oldest son.

Derrico is a lifetime investment, well worth my time, and I don't begrudge a minute of it. We have history together, you know? I feel better just knowing there IS a Sam Derrico. Because he knows where my bodies are buried and I know which of his skeletons hang in what particular closets and we both know too much, and it's a safe arrangement. You can be at ease with a friend like Derrico. He's the type who is not just good at comforting you when you are down, but is excellent at helping you plot revenge. When the revolution comes, as Kevin often half-jokingly said it would, I want Sam Derrico on my side.

Other relationships may not represent such a great investment of your time. I spent an estimated three percent of my time so far on this planet involved with the lovely, talented and enigmatic Margaret Brentham.

I say lovely because she was. Margaret -- I liked to call her Maggie, which she hated, because her artsy friends knew her as Margo -- was (and still is, for all I know) second cello with the Cleveland Orchestra. She drove a little red convertible Miata, lived in a beautiful old house in Cleveland Heights, and had the longest legs of any woman I have ever dated. (Grace would be indignant at this -- Grace of the "yard of leg" -- but Margaret must have been close to six feet tall, and I swear three-fourths of it was leg. I'm a leg man. Probably because my Ma was a dancer and dance instructor before she met Dad and had to settle down. Her stories of her youth stay with me still.)

Mags -- she hated that moniker even worse -- was indeed musically talented. I don't know if she was gifted or not -- I heard her play a few times, but quite frankly I wouldn't know good cello from bad unless it was off-key or something, and that's one thing you could say for Margaret -- she never missed a note. She attended the New England Conservatory of Music as a very young woman and showed exceptional promise, and received an offer from the Cleveland Orchestra alnost immediately after graduation. I had no idea where or what the hell the New England Conservatory was before I met her, but I learned that it is a very prestigious school indeed. As a musician, Margaret couldn't expect to make much money, but she was very well taken care of. Her parents were old Connecticut money, her father was an investment banker who had done pretty well for himself in addition to having been born into a fair chunk of money, and Margaret, an only child, lived on a trust fund that pretty much allowed her to do nothing but play cello and travel with the Orchestra. She lived where she wanted and how she wanted and really didn't need anything. Particularly, it would seem, she didn't need a scrubby, dirt-poor fireman hanging around, however much fun it might be while it lasted.. She always made it pretty clear that she had chosen me, and if or when it was Game Over time, that would be her call. Still, she was so cheerful and charming about it that you never really held it against her. She wasn't mean or spiteful about it, just...reserved. And since I didn't exactly have anything better to do than sleep with a gorgeous heiress who claimed to find me adorable....well, you know how it is. Maybe. I actually didn't know how it was myself even as it was going on. It was actually a pretty strange relationship. And about half of one per cent of my life.

You don't meet women like that hanging around the firehouse, obviously, and I met Maggie at a benefit the Department was giving. We had a $500 a plate dinner the spring after September 11, to benefit the families of firefighters who were killed. It was held at the Four Seasons downtown, and there were a few speakers, New York City firemen who had survived the 9/11 aftermath, and there was a string quartet playing during dinner. The quartet was pretty much unnoticed; all focus was on the New York firemen. Most of the people at the dinner were the sort you could expect to be at a $500 a throw dinner, but there were a few of us there to present the check to the speaker and say a few words on behalf of the Department. I had kept my nose clean so far that year, and I was one of the guys chosen. I really had no goddamn use for either a bunch of swells at a dinner or the creamed chicken and green beans that they always serve at these things, but I was glad to be able to hear the brothers from New York. It was very hard to keep from crying listening to these guys talk, and I am glad I was there. As for the bullshit speeches by the Mayor, though, and all the goddamn fancy h'ors d'eouvres and the chamber music -- well, the Indians were playing an exhibition game against Boston plus it was getting toward hockey playoff time and...well, anyway, I wasn't in much of a mood to be standing there making speeches and peeing out my eyes, not with three games and an exhibition ballgame on TV at home. But it was for a good cause, so I said what the hell and ate my Chicken A L'Orange.

To pass the time, I watched people. The string quartet was interesting to me because the only live music I usually hear is either rock and roll or Irish traditional. I like music of any sort, though, and was fascinated by how easy the musicians made it look.

Particularly interesting, of course, was Margaret. As I said, I don't know much about music, but I'd venture to say that one subject in which I have a lively, sustained and empirical interest is women. Margaret was beautiful, and under the bright light, with her hair falling like golden cornsilk over her black velvet blouse and her lovely tapered fingers coaxing rich, sweet sounds from the cello, and ...well, the words of an old Irish folk song came back to me:

"Her eyes shone like the diamonds
You'd think she was queen of the land
And her hair hung over her shoulder
Tied up with a black velvet band..."

I was very taken with her. And of course, I worked that shy, diamond-in-the-rough firefighting lad mystique for all it was worth, and wangled an introduction after the dinner.

I'm gonna spare you the details; suffice it to say it was a wild, sweetly romantic and tempestuous affair. I alternated between the heights of elation, unable to believe that such a beautiful and ethereal creaturee loved me, and the absolute depths of gloom -- I had no idea where the hell the Slough of Despond is, but by God, Mags old girl dragged me through it. She was an absolute dream in bed. I don't know what it is with those rich Protestant girls, and I beg the pardon of any reading this, particularly if you are interested in dating a fireman named John Sullivan, but she could perform the most incredibly debauched, obscene, deliciously shocking acts and act as if she were just baking cookies or doing a watercolor painting or.... Many times I would say, at Mags' mouth or fingers or incredibly ready sex in positions or places I had never thought to expect them: "Oh my GOD, you're not gonna...." I don't think in the months we were together that I ever actually finished that sentence. I didn't, but she did, and those actions spoke far louder than words, and maybe how well I will tell you later.

Anyway. She was a dream in bed but a nightmare out of it. She was very turned on by the "rough, tough macho fireman from a poor Irish background" thing, but in a way that hurt me. It was like I was playing a role for her, you know? Part of this was my fault. I never told her about my journalism degree from Northwestern, mainly because I felt that it would somehow shatter her image of me. Isn't that stupid? One of the greatest, in fact, the few, accomplishments I have to my name, and I hid it from her. I still don't understand that entirely. Also, I never told her about the rose garden I designed and maintain over at my brother Pat's rectory. I know she would have liked it, but I was afraid it would clash with her image of me. Maybe she would have found it romantic, you know? But i was stupid and insecure and besides, it never got that far. Things were just not destined to hold together.

