by Sean Flynn
“Denise, do you want to go down to the scene?”
“No,” she said immediately. “Paul always told me if anything happened to him, the fire department would come to me. And no news is good news.”
The broom whisked across the linoleum, sweeping soft clumps of freshly snipped hair into a neat pile. The phone in the salon rang. Michelle Lucey leaned the broom against the chair where she'd been cutting her clients’ hair, reached for the receiver. It was Ralph, her brother.
“Michelle, there's a really big fire downtown,” he said.
“Really?” She looked a the clock. A few minutes before nine. “Okay.”
“Is Jerry working?”
“Yeah, he swapped on.”
“It's a really big one.”
“Okay,” she said. “I believe you.”
The conversation was short and inconsequential. Ralph often called when a particularly spectacular blaze ignited somewhere in the city, wanting to know if Jerry was working, if he was all right. He always was. In fact, Michelle worried more about his damned motorcycle than she did about him being a fireman. It was a retired police bike, a big white machine, and he rode it all year, even in the winter, pulling into the station with his cheeks red and raw from the wind. “You just have to have a Harley,” she'd grouse at him. “More danger. What is it with you?”
“You know,” Jerry would say, a touch of swagger in his voice, “my job is a lot more dangerous than a Harley.”
And maybe that was true. He'd lost eight weeks one summer when he twisted his ankle on a step, and he complained about the soles of his feet hurting ever since he fell through a collapsing floor. Funny thing was, Jerry's partner, Paul LaRochelle, was always off when Jerry got hurt. “It's because I wasn't with you,” Paul told him every time. “I'm telling you, you need me to watch your back.”
Michelle picked up the broom and continued sweeping. She'd been cutting hair for twenty years. She made a good living at it, too, enough to practically support Jerry and the boys during the months when Jerry was laid off from the fire department. That's why they had a tiny house. Jerry wanted something they could afford on only one income, just in case one of them was out of work. They were doing all right now, though. Maybe next summer they'd blow out the side wall, build a family room over the garage and enlarge the basement. Jerry had already sketched out the plans.
She finished cleaning the salon, then picked up the phone again. She and Jerry were organizing the Christmas party for Group III, his regular shift, and she still needed a head count for the caterers. Mark Wyco hadn't confirmed yet. He was assigned to Group II, but had been close with Jerry ever since drill school. He was always invited. She called him at the Park Avenue station.
His voice was strained when he answered. “Michelle,” he said, “where are you?”
“I'm at work. I'm just leaving now.”
“Michelle, there's a really big fire,” he said. A hitch, like he was swallowing. “Michelle, we might've lost six guys.”
Her veins turned to ice. She struggled to form a word, force it past the lump in her throat. “Mark, Jerry's working tonight.” She let that hang there for a moment, gathered the oxygen for the next line. “Was he one of them?”
Mark was silent a beat too long. “I don't know,” he said. “Michelle, go home. Now. Go home and make some calls.”
The ice in her veins melted, began to boil, made her arms and her legs and her face tingle. Tears, salty and stinging, welled in her eyes. Her vision blurred. She dropped the broom, got into her car, turned the key. The engine turned over, caught. She started to weep. Their first date had been in a car, sharing a six-pack in a Pontiac when she was a cashier at the Big Y and Jerry stocked shelves. They'd been together ever since. She'd never known a life without Jerry. “How am I going to live without you?” she whimpered. “Oh, God, how am I going to live without you?”
She blinked, forcing the tears out, clearing her sight. Why hadn't he listened to her mother? “Jerry,” she'd tell him, “now, when you go to a big fire, do one thing: stay back.” It was only a joke, but why didn't he listen?
She burst in the front door. The baby-sitter was on the phone, talking to Michelle's mother. Michelle told her she didn't know anything, that she had to use the phone. She called Ralph, then her sister Elaine, and her sister-in-law, Noreen. They all said they were on their way. Then she tried to call the fire department. There was no dial tone. She tried another extension. It was dead, too. She tried different jacks. They were all silent. Her phone line had suddenly gone out, and for no apparent reason. She was frantic, unable to reach anyone. She found Jerry's scanner, plugged it in, tried to glean snippets of information from the radio chatter. But there was too much backgound noise. Nothing came in clearly.
