Chapter Ten

Well, as they say, be careful what you wish for. I had no sooner written that last sentence than the tones went off and we had a dandy. Triple winner -- a wreck with passenger injuries, a vehicle fire and a fatality.

Engine companies get called to the scene of traffic accidents whether or not there is a fire, because chances are we will get there first, and there is always the possibility of a vehicle fire. Some houses have a Rescue unit with a Hurst tool and other equipment to pry people from wrecks; some have EMS units. We're a fairly small house; we have one engine apparatus and one ladder apparatus. But when there is a wreck nearby, we get the call, and we are usually on the scene at the same time as Rescue and EMS if not before. If none of the vehicles involved are on fire, we usually stay until we are sure that everything is under control per EMS and the police. If there is a fire, of course, that's our job.

The call came in just as I had turned off the laptop and was hitting the rack. We are often called to the scene of medical emergencies -- heart attacks, falls, fights, industrial injuries. This is because there are more firehouses than hospitals, so chances are we can get to the scene first. Most firefighters have some EMT training and all of us have CPR and basic first aid, so we are often called in first to take care of the situation until EMS can arrive with an ambulance. Wrecks are more frequent non-fire calls, though, and they usually involve a lot more than CPR and a little handholding. This one was sure no exception.

It was raining, and the rain was turning to sleet. A car and a minivan had collided on the on-ramp to I-490 at East 55th. Apparently the car cut off the minivan and the minivan driver didn't see it and was unable to slow down in time. The car was totaled. It looked as if a very pissed off minor deity had grabbed it up, wrung it like a washcloth and tossed it to the pavement. The front end of the mini-van was smashed in pretty thoroughly. The impact had sent the minivan fishtailing into the guardrail, where the gas tank eploded. Flames were shooting from the minivan's undercarriage and left rear.

This doesn't happen nearly as often as the movies show it; if you've seen an action movie with a car chase, you might think that every vehicle is built to explode on impact. In truth, since Ford recalled the Pintos in the mid-70's, there have been very few vehicles made that are likely to explode even on very hard impact. What generally happens is that the gas tank is punctured on impact and the accumulated fumes eventually explode as a result of friction from passing vehicles, an attempt to turn the ignition key, sparks from the vehicle's electrical system or improper attempts to pry the wreckage or other accidental sources. However, regardless of the reason or timing, it's always nasty when it happens. Best case is that all passengers have been removed from the involved vehicle and emergency personnel are well out of the way. But of course, if this was a best case, you wouldn't have a massive wreck on the freeway ramp at 2:30 in the morning.

In this case, the goddamn thing went up just as the last passenger was being removed from the minivan by Rescue. We were on the scene just as it happened, which was amazingly good timing considering how bad the rest of the situation was. Dispatch had told us there was no fire, but Dispatch forgot to say "yet".

We were off the truck and had the pumper going immediately, and we had the fire out within a few minutes. The driver of the minivan, a woman who looked to be in her mid-fifties, had been bundled into the Metro ambulance, bleeding from a head wound, but she was sitll conscious. Her passengers, a younger woman and three little kids, were put into the EMS ambulance. The younger woman was ambulatory but her dull, lifeless expression indicated she might be in shock. The kids, who all looked to be under five, were screaming and crying, but it would be hard to tell if they were hurt and how badly until they got them to the ER.

The car was another story. Rescue had the driver on a Gurney and he was covered by a sheet, waiting for transport. He wasn't going anywhere in a hurry, now or ever again.

Probably the thing that bothered me most about this is that as we were standing talking to the cops about what happened, a brightly colored object on the sleet-drenched pavement caught my eye. It was a small stuffed bear with a bright purple ribbon around its neck. And on the ground next to it was a ripped-open twelve pack of Natural Light beer and a couple of empty cans.

"This come from the van?" I asked the younger cop.

"Nah. All his," he said, indicating the body on the Gurney.

"Was there a kid in the car?"

"No. Not tonight, thank God."

"Man."

"Yeah."

No matter how many times you see it, it never loses its impact. At least, it doesn't if you are doing this job for the right reasons. As dead bodies go, this was one of the tidier ones, and he had the courtesy to be nicely covered before we got there, but I don't care how many of them you see -- it's never easy. It's part of the job, and you can't afford to emotionally process every fatality you encounter as it happens. You have a job to do. Grief and its handmaidens, Fear and Anger, don't have seats on any working apparatus. We have an obligation to the survivors and to our brother firefighters, to save lives and minimize damage. But dealing with death will definitely work on you, and sometimes, if you don't fully realize its impact at the time, you will later.