The problem was that Mags was, I don't know, detached. She was unfailingly pleasant and cordial and seldom disagreed with me; had a gentle sense of humor and a dazzling smile and was great company, easy on the eyes and the spirit as well. But Mags never....well, she never engaged. She was nice and polite and pleasant, and she could make love like a wild woman, but she was never passionate. It's not that she couldn't be passionate in bed, but she had no native passion. I would get all worked up, in bed or out of it, and try to pull her into the spirit of the moment, and it was like she was a spectator. Amused, appreciative, at times even delighted, but never once involved.

Well, the way we broke up was so stupid that I dont want to tell you, but I've got this far and it's a Sunday afternoon and things are quiet, so I don't even have an excuse to stop.

I am a baseball nut. I was born during an Indians game. Not there at the game, but my dad was watching TV in the hospital lounge and Early Wynn was spitching one of his last games and....well, Ma's still pissed, but never mind. I ate, slept and breathed baseball as a kid. Still do. My favorite teams are the Indians, the Red Sox and, in the National League, the Diamondbacks and the Cardinals. But I do not like any team from New York. I don't even like the Giants, though they've been in San Francisco forever, because I haven't forgiven them for the '54 Series. I love Willie Mays, but...anyway, poor, sad, goddamn Vic Wertz... Okay, okay. Don't get me started on baseball. But if they're from New York, I hate 'em.

So, Mags and I were lying in her huge, antique four-poster early one Saturday morning, and I mentioned that it would be a good day to go down to the Jake and see an Indians game. She looked at me with that pretty smile and said, "Oh, thanks no, Johnny; I never watch any team excepting the Mets," and laid her pretty blonde head back down on the pillow and fell sound asleep.

I don't know why, but this bugged me. A shrink or other witch doctor would probably say that this was a sign of deeper underlying problems and that this was only a precipitating incident. Yeah, yeah. It was bullshit was what it was, and I wasn't having any more of it.

I didn't get many Saturdays off, and of course I had gone to a lot of trouble to trade schedules so I could be with Mags, and one of the things I thought I could treat her to, one of the few affordable things, one of the few things I knew, and could maybe even share with her and make interesting to her, was a day at Jacobs Field, watching the Indians play the White Sox.

The whole thing kept echoing in my mind...."Johnny...she called me Johnny....I hate that...'thanks no'...who the hell talks that way, I ask you...'excepting the Mets'..." A very shrill, snotty, whiny voice was mocking Mags' words in my head. I wasn't sure if it was my own or hers. I was just sure I hated it.

I have left a couple women in my life. Grace...well, Grace and I have left each other but somebody always comes back. There is something about Grace and me that is never quite finished. But other women? Oh, brother. I am not really proud of this, but I'm just not that great at sticking around. It's always something. Either the woman wants to get married and issues an ultimatum, or they are fooling around with someone else, or they want me to be "serious", or....listen, I hate this topic.

Anyway, none of that is any excuse for the various irresponsible ways I have chosen of ending relationships. And most of the women I have left, I have HAD to sneak out. They had tempers. Some had weapons. They had big, mean, loud families. They had ways, means and every method of keeping a guy prisoner.

I knew Mags wasn't like that. She was always so....nice, you know? Too nice.

I have been in a lot of fires where I felt trapped and knew that if I didn't keep my head I was going to die. I have thought my way out of fire situations where following my own gut instinct would have killed me. But I don't have any of this kind of sense at all when it comes to women. I panic.

This morning, I panicked. I took a scrap of paper and a pen from near the telephone, and scrawled a note.

"Mags: [I knew she would hate that]

I have gone to the Indians game and I am not coming back.

I wish you well.

Love always, John Sullivan.

p.s. you could keep the necklace."

I folded the paper, took the orange juice out of the fridge, and stuck the note under the half-gallon carton on the kitchen counter. (I knew not to leave it on the wood table; that would make her even madder.) Then I went out to my truck, jumped in (but shut the door quietly -- I felt like such a snake) and left.

When I got home, there was a message on my machine that they had two guys call off second shift at the house that night and were looking for fill-ins. I called and said I would be down right after the game. I went to the Jake by myself and watched the Tribe lose to Chicago 6-3. I couldn't even have any beer because I was headed to work. Then I drove in to the house.

I had been sitting in the break room dissecting the game with Derrico when Cullen-the-cadet came in and said, "Sully, there's somebody here to see you."

"Who the hell....Guy or woman?"

"A woman."

Suspicion dawned uneasily (and correctly) in my guilty soul.

"What does she look like?"

"Um, she's beautiful, kinda tall, with long blonde hair and green eyes..."

"Listen, I don't need the Forum Mag version. Cullen. Do me a favor. I'm not here. Go tell her...."

Too late. There in the doorway of the break room stood Mags.

"Johnny!" she said, a little too brightly. One look told me she had been crying. A lot. I grabbed her by the elbow, gently, and steered her out to the garage.

We stood by the hook and ladder rig, and I tried to talk to her:

"Ah, now, come on, Maggie....er, Margo...Margaret....we don't want to remember it this way, do we? There's no reason to be bitter, is there? It's me -- John. You know me. I wouldn't ever want to hurt you. It just couldn't go on like....hey, don't cry....oh, come on, Honey...I will always be your friend...."

Well. You never know with women. Apparently, I sure as hell didn't know with this one.

Ms. Glacial Cool, the Ice Queen of Northeastern Ohio, went into full-fledged meltdown mode before my eyes. Those chiseled high cheekbones flushed a lovely dusty rose, her green eyes narrowed like a cat's sighting prey, and she spat at me, "You son of a BITCH!"

Really. Remarkable. I didn't know she had it in her. In that split second of surreal, unreasoning wonder that often precedes the brutal impact of reality, I was perversely proud of her.

"Honey, I...."

"Don't you 'honey' me, you fucking PRICK!"

I had never heard her use such words outside of very pleasurable situations, and never in that order. Certainly not with such passion. I was quite bewildered.

The next thing she did was far more painful to me than anything she said. She reached around her neck and grabbed the little gold and diamond Claddagh necklace I had given her to celebrate our first month together. It was a stupid thing of me, set me back a week's pay, and I always did feel like she wore it just to please me, like it was a case of "Look what Paddy got at the dime store -- how quaint." Anyway, she ripped the necklace from her neck, without even bothering to unfasten the clasp, which must have hurt -- a red mark immediately showed -- and tossed it at me. It skittered across the apparatus floor and dangled from a metal drain grating.

I stood transfixed, unable to speak or move, and could only watch her stomp down the concrete apron and jump into her little red Miata. She screeched away from the house in a cloud of exhaust -- and proceeded the wrong way down the one way street running behind the firehouse. She flew into a U-turn just in time to attract the attention of Hanrahan and Gage, the zone cops who had the patrol in our block, who went flying after her with sirens and lights going. They pulled her over about half a block down the street.

I looked up to see Derrico in the garage doorway.

