The Supper in the Old Fire Station

“Okay,” I said. “That’s your call.”

“You’re mad.”

“I’m not mad,” I said, and I mostly wasn’t. “It’s your banquet, and it’s your list. I’m not going to fight with my brother in front of the department over a dinner. I’ll take care of Dad.”

He looked at me like he wanted to ask what that meant. He didn’t ask, and I didn’t explain, because I didn’t know yet myself.

On the drive home I thought about calling somebody. I thought about calling Chief Lindgren, or the township board, or the woman who ran the auxiliary. But there was nothing to call anybody about. Royce hadn’t broken a rule. He’d followed one.

So I decided I’d just make Dad a supper. That was all. If my brother had his night at the supper club, my father could have his night too, and nobody had to say a word against anybody.

Marcy said the same thing I was thinking before I could say it. “Not at the house,” she said. “Somewhere that means something.”

There was only one place in town that meant what we needed it to mean.

The old fire station sits on the corner of Main and Third, across from the bank.

It’s red brick with a white cornerstone that says 1926, the year the department was organized and moved out of a lean-to behind the creamery into a real building.

The department left it in 2004 when the new metal hall went up out by the highway, with four bays and a training room and a parking lot.

The historical society took over the brick station the next year and turned it into a museum that is open Sundays in the summer.

Inside there’s one big bay with the old wooden doors, a tin ceiling, a brass pole nobody is allowed to slide down anymore, and glass cases full of leather helmets and photographs of men with big mustaches.

And there’s the pumper. A 1958 American LaFrance, painted fire engine red with gold leaf on the doors, the last truck the town bought new before the department moved to diesels.

It was retired in 1989 and given to the historical society when they took the building.

It still runs. It runs because my father kept it running. Every spring since, he’s gone down there with a battery charger and his toolbox and changed the oil, checked the hoses, and turned it over so the Fourth of July parade could have it.

The president of the historical society is Mabel Ostrowski, seventy-eight, who taught second grade to half the town including me and Royce. I called her on Thursday and told her what I wanted.

There was a long pause on the line. “The banquet’s the same night,” she said.

“Yes, ma’am.”

“And your brother’s the chief.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Another pause. Then she said, “I’ll want a fifty dollar donation to the roof fund, and I’ll want it swept when you’re done. And nobody sets anything on the pumper. Not a cup, not a hat.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Your father put a new fuel pump in my husband’s Buick in 1984 and wouldn’t take a dime for the labor,” she said. “I’ll bring the coffee urn.”

That was Mabel’s whole speech on the subject, and it was more than enough.

Marcy took the food. She called her mother, and her mother called the women from St. Paul’s Lutheran, and by Friday night there was a plan for six roasters of hot beef, enough mashed potatoes to stucco a garage, a slow cooker of gravy, two kinds of coleslaw, and three pans of bars.