Charlie’s probation officer, Roy Custis, dutifully relayed his charge’s continued struggles in a series of letters to the local Commonwealth’s attorney. Usually, Charlie was where Custis expected him to be for their regular check-ins—with his parents—but sometimes he wasn’t. Once, Charlie had disappeared for an extended period of time, then reappeared with bloodshot eyes and sallow skin, telling Custis he didn’t need to take a drug test because he’d rather just admit there was crack in his system.
Custis couldn’t help but like Charlie, a sentiment that he realized was relative, considering that it mostly meant he liked Charlie more than the other criminals he was employed to spend time with. But he liked the whole Smith-Applegate family. Charlie’s mother, Brenda, was unfailingly supportive of her wayward son, and though Charlie’s stepfather didn’t seem to have quite the same warmth, Custis sensed that any sternness on George’s part had to do mostly with worry about Charlie falling off the wagon again. To Custis, Charlie was pleasant and polite. He seemed innocent. Not innocent in the legal sense, but innocent in a sort of guileless hopefulness. Custis hoped he needed just a few more years of growing up before he became a fully functioning member of society.
After his first stint in prison, Charlie had a brief dalliance with an old friend that resulted in a baby girl. The pregnancy had been accidental, but his commitment to fatherhood was steadfast. He suggested marriage; the baby’s mother declined but told him he could be as involved in their daughter’s life as he liked. He never missed a hockey game or school recital, and volunteered to take his daughter to doctors’ appointments and playdates while her mother was at work.
After his second stint in prison, a penitentiary in central Virginia, he went to look for a job at a poultry plant, and when he walked in the door he was spotted by a woman named Mary, who saw him, turned to her friend, and immediately said, “Oh my God, I’ll end up with him.” There was something about Charlie that Mary just liked. He seemed easygoing. What appealed to her most of all was the way he talked about missing his daughter, and how he wanted to be a good father to her. After he and Mary had been going out for a little while, she agreed to move back with him to Accomack so he could be closer to his child. Her own two children eventually joined them and they settled in a house that Charlie’s parents had rented for them just down the block from the fire station.
He did good, they both did. Charlie went to AA meetings and NA meetings, and Mary got a settlement from a job injury that let them do up the kids’ birthdays in a big way, and gave her the money to enroll in EMT classes.
And there was the fire department, the other hub in their lives. Despite his criminal record, the leadership of the Tasley department believed what his parole officer believed—that Charlie was a decent guy who was just a little lost. They allowed him back in the department, where his stepfather and half brother, Bryan, were still volunteers.
“Tasley wouldn’t have a crew if it weren’t for the Applegates,” people said sometimes, because Charlie and Bryan showed up so often. Having spent most of their lives learning how to put cars together, they were particularly adept at taking cars apart, and were often called on for vehicle extrication.
Charlie wasn’t great at taking charge of a situation, but he was excellent at following precise directions. He would await an assignment from the chief, go off to complete exactly and only that assignment, and then return for his next task. When Tasley was called to car accident scenes, Charlie was brilliant. He could point to exactly which pieces of twisted metal needed to be cut, using which piece of equipment. And he would run into any building, without hesitation. Shortly after Jeff Beall arrived in Accomack, Beall was called out to a burning funeral home. He and Charlie were the first ones in the building. The fire was in the back of the second floor, but the only way to access it was by using the stairs in the front of the first floor. In true Accomack fashion, the building had been constructed piecemeal over time. The hallways zigzagged and joists didn’t quite line up, and Beall and Charlie had to belly crawl toward the fire with the hose tucked under their arms, spraying water at the flames that popped and crackled like machine guns. They were laying on the hose, spraying at those flames with full force, but the water wasn’t doing anything. The flames kept getting brighter, and finally Beall yelled, “Dude, we gotta go,” and they left the hose right on the landing and fumbled downstairs.
By the time they got outside, help had arrived, and one of the other volunteers pulled Beall aside. “We thought the flames were going to catch you,” he said. When Beall and Charlie had fought their way down the stairs they passed by a big picture window, the volunteer told Beall. Everyone outside watched through that window as the flames followed the two firefighters down the stairwell, licking the tops of their helmets. “We really thought the flames were going to catch you.”
“It was the worse place I’ve ever been,” Beall would say when he told the story. “Me and Charlie.”
Friday night poker at the firehouse, weekend barbecues with other volunteers, birthday parties for his daughter at the Tasley firehouse, with little kids trying on all the hats and boots. When the pager went off, Mary would joke about throwing it across the room, but the noise would make Charlie’s face light up. She didn’t think it was about the fire, particularly—unlike some firefighters, Charlie was just as excited to get called out for a fender bender as he was for a raging blaze. Mary sometimes wondered if what Charlie really liked wasn’t the fire aspect at all, but the camaraderie and the sense of being needed.
He liked being needed, especially by women and children. He was always offering to beat people up, not because he was particularly interested in fighting, but because doing it seemed like the honorable thing to do. His friend Saira was with Charlie and some others at a bar when her ex came in. She was furious with her ex and wanted to have words, and while most of her other friends tried to convince her that he wasn’t worth her time, Charlie pulled her aside to ask quietly, “Want me to take care of him for you?” No, Saira said. But thanks for asking.