Report From Engine Co. 82 - Dennis Smith [82]
The traffic is heavy, and I reprove myself for oversleeping. It is seven-thirty, and I’m just passing Stony Point. It was near here that Benedict Arnold’s wife charmed Washington as her husband made off for London. It is beautiful country, made more beautiful by the season. Normally, I would be passing Tappan by now, and the traffic would move freely. But the speedometer reads first 50, then 30, then 45, then 25 and from a hilltop I can see the long parade of automobiles before me, marching two by two and out of step toward the city. How I hate to drive. One of the luxuries of the very rich is that they don’t have to drive their own cars, and they can watch the leaves turn as they go from place to place. The leaves are turning now, but I can’t watch them. I begin to daydream.
“Oh Rodney, make a stop at Tiffany’s before we go on to the office. I want to pick up a little something for Mrs. Smith. Isn’t it clever of the maple to shed his leaves in preparation for the cold winter ahead.”
It’s twenty minutes to nine as I park the car next to Pete’s Bodega, a Spanish grocery store across the street from the fire-house. Like many industrious Puerto Ricans, Pete came to this country and opened up a small bodega. Eleven years later he found he could buy his wife a new Cadillac with leather upholstery and wire wheels. Then he bought the frame building that housed his bodega, and the two buildings adjoining it. He attached a garage to protect the Cadillac from the neighborhood kids, and he double padlocked it, and built a mesh wire fence around it, and padlocked that. He never gets to drive the Cadillac though, because he works the bodega fourteen hours a day, seven days a week. His wife doesn’t get to drive it much either, because it takes two to run the store. The garage proved to be a good investment for them.
Charlie McCartty is in the firehouse kitchen munching an onion roll. Most of the day crew, and some of the night crew are sitting around drinking coffee and talking idly. Charlie is standing with an elbow propped on top of the soda machine. He spots me, and says in his deepest authoritarian voice, “It’s about time you got here, Dennis. I’m gettin’ sick an’ tired of you minute men gettin’ in here just before the nine o’clock bells. The brothers are tired, and they need relief.”
“Up yours, Charlie,” I say dispassionately.
“Up mine, huh? Up your old lady’s.” He pauses, then adds, “That’s probably why you can’t get in here in time.”
“That’s probably why everyone is late around here,” Jerry Herbert says.
“Listen guys,” I say, not bothering to give an explanation, “it’s only a quarter to nine, and the book of regulations says we don’t have to start until nine. Give me a break.”
“No breaks around here,” Charlie says. He puts his coffee cup on the soda machine, and throws his heavy powerful arms around me.
“Lemme give ya a little hug,” he says.
I feel enveloped and crowded by his husky frame, like a plastic toy being pressure-wrapped in cellophane. He squeezes with small effort, and I can feel a slight pain in the small of my back. Not a hurting pain, but one of relief, like when a chiropractor’s at work.
“Listen Charlie,” I yell, “love me or leave me, but don’t go halfway.”
He releases his hold, and laughs, “But you know I love ya, Dennis.”
“So does that broad in Prospect Hills,” I return. Charlie lives in a small town called Prospect Hills.
Benny Carroll is sitting at the back table reading a newspaper. He looks up, and interjects, “That broad in Prospect Hills loves everybody.”
Everyone