something to eat.
The food is every bit first-rate. The local dj on the booming radio is making everything sound like a real party, and calls out to us personally so many times Iâm starting to feel like heâs here, doing the play-by-play. Heâs not, but he has certainly been filled in.
I keep hearing my fatherâs name, and DJâs fatherâs name. On the radio, very loud. In my ear, in my face, so very loud. One woman says she came from an hour away and her brother is a firefighter wherever she lives but he couldnât come because he is on duty protecting everybody just exactly the way my father would have done. She is sweet and kind and talking a little too close to my face and she holds an adorable three-legged puppy up to me, itâs a little Jack Russell and she tells me how he lost his leg in some fire-related way that I simply cannot understand but I do understand when she tells me the dogâs new name is Dave Russell after her two heroes.
DJ does an about-face at this, keeping his back to the woman while he looks everywhere else.
She gets all weepy and kisses me on the cheek before backing away with all red and dripping eyes and I wonder how she is going to drive all that way back home like this. She may need firefighters yet, today, is the joke I tell myself to try and hold it together.
âHang in there, pal,â says another firefighter I have known since before I knew. His name is John DeVellis, and though he has no mustache his face plays like it does so itâs okay. If John were not a firefighter he could be employed as a fireplug, such is his build. Five six, barrel chest, shaded specs, brilliant white teeth always shown off with a smile, and salty-pepper hair that splays out in rays exactly like how I used to draw the sun over this firehouse in school as a little kid. I might have been drawing John all along.
âIâm hanging, pal,â I say to John.
He hands me a plate with strawberry-rhubarb pie, warmed and melting its ice-cream helmet. He puts his helmet on me, too. Much as I love John, I wish he wouldnât. Iâm not a kid anymore. Iâm really not. I canât be.
I cannot find my mother. I wonder if sheâs all right at the same time as knowing that she is. Part of me feels like wondering and worrying about her is supposed to be my thing now.
DJ is better because truly food does make you better if you let it, and because DJ is a strong person in spite of Melanieâs warning. Stronger than me, I always thought, and I have no reason to stop thinking that now.
We talk to a lot, a lot of people, which is to say we mostly listen to a lot of people come up and tell us how unbelievably great our dads were, and our mothers are, and we ourselves will be over time. Itâs very much like a dream, where the people are people you know, but at the same time theyâre not.
âYouâll be great,â says a woman who is crying, quietly but steadily enough that rivulets of tear water are carving canyons down her face. She is my parentsâ generation, and I know I should know her. I know I do know her. It would be a good time for my mother to be handy. âYou come from greatness. And youâll be great.â
âThank you,â I say in a way I hope is familiar enough. âIâm going to try.â
We say thank you a lot, me and DJ. Then it is time.
âItâs time!â booms a voice even louder than the radio guyâs voice, cutting him right off as we go live and everybody migrates toward the big stage and the beginning of the big show, the highlight centerpiece of the whole day. The performance of the Hothouse Heroes, with the unveiling of the tributes.
âFolks, what can I say?â Jim Clerk says when the mad cheering has calmed a bit and he certainly knows what he can say. âRussell and Dave were the best of us. They wereââand here he chokes, not for the last timeââthe best we
The food is every bit first-rate. The local dj on the booming radio is making everything sound like a real party, and calls out to us personally so many times Iâm starting to feel like heâs here, doing the play-by-play. Heâs not, but he has certainly been filled in.
I keep hearing my fatherâs name, and DJâs fatherâs name. On the radio, very loud. In my ear, in my face, so very loud. One woman says she came from an hour away and her brother is a firefighter wherever she lives but he couldnât come because he is on duty protecting everybody just exactly the way my father would have done. She is sweet and kind and talking a little too close to my face and she holds an adorable three-legged puppy up to me, itâs a little Jack Russell and she tells me how he lost his leg in some fire-related way that I simply cannot understand but I do understand when she tells me the dogâs new name is Dave Russell after her two heroes.
DJ does an about-face at this, keeping his back to the woman while he looks everywhere else.
She gets all weepy and kisses me on the cheek before backing away with all red and dripping eyes and I wonder how she is going to drive all that way back home like this. She may need firefighters yet, today, is the joke I tell myself to try and hold it together.
âHang in there, pal,â says another firefighter I have known since before I knew. His name is John DeVellis, and though he has no mustache his face plays like it does so itâs okay. If John were not a firefighter he could be employed as a fireplug, such is his build. Five six, barrel chest, shaded specs, brilliant white teeth always shown off with a smile, and salty-pepper hair that splays out in rays exactly like how I used to draw the sun over this firehouse in school as a little kid. I might have been drawing John all along.
âIâm hanging, pal,â I say to John.
He hands me a plate with strawberry-rhubarb pie, warmed and melting its ice-cream helmet. He puts his helmet on me, too. Much as I love John, I wish he wouldnât. Iâm not a kid anymore. Iâm really not. I canât be.
I cannot find my mother. I wonder if sheâs all right at the same time as knowing that she is. Part of me feels like wondering and worrying about her is supposed to be my thing now.
DJ is better because truly food does make you better if you let it, and because DJ is a strong person in spite of Melanieâs warning. Stronger than me, I always thought, and I have no reason to stop thinking that now.
We talk to a lot, a lot of people, which is to say we mostly listen to a lot of people come up and tell us how unbelievably great our dads were, and our mothers are, and we ourselves will be over time. Itâs very much like a dream, where the people are people you know, but at the same time theyâre not.
âYouâll be great,â says a woman who is crying, quietly but steadily enough that rivulets of tear water are carving canyons down her face. She is my parentsâ generation, and I know I should know her. I know I do know her. It would be a good time for my mother to be handy. âYou come from greatness. And youâll be great.â
âThank you,â I say in a way I hope is familiar enough. âIâm going to try.â
We say thank you a lot, me and DJ. Then it is time.
âItâs time!â booms a voice even louder than the radio guyâs voice, cutting him right off as we go live and everybody migrates toward the big stage and the beginning of the big show, the highlight centerpiece of the whole day. The performance of the Hothouse Heroes, with the unveiling of the tributes.
âFolks, what can I say?â Jim Clerk says when the mad cheering has calmed a bit and he certainly knows what he can say. âRussell and Dave were the best of us. They wereââand here he chokes, not for the last timeââthe best we
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