The Hat
Bodie did not hear any of that. He had run straight past all of us to the engine, and when he came back he was carrying his plastic fire helmet in both hands, the red one with the gold shield.
He walked right up to Brielle and stood on his tiptoes and reached up toward his baby sister.
Brielle did not understand at first. Then she did, and she bent down so he could reach.
Bodie set the plastic fire helmet on his baby sister’s head. It was much too big.
It came down over her ears and tipped to one side, and she reached up with both frosting hands and grabbed the brim.
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“There,” Bodie said. “Now you’re a firefighter too.”
The baby laughed, that big surprised laugh a one-year-old does when she does not know why something is funny.
Every mother in that lot laughed with her. Amos laughed. Even Brielle laughed, and then she was crying, and then she was doing both.
After
We packed up a little after four. Jasper rolled the booster hose back on the reel, and Amos pulled the engine back into the bay, slow, with Bodie riding in the passenger seat one last time.
The moms helped me fold the tables and carry the trash bags to the dumpster behind the station.
Penny’s mom took the leftover cake home in her van, because I told her to, because her kids had eaten the most of it.
Before I left, I tried to give Amos and Jasper something for their trouble. Amos would not take it.
He told me to put it in the coffee can at the pancake breakfast next spring, and I did, with interest.
I never did go to the parks office that Monday. I thought about it. I had the right to.
But Bodie had his birthday, and I did not need a thirty-five dollar apology from a lady behind a counter.
Brielle and I are not friends. I would not say that.
But at Bodie’s school program in May she saved me a seat, and I sat in it, and the baby sat between us on the bleacher for most of the program.
Next year, Bodie’s dad called me in February and asked what Bodie wanted for his birthday party. I told him the fire station. He said he would call Amos himself, and he did.
Bodie is eight now. He still wants to be a firefighter.
He has a new plastic helmet, a bigger one, because he gave the first one away and has never once asked for it back.
The last thing I saw that Saturday, as I was buckling Bodie into the car, was across the gravel lot at the edge of the ball fields: the baby on Brielle’s hip in the afternoon sun, still wearing Bodie’s fire hat.