Read Online Report from Engine Co. 82 by Dennis Smith - Free Book Online

a heavy bath. Our underclothes are sticking to us, and the brisk breeze sweeping through
     the ventilated apartment chills us. I think of those men on Charlotte Street, and wonder how people can drink beer on street
     comers in weather like this.
    The kitchen clock reads eight o’clock as I put fifteen cents in the soda machine. Matt Tunney looks up and says, “They took
     Nick Riso to the hospital.”
    “What happened?” Vinny Royce asks.
    “We were coming back from Hoe and Aldus and some guy threw a brick and hit Nick in the chest. Not a half brick. A full fuckin'
     brick. The pumper was going about twenty-five miles an hour, and if it would’ve hit him in the face, it would’ve killed him.”
    “Is he hurt bad?” I ask.
    “Well, they’re lettin' him outta the hospital, so it can’t be too bad.”
    Matt looks up, and a smile appears on his face. Riso is standing at the door.
    “How ya feel?” ask Matt and Vinny at the same time.
    “A little weak,” Nick answers. “A lot of blood vessels in my chest are broke.” He opens his shirt and shows us the redness
     on his chest. “If I didn’t have my rubber coat on, the impact would have knocked me right off the pumper. It absorbed the
     impact, ya know. The Doctor says I need a lotta rest.”
    The bells start sounding again—Box 2402—and the guys of Engine 85 and Ladder 712 hustle out of the door. Nick goes upstairs
     to change clothes. He’ll be on sick leave for a few weeks. We call it “
R
&
R
(Rest and Recuperation).”
    I follow Nick up the stairs. In my locker somewhere there is an old battered book of Yeats’s poems. I search through the pile
     of dirty laundry, the paperback mysteries, the wom copies of
Playboy
and the
Saturday Review.
Ahh, there it is. The red cover is coming apart, and some pages have loosened, but it’s still complete. I remember reading
     a poem where Yeats talked about wise men becoming tense with a kind of violence before they can accomplish fate, and I finger
     the pages looking for it. It is this kind of violence I am feeling now, as Nick Riso slowly changes his clothes across from
     me. What can be done with people who throw bricks at the very men who are most committed to protecting the lives of the brick
     throwers? I feel empty and helpless, because I know that nothing can be done. And I feel violent, because I know that this
     insanity will continue until the brick throwers are educated, until they find decent jobs, and until they have better places
     to live in.
    I come to “Under Ben Bulben,” and start to read, but three short rings of the telephone interrupt me. A voice from downstairs
     yells, “82 and 31, get out.” Benny Carroll closes a fire protection manual, and runs to the pole hole. Nick says, “So long,
     guys,” as I wrap my arms and legs around the top of the long brass pole.
    As I slide the pole the bells come in—Box 4746—Prospect Avenue and Crotona Park East. It’s a job. The telephone alarm and
     the location give me a feeling that well have a worker. It’s like a sixth sense.
    It is 8:20 P.M. As we turn up Prospect Avenue we can smell the smoke. There is only one smell like this: burning paint, plaster, and wood.
     We can see the smoke banking down on the avenue before us, but we can’t see the fire yet. Ladder 31 is right behind us, so
     we know we will get the ventilation we need.
    As we turn the corner at Crotona Park we can see the fire. Flames are licking out of eight windows on the third and fourth
     floors of a six-story tenement. There must have been a delayed alarm, and I imagine people alerting other people—alerting
     everyone but the Fire Department. There is a crowd of people on the sidewalk. Some are in nightclothes. Some are barefoot.
     Many are simply interested passersby. People are still rushing out of the building, crying, sobbing, or just sullen.
    We have to take the heavy two-and-a-half-inch hose for a body of fire like this. Jim Stack takes the nozzle again, and