"Jesus, Sully."

"Yeah."

"Should we go help her out?"

"Ah, the hell with her. Those two numbnuts will get a load of her and let her off with a warning. Besides, she'll say she knows me and they owe me one for the bookie thing."

"Yeah. Well -- oh, shit!"

We both looked down just in time to see the claddagh necklace swing tantalizingly for a moment and drop into the floor drain.

"Shit, John, I'm sorry. Hey, maybe she'll be back. She's gotta come back, right?"

"Christ, I hope not. Hey, have you got any....."

Well, what Derrico may have had will have to remain a mystery for now. For one, the callbox went off just then, and ....well, we were in for a hell of a night, which I'll tell you about next time. It was one of our worst blazes in my twenty years with the Department. Way too much to tell here.

But I have to quit now anyway. Derrico needs another hand for poker. Which might seem like a waste of time to you, but as we've just been over, there are wastes of time and then there are investments. Mags -- well, she was on the debit side of the ledger. Derrico, he's an investment.

Chapter Five

There's not a lot I can tell you about my cousin Kevin that you haven't probably already read in the Cleveland Plain Dealer. He died in a fire about three years ago. The paper said that he was married, the father of three, a graduate of Cuyahoga Community College. It said that he was helping rescue some kids from a burning house, and that he was a hero, and that he will be very much missed by his brothers at the firehouse, his wife and family, and his large extended family, which included two sisters, two brothers, his mother, several nieces and nephews and a number of cousins who are also firefighters. It said that he was the son of Owen Kilbane, a retired firefighter. It mentioned that he was a member of the Pipe and Drum Corps and also that he was an amateur ham radio operator. They didn't miss too much. (If you know the Plain Drooler, this in itself is an unusual thing.)

But I want to tell you the things about Kevin that the Plain Dealer may have missed. It's early in the morning, we just got back in from a job a lot like the one that took Kevin, and none of us are hurt. The two cadets, Cullen and Marshall, are coughing a little, but that is because the dumb shits went in without masks, just exactly as they were told not to, which is the sole thing you can always count on a cadet to do, is the one thing you tell him or her not to do.

Anyway, none of us are hurt, I'm feeling grateful and still pretty wired from the fire, and I'm still trying to get this whole Grace thing out of my mind, so I figured I'd focus on something a little sobering.

Kevin was my cousin through my mother's brother, my Uncle Owen. Ma's side of the family is the lighter, blue eyed and freckled Irish. My dad's side is what they call Black Irish, which means that they have dark hair and dark or blue eyes. People say that's because the Spanish invaded the western coast of Ireland. I don't know if that's true but it might also account for the fact that every Black Irish person I know has a hot temper and a taste for spicy food. Well, maybe not every one. At least I do. Anyway, this is about Kev and not me, so I'll try to stick to my last here.

Kevin was tall, with thick dark blonde hair, blue eyes and freckles. He looked like the old Arrow shirt ads, my folks used to say. Girls adored Kevin on sight, the lucky bastard, because he was that perfect blend of handsome and innocent that chicks always go for. He had a little boy grin and a big, deep laugh. It would have been easy to envy him if he didn't have such a natural, self-deprecating way about him. As my mother used to say, Kevin's biggest attraction was that nobody had ever told him he was handsome, or if they did, he hadn't believed them.

Kevin was three years older than I am and I used to follow him around a fair bit when we were kids. He knew how to play bagpipes from an early age. Uncle Owen taught him, and he took lessons at the West Side Irish American Club too, and he was a natural, very good at it. At least, as good as anyone can ever make bagpipes sound, which isn't too good according to many people, although I've always liked the sound. When we were teenagers, he took a lot of flak from our other cousins. Everyone knew that if you wanted to get laid, you learned to play the guitar, and of course there were lots of jokes directed at Kevin. It was a pretty rich vein and we mined it well, so that by the time we were in the last years of high school, Kevin's piping was kept under wraps, like a secret vice.

One morning before school, Ma had sent me over with a dress pattern that she had borrowed from Aunt Mamie, Kevin's mother, and I caught Kevin out in the back yard practicing. He was playing an air I recognized from St. Patrick's Day parties and from the old 78 rpm records Dad and the uncles liked to listen to. The tune was called "The Minstrel Boy", and Kevin was doing it fair justice.

I entered the yard by the garden gate off the alley. I nodded to Kevin, who kept on playing. I'm glad I didn't say anything smart that morning. It must have been, as the old ones say, the grace of God, because it was not like me to let such an opportunity pass without a wiseass remark of some sort. We viewed it as practically an obligation in our family, a familial duty to keep each other humble, particularly the boys. But there was something about the sun on Aunt Mamie's scarlet roses in the garden that morning, and the wistful sadness of the air, and Kevin's earnest concentration....

See, this is why I hope to Christ nobody in the firehouse ever gets ahold of my laptop. If they were to read this, I would never hear the end of it. I would be accused of everything from being gay to thinking I'm William Butler Yeats, and since I don't see either as a shameful option, I would be forced to defend myself, and...well, these guys can be real shitheads when they smell blood. Firemen gossip like crones at a wake, and they love to play practical jokes, and if they know they are getting under your skin, they are more than delighted to take what started as a small, accidental joke and turn it into a running gag that goes on for years, being handed down in firehouse lore. "Remember the time we caught Sully writing that girly-girl novel, and we...." Yeah, yeah. So I keep this under pretty tight wraps here. If anyone asks, I tell 'em I'm writing love letters to my married girlfriend. I don't have a married girlfriend, but these guys are always quite ready to believe the wrong thing, especially if it involves banging some broad who's off-limits, and so I'm fairly safe for now.

Anyway, Kevin was a good piper, and he also wanted to follow my Uncle Owen into firefighting. It came almost as second nature to him. Some guys have to go off and "find themselves", have to go to college and work a desk job and maybe go in the Army or work as unemployed artists or whatever the hell it is they think they're going to do, and then one day it hits them that there's a greater purpose and they go into The Job, either firefighting or police work, twin heads of the Irish Catholic Career Hydra. The other option in this town is to be a pipefitter or ironworker. You're Irish, you're male, you're a cop, a firefighter or a journeyman pipefitter or ironworker. None of this bullshit about being a stockbroker or an English teacher or any of that other shit they tried pushing you into in college, if you were lucky enough to go to college and sit on your ass for four years and think about things, getting pussy beaucoup and free beer and prepared meals and reading all night and taking little multiple choice quizzes...... No, sir. You are going to work hard and if it was good enough for your father/brother/Uncle So-and-So....

Anyway. Some guys come into it the roundabout way, like I did after getting an English degree from Northwestern University and driving Ma and Dad nuts for three years while I lived at home and bummed through a succession of jobs. Other guys, like Kevin, are born to it. They seem to know almost from childhood that they want to go into The Job, and they do so with a preternatural concentration.

