Broken Glass
The water was always frosty on the first shower of the morning. Most of the guys made a fuss about having to be the first to brave the cold, but Hank relished it. Nothing like a cold, brisk shower to shake off the warm fuzzies of uninterrupted sleep.
When the water finally went from icy to tepid, he stepped out and padded back to his bunk, dripping and naked. The rest of B shift was still in bed, tangled in their heavy cotton sheets. Soon, dispatch would signal the morning tones, and Hank would have to cover himself in a cloak of rough indifference. But for now, he could be his tender hearted self, a lover of people and nature.
He stood by the window and watched a bird preen on a nearby branch. The branch shook with the bird's ministrations, and Hank shivered in time with the branch. The bird stopped bathing and cocked its head, as if it was watching Hank watch it. Then it flapped its wings and disappeared into the thick of the trees.
Hank tore himself away from the window and dressed quietly, then slid down the pole to the apparatus bay. He went tiptoeing across the station, past the engine and the ladder truck, past the rescue squad and the office, to the tiny door that led to the backside of the building. He eased the door open and stood there in the cold mountain air, and relished his last few seconds of peace.
Those seconds were shattered by the tones - they were much too early. Hank hissed and ran back inside, and saw the rest of the shift stumbling away from the pole in the middle of the garage, tripping over their turnout gear, squinting into the early morning light. Just a little more than an hour, and they'd have been free for the day.
Hank hauled himself behind the wheel of the main engine and started her up. She roared to life, and settled into a thrumming purr, jostling ever so slightly as her full complement hoisted themselves aboard. The station doors rolled up, slow but sure, and the full brightness of early morning winter sun poured into the bay. Hank thrust the engine into gear, waited for Captain Whitmore to jump in next to him, and then barreled out onto the wide, newly paved country road.
The address led them down into the city, to Palmdale, away from the heavy brush and dust, and down into the dry desert where people were trying to carve out lives in the hot Antelope Valley. Hank could see the thin column of smoke from the freeway, and whispered a prayer that it didn't spread to the new condominiums just to the south. It was hard enough containing a fire in the arid mesa that overlooked Lancaster, even during the winter. If they had to evacuate the behemoth structure that was outfitted to house over 100 families... well, the overtime alone would send the County supervisors into a tailspin.
They surrounded the source of the fire on three sides, and attacked from all five - air support was next on the scene, and none too soon, as the wind began to pick up and scatter bits of flaming rubble towards the condo units. The fire burned hot and high, but Hank was relieved to see it wasn't really a structure fire so much as a really large trash fire. Still, the dry wind was making matters difficult, and a second alarm sounded before the companies began to get a hold on things.
Hank stayed close to the truck and kept a watchful eye on the water supply, but he took in the entire scene as it unfolded around him as well. A young girl, not more than fifteen, if that, tried to get close to the fire, but a couple of guys from 33 held her back. She didn't seem particularly alarmed, but she tried more than once to duck into the fireline to get to the center of the action. She was quick, but there was plenty of man power on the west side of the vacant lot where the fire seemed to originate, so she could never get more than a foot or two closer to the fire than the gathered crowd before being unceremoniously shoved back.
Her cool, calm approach seemed strange to Hank - most civilians who ran into a fire were frantic, desperate. People ran away from fires, not towards them. If they did approach a raging fire, it was usually because there was something important there - either a loved one, an object so dear that loss of life would be preferable to the object's loss, or the civic duty that came with working with the fire service. But of the three types of people who approached a fire, only a firefighter would do so calmly, and even then, not a single time in the decade Hank had been a fireman had he seen such an unaffected air of cool collection. It wasn't right.
He glanced at his meters and gauges, and, satisfied that he could safely hand off the engine to another fireman for just a moment, he ducked around the other side of the truck. Sure enough, another young woman and two boys, all the same age as the girl trying to get close to the fire, were sneaking around between Hank's engine and the truck from 33. "Hey!"
The three kids froze, wide eyed. The girl began to cry, while one of the boys started blabbering about accidents. The other boy hesitated, but he took off and bolted away from the commotion as fast as his scrawny legs would take him. The first boy looked at him in shock, and then after stammering a bit, he too began to run. The strange girl who'd been trying to get at the fire joined up with the boys, but they didn't get halfway down the block before a sherriff's radio car cut them off.
Hank returned his attention to the crying girl, who was now sagging heavily against the truck. Her clothes were tatty and her face was sooty, but the clothes were fairly trendy, and she had a nice ring with a large, glinty stone and a heavy chain with a matching stone hung from her neck. Hank smiled as broadly and openly as he could, and approached her calmly. "You can sit up in the truck if you want, until your parents come."
