BOYS' OWN BOOK
Chapter 3
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Tree, Falling
September 11, 1978: The Boys (Jimmy)
Now it's later, though not by much, and changes have come, but not so many. Not the important ones; or if they have begun, you cannot see them.
Jimmy's a fireman. Aces the Academy and has a choice of houses; and though he could have had Manhattan, where the television cameras always come, or Bed-Stuy, where the trucks go screaming out two, three times a night, Jimmy asks for and gets Engine 168, around the corner. Wants to be close, so he can trot down to the house on days off, to drink coffee, listen to the old-timers. He loves the stories, Jimmy does: lunatic bravery, elaborate pranks, offhand memories of laughing just out of Death's reach.
Four years old: Jimmy across the street, wearing the red plastic fireman's helmet he got for Christmas, so excited he can't stand still as the bell clangs and the door flies up so 168 can go tearing out. Firefighters yank their coats on, swing up on the truck as it starts to roll. One of them grins, waves to Jimmy. Jimmy's father grabs him: The kid was gonna run right up onto it, he tells Jimmy's mother later, shaking his head. He was going to the fire, weren't you, Jim? I wanted to go, Jimmy says, I wanted to go to the fire. His mother asks, You wanted to help the firemen? Jimmy nods hard. But Daddy said, Daddy said they don't let kids, kids aren't big enough. I can help when I'm bigger. When I'm bigger, I'll go to the fire and help. Jimmy's dad musses Jimmy's hair and smiles. His mother smiles, too, but then she looks at him without saying anything, just looks and looks at him.
Now, when the smoke is whipping and the flames are roaring, someone still has to hold Jimmy back, someone senior screaming, No! some soot-streaked face in his, yelling, Don't play Superman, kid, just do your job, that way you make it out and all your brothers, too. What Jimmy wants, what he wants, is to go howling in, come out carrying everyone in his arms.
But Brother: they're calling him that already.
So he nods through the smoke, follows his orders, shrugs when his captain shouts to him, What the hell's so funny? Jimmy's seen the same grin, the one he can't keep back, flash across his captain's face, and some of the other guys', too, as they're piling off the truck, eager, one more time, to cheat the dragon.
Jimmy's happy.
Absent Friends
S. J. Rozan's books
- A Brand New Ending
- A Cast of Killers
- A Change of Heart
- A Christmas Bride
- A Constellation of Vital Phenomena
- A Cruel Bird Came to the Nest and Looked
- A Delicate Truth A Novel
- A Different Blue
- A Firing Offense
- A Killing in China Basin
- A Killing in the Hills
- A Matter of Trust
- A Murder at Rosamund's Gate
- A Nearly Perfect Copy
- A Novel Way to Die
- A Perfect Christmas
- A Perfect Square
- A Pound of Flesh
- A Red Sun Also Rises
- A Rural Affair
- A Spear of Summer Grass
- A Story of God and All of Us
- A Summer to Remember
- A Thousand Pardons
- A Time to Heal
- A Toast to the Good Times
- A Touch Mortal
- A Trick I Learned from Dead Men
- A Vision of Loveliness
- A Whisper of Peace
- A Winter Dream
- Abdication A Novel
- Abigail's New Hope
- Above World
- Accidents Happen A Novel
- Ad Nauseam
- Adrenaline
- Aerogrammes and Other Stories
- Aftershock
- Against the Edge (The Raines of Wind Can)
- All in Good Time (The Gilded Legacy)
- All the Things You Never Knew
- All You Could Ask For A Novel
- Almost Never A Novel
- Already Gone
- American Elsewhere
- American Tropic
- An Order of Coffee and Tears
- Ancient Echoes
- Angels at the Table_ A Shirley, Goodness
- Alien Cradle
- All That Is
- Angora Alibi A Seaside Knitters Mystery
- Arcadia's Gift
- Are You Mine
- Armageddon
- As Sweet as Honey
- As the Pig Turns
- Ascendants of Ancients Sovereign
- Ash Return of the Beast
- Away
- $200 and a Cadillac
- Back to Blood
- Back To U
- Bad Games
- Balancing Act
- Bare It All
- Beach Lane
- Because of You
- Before I Met You
- Before the Scarlet Dawn
- Before You Go
- Being Henry David
- Bella Summer Takes a Chance
- Beneath a Midnight Moon
- Beside Two Rivers
- Best Kept Secret
- Betrayal of the Dove
- Betrayed
- Between Friends
- Between the Land and the Sea
- Binding Agreement
- Bite Me, Your Grace
- Black Flagged Apex
- Black Flagged Redux
- Black Oil, Red Blood
- Blackberry Winter
- Blackjack
- Blackmail Earth
- Blackmailed by the Italian Billionaire
- Blackout
- Blind Man's Bluff
- Blindside
- Blood & Beauty The Borgias
- Blood Gorgons
- Blood of the Assassin
- Blood Prophecy
- Blood Twist (The Erris Coven Series)
- Blood, Ash, and Bone
- Bolted (Promise Harbor Wedding)