The Fireman's Wife

by Jack Riggs

  “No there's not,” I said. “Just pay the bill and let's get out of here.”

  I ran out after Kelly, my embarrassment hidden in the anger I felt when the cashier just stood there looking at me like I was the plague or something, chewing gum, her lipstick smudged, mascara tired on her face from the all- nighter she'd just pulled. “He's paying,” I said, and then I smiled at her like the next thing out of my mouth would've been Eat shit and die if I was going to say anything at all.

  I walked out, found Kelly standing at the edge of the driveway looking back down the road toward Garden City Beach. We had always rubbed against each other. I think it's just the way it is when a child is having a child. Kelly kept me sick until she was born and then she was a colic baby. By the time I thought I had figured her out, she'd change or go through some other phase that scared me more than the last. There were days that I didn't want her. I feel horrible thinking about that now, but I didn't. Momma used to say children were empty vessels that we fill. If that's the case, then I was only half full myself when Kelly came along. I don't know how we made it this far.

  Outside the diner, I hoped her attitude might change, but she still wanted to fight. She just turned her back like she didn't want to have anything to do with me. “Look,” I said. “We're going to Meemaw's and you're going to play softball. That's all.”

  “Why isn't Daddy taking us?” Kelly asked. Her words were muffled by the cars passing along the road. I wanted to grab her arm and pull her back, but didn't. I was afraid if I tried, she'd pull away, maybe step out into oncoming traffic and there'd be no time to react. I stood next to her, arms crossed, trying to explain, my heart softening. “Does Daddy ever come up to the mountains with us?”

  “No,” she said. “But we could have asked. Did you ask him?”

  “He knows we're going,” I said, wanting that to be enough.

  “Does he know Clay's taking us?” She turned then to face me, her cheeks wet with tears.

  I stood looking at Kelly, her features so much like Peck's that I didn't want to tell her the truth. Clay finished up inside the restaurant and came out, watched us from the distance of his truck. He lit a cigarette, leaned against the cab and waited.

  “He doesn't know, does he?” she said defiantly. “You should call him and tell him the truth.”

  “And what's the truth, Kelly? What am I going to tell your father when I call him?” My questions seemed to stump her. It was like her young mind could only take what I was doing so far and then it shut down. All she could say was, “I want to talk to Daddy.”

  The moment passed, cars whizzing along the highway, the air whipped up into a hot wind. I could see Kelly was exhausted by everything. I had roused her early from sleep, and we had been at each other for the better part of the morning already. I put my arms around her, walked back toward the car. “You can call him later, after we get on down the road a bit.” I looked to Clay, motioned quietly for him to get in his truck, to get going. We left Conway, Kelly in the seat next to me, still mad because I had involved her in my messy life.

  She is just like her father, a hard-set chin and silence. She won't tell me I'm wrong, but the way she stares out the window, a stranger, a hitchhiker here only for the ride, is telling enough. I have tried to tell her that there was no other way. I could not look Peck in the face and say good- bye. It would never have worked if I did that, so to leave a quick note and be gone was the only way, no hurtful words or stares.

  “Do you want to turn on the radio?” I ask, but she won't give me the pleasure of an answer. I try to keep my eye on her, but it's hard to do that with Clay slowing down to check on me. I honk my horn. “Just go on,” I say as his hand comes out of the window to give me the okay sign.

  It's getting on my nerves the way he drives, assuming I can't do it without him leading the way, but I dare not share this with Kelly. She would like it too much. She would look at me with that so why are you following him, then? look on her face. I just let it go and turn the radio on myself, punching buttons, running through the stations but finding only static along the dial.

  “There's nothing out here,” Kelly says, reaching over to turn it off. “We're in the middle of nowhere, can't you at least see that?” Then she is gone again, her head turned away from me, body scrunched up in the seat, feet on the dashboard. Her comment is something like smoke disappearing into the hot air, giving me nothing to reply to. Just like Peck, I think. She is so like her father, it's annoying.

  When we stop outside Columbia for gas, Clay checks his boat and then comes back to the car where I'm filling the tank myself. “Let me get that for you,” he says.

