scooted his chair back with a honk, and said, “Follow me.”
I followed him—out the door and down the hallway into another office. He grabbed the PA system mic and flipped it on. “Attention, please. There’s a stripper at the kitchen table. Repeat: Stripper at the kitchen table.”
He gave me a little wink and headed back into the hallway.
“You do know I’m not a stripper, right?” I asked, following him.
He kept walking. “Of course I do.” Then he pushed through the swinging doors to the kitchen. “That’s just how we call all our meetings.”
The guys from C-shift were gathering at the table. Some were already reading the sports page or checking their phones, and some were arriving from other parts of the station. I hung back near the kitchen work area.
Captain Murphy stood at the head of the table and started talking before everybody was settled. “It’s just another C-shift today, boys, but it’s not just another C-shift. Today, while the Patterson brothers are sunning their flabby Irish asses on a Florida beach, we welcome not one but two new members to the finest crew on the finest shift in all the departments of the great state of Massachusetts.”
The guys cheered.
I’d studied them all, the same way I’d studied the territory. I’d learned all their names beforehand: Jerry Murphy, Joe Sullivan, Drew Beniretto, Tom McElroy, Anthony DeStasio. Add me and the rookie, and that was the whole crew, though we were too new to be up on the website. I scanned the group and matched the photos I’d seen with their real-life faces. Quite the contrast from my shift back home, which had been almost universally young, fit, clean-cut, calendar guys. There were seven of us on this shift, and, with maybe two exceptions, nobody fit that description. Even the guys who weren’t middle-aged kind of looked middle-aged. All scrawny and grizzled, with a gray, northeastern paleness to them. Down in Texas, everybody had been robust and tan. Here, they looked like ashtrays. And one, McElroy, was fat. Much fatter than in his photo. Genuinely fat. Heart-attack fat.
Nobody in the room looked anything like a rookie.
Captain Murphy went on. “Some of you might be wishing we didn’t have to break in two newbies at once, but I’m here to tell you it’ll be worth it. These are impressive new recruits, and that’s no lie. The first one rose through the ranks of the Austin FD down in Texas like some kind of a comet before moving to our neck of the woods for family reasons. But we’ll save the best for last. First, I want you to meet our new rookie, a fourth-generation Massachusetts firefighter. Some of you may know his father, Big Robby Callaghan out of Ladder 12 in Boston. This kid’s fresh out of the academy, and now it’s our job to make him a man.”
Captain Murphy paused a second to look around the room. He frowned a little.
“Guys, where’s the rookie?”
The guy I recognized as Beniretto cleared his throat. “He might be duct-taped to the basketball pole, Captain.”
“Already?” The captain shook his head. “Sullivan! DeStasio! Go cut him loose. He’s missing his own introduction.”
Two guys stood and headed for the bay doors. I recognized Sullivan from his picture, but he was much bigger—at least six-four—than you could tell from the website. The other, DeStasio, was much smaller.
The captain watched them a second. “Look at that,” he said to the group, like it was a profound life lesson. “The Irish and the Italians working together. Who says we can’t overcome our differences in this country?”
Again: I couldn’t tell if he was joking.
But I didn’t have long to wonder, because a second later, the bay doors burst back open and the two came jogging back in—this time, carrying a sideways body.
The rookie.
He was sopping wet—clearly, they’d turned the hose on him—and his ankles and wrists were duct-taped together, hands behind his back. Sullivan and DeStasio smiled as they laid him facedown on the dining table.
“Not sanitary,” one of the guys called out, as the rest broke into applause.
DeStasio pulled out a utility knife and approached the rookie.
I should mention that when firefighters work, they work hard—and when they play, they play just as hard. Firehouses are full of guys with too much energy who are stressed-out adrenaline junkies haunted by plenty of tragedy. Goofing around is nothing short of a survival skill.
Everyone in the room knew that the soaking-wet rookie was just the fun new firehouse toy—but I had a