Report From Engine Co. 82 - Dennis Smith [67]
Like Tina deVega I searched for, and found, my own way of survival. After a time I became unhappy in my job, but it is always better to have money in the pocket when unhappy, than to be unhappy and broke. I kept on working. I rang the back doorbells of the “earth shakers,” and delivered the orchid centerpieces, and the maid would thank me as she pocketed the fifteen cents tip that she would tell the boss she gave me. And on Saturday nights we drank beer down by the river, and watched the blinking Pepsi-Cola sign on the Queens side, and got drunk. We made out with girls in sleeveless blouses and long, crinolined, felt skirts, playing “trust me.” A nervous hand on a felt-covered knee, and an anxious voice saying “trust me,” and after an apprehensive nod the hand moves to the thigh, and with each nod another inch up and around the leg until the mysterious excitement of holding a female’s buttock is realized. And satisfied with that we got drunker, until our bodies rejected the strange dizzying liquid. And we vomited, and the girls ran home, and we staggered through the streets abusing anyone we thought cowardly enough not to reply. And all the while we forgot about the stifling crowded tenement rooms, nagging mothers, and drunk or gambling or cheating fathers.
Someone on the apparatus floor is hammering the fire bell on the Chiefs car, the signal that lunch is ready. I ditch the cigarette in a sand bucket, and slide the pole to the street level. Cagey Dulland has cooked roast beef, and the kitchen walls steam with the heat. The air-conditioning unit we bought for the kitchen was second-hand, and didn’t last long. The comfortable coolness I was feeling a minute ago is gone, and I can feel the perspiration beads building on my forehead.
Thin strips of roast beef lie across warm toast, covered with a hot brown gravy. The heat of the gravy steams over my face as I lean over the lunch, but I am hungry, and I don’t let it bother me. Willy Knipps is complaining to Cagey that he should have had better sense than to cook a hot meal on a day like this.
“And for eighty-five cents,” he says, “for chrissakes, I could eat roast beef in the Stork Club for that price.” But Cagey just utters a few words about inflation, and lets it go at that. He knows that the guys are grateful that he took the time to cook for us, and the wisecracks are as natural as the rising sun.
I am sponging the gravy from the plate with a piece of white bread when the bells interrupt. At least we got to finish our lunch. “Southern Boulevard and Fox Street,” the house-watchman is yelling.
Box 2787. We were just there. “I bet it’s that abandoned building again,” Benny Carroll says.
“Well, of course, what else?” rejoins Willy Knipps as he puts the three-pound helmet on his head.
“Listen Willy,” Benny says, with a sly smile on his face, “since you had the nob at that job this morning, 111 take it if we have a job now, O.K.? I mean you must be pretty tired and alL”
“That’s no on two counts,” Willy replies. “I’m not tired, and I won’t give ya the nob.”
“Say no more,” Benny says, pretending indifference.
The clock on the firehouse wall reads 12:45 as tne pumper screams out of quarters. Ladder 31 echoes close behind. We can see the dark, dancing clouds of smoke as we roll up Tiffany Street. “What did I tell ya?” Benny says, pulling his boots to his thighs. I swing my rubber coat on, and I realize that it