Report From Engine Co. 82 - Dennis Smith [70]
Lieutenant Welch makes a call for more police assistance, as we hurriedly repack the hose. We all keep our eyes on the roofs as we pull the hose forward and onto the fire engine. Three squad cars come wailing into the block, and we feel a little safer. The hose is packed and we drive quickly from Fox Street, never taking our eyes from the roofs. That’s it. Lieutenant Welch will make a report of the incident when we return to the fire-house, and that will end it. The fire marshals may phone to get the complete details for their report, but nobody will actually go into Fox Street and question people. That takes too much time, and, anyway, nobody was killed. I can’t help thinking though, that if it were Mayor Lindsay standing there instead of Fireman Royce, the guys who threw that garbage can from the roof would spend tonight in jail.
As we are returning to the firehouse we are redirected to Boston Road and Seabury Place. Engine 45 arrives at the location before us, and transmits a signal 10-92—a false alarm. Once more in the firehouse, I run to the second floor, and the air conditioning. I remove my shirt, and dry my arms and chest with a beach towel. I take a clean shirt from my locker, and think of my wife as I look at the well-pressed sleeves. And I think of my kids, of the kids on Fox Street climbing on the apparatus, of sitting on a rainy stoop in my youth, not wanting to climb the steps to my apartment, yet not knowing of anything else to do, of school-desks falling from the sky, of picking buttercups with my children on soft, green mountainsides, of walking with my beautiful wife through a calm starlit night, and of talking with a beautiful whore on Fox Street. I should wash up a little, but the newly-washed shirt makes me feel clean enough.
Benny and Vinny come into the bunkroom. They wash up, and change their shirts. I am lying on a bed, smoking, and listening to the radio. The music is the easy, popular kind that is usually piped into offices and elevators. Benny and Vinny, clean-faced and clean-clothed, lie on beds on either side of me. We talk some about what has happened, but we all agree that it is difficult to make any sense out of it. Benny says that it could be an organized guerrilla warfare, and Vinny says that it is just a part of the lawless times, and I say that it could be both of those, but it is also due to a sad loss of respect for human life. The people on Fox Street may feel that they have good reason to hate us, but that’s not the issue. I hated plenty of people when I was a kid, but I never thought of killing them.
I used to believe that people who threw rocks at firemen were motivated by conditions—the lower depths of American society. I used to believe that the fundamental problems were housing and education, and that people would stop throwing rocks if they had a decent place to live and were given equal educational opportunities. But I don’t believe that anymore. That, to me, is prescribing for symptoms. The disease is more seriously latent, more pernicious than uncaring landlords, or bureaucratic, apathetic school officials. The malignancy lies in the guts of humankind at all levels. We have unlearned the value of a human life.
The bells ring out an alarm: Box 2737. But Vinny, Benny, and I relax when we hear the three bells follow the seven. We know that’s not for us, and we lie calmly as we listen to Engine 85, Ladder 31, and the Chief roll out for Hoe Avenue and Jennings Street. In a matter of minutes, the signal 75-2737 is transmitted. All hands are working at Hoe Avenue.
We slide the pole to listen to the department radio. Whatever they have must be hot enough, since Chief Niebrock doesn’t sound an “all hands” alarm lightly. From the doors of the fire-house we can see the high spiral of smoke rising to the northeast. Vinny turns the radio up as the dispatcher asks Battalion 27 if the Field Communication Unit and another Battalion Chief are needed at 2737.