She shook her head emphatically, and then began to sob harder. "Are we going to jail?"
"I have no idea. But sit down here and try to take it easy. My name is Stanley, Hank Stanley, okay? What's your name?"
She shook her head again, but she sat down on the tailgate of 33's engine. "Some people call me Sparrow."
Hank smiled. "That's nice. Are you hurt, Sparrow?" She shivered and looked away. "Okay, well, you sit here, Sparrow. I'm gonna be right over there. Holler if you need anything."
"Am I in trouble?"
Hank sighed and brushed long dishwater blond strands out of the girl's face. "Anybody who's afraid to have their parents called must be in at least a little tiny bit of trouble, right?"
She shuddered and drew in on herself. Hank looked at her for a minute, taking in the thin and worn material of her mini dress and the way the soles of her shoes seemed to be ground to a thin sheet. He took off his turnout coat and draped it over her shoulders. "Here," he said quietly, and shivered slightly. The hairs on his exposed forearms immediately began to prickle, but he ignored it.
"But you'll catch your death of pneumonia," Sparrow cried.
"So will you, and you're a lot smaller than me, and a lot colder, so you just hang on to that coat for me until you warm up a little," he said. She bowed her head and nodded, and pulled the coat in closer around her face. He smiled a little and returned to his dials on the engine. The lineman who'd monitored the water level for him gave him an odd look, but Hank shrugged it off and sent him back to the main line. From Hank's assigned position by the charged lines, he was no longer chilly, as he knew he wouldn't be, but was almost uncomfortably warm. The heat of the blaze reached him easily, and the truck blocked the cold, dry wind that whistled over where he'd stuck the girl. He half thought of putting her down by the tires on his side of the engine, but he knew she'd just be in the way there, and she'd be in even more trouble than she probably already was. Instead he dug in the truck's cabin for his regular jacket and shrugged it on. It wasn't much protection against the elements, but it dampened the distant burn on his exposed arms just enough for him to concentrate on his work.
In all, it took the battalion a little over two hours to clean up what should have been a simple campfire in a not-quite hollowed out car chassis. A couple of deputies from the sheriff's department were questioning Sparrow when Hank retrieved his turnout coat. Such a sad state of affairs, to be out in the cold, hiding from families that loved them because they didn't want to toe the line. He wondered if the four kids were going to face time in Juvenile Hall for their mishap, or if they simply would be returned to their parents with stern lectures and fines from the County.
"You're getting involved, Stanley," Whitmore said over Hank's shoulder. "You gonna take us home, or what?"
Hank shrugged into his coat and clambered up behind the wheel with a grunt. "I'm not getting involved, Cap."
"Sure you are. You already gave the kid your jacket. Now you want to post her bail." Whitmore waved Hank silent. "Don't even try it, I can see it in your eyes."
"She's just a kid."
"She's a menace to society, and one of the worst kinds - the ones that can turn on the waterworks like that are nothing but trouble, Henry, mark my words."
Hank resisted the urge to give Whitmore a dirty look and kept his eyes firmly on the road ahead. "You're all heart, Cap."
"Sure I am - I'm trying to help you out, right?"
"Riiight."
They rode the rest of the way back to the station in silence. Hank stole a couple of glances at his captain. Whitmore seemed content - apparently, the matter was closed and well handled as far as he was concerned. Hank, on the other hand, was almost crazy with unspoken rebuttals and half formed closing arguments. He'd worked himself into a tizzy by the time they'd gotten to the station, and Hank almost shaved off the side mirror on his reversal into the bay.
"Hey, watch it there, Helen Keller!"
Hank grimaced and righted the truck, and eased his way into his usual space. "Sorry. Guess I'm tired."
Whitmore looked dubious. "Think it's safe for me to get out, or should I wait until you're out of truck and the engine's cooled down?"
Hank rolled his eyes and hopped out of the truck. "It's fine, sir." He headed back towards the stairs, so he could change into his street clothes, but Whitmore called him back. "Sir?"
"Come into the office for just a sec, Hank. It won't take long."
Hank looked around nervously, and noticed that none of his shiftmates would meet his gaze. "Um, okay, sure." He shuffled into the office and nodded vaguely at the captain of the C shift, who quickly vacated the office. "Something wrong?"
Whitmore sighed. "Hank. You gotta learn to relax."
"If this is about the mirror, I promise it won't happen again-"
Whitmore held up a hand. "I know."
Hank didn't like the sound of that. "You do?"
"I do." Whitmore grabbed a seat and shoved it towards Hank, and plopped down in his own chair. "The captain's list has been out for a while now, hasn't it?"
