Chapter Two

 

 

MICK WALKED up the path from the driveway to the low ranch house. A fountain that had run dry a long time ago still sat on the front lawn. He’d hidden in that fountain once when it still had water, trying to get away from his father’s belt. The old man had found him and held his head under until he blacked out. What he deserved, his father said. He must have been a bad kid, because he got a lot of what he deserved.

Mick stared at the front door. His stomach felt like somebody had punched him, then fed him shit. He took a deep breath and let it out real slow.

Damn, it was bad to feel this way. Unholy. But all he wanted was to turn around and run—back to the firehouse. Back to Laguna Beach. He shook himself. Honor thy father and thy mother. He pulled up an algebra equation in his head and figured it out real fast. Good. That made him calmer.

He knocked politely. A young woman in a long, shapeless dress opened the door. She gave him a big smile before casting her eyes down to the ground. Proper modesty. But he kind of liked the smile more.

“Good evening, Brother Michael.”

“Good evening, sister. Is he talking?”

“Yes. Please come in.”

She stepped back, and he crossed into the entryway. From there he could see into the open living room filled with people sitting on the floor around a big man wearing overalls and a flannel shirt, leaning forward in a huge easy chair. His father. His beard bobbed as he spoke, and that voice… it had given Mick the willies since he was a little kid. Slightly high with an edge that cut like a knife.

“Believe me when I say, hellfire is waiting for those that practice sin.”

He’d heard that a few million times. He backed away and turned to walk in the other direction, across the dining room with its big maple table and twelve chairs, toward the kitchen. A bump with his shoulder pushed open the swinging door, and he peeked in. His mom bent over at the oven hauling out food for the multitudes. Three other church women helped her, chopping vegetables and pulling out plates from the big pantry shelves.

“Hello, Mother.”

She straightened, a tall, bulky woman with pale hair like his own and eyes that might have been green once but now seemed kind of watery. “Hello, son. Glad to see you’re finally here.” She set a casserole dish on the hot plate on the counter. Casseroles. He’d been an adult before he discovered all food didn’t come mixed together in a dish. He could barely look at hamburger and noodles.

“Good to see you, ma’am.”

“Have you talked to your father? He has something to say to you.”

God, his spine turned to ice, and he didn’t even know what the man wanted. “No, ma’am. He was talking when I came in.”

“Well, don’t leave before he talks to you, understand?”

“Yes, ma’am.” He swallowed. “Can I help you with anything?”

“No use in you doing women’s work. Get out there and listen to your father’s words. You need ’em.”

He nodded and stepped back out through the swinging door. He pulled in a deep breath. Maybe his heart would stop thumping.

His father’s voice bounced off the walls. He was going now. “How can this nation, once great, protect these fags and queers that claim they have a right to live amongst decent people?”

A few people murmured, “Amen. Amen.” Oh man, he’d heard this so many times. So many. He pressed his back against the dining room wall and tried to look small. That was a funny idea.

“The day of reckoning is coming when the Lord will choose his weapons and smite this perversion from the earth. Wait for the call, brothers and sisters. Wait for the hand of the Lord to fall upon you.”

The congregation was into it. “Amen.”

One older man said, “I’m ready to be called.”

Was he into it? He’d been taught and he’d always believed. But then he’d met guys like Jerry. No, not guys like him. He’d met Jerry. The guy was a fag but a damned good firefighter—and he was so nice. Hell, even that pretty fag guy who’d left the station—Hunter. Even he’d been good at his job. Not funny or kind like Jerry, but okay. What would happen if one of the people in this room just took out a gun and killed one of those guys? They’d get arrested, but would it be a good thing in the eyes of God? That’s what his father said. He’d never had a reason to doubt—until now.

“Michael Cassidy, where are you?” His father’s voice roared from the living room.

He stiffened, pushed off from the wall, and walked through the archway that led to the gathering room. “I’m here, sir. I was listening but didn’t want to interrupt.”

His father’s eyes narrowed, but he smiled. The man was handsome despite his hick clothes, and he knew it. “Good. Come here, son. I have some joyous news for you.”

Damn. Joyous news was usually worse than bad news. Too much joyous news had driven him to drink a couple of years ago.

He walked over and knelt beside his father’s easy chair, from which the man held forth to the multitudes—which at the moment consisted of about fifty wide-eyed followers. They were only outside of Norco in Southern California, for God’s sake, but you would think this was farm country or the backwoods, the way they all dressed. Every truck had a gun. It made him nervous.

“How old are you now, Michael?” He pitched his voice just loud enough to be heard by most of the people in the room, even though he was pretending this was a private conversation.

“Twenty-four, sir.”

“And I paid to have you educated, am I right?”

Not really, since Mick had worked his ass off to pay his own way, but arguing was not part of this performance. “Yes, sir.”

“And what did you do with that education? Become a teacher or a preacher?”

