Chapter Eleven

A lot of people think being a firefighter is an exciting life. Much of this is because when you see a TV show or movie about firefighters, it focuses on the action. Fairly or not, people get the idea that we are constantly racing around, responding to third, fourth and fifth alarm situations, rushing from one exciting conflagration to the next. They see us as heroes, warriors, gladiators in the battle against the Red Devil.

We would love it if this were the case, if we were given this much opportunity to be useful, but unfortunately, it's not. A lot of firehouse life is just like your own life at home only more so, as Yogi Berra might say.

We live together, eat together, sleep under the same roof, all one big happy and occasionally slightly cranky family. Since we work in twenty-four hour shifts, that's a lot of hours logged together. Out of each twenty-four hour shift, our engine company will get an average of between twenty and thirty calls a shift. Of those calls, on a busy night for our house, two or three might be what we call working fires, blazes that require a certain amount of throwing our backs into it. Of the rest, there will be freeway accidents, medical calls and about ten will be false alarms. Most of these are accidentally tripped alarms at businesses and residences.

Not many people these days pull false alarms for the fun of it, because it carries substantial penalties. In what my Uncle Owen remembers as the Hough years, during the riots and civil unrest of the late 60's and early 70's, fase alarms were pulled as a form of civil protest, and the busier companies could get up to thirty a night. The greatest problem with this was that for every batch pulled, at least one was a true alarm, and quite often it was a working fire, a serious one, so each alarm demanded immediate response. Those years saw a lot of arson in Cleveland's Glenville/Hough neighborhood.

This reflected the scene for fire companies in every major U. S. city. Arson was in those days not only a crime against property but considered a form of protest. Large urban areas that had fallen to decay were filled with properties, businesses and apartment buildings owned by slum landlords. Inner city residents were unemployed, angry and restless. There was a growing climate of dissatisfaction with the war in Viet Nam, the poor economy, the worsening conditions of poverty and despair that afflicted big cities like some sluggish cancer. The disenfranchised and the disgruntled adopted arson as a form of anarchic justice. If nobody was going to listen to them, they were going to make themselves heard. "Burn, Baby, Burn" was the urban guerrilla's battle cry during that restive era.

I have listened to Uncle Owen and some of my other uncles and older cousins tell stories of this era. They saw the residents of these neighborhoods as victims too, although their empathy was not always returned. A lot of times firefighters would be lumped in along with the cops as "The Man," the presence of authority. There would be jeers and taunts directed at the firemen on the scene (for in those days there were no female firefighters; "firefighter" wasn't even a term used much back then. These days, in the era of PC jargon, we say, "We are firefighters. A fireman works on a steam engine."). Still, the majority of the people were law-abiding citizens trapped by social and economic circumstance within a climate of anger and fear. Although citizens displayed hostility on occasion, the firefighters knew that they were battling conditions far more dangerous and hopeless than fires in abandoned buildings, and most of them were sympathetic.

One time when I was a kid, listening to the uncles and cousins in our kitchen telling stories of their day's work, I asked Uncle Owen, "If you guys were the good guys, why weren't they glad to see you?"

He answered, "Because we were the ones who showed up." I never forgot that. His answer was completely absent of rancor and sarcasm; it was plain to me that he felt empathy for the people he served. Firefighters are indeed "who shows up". No matter what the circumstances, no matter what the reason, if we are called, we will be there. Unlike bureaucrats and politicians, we are bound to our duties by personal ethic as well as federal law. We leave no cry for help unanswered; we do not even hesitate. The most routine run in the world is still as important as "the big ones". We don't question why or how we were called, nor who called us. We show up. It's what we do. You can bet your life on it, and we understand that quite often that's exactly what's at stake. You call, and we answer. It's one of the reasons I feel good about what I do. My badge is an emblem of dependability, usefulness and responsibility to the community I serve and, by extension, to humankind. I'm very proud of that.

Well. Before I started waxing saintly here, I was telling you about how routine firehouse life really is. And it is that.

Just yesterday, I was out shoveling the snow from the sidewalk in front of the firehouse. It's one of those things we do that make this job a lot more like a lifestyle than a career. If you have a regular job, you get in your car and go to work and somebody who was hired to do so has shoveled the snow. When you get home, you shovel your own snow. That's kind of a capsule description of firehouse life: you shovel your own snow. In the same way, you cook your meals, you wash your vehicles, you shop for groceries and you clean the place regularly. In some ways, I suppose that makes it more like home than home is for some of the guys. The married guys usually get a little help in the housekeeping department. Here we do our own.

