Report From Engine Co. 82 - Dennis Smith [42]
Again in the street, the cold attacks me. The wet clothes stick to me. Chills run up and down my back. There is still a lot of work to be done here, but it’s not our work this time. The wind and the cold won’t bother us any longer. The first alarm companies will have to fight it out. We’re going home.
Chief Marks’ aide is standing in front of the burned-out building, a walkie-talkie strapped over his shoulders. The thing is blaring out the Chiefs orders, and Carroll has to yell over the high screeching sound, “Hey, what happened to Bill Kelsey?”
“Who’s Bill Kelsey?” the aide yells back.
“The guy from Engine 82 who got something down his boot.”
“Oh, him,” the aide returns. “They brought him to Fulton Hospital in the Chiefs car. He’s got a nasty bum on his thigh, you know?”
“Anybody else hurt?” Carroll asks.
“Yeah, a guy from Engine 50 fell through the floor—a guy named Roberti, or Roberto, or something like that.”
It’s all very impersonal. When a guy gets hurt at a fire, it’s easier to remember the injury than the man’s name. There are many names, but the injuries are all about the same—a guy got burned, he fell through the roof or a floor, he got cut by falling glass, the ceiling or a wall fell on him, or he was overcome by heat or smoke. These injuries can’t be prevented, not as long as the best way to put out a fire is to get close to it.
The hose couplings are frozen, and we have to hoist them over the exhaust pipe again. Billy Valenzio, the company chauffeur, leans down from the top of the engine, grabs the hose with one hand, and lifts it over the steaming pipe. I can see the strain in his handsome Italian face, and say, “I’d help you, Billy, but I know that a good-looking guy with muscles like yours can handle the job by himself.”
“Yeah,” Benny Carroll says, “if I had arms like you Bill, I’d pick the hose up two by two.”
“Anyway,” Royce interrupts, “you’d probably get mad at us if we tried to help ya. Every time ya pick the hose up ya say to yourself ‘Man, this is good for my arms. I can just feel the muscles gettin’ bigger and bigger.’”
“C’mon guys, what did I do?” Valenzio laughs. “Just because God gifted me with strength and beauty is no reason to take this abuse from guys like you.”
Billy, in fact, has large muscular arms, that go with his large muscular chest, and he has every reason to be vain. But he isn’t. It is because he is such a humble guy that we give him the business every once in a while. “You’re all jealous,” he says, as he strains with the next coupling.
“I’m not jealous,” Knipps says, climbing up the side of the apparatus. He helps Billy with the hose until the coupling thaws, and loosens. “I figure if I do what you do, maybe some day 111 have arms like you.”
The laughing is over, and the hose is laid on the bed of the apparatus. The wind blows even harder as the apparatus moves down the street toward the firehouse. It’s almost 5:30 AM. as the truck backs into the firehouse. The stillness of the early morning hour is broken by the harsh sound of a siren as a police car speeds down Intervale Avenue, but we don’t pay any attention to it. All we care about is sitting in the warm kitchen and relaxing for a while.
I am changing into a dry pair of pants as the bells come in. “Damn it, give me a break,” I think as I slide down the pole from the second floor to the apparatus floor. Fortunately, the box that has been pulled is only five blocks away, on Boston Road. It is a false alarm. In ten minutes we have responded, made a search of the neighborhood, and returned to the firehouse. We have two more false alarms before the day crew begins arriving at eight o’clock. It is nine o’clock before I start the sixty-mile drive home to a good day’s sleep.
6
THE night is balmy, unlike anything I remember of past March nights. There is an easy wind blowing over