Fire Girl

The beeper went off on its recharging stand on the kitchen
countertop. Not the stuccato Beep, beep, beep! for a medical emergency,
but the long, steady solid tone for a fire. Garland leaned forward on
the couch and sat without moving in order to hear the 911 dispatcher
over the groaning of the leather on the couch and the TV. Near midnight
on a Saturday night, he anticipated a car wreck or a bonfire out of
control. Instead it was the worst call a fireman can receive. A
confirmed structure fire with flames showing and possible victims
trapped inside.

Next to the door he stepped into his heavy rubber boots that were
tucked in the legs of his rolled down bunker pants so he only needed to
pull the suspenders up over his shoulders. On his way out the door he
snatched his bunker coat off the coat rack and his red, Engine Company
44 helmet and searched his key ring for his car key, listening to the
beeper for the roll call of units responding.

He started the car and got it whirled around quickly in the driveway,
shifting gears to scamper the little Subaru up the steep hill with the
sea kayak still on the roof rack and turn onto the dark, desolated
country road. The beeper remained omniously silent as he drove on until
the alarm tone sounded again. A second call had been received
confirming that flames were visable and he tried to see through the
trees in the darkness in the direction where the address was to see if
there was light from a fire in the night sky.

Then the date slowly settled in on him. It was Memorial Day weekend.
Half of the firefighters in the county were off on fishing trips or
family vacations. Stan, wonderful Stan, who knew the fire operations
proceedures inside and out and spent his off-duty hours driving around
neighborhoods locating fire hydrants and updating the address books in
the fire engines. Stan had left Friday after work for a vacation at a
Bible camp in Oregon. Chief Rawls, Clark Fire One himself, was
attending a seminar in California and bringing back a new brush fire
truck for Station No. 45 and was probably camping that night with his
wife in Yosemite at the taxpayer's expense. Don Barnes, the training
officer, the one who everyone counted on to lead them into battle
against fires was out of town at his daughter's wedding.

As Garland pulled into the darkened parking lot of Station 44 the grim
reality dawned on him. There was a major fire burning somewhere out in
the night and there was no one else to pass responsibility off on. He
felt like a lonely lighthouse keeper, indeed, turning on the lights in
the apparatus bay and seeing the glistening red, half million dollar
International fire engine with its chrome fixtures and utility box
latches. He started the big diesel engine to build up pressure in the
air brakes and disconnected the external power as a car pulled in front
of the open apparatus bay door. Young Jason Elliott climbed out of the
passenger's seat and balanced his firefighting helmet on top of his mop
of hair, smiling and showing his braces. Elliott was one of the
teenaged high school auxilaries. His mother had driven him to the
station.

"Call when you get done," his mother told him.

Williams came in through the side door. Another high school student.
Both young men were in their bunker gear, looking around the fire
station for the other firefighters they expected to be fighting for a
seat on the engine with.

Garland looked them over and sighed. "Saddle up, fellas. Let's
ride."

"I got shotgun," Jason leapt into the passenger's seat, the Number 2
seat in fire engines. "Should we get the air tanks on?"

"Get it on and get your mask on, god damn it," Garland snarled to
convince them how serious the situation was. "We're going to a fucking
fire!"

Watching to make sure the mirrors cleared the station doors, Garland
saw Jason Elliott out of the corner of his eye trying to buckle on the
SCBA tank without unbuckling it from the seat. He picked up the radio
microphone. "Dispatch, Engine 44 en route with three."

"Copy, Engine 44 responding. Time twenty-three, thirty-five."

Turning on the flashing red emergency lights and stobes, Garland
selected the alternating wailing and screaming modes for the siren and
pushed the throttle to the floorboard aggressively to get the big
engine moving with its extra three tons of water in the tank. Closing
the windows to isolate them from the siren, the three of them sat
huddled in the cab that still summer night, listening intently for
radio traffic of somebody else responding. An uneasy feeling rode with
them. Garland knew there were no fire hydrants along Taylor Road and no
swimming pools or bodies of water to suction water from. All they had
was the 750 gallons onboard Engine 44, and it would be empty in a
matter of minutes. They needed the tanker from Station 45 or one of the
other fire engines to shuttle water or they might as well not show up
at all.

"Is somebody else coming?" Williams asked, meekly.

