On Fire Read online

  The worst thing I ever saw was either two babies and their grandmother burnt to death, to nothing, to just charred black lumps that had to be picked up out of smoking rubble, or a guy who wasn’t dead yet who was mashed half in two by a truck. I saw a lot of death, and I worked at a small department in a little Mississippi town. It may sound cold, but the dead who were already gone never bothered me as much as the living ones, who were in great amounts of pain and shock, who had to be assured that yes in fact they were not going to die but were going to live if they would just take it easy and relax. You cannot think about a person’s pain and do your most efficient job; if your feelings about his feelings are weighing on your mind more than how best to remove his crumpled car door from around his body, you’re not doing him any good and should probably step aside and let somebody else operate the tool.

  Remove the car from the victim, not the other way around. You can be faced with anything. A car upside down on top of two people, one dead, one alive. A head-on collision, two dead, two alive, one each in each car. A car flipped up on its side against a tree, the driver between the roof and the tree. A burning car with live occupants trapped inside.

  Rolling on a call has been likened to soldiers going into combat. I never had a feeling any better than I had when driving my big pumper through the streets of Oxford at three or four in the morning, while everybody was sleeping, while the streets were deserted except for an occasional police cruiser, with the lights flashing just yellow caution at the intersections, wheeling that big red truck like all little boys would like to and some will grow up to, like me, and knowing that they were all asleep while we were up, taking care of the city of my birth, watching over them, there and ready to protect them and help them if they needed us. I know that sounds sappy as hell. I don’t give a shit if it does.

  It’s a summer night in the late 1980s and we’re up on a bridge outside of town. The two men ahead of us in the decapitated car have been nearly decapitated themselves, and I’m reluctant to walk up there and see them in their death and blood. Some of the younger boys I work with don’t feel like this, but I’ve seen enough of it already. I take the cops’ word for it and go back to the van and get on the radio and cancel the rescue unit that’s screaming toward us.

  Later I’ll take this incident and put it into a novella and act like I made it up, but here they both are, one of them gasping for breath, and he’ll die soon, en route to the hospital in the ambulance, and the driver is already dead. He hit a tractor-trailer that was crossing the road—he was doing about ninety—and slid all the way under it and out the other side for 105 feet. The cops have the tape out and are measuring the single skid mark, which means only one brake shoe was working. We’ve got our pumpers parked in the middle of the road with all our lights flashing, and we were probably eating something or watching something just before we were called out to witness this.

  The ambulance arrives. There’s nothing for us to do but wait around to wash the broken glass and debris off the road after a wrecker tows the car. The EMTs will transport the dead and the dying. The cops need some chalk and they don’t have any, so I get back in the van and ride up to the main station for it. I keep thinking about the guy with his head cut off. The business I’m in, you can never tell where it will lead you. One day somebody wants you to get a cat out of a tree and the next day some kid may be burning up inside a house. The night we went into C. B. Webb, a housing project in town, when three apartments were on fire, with flames coming through the roof, the people standing out in the yard told us on our arrival that there were some kids trapped inside. We fought our way through fearsome rooms of fire, knocking the flames down everywhere, climbing a black staircase to the top floor, where there were only burned mattresses and charred walls and no bodies to be found. We found out later that one guy had jumped from the top floor, had hit a clothesline on the way down, had luckily broken only one leg, and had somehow managed to run off. He had been standing in a window broken from heat, and the people on the ground told him to jump or die. As it turned out, they gave him good advice. He wouldn’t have survived what had gone on up there.

  I never laid my life on the line. That day when those two little kids and their grandmother burned up, I was out at the elementary school giving a fire extinguisher class with the chief, and somebody else had to drive my pumper to the fire. We got the call during the class, and I rode with Uncle Chiefy out there and we saw immediately that the house was falling in with fire. I was breaking in a rookie, and nobody had even told him to put his gloves on. He stood there in the yard and did all he could and blistered his hands badly while using an inch and a half hose. Then the house fell in and we were told that there were people inside.

  It was late in the evening by then, winter. The ruins were smoking. Cops tried to keep screaming family members back. The smoke shifted in the rubble, and we all stood back, dreading what had to be done. The back door had been nailed shut for some reason. We couldn’t have saved that house unless we’d gotten there early, long before it got so bad. Maybe they didn’t have a phone to call us. Maybe they were taking a nap. Sometimes you can never save them. We wetted it down while crying and wailing women fought to be free from the police who held them. We entered the back side of the house and no words were said. The police had set out the body bags for us. It seemed like a hundred people were in the street, shouting and taking on in the most awful way. The smoke moved among the charred timbers and piles of ashes and glowing embers, and we had to find the things we were looking for. It was hard to tell, everything being so burned, everything looking so much alike. Only a firefighter or a victim of fire can tell you what a terrible thing fire can be.

  There was silence among us as our people lifted the bodies out. The children were so small. I thought of my own. No words were said. Maybe it was February or March. The women were still screaming in the street. I wondered what my life would ever come to. These people had suffered a terrible death. I blamed it on poverty, and ignorance, and my not being at my station when the call came in, although the class the chief and I were giving could prevent things like this.