Kevin took the Civil Service test and got on as a probie straight out of high school. Back in those days, the mid-seventies, you could do that. It's very unusual today. First off, most people want to go to college. Almost nobody starts work straight out of high school these days. Secondly, the Job wants you to have some training through the community college, either emergency medical technician, criminal justice, or both. Now you can even do a special safety technology course that's tailored for firefighting.

In those days, though, you didn't have to do that. Suit up, show up, pass the Civil Service test and report for work. Kevin was unusual in that he wanted to do more, to learn more. He didn't just want to be a firefighter, he wanted to be the best firefighter possible. He enrolled in night school and did a course in emegency medicine. He could have been an EMT, which in those days paid better, but he wanted to fight fires. He wanted to be on the front lines. It was the way he lived his life.

The fire that took Kevin was pretty ordinary. I say that because when you've been on this job for a lot of years, you see a lot, and although there is nothing ordinary about a burning building to most sane people, when you have been doing what we do for awhile, you learn to recognize that it's always dangerous but it's not often exciting. Yeah, there is a rush about going into a burning building -- the old saw goes, firemen are nuts because we run into a building that any sane person would run out of -- but there are fires and then there are fires. As with any job, there are defining moments and triumphs and narrow escapes and brilliant moments, and then there is the old same shit, different day ennui that haunts most of our day to day gigs.

Whether you are a firefighter or a computer programmer or a housewife packing school lunches, some days it seems so much the same that you couldn't really say what day it was when this or that happened; they all run together. This was that kind of a day except for one thing: we lost Kevin. It just goes to prove that we never know, any of us, what a seemingly routine day can have in store. There are no guarantees in this life except that one day, something is going to kill you. It may be as benign as old age or as dramatic as a gunshot, but one day, you are gonna go. In our line of work, you'd think we'd bear this in mind, but you can get used to anything if you deal with it often enough. Get too comfortable and it cankill you, whether you're a firefighter inside a building whose roof's about to collapse or a CPA speeding along the freeway at 85 mph. Mindfulness is an important thing. I'm more aware of this as I get older.

There are a very few, up in their comfortable offices in City Hall, who will say that Kevin was not mindful on that day. They, the self-crowned efficiency experts, are generally regarded with contempt. Those who knew Kevin at all know what he was, what he stood for, and that he was the kind of firefighter you would always want on a job with you. He didn't take stupid chances, he wasn't a fool who thought he was bulletproof, and he didn't forget for a minute the reason we do our job: fires take lives.

It was a house fire, in the early morning hours, over on the east side on Kinsman Road. There must have been fifteen people, most of them kids, living in the old two-story clapboard Colonial. Most of them were gathered on the lawn, a large woman huddled with three tiny kids, a crying baby slung over one of her ample hips; a shirtless teenage boy, a couple of young girls, an old woman wrapped in a blanket, and various school-age kids, shivering in the predawn cold and damp (it was a rainy early March morning, ugly and windy and the streets were snot-slick with fresh sleet). Two lines had already gone in; the fire had been contained to an area in back of the house but was now spreading to the second floor. The family had been using a kerosene heater that one of the kids had tipped over, and the place had gone up fairly quickly. We had thought everyone was outside, but the woman had started screaming after an initial head count that someone named Raphael was on the second floor. Raphael, it turned out, was a four-year-old boy, and he had gone back inside to save his dog.

I'm not going to make this any longer than it has to be. You don't want to read it, and more importantly, I'm not sure I can tell it. The roof gave in, in a shower of sparks and debris, while Kevin was in there trying to find Raphael. When we finally got in, through all the black smoke and heat and spray from the hoses, and cut through the wall of the back bedroom, we found them.

Kevin had thrown his body over Raphael, who had thrown his body over the dog. All three were dead of smoke inhalation. The coroner says they didn't last long, but then the coroner wasn't trapped inside a burning house. All I know is that Kevin was a hero. Rescue was on the scene almost as it was happening, but there just wasn't time. It all happens so quickly in that situation.

Kevin's funeral was on a Monday. Ma and Dad sat in the front of St. Kieran's with Uncle Owen and Aunt Mamie. My brother Pat, the only priest in our family, said the funeral Mass.

It was raining like hell that day, and I don't remember everything Pat said, and I had to get up and say a few words, and Jeannette, Kevin's widow, said a few words before having to be helped back to her seat beside Uncle Owen. Kevin's kids were all in one pew, with my sister Theresa looking after them. Sean and Jimmy were seven and five, old enough to know what was going on, but Katie, the baby, who is named for my mother, was in Theresa's arms, smiling at all of us. There might be something more heartbreaking than that toothless little smile on that merciless March morning, but I hope I never see it.

The pipers, playing "Amazing Grace" as the coffin was borne from the church, had a notable absence. The clearest note among them was never to be heard again.

The cemetery was a pretty difficult scene, and there never seems to be good weather when someone is buried. I don't know why it works out that way, and maybe it's better, but all I know is that I have never been to a cemetery on a day tat was sunny and seventy. I'm sure there are such funerals -- I mean, they have funerals in California, right? or maybe they just scatter ashes off a cliff into the ocean; I don't know -- but I have never been to one.

We all repaired to the Flat Iron after the funeral breakfast, at least, the brothers from the firehouse and Uncle Owen. The wives and kids had gone to Jeannette's afterward. We all got pretty drunk that afternoon and evening, at least, the ones who didn't have to be at the house. That is another thing about our job. Fires don't take a break, and somebody always has to go back to the house. I made it home somehow, and next day I had to report for a shift, and we all made it through the next few weeks without too much ado. St. Patrick's Day was in there somewhere, and a bunch of us made it to the parade, and it was pretty tough seeing the Pipes and Drums go by without Kevin.

But I think the toughest thing, or at least the toughest thing so far, was cleaning out Kevin's locker at the house. His pipes were in there, and that was pretty awful, and there was of course his civvies and his shoes, and a couple of library books, and a tiny bottle of Irish Mist with the seal still on that Uncle Owen had brought back from Shannon's duty free shop when they all went Over the year before. There was an old black wooden Rosary and a bunch of issues of Mother Jones (Kevin always was a reader and used to get teased about being a wild-eyed radical). There were pictures of Jeannette and the kids taped to the inside, and an Indians sticker, and of course there were comments scrawled all over it in magic marker -- you aren't loved unless there are droll obscenities on your locker. But I think the thing that got me most was that there, at the bottom, was a small toy metal firetruck I recognized from when we were kids. It was a Tonka truck, one of the miniature kind, and it was chipped and banged up and one of the rails was broken off. But here Kevin had kept that with him all these years. A memento? An inspiration? A talisman?

