Nineteen Firefighters in the Front Pews

One Phone Call

On Monday I went to work. I am the secretary at Ellerton Elementary, which means I know every family in town by the sound of their voice on the phone.

Duane’s grandson, Tyler, is in second grade. Duane picked him up that afternoon for a dentist appointment, and he stood at my counter signing the sign-out sheet with his reading glasses pushed up on his forehead.

He did not say anything about church. Duane was not there on Sunday. He and his wife go to St. Mary’s, the Catholic church at the other end of Main Street.

I almost said something then. I did not. The office was full of kids waiting on the nurse.

That night, after Mike went out to the barn for evening milking, I called Duane at home. I told him exactly what had happened, the hand on the doorframe, what Harold said, Mike walking back to the truck.

I did not add anything. I did not tell him what I thought of it. I just told it.

Duane did not say a word the whole time. When I finished there was a long quiet on the line.

“Was he still wearing his pager?” Duane asked.

“Yes.”

“Did Harold know where he’d been?”

“Mike told him. Harold said he knew.”

Another long quiet. I could hear his television on low in the background, a hockey game.

“Leave it with me, Jody,” Duane said.

“I’m not asking you to do anything, Duane. Mike would be mad that I called. I just thought you should know.”

“I know you’re not asking,” he said. “Leave it with me anyway.”

Drill Night

Tuesday is drill night for the Ellerton Volunteer Fire Department. They meet at the hall at seven, nineteen members on the roster that winter, everybody from a nineteen-year-old who had just finished Firefighter 1 to Duane himself.

They train on whatever is coming. In March it is usually ice rescue and grass fires. That Tuesday it was supposed to be checking and cleaning everything from the Kessler fire.

Mike came home at nine-thirty and stood in the kitchen with his jacket still on.

“The guys were acting funny,” he said.

“Funny how?”

“Quiet. Duane kept everybody after for ten minutes and sent me out to check the air packs on the engine.” He hung up his coat. “When I came back in, they all stopped talking.”

“Maybe they’re planning your birthday,” I said, which was a lie, because his birthday is in August.

On Thursday he came in from the barn and said Duane had texted the whole department. Everybody at the hall at ten o’clock Sunday morning, in gear, helmets.

“On a Sunday,” Mike said. “He never does anything on a Sunday.”

“Maybe it’s a picture for the fish fry poster,” I said.

He looked at me across the kitchen for a long moment. Mike is not a foolish man. I think he knew. I think he decided not to ask, because if he did not ask, he could not tell me to stop.