"We don't need anybody else," Garland told them, confidently. "Hell,
we'll have this thing knocked down before we need resupply, no sweat.
You guys are going to be studs tomorrow. You get to start in the big
game. Are you guys on the football team?"

"No."

"Chess club," Williams offered.

"Either of you guys know how to work the pump panel?"

Elliott looked at William in one of the rear seats. "No."

"You guys know which line is the foreward lay?"

"No."

"Either of you know what the preconnect is?"

"Yeah!" Elliott said at the same time Williams said, "I don't think
so."

"All right, then," Garland explained. "When we arrive you guys run out
the preconnect on this side of the truck."

"Is there sombody else coming?" Williams asked again.

They saw the sinister orange glow of the fire two miles away when they
made the turn onto Taylor Road. The trees around the house were backlit
into eerie silhouettes. Garland leaned forward in the driver's seat as
they approached the scene. The narrow gravel road was lined on both
sides with dozens of cars, some so far into the roadway the bumpers of
the fire engine could barely fit between them. In front of the house, a
couple dozen people were standing around in the light of the fire with
their arms crossed. Talking and pointing. They moved aside slowly as
listless cattle for Engine 44 to stop in front of the house that was
very much on fire.

The flames were eating at the side of the building with ferocious
might, peeling asphalt shingles off the roof like cards from a deck and
carrying them up on its terrible thermals into the column of thick,
oily smoke. Garland set the air brake, went into neutral, engaged the
pump and put the transmission back into Drive to drive the water pump.
The moment he opened the door of the cab to step down he heard the
tell-tale thumping sound of the fire banging on the upstairs walls
trying to get out and it was shaking the entire house. Lights were on
throughout the house, but the upstairs windows were black and still as
a crypt where an explosive backdraft was gathering fury. Sucking
whistling air howling through the roof vents.

"What are you guys gawking at?" Garland screamed at Williams and
Elliott standing alongside the engine fixated by the fire. They wanted
nothing more than to climb back into the safety and security of the
cab. "Get that fucking preconnect out and stand by for water!"

He hurried to the pump control panel and picked up the microphone for
the handheld radio in his bunker coat pocket. "Dispatch, Engine 44, um,
we need some help here."

The dispatcher sounded irritated. "Stand by Engine 44."

The crowd of people who had parted to let the engine park, flowed back
in around them. This time they were distracted and talking animatedly
among themselves over the various different buttons and levers on the
water pump control panel. Two of them held up Williams and Elliott from
pulling down the preconnected hose behind the cab and one of them
stepped on it while it was being run out and jerked it out of Williams'
hands.

"Who are all of you?" Garland screamed. "Do any of you live
here?"

The people went back to watching the fire and clucking their
tongues.

One lady said, "Oh, and they just had all that work done."

"Why aren't they putting any water on it? Looks like a bunch of
kids."

Garland shouted again. "Does anybody know if there's anybody in that
house?"

He gave up and turned to the pump control panel. A myriad of gauges and
levers and switches that formed a completely incomprehensible jumble
that was intended for professional firemen with weeks of training but
overcomplicated to the point of near uselessness for anybody else. He
spoke out loud as he experimented with the various different levers.
"Let's see, Pump No. 1 Suction Pump No. 2 Drain. Keep closed."

He managed to get the main tank open and pulled the No. 1 Preconnect
lever and was rewarded with the sound of rushing water under such
enormous pressure it made the flimsy nylon hose rock solid. He watched
the pressure gauge for a while, adjusted the throttle a little one way
then the other and then gave up on it. They had water. That was a
start. He stabbed the transmit key on the mike with his thumb. "You
guys go on air and get that hose up there. Either of you guys bells out
on air, you both get away from the building and swap bottles back
here."

Checking around the front of the fire engine, he watched Williams open
the bail on the hose, nearly knocking them both down from the pressure.
"Williams! Tighten your hose pattern, we're not watering the fucking
petunias! Make it count!"

The hose stream broke one of the upstairs windows that were blackened
out and it the rush of fresh air ignited the upstairs of the house with
explosive force. It took only seconds to realize they were not going to
have enough water. Garland looked down the dark length of Taylor Road
and saw no flashing lights on the horizon. Grabbing a rubber mask from
the cab he hung it around his neck by the straps and took one of the
SCBA tanks from the back seats. He had to fight his way through the
people gathered around the engine to get to an axe and a big, six volt
flashlight from the side compartments.

