The Complete Firehouse 56 Series

by Chase Jackson

  “For you,” I said simply.

  She frowned, sliding the headphones back down.

  “For me?”

  “Just listen,” I told her. I tapped the ‘play’ button, and the Walkman made an electronic hum as the disc began spinning around. I heard the intro to The Cure’s ‘Lovesong’ start to play through the headphones, and she pressed them back over her ears to listen.

  Her shoulders swayed back and forth to the beat, bumping gently into me. I didn’t move away. I stared at the toes of my beat-up Doc Martens, silently mouthing the lyrics.

  When the song ended, she pulled the headphones down.

  “I like it,” she told me. “But… why did you make me a playlist?”

  “I can’t tell you that yet,” I smiled cryptically as I popped open the Walkman. “You have to listen to the rest of it, first.”

  The disc was still spinning around inside; an abstract swirl of white and red, like a peppermint. As it spun to a stop, the peppermint swirl slowly separated into the blank white CD label and the red Sharpie heart that I had drawn around the hole in the center of the disc.

  “Here,” I said, popping out the disc and handing it to her. “Maybe you’ll figure it out once you listen to the whole thing.”

  I was worried that the red heart would immediately give it away, but as she reached for the CD, her eyes landed on my forearm instead.

  “Holy shit, Rory!” she gasped, seeing the burn mark that my stepfather had left. “What happened?!”

  “Oh, that’s… nothing,” I tried to roll down my shirt sleeve, but she stopped me.

  “That doesn’t look like nothing!” She held my arm in her lap, inspecting the burn. Then, lowering her voice to a whisper, she asked: “Did he do this to you?”

  I didn’t answer, and she didn’t let go. Her fingers crawled along my arm, gently tracing the veins towards my wrist. I felt the tension fade away, and my fist unclenched and fell open. Then she wove her fingers through mine and pressed our palms together, holding my hand in hers.

  “Rory…” her voice was so soft that it almost got lost in the night air, and her lips were inches from mine. She was holding the CD in her other hand; her palm resting over my red Sharpie heart.

  Before I could say anything, the silent night was pierced by the high-pitched squeal of police sirens.

  “What the--”

  We both jerked up from the table and watched as a pair of Hartford Police cars flew down the road, passing the park in a bright strobe of flashing red and blue light.

  “I wonder what’s going on?” she pushed herself off the table and jogged towards the edge of the park, watching as the squad cars sped down the darkened neighborhood street.

  I stayed glued to my spot on the table, glaring down at the rubber mulch as my stomach sunk and my hands balled back into fists. I didn’t need to look; I already knew where the cops were headed.

  “Oh my God,” she said, turning back to me slowly. “Rory… I think the cops just pulled up to your house.”

  CHAPTER ONE | RORY

  Eleven Years Later

  I flicked off my black Wayfarer sunglasses and squinted up at the firehouse through the glare of the white-hot afternoon sun.

  Without the black tint of my sunglasses, everything looked vibrant and bright. The square firehouse was constructed out of rusty red brick, and the front driveway was pristine white concrete. The vehicle bay doors were rolled up and a candy-apple red fire truck was pulled out in front of the station, gleaming immaculately in the sunlight.

  An American flag rippled in the summer breeze, and a flat field of lush green grass surrounded the firehouse in all directions, dotted with yellow wildflowers.

  A white sign was staked in the lawn in front of the station, marked with proud brass letters that spelled out:

  HARTFORD FIRE DEPARTMENT

  And beneath that, in even larger letters:

  FIREHOUSE 56

  It’s... perfect, I thought skeptically as I slid my sunglasses back over my eyes, blinking a few times until my sight readjusted to dimness of the black lenses.

  Too perfect…

  The version of Hartford, Connecticut that existed in my memory was plagued by cracked asphalt, shattered glass and the constant wailing sound of police sirens in the distance. Green grass and squeaky-clean concrete didn’t belong in that world.

  From where I stood on the curb, Firehouse 56 looked like something straight out of a postcard or a movie set. The only thing missing was a white picket fence and a purebred dalmatian--

  WOOF! WOOF!

