BOYS' OWN BOOK
Chapter 18
Jimmy folds his T-shirt and shorts into his gym bag, slings it over his shoulder as he leaves the basement apartment that's been his for twenty years. Since spring he's been going to yoga classes at a place around the corner from the firehouse, will be heading there today at the end of his shift. Needs to stay flexible, Jimmy does: he's forty-six, and though he's got his eye on a Battalion Chief's spot in the next year or two (and been told over the back fence he has a good shot at it), at Ladder 62 he's Captain. He's got to be ready, when the bell rings, for the ax, the flames, the smothering smoke and heat like a wall. He's got men depending on him, men who follow him.
Some of the guys, they rag on him about it—Hey, when you do the stork one, they give you a baby to deliver? —but the guys rag on the officers anyway, it's part of what makes the firehouse what it is, your brothers yanking your chain. And Jimmy has to admit, you need a good laugh, you could do worse than watch him try to stand on his head. But, he tells the guys, there's a dozen twenty-five-year-old girls there standing on
And delivering babies, he's done that seven times already since he came on the Job.
Jimmy's up early today so he can take the long way, down around the tip of the island. This is something he does sometimes, just walk and look and think. He's got a lot on his mind, nothing he can't handle, but he needs to think what to do, make a plan for each thing. Two of his guys are out for a couple of days—Doherty's sick, and Logan's wife just had twins—so he's got to work their replacements into the rotation. He's got a probie, Adams, three months out of the Academy, green like Kevin; Jimmy'll have to come up with some drills for the kid, doesn't want him just sitting around. And Gino Aiello: Jimmy needs to call him, to see how the Deputy Chief's coming on that favor he promised, getting Kevin assigned to 62 for a few months. Kev asked for 168 in Pleasant Hills, same as Jimmy did out of the Academy, and Jimmy thinks that's great, a good place for him. He can serve out his whole time in that house the way Jimmy'd been planning to before; but first he needs experience, he needs knowledge. Kev's up for the transfer, and Jimmy wants to get him here, show him, teach him, before it's too late. Because when Jimmy moves to the Battalion, he won't be running a house day-to-day anymore.
Jimmy's picked up coffee from the Pakistani guy at the newsstand. He peels back the lid, sips it as he walks. It's good; it always is, from that place, a lot better than the guys make at 62. Either he's got to get some Italian guy transferred to 62, Jimmy decides, or he's got to detail one of those micks to learn to make decent coffee.
This early, New York's still shaking off sleep, getting started on the day. A neighbor, walking a funny yellow mutt, greets him: Perfect weather, she says, and strolls away smiling. As Jimmy passes the Y, he hears the thud of a basketball on the hardwood; God, those guys must love that game, to come out at this hour. He crosses the highway to the path by the Hudson, watches the sun glinting off the silver water. A bird and an airplane cross high overhead, going in opposite directions, and Jimmy has to smile: they look the same size.
At the tip of Manhattan, Jimmy stands at the rail near the ferry terminal. On a morning as clear as this, he can see the Verrazano Narrows Bridge arching away, see Staten Island across the harbor, see the boat docking there as one approaches here. Watching the ferry come in, Jimmy spots some young guy on the deck, dark-haired, broad- shouldered, not too tall, but standing straight, like Jimmy himself when he was young. Staring straight ahead, like Jimmy himself.
Twenty-five years old: Jimmy's on the ferry. Two hours, back and forth five times already, how stupid is that, but he can't decide.
It's a February day, the sky that hard blue it only gets in winter, everything sharp and fresh. Not like that gray day last week, sitting under the bridge with Tom.
When Jimmy first gets on the boat, he goes to the front. The sunlight glints on the water as Manhattan grows and grows. When he can't decide, he stays there while the boat heads the other way. The towers of the skyline throw bursts of light at him, but they keep getting smaller. After that he goes inside and buys coffee and stares through the window. The glass is so clouded and scratched that he can't make anything out.
Jimmy's thinking this: More than anything, he wants to stop keeping this secret. For months it's been inside him, filling up places that should have been for other things. This secret is changing him, and Jimmy doesn't want it anymore. He wants to stand up and say, This is what happened that night on Coleman Road. This is why Jack is dead, and why Markie.
But if he does that, what happens?
One thing, Sally would find out Markie chose to be where he was. He didn't have to leave her and Kevin and put himself where this could happen to him, but he did. As bad as things are for Sally now, Jimmy thinks knowing that would be much worse.
And Tom goes to prison. Peggy Molloy's lost both sons then.
And if Tom's in prison, he's not giving money to Sally, that idea he had about giving her money. Jimmy could give her some himself, but he doesn't make that much, and he's just a fireman, he never will.
And Vicky. She just had a baby, hers and Tom's second. Vicky and Sally, both raising their kids without fathers, Jimmy thinks about that.
And this, too: Tom says if that's what it takes, he'll go straight. That would be a good thing, God, yes, Jimmy knows. For Tom, for Vicky, for a lot of people.
Through the beat-up glass Jimmy sees sunlight flash off something, it looks like a flame. And again he thinks, what he wants is to not have this secret anymore. He wants to walk into a fire and have it burned away. That's what it would feel like, he thinks, if he told it. It would hurt, like getting burned, but he'd be clean after that.
But if he does that, who's saved?
Only Jimmy.
The other way, it's better for everybody else. Jimmy can't see anyone, besides him, that the other way—Tom's
