Report From Engine Co. 82 - Dennis Smith [57]
We wait in the hall for Bill to connect the pumper to the hydrant, and open the discharge gate. The men of Ladder 31 have made a search of the apartment. It is vacant and unoccupied. Richie Rittman is on his knees, his face stained, his nose flowing. “It’s only one room,” he says to Royce, “nothing to it—a cup ’a tea.”
The water comes, and Royce braces himself for the hardening of the hose.
“Let’s go, Vinny,” Captain Albergray says.
They crawl into the apartment, and I hump the hose behind. It’s a long hall—a snotty hall. Vinny reaches the end room, and opens the nozzle. At the ceiling. All around. In circles. One hundred and fifty gallons per minute. The fire is out in a minute. Sixty seconds of water, and the building is saved. A perfect job. Minimum water damage. The apartments below will not have to be vacated because of waterlogged and fallen ceilings.
Knipps takes the nozzle as Vinny goes for a blow to an open window and clean air. We wait for the smoke to lift. Chief Nie-brock takes a thorough look, and leaves for the floor above where he will check for fire extension. McCartty and Billy-o are in the room, hooking down the charred and blistered ceiling. The minutes pass quickly. We give the room a slight and final bath. Take up. The job’s done.
There is a commotion in the hall. A woman screams. “I’ve been robbed. I’ve been robbed.” Two small boys huddle at her side. “My television set. My phonograph. They are gone.”
I look at the boys. Two pre-schoolers, handsome in their little pea-coats. But their faces are dull. The adventure of the fire next door to them is gone. Dull, and unhappy, as if they realize that there will be no more Saturday morning cartoons for a while. No more Sesame Street, or Mister Rogers.
Chief Niebrock investigates. Writes the name and the apartment number in his notebook for the fire report. The police will come to investigate also.
I can remember Sister Mary Jean telling us that it was a much more serious sin to steal from our neighbors than it was to steal from a place like Macy’s. I was in the fifth grade then, and I believed it. I still believe it.
My childhood home was on East Fifty-sixth Street one block west of Sutton Place. One block. A black and white contrast I’ll always remember. Even then, Sutton Place was reserved only for millionaires. Winter-tanned boys in camel’s-hair coats would wait on the corner for a taxi, or for their school car. They had plenty of money in their pockets, lunch money at least, but we never thought of roughing them up for it. They were people. Instead, we walked to Bloomingdale’s. Three blocks up, and two over. Leather gloves, baseball mits, pocket knives, shirts, ties, cuff links—we took anything we could sell. Bloomingdale’s wasn’t people. We never stole from people.
“Do ya think those guys set the place up to create the confusion?” Vinny asks, looking back as he drags the limp hose down the stairs.
“Probably,” I answer. It doesn’t make sense to say any more about it. “We were lucky,” I continue, “that we got here as fast as we did. A few more minutes and we would have had a second alarm on our hands.”
“Yeah,” Vinny replies. “Lucky.”
We are back in the firehouse, and it is twelve-thirty. The sausages are popping in the oven, the peppers and onions sizzle in a frying pan. We are all dirty, faces blackened and greasy, mucus hardened under noses, ears filled with grimy dust. I head towards the bathroom to wash up. Billy-o climbs down from the back wheel—the tiller of the truck. He takes his glove off. His hand is covered with a bloodied handkerchief. Vinny, Knipps, and I take a look, joined by Rittman and McCartty.
“It’s nothin’,” Billy-o says, looking at the gash across the back of his thumb. “A piece of glass must have gone down my glove when I took the windows out.”
“Nothin’