Report From Engine Co. 82 - Dennis Smith [50]
It is a little after nine when we return to the firehouse kitchen. The ambulance came for Juan, and the police came to talk to his friend. It will all be recorded officially—the police report, the fire report (no fire, assisted distraught civilian), the ambulance report, the hospital report. And Juan will end up in Bellevue for a few days if luck is on his side, or in a state hospital for the rest of his life, forgotten by all but a few close relatives.
Engine 85 is back from Hunts Point, tired and disgusted. They had to stretch two full blocks for a rotten garbage fire. Wasted time, wasted effort, all because the laws are meaningless when a few dollars are available. They tell how the men of Ladder 48 wore themselves out overhauling the mountains of trash. Pulling with their hooks, their halligan tools, their hands at car bumpers, fenders, refrigerators, mattresses, metal boxes, wooden boxes, bedsprings, car seats, tires, and hundreds of brown paper bags filled with American waste.
Cagey Dulland is cooking the night’s meal. The kitchen is crowded, as it usually is before the meal. Men pass the stove, excited by the cooking smells, looking for a little knosh, a small indicator of the meal to come. Willy Knipps begins to cut the meat. Thick slices of sirloin, cut on the bias, hot juice spilling over the cutting board, mushrooms falling to either side of the meat. He cuts into the bumed edges of the steak, through the reddening center, and again through the crisp edges. Each time he feels the cutting board he flicks his wrist, and the meat falls uniformly into a chrome serving pan, carried there by a slight movement of the arm and a turning knife. Fourteen, fifteen slices, and Willy comes to the end, the lonely tapered end not worthy of slicing. He cuts it bruskly into three parts. He puts one in his mouth as he knifes another and offers it to me. Cagey, watching the progress closely, reaches past me for the third. My mouth waters, and the meat dissolves like a communion wafer, the juices leaving a desire for more.
There are two more cuts waiting to be sliced, and Willy raps the knife quickly against the long thin metal of the knife sharpener. I walk onto the apparatus floor, counting the minutes until the bell rings signaling mealtime, and leaving the space behind Willy for another to watch him slice down to the knosh end.
It is a quarter to ten as Billy-o pulls the hammer of the bell on the Chief’s car. The price Written on the blackboard is “$1.35.” I take the money from my pocket and put it into the collection bowl sitting on a shelf next to the blackboard.
“Just to show you how much confidence I have in you Cagey, I’m going to pay for the meal before I taste it.”
Cagey grins as he walks by me, plate in hand. There is a running joke in the firehouse that the meal does not have to be paid for if it is not absolutely satisfying. I run my finger across my chalked name on the blackboard, and take a place between Billy-o and Tom Leary.
On the plate before me there are two pieces of meat, and a large baked potato. Next to the plate there is a side dish of salad: lettuce, tomatoes, cucumbers, red onions, scallions, stripped carrot. There is a bowl of french dressing, and a bowl of sour cream and chives on each of the four tables. Tom is telling Billy-o about the months of skin grafting he underwent. Skin from his belly to his leg and foot. Micro-thin layer over layer. He was working, making a search, in the apartment above a fire. The floor gave way. Tom’s leg went down. He couldn’t get loose. His leg jutting into a roaring inferno, he screamed, and screamed. His boot was gone when they pulled him out, but parts of it were stuck to the bone of his leg.
“Jesus,” I say, “can’t we find a more pleasant topic to talk about? Please pass the salt and pepper.”
“We’re professionals, Dennis,” Billy-o says, passing the two shakers. “We should be able to talk about anything when we eat, and not be so involved with it. Like doctors, ya see. We’ve got a job where we see a lot of ugly things, and what happened to Tom shouldn’t bother