You just never know.

Chapter Four

Well, we're back from the grocery store. Derrico had to go along and supervise. He always does, the big dumb Dago. You'd think he was Chef Boyardee.

Not that he can't cook. And not that he limits his specialties to Italian food, either. It's not what you'd expect, you know -- a fireman in charge of the kitchen, a Neapolitan Italian, you'd think we'd have Chianti and white tablecloths and huge pots of pasta and all be singing "O Sole Mio". Real "Lady and the Tramp" stuff.

Unh-uh. Derrico's latest thing is Thai food. Last week, the crazy bastard had us driving all up and down St. Clair Avenue looking for -- get this -- lemon grass. Lemon grass, he says. The Thai sine qua non of Derrico's Thai clay-baked chicken. Here we are trolling up and down St. Clair near Hamilton Avenue, in Chinatown, stopping the rig at first one Asian grocery and then the next, people stopping ont he sidewalk to peer into the shop windows.

Which brings me to a point.

Of course, the assholes who have no idea what they are talking about will always have plenty to say.

"Look at those firemen wasting the taxpayers' money," they whine. "Out grocery shopping and using the city's equipment to do it! Tch! Disgraceful! They even leave the engine running! Wasteful! Awful!"

Okay. Excuse me. Hold the goddamn phone here, just for a minute.

If I am in the middle of my shift and it's my turn to shop for the house, and we get a call on the callbox that your house is on fire, would you rather I had taken my little shitbox 1994 Subaru? Would you? Or would you rather I can dump the grocery chore (because yes, it is a chore for me, just like it is for you, and firemen gotta eat, just like you do) -- would you rather I dump the grocery basket, run out in the lot where the guys are keeping the engine running, jump on the truck and speed over to your house? Or would you rather I brought the Subaru?

Yeah. I thought so. Try to remember that next time you see a rig parked outside the Stop-n-Shop, will you?

Anyway, I was on the subject of Grace and women, and maybe that's two subjects.

As Grace and I grew a little older, I started to think maybe we would end up together. We liked each other, got along well enough, and when the crowd got together for parties in people's basements, football games, etc., Grace and I always seemed to wind up paired off. It was very natural. People started saying, "Grace 'n' John," like the names belonged together somehow.

Uncle Eamonn called to me from the front porch of his house as I was going by on my bike one summer Saturday morning.

"Johnny. Johnny Sullivan. Come here," he intoned.

Uncle Eamonn (not really my uncle; in our neighborhood all the parents were Uncle and Aunt) was not someone to whom you said no, you thought you'd come back later. There was only one proper answer to Uncle Eamonn, and that was "Yes, sir."

First of all, Uncle Eamonn was powerfully built, a fast runner, and his temper was legendary. Twenty-five years of work as a pipefitter had kept him in pretty good trim, and he had boxed semi-pro as a young man. He had a pretty bad temper when he drank, which was more or less all the time. You never saw Uncle Eamonn legless, disgracefully drunk, but you never saw him sober, either. The only one I knew who wasn't afraid of his temper was Grace, but then, it can be fairly said Grace probably would have slapped the Devil himself for having a smart mouth, so that was pretty much a given.

Wanting to avoid any sort of confrontation with Uncle Eamonn, and also wanting to please Grace, I parked the bike alongside the brick porch and walked into the kitchen of the house.

"Will you have a drink, Johnny?" asked Uncle Eamonn. "A beer? What'll you have?"

"Oh, I'm too young to drink yet. Sir." I was very nervous. I was no stranger to drinking, in fact had tied one on the night before with my older brother Dan's friends, but I was not about to let on.

Uncle Eamonn walked to the cupboard, took out a glass, and poured a generous dollop of Bushmill's into it. He indicated I should drink it. The very smell under my nose made my eyes water, and I only pretended to sip at it.

"You've been keeping company with my daughter, Johnny," said Uncle Eamonn. It was not a question but a statement.

"Yes, sir."

"Have the two of you been....what is your intention, Johnny? Is my girl...."

I had no idea what he was getting at -- well, no, I had every idea what he was getting at -- and I was scared shitless.

"My Grace," he continued, "my girl is the apple of my eye, my heart's darling, ma bhoirnin, my child...She is INVIOLATE!" he finished with a shout, and pounded his fist on the table. A saucer fell from a shelf and shattered in the sink.

I nearly pissed myself.

"She is inviolate and will remain so, Johnny Sullivan. Or I will break your neck. Never doubt that I would, lad." He said this last very sadly, as with the heavy heart of someone who must break bad news, however difficult.

"I...I....." Not only was the subject terrifying to me, but if Uncle Eamonn only knew that it was the dearest desire of my heart to accomplish exactly that for which he would break my neck, I had no doubt he would do so. Sadly and tenderly and with no other recourse, but, as my Uncle Owen would say, as sure as shit stinks. I have doubted and pondered many mysteries, such as Transubstantiation, Schroedinger's cat and the infield fly rule, but I harbored not one scintilla of doubt that in this case Uncle Eamonn was a man of his word. He would snap my neck like a matchstick if I so much as....

A noise on the stair, and Grace came into the kitchen, cheeks flaming pink, eyes blazing.

"DA! What the hell kind of nonsense is...Johnny Sullivan! Have you been drinking? In the middle of the morning????"

I daresay we looked about as stupid as it is possible to look. It's a good thing there were two of us; I doubt one man could have looked sufficiently stupid when Grace was on her mettle. To make a long and dull story short, she threw me out of the house and made Uncle Eamonn go out and weed the garden before her Ma got back from work. As I have said, there has never been another Grace.

Ah, Grace. We graduated high school, and I went off to Northwestern University and she stayed at home to go to John Carroll. I saw her at Christmastime, and hadn't the sense to realize that young Grace with her slender build and pale skin, her budding breasts and funny, froggy little voice, her impossibly unruly auburn hair and her huge hazel eyes that were so sad and merry by turns, her ten-dollar words and her banshee visions (she always subscribed to some sort of alternate spirituality, which she never would explain to me), was worth ten of any of the cool, Farrah Fawcett-tressed sorority types that I never seemed to get far with. Oh, I got laid, and lots of it, but they kept a well-bred distance, and always there was something about Grace that saw through to your soul.

Maybe I was afraid to be so close to her. She knew what I was, and what I was about. We went our separate ways, and I heard she moved away somewhere down South and married, a real fancy pants type, a physicist or some high-tech type, and the bastard beat her (Uncle Eamonn had long since died, more's the pity since he would have killed anyone who laid a hand on his Grace), and she had a boy, and left the no-good husband and moved back here with the child. I saw her briefly then, right after the divorce, but it wasn't right.