He sighed. Very quietly. “No, sir. I became a firefighter.”

His father’s voice got louder. “And where do you do that firefighting, Michael? In Norco?”

“No, sir. You know I’m a firefighter in Laguna Beach.”

A couple of new people who hadn’t heard this story before clapped hands over their mouths. He might as well have said Sodom.

“Right. Laguna Beach, the home of half the homo fags in this homo-fag-loving state. So, you are crawling into buildings and pulling these unnatural queers out of the flames and touching their bodies and saving their lives when God is trying to condemn them?”

He looked down at the flowered carpet. “Sir, my job doesn’t allow me to figure out if a person is a queer before I save them. And we don’t actually save that many people to begin with. We mostly teach people how to prevent fires and stuff.”

“Yes, well, I think it’s time to take steps to protect you from the terrible pull of these homo fags on your pure, godly spirit.”

What? He looked up. His father extended a hand to a pretty girl who was sitting on the floor on his other side. She was dressed in the usual flour sack, but hers was a little tighter, and there was a chance those lips weren’t that rosy just from eating strawberries.

“This is Jezebel.”

Wow.

She cast her eyes down, but there wasn’t much demure about her that he could see.

His father laid a hand on the auburn hair she had pulled back in a low tail. “Michael, I give you permission to court Jezebel.”

“What?” Oh damn. He’d like to pull that word back. “I mean, what do you want me to do, sir?”

His father laughed, and a couple of the women nearby giggled. “Well now, Michael, you’re twenty-four years old, you say. You may be pure, but I’m sure you’ve got some instincts when it comes to courting a beautiful girl.”

Did he? Nope. Not one. “Yes, sir.”

“Well then, go to it, son!” He clapped Mick on the shoulder, hard. “Go on.” He flicked his fingers toward the girl, so Mick got up and extended a hand to her. She took it and rose gracefully.

His father chortled, “Good start!” He grabbed her slender arm. “Now you make sure he behaves, darlin’.”

Did his father like this girl? He sure had a gleam in those dark eyes.

Mick helped Jezebel navigate between the people sitting on the floor. So where the hell should he take her? And what should he do when he got there?

She smiled up at him. “Shall we go outside? It’s not too cold.”

Considering it was March and California, temperatures at night often dropped thirty degrees. “Not too cold” seemed unlikely.

He must have looked skeptical. She smiled again. “You can always keep me warm.”

No, he couldn’t. Hell no. But he followed her out to the front porch. Sure enough, it was three degrees above a witch’s tit out there. He pulled off his denim jacket and put it around her shoulders.

“Thank you, Brother Michael.” She smiled. He knew he was supposed to feel something. Hell, he was alone in the moonlight with a pretty girl, one he was supposed to court. Nothing. That serpent in his pants didn’t wiggle. When he did evil things like watch porn, it jumped and hardened and throbbed and shot stuff all over his keyboard. Well, not for just any porn. Only when some guy shoved his thing in the girl’s behind.

He smiled. “So, do you go to school?”

She shook her head. “My father won’t let me. He said high school is even too much for a girl, but he let me finish.”

“That’s too bad.”

She shrugged real pretty. “My ambition is to be a faithful wife and mother.”

He frowned. “Are you telling the truth?”

Her big eyes got bigger. “Why would you ask that?”

“Because you’re a real pretty girl who probably has some brains. All that just sounds like hoo-ha that your father told you to say.”

She narrowed her eyes. “Is this a test?”

“Hell no.”

She looked at him closely, then took a deep breath that pushed her boobs against the shapeless dress. “Yes, he told me to say it. As soon as I can get a little money, I’m leaving this town and my family behind. I’ll crawl on my belly to get to college, and I never want to see my father, your father, or hear another hellfire sermon as long as I live.”

He grinned. “Hey, Jezebel, how’d you like to go to the Firefighter’s Ball?”

 

 

WEIRD. HIS heart hurt. Who knew when your heart got broken you could feel it? Jerry dragged himself into the training room and grabbed a seat next to a rookie who smiled at him brightly. Jerry nodded. “Hi, Donovan.”

“Hey, Jerry. You don’t look so good.”

Man, he better get it together. “Just didn’t sleep too well.”

“That’s what you get for having a day off. You needed some diesel fumes and sirens to make you sleep like a baby.”

“Yeah, you got that right.” He tried to smile.

Most of the guys on duty had seats. Mick was sitting on a couch by the wall. He looked up and kind of moved his hand like he was saying hello. Jerry nodded at him, and he smiled. Shit, better stop looking, because Mean Mick looked pretty damned good when he smiled.

The captain walked in with a tall guy beside him. The new man looked a little older than most of their crew and real stiff-backed. “Listen up. This here is Ben Straight.” Jerry smiled because, man, that was how the dude looked. The guy named Straight nodded, then put both hands behind him like he was at parade rest or something. Probably ex-military. But they usually became cops, not firefighters.