  The lights of all the emergency vehicles blinked out in the street and even the cops wanted to turn their faces away from this. I know they have a hard time. People mess with them and they have to mess with the drunks. And once in a while they have to look at something with us.

  A few days later, the man who was the father of the dead children came into the station to try and get his hands on a copy of the fire report so he could turn it over to his insurance company. A poker game was going on at our big table in the middle of the kitchen. This man had his cap in his hands, and his clothes were ragged. The betting went on, our boys never looking crossways at him, not knowing who he was. Their voices got louder while the man stood there patiently, waiting for the chief to find the report in the file cabinet. The man looked humbled by what had happened to him. His children had probably been buried quickly. The poker game went on and on and the man kept standing there with his cap in his hands, until finally, mercifully, Uncle Chiefy found the report and took the man back to the Xerox machine to make a copy of it. I never asked them to stop the game. Sometimes there was a weird callousness about the work we did. We couldn’t let it get too close to us because we didn’t want to be touched by it. We didn’t talk much about the bad ones. When they happened, we dealt with them. Then we went back and ate or watched a movie or went on another call, or washed the trucks and polished the chrome. We got through our shifts and then we went home and went fishing or hunting or made love to our wives or played with our children. We hoped the bad things we saw would never claim us. We hoped we wouldn’t die in smoke and flames or torn steel like the people we couldn’t save.

  I don’t much think Sam’s going to be able to get any puppies. I’ve just got my doubts about the little fellow. He nearly ripped MA’s gown off her the other night. She got to pushing and shoving on Billy Ray where he was lying in the floor, playing with
him, and Billy Ray got to hollering that she was hurting him, and Sam started growling and nearly went crazy protecting him and tore two holes in her gown and pulled one sleeve completely off her arm. I got to laughing so hard I couldn’t even get up from the floor.

  We mess with his head all the time just to see what he’ll do. Just like with him and Pooch’s balls. I think that may be connected, a dog that doesn’t know how to make puppies trying to bite another dog’s balls. I’ve never seen another dog do that. But I never saw a dog that didn’t know how to make puppies, either.

  I don’t really understand it. He’s got the hunching part down pat, witness his demented attack on the little gyp we had. He just didn’t know where to stick it. You wouldn’t think a four-year-old dog could be a virgin. You’d think he’d have found him a little, somewhere down the road. I guess it’s our fault for making him live such a protected life. He never got to run with a pack. We’re his pack. It looks like I’m going to have to set aside some time to think about it and try to arrange some way for him to get him a little. I feel like I’m depriving him. I’m sure some cute little girl dog would love to have him. Maybe a beagle with pretty eyes. Some laid-back bitch. We could fix them a little candlelit dinner in the carport, buy some of that good Alpo, arrange a nice blanket in the corner by the lawnmower.

  Hell, I doubt if he’d let us watch.

  The year is 1975. I have been a firefighter for less than two years, and I’m in a 1974 red-and-white LTD, speeding down through the Mississippi Delta to light a Christmas Tree this summer night. There are about six other off-duty firefighters in the car with me, and it’s ten o’clock in the morning, and we’re all drinking beer. Actually some of us are getting a little happy. We’ve stopped at a beer store in Batesville and we’re having a wonderful time, heading off into adventure.

  We come down out of the hills and flatten out into the Delta where there are few trees and thousands of acres of cotton growing. The heat lies in ripples over the land but we have the air conditioner going full blast. I feel myself getting a little woozy and I know it’s going to be a long day.

  The bad thing about drinking beer on a trip to a fire school is that eventually you’re going to have to start making pit stops. It’s best to hold it for as long as you can, because once you start peeing, that’s it. Before long you’ll be stopping all the time.

  The first one we make is behind a cotton pen on a long deserted stretch of road with few houses. The Highway Patrol would frown on our actions if they happened to come by, so we all try to hide behind the little building. It’s still a long way to Greenwood, but there are plenty of beer stores between here and there. Just how many, we don’t know yet, but we’ll find out. We hope to arrive in Greenwood around one, maybe two. We were supposed to arrive in Greenwood around twelve. But we don’t have a whole lot of responsibility about us on a trip like this. The trunk is packed full of our turnout gear, our coats and boots and helmets and gloves. I’ve never been to a Christmas Tree before, and I’m a little nervous about it. We’ve been told that the temperature will reach 1,500 degrees.

  We stop at a couple more beer stores. We go past the penitentiary, Parchman, see the high walls and the barbed-wire fences, and we shake our heads, glad we’re not in there.

  We notice that the price of beer goes up the deeper we get into the Delta. It’s nearly twice what we pay for it in Oxford, but we don’t complain. We can’t stop now. But we’re having to stop the car every twenty minutes because some of us have stronger bladders than others, and when the pain gets too bad, it doesn’t matter where we are. We’ll leap out behind trees, jump down in ditches, while the others sit in the car with the windows down and hoot and scream and throw beer cans. We’re an accident looking for a place to happen.