There is, of course, a lot of black humor involved. We find nothing funny about the fact that someone was killed, but we definitely joke about the circumstances in which we find them and find ourselves. What passes for humor among the brothers might not be considered amusing or appropriate to the outside world, but believe me when I tell you, we grieve your loss too. Some of the jokes we tell are just coping mechanisms for enduring the pain of loss we feel too. Our loss is in no way as great as yours, but our loss is compounded by the pain of failure. Whether or not it is right, any fire in which there are fatalities makes us question whether there's something more we could have done, something we neglected, overlooked or failed to consider. We are taught to solve problems as well as save lives, and when we feel we have failed to do so, we blame ourselves.

So our humor is a method of surviving what would otherwise be an unbearable burden. You need us at maximum usefulness, so we need to avoid crippling emotions such as grief, self-doubt and bitterness. One of the ways we do this is by joking. Never at the scene, never within earshot of any of the victims, but things can get pretty raw sometimes back at the house. It's our way, and it may sound odd to say, but it's humor born out of love for the people we serve. An outsider might be shocked at some of the things we consider funny, but it's all a way of "keeping our heads from killing our bodies," as my Uncle Owen used to say. So my remark about the fatality having had the decency to be covered with a sheet is not intended to be disrespectful to the guy who was killed. It's more a way of keeping the living on an even keel.

Anyway, back at the house, there was a little winding down before we all got back in the rack, but the atmosphere wasn't as charged as it would be after, say, a multiple-alarm fire involving a residential block. As wrecks go, it was nasty, but it was pretty standard fare. There were a few mutters about the driver who caused the wreck. Derrico had learned from one of the cops at the scene that the diver had a record of multiple DUI's, something like four in the last three years. "Yeah, well, just think of all the time they'll save in Traffic Court" said Derrico. "The cops ought to like that. The downside is his bartender probably won't be able to buy a boat until next year." Black, bleak humor, but sometimes that's how we are.

But when I turned in, as I lay there in the rack, a single image kept coming back to me. There, face down on the pavement in the sleet, had been that little teddy bear. Somebody's toy. Somebody's daddy. Alcohol removed a lot more than a drunken driver from the road this night. It also took away a big part of some child's life.

I've been drinking a lot lately. Part of it I've been blaming on the Grace thing, part of it is blowing off stress after work. It might be a good time to look at that. On the one hand, I'm not somebody's father or husband or.....

On the other hand, there's a life involved here too. Mine.

I'm too tired to process all this right now. The hell with it, and we'll see what happens in the morning. Unlike that poor guy, I'll have another day to think it all over. Believe it or not, for that I'm truly grateful.

Chapter Nine

I can't stop thinking about Grace.

I knew when I saw her a few weeks back that it would set off some pretty difficult reactions.

Derrico asked about her just the other day. I of course told him that I didn't know, hadn't heard from her in awhile, had no idea what she was up to.

Why is is that when you shouldn't think about somebody, you can't stop? I know at least half a dozen women who periodically bug the shit out of me about staying in touch. Oh, some of them go at it kiddingly, leaving me phone messages that I'm sure are intended to be light and airy and funny, stuff like, "John, this is Jenny; just checking to see if you're still among the living. Give me a call some time! Catch ya later!" One of my favorites was from a girl who's really more a friend than a girlfriend: "Hey. Sully. If I was a goldfish I 'd be dead by now. Call me." But the underlying message is still the same: "You shithead. You never call. What do I, have to show up naked for you to be glad to see me?"

The honest answer to that, sadly, is, "Pretty much. " It's not that I don't like the women I date, or that I don't care how they feel. But I just don't get seriously involved if I can avoid it. Like most guys, I have been hurt pretty badly a few times, and like most guys, I don't lay all my cards on the table at once. Also, like most guys, I probably say a lot of stuff I shouldn't in order to get laid. Funny how a phrase like "You're amazing," which I considered to be fairly safe and noncommittal, can come back to bite you in the ass months after the fact. I had one of my "one-week stands" come up to me at a bar where Derrico and I were downing beers and watching babes, dump a beer on me and say, "How amazing am I now, asshole?"