He went to where Williams and Elliott were fighting to control the fire
hose and said, "Listen, fellas. You're doing great. I've got to go see
if anybody's inside."

He hurried across the lawn to a ricketty wooden fence and unlatched it.
He stepped through the gate into another world. The entire back yard
was filled with young people standing around with plastic beer cups in
their hands, looking up at the house with their faces lit by the fire.
One of them was watching the fire while he was pumping the handle of
one of the kegs of beer on the lawn in a vat of ice. Garland had never
seen such expressions before.

Hurrying over to the kegs, he got the attention of two tall, lanky boys
and told them, "Get the kegs back to the fence."

As they carried the heavy kegs by the handles of the ice vats it pulled
the entire crowd like a magnet away from the house.

On his way up the steps to the back door, he encountered a young woman
in a frilly lace shirt that showed her sexy midsection. She was
carefully descending the steps in platform shoes with an over-filled
plastic cup of beer.

"Is there more people inside?"

She looked at him, then looked at him again and at the red helmet with
the reflective tape and the large Clark County Fire emblem on the
front. "Do you know if Brian is here, yet?"

"Brian?" Garland shook his head. "No. No, I surely don't."

The screen door opened with a groan and Garland walked into a hallway
jammed with people shouting at one another over indecipherable music.
He stepped up next to a couple drunkenly dry humping one another
against the wall and saw water was running down the stairwell from
where Williams and Elliott were fighting the fire upstairs. The scene
was a giant What's Wrong With This Picture puzzle.

Garland leaned back and screamed at the top of his lungs. "Somebody
called the cops! They're on their way!"

"Cops!" The word reverberated through the house. "Cops!"

People came stumbling out of bedrooms and closets, half dressed,
hopping on one foot to get their shoes on. Garland stepped aside and
let them file out past him.

"Hey, thanks, man," a young man clapped Garland on the shoulder of his
bunker coat. "Good looking out, you know?"

The music was still playing, but the obnoxiously loud bass could no
longer hide the rhythm of the fire steadily building upstairs. Garland
hurried into the living room and checked the coat closet, poking the
piled up coats with the axe handle.

"Garland, this is Williams. We're down to three lights on the
water."

On the couch was an overweight teenaged girl passed out wearing a skirt
that was too short above thighs crinkled with cellulite. The coffee
table in front of her was strewn with empty wine cooler bottles and an
overflowing ashtray and Garland upended it and tossed it out of the
way. He took a blanket off the back of the couch and did a bullfighting
ole' to open it on the floor. When he tried to roll the girl off the
couch onto the blanket she shoved his gloved hands away and said, "Fuck
off."

He grabbed her by the clothes and unceremoniously flopped her onto the
blanket, jerking her towards the back door with great, heaving scoots
across the carpet until he pulled the blanket out from under her. Then
he angrily sat her up, got the axe handle locked in front of her and
stood, dragging her out the rear door on her heels and out into the
grass by the abandonned kegs.

Looking up, he could see the fire had broken out windows upstairs and
gotten a hold of all the air it needed to cross over into an
uncontrollable inferno.

"Get my purse," the girl mumbled.

Williams reported. "Down to two lights left on the water."

Garland was breathing heavy, kneeling in the grass and leaning on one
of the beer kegs with its aluminum skin reflecting the firelight. He
used his radio. "Dispatch, Engine 44, is there any help coming?"

He backhanded sweat from his upper lip with his leather glove. "I feel
like Holden Caufield, here."

"Say again, Engine 44?"

"Holden Caufield!" He climbed wearily to his feet and headed back
towards the house. His knees were shaking from the effort. "The guy
from Catcher in the Rye."

The roof trusses were finally eaten through enough to where a section
of the roof collapsed into the upstairs and knocked out power to the
house and the windows went dark except for those parts of the house
that were brilliantly lit by fire. The house was popping and groaning
in addition to how badly it was shaking. He hurried inside and
downstairs into the basement, panning the powerful search light around
the darkened interior.

"Hello?" He called out. "Fire Department, is there anybody in
here?"