We were sitting watching the Indians game on television after she had got the little one to bed, and we were sharing a beer, and she looked right at me and said, "Go on, Johnny Sullivan; you're bored to pieces, I can see it in your eyes."

"What do you mean?" I asked, genuinely puzzled.

"Go," she said. It wasn't melodramatic, but it was a definite command.

"But why....Grace....I thought...."

"You thought wrong. Oh,there's beer, and baseball, and conversation, and after awhile we'll go up to bed, and then you'll have me, but it will never be enough. You don't want me, you want The Life."

At the time, I was a probie, just got on with the house I work out of today, and we were all a wild bunch, but no worse than the rest, I suppose.

"What do you mean, I want 'The Life'?"

"Oh, you do," she went on, "though you may not even know it yourself yet. Go on, then," she said, and handed me my jacket.

"Grace, what the hell are you...."

But she wouldn't explain, wouldn't say another word, just ushered me to the door as if this was something we had agreed upon, as if it were all for the best and an inarguable fact of life. The Natural Progression of Things.

I was hurt beyond words, but for some reason, deep inside I knew what she said made sense. I was in no way ready to settle down, and I would have only broken her heart, and somehow she knew that. But her behavior was like nothing I have ever encountered in any woman before or since. She seemed to be recklessly breaking a thing for the sake of it being broken. Women don't usually do that. They build things. It's usually us, the men, who break them. But not always.

I didn't know then that it was herself she feared. I think I understand that now. She always made talk about other girls too, as if she were the jealous type, but a fellow who could see beyond that could see that she was really afraid of her own inability to love. I was not a fellow who could see beyond my nose at the time, and I have had plenty of time since to regret that.

I heard a year later that she had got married and was expecting a baby. I was on my third post-Grace girlfriend by then, and just scoffed. I ran into her in the grocery store and she was radiantly, startlingly pregnant, and made conversation with me as warmly and casually as if we had parted just an hour before. I lost track of her after that, though down through the years, I thought of her often. And the night I heard she had a little girl, I went out and bought a Cecile Brunner shrub rose and planted it in my garden and got very, very drunk. But I didn't see her again until....

Last week, a bunch of the guys and I were having lunch down in the Flat Iron Cafe in the Flats. (This is another thing. Firemen eat lunch together in public places, and when they do, they take the firetruck. And why do they take the firetruck? Come on...come on....see? You're catching on!)

Well, we had a window table, and I saw a car pull into one of the spaces under the bridge, and a woman got out -- no, leaped out. She strode through the thin November sun, bright red wool cape swirling around her in the wind, her dark hair glowing burnished auburn, an unmistakable authority in her long stride....

It was Grace. As she walked into the bar, thirty years passed my eyes, and I saw The Girl. She made no overt move of recognition, just flashed us all that dazzling smile she's so good at throwing out when she wants to keep her cover. I saw a bunch of rings on her hands, but it was impossible to tell if one was a wedding ring. Derrico made some smart remark about "Red Riding Hood," and I wanted to deck him, but I didn't want to tell him anything. My heart ached watching her -- she was having lunch with some fellow who must have been her brother or a friend -- it wasn't her husband and if I know Grace, if the husband's still around it wasn't a lover -- Grace always did play it straight.

And God help me, I hope I see her again, because there is a very wicked, ugly side of me that would like to change that....

I think next time I will talk to you about my cousin Kevin - the whole Grace subject seems to provoke an allergic reaction in me....it's hard when you know right from wrong and know that you'd go with wrong in a heartbeat if the opportunity presented. Cognitive dissonance and all that great shit. My whole life is about being one of the Good Guys, and I think I need to remind myself of that right now. So, next time I will tell you about Kevin.

Chapter Three

I guess I can talk about girls. Women. Dames, broads, babes, vessels of life, flowers of creation, yeah, yeah. How about royal pains in the ass? Can we say that?

Where to start? Well, I can't go on long, because it's my night to go to the store. Anyway.

The beginning. I'll start at the beginning. Grace was my first. Grace was not just a girl, she is my idea of woman. She formed me. I know that sounds corny, but there it is. Before I knew girls, I knew Grace. She was The One Who.

Gracie and I knew each other in grade school, back at old St. Kieran's. She was the only girl I ever knew who could make the nuns as mad as the baddest guy in the school. She was smart, and when she wanted to, I guess she did all right, but sometimes it must have seemed to those Sisters of Saint Joseph nuns that Grace was their special penance, sent from a God who thought that their lives, their devotion, their chastity and their material goods were not enough. He, being Divine Trickster, wanted to fuck with their heads as well.

Gracie liked to do stuff like set off firecrackers in the toilet stalls, write graffiti on the blackboards during recess. But those were minor deviltries. She once set up a proof that Jesus could not possibly have been the Son of God, and used the Catholic Bible to do it. She got sent to Father Kelly, and then had to go home for a week. She also cut off just one of her footlong braids and came to school that way. Her specialties also included playground fighting, smuggling Uncle Eamonn's Black Watch cigars to school and teaching us to smoke behind the school boiler house, and making up the dirtiest limericks I have ever heard before or since. Grace used awful language for a girl. For anyone, for that matter. Ma said that it would bar her entry to Heaven one day. Sister Mary Colman nailed it better; she said that Grace had a mouth on her that made the saints cry and could cut through a four-hour steel door. I have seen fires that burn through four-hour doors, and I think Grace's mouth would have given them a good run. For many reasons.

Yet Grace was one of the gentlest females I have ever known, then or now. She would beat the bejesus out of you on the playground, win all the marbles and keep 'em, go nose to nose with a sandlot umpire as good as any big-leaguer I have seen, but somehow she had a knack for knowing when there was real trouble in your life. She would always mysteriously appear when you were alone and in a bad way, offering a shoulder, an ear. She never said a word, just let you cry and promised not to tell. She was there for me when my younger brother, Paul, was dying. Never said a word, just let me sob it out on her clean white blouse and gave me a piece of licorice from her pocket after. "Yer all right, Johnny Sullivan, yer fine," she'd say in that funny little hoarse voice of hers, "God just gave you a little much to handle here." She clumsily patted my back and was off down the drive on her bike before I could say anything.

I remember the day when I saw Grace as someone more than Gracie of the skinny legs and swift right cross and oddly olive green eyes, Gracie of the dirty vocabulary and soft heart and kind, capable hands, hands always engaged in throwing a ball or picking a locker's lock or shooting a ringer marble or patting one of the many stray dogs that populated our neighborhood. (Gracie loved animals. Uncle Eamonn would not have a dog, so Grace used to buy dog biscuits and keep them in her jacket pocket for the neighborhood strays. She usually had a mangy, scrawny cat or two hanging around her, too.)

