effort flexing your ribs.
One of the things training officers sometimes doâone of the things Iâve doneâis to creep up behind a rookie firefighter in the smokehouse, when his mask is blacked out and he can see nothing, and turn his tank valves off. You want to see what the firefighter will do, how he will react, whether heâll check the override valve on the front of the regulatorâitâs a different shape and feel than any of the other valvesâand whether heâll take the time to reach back and find the main valve behind his back before giving up. It takes tremendous self-control not to simply stand up and tear your mask right off your face and suck in a great heaving breath of whateverâs out there in the air all around you.
That first dreamâthat first needling dreamâstarted to prick a small hole in my confidence, in my belief that I had everything under control. Later on, that lost control would start to prick holes in my days as well as my nights.
An early June morning and the pager had gone off, because there was a car in Healeyâs Pond and no one had any idea how long it had been in there.
A new-looking Tempo had gone up and over the guardrail and down into deep-enough water that we could only see the dome of the roof from where we stood, looking down through water from the bank. Standing by the guardrail, I wondered just how anyone even saw it down there, or at least saw enough through the peaty brown water to stop and look more carefully.
We couldnât tell if there was anyone in the car, and we didnât want to wait for the divers. You call for divers and theyâll suit up, the cold-water rescue team from St. Johnâs, but it takes time for them to track down the whole team and get the gear on the road. So Mike Reid put on one of the floater suits from the rescue and walked into the pond, and every time he kicked himself down under the water, he bobbed back up again like an orange cork.
Once we knew there was no one in the car, we were busting up laughing, all the time trying not to let anyone see in the cars that slowed down every time they came around the corner and spotted our lights.
Finally, Mike got himself completely inside the car, and the flotation suit held him stuck tight up against the roof like an air bubble, so that he had to pull himself around by holding on to the carâs interior. He managed to get the registration out of the glove compartment, and the police called the woman who owned the car, and she said that her son had had it the night before but he was home asleep in bed now, thank you very much.
âSo, is your car in the driveway, then?â we heard the police officer ask her on the phone. We couldnât hear the answer.
NINE
When I graduated from university, it was suddenly time to move. Time to find work, even if that meant moving hundreds of miles to Toronto. At least that was the plan, and I thought it was a good one.
After we left Wolfville, I didnât plan on ever fighting fires again. Iâd only been in the department for a little more than a year and a half, on call every single night, but leaving the department was actually more difficult than leaving my family and heading off to college had been. Iâd married my high school sweetheart, weâd finished college together, and like many people in the Atlantic provinces we were heading for Toronto. Barby was going to go to art school and I was going to find a full-time jobâany full-time job. By then I was the only arts graduate in my family, with an honours degree in philosophy and not very much in the way of solid prospects.
Iâd changed, too. For months, as Barby watched me get more and more involved with the fire department, I had been telling her less and less about the most serious calls. It just didnât seem important. Well, thatâs not true. It did seem important, but I couldnât bring myself to go through all the
One of the things training officers sometimes doâone of the things Iâve doneâis to creep up behind a rookie firefighter in the smokehouse, when his mask is blacked out and he can see nothing, and turn his tank valves off. You want to see what the firefighter will do, how he will react, whether heâll check the override valve on the front of the regulatorâitâs a different shape and feel than any of the other valvesâand whether heâll take the time to reach back and find the main valve behind his back before giving up. It takes tremendous self-control not to simply stand up and tear your mask right off your face and suck in a great heaving breath of whateverâs out there in the air all around you.
That first dreamâthat first needling dreamâstarted to prick a small hole in my confidence, in my belief that I had everything under control. Later on, that lost control would start to prick holes in my days as well as my nights.
An early June morning and the pager had gone off, because there was a car in Healeyâs Pond and no one had any idea how long it had been in there.
A new-looking Tempo had gone up and over the guardrail and down into deep-enough water that we could only see the dome of the roof from where we stood, looking down through water from the bank. Standing by the guardrail, I wondered just how anyone even saw it down there, or at least saw enough through the peaty brown water to stop and look more carefully.
We couldnât tell if there was anyone in the car, and we didnât want to wait for the divers. You call for divers and theyâll suit up, the cold-water rescue team from St. Johnâs, but it takes time for them to track down the whole team and get the gear on the road. So Mike Reid put on one of the floater suits from the rescue and walked into the pond, and every time he kicked himself down under the water, he bobbed back up again like an orange cork.
Once we knew there was no one in the car, we were busting up laughing, all the time trying not to let anyone see in the cars that slowed down every time they came around the corner and spotted our lights.
Finally, Mike got himself completely inside the car, and the flotation suit held him stuck tight up against the roof like an air bubble, so that he had to pull himself around by holding on to the carâs interior. He managed to get the registration out of the glove compartment, and the police called the woman who owned the car, and she said that her son had had it the night before but he was home asleep in bed now, thank you very much.
âSo, is your car in the driveway, then?â we heard the police officer ask her on the phone. We couldnât hear the answer.
NINE
When I graduated from university, it was suddenly time to move. Time to find work, even if that meant moving hundreds of miles to Toronto. At least that was the plan, and I thought it was a good one.
After we left Wolfville, I didnât plan on ever fighting fires again. Iâd only been in the department for a little more than a year and a half, on call every single night, but leaving the department was actually more difficult than leaving my family and heading off to college had been. Iâd married my high school sweetheart, weâd finished college together, and like many people in the Atlantic provinces we were heading for Toronto. Barby was going to go to art school and I was going to find a full-time jobâany full-time job. By then I was the only arts graduate in my family, with an honours degree in philosophy and not very much in the way of solid prospects.
Iâd changed, too. For months, as Barby watched me get more and more involved with the fire department, I had been telling her less and less about the most serious calls. It just didnât seem important. Well, thatâs not true. It did seem important, but I couldnât bring myself to go through all the