  As if on cue, something furry and brown scampered out through the open vehicle bay doors and sprinted across the white concrete driveway.

  Ok, so he wasn’t a purebred dalmatian. In fact, he wasn’t a purebred anything. He was a scrappy little brown mutt that looked like he hadn’t grown into his own legs yet.

  The dog skidded to a stop when he spotted me standing by the curb. His bright pink tongue flopped out of the side of his snout as he panted, and he looked up at me with a dopey grin on his face.

  “COOPER!” a voice shouted from inside the vehicle bay. The dog cocked his head, then immediately took off running again… this time, making a beeline straight towards me.

  I squatted down and stretched open my arms, letting the rambunctious brown mutt hurdle straight into my grasp. Before he could dart away, I looped a finger through his collar.

  “COOPER!” the voice called again from the vehicle bay. “Come on, dude! Where did you go?!”

  I glanced up at the firehouse and saw a member of the crew sprinting out. He shielded his eyes and glanced around the field, frantically searching for the mutt…

  “Over here!” I called out.

  His eyes shot in my direction, and his face lit up with relief when he spotted the dog corralled between my arms. Then he saw me, and that look of relief immediately darkened.

  I watched as his eyes scanned me up and down, pinballing from one red flag to the next: arms covered in tattoos, muscles bulging out of a black Bauhaus t-shirt, cigarette tucked behind one ear, black denim jeans torn at the knee, scars on my knuckles, black hair slicked back, grizzly beard covering half of my face...

  You didn’t need a calculator to add up the sum of all my parts: I was bad fucking news, plain and simple.

  But I guess basic addition wasn’t Meathead’s strong suit, because he was still trying to run the numbers in his head when another member of the crew sauntered out of the garage and spotted me.

  “Well howdy, partner!” he crooned in a smooth southern drawl. “You must be the new guy! We’ve been expecting you!”

  I released my grip on the dog’s collar and stood up. The mutt immediately scampered out towards the field, and Meathead dumbly started chasing after him. The cowboy just shook his head and laughed.

  “Don’t pay him no nevermind,” he said to me. “We’re still trying to train Duke on how to interact with humans, but I promise he doesn’t bite. And the dog doesn’t, either!”

  I chuckled dryly. I like this guy already...

  The cowboy didn’t seem to give my tattoos or goth rock t-shirt a second glance. Instead of a scrutinizing once-over, he just looked me straight in the eye as he wiped the engine grease off of his palms, then offered me his hand.

  “Name’s Walker Wright.”

  “Rory McAlister,” I shook his hand. Then I added, “I know that’s not a Hartford accent I’m hearing?”

  “Texas, born and raised!” he declared proudly. “Is my twang that obvious?"

  I just shrugged.

  “What about you, New Guy?” Walker asked. “The chief mentioned that you were transferring to Hartford from out-of-state. Massachusetts, was it?”

  “Boston,” I confirmed with a nod. “I was with the Boston Fire Department for six years.”

  “So this ain’t your first rodeo,” Walker grinned. “Are you a Boston native?”

  “Not exactly.” I hesitated, then I admitted rel
uctantly, “Actually, I’m from Hartford originally.”

  “Shut the front door!” Walker exclaimed loudly. “Where in Hartford? Anywhere nearby?”

  I knew that he was just trying to be friendly, but I suddenly wished I hadn’t said anything.

  “A few blocks from here,” I told him vaguely.

  “You’re shitting me!”

  I wish I was… I immediately saw the image of my mother’s house burned into my memory, and I flinched involuntarily.

  A few blocks away, but in a completely different world...

  “So what brought you back to Harford?” Walker asked. “Family? Old friends?”

  “This job,” I said flatly. Among other things…

  Maybe Walker could take a hint from the dark expression on my face, or maybe I just looked like a guy who didn’t talk about his past. Either way, he didn’t pry any further. Instead, he slapped his open palm against my back and said:

  “Well in that case, welcome home!” Then he ushered me towards the station. “Come on, I’ll give you the Firehouse 56 grand tour!”