Anyway, I remember when Gracie made that transition from a girl to The Girl. There was nothing too definite about it, but it was memorable. We were in high school, and there was a dance at St. Kieran's for the CYO, and I remember the band was covering a Raspberries tune, "Go All The Way," and I asked Grace to dance, and it was really weird. Suddenly she went from this scruffy, skinny girl I had known all my life to an attractive young woman. It was just something about her movements. I don't know how to describe it. The other girls were out there jumping around, shaking it pretty good, but there was something about the way Grace moved -- she looked -- I don't know -- dangerous. Like she could do a guy some damage. Not in a mean or crazy way, she just -- she didn't look like anyone I ever saw. I didn't know it, standing there in the sweat-scented gym of St. Kieran's, but she looked like no one I have ever seen again. There has never been another. And I did not know, that chilly November night, when she grabbed both my hands behind the gym, that it would never happen quite this way again.

"Kiss me, Johnny Sullivan," she said, "kiss me like you mean it."

I awkwardly put my mouth over hers and attempted a kiss. I wasn't entirely sure about where tongues should go and so forth. Grace showed me. I felt like I was immersed in liquid fire, and yet I felt like laughing. It was absurd, and it was wonderful. Grace's breath smelt of Dentyne and a faint tinge of Irish whisky, probably filched from Uncle Eamonn's supply, and under the sodium light, her eyes were emerald and liquid and....

"JOHN SULLIVAN AND GRACE ANN O'MALLEY!"

It was Father Kelly. He was in a self-righteous lather, and he had probably had a little whisky himself, and we realized that we could at least outrun him if we didn't outrank him, and we jumped the fence behind the gym into some bushes and ran down a gully and onto the Norfolk and Western tracks. We walked the tracks home, as we lived only a few streets apart.

"I'll walk you to your door," I said.

"You'll play hell," she said. "D'you want my father to break your goddamn neck? Go home, Johnny Sullivan, and try not to find any girls between here and there." And with a harsh laugh, she ran off into the dimly lit brick street.

I was a little hurt, but still bedazzled, and I wandered home half-drunk from the night air and the kiss and the insane realization that this was a girl I could never let go.....

Oh, for God's sake. Wouldn't you KNOW that that shithead Derrico is down there roaring like he's giving birth? I'll tell you the rest a little later, I promise. It's important I keep this going. You see, I saw Grace yesterday....

Chapter One

Well, anyway. I thought I'd transcribe some stuff here between jobs. One of the guys thinks I ought to write a book. "Yeah," I told him. "A book about what? My love life? Two chapters long and mostly blank." He thought that was pretty funny. Bastard. He thinks everything's funny as long as it's not on him.

I suppose this is the part where I tell you about who I am and what I do. My name is John Sullivan. I'm a firefighter. There. Is that enough? I suppose not. I really ought to give you a little more background, maybe the standard opening paragraphs about being a kid in Cleveland, about the family, about my hopes, dreams, what drove me to become a firefighter.

Nah. You don't want to hear that. So what I will tell you about is what happened last December on Buckeye Road.

We were putting out a warehouse fire. Since the Buckeye neighborhood went downhill, what you have is a lot of empty warehouses, factories and storage facilities on the outskirts of a residential area. It used to be a pretty profitable business district, and the residential area was filled with people who worked in these buildings or in the steel mills down in the Flats. Now it's pretty much abandoned. Nobody lives here who doesn't have to. You have elderly homeowners, out-of-work tenants, Section 8 tenants and people who somehow get by without jobs or welfare, mostly running numbers or other petty racketeering, though there are a few drug dealers. Something for everybody. The neighborhood used to be mostly Polish, but now it's a few older Polish, mostly poor people, white and black, and a few Asians. Asians are the new black in this neighborhood.

Anyway. We get the call to go to this old metal stamping plant off Buckeye over by 55th. We get there, it's about 2 a.m. on a nasty, chilly, raw night, the kind only Cleveland can produce in December. There's a standpipe for the pump hookup but no way to tell if it's patent; that is, if it's clear. There's a hydrant on the street, too, but obviously the standpipe, being closer to the building, would make this easier. We're in no hurry -- there hasn't been anyone inside this building for ten years -- at least not anyone who's supposed to be.

We're not supposed to go inside an abandoned building, particularly factories or warehouses, because they can collapse in an instant, killing an entire crew. It's not like an apartment building where you have to go crawling around making sure there are no kids hiding in closets, elderly people passed out, so forth. So we assume we're not going in. We are going to hook up, get a couple nozzles inside, break open the roof so there's no implosion, get the bastard under control, see what we've got, maybe then go in if there's still a hot spot. This is not urgent work, but we have to do it, and if we're lucky, this standpipe is clear and it won't take us long to get this under control, take up and get out of there.

So we have Cullen, one of the cadets, jump off the truck -- cadets are probationary firefighters, and we usually graciously assign them the shit detail -- we say it's so they'll learn, which is partly true, but also because everyone has to pay their dues and so the pain in the ass stuff falls to the last hired. It's also least hazardous, so there are tradeoffs. The cadet grabs a wrench, goes over to check out the standpipe, and shouts, "Chief! There's somebody in the building!"

Jesus Christ. This is not good news, because we can tell by the way this is burning that it's probably arson and probably burning pretty hot and that it is probably not the ideal place to be, either for anyone inside or for us. It is also an older building, mostly lathe and plaster, wood joists and beams with a brick front, and it is going to go quickly.

Anyway -- Well, goddammit, do you believe that? There goes the callbox. I gotta go. I'll finish this when we get back. Hope this isn't a long one, because I haven't eaten yet. More later.

Chapter Two

All right. Where was I? Kinda hard to keep up with this with everything that goes on around here.

Oh, yeah. The stamping plant off Buckeye Road.

Well, Cullen-the-cadet is shouting that there's someone inside. We are trying like hell to get a line going in. Two of us go over to help whoever may be trapped inside. Derrico, who is my height but a lot heavier, grabs a halligan and takes out the window. You can hear screaming coming from within. It's not loud screaming, more like sobbing. Cullen and Derrico go in. I am right behind Derrico.

I couldn't believe what we were seeing. There in the smoke and dirt, trapped under a metal storage rack, are a man, a woman and a baby.

The guy is huddled over the woman to protect her. The woman has wrapped her body around the baby. The baby is whimpering more than crying. They are wrapped in blankets, and their clothing is dirty and torn. It's hard to tell if it's sooty from smoke or if they're just filthy. Anyway, things are happening too fast to take in all the details, and it's dark, and the only light is coming from the fire, which is closing in fast. The two of us manage to push the metal rack off the people, and it totters to the concrete floor with a crash. Derrico helps the man to his feet. I grab the woman, help her to her feet, and Cullen takes the baby. It's a young baby, maybe a year. My sister Katie has a one-year old, which is how I know.