She was in one of the rooms of the basement. The place was cluttered
with dirty laundry and a few mattresses that had been taken over as
make-shift love nests. She was sitting on the floor with her thin arms
hugging her knees holding a cigarette in two fingers. Her dark hair was
frazzled and Garland could see the supple curves of her slender neck
and delicate jaw. Her nose was a bit too big. Maybe Middle Eastern or
Eastern European, but it gave her face a mysterious, exotic look that
was mismatched for her lithe, pointed elbows and knees shape. The way
she was seated let Garland see the smooth skin of her slender thighs
and the black panties she was wearing. A fine Latin nose, he thought to
himself.

"Hey, hey," he came over to where she was and lowered himself on one
knee. "Hey, c'mon, the house is on fire we have to get you out of
here."

She did not shake or head or nod. She only took a drag from the
cigarette and said, "Leave me."

"Leave you?" He put the head of the axe on the floor and leaned on the
handle. The light shone on the floor between them. He could see that
the sparkle that once lit her striking dark eyes had gone out. "I can't
just leave you here."

By the light of the flashlight Garland could see a plate between the
matresses and a bent, blackened spoon and needle. "Hey, look. Nevermind
about all this. We'll get you some more, if that's what you want.
You've got to get out of here."

She took the hand she held the cigarette in and picked up the rim of a
plastic cup with orange juice mixed with something else and took a
drink. It was stiff and she made a slightly dour face. "What am I going
to do now?"

The fire reached something explosive upstairs and it went off like a
bomb, rattling the entire building. He could hear the wood and plaster
raining down on the hardwood flooring. Garland was sickened to see that
the girl did not flinch.

"Nobody cares," she said. "Everybody just wanting to have a good
time."

She put her wrist to her mouth and turned away, unable to face him and
unable to keep silent. She swore under her breath. "Things could have
been so different."

"Look, it's going to be okay," he assured her. "People care. I
care."

When it did not seem to register with her, he continued, "If something
happened that is so shitty that you're willing to give up your life
over it, why not go all of the way and just let it go?"

"You're in a great spot," he said as paper flakes from the drywall on
the ceiling began to sprinkle down. "You're at a point where you're
willing to try something new. You've got nothing to lose."

"What do you care?"

"What, are you kidding?" Garland asked. Leaning the axe handle in the
crook of his arm he put both knees on the floor and sat back on the
heels of his heavy rubber boots. "Nobody wants me, either. It's
Saturday night on Memorial Day weekend and I was sitting at home
watching a movie and eating leftover Indian take-out because I don't
drink and that makes me an American leper. I think you're the prettiest
girl I've ever seen. If you've got nothing else to do, why don't you
hang out with me for a while?"

She looked up at him. "Why don't you drink? You some kind of Jesus
freak?"

"No, I'm not some kind of Jesus freak," he said, defensively. "I
believe in the Easter Bunny more than Jesus."

She nodded. "So, what are you? Some kind of recovering
alcoholic?"

"I don't believe in that, either," he said. "I used to drink like a
Viking. I just got tired of it. It just wasn't doing anything for me,
anymore. It wasn't any fun. I was just going through the motions. One
morning I woke up and I decided to try not drinking for a while. The
thing is, when you try not drinking for a while, you can never really
go back. Not like in the Beatty Ford clinic or something where they
make you not drink, but when you do it on your own, you're like that
guy who gets free in Plato's Allegory of the Cave? You know what that
is?"

She shook her head with the least amount of effort she could while the
gas tank on one of the cars parked next to the house ruptured and a
massive fireball flared in the basement windows. There was a clanging
of metal auto parts landing in the concrete driveway.

Williams' voice crackled over the radio. "Garland, there's only one
light left on the water."

The dispatcher finally seemed to realize the gravity of the situation
and reported gravely. "Attention all Clark Fire units, Engine 44 is
showing one light on water."

"Well, the Greek philosopher Plato used this story to make a point
about life," Garland said. "It's about a guy who figures out that his
day to day life in the city is really nothing more than an elaborate
puppet show projected onto the wall of a deep cave. He finds his way
out of the cave and he goes out into the sun and the fresh air and he
sees the real world, but then he tries to go back down into the cave
and explain to everybody else that their life is this big, elaborate
hoax and nobody wants to believe him. He's not really asking anybody to
believe him, he's asking them to go outside the cave and see for
themselves."

"Like The Matrix."

"Exactly like The Matrix," he laughed. "Well, that walk out of the cave
is a bitch. Once you're outside, there's no going back. It's social
suicide. Nobody's going to come right out and tell you they don't want
to hang out with you 'cause you don't drink, they just stopped coming
around. I started hearing about things everybody went and did without
inviting me. After a while, they just quit coming around at all. Now I
see people who used to be my best friends at the store and they just
nod."

"You don't decide to stop doing something like that. You decide to give
up everybody in your life." He leaned on the axe handle again.

"Garland!" Williams radioed. "Garland, we're out of water on the
truck."

"Come on," he said, offering her his gloved hand. "Come on out with me.
I promise I won't lecture you. No lectures. No bullshit. I just want to
hang out. We can just chit chat."

"Chit chat?"

"Yeah," he said. "Chit chat and fritter."

She forced a tiny grin and stood, gathering up her pack of cigarettes
and her drink. Garland was not about to risk the stairwell collapsing,
he used the axe and knocked out the glass of one of the basement
windows. He grabbed up some covers and dirty clothes from the mattress
and laid them over the jagged window frame for her to slither out. He
had to take off the SCBA tank to follow her and she helped pull the
heavy tank as best she could while he pulled himself out the window. He
hurried her clear of the roof eaves where smoldering debris was raining
down from the roof and kept himself between her and the house in his
bunker gear like a full body oven mitt to protect her from the intense
heat.

Standing next to Engine 44, he could see that the house was completely
involved in flames. Two of the cars in the driveway had caught fire and
were burning in the black and orange tornados that ruptured gasoline
tanks make. The heat was impossible and the black, twisted smell of a
house fire was everywhere, the smell of burning memories. Forgotten
photo albums in dust covered cardboard boxes that waited to distract
someone who had gone into the attic for something else to sit for hours
and go through them. Wedding pictures. Baby pictures. High school
yearbooks. Pictures of people who were no longer around to take
pictures of again. A cedar hope chest with a lovingly folded wedding
dress inside of it. The state-of-the-art computer system and all of the
plastic disks and magnetic tapes. Aerosol cans of cleaners popping.
Canned food in the cupboards exploding like shotgun blasts. Bang!
Spinach. Bang! Corn.

The sherriff's department had managed to clear a fire lane through the
snarl of traffic caused by the panicked teenagers fleeing the scene.
One of the patrol cars led the way for the tanker and Garland saw that
the back seat of the patrol car where they kept people under arrest was
packed with four firefighters in bunker gear carrying extra SCBA
bottles. Mark Duncan, the Engine 45 officer was in the deputy's
passenger seat.

Before Duncan had a chance to say anything, Garland told him, "There's
one she-beast taking a nap in the back yard. Get that water on the
neighbor's roof. All we can do now is see if we can contain this thing
until it starts burning down."

He got the girl one of the folded itchy woolen blankets out of one of
the side compartments on the engine and helped her into the cab of
Engine 44. The sherriff's deputy watched her climb into the seat of the
fire engine and put her drink on the center console near the radios and
the siren and emergency light panel.

She had seen the letters spelling his name on the back of his helmet.
"What happens now, Garland?"

He smiled. "Sit tight. We can hitch a ride on the tanker back to the
station. If you're hungry we can find an all night place and get
something to eat. We can take the other engine that's back there. I
mean, how many times have you gotten to go out to eat in a fire
engine?"

When he closed the door and stepped down off the high running boards,
the remainder of the roof collapsed in on the house in a geyser of
embers. The flames towered into the night sky, lighting up the entire
block as if it was mid afternoon and churning out a column of thick
black smoke that obscured the stars.

"Report is that kids set the house on fire after they got kicked out of
the party." The deputy sherriff stepped up next to Garland and examined
him suspiciously. "So, is it an arson or a homocide? Anybody still in
there?"

"I don't know," Garland shrugged, indifferently. "I searched what I
could."

"Well, what's your guess?"

"We don't guess about stuff like that," Mark Duncan interrupted. "He
said he searched what he could."

The deputy looked at the windshield at the girl. "She the last one
out?"

Garland pulled off his leather gloves and stored them in his bunker
coat pockets as he watched the fire. "She's the last one coming out in
this world, anyway."