Look. It's not like I told her I loved her. It's not like I promised her anything. It's not even like we dated for a long time, or that I left her without goodbye. In fact, she left me. This might have had something to do with the fact that I didn't call her for two weeks after our last round in the sack, but it's not like I did anything evil or mean, like calling her best friend instead.

In fact, most of the trouble I get into with women seems to be directly related to things I don't do. "You don't call me enough, you never want to take me shopping, you didn't remember our one-month anniversary, you never tell me I'm beautiful, you never send me cards..."

My God. I don't keep lists, I don't do anniversaries, and if you want cards with kittens on them, call your Aunt Rose. If I am with you, I think you're beautiful. I don't mind fixing your front porch railing, changing your oil, picking up your kid from preschool in a blinding snowstorm or replacing the batteries in your smoke alarm. But for Christ's sake, don't expect me to dance like Astaire, feed you all the best lines or help you choose new outfits. If you want a guy who'll do all that, I hope you have male pals who are gay, because I'll tell you the truth -- most straight guys who will even think about doing that sort of stuff will only do it for about a week. After that, they're looking to get laid somewhere else.

Sometimes women get the mistaken impression I am a sensitive guy because I love roses. I really don't think so. Roses are real. They have genus and species, specific characteristics, history, growth habits, all sorts of interesting stuff. Some, like the tea roses, are very fussy and take a real expert to grow successfully. Some, like the floribundas, practically grow on their own, but you have to know what type of environment they like: soil acidity, climate and so forth. There are old garden roses, "collector" hybrids and species, and lots of different varieties even within the same group. They're interesting, they can be expensive, and it's necessary to know what you are doing.

In that way, I don't see how being a rose hobbyist is fundamentally different from having an enthusiasm for, say, sports cars or wild birds or horses or antique guns or woodworking. They do involve the care of a living thing, so I suppose you could call that a nurturing thing, but I don't see how my fondness for roses is romantic. But you can't tell women that. You can't tell the guys at the firehouse that either. If you're smart, you won't try.

I suppose the romance connection is obvious; it's the long association with roses as the flower of love. The standard American Beauty long stemmed thornless rose, deep red and in tight-budded perfection is a lovely thing, of course. But I have never thought of it as particularly romantic. McCann, one of the guys on B-shift, calls them "Get Out Of The Doghouse Tokens" and rates his adventures by the numbers -- "that was a six-token job," "that was a genuine twenty-four-token bitch-up", etc . Roses, at least the kind I like, are a lot more interesting than that, and I don't count many red varieties among my favorites.

Well, anyway. Like most things I have thought about this week, thinking about roses brings me right back around to Grace. She used to have quite a garden full of them that she took over when Uncle Eamonn died. Her mother remarried after a few years and eventually moved out of state, so when Grace returned to Cleveland after her divorce, she and her son, Sean, lived in the old house. Grace had always had an enthusiasm for plants and animals, and under her loving care the garden soon was overflowing with new and revivified old life.

I would come by some mornings after my shift and do a little pruning, sneak a new variety into the plot, add some bone meal to the soil. Even though Grace was at work and Seanny was at daycare, Grace's presence was somehow still there in the garden, and I don't think I ever felt as close to her as when I was alone planting roses in her garden, listening to a cardinal's song and the hum of traffic from the freeway nearby and enjoying some music on the little portable radio she always left out on the back porch for me. I didn't have a key and I didn't want a key. Grace was very independent and if the time came for me to have a key, I guess that's how it would have been, but I never pushed her for it. With a girl like Grace, it was always better not to push.

We would sit drinking beer on her sandstone back steps long after Seanny was in bed. We'd listen to the Indians on the radio and smell the amazing perfume of some of the night-blooming white roses, and we wouldn't say much. We'd maybe comment on an occasional play: "My God, is he actually going to pull Candiotti when he's ahead in the count? Christ!" We'd slap a mosquito or two sometimes we'd get a citronella candle going if they were particularly hungry. After the game, we'd turn off the radio, cuddle together on the big wooden porch swing and listen to the gentle patter of the lawn sprinkler as its jets made an arc through the tree leaves overhead. Generally, the thing I liked most about those summer evenings was the sense of deep peace. I don't think I've ever found that kind of peace before or since. There are lots of women who are easy to talk to. Grace was a woman with whom it's easy to be silent.