We herd the people out of the building. Meanwhile the guys on the truck have hit paydirt -- the standpipe is clear and it is a Siamese standpipe, which means if the engine has enough pressure we can get two lines going in at once. This may go faster than we thought. We get the lines in, turn on the water and we are putting out the fire pretty well. A small section of the roof caves in a shower of sparks, and steam comes up through the opening. It actually looks worse than it is because the cold air intensifies the steam as the water hits the fire.

We get blankets off the truck for the little family shivering here on the concrete, and we put in a call to the EMS.

If we hadn't been able to get them out on the first try, we would have had to call Rescue. Not all houses have a rescue unit. The rescue guys are the prestige crew. These are the guys who get called to the bad ones, and it's a high-profile job. Generally their work involves cutting people out of impossible places and piecing them back together until they can be transported to a hospital. Nobody wants to need Rescue, but I have yet to hear of anyone who wasn't glad to see them. Firefighters are always the good guys (well, almost always -- we ghave been to a few scenes where an ongoing domestic dispute made us the bad guys until the police arrived and sorted things out), and Rescue is the good guy elite.

I am trying to get information from the people. This is really a job which will be started once an ambulance arrives to transport the victims to the ER over at Metro, but in the meantime I figure it might help them get over their fear a little. They are not obviously injured, maybe a little scared, but it''s also important to determine whether anyone might be in shock.

"You're gonna be okay," I say to the man. "We have a unit on the way to take you to the hospital. We want to make sure you're both okay and that the baby's fine." The man is bundling the blanket more securely around the woman's shoulders. The baby is whimpering and coughing a little. "Anyway," I say, "what were you doing in there? Do you live around here?"

"In there," says the man, pointing to the building. The man is of medium build, a little stooped, kind of dirty brown hair. It is impossible to tell under the streetlights what color his eyes are.

"In there," I repeat. "You lived in there."

"Uh-huh," says the man. "It was all we could find."

The woman, a little, tiny thing with thin shoulders and huge eyes, is clutching the baby tightly to herself. She looks as if she could cry at any minute. She is trying to articulate a thought but her words are coming in short bursts and she is nearly impossible to understand.

"I got...they...you won't....them if...TELL them...oh my God oh my God oh my oh...oh...Mi Dios, Mi Dios...."
I'm worried she might be verging on hysterical shock.

"Ma'am. If you'd like to sit down, we can go over to the truck."

"NO!" She's pretty definite about this, and I don't want to upset her more. I try a different tack.

"Ma'am, it's no good for the baby being out in this cold. Let's just take a walk over toward the truck and you can get him out of the wind. Is it a he?"

"Yes. This is Javier," she says, presenting him a little awwardly. She pronounces it "Havi-yay". I thought they looked Hispanic but in this light everyone looks pale green or lavender anyway.

The baby is still sniffling a little bit but settling down. I stoop a little, smile at him, and say, "Hi, guy."

Javier manages a crooked, bewildered little smile and begins to whimper again.

"C'mon," I say, "let's get him to the truck."

So we walk back over toward the rig, and Derrico wanders over and we get the woman up into the cab with the baby on her lap and another blanket around them. The guy remains on the ground and we are talking.

"Anyway. How the hell did you guys happen to be in there on a night like this? It's gotta be no warmer than the mid-twenties out here. What were you doing in there?"

"We live there," the man repeats.

"Why? What happened? Nowhere to go? You in some kind of trouble?"

"I'm out of work. I lost my job last year when the mill closed. Estella don't work. We had Javier last year and there was nobody to care for him. Me, I could stay home with him but Estella can't work. She got...problems."

I'm not sure I want to know what kind of problems, because this sounds like a Neverending Story, and there are a lot of them in this part of town, and I must confess, my own selfish interest is to get these people to a hospital and get the hell out of this weather. I am begining to wonder just what in the Christ is holding up EMS when they arrive on the scene. Here comes the cavalry. It's all good.

But I still feel oddly responsible for this strange little family group. Living in a goddamned abandoned factory in the middle of December, of all things. These people have seen rougher times than the worst ones I have lived through, and they probably see them daily. The worst rough night of my life is their daily existence. Maybe worse. My rough nights are mostly my fault, and I can quit having them whenever I want. (My ex-girl says I can't quit, but we won't get started about her.) Anyway. These people just live this way. Period. And then some asshole sets their only shelter on fire for fun.

So I ask the guy, as the woman and baby are bundled into the rescue unit: "You looking for work?" I have no idea why the hell I am asking him this, or what to tell him if he says yes.

"Yes," he says. Of course.

"Listen," I say. "My sister works for Child Services. Maybe she can put you in touch with some people who can get you a place to live. You can't...."

"Sully, for Christ's sake would you quit playing Mother Teresa over there and get on the truck?" It's Derrico. He's hungry, he's cranky and it's his night to cook. Probably not a good idea to piss off the cook.

I keep my sister's card in my coat. We run across people in bad situations -- it's kind of what we do. So I grab a card and press it into the guy's hand. "Here. Call here," I say. Roz' number stands out in clear black type, along with a bunch of Child Services numbers.

"Thanks, man," says the guy. He extends his hand. "Manny."

"Sully," I say. "Nice to..."

"Sully for the sweet love of Jesus willya COME ON," I hear from the truck.

I wave, leave the family in the care of Rescue and hop onto the truck for the ride back to the house.

That night after supper, I am lying on my rack and it occurs to me that the people I have met are like characters in a play. I start thinking about them. Estella and Manny and Javier. I suppose Manny is short for Manuel. Manuel is Spanish for Emmanuel, isn't it? And Estella, that means star. And Javier is also spelled Xavier, which means "Savior". Emmanuel, Star and Savior, in an old building on a cold December night. Nah, why do I always think sappy stuff like this? There absolutely aren't three wise men or a virgin in our entire goddamn company, that's for sure.

But anyway. The story struck me as funny, like funny-peculiar. Thought you might be interested. Also, I have a feeling I will see these people again some day. Why, I have no idea. I just hope it's under better circumstances. It also makes me wonder what the hell is going on that a man and his wife are living in an abandoned factory with a little baby and there are people on reality television making millions for acting like complete jerks.

Me, I usually act like a jerk for free. But more about that later. I gotta turn out the light; it's Saturday early morning and the weekend revelers are toning it down, incubating today's hangovers, their arson and carelessly tossed cigarettes and tipped kerosene heaters all projects for later on tonight. Shitheads. We always have customers, ya know?

More later, be good, and if you can't be good, for Christ's sake come back and tell me about it. I'll be here.