The Birthday Party at the Fire Station

The Engine

Amos and Jasper ran that afternoon like they had been planning it for a month.

They lined the kids up and let them climb into the cab two at a time, and Jasper stood on the step to spot them.

Every kid got a turn behind the wheel. Every kid got a turn in the seat where the officer rides, with the radio handset they could hold but not key.

Then Jasper pulled out the booster hose, the small red one on the reel, and set up an orange traffic cone at the edge of the lot.

Each kid got to hold the nozzle with Jasper behind them and knock the cone over.

The moms stood along the side of the bay in a row, holding their phones up.

One of the dads helped Amos pull the turnout coats off the rack so the kids could try them on. They came down past the kids’ knees.

Bodie wore a turnout coat that dragged on the ground behind him like a wedding train.

He wore it over his red T-shirt and under his plastic helmet, and he walked up and down the bay in it for ten minutes.

I stood at the edge of it all and watched. I could not stop watching.

My son had fourteen friends climbing a fire engine on his birthday, and he was walking around in a coat four sizes too big, laughing.

The Horn

About 2:45, Amos waved Bodie back over to the engine. He lifted him into the driver’s seat again and leaned in the open door and pointed at something on the dash.

“You know what that is?” Amos said. Bodie knew. Every boy who wants to be a firefighter knows.

It was the switch for the siren, and next to it was the button for the air horn.

“Birthday boy gets to sound it,” Amos said. “One time. Short. We don’t want to scare the whole county.” He looked over at me first, and I nodded, and he looked back at Bodie.

Bodie put his finger on the button. He looked at all his friends standing in the lot looking up at him.

Then he pushed it, and the air horn went off, long and deep, and then Amos flipped the siren for one short whoop.

Every kid in the lot screamed and covered their ears and then laughed. A couple of the moms jumped.

Jasper whooped right along with the siren. And across the ball fields, at the pavilion, every head turned.

I counted them, too. I am not proud of that. There were six people at the pavilion.

I could make out Brielle, and her mother, and her sister, and two other grown women, and the baby in a high chair.

Six guests. Pink balloons on every post and a bounce house that nobody was bouncing in.

She was standing at the end of the table with her hand up over her eyes, against the sun, looking at us.

I looked away. I did not wave. I did not want to.