Heroes

Rita heard the front door swing open, and Mitch thudded in wearing his heavy boots. He stopped in the kitchen doorway and leaned against the jamb. His hair and uniform were a crumpled mess. “Hi,” he said. “Something smells good.”

“How does lasagna sound?” Rita said.

“Sounds real good. We saved a couple kids today.”

Rita wiped her hands on a thin dishtowel and turned directly towards him. The circles under his eyes were very dark after the long shift, but his eyes still danced. “Yeah?”

He smiled, his teeth bright. He had missed a dark smear of soot near his ear.

Mitch almost never talked about work. There were bad days – when an apartment building burned to the ground, or a civilian got burned up, or a firefighter was injured (or worse) – and the last thing in the world he wanted to do was come home and relive the horrible events he sometimes had to experience.

When they were first married, she had tried to get him to talk. He would slog home, slump into his overstuffed armchair, and for fifteen minutes he would drink beer and stare at the television. “Nothing,” he would snap, “nothing happened.”

At first she was hurt by his reticence, but she slowly realized it was probably better this way. He needed home to be a haven, a place where the bad things never intruded. Now, six years later, he still dropped in front of the TV after his shift, although he didn’t drink beer any more. Mitch and Andrew Spears got together and agreed to give up alcohol, so they would be more alert for their jobs.

And Rita was a firefighter’s wife. Julie Spears, Andrew’s wife, told Rita once that wives had a job too, an important support role. Mitch and Rita were newlyweds at the time, invited over for a barbecue. The women were inside cutting up vegetables for hamburgers. Julie’s eyes were pink from slicing an onion. “If it wasn’t for us,” Julie said as she wiped a tear with the back of her hand, “they wouldn’t be able to go out and do their jobs day after day. They couldn’t stand it.”

Eventually, what Julie said began to make sense. So Rita stopped complaining. When Mitch wasn’t brooding, she took it upon herself to make their time together fun and happy.

Her most successful technique was letting him see her naked. Once, before they were married, as she climbed out of the tub, he was standing there watching. “Baby, I love your butt!” After that, whenever she got the chance, she made sure he caught a glimpse of her naked backside. Waking up in the morning. In the shower. Putting on makeup. She spent a lot of hours on the Stair Master keeping her butt toned and fit.

It was the part she played to keep the city safe from fire.

But none of that kept her from worrying.

The worst days were the ones when someone was seriously injured or killed. The sickening news speeded along the phone lines among the wives and girlfriends. “Somebody from the 164th died, have you heard who?” “I heard it was the 112th. Have you heard from Mitch? If he calls, ask him if Andrew is OK.” And then the long, sleepless night, waiting for someone to find out what really happened, watching the TV news, desperately hoping to see Mitch’s image captured by a news camera.

And then, when he finally came home, the enormous relief. And then Mitch’s maddening silence.

But Mitch was bursting to talk today, a mood Rita had not seen in years. “So what happened?” she asked eagerly.

“We got to this old house and it was already almost fully involved, smoke everywhere, big flames coming out under the eaves. A teenage girl was running around crying and screaming. She said her brother is still inside. Cap was trying to get her to explain where exactly they were, but she was hysterical, and we couldn’t get anything out of her.

“The other crew was getting ready to get up on the roof, and I was waiting to be second on the water line, but they were having trouble with the hydrant connection. Cap told me I needed to get in there and see if I could find the boy.

“I grabbed a mask and air bottle and went through the front door. I’d been in houses like this one before, so I found the hallway right away. But the smoke was really bad. It seemed to be coming from everywhere. I knew the fire was in the attic, and it could drop down on me at any minute.

“And then the door at the end of the hall just blew open, and I could see the master bedroom red with flames. I had to duck into another bedroom to get out of the heat.

“The smoke was terrible. I wasn’t even sure I’d found a bedroom. For a minute, I thought I heard crying somewhere, but there was so much smoke I couldn’t see a thing and it was so loud I wasn’t sure if I wasn’t just hearing things. I felt around for anything, but I kept bumping into walls and dressers. ‘Hello! Can you hear me?’ I yelled out, but I couldn’t even hear my own voice, the fire was too loud. Then it got real hot real fast. I was about to give up and get out of there, when I nearly tripped over the bed.

“I felt around on the mattress and I found his foot. A little kid’s foot, right there on the bed, with his socks on. He wasn’t moving at all, and I hoped I wasn’t too late. I snatched him up, he didn’t weigh anything. Just then I heard something up on the roof, and I knew I had to get out of there. Either the fire was above me, or the crew was about to vent it open. The fire was getting even louder. I could hear it in the next room, pounding, like it was trying to break down the wall.

“And the kid started crying. ‘Lucy, Lucy, Lucy,’ he was crying.