  ***

  “...and here we have the locker room!” Walker announced with a dramatic flourish as he led me into a brightly lit, oversized locker room.

  A long metal mesh bench bisected the room into two halves. On either side, the painted-white cinderblock walls were lined with bright red metal cubbies, each assigned to a member of the crew.

  Thanks to Walker Wright’s educational guided tour of the station, I had already learned that Firehouse 56 had a twelve-man crew. Now, as I stepped through the locker room, I began constructing a mental roster of the names that I saw engraved on metal plates directly above each cubby:

  HUDSON, BRADY

  HUDSON, JOSHUA

  WILLIAMS, DUKE

  HART, TROY

  FORD, LOGAN

  I stopped in my tracks, repeating the name again in my head.

  Logan Ford… why does that name sound so familiar?

  Before I could place the name, I heard Walker whistle from across the room. I glanced over my shoulder and saw that he was nodding towards a cubby on the far end of the opposite wall.

  Unlike the other cubbies -- which were crammed with the standard-issue black nomex turnout gear -- this one was empty, but an engraved name badge had already been affixed directly above the unit:

  MCALISTER, RORY

  “You’ll need to contact the department to custom-order your first set of gear,” Walker explained. “In the meantime, there’s some spare stuff in the closet that you can use…”

  I nodded, inspecting the locker from top to bottom. Then something on the top shelf caught my eye. It looked like a… gift basket?

  “Oh, I almost forgot about that!” Walker grinned, reaching up for the basket. “This is just a little something we put together to say ‘welcome to the family!’”

  He handed me the basket and I turned it around slowly in my hands. It was full of odds and ends: a bottle of Fireball whiskey, a Firehouse 56 t-shirt, a pair of beer mugs from a local bar called Rusty’s Tavern...

  There was something else wedged at the very back: a flat square wrapped in shiny cellophane. I lifted it carefully out of the basket and my eyes narrowed behind my black sunglasses as I tried to make sense of what I was looking at.

  “That right there is a piece of Hartford history,” Walker explained proudly. “That’s the annual Firehouse 56 calendar.”

  “You guys have your own calendar?!” I raised an eyebrow as I inspected the photograph on the front cover of the calendar: twelve shirtless firemen suggestively straddling a bright red engine.

  “Hell yeah, we have our own calendar!” Walker flipped the calendar over in my hands and pointed to the grid of images printed on the back; twelve squares, each offering a miniature preview for the twelve months in the calendar.

  If the front cover was cringeworthy, the preview pictures on the back were downright vomit-inducing. I grimaced as my eyes scanned over the images.

  “Since there are twelve of us on the crew, we each got to pose for our own month in the calendar,” Walker explained. Then, dragging his pointer finger over the cellophane, he proceeded to identify the crew member posing in each of the thumbnails. “That’s Brady Hudson as the month of January. And that’s his younger brother, Josh, as Mr. February.”

  When his finger trailed over the thumbnail for March, I recognized the meathead that I had encountered earlier.

  “You’ve already met Duke Williams,” Walker said dismissively. Then he pointed to the fireman in the next square and said, “And you probably won’t be meeting Mr. April. He quit a few months back. That’s why there was an open position on the crew.”

  He grinned up at me and added, “I guess that means you’re our new Mr. April.”

  My eyebrows shot up behind the black plastic frames of my Wayfarers.

  “Yeah right,” I scoffed. I was tempted to point out that I was a fireman, not a fucking male stripper, but I bit my tongue.

  There wasn’t a chance in hell that I was going to make a mockery of myself -- or my profession -- by stripping off my clothes and straddling a firepole for some stupid calendar.

  Besides, a guy like me didn’t belong in a calendar like that. The guys in the calendar were all clean-cut, All-American heroes. My tattoos and dark, brooding eyes didn’t exactly fit the mold; I’d stick out like a hamburger at a hotdog party.

  I might be part of the crew now, but that didn’t make me any less of an outsider at Firehouse 56. My encounter with the Mr. March was proof of that.