Shortly after ten o'clock, Kathy Spencer's phone rang again. Her in-laws were calling from two doors up.
“Kathy,” Tom's father told her, “the fire department wants us to go down to St. Stephen's.”
“Why?” Kathy was annoyed. St. Stephen's was all the way downtown.
“I don't know. Maybe they want us to make sandwiches.”
Make sandwiches? Kathy was more annoyed, almost perturbed. Twelve hours of work, and she had to drag herself out to fold baloney onto white bread? She took a deep breath. A bad fire, the guys would be hungry. Tom's last night. The brotherhood and all. “All right,” she said. “I'll come up.”
She pulled on a coat, walked out the door and up the street. Her sister-in-law met her on the sidewalk. She looked worried. “Should I bring the kids?” Kathy asked.
“No, no. Leave them. They'll be fine.”
Tom's parents were getting into the car. Their faces were grim. Kathy slipped into the backseat with her sister-in-law. They rode in silence for a few blocks.
“So,” Kathy finally said. “Is there something you're not telling me?”
A short silence, then all three in unison. “No.”
The drive to St. Stephen's took almost fifteen minutes. Kathy stewed most of the way, still aggravated she was being taken away from her kids to make sandwiches. Her father-in-law parked, and Kathy followed him into the building. There were a couple dozen people inside, firemen or their relatives. She didn't recognize all of them, or even most of them.
She saw a familiar face through the crowd. Dave McGrath, a fireman and a friend of Tom's. He walked toward her, but with an odd gait, a mild lurch, as if his legs had atrophied. He held both his hands out, took Kathy's in his.
“Kathy,” he said, “I'm so sorry.”
She knew Tom was dead.
She stared blankly, stoic. “About what?”
Dave's eyes opened wider, surprised. “Tom's missing. Didn't you know? Mike McNamee's on his way to your house.”
Kathy stopped breathing, had to focus, make her lungs inhale. She had one thought. “I left my kids at home alone,” she said. “You've got to get me home. You've got to get me home right now.”
A twitch in her stomach. Eggplant parmesan. Her face went white. “Dave, I'm gonna throw up.”
Dave stepped to one side, gently nudged her in the direction of the bathroom. Kathy ran past him, through the door, into a stall. Her stomach emptied in three heaves.
Then she lay down on the floor, turned her head, let her cheek rest against the concrete. Ammonia burned her nose, the smell of cleaning fluid masking urine. I've got to get home, she thought. I've got to get to my kids.
The floor felt cool against her face. She didn't want to move. Outside, Tom was dead and her children were alone and a hundred grieving men were waiting to tell her how sorry they were. Her face would be hot, flushed. The floor felt so cool. She could lie there a little longer.
17
THE TRUCKS HAD ALL BEEN PULLED BACK, AWAY FROM THE warehouse, out of range should the walls collapse. They were arranged in a rough semicircle on Franklin and Arctic Streets, the ladders and aerial scopes fully extended, rising above the building and pouring mighty streams down into the flames. Tru
cks were positioned on Interstate 290, opposite the big words WORCESTER COLD STORAGE AND WAREHOUSE CO., which were still visible through the smoke. With all the nozzles opened, Worcester firemen were dumping nine thousand gallons onto the building every minute. Still, the fire raged on, swallowed the water, spit it out as steam.
The rest of his men were safe. Mike McNamee knew no one else would be lost, that they would maintain defensive positions, wait for the flames to weary, consume whatever fuel was left, then expire. The warehouse wouldn't claim anyone else, not tonight.
Television cameras and newspaper reporters and photographers lingered on the perimeter. The fire had played out live for more than an hour, a legion of sparkies had been monitoring their scanners, and the glow, a shimmering, dusky orange that lit up the sky, had drawn hundreds of onlookers. By now most of the city knew two firemen were missing, and it wouldn't be long before the true and awful number leaked out. Worried wives and frantic relatives had been dialing fire stations since six-thirty, asking first what was burning, then, later, who was missing, if their husbands and brothers and sons were among the lost. Some of them began to gather near the burning warehouse, peering through the smoke and the steam, searching for a familiar face. So many people were begging for information that the department brass decided to gather them at St. Stephen's Church, eight blocks from the fire.
