The Fireman's Wife

by Jack Riggs

  She would go crazy and leave the house, take Kelly and drive along South Waccamaw, drive all night sometimes. She never drove all the way to Cashiers, but she drove to Florence a couple of times, and then once to Spartanburg. That's as far as she ever got, Kelly sleeping soundly in the seat beside her.

  She always came back. Funny how that worked. She'd leave me, clean out everything, and then drive all over the place only to end up at Pops and Mom's house in Conway. I think they both knew what we were going through. I never asked if they did similar things. But I know we never would have made it without them.

  I wish I could at least pass all of this by one of them now, see if they could help me out again, but that won't happen. Mom's been dead eight years and Pops isn't doing too well over in Con-way We grow up when we have children; we grow old when our parents die. I've already grown old once, and I'm afraid I'm getting ready to grow a bit older a lot sooner than I want to. Pops is withering away in a rest home. I need to go see him. It's been awhile.

  Suddenly the scanner on the dashboard of my truck lights up like a Christmas tree, a dispatcher's voice crackling out codes, Garden City station and Surfside responding. There is no time to think anymore, Pops and Cassie put on hold for now. I only have time to react and do what I have done my entire adult life, be a fireman and respond. My headlights push hard at the darkness along the narrow ribbon of road. I hit a switch, red lights spinning like a tornado against the night as heat lightning catches fire across a dry sky.

  WHEN I GET TO THE station, it's empty, the Pirsch gone, the Quon-set hut deserted. I move fast, grab my turnouts and check with Surfside while in route, confirm the location of the 10- 52—a wreck with possible fatal injuries. There is a second code, 10- 53, all lanes blocked. My emergencies pierce the darkness, spinning and flashing off windshields and into the eyes of unsuspecting motorists. They slice panicked looks into rearview mirrors before slowing down to pull over so I can get past, make it to the scene and do my job. The drive in is awesome and terrifying at the same time, as I come up on traffic that's building from the blocked highway up ahead. The pulsing emergency lights of fire and police already on scene reach out to pull me in so the whole grisly dance can begin.

  I drive down the shoulder, careful not to create another accident by hitting a curious pedestrian. They always show up, gawk-ers, onlookers who don't realize how much of a hazard they're creating when they walk up or slow down to rubberneck at the misfortunes of others.

  Surfside has a pumper and a ladder unit working alongside our Pirsch. Floodlights attached to the trucks pour down an unnatural kind of daylight onto the wreckage. Ambulances wait nearby. I pull over into what should be a left- turn lane and park. Glass and car debris are scattered everywhere. It's hot as hell putting on turnouts during the summer, even in the middle of the night, but you've got to wear them. You've got to protect yourself, always, so I slide the fire retardant pants and boots on, buckle the jacket tight before going to locate my crew. When I find them, Partee is pulling a line from the Pirsch, J.D. inside the car looking at a boy who is dead and a girl who is dying.

  A Plymouth Barracuda ran a red light and plowed into a Ford Gran Torino full of teenagers, T- boned the shit out of it. Couldn't have planned it any better, a perfect bull's- eye. It pushed the middle post on the left side of the Torino almost to the other side of the car, propelling the whole mess into the southbound lanes and clogging up the entire highway.

  The impact nearly split the Torino in two. There's a girl trapped, pinched tight in the backseat, but she's still alive. The boy in the driver's seat is dead, two others are on the ground, having been ejected from the car, dead. The Barracuda is local, and the kid who was driving it is alive and drunk, his face messed up, but that's about it. When I walk up to the car, I can't imagine how he escaped injury. The engine compartment is pushed completely into the front seat. He keeps saying the car's not his, keeps telling a patrolman that he wasn't driving. But there's no one else here, and this boy somehow still alive, is so drunk that he can't stand up. I count ten beer cans in the backseat, empty.