After awhile, we'd bundle up our empties, toss out the invitable Subway wrappers and maybe a Happy Meal box left from Seanny, and go into the house and up to bed. We'd make passionate, slow love. We never said much then either. We made the usual noises humans make when they are ecstatically happy, accompanied by very few words. We seemed to have in common that the happier we were during sex, the less we had to say during or afterward. I would always tell her I loved her right before we fell asleep, but I can't say that she always answered me, either.

Strange. You'd think that detail would have been important, and yet I can't recall it. Maybe I don't want to remember it. One thing is very certain at times like today, and that's that I wish I didn't remember anything about Grace at all. And yet such a part of my life would be missing if I didn't.

This is too much thinking. I almost wish the tones would go off and we'd get a working fire. Not that I want anyone in harm's way or that I want to see a building burn. But feeling useful right now, feeling needed and good and helpful and that I am fighting on the side of right, would go a long way toward getting my mind off things I have no right to think about.

Wherever Grace is, I hope she is well.

Chapter Eight

Almost all firemen have side jobs. Generally, we work two twenty-four hour tours in a week’s time. That leaves us with a lot of unoccupied time.

I’ve heard people say, “Oh, that must be wonderful, all that time you have to spend with your families.” Well, I’m not a family man myself, at least not in the married with kids sense. But one of the engine crew at our house, Bones, is married with five kids and his wife damn near left him once out of exasperation. Her complaint? He was never home.

Bones did what a lot of guys do. Since he had a pretty large family to support and since this job allows for large chunks of time to be spent at other pursuits, he had a second job that took up most of his days off. So, he was putting in three ten-hour shifts at a machine shop in addition to working two tours a week here at 19 Engine. Many of the guys have wondered aloud how it is he found time to father five little Boneses. Speculation has circulated at the dinner table that there is Mailman Bones Junior, Cable Installer Bones Junior, Beat Cop Bones Junior, etc. Bones takes this pretty well. He knows we are joking, and if he gets a little hurt, we console him by assuring him that the Bones tribe is far too ugly to be anybody but Bones’ kids.

But most firefighters have second jobs. It was pointed out to us when we were in training that we would never get rich on a fireman’s pay. The rich irony here is that the guy telling us this, a retired battalion chief and fire school instructor, made some smart investments and became one of the wealthiest men in Cleveland. But he was right; though the pay and benefits are very good, you don’t go into this line of work because of the easy money.

But most firefighters, like the BC who made good, are also innovative about making money on the side. I know guys who do everything from tending bar and playing in a band to working as investment brokers, carpenters, substitute teachers and computer programming consultants. One guy over at 42 Truck went to law school while on the job and hung out his shingle last year. His specialty? He works with the city and the DA‘s office, prosecuting arson cases. You might say he’s more than an ambulance chaser; he’s driving the firetruck.

When I first started, I did some work as a stringer for a local community newspaper. My degree from Northwestern got me the job, but I found it hard to sustain interest. Also, they expected that since I was a firefighter, that I had some sort of finger on the pulse of city politics. Well, in a way, I do, but my opinions seldom jibed with those of the conservative paper franchise and I was unwilling to provide them with more than the public-record facts. Journalism is a dirty business, which is part of why I went into firefighting, but that’s a long story I’ll save for later. Let’s just say that if the Plain Dealer building was on fire I would help put it out, but that’s about it.

Anyway, my favorite side work is not writing or anything like it. I have a minor in Plant Biology/Horticulture and I am a rose enthusiast. This is not exactly something I trumpet all over the firehouse. The fact that I know a monocotyledonous plant from a dicotyledonous plant isn’t too bad -- that would probably just produce some grudging admiration or a “so effin’ what?” from the majority. But if I were to sit down over coffee with Bones and Derrico and rhapsodize over the glories of a Madame Hardy damask rose versus these come-lately floribundas, admitting that the David Austin English Roses are, however, a combination of disease resistance and beauty….well….let’s just say that if I ever go off my trolley and try it, I had best be sleeping with one eye open. Horse manure in my locker would probably just be the opening salvo.

But the plant thing has paid off. My brother Pat is a priest (yes, we are practically a “stage Irish” family -- my siblings and I include a priest, a firefighter, a mother of four, a social worker, a cop and a pipefitter) and he was assigned to our old parish, St. Kieran’s, as assistant pastor. St. Kieran’s, being an older parish in the “hood”, was badly in need of re-landscaping. I took the job, learned quite a bit about everything from best prices on topsoil and brick to the finer points of acid-loving plants and soil testing, and built a rose garden on the grounds that even includes a running fountain and a created seating space -- a beautiful place to meditate, right there in the city soot and traffic, tucked away behind a wall I built myself on days off. Pat loves it, the older parishioners love it, and I recently heard that the kids all have their class pictures taken there, so that’s something that makes me feel good.