“I ran out and gave the kid to an EMT. They took him off in an ambulance. I heard he’s OK. A little smoke inhalation, but not too bad.

“And then Cap came up to me. ‘The girl here says there’s another girl inside,’ he said.

“I told him I was going back in, but he said no, wait for them to vent the roof. But I knew it would be too late by then. Hold them off just a little longer, I told him, I had been in there, I knew exactly where the rooms were. If she was still alive, I could find her.

“’OK, you have one minute,’ Cap said.

“It was the luckiest thing. The fire was already in the boy’s room, the one where I found the kid, and it was coming down the hall, and there was only one place left I could look that wasn’t fully involved. I knew I only had a couple seconds. The door was closed but it wasn’t hot. I pushed it open and at first the smoke wasn’t quite so thick. A little girl who couldn’t have been more than two years old was sitting right in the middle of the floor, crying, hugging a little stuffed dog.

“The smoke rushed in the room. And I could hear it, I could hear the fire coming, like an animal snarling. I grabbed her and the fire flared up behind me in the doorway. It looked like it was going to blow right inside on us, but it died down a minute. No way I could get out through the door, there was fire everywhere. But there was still the window. I kicked it to pieces, I can’t believe I could even get my foot up that high, but it smashed and someone from the 112th rushed up. Outside, there was fire coming down from the eaves. I handed him the kid and got out.

“See, I cut my finger on the glass,” he grinned, a little bandage wrapped around the tip of his index finger.

“We were out for maybe ten seconds when the house exploded. Boom, like a bomb. One guy from the 112th broke his arm, but he’s OK.”

Tears budded in her eyes. “Oh my God, you’re a hero,” she said.

“No,” he said, “I was just doing my job.”

He walked up to her and wrapped her up in his arms. He was a big man, and so very solid. She held the wooden spoon, wet with tomato sauce, away from them, trying not to drip.

“Do you want to eat?” she said, and a tear slipped down her cheek. Her throat felt thick.

“No,” he said.

He turned off the stove and took her hand. He led her to the bedroom. He undressed her. He kissed her neck. His fingers danced down her belly, and he kissed her nipples.

She undressed him. When she uncovered the familiar scar across his ribs, an injury he’d received when he fell off a roof, she ran her finger across the damaged skin. It was strangely smooth and ragged at the same time.

She lowered his pants. His penis was thick and hard. He stroked her earlobes as she petted his solid length.

She lay back and he got on top of her. They kissed. He entered her. She arched against him. He pressed into her.

They made love.

When she reached her peak, she forced her eyes open, looked into his eyes. Mitch kissed her, and she throbbed. In a moment, he cried out, “Oh, Rita!”

Afterwards, they lay together. “It’s so nice to see you in such a good mood,” she snuggled against his chest.

“It was a good day,” Mitch said.

They fell asleep in each other’s arms.

She woke up first, the sun streaming through the window. His morning erection poked her thigh. His eyes fluttered beneath their lids.

She thought of making love again, and put her hand on his naked hip. Mitch’s eyes eased open, and he smiled.

Then the phone jangled. Rita forced her mouth into a pout. Mitch rolled over and picked up the receiver.

He listened for just a few seconds. “OK,” was all he said. When he hung up, he kissed her. “I have to go, baby.” He slid out of bed.

“But you’re supposed to be off today,” she whined as he pulled his uniform pants up over his firm, round butt.

But she knew it was pointless to complain. He had flipped that switch inside him, and he moved in that deliberate way of his, his eyes fixed as if he were aiming at something in the distance, his fingers moving quickly and precisely as he dressed.

“It’s something big. I have to go.”

She rolled over and hugged his pillow to her chest. It was soft and thick and still warm with his heat. The air above the covers chilled her back, but she didn’t want to cover up, not just yet. He always said he loved her butt. She wanted him to see her this way, naked, before he left. “Hey,” she said, “be careful, OK?”

He looked back over his shoulder, his eyes moved quickly down her body, his smile gleaming.

He was gone for only a few minutes when the phone rang again. “Did you see the news?” Julie said.

She turned on the television and saw a picture she did not understand: geometric shapes and parallel lines filling the screen. “It was a plane, it was definitely a large, passenger plane,” someone said on the TV. The camera pulled back to show what she had been looking at: a close-up view of the World Trade Center. A black scar sliced the building at a slight angle, and thick, black smoke billowed upwards.

She noticed a passenger plane fly across behind the building and wondered if that was the plane they were talking about. She felt Mitch’s semen slide inside her. Surely this was the fire he had been called out on.

She turned off the television. She couldn’t stand to watch, it worried her too much. The big buildings were difficult, very dangerous. It would be best to hear about it later, after he came home. If all went well, if it was another good day, maybe he’d even tell her about it.

But she knew if it didn’t go well, he wouldn’t say a word.