Firetrap by Earl Emerson Page B

he’s the captain and I’m just a driver. I could have made those rescues as easily as he did. He was basically just dropping people out the window.”
    â€œSo
you
were the one throwing people out the window?” I asked Brown, somewhat astonished by the revelation. Why hadn’t he said so earlier? And why hadn’t the official report mentioned it?
    He gave me a look. “I wasn’t
throwing
them. I was
lowering
them and then dropping them. I would have walked them over to the escalator, but we didn’t have one.”
    â€œOkay, whatever. Is that why the department wanted to give you the award that you threw in their faces?”
    â€œI didn’t throw anything in anybody’s face. I didn’t want the whole ceremony thing. Okay?” Again, the look.
    â€œOkay. Sure.”
    Yikes.
    Â 
    Tall, angular, and a whirlwind of constant motion, Kitty Acton was a different creature altogether from the slow-moving Clyde Garrison. Kitty was near tears at the beginning of her interview; then she teetered away from her emotions as she veered off topic and approached tears again when she returned to it. The upshot was they’d gone to C side and put up a ladder, and then the captain went up and began throwing—uh, lowering—people out of the smoke.
    She talked for almost an hour, backtracking willy-nilly, diverting her narrative off that night to other calls they’d been on, hogging the spotlight while she had it, a ballerina dancing on top of a music box. After Engine 28’s station bell hit and she ran out of the room to climb onto the fire engine, I turned to Brown. “Is she always like this, or is she just nervous?”
    â€œShe’s always nervous.”
    â€œHmm.” I took a deep breath. “Do you want to tell me your story while we’re waiting?”
    â€œEverything I have to say is already written down.”
    â€œEverything
everybody
has to say is already written down.”
    â€œI’d rather wait.”
    â€œSure. Just one question, though. Clyde says you shouldn’t have left your post as Division C commander. That he could have handled the rescues as easily. What’s your response to that?”
    â€œWhen it started, there were only three of us back there. Me, Clyde, and Kitty. Kitty isn’t strong enough to yard anybody out of a window, and Clyde was moving like molasses. We only had a few minutes to act, and even as it was, we didn’t get them all out. I didn’t want to take a chance that somebody wouldn’t get out because Clyde wasn’t strong enough or was moving too slowly.”
    â€œAnd you knew you were strong enough?”
    â€œI know for a fact I got more people out than Clyde would have.”
    â€œHe doesn’t want to acknowledge that, does he?”
    â€œNope.”
    When Engine 28 hadn’t returned forty minutes later, I realized Kitty Acton’s testimonial had degraded into speculation and sidetracking anyway, along with all the trivia about her love life, which Brown told me she was in the habit of talking about endlessly. She tapped into the guys for dating advice, as if they were all her big brothers.
    â€œOh, I guess I thought she was a lesbian for some reason.”
    â€œShe is,” he said. “The dating advice thing can get kind of weird sometimes, like the time she was making out with Miss Ballard behind the station.” He grinned at me.
    So, I thought, Trey Brown has a lighter side after all. I grinned back.

11. FOUR WEEKS EARLIER
    ANDREW WASHINGTON, SPURNED LOVER/ARSONIST >
    It takes me freakin’ forever to find two empty bottles. I finally snag a couple out of some old lady’s garbage with all the bacon drippings and shit—wiping them off on my pants—and then I can’t find no gasoline nowhere. I try a couple of garages for lawn mower equipment and shit, but I can’t get into the first two, and the third has a motherfriggin’