The captain kept talking in his low-key way. “Ben’s joining our crew, and he’s had some good experience on a FAST team in Missouri.”

One of the guys, Andy, raised a hand. “FAST? Like RIC, Captain?”

Straight nodded. His voice was deep. “Yes, a lot of stations call it Rapid Intervention Crew now, but my station still called it Firefighter Assist and Search Team.”

The captain nodded and ran a hand over his wiry brush cut. “I’ve asked Ben to do some special training in intervention techniques. He’ll post some times on the board for the different shifts. Okay, that’s all. Thanks.”

A bunch of guys got up and headed for Straight. Get to know the new guy. Jerry didn’t feel so much in the mood for chitchat today. He looked toward the rook. “Hey, Donovan, you cleaning the apparatus?”

“Yes.”

“Why don’t I take that over and you can help on kitchen duty.”

“You sure, Jerry? I don’t mind the rookie jobs.”

“That’s okay. I’m not much more than a rookie myself.” He grinned at the kid. Well, the kid was probably only a year or two younger than him, but still.

He headed out to the apparatus room. There was a bucket but nothing to clean the big engine with. He needed some new sponges. He stopped at a storage cabinet. Nothing. Maybe the kitchen.

When he walked into the kitchen, Mick and TL Durry were clustered by the new man, chummy and laughing.

Jerry walked over to a storage chest and opened it. A big burst of laughter behind him made him glance back. All three men were staring at him. When he met their eyes, they looked away. Okay, he didn’t want to be paranoid, but the two guys standing with Straight made up the homophobe contingent in the station. Just the fuck what he needed. One more.

 

 

MICK GLANCED up at Jerry. Shit, the guy looked hurt.

Straight leaned in to him and Durry. “Why can’t gay guys drive faster than 68 mph?”

Durry grinned. “Tell me why?”

“Because at 69 they blow a rod.”

Straight and Durry about busted a gut. Mick smiled. “Yeah, ha-ha.” But all he saw was Jerry’s straight back as he walked out of the kitchen with a sponge in his hand.

The scream of the alarm sounded right up his spine. Damn. Guys scattered toward the apparatus room, where their turnout gear stood ready. Mick ran to his, suited up, and jumped on the pumper. Jerry already sat across from him in full gear. He didn’t meet Mick’s eyes. The guys were buzzing. “What’s up?”

“Elementary school.”

“Damn.”

They raced south on Pacific Coast Highway and careened around the corner onto the side street. No smoke. Probably good. As they pulled into the fire lane, Jerry jumped off. Mick stuck his head out and glanced back. Rows of little kids filed out of the school and crossed the street to a parking lot beyond, with teachers guarding on both sides. It looked like an orderly evac. Good. Kids made him nervous. Glad they were out of the way.

He jumped off the equipment as men began unwinding hose. Still no smoke. He hurried over to the officer in charge. “What’s up, Cap?”

“Fire in a storage room. Fortunately it’s one-hour construction with sprinklers, so no spread.”

“What about fumes? Those kids are little.”

“Wallender’s in there now with Estevez.”

Mick looked up as Jerry walked out of the side door of the one-story structure. Even in gear that would have fit some abominable snowman, he managed to look good. How did he do that?

Jerry glanced at Mick but faced the captain. “The fire’s out. It didn’t even reach the ceiling. The sprinklers did their job. No fumes I can detect. Estevez is ventilating. I think the kids can go back in after you inspect, Cap.”

“Good. Thanks.”

An older woman walked up, and the captain smiled at her. She seemed pretty calm. “I’m Charlotte Grimes, the principal. Can you tell me the status?”

The captain nodded. “Everything’s under control, ma’am.” He took her arm and walked a couple of steps away.

Jerry started walking toward the truck. Mick fell in beside him. “Sure scary with all those little kids.”

“Yeah.”

Damn. He couldn’t think of anything else to say, so he just shut up and walked. When they got to the equipment, Jerry started rolling hoses, and they didn’t need any more guys. Mick got back on the pumper.

A few minutes later, all hands aboard, they headed toward the station.

Back in the apparatus bay, he took off the turnout gear and restaged it, then checked hoses and other equipment into inventory. All second nature. No Jerry.

When he went back into the kitchen, he saw Jerry talking to the rookie. He was laughing and seemed to be joking with the kid. A lot of guys didn’t do much with the rooks because they thought it might make them somehow smaller or less important. Not Jerry.

The captain came in, and everyone quieted down. “I want to do some follow-up community support with the kids in the school we were at today, starting with the little ones. I want them to feel safe and still be careful, okay? Cassidy, Wallender, you take the kindergartners tomorrow.”

Did his heart drop twice? A day with little kids or a day with Jerry. Which one panicked him more?

“Um, Cap.”

“Yeah, Cassidy.”

Jerry’s blue eyes stared at him from across the room.

“Nothing.”