outside, but he opted out of that. He doesn’t want to live the twilight of his life driving back and forth from the hospital. Mostly, he’s playing golf. When he has the strength.”
It was bad enough that his father was dying, worse that he was dying of cancer, an occupational hazard among firefighters, and it prompted Finney to wonder what toxins had banked up in his own system during the nearly two decades he’d been a firefighter. He knew that because of the twenty- to thirty-year gestation period of many cancers, firefighters frequently retired just in time to discover they had six months to live.
“He was a stubborn old fart,” said Reese, grinning.
“Still is.”
Finney resisted the temptation to toy with the set of lieutenant’s bars in his pocket, a gift from his father, who couldn’t get enough of the fact that his younger son, with whom he rarely saw eye-to-eye, was finally going to be an officer. If his father didn’t live long enough to see him make captain, at least he would see Finney wearing his own battle-tested lieutenant’s bars. Finney’s older brother, Tony, the apple of his father’s eye, made lieutenant twelve years ago and captain shortly thereafter, all according to the old man’s schedule. The fact that Tony then went into a long tailspin precipitated by a gambling habit and two volatile divorces from the same woman somehow evaded their father’s radar, a situation Finney found amusingly ironic. Finney’s father wanted only one thing for his sons. He had climbed through the ranks from firefighter to lieutenant, from captain to battalion chief, and he wanted desperately to see both his sons do the same.
“Did you know your old man was my first batt chief?” Reese asked. “Out at Eighteen’s?”
“I guess I’d forgotten.” Reese couldn’t have looked too impressive just out of drill school. Finney remembered how his strength used to fade toward the end of the day as they were picking up wet hose to hang in the tower at 14’s, how he couldn’t hide his fear in the smoke room. As a recruit Finney quickly learned which of his fellow trainees he could count on, and Reese had never been one of them. Once in the company, Reese spent thousands of hours studying for promotionals. Despite all the studying, his first test results were mediocre—forty-eighth on a lieutenant’s list from which fifty-four firefighters were promoted. Three years later he scored slightly higher on the captain’s test, but only enough to get the last captain’s spot. If he hadn’t been one-sixteenth American Indian, he might not have been promoted at all. Later he was the last battalion chief to be made from that list. Even in drill school Reese had made each cut by a whisker, yet his history of scraping by was transformed in a single stroke by Leary Way, which propelled him directly into the department chief’s office.
“Your father. My first day in the company he told us he was going to drill the engine. Most of those guys had been in fifteen, twenty years, and they were worried. I took my cues from them. Your old man was a terror. He finally shows up eating a Wendy’s burger. He runs us through five hose evolutions on the back ramp. I thought we were going to suck the main dry. Afterward we’re sopping wet and exhausted and shivering, and he comes over to me and says, ‘You’re pumping into the standpipe to the tenth floor of a high-rise. Upstairs you’ve got two hundred feet of inch-and-a-half hose line with a Wooster nozzle. Two one-hundred-foot two-and-a-half-inch lines into the standpipe from the engine. What’s your pump pressure?’ That was his question to me, and that’s my question to you now.”
“We haven’t carried inch-and-a-half hose for years.”
“What if I said your promotion depended on the answer?”
What an asshole, Finney thought. Well, he wasn’t above jumping through a few hoops if that’s what it took to get a promotion. Just so he didn’t have to bend
It was bad enough that his father was dying, worse that he was dying of cancer, an occupational hazard among firefighters, and it prompted Finney to wonder what toxins had banked up in his own system during the nearly two decades he’d been a firefighter. He knew that because of the twenty- to thirty-year gestation period of many cancers, firefighters frequently retired just in time to discover they had six months to live.
“He was a stubborn old fart,” said Reese, grinning.
“Still is.”
Finney resisted the temptation to toy with the set of lieutenant’s bars in his pocket, a gift from his father, who couldn’t get enough of the fact that his younger son, with whom he rarely saw eye-to-eye, was finally going to be an officer. If his father didn’t live long enough to see him make captain, at least he would see Finney wearing his own battle-tested lieutenant’s bars. Finney’s older brother, Tony, the apple of his father’s eye, made lieutenant twelve years ago and captain shortly thereafter, all according to the old man’s schedule. The fact that Tony then went into a long tailspin precipitated by a gambling habit and two volatile divorces from the same woman somehow evaded their father’s radar, a situation Finney found amusingly ironic. Finney’s father wanted only one thing for his sons. He had climbed through the ranks from firefighter to lieutenant, from captain to battalion chief, and he wanted desperately to see both his sons do the same.
“Did you know your old man was my first batt chief?” Reese asked. “Out at Eighteen’s?”
“I guess I’d forgotten.” Reese couldn’t have looked too impressive just out of drill school. Finney remembered how his strength used to fade toward the end of the day as they were picking up wet hose to hang in the tower at 14’s, how he couldn’t hide his fear in the smoke room. As a recruit Finney quickly learned which of his fellow trainees he could count on, and Reese had never been one of them. Once in the company, Reese spent thousands of hours studying for promotionals. Despite all the studying, his first test results were mediocre—forty-eighth on a lieutenant’s list from which fifty-four firefighters were promoted. Three years later he scored slightly higher on the captain’s test, but only enough to get the last captain’s spot. If he hadn’t been one-sixteenth American Indian, he might not have been promoted at all. Later he was the last battalion chief to be made from that list. Even in drill school Reese had made each cut by a whisker, yet his history of scraping by was transformed in a single stroke by Leary Way, which propelled him directly into the department chief’s office.
“Your father. My first day in the company he told us he was going to drill the engine. Most of those guys had been in fifteen, twenty years, and they were worried. I took my cues from them. Your old man was a terror. He finally shows up eating a Wendy’s burger. He runs us through five hose evolutions on the back ramp. I thought we were going to suck the main dry. Afterward we’re sopping wet and exhausted and shivering, and he comes over to me and says, ‘You’re pumping into the standpipe to the tenth floor of a high-rise. Upstairs you’ve got two hundred feet of inch-and-a-half hose line with a Wooster nozzle. Two one-hundred-foot two-and-a-half-inch lines into the standpipe from the engine. What’s your pump pressure?’ That was his question to me, and that’s my question to you now.”
“We haven’t carried inch-and-a-half hose for years.”
“What if I said your promotion depended on the answer?”
What an asshole, Finney thought. Well, he wasn’t above jumping through a few hoops if that’s what it took to get a promotion. Just so he didn’t have to bend
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