  We roll into Greenwood an hour late, all of us happy, and find the classroom and walk in as all heads turn to view the latecomers. They all shake their heads. They all know we’re those crazy fuckers from Oxford. The class has been underway for some time. The man is explaining the properties of Liquid Propane gas, LP, and it’s no laughing matter. Three Vicksburg firefighters have recently been killed in an LP explosion, burned to death and beyond recognition, a fire truck destroyed. We look at slides of what was left of their turnouts. We’re told that we don’t want to see the slides of the men who had worn them. We sit all the way to the back of the room, and we don’t take notes because none of us thought to bring notebook or pencil. The class goes on and on and we’re hungry and still thirsty.

  We’re told to be back just before dark, and then they turn us loose on Greenwood. We decide to go looking for something to eat.

  The place to eat turns out to be a bar that serves hamburgers and things. We all go in and order beer and food and stay there most of the afternoon. We figure it doesn’t make any sense to sober up now, so we don’t.

  When dark arrives, we’re in a parking lot with a new lime-green fire truck, maybe a Seagrave or a Mack, and about a hundred other firefighters from cities all across Mississippi. The State Fire Academy is teaching this course. A large LP gas truck is parked off to one side, and in the center of the parking lot there is a big framework of metal pipes that resembles the rough shape of a Christmas tree, with a base about fifteen or twenty feet in width. A line has been laid from the gas truck to the tree, and the Greenwood Fire Department’s pumper has charged the hand lines. A flaming rag will be laid on an arm of the tree, and the gas in the truck will be turned on, and a ball of fire about twenty feet tall will erupt and intensify, and we will go up to the thing with only our hoses and turnouts for protection, and we will shut it down while holding the fire at bay.

  One group of firefighters gets up to be first in line on the hoses, but we step up and tell them that we want to go first. We man the hoses and the Oxford firefighters pick the man who will have to crawl up and shut off the valve, who happens to be me.

  The whole town has turned out to see this. The pumper is throttled up, adrenaline kicks in with a rush, the hoses are as hard as iron. Two groups of three men form on each side, and I hang back with the group on the left, my position the last one in the line. Some instructors from the academy stand with us. There is no joking or laughing now. One little fuckup and somebody will be burned badly. Everybody is ready. A firefighter in full turnout gear walks to the pipe framework, the Tree, and lays a rag on it that has been soaked in kerosene. He lights it with a cigarette lighter and runs out of the way. The rag lies there burning, one small point of light in the night, and the man at the gas truck opens the valve. Holes have been bored in all the pipes, and the gas rushes out in small blue flames, dancing in tiny blue spots only for a moment. He increases the volume and all the flames come together into one, and it starts to roar and change color. The blue-and-white fire comes out like water under pressure and it completely obscures the pipes. It towers over our heads and the awful heat touches us where we stand, fifty feet back from it. The two groups open the nozzles of the hoses in a fog pattern, and we start forward. The instructors tell us to keep our heads down, make sure our face shields are down. Our collars are pulled up and snapped tightly around our throats, and the gauntlets of our gloves are pulled up over the sleeves of our coats.

  The two groups walk closely together, meshing the two fog streams so that there is an unbroken barrier of cool water between us and the fire. We get closer and the flames push forward over the fog streams. The instructors call, Steady, steady now. We go forward until we stand two feet from the living ball of fire. It is incredibly bright now, the flames reflected on the face shields of my companions. All of us are relying on each other. We have to trust each other not to run. The instructor makes us stand there, steady, until he sees that we are holding the fire at bay, and then he points to me. I drop to my knees and go forward, and I crawl between his spread boots. The parking lot is brighter now than day. There is a valve right in front of the instructor’s boots, and I lie on the wet black bright asphalt and reach out with my gloved hand, the killin
g fire right above me, the terrible heat right over my neck. I turn the valve swiftly until it closes and the fire diminishes, drops, goes out. I get up, go back to my position at the end of the hose, and we back away, wet, steaming, droplets of water obscuring our vision behind the face shields. We did it right. At other times, at other Christmas Trees in the future, in other cities, it will not be done right, and once I will see my training officer badly burned because of the fear of a stranger, and take on a scar on his forearm the size of an elbow patch, something he will wear forever, but this time, this first time, we do it right.

  Our gig done, we head for another bar.

  We’re still in Greenwood and we’re still in a bar and there is a band from California playing. They have lots of horns and a pretty female lead singer and we’re dancing in our uniforms with all the women in the bar. Some of the other firefighters have joined us until there are so many firefighters that we have taken over the bar with our happy debauchery and our loud jokes.

  There is a woman in this bar with a set of breasts that are spectacular, that are not to be believed, that have attracted the eyes of every man in the bar. She dances so fine that I think she has to be a professional dancer. I go over and dance with her, but I’m no match for her. I don’t know what I’m doing, I’m just flopping and jerking my body around on the dance floor, making a fool of myself. Her breasts are as big as my head, but she’s not a big woman. She must be a go-go dancer. Before long she starts slinging me around like a rag doll. She seems stronger than me and I’m embarrassed. She finally slings me into a chair and oh how the boys do howl. I’m having a sinking spell. I don’t feel very good and we’re still a long way from home.