Doing all this had its own reward, though. I learned a fair bit about landscaping as a business, and for the last few years have managed my own little landscaping company during summer months. I’m never shorthanded, as there are always guys from the firehouse who are willing to come along and help in order to earn a few extra bucks, and we have a lot of fun getting the work done. The only way we advertise is by word of mouth, but we are never at a loss for jobs in spring and summer. And of course, in the Fire Department, everybody knows somebody -- we have bricklayers, materials suppliers, contractors, one guy has a rototiller, another guy has a backhoe, another guy knows a lakefront property owner who will give us all the decorative limestone we care to haul -- it all works together.

Last summer Pat called to say it had been five years -- apparently, time flies whether you are having fun or not -- and ask if we could come out and overhaul the garden. Things had died or become overgrown, retaining walls had given way, mulch had washed out. So, I got a crew together consisting of Bones, Derrico, Cullen-the-Cadet, and a couple of B-shifters and C-shifters from 19 Engine as well, and we spent a sunny Tuesday afternoon spreading redwood bark mulch and gravel, replacing ailing rhododendrons, and rebuilding a rose arbor. I am happy to report that the rose arbor needed to be rebuilt due to the vigorous growth of a Gloire de Dijon climber that I had installed myself when I originally put in the garden. It was a little disappointing that there was nobody with whom I could share this. Grace knows roses, but I hadn't seen Grace in a few years then, and Derrico thinks he knows roses, but Derrico thinks he knows everything. Cullen would be lucky to know which end of a rosebush to plant in the ground, but at least Cullen would admit it.

Well, firemen, as a general rule, consider the consumption of beer to be essential to any well-executed construction project, and this was no exception. We had two coolers going, not of beer and soda but of real beer and "toy beer", popularly called light beer. I think somebody had brought a 12-pack of cold Coke as well, and this got scattered in there, and Pat's housekeeper made us a jug of lemonade that looked like she should have used a dolly to roll it from the kitchen, and we were set. We had a few lawn chairs for breaks and of course somebody had brought cigars.

The only thing missing from the jobsite were pretty girls walking by. You don't get a lot of those in St. Kieran's neighborhood -- even the young and healthy have a rather beaten look that comes of living too long with too little and trying to do too much with nothing. Not an indictment of the neighborhood's people so much as a fact -- it's the near West Side of Cleveland and hope, health and Hollywood good looks aren't found in abundance.

Imagine, then, our surprise when a few hours into our labors, a brand new Passat pulled into the lot just off the alley, between he convent and the rectory. Imagine, if you will, our increased surprise and the addition of delight when from that shiny blue Passat emerged a statuesque, athletic goddess with cropped honey-blonde hair, gorgeous blue eyes and a San Diego tan. Not your average girl, not from around here and definitely not an unwelcome sight.

Good news travels fast, especially across small spaces. Cullen dropped a fence section he was moving, Bones dropped his jaw, and Derrico dropped any pretense of trying to spread mulch evenly. Nobody dropped their drawers, but then, we were only halway through the first case of beer. One of the C-shifters, a guy named Gus, emitted a long, low wolf whistle. Most of the guys on C-shift are rude, coarse, low, vulgar animals who have no gentlemanly respect for the delicate sex. This is not slander; it is a simple statement of fact. And if C-shift were speaking of us, they would return the compliment. But probably in worse language, because that is just the way they are, the dirty dogs.

Anyway.

Gus let out a relatively subdued catcall. The apparition, gorgeous and unruffled, stepped to the trunk of her car to unload a briefcase and some books. Four guys were immediately at her side. "Here. Let me get that for you," said Derrico, and attempted to appropriate the briefcase.

She smiled serenely at him, pulled back the briefcase, scooped up the stack of books in her other arm, smiled, said, "Thanks; I have it," and glided -- not walked, glided -- across the lot to the rectory gate. She was the picture of gorgeous, golden, athletic grace, shining in the summer sun. Statues of Nike have been modeled on lesser women. We were stunned. We were in awe. We were also half smashed.

It was too lovely a moment, too perfect, and of course, some shithead had to ruin it. This always happens. If this story were about any other bunch of guys, it would be either unremarkable or picture-perfect. Not Animal House. Not 19. It's always something with these guys. Always.

