Report from Engine Co. 82 by Dennis Smith Read Free Book Online Page A

though I know nothing about drawing. Her eyes meet mine occasionally, but she
     turns quickly away, making a little movement with her lips. I can see as she turns, the soft, almost invisible down at the
     side of her cheek reflected in the light. How I would like to run the back of my fingers over it in an easy up and down way.
    I am trying to look at her now in a different way. She is a human being, I say to myself, with friends, perhaps a husband
     she loves dearly, children, a life-pattern with ordinary or even extraordinary ambitions, jubilations, and miseries. She probably
     knows a lot about something, and enough about everything, to make her interesting in ways other than sexual. The train stops,
     and a man sitting next to her gets off. Maybe I should sit next to her now. The train begins with a jolt, and she has to uncross
     her leg to regain her balance. She settles in the rhythm again, and recrosses it, generating in my body a return to passionate
     perception. Stop it. Stop it. Go sit next to her and say, “Hello, my name is Dennis, and I’ve been trying not to look at you
     in a dehumanizing symbolic way, but as a real person, with feelings and intelligence, opinions and a point of view. I don’t
     care about the tightly tucked blouse, or the shadowed triangle. I want to know what you think, and why you think it. Do you
     think Spiro Agnew will be President? Will cybernetics ruin us? How are you handling future-shock? Are you a Consciousness
     III person?”
    The train stops again, and I look out of the window. Simpson Street. Freeman Street will be here next, and I’ll have to get
     off. The train starts and I try to think of something else to say to her, but I can’t. I wonder what kind of a night we’ll
     have. A Saturday night in the South Bronx is always hectic, and there is no reason to think this will be any different. I
     get up without taking a “good-bye-I-loved-you” glance, and stand with my back to her by the train door. The doors spring open,
     and I step into the cold of the Freeman Street Station. I don’t look back. It never makes any sense to look back, especially
     on the Lexington Avenue express.
    It’s five-thirty as I walk toward the firehouse on Intervale Avenue. In the summer time Intervale Avenue is a concrete swamp.
     The constant running of open hydrants makes the street dank, and muddy. But now it’s just dirty. I can hear the choir practicing
     as I pass Mother Wall’s Baptist Church, and the high, quick sounds of the gospel music remind me in a curious way of a siren.
    The firehouse is empty. As I walk up the stairs to the locker room I hear the sirens and the air horns coming down 169th Street.
     They pass the firehouse, and the sounds fade. They are coming from one alarm and going to another. I change clothes. There
     is blood on the sweatshirt I wore last night, so I fumble through my laundry bag for a clean one. Even with three small boys
     to care for, my wife always makes certain to have a clean change of clothes in my laundry bag. On the left side of the sweatshirt
     there is a six-inch maltese cross. In the circle of the cross, in bold letters, it reads: “ ENGINE 82”—a mark of identification in one way, and a boast in another.
    It is 5:45 P.M. now, and Ladder 31 and Engine 82 are backing into quarters. Engine 85 is still out somewhere, along with Ladder 712 and the
     Chief. I see Ed Kells and ask him how the day went. He says, “Same old crap—about ten runs, most of them rubbish. Engine 85
     caught a good ‘all hands’ this morning on Hoe Avenue.” (An “all hands” is a serious fire, but not serious enough to call for
     a second alarm.) “Don Butts got a kid out,” Ed continued, “and they’re gonna write him up.”
    “Lot of fire?” I ask.
    “Yeah, a frame building fully involved. Don got the kid out a rear window with a portable ladder. It was a great job.”
    “How’s the kid?”
    “He’s in the hospital with second degree burns, but