Page 1 of Falling for My Grumpy Fireman

Chapter one

Voluntary Leave

OWEN

The Battalion Commander doesn't yell.

That's how I know it's over.

He sits across the desk with my personnel file open in front of him. The thing is thick as a phone book now. Incident reports. Write-ups. A complaint from a captain in the 14th who says I called him something I probably did call him.

The fluorescent light hums over us. Somewhere down the hall, a printer chews through paper. Normal station sounds. Guys living normal lives.

"You were the best fireman I ever ran, Peterson." He closes the file. "That's the only reason this thing is a file and not a termination letter."

I don't say anything to that either.

"Take the voluntary leave."

I don't say anything.

"Because the alternative won't be voluntary."

My fists sit on my knees like two stones. I look at them. I make them open.

Claire's ring hangs on its chain under my shirt, flat against my sternum. Two years it's been there. It'll be there when I sign this thing too.

There's a form on the desk. A pen beside it, laid out neat, like he knew how this would go before I walked in. He probably did. Everybody in this building has known how this would go for two years.

I sign.

He doesn't shake my hand. Smart man.

***

I'm