Gus led off. "Hey," he called after the goddess' retreating figure, "are those gorgeous legs tired? 'Cause you've been running through my dreams!"

Oh, no. Oh, my God.

Cullen, seeing this as an opportunity to for once not be the lowest on the house totem pole, said, "Gus, Jesus. Watch your mouth, willya?"

The Goddess nodded in our direction as if to acknowledge that chivalry does indeed still live, in the person of Cullen-the-Cadet, and continued across the rectory porch. She was no sooner in the door than a huddle of furious firemen descended on Gus as if he was a small but dangerous brushfire.

"Nice goin', asshole." This from Derrico, who has made his share of bonehead moves where women are concerned and was probably just glad that for once it was not him.

"Do you mind?" I added. "She probably knows Pat, wouldn't you say? And she's here on church business of some sort, so she's probably not the kind of broad you would hang out with anyway."

"Certainly she wouldn't hang out with YOU," added Bones.

The shamefaced Gus, recovering from the scolding, started to bristle.

"Ah, whadda you assholes know? She was givin' me the look anyways. I saw it."

"The look, my ass," I retorted. "The look people get when you pull them out of the smoke, right before they puke all over the EMT, maybe."

"I don't think she was lookin' at anybody, guys." This from Cullen, who is occasionally allowed to speak.

"Whaddya mean? You think she's gay? No way," said Derrico.

"Um, no, I think she might be married. She had a wedding ring, " said Cullen.

Derrico, Bones and I took this as further proof of Gus' utter degeneracy and a reason to further berate him. Not that he said anything we weren't all thinking, but you have to take opportunities when you find them. Especially with C-shifters.

Gus, not about to concede, said, "So what if she's married? A lot of those married broads are players. I bet she's a player. She had that look. And she was lookin' righ at me, boys. Eat your hearts out."

"Fifty bucks," I said, "that even if she's the type, 'if she do, it ain't with you'," I finished, using a favorite firehouse saying.

"You're on," said Gus, cocky and now with a point to prove.

We didn't have long to wait. The vision emerged from the rectory, accompanied by Pat, who called to us from the porch. Now we would see whether there was any flirtatiousness. Firemen are ver good at picking up this sort of thing. We have to be. It's a very important people skill. We have to be good with people to work with the public, right?

"Johnny," called Pat. "Come here. There's someone I'd like you to meet. Come on, guys, you too. Come on over here."

This was unusual. Usually it takes hours to gain an introduction, and it takes a lot of work. Pat was certainly eliminating the middle man.

We crowded around the porch. If we had been wearing hats, we would have taken them off. Kerchiefs mopped sweat and dirt from sun-reddened faces. We wiped garden-soiled hands on our shirttails in anticipation of shaking the slender, soft hand of the golden vision before us. We were nothing if not a troop of angels with only slightly crooked halos.

"I'd like you to meet Sister Jean. She has recently returned from El Salvador and will be the new athletic instructor at St. Kieran's. Don't know if any of you guys have kids in school here, but thought you might like to say hi."

Well. You could have heard the proverbial pin drop, but since there were no pins involved, it's fair to say that the dropping of expectations was nearly audible. It seemed to be a win for gravity, that's for certain. We all shookhands politely, mumbled "Hi, Sister," as we were all taught to do years ago in school, and stepped back, almost as if we were afraid she'd break.

Sister Jean laughed, a sound like the clear pealing of a single chapel bell, and said, "Please, guys. It's Jean. I'm only 'Sister' to my students."

Well, it was fair to say we'd all learned something that day, but I'm sure that's not what she meant.

Later, order being restored and back to our work, we discussed the situation in hushed tones.

"Jeez, Sully, I bet you're glad you didn't say anything to her," said Bones. "You're usually the bigget mouth in the bunch."

"Grace of God, I guess. Hey, at least I didn't think she was married."

Cullen chimed in, "She must be a Dominican sister. They wear a wedding ring to show they're the betrothed of Christ."

"Hey, cadet, how do you know so much?" said Derrico.

"I read a lot," said Cullen.

"Yeah, read this," I said, making the universal gesture. "Let's finish up here; the Tribe's playing the Yankees tonight and I don't want to be dipshittin' around with this at game time."

Gus didn't say anything. But it was a very, very long time before he asked to work landscape with us again.

And probably even longer before he hit on his next nun.