Mike didn't know who had been called, which families were going to be at St. Stephen's. Someone had to go to their homes, notify them in person, tell them they'd probably been widowed before they heard it on television or read it in the morning paper. Department protocol is to send the chaplain and a chief to break the news. But there were so many, more than anyone had ever had the grim foresight to plan for. More than one chief would have to go, and they would still have to enlist local police officers to help. Randy Chavoor offered to go to four homes. Mike agreed to take the other two.
Joanne was with him, watching from the periphery. She'd made it to Grafton Street, just beyond the highway, before she was stopped by a police line. Two firemen, friends for years, recognized her in the crowd, told her Mike was okay, and then told Mike to go see his wife. “You stay with me,” he'd said when she hugged him. “I don't know what's going to happen now, but you stay near me.”
She had nodded and followed him toward the warehouse, knees weak with relief. Mike's alive, she'd thought. And then a second thought. I hope this wasn't his screwup. Please, God, don't let this have been Mike's mistake. She felt ashamed, knew it was her Irish-Catholic fatalism taking over, making her think terrible thoughts. She never said it out loud.
Now Mike was next to her again, asking her if she would go to see Jay Lyons's parents, stay with them. Of course she would. She got into a sedan with her husband and another district chief and a fire chaplain from one of the suburbs who'd raced to the scene as soon as he'd heard two men were missing.
They drove west to Mike's neighborhood, Mike taking slow, deep breaths, trying to keep his composure. The chaplain steered around the last curve on Saxon Road and pulled to the curb across from Mike's own house. Mike got out and looked at the white Colonial where Jay had grown up. He cast his eyes up to a window on the second floor. Jay's bedroom.
He remembered the first time he saw Jay. It was the spring of 1978, a few months after Mike and Joanne had moved in. Mike was in the backyard with Kate, who was just past her second birthday, holding her hand while she toddled along the edge of the lawn near the scrub brush and a small stand of trees. He'd heard a snap in the wood, like a twig breaking or a rabbit disturbing a cluster of dry leaves. Then, from his left, he heard a muffled poof, a burp of compressed air. Another snap in the woods, this one closer to the lawn. Mike looked across the street, squinting a little, his eyes crawling over the front of the Lyonses’ house. The barrel of a gun poked from an upstairs window. Poof. Snap.
“Come on, Katie,” he said to his daughter. “Let's move way over there, on the other side of the yard.”
A few days later, Mike had been puttering in his driveway when he saw Jay in person. Skinny little fellow. “Hey, kid,” he'd said, loudly enough to be heard across the street. “C'mere.”
Jay had dutifully crossed the street. “Yes, sir?”
“You gotta BB gun, right? I want to talk to you about it.”
“Um … okay.” Jay shuffled his feet, squirmed a little, bashful.
“You almost hit my daughter. And me.”
Jay squirmed some more, ashamed now.
“Oh, jeez, I'm sorry, mister. I didn't see you, really. I'm sorry.”
“Yeah?” Mike eyed him. “Well, what the hell were you shooting at?”
“Just some squirrels I could see from the window. Really.” Jay looked up at Mike, stopped fidgeting. “I'm sorry, I really am. I didn't see you.”
Mike had considered that for a moment. “Well, all right,” he said finally. “But don't do it again.”
He hadn't stayed mad at Jay. They ended up talking about the fire department, Jay asking a hundred questions, Mike answering them all. He liked the kid, his enthusiasm. Over the years, as Jay grew into a man, they became friends, equals, no longer a grown-up being nice to the little boy across the street.