  The Torino is from Ohio, a long way from home. I look inside where J.D. is laying a canvas covering over the boy's body. He's got to get some room to work and needs to sit on top of the dead boy if he's going to have any chance at the girl in the back. Nobody asks me why I'm here when I'm supposed to be off duty. Nobody has time to care about that.

  “What do you need?” I ask.

  “I need to get her out and fast,” J.D. says, his voice calm and even. “I think there's an artery cut, lots of blood, and I don't know if I can get to it without freeing her first.”

  “Okay then,” I say, scanning the chaos for someone from Surf-side who might have a Jaws of Life. Of course no one does. “Next in line to get one,” Bob Strachen tells me as he pulls a crowbar from a cabinet on his pumper. “We got a ram tool and a saw. What you got?”

  “Same,” I say and then go over to Partee, tell him to pull the saw and tool. “We're going to lose everyone out here if we don't get the girl out now.”

  The crowd is growing. Four Horry County Sheriff's cars and three State Troopers control the perimeter of the accident. Flares are scattered all over the place. An attempt is made to reroute traffic in both directions, but then the patrolmen give up and just shut the flow down cold. Everyone has to wait, those closest getting more than they bargained for on their vacation.

  The problem won't be solved with just cutting sheet metal. They can cut it, but the ram tools will have to pry the metal back if we're going to get in there anytime soon. J.D. and the girl are covered because of the debris the saws might kick up. Two lines are laid out, primed and then sprayed around the car to keep sparks from igniting the gasoline. The smell of fuel sits heavy in the air. Once everything is up and online, three rams and two saws start to work on the car, J.D. and the girl buried under a pile of metal shavings and glass.

  Early on, it looks like nothing is going to budge, sparks flying all over like we're trying to catch the whole mess on fire. Then there is a sudden shudder, a crack followed by a loud Pop! and the car falls apart. It cracks right open like an egg and falls into two pieces in the middle of the goddamn road. It's like God said “Enough of this,” and just flicked His finger and broke that son of a bitch right in two. The girl falls to the ground, J.D. there to tie off the bleeding artery and then stabilize her on a backboard.

  Strachen comes over and tells me a medevac from Florence is coming in.

  “Where?” I say.

  “How about up the road a bit? We'll need to set flares.”

  I agree and then hustle across the scene, moving around broken bodies and destroyed vehicles to pull torches off the Pirsch. Fifty yards out, I set up a perimeter of flares just as the chopper's lights come into view. Its blades raise the air into a torrent, sand whipping up, going under my mask into my face and eyes. Flashlights lead him in, bring that bird down on the mark, and he's on the ground before the sand can settle.

  J.D. hands the girl off to the flight nurse, a breathing bag going, her artery the least of the injuries as far as I can tell. She was on the side of impact so has extensive head trauma. J.D. tells the flight nurse, “Keep the bag going. I don't know if you got enough time. It took us too long to get her out.”

  The nurse has no opinion about that. She just takes control of the bag and the rest of us get the girl into the helicopter. It's ready to lift off in a matter of minutes. When everyone is a safe distance away, I release him back into the night. The chopper dips its nose, turns a hundred and eighty degrees in a tight maneuver, and heads for Florence.

  The boy who did all of this is from over in Conway and only has a broken nose, cut lip, and some glass in his face. He's put in an ambulance in handcuffs, a Sheriff's deputy in the back with him so he can be patched up at the local emergency room and later booked on multiple counts of vehicular homicide. The kids from Ohio leave in the other three ambulances with flashing lights on, but no sirens. There's
no rush since there's no one to be saved.

  It seems like we're here for about five minutes doing all of this, but when I look at my watch, it's three- thirty in the morning. Someone says traffic is backed up all the way to Myrtle Beach north and Pawleys Island south. I wouldn't doubt it one bit. I walk over to Strachen and thank him for coming down. “We're short-handed with Clay resigning,” I say. “So it was good to see you fellas out here tonight.”

  “He's still got a week to go,” Strachen says like he thinks he ought to be here. But I shake my head, raise my hand and tell him no.