  “No,” I say. “I can fill my car.”

  “I know you can,” Clay says, “but I can finish it so you and Kelly can freshen up. You need to freshen up, don't you?”

  Clay's getting frustrated, and for whatever reason that irritates me even more. “I can freshen up when I finish filling up,” I say, using my fingers to hang quotation marks in the air.

  My attitude is enough to send Clay back to his truck where he slams the door and sits inside the cab. Everything is suddenly so uncertain that I lose confidence in what I'm doing, feel too alone to keep going by myself. I know I need Clay's strength right now. I don't need him mad at me too, so I walk over to his truck and stick my head inside, kiss him on the lips. “Sorry,” I say.

  “For what?” He won't even look at me.

  “For being such a bitch to you. I'm sorry.”

  “It's nothing,” he says, reaching for the cigarette lighter. He lights one, takes it from his mouth and puts it in mine, then reaches for another. “We still got a long way to go. Are you going to be all right?”

  “Yes,” I say, but I'm not so sure, the uncertainty from Kelly's softball game returning, that feeling of treading water, starting over with something so familiar that I wonder if I'm really starting over at all. I don't want to tell him this. I don't want to believe it myself, because to do so would make my leaving Peck seem that much more useless. Instead, I smile. I nod my head and say yes again. “Yes, I'll be all right.”

  The rest of the trip is uneventful. We stop for gas again, eat sandwiches at a Stuckey's, then more coffee. Kelly turns on the radio around Greenville and follows stations all the way to Clem-son. We drive on late into the afternoon and then into cooler evening air. The upstate favors opened windows, the cool air acting like a balm to ease the tension as we rise and fall along the rolling farmland, crossing over into Oconee County. And when we are on Main Street in Walhalla, I feel like I have arrived at another life altogether. The evening light feels good here, Walhalla, a good place to be. I look over at Kelly, but she's still ignoring me. She knows where we are, but there's nothing she can do about it.

  We follow Clay as he looks for the fire station. I try to stick my head out of the window and tell him to just stop and ask directions. People are sitting outside the Rexall with ice cream cones. There's a cafeteria right next door. But he just drives on, passes a gas station twice.

  “Momma, can we just stop and let him come and get us when he finds the thing?” Kelly comes alive now, just when I need her to be quiet. “If he can't find his station, how can he find a fire?” she says.

  “Honey, this town's small enough that he'll be able to see the smoke.” We both laugh at that, knowing it's just ridiculous that Clay won't stop and ask. And when he finally does bump into it, the station is right there, right under his nose, one block off Main on East North Broad.

  “Shouldn't that be Northeast Broad?” Kelly asks.

  I look at my child.

  “Well, it's just weird, that's all,” she says and then slouches back down, leaving me alone again.

  The station is a big, brightly lit cave, not like the dirty garage Peck works in. There are two engines inside and a fire chief's car. It's a two- story building with big opened doors, the painted floor glistening like it's still wet. No sand anywhere. I point to the car, all red and shiny. “That's wh
at Clay will drive to the fires. He won't have to ride on the engine anymore.”

  “Probably a bright idea to keep him away from real firemen,” Kelly says.

  I'd like to reach over and smack her face because of the way she disrespects Clay. He's a good fireman, but he'll make a better chief. He told me he's better watching from a distance, seeing the problems and following through with the right procedures. He's a thinking fireman, he says. Once when I told Peck that, he just said, “Well I'd like to know what he's thinking about, because he sure isn't doing anything else.” Peck can be such an asshole.

  We pull into the station, Clay's truck and the boat and then me and Kelly. When he comes over to the window, I put my arms on the door, lean out and smile. “Hey Chief, where's the fire?” I say, but he's all business.

  “I need to check in, see how the crew's doing, let them know I'm here.”

  “Okay; want us to wait?”

  “I'd rather keep going,” Kelly says. “We still have an hour and a half to Meemaw's.”

  Clay looks at me hard. “Haven't you two talked?”

  “About what?” Kelly says.