Hank hated being reminded of how low he came in on the list. It wasn't like he was at the bottom, but it wasn't great to not be anywhere near the top. He dropped down into the seat and waited to see where Whitmore was going with this unpleasant reminder. "It has. I'm not so sure I'm taking it when it comes around again. Not this time."
Whitmore laughed. "No, I'm pretty sure you aren't." He rubbed his hands together gleefully when Hank glared at him. "How do you feel about moving back to the big city?"
Hank frowned, confused. "What's wrong with Palmdale?"
"Nothing! But there's lots of wildlife up here, lots of brushfires, lots of disaster. A lot of destruction, Hank. And I gotta say, you are not a guy that thrives on destruction."
Hank narrowed one eye at Captain Whitmore. "Uh, Cap, I don't think anybody thrives on destruction. Certainly not in the fire department, I hope!"
Whitmore shrugged. "Actually, Hank, a lot of us do. But that's not really your style. You have a lot in common with us up here - you're dedicated to everything you decide to take on, you're passionate about taking down the fires that threaten us all, you're very, very good at working with the equipment. But there's something you don't have in common with the rest of us - the brushfires bring you down, Hank."
"That's because I don't like the idea of Los Angeles burning to the ground!"
"We don't either, but that's why going in and fighting those kinds of fires is so satisfying to us up here. We're gonna defeat the enemy!" Whitmore looked almost manic, and Hank found himself inching his seat backwards towards the door ever so slightly. Whitmore leaned forward, catching Hank's eye in his own fevered stare. "But that's not how you see things, is it Henry?"
"Uh... no... not really..."
"No, not really. You wanna help people."
Didn’t they all? "Yeessssss...?"
"Yes, of course you do! And that means you gotta be down there where all the people are, right? Right!" Whitmore pulled out the captain's list. "Most of the guys that scored higher than you? They think like us up here. The ones that don't think like us, well, they got snatched up by other stations down south."
"Okay," Hank said, even though he was pretty sure everything was as far from okay as it could possibly be without actually getting toned out again.
"Whenever something opens up, there's a mad dash for it," Whitmore said.
"Uh huh."
"Seat's not even vacant for a day, and people start lining up like crazy to interview."
Hank shrugged. "Guys want promotions. That's why they take the exam."
"Do you like the beach, Hank?"
"Uh... sure...?"
"What do you think about the paramedic program?"
Hank decided to play Twenty Questions a little bit longer. "I think it's an amazing concept, and I'd love to see it in action, but I know there's resistance to the program up here in the boonies."
Whitmore nodded. "That right there? That's what I'm talking about."
"What?"
Whitmore grinned. "I recommended you for the position."
"What position?! Cap, are you gonna tell me what in the sam hill you're-"
"Station 51 needs a new captain."
Hank snapped his mouth shut and blinked. "Urm," he said, "is this about my inability to drive the engine just now?"
Whitmore laughed riotously. "Listen, you'll probably be called in for an interview before next shift, but just go take a look at the area before you explain to them how you'll never be good enough to be a captain okay? You might be pleasantly surprised at how much you want to be down there. You know, with all the people."
"You make it sound like people are the worst thing in the world, Cap!"
"Nah. Just not my cup of tea. But it might be yours." He looked up at the clock. "Okay. You can go home now, I'm finally done torturing you."
Hank got to his feet and headed for the door, but then he paused. "Cap... you think they'll promote me?"
Whitmore snorted, the picture of indignation. "They'd damn well better! After the glowing recommendation I gave them? Took me two hours to pen that, Stanley! Two hours!" Then Whitmore cackled, and hopped out of his seat, and practically shoved Hank out of the office and up the stairs to the locker room. "Boy, I'll tell you one thing, Hank - if they don't put you in that seat, I'll eat my hat! They never should have scored you so low."
Hank went home surprised by the apparent warmth and confidence his captain had for his abilities, but it didn't take him long to twist those joyous words into something a little more self serving - Hank didn't fit in with the team, and it was practically impossible to get fired from the County once you'd gone full time. He'd have to rob a bank, pee on the Board of Supervisors and murder the President of the United States before anyone would even think of documenting poor behavior. The best way anyone ever got rid of a Los Angeles County employee was to promote them out with words of love and joy, and Hank was pretty sure that was part of what was happening here.
It didn't matter, though. The truth was, he didn't enjoy being with his station any more than they enjoyed having him. They were the main reason he'd tried for Captain in the first place, and they would be the main reason he'd start being more proactive in trying to get out of their station house. If he didn't somehow manage to finagle this position at 51s, then he'd start applying for other cities. Either way, his days in the brush were numbered.