I am on the line all day. I am on the line all day where she can see me from the office window. I am on the line all day where she can watch me run the rookies through the standpipe drill and the search drill and the ladder drill and the SCBA drill and the forcible-entry drill, and she will watch me, and she will not call me into the office, and she will not say a word to me, and she will let me feel her eyes on the back of my neck for ten hours.
This is the punishment.
The punishment is that she has not put me on a bus to Boise. The punishment is that she has put me on the line.
I drink the coffee.
I go to the locker room.
I put my turnouts on at the bench the way I have put my turnouts on three thousand times. Boots. Pants. Suspenders. Coat over the chair. Helmet on the shelf. Hood folded inside the helmet. Gloves on top of the hood. I sit on the bench in my undershirt with my hands on my knees, and I count to four, and I breathe through a second count.
Doyle comes through the locker room door behind me. "Hale."
"Captain."
"You all right?”
"Yes."
"You look like hell."
"I am all right."
She stops at the doorway. She looks at me for a count. She does not say anything else. She goes through to the bay.
I put my coat on.
I put my helmet on the shelf.
I go to the line.
---
I run the standpipe drill at six-thirty with the four rookies. The big rookie with the cowlick is fast on the hose deployment and slow on the coupling, and I make her do the coupling six times until she is fast on it. The small rookie with the undercut does the search drill in the smoke trailer with one hand on the wall and one hand on the rope and she is good, and I tell her she is good, and I do not say anything else.
I run them through the ladder drill at eight.
I run them through the SCBA drill at nine-thirty.
I do not look at the office window.
The office window is on the second floor at the far end of the bay. The blinds are open. Val is in there at a desk with the dooropen and the radio low and the file on her desk that I know is the arson file. Sometimes she works on the second floor when she wants to be seen.
I do not look at the window.
I feel the window.
I feel it the way I feel a fire at my back in a structure I do not know. I feel the heat without turning my head.
She is watching me.
I run the rookies through the forcible-entry drill at eleven.
The big rookie with the cowlick swings the halligan and her shoulder is wrong and she glances at me, and I show her the angle without speaking, and she does it again, and her shoulder is right, and she hits the door at the lock plate and the door goes, and she looks at me, and I nod once, and I do not look up at the window, and I feel her watching me.
She is watching me run drills.
She is watching me run drills like she has already lost me.