  “About tonight.” He looks at Kelly like he's daring her to keep it up. “You're not going any farther. You're staying here tonight.”

  Kelly looks out the window. “At the fire station?”

  “No,” Clay says. “You're staying with me.”

  Kelly says, “No I'm not.”

  “I'll talk to her, Clay, just go on over and see your new firemen.” But he doesn't leave. He eyes Kelly, waiting for her to turn and look back, but she won't. She stares out her window, cheeks sucked in, defiant. “Go,” I say. I can feel the car shake when he pushes himself off the door to turn and walk away.

  I look at my daughter. She's as unhappy again now as she was when we left. The radio is on, the volume too loud for sitting here without the wind blowing into the car, so I turn it off. I kill the engine too, and then we are surrounded by uncomfortable silence. In her eyes I see something I have never seen before. There is hatred staring at me, a hatred I don't know how to answer. It sends a cold chill through the center of my body.

  Clay is talking to the firemen over at the opened doors. A couple are sitting, two or three standing around him. He scuffs at the ground, motions back, but it's not to point toward us. He's talking about his boat, I can hear that. The men nod and then shake their heads, point in a direction that is up the road. “On up there,” one of them says, “about five miles.”

  One man comes from inside the station with a piece of paper, hands it to Clay, and then points in the same direction, his hands and arms weaving in the night air like he's trying to draw a map. Clay nods, looks back at his boat, then to us with a slight wave. I hear one of the men ask how his wife and daughter are doing, how they fared on the long trip and all.

  “Wife and daughter,” Kelly says. “My god, Momma.” She slumps hard in her seat, feet against the dashboard.

  “Hush,” I tell her. “They don't know any better. It's just a mistake. Don't you say anything about that.”

  When he's finished, he shakes hands around and walks back over to my window while slipping the folded paper in his shirt pocket. He lights a cigarette, takes a long draw before bending into the window. “Got a little more to go,” he says.

  “Where?” I ask. He can tell I don't want to drive anymore. It's been a long day.

  “Just up the road. It's a new station they're opening. I won't be down here.” I can tell this disappoints him. He seemed more excited when we first pulled up to the brightly lit firehouse, the chief's car all polished and parked out front. “I can take you two over to the house first,” he says, “then I'll go drop the boat off.”

  “No, that's all right,” I say. “We've come this far.” He smiles, glances over at Kelly, and then walks back to his truck, flicking his cigarette into the darkness.

  The rest of the ride is up a winding unlit road, treacherous when I'm this tired. Kelly is even sitting up keeping an eye out, keeping tabs on Clay, who's driving too fast for us to follow. “Where's he going?” she asks, breaking the silence between us.

  “To his station,” I say, “but I have my doubts. I think he's lost again.”

  When we catch up, Clay is pulling into a small graveled parking lot. My headlights sweep across a building, an unpainted cinder- block garage with no fire engine inside. The place seems abandoned in the night. We make the small donut turn and wait for Clay to back his boat in against the far side of the building.

  The trees rise around us, a black wall that feels warm and comforting. We are past the foothills now. Cicadas and tree frogs fill the cool air and somewhere off in the distance I hear a small stream running down along the roadside. I am on the cusp of being home, and think maybe Kelly is right that we should just keep going, push higher into the mountains until we are beyond South Carolina and back home in Whiteside Cove.

  Clay comes toward the car, his dark figure moving away from the building like a prowler who has failed to find a way inside. “Where are they?” I ask.

  “It's volunteer until Monday,” he says, “then I'll have a crew. Two of the firemen I was talking to will be up here with me. Later there'll be more.”

  “It's a long way from Walhalla,” I say.

  “Only five miles, but it takes a while to get up here with the roads.” He acts for a moment like he's unsure what to do next, like maybe he's made a mistake in taking this job. It makes my stomach sink to see it, a feeling of disappointment flushing hot across my face.

  “Are you okay?” I ask, my voice pulling Clay back.

