Report From Engine Co. 82 - Dennis Smith [53]
Two policemen come out of the building, the fugitive braced between them. The young cop is right behind them. He talks to the Sergeant and Whitey as the fugitive is placed into the back seat of a squad car. The Sergeant is still writing in his logbook as the young cop gets into the car next to his prisoner.
Other firemen have joined me in leaning on a parked car. Whitey comes over to pass the time of day, for he knows most of us on Intervale Avenue.
“That cop did a nice job in catching that guy,” I say. “What did they want him for?”
“Well,” Whitey says, his eyes sparkling, and his mouth grinning, “it started out as a domestic squabble. The guy’s wife threw him out of the house, and he tried to get back in through the fire-escape window. The sector car got there, and they tried to settle the dispute. We get these things all the time—four or five a night. Anyway, the guy took a rap at the cop, and ran away.”
“Is that all?” Ed Shoal asks, “and there were five discharges?”
Whitey laughs, and starts to walk away. The Sergeant is ready to leave. “What can I tell ya?” he says. “It was a young cop. He’ll learn.”
“We’ll see ya, Whitey,” I say.
“Yeah, so long guys. Say hello to my little brother-in-law for me, will ya.”
“He’s in the kitchen watching television. Want me to get him?”
“No, I don’t have time. Tell him I’ll see him Sunday.”
“Okay. Siong.”
The excitement is over, and we walk back into the firehouse. Billy-o is standing by the door, and he notices the bulletin board. “Hey, look at this,” he says.
We walk over to investigate. He has his finger in a hole in the side of the steel encasement. “Is this a bullet hole?” he questions.
“Let me see,” Shoal says, looking over Billy-o’s shoulder. “It sure looks like it. Sure it is. Look. The bullet is in there. Ill be damned. The bulletin board was just put up there two weeks ago, and it has a bullet hole in it already.”
“Jesus, and we were standing right here too,” Billy-o says.
I take a look. I put my pinkie in the hole, and feel the bullet. It is caught between the outer and inner casing. “Man, and I was standing right next to the thing.” And I felt sorry for that cop, too. Well, he’s a young cop. As Whitey said, he’ll learn. But he almost killed me. Well, he didn’t though, did he? Almost doesn’t count in anything. I learned that early.
The bells interrupt my thoughts. 2743. Charlotte Street. “Get out Eighty-two and Thirty-one. Chief goes too.”
Again, going up Wilkens Avenue. It’s probably another false alarm. I hope it’s a fire. I don’t want anybody hurt, and I don’t want to see anyone’s property destroyed, but I need something to occupy my mind. But, it is another false alarm.
On the way back to the firehouse I think: If time is cyclical, I wonder what my next experience with a bullet will be?
7
TOMORROW is Easter. I have the day off, and will be at home with Pat and the boys. My brother and his family will come up, and my mother. My brother will talk about the mentally disturbed children he teaches to read and write, and we will scold our own children for making too much noise. Ill talk about fires and firefighters, and my mother will relate the successes and failures of the guys I grew up with. We’ll laugh, and sing songs with the children. The youngest of them will grab at the strings of my guitar and the songs will be interrupted. We will eat heartily, and afterwards the children will ask me to play the bagpipes, and I will tell them I am too tired, and too full. When the table is cleared, the half-devoured ham wrapped securely in plastic, the dishwasher belching its ugly sound, we will sit by the fireplace, joined by the women, and sip brandy and crack nuts, throwing the shells into the fire. It will be a fine day.
It is now eight o’clock, and I have just crossed the George Washington Bridge. The traffic on the Cross-Bronx Expressway moves slowly. It is a cold day, and I can see the exhaust of the cars before me rise up to the morning