  “Anyways--” Walker said, turning back to the calendar. But before he could finish making calendar introductions, he was interrupted by the sound of footsteps shuffling into the locker room behind us.

  I glanced up at the intruder and immediately felt my body go stiff. As soon as I locked eyes on him, I realized why the name ‘Logan Ford’ had sounded so familiar…

  A rash of angry heat prickled up the back of my neck, and my hands balled into fists at my side. I could tell from the dumbstruck look on his face that he recognized me, too.

  “Logan!” Walker piped up. “This is the new crew member--”

  “Rory McAlister,” Logan finished for him.

  Walker looked taken aback, and his eyes flicked back and forth between the two of us.

  “Do you two know each other?”

  “We went to high school together,” Logan said.

  I clenched my jaw, grinding my teeth together. There’s a hell of a lot more to the story than that…

  I had only attended Hartford High School for one year before I moved away to Boston, but thanks to guys like Logan Ford, that year had been a living hell.

  I blinked behind the black lenses of my sunglasses, and when I opened my eyes I wasn’t standing in the Firehouse 56 locker room anymore.

  Instead, I was in the boy’s locker room at Hartford High...

  CHAPTER TWO | DESIREE

  Ask me what the deepest, darkest pit of hell looks like, and I’d draw you a picture of the first day of school at Hartford High.

  It was five minutes til the first period bell, and the cramped hallways were swarming with hundreds of angst-filled teenage bodies still riding the high of summer vacation.

  New shoes scuffed over the old tile floors. Twenty-pound textbooks were crammed carelessly into lockers. Gossip was murmured in hushed whispers, and insults were heckled with haughty laughter.

  You could practically smell the hormones in the air; that unmistakable cocktail of bad body odor masked with AXE cologne. I fought the urge to snort a sinus-cleansing glob of hand sanitizer as I weaved my way through the first-day-of-school chaos.

  A circle of reunited friends swapped vivid accounts of their summer break adventures. Across the hall, a pair of reunited lovers were making out furiously beneath a poster advocating the benefits of safe sex.

  A tribe of bleach-blonde It Girls strutted down the hallway, then paused to take a choreographed sip
from their matching Starbucks cups. An incoming freshman scuttled around them anxiously, clutching a printed-out copy of his new class schedule.

  “Do you need help finding a classroom?” I asked him, trying to sound helpful.

  “I’m not lost!” he insisted in a panicky squeal, then promptly scurried away.

  Before I had a chance to call after him, I felt someone plow into my shoulder.

  “Move your ass, bitch!” a female student snarled as she darted past me impatiently.

  I sighed. Although today marked the beginning of my third year as a member of the teaching staff, I was still routinely mistaken for a student in the hallways of Hartford High School.

  There were a few factors working against me, at twenty-five years old, I was the youngest faculty member on the roster. I was also short -- even in heels, I struggled to reach the 5’5” mark -- and I had never grown into my baby-faced features. Thanks to my oversized brown eyes and my round, dimpled cheeks, I still got carded whenever I tried to buy tickets to an R-rated movie at the local cinema.

  I had tried everything to make myself appear older -- from wearing a pair of non-prescription glasses, to investing in a new wardrobe of ‘teacher friendly’ cardigans and ankle pants from Ann Taylor LOFT. Nothing seemed to work.

  No matter what I did -- or what I wore -- it seemed like I was just destined to be jostled and heckled in the hallways, the same way I had been years ago, when I walked the same halls as a student.

  I took a deep breath, then flung myself back into the current of foot traffic that shuffled down the long hallway.

  Up ahead, I spotted a cluster of jocks in matching leather Varsity jackets blocking the main stairwell. Impervious to the students that were trying to squeeze around them to get up and down the stairs, the jocks were sprawled out on the steps like sunbathers on a beach. They ogled girls walking by in the hallway, then took turns muttering innuendos and exchanging high-fives.

  When a curvy girl attempted to climb up the steps around them, they erupted into a chorus of cow sounds.