I don't mean to make that sound like a pain in the ass, either. It isn't. I actually enjoy some of the chores around here. Shoveling snow is one I pretty much enjoy. It gives me a chance to get outside, which can be a lot more refreshing in mid-January than it sounds. When you are between runs and you've cleaned up after dinner, and you've done all scheduled equipment maintenance, exhausted all possible discussions of the Super Bowl and of baseball off-season trades and news, and there's no good gossip, and you're tired of playing cards and you're not tired enough to turn in, the firehouse can be a pretty dull place to be. Quiet is good, but sometimes in midwinter, the place can actually be too quiet.

So I like to go outside, shovel all the snow from the apron in front of the apparatus bays and do all the sidewalks and paths around the building. We actually have a snowblower that somebody brought in from home and that somebody else fixed and that somebody else broke again, but even if the thing were running perfectly, I wouldn't want to use it. I like the chance to be outside, to say hello to neighborhood people, to think that I might spare the older folks a slip on an icy walk. I like the quiet, steady hard work of shoveling snow under the iron-grey Cleveland sky, using a broad-blade steel shovel to push and scrape, steadily, thoroughly clearing a path.

Snow shoveling, properly done, is an art. It's like I suppose a Zen exercise would be. You are making the path before you be not-snow, accepting that more snow will cover your work and eventually the sun will melt all. There is nothing permanent about snow shoveling. Maybe I've been reading too much about Eastern religions lately, but if there's one principle they seem to grasp, it's that nothing we do is eternal. In this way, snow shoveling has similarities to firefighting. It teaches you acceptance. You shovel snow and an hour later the path is covered again, but you do it anyway, because all that you can do anything about is what is here and now. In the same way, a building that's on fire now needs to be put out now. It may burn to the ground a week, a month, a year from now, but that is not your problem. Firefighting very much teaches you to be here now, as they say.

Well, in the midst of similar meditations yesterday, I was hit in the back of the neck by an iceball. Hard. It wasn't big, and it wasn't hard enough to injure me, but it stung like hell, and it made me pretty mad. I immediately swung around to see if I could spot the marauder. There are a couple of young kids in this neighborhood who are pretty mischievous, and I was trying to spot a rapidly retreating dirty Browns parka or camouflage flak jacket, favorite apparel of a few of the primary suspects. My plan was to chase down the offender and give him a good facewash with a gloveful of snow, not really too terrible but certainly a punishment fitting the crime.

I looked in all directions in the rapidly deepening winter dusk but saw nothing. I took a few tentative steps in the direction of a large oak in the treelawn on the street alongside the firehouse. I heard a giggle. It sounded like a girl -- no, more like a woman. We have a few of what my father calls "characters" in the neighborhood; I was hoping it wasn't Mrs. Duffy from around the corner, who is fine when her daughter can persuade her to take her meds, but also has some disctinctly non-fine days here and there, an occasional one of which requires transport to the psych unit at Metro.

I kept steadily, slowly onward in the direction of the tree until I was nearly up to it, then rushed over to run around behind it.

There was Grace.

Flushed, smiling, with snow in her hair and all over her coat, laughing and giggling like she was about eight. At least, like I remembered her from when we were eight.

I didn't know what to say. I was totally astonished. I stammered a bit. Finally, I managed, "Grace -- what the hell -- what ARE you doing here?"

"Sully, I need to talk to you."

"Just like that? You show up after all these years, whack me with a snowball, and it's 'Hi, Sully old pal; let's have a chat? How's every little thing?' Are you crazy?" I didn't mean to sound like an asshole but I also realized to my horror that I had a running start on the prospect. Too late to take it back; best to shut up now while I was at least somewhat ahead.

Grace shook her head, shook some snow from her hair and laid a finger over her lips as if we really WERE still eight years old and hiding from older neighborhood bullies.

"Not now, Sully. But I need to talk to you. Here's one of my cards," she said, fishing a business card from a knit wool bag, "and there's an email address and phone number written on the back. Use them; don't use the business numbers."

I wasn't sure whether I was irritated, amused or both. I settled on both.

"What's with the Bond girl routine? And what is so important after fifteen years that couldn't wait until you at least tried to see if I thought it was a good idea to talk?"

As if it answered my question perfectly, she said, "I have to pick Seanny up from the bus stop in ten minutes and then go get Kate from after-school. But I want you to call me." She turned to fly off into the night, down the snow side street, away again, always away from me....

I reached out before she could go and grabbed her shoulder. It felt so thin through her cloth coat, like the bones of a bird.

"Grace. What is this about? Why now? Why ME? And I thought you were married. Is everything okay at home?"

"WAS married. There is no 'at home'. But it's all right. Call me. I really have to go."

And she twisted free form my grasp, lightly, quickly, and was off down the snow-silent street just as the streetlight came on, casting its cold glow over the snowdrifts.

Maybe I'm a coward but I didn't chase her. And maybe I'm a fool but I want to call her. If only to see what could be so important to her after fifteen years and two more husbands that she still thinks of me at all.