The Birthday Party at the Fire Station

The Station

I drove the long way around the park so we would come in from the back road and not past the pavilion.

When we pulled into the lot, the bay door was rolled all the way up, and the red engine was parked out front of that small brick station, shining in the sun like somebody had polished it by hand.

Somebody had. Amos was standing beside it with a rag over his shoulder.

Jasper was setting up two long folding tables in the open bay, and there was a cooler of ice already sitting by the door.

It was a bright April afternoon, the kind southern Indiana gets maybe a dozen of in a good spring, warm enough for short sleeves and cool enough you don’t sweat. The redbuds were out along the fence line.

Bodie got out of the car and just stood there. He did not run.

He stood in the gravel in his red T-shirt and his plastic helmet and looked up at that engine like it was a church.

Amos walked over and crouched down in front of him, slow, because his knees are not what they were. “Happy birthday, Firefighter Ostrom,” he said. “You want to sit up front?”

Bodie nodded. He could not talk. Amos opened the driver’s door and lifted him up under the arms, the way he must have lifted a hundred kids at a hundred open houses, and set him in the big seat.

Both of Bodie’s hands went straight to the wheel. That steering wheel is bigger around than his whole body, and he gripped it at ten and two like he had been told how, which he had, by his granddaddy, years ago.

He did not let go. He turned it a little left and a little right and made a low engine sound in his throat, and he looked out the windshield at the empty lot like there was a whole road out there.

I stood on the step below him with a cupcake in my hand.

I had stuck one candle in it, and I held it up so he could see it, and he grinned down at me.

Across the Park

From the step of the engine, you could see clear across the ball fields to the pavilion.

It was maybe three hundred yards away, small at that distance, with pink balloons tied to every post.

Somebody had set up a bounce house on the grass beside it.

I could see cars pulling into the little lot over there, and people carrying things from their trunks to the tables under the roof.

I could hear music starting, faint, some kind of children’s song coming out of a speaker.

Bodie heard it too. He took one hand off the wheel and pointed. “Is that Sissy’s party?” he said.

“That’s Sissy’s party,” I said.

He watched it for a minute. Then he put his hand back on the wheel.

“Her party has a bounce house,” he said. He did not sound jealous. He sounded like he was reporting the weather.

“It does,” I said. “Your party has a fire engine.” He thought about that and nodded, like that settled it.