Flashover by Suzanne Chazin

Author:Suzanne Chazin
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: eBook ISBN: 9781626817319
Publisher: Diversion Books
Published: 2015-04-06T04:00:00+00:00

28

Rain. Flowing in rivulets down the gutters, turning the pavements as slick as polished granite, chasing the squealing children from the park. Rain washes the streets—of garbage, of heat, of people. But not of memories. Memories, Robin Hood noticed, seemed to blossom like clover in the rain.

Bear had loved the rain. He never minded being wet. He used to say that feeling the icy runoff of a fire hose down the back of his turnout coat on a ninety-degree day was the sweetest sensation in the world. Even after he got sick, Bear loved being out in the back of their row house during a soft summer shower. He loved lightning and thunder. He had a laugh like thunder—rumbling deep down in his gut so that you could feel it like a dog’s growl when you got near him.

Hood grabbed a sandwich in a small deli and stared out windows fogged with condensation. Cars roared by, kicking up a spray of water along the curb. It had rained like this when they were burying Bear at the cemetery, too—rained so hard the hole was nothing but mud and everybody’s shoes were ruined. Water stains, mixed with lime, running in wavy white lines on black patent and flat leather. Hood remembered the ruined shoes more than anything else that day. Funny what you remember.

Don’t let them forget. That’s what Bear had always said. Don’t let them forget, or I’ll have died for nothing. So Bear told the tale and the child learned it note by note and breath by breath, as if that terrible night belonged to them both.

The night air was fit for the breath of a dragon. A hot August evening when just sitting puts sweat on your skin and the air feels as damp as an errant mist off Long Island Sound. Back then, the city was reeling from municipal cutbacks and neighborhoods were burning up like candles on a cake. Three or four fires a night were the norm. Big fires, too. But this? This was no big deal. “A walk in the smoke,” they called fires like this.

The 10-33 came in around 2300 hours. A 10-33 is a smoke condition. Twenty-three hundred hours: eleven P.M. Everything in the fire department is on military time. A passing oil delivery truck noticed a few wisps coming out of Kowalski’s warehouse on Bridgewater Street. Ladder One-twenty-one and Engine Two-oh-three were first due. Captain Patrick Flannagan was in charge of the ladder, Lieutenant Frank Lopasio, the engine. All the men working under them were experienced hands—all except for Mickey, the twenty-four-year-old probie, or first-year firefighter. He was brand-new to Ladder One-twenty-one. Gerry Mulrooney, with twenty years on the job, took Mickey under his wing.

“Stick with me, kid, and do as I tell you, you’ll be all right,” he growled. “Ain’t a fire been made that can put me in hell ’cause I’ll just piss it out.”

Kowalski’s Carting and Hauling was sprawled across two acres on Bridgewater Street. It was surrounded by a chain-link fence topped off with razor wire.

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