  “He won't be back at Garden City Bob. I can't have him calling out sick with our crew as light as it is. I'd rather know who's going to be here than have to second- guess who might not show. Besides, he's going to Walhalla to be chief, so let him go be a chief.”

  Strachen looks at me real close like he's trying to figure out my point. It's been a hard night on everyone, still a lot to be done to get us out of here and back to our stations where we belong. He knows I've never refused help or equipment before, yet here I am standing in the middle of Highway 17 with blood and human remains, car parts and all kinds of hell surrounding us, and I'm telling him I don't need a man on my crew. I know it doesn't make good sense, but I'm not going into details just yet on something that doesn't need a public airing.

  “We'll keep him down at Surfside then, or hell, maybe we'll just let the son- of- a- bitch go, but I can't give you anybody else right now. Maybe later this summer, but until then you've got to double it up, see if there's a man who can come over from the volunteer squad and help out. I can't give any overtime on this.”

  I look at J.D. as he wraps up his gear, all the patients gone, the victims’ positions replaced by fluorescent orange spray- painted silhouettes, ghosts on the ground, as the highway patrol finishes marking and investigating the accident. “I want J.D. to have overtime tonight,” I say. “He's on for Clay because the guy never showed up. That's only fair, I think. He may have saved that girl's life because he took the shift.”

  It takes him a minute, but he agrees. “I'll do that,” Strachen says, “but that's it. You guys figure this out, and let me know what you come up with.”

  I thank him and then walk over to J.D., his uniform covered in blood and dirt, his hair flecked with glass from being inside the Torino while we were cutting it apart. “You okay?” I ask.

  He looks up, and for the first time I can tell he's surprised to see me, wasn't expecting this. “What are you doing out here?” he says. “Thought you went home.”

  “Oh, I did, but then I was thinking, what the hell, I can't miss the rookie earning a merit badge. What kind of chief would I be if I did that?”

  A smile pushes against J.D.'s face. He looks over at Partee who's laughing along, pushing a broom, removing the debris from the roadway. I'm glad he can still have a sense of humor after what's just happened out here. It's a good sign, because tonight we tried to save a life. You've got to find ways to remember that. Lots of kids died and there are families from Ohio whose lives will never be the same because some kid from Conway got drunk and then went on a killing spree. We tried our best. That's what I want to focus on, even when our best comes up short.

  On the ride back, I make the call to Surfside, ask that we be taken off- line so we can get some rest and reload. According to statistics, nothing happens this time of the morning, the night nearly exhausted. People who dodged any trouble will just be going to bed while others are starting to get up for work. Nothing's bound to happen until at least eight, if not later. Surfside agrees and takes us off- line until 8 A.M.

  At the station, no one wants to sleep. It's too hot, too much to process with the young kids who died tonight. I could insist that we all try to lie down because we have to be ready in just a few hours to go back on call, but I don't. We make ourselves busy, Par-tee taking care of the Pirsch, J.D. working on his emergency kits, restocking bandages, IVs, blankets, and extrication kits. We sent the neck brace and backboard with the victim, and so J.D. breaks out our backups, but not before letting me know we need to get that equipment back, if we can. I promise to make the call later in the morning.

  I walk out of the station, leave J.D. and Partee there to do the cleanup. I need some time alone. Tonight hurt more than that drowning did in the afternoon. I saw a girl not much older than Kelly dying in the backseat of a car. I'd hate to get the call that someone's parents got tonight in a hotel room, or worse yet, back home in Ohio. No parent's supposed to outlive their kid, that's about as unnatural as anything in the world, but it's precisely what we've had to deal with all day.

  I'd like to hide Kelly away somewhere until she's thirty, then I'd let her out and say, “Good luck,” but I know I can't shelter her like that. She already sees too much that's between her mother and me. When Cassie and I were good, there was nothing sweeter. But the low country just seemed to drain it all out of her over the years. The mountains probably would have done the same to me if I'd had to go there against my will.

  That first night back in Conway, Cassie was almost inconsolable. It was the fall of 1954, and she was to have already started college. Instead, we were staying with Mom and Pops. Cassie's anger at her own father was so deep and hot that she seemed to give up inside; burned beyond recognition is the only way I can explain it. It was like the girl who spent the summer with me died when Cassie went home, and the pregnant girl who returned when her daddy kicked her out was someone else entirely. Her whole world stopped, and Cassie floated free of anything that had grounded her in life.

  She never settled things with her father. He died before she could find a way to work it out. Parker had remained silent in life, and now for the past ten years, silent in death, though I think he haunts her. Cassie tells me that she sees her father in Kelly's eyes. She says, “Sometimes I think he's watching me through her, sometimes I can hardly look at her face and not feel I'm being spied on.”

  “Don't be unfair to Kelly,” I tell her. “She's got nothing to do with this.” But I don't know if Cassie believes that. I'm not close enough to her anymore to tell.

  Out before me, the marsh is finding the early light, the salt creeks just beginning to wake. Along the fringes of cordgrass, black mud disappears beneath a rising tide. Skimmers rake their beaks across the water for an early morning meal. Even before the sun is on the horizon the air is thick. It's going to be another hot one with no chance of rain, and here I am working on a twenty-four- hour day when I was supposed to be off duty, so tired I can barely breathe.

  Cassie

  IT IS SATURDAY MORNING and I am following Clay, watching his taillights weave back and forth, the small boat he pulls behind the truck teasing the yellow line whenever we take a curve. We pass through little inland towns, Conway and then Lake City, Turbeville, until we are finally on a long stretch of 378. Here the land begins to rise, the road warning that the distance I have already traveled has meaning. To continue, it says, will mean that I have finally done it. I have left Peck.

  My spirits lifted the minute Peck left the house last night and went back to the fire station. I went inside and packed my bags, knew it had to be done right then, that in the morning if I wasn't ready to go, I might never leave. Clay called early, said Surfside had let him go, that he was packing too. “I got no reason to stay now, so let's eat breakfast over in Conway and get the hell out of here. Oh, and don't worry,” he continued, “it's better we leave like this. I can watch your back.”

  I felt like I was back in high school and it was the first day of summer, my whole life in front of me. Kelly was mad from the moment I woke her up, just plain ugly, but I didn't care. I ignored her and packed the car. In Conway, Clay was excited too. Strachen had let him go with a full week's pay—a good omen, Clay called it.

  He talked about his new job, the trip to Walhalla, and the coming summer. He promised to take us to Tallulah Gorge in July to see the great Flying Wallenda walk across it on a wire, like that single event was going to
be the great send- off to this new adventure, the new life we were beginning that morning. I was excited and wanted Kelly to feel the same, but that wasn't going to happen. I said, “You can invite Ellen to come up, if you want to.”

  “What for?” she said, like she hadn't heard a word that Clay had spoken.

  “You know what for, young lady.”

  “Cassie, we got time,” Clay said. “Kelly can decide about that later.” But I was having none of it.

  “I don't care if we got until doomsday, she's going to be respectful.”

  Kelly sat playing with her link sausage and the little bit of egg left on her plate. She was so rude. “I don't want to see some old man walk on a rope across a gorge. I don't see what that's got to do with anything anyway.”

  She slouched down in the booth. “Sit up,” I said, but she didn't move.

  “Cassie,” Clay pleaded.

  “Sit up, Kelly, right now.” I kicked the booth between her feet, pushed it back against the wall. Her fingers lost the fork and it fell off the table and onto the floor, the whole restaurant watching what was going on. It got really quiet, and then Kelly pushed back on the table, sending it into me and Clay, stood up and stormed out of the restaurant. Everybody watched her walk out, and then it was like they all waited to see if someone was going to follow. Clay looked at me with disappointment. “You didn't have to make a big deal about it,” he said. “There's plenty of time.”