  “Sure,” he says. He smiles, looks around like he's sizing up the possibilities. “This is going to be great.” He looks out over the top of the Bel Air, then leans into the window, points with his hand up a road that disappears quickly into the black night. “See that right there? It goes to the Highlands,” he says. “You take that, then head on down 106 past Scaly Mountain until you hit 441 toward Clayton. You get that far, and you're almost to Tallulah Gorge, where they're building that rope walk for Wallenda right now.” He smiles at the both of us, but I think we're just too tired to care.

  “Let's get going,” I say. “If I don't get something to eat soon, I might never make it to Tallulah Gorge.” I can see Clay's disappointed that we don't play along, so I smile, try to be more reassuring. “Why don't we get some dinner at that cafeteria, maybe some ice cream afterward?” He smiles then, his spirits raised.

  Back in Walhalla, our luck keeps running out. The cafeteria is closed, the Rexall too. There's no place to eat this late on a Saturday night except a small roadhouse all the way back down in Westminster. Retracing our steps makes me feel I'm losing ground, falling farther away from where I want to be. By the time we have eaten and found the house that Clay has rented, it's midnight, Kelly asleep in the car. When I try to wake her, she calls out for Meemaw in a small voice.

  “No honey,” I say. “We aren't there yet. We'll go tomorrow.” And then she remembers about Walhalla, and refuses to move.

  It's not worth the fight to pull her out of the car, drag her into the small house Clay has rented for himself. “Stay in the car,” I say. “I don't care.” I slam the door and leave her, forgetting to lock the car until I hear her push the buttons down. “This has been the worst day of my life,” she yells through the closed windows. “I hate you. I hate you more than anything in the world.”

  What do we do to our children in this life? If I could change it all in a moment, I would. If I could walk over and tell Kelly that everything will be all right, I would, but I can't. I'm just as scared as she is, and I have no idea how all of this will turn out, but I won't stop now. I can't. I've come too far, even if I fail, to give up trying now.

  Inside, the house smells of spoiled summer heat. There is no air- conditioning, but the nights here are not as hot as in Garden City Beach, and a breeze slips through the raised windows. The carpet is worn through in places. The walls need a good coa
t of paint, cobwebs shadowing the corners along the ceiling. The kitchen is tiny, the linoleum peeling on the floor, the pine cabinets dark and oily to the touch. “Seems the chief of a firehouse could live a little higher than this,” I say, sorry as soon as the words escape my mouth.

  “I'll do better once I get settled in,” Clay says. He looks out at my car where Kelly has grown silent, the windows beginning to whiten on the inside. “Think she'll be there in the morning?”

  “She has no idea where she is,” I say, “so I imagine she'll stay put.”

  “Want me to go out there and say something?” he asks.

  “No, let her stew. Maybe a night in the car will do her some good, the hardhead.”

  He watches her for a minute more, then draws the shade while I make the bed where we will sleep tonight. “I won't lock the door,” he says, “just in case she changes her mind.”

  “Thank you, that's kind,” I tell him, “but you don't need to be on her side.”

  “It's not her side I'm on, Cassie. It's ours.” I know he wants me to say something, give some kind of reassurance about what we are doing, but I can't. I just find my nightgown and toothbrush, then head to the bathroom to get ready for sleep.

  By the time we are in bed together, it is after one, Sunday morning, and I am thinking about Peck, wondering if he knows by now that I have left him for good. I did not say that in my note, just a quick line to tell him I would call. But if he looks around, he will see things are missing.

  It is the first time that I will spend a whole night completely with Clay. In the past it has been only stolen afternoons or evenings at the house when Kelly was out or asleep, short hours together that never had the sense of permanence that this night carries. It is more uneasy than I had imagined it would be. The fight that has raged all day with Kelly has taken something away from the moment, and I can't summon the strength to bring it back. In the past just being with Clay, even if it was only an hour or two, was easy. I didn't have to think about what I was doing. I was desperate to just be there, and my reward was always a renewed strength to continue, a strength that I had thought I would find here tenfold tonight. Instead, I am exhausted. My daughter is angry and alone in a car and Clay is beside me waiting as I struggle to decide if I should turn to him.