DogCanyon will publish this story serially, in four parts.
To read Part 1, click here.
To read Part 2, click here.
Pikers on the LPGA golf course
Back at the hotel we all washed our Piker shirts and our fire resistant nomex pants; we showered up and combed our hair and even passed a can of pomade from room to room. By the time we climbed on the bus to meet Slick Willy we were looking sharp.
At the Nascar speedway a little white tram picked us up to take us to the security checkpoint. Security guards looked over our IDs and then more guards looked over them again. Then we stood in line and waited. And waited. At the entrance more guards checked our IDs against a guest list. When we finally walked in the enormous tent set up outside, the air conditioning made it feel like a meat locker.
There was a great big stage with an American flag behind and loud speakers blaring Yankee Doodle Dandy and God Bless America. At the back of the tent there was a section roped off for reporters. It was full of news cameras and there were anchorwomen and women grips, beautiful, all of them.
The Indian crew was there and people whose houses had been saved by firefighters and then lots of other people in suits, looking like they went to see the president speak everyday. I stood around with Rock Star and Tan and listened to Tan raise hell about what a fucking dog and pony show it was, what a waste of a day we could’ve spent on the fireline.
more at the jump…
The shrimpers who seemed to be organizing the whole shindig picked a bunch of Indians and women and structural firefighters to stand up on the stage in front of the American flag that looked big enough to be waved over a used car lot. Then lightbulbs started popping all over the place. Tan went off about that, he was so disgusted.
Pretty soon a bunch of us Pikers gathered up around him, all bitching and complaining about how our time was being wasted, saying we’re Hotshots so we don’t have to deal with fakey, PR bullshit.
The other half of the crew–the shrimpers, the weaklinks, Sasha and Lee–were in the crowd, strategically standing near the stage so they’d be ready to push forward when the Prez finally showed up.
Hinky paced along the edge of the crowd. He walked in a horseshoe shape–he started at one side of the stage, walked to the back of the tent, crossed in front of the roped off section of reporters and cameras, and then walked along the other side. When he made it to the stage again, he turned around and retraced his steps. His lips hadn’t stopped moving.
Rock Star nodded his head in Hinky’s direction. “It looks like the Green Goblin’s gnawing on him.”
“He looks like a fucking psycho,” I said, surprised to realize it was true.
I think everyone there started to think Clinton wasn’t going to show. “Probably lost track of time while getting serviced in Air Force One,” Tan said and we laughed.
Finally the whole goat rope got rolling. The Governor of Florida came out and made a speech. Then some plump blonde schoolteacher who got all weepy when she introduced a structural firefighter who helped save her house.
When the firefighter stood in front of the microphone the crowd went nuts, absolutely crazy.
Rock Star and Tan and I all sort of stood back in the far corner of the tent with our feet apart and our arms crossed over our chests, checking the whole thing out.
The firefighter talked kind of low and sort of fumbled a bit. He didn’t look comfortable up there, but when he talked about how great it was to do his job, about how good it felt to pick out the houses that for sure could be saved, we knew what he was saying. We all stood there, nodding and listening. Even Tan.
We’d done the same the week before in an urban interface neighborhood edging the swamps. We dropped trees to open up clear space around the houses. Some diggers scratched fireline around the yards. Others helped the engine slugs spray down the roofs with foam. Hinky and I climbed up on back decks and chunked wooden deck furniture out into the yards, and even he was hollering at how good that felt. To save a house by fucking it up. To feel like you’re wrecking something, but really you’re keeping it from the flames.
Mary Lowry takes a break from fighting fire
After we’d done all we could to triage the houses in the neighborhood, we broke up the crew, five of us or so to a house. I was waiting at these nice folks’ place to see if the fire would come. They’d set up sprinklers to spray water on the grass and up onto the roof. The husband thanked us a million times just for being there and his wife brought us big plastic glasses of sweet tea and a pineapple upside-down cake.
That’s when we heard the rumble of the fire finally coming. It seemed to move slowly, but that was because we waited for it with those nice folks who tried to act like they weren’t fretting about its coming towards their home.
The fire burned right up to the trees at the edge of their lawn. The engine crews sprayed foam on it and we Hotshots pretty much stood by and watched; we’d done all we could do. And the man and woman who owned the house wrung their hands and I couldn’t hear their voices over the sound of the fire and even the chug of the sprinklers was lost.
A big tree torqued out and usually we all would’ve cheered, but we didn’t this time, out of respect for the man and his wife. And I wondered then if maybe they couldn’t help but notice how pretty the flames were, blowing up like that, up and out of all human control.
But the foam and the fireline we’d dug around the house and even the sprinklers kept the fire at bay and in just a few minutes it’d passed us and the nice couple by, leaving their house standing in a circle of yard that looked bright as a putting green in the middle of all the burned swampland around it.
All that just to say that when the structural firefighter stood on stage in the middle of the hoopla, in front of the reporters and the politicians with that phony bright flag behind and the lights beating down on him, all of us knew he was saying something that the Governor hadn’t been able to say. When the firefighter finished the applause thundered, like he was somebody.
When the cheers finally died down, Bill Clinton walked onstage and shook the firefighter’s hand and then stood in front of the microphone himself.
To Be Continued….
Big thanks to John Markalunas for photos of the Pike Hotshot Crew. And, as always, big love to my boys on the Pike.