Mike lowered his eyes, looked at the lawn, still green in early December. Some afternoons, Jay would stride across that same patch of grass and wave at Mike in his driveway. It was a signal they'd worked out: a wave meant he didn't have time to talk, or nothing to talk about. More often than not, he'd cross Saxon Road. Mike and Jay had most of their important conversations in his driveway. That's where Mike had told him to go be a state trooper, at least try it because he had nothing to lose and where, after Jay had lost everything, he told him to research the civil service rules to see if an ex-con could get his job back with the fire department. He'd listened to him rant about Sully, about how timid he seemed, how he wouldn't let Jay charge through every wall of fire that sprang up on their shift, and Mike had told him to slow down, be patient, that his time would come, that someday there'd be enough fire to go around, enough fire for everyone.
The storm door opened with a creak. Mike saw Joan Lyons, Jay's mother, standing on the stoop. He walked toward her, forcing his feet to keep moving, not feeling them. He stopped on the brick walk.
Joan held the door open with one hand. She kept her other arm pulled close around her waist. “Michael,” she said, her voice quaking. “Do you have bad news for me?”
Mike started to answer. He realized she'd never called him Michael before. Always Mike, never formal. The words stuck in his throat. He swallowed, braced himself. “Joan,” he whispered, “Jay's missing.”
Her knees buckled, her chest convulsed, her face seemed to melt. A reflex pushed Mike forward, up the stairs. He caught her, wrapped his arms around her. He led her inside, gently, almost carrying her. No one else was home. Jay's father, Jim, had already left for St. Stephen's, hoping to hear some word about his only son.
“I have to call Kathy,” Joan said. Kathy was Jay's big sister, six years older. “I have to tell Kathy.”
“Okay,” Mike said softly. “We'll call Kathy. C'mon, we'll call her now.”
He followed her into the kitchen, stroking her back as she picked up the phone. Joan stabbed at the keypad with a trembling finger. She hit the wrong buttons. She hung up and started again. Her hands were shaking too badly to dial.
“Here,” Mike said, reaching around her, taking the receiver. “I'll call Kathy. Tell me the number, and I'll call her.”
She recited seven digits, which Mike pressed. His mind flashed back precisely two years, to December 3, 1997, the night he dialed his own sisters’phone numbers to tell them their father was dead, killed when his car crashed into the back of a tractor trailer. His own fingers had trembled then. Those were the worst calls he'd ever had to make, and, for two years, he had believed they always would be.
Michelle Lucey couldn't get a dial tone. The scanner was gibberish, a racket of static and growling. She believed her hus
band was missing, feared he was dead. But until someone told her, stood in front of her and said the words, maybe it wasn't true. No one on the news had mentioned Jerry Lucey, and no officers’ cars had pulled into her driveway. No news was maddening but at least it wasn't bad news.
Her brother and sister and sister-in-law stayed with her, waiting for some word, any word. The house began to feel crowded, claustrophobic. Ralph, her brother, said he was going out for some air.
“All right,” Michelle said. “Just don't tell me there's a chief's car out there.”
Michelle felt her body tense as Ralph opened the door and stepped onto the stoop. She held her breath. But Ralph didn't say anything. The driveway was empty.
She paced. She tried the phones again, fiddled with the scanner. Ten minutes passed.
“Jesus Christ! Oh, Jesus!”
It was Ralph, outside, briefly backlit by the headlights of Randy Chavoor's Expedition. Michelle felt her face flush and her hands go clammy. She knew why they were there.
She saw Randy get out. Paul LaRochelle was with him. Both men started toward the house, Randy slightly ahead. Paul put his hand on the chief's shoulder, slowed him down. “No one's telling Michelle but me,” he said.
Randy nodded, let Paul go first.
He didn't have to say anything. Michelle was waiting, eyes wet with tears. They held each other, and then Michelle pulled away, just far enough so she could look at Paul's face, into his eyes. “It's because you weren't with him,” she said. She managed a weak smile, then collapsed into tears.
Linda McGuirk put Emily to bed, tucked the covers around her, bent down and kissed her on the forehead. Worry creased Emily's face.
“Why can't Daddy call us?” she asked. It was nine o'clock. Joe always called home about then to say goodnight to his wife and children.
Linda sat on the edge of Emily's bed, leaned in closer, brushed a delicate strand of chestnut hair from her daughter's forehead. “Oh, sweetie, I know he wants to,” she said. “But he can't right now. There's a really bad fire and he can't get to the phone right now. But he'll be here in the morning.”