Free Report from Engine Co. 82 by Dennis Smith Page A

knows the fires have to be put out, but can’t you find a better
     way?”
    The other nurse quietly washes Carmine’s neck. She is slender and pretty, and reminds me of the girl on the subway. Smooth
     olive skin, and long black hair pinned up beneath her starched cap. She moves in quick, determined motions, with an air of
     professionalism that attracts me. She leans her elbow on the back of Carmine’s lowered head, applies the bandage, and then
     confidently lifts his chin with her fingers. “Would you sit over there, please,” she says. It is not a request, but a pleasant
     command. She looks at Benny. “Are you next?”
    Benny sits on the stool, and she holds his hand. He has a burn the size of a silver dollar behind his right thumb, and he
     winces as she wipes it with soapy gauze. But he is enjoying the attention, and I silently wish I could trade places with him.
    The doctor comes to me armed with a flashlight and a tongue depressor. He chokes me in the gentle, easy way all doctors choke
     people when they look at throats. “You’ll be O.K.,” he says, “but don’t smoke for a week, or use your voice too much. The
     throat is irritated, but it’s not burned, luckily.” He writes a prescription for a syrup, and tells me to take it three times
     a day.
    The telephone rings. It is the Fire Department Medical Officer, and he wants to talk to the attending physician. The doctor
     talks into the receiver in the matter-of-fact way doctors talk to each other. The conversation is brief, and he turns to me,
     and says, “The Department doctor wants to talk to one of you.”
    “This is Fireman Smith speaking.”
    “Listen Smith, are the other men with you? Carroll, Stack, Belli, and McDowell?”
    “McDowell?”
    “Yes, the man from Engine Company 45.”
    “Oh, yes, everyone is here.” I had forgotten about that guy.
    “Well, tell them that you are all to report to the medical office a week from Monday. We won’t have to worry about Rittman,
     because he has a broken leg. Do you have the message?”
    “Yes sir, a week from Monday, thank you, good-bye.”

4

    I live in a small town called Washingtonville. It is a pretty town located sixty miles north of the city, and the only objection
     I have to it is the length of its name. The surrounding countryside is filled with the soft, rambling hills of pasture land,
     and it is only in the past decade that the dairy farmers have begun to sell pieces of their farms to developers. People were,
     and still are, moving from the city in droves, buying their little piece of America. Cops, firemen, construction workers,
     school teachers, engineers, and auto mechanics—all abandoning the place that provides them a livelihood. And why not? After
     living in tenements all my life, I want to give my three sons a little more space than I had, a place where they can ride
     a bicycle and breathe clean air.
    My piece of America is a four-bedroom house on a half acre of ground. The house is built on top of a hill, overlooking distant
     mountains and my neighbor’s backyard. It is peaceful and plain. I can’t enjoy the solitude Thoreau talked about, not with
     the kids playing noisily in the yard, or the roar of a neighbor’s lawnmower or snowblower, but I can plant a bean row if I
     want to.
    A little old lady died a few years ago in Boise, Idaho. She left no will, and her property was divided among unknown relatives.
     My wife’s uncle, a poor blind man living in Ireland, was made rich by Irish standards, and a wealthy cousin was made richer.
     My wife was given several thousand dollars, enough for a down payment on the house. We could never have saved that money on
     a fireman’s salary. That is what life is all about—living in a three-room apartment with three kids until a strange lady,
     a thousand miles away, dies.
    Washingtonville is a bastion of Goldwater Republicans. The people are not unfriendly, but neither are they friendly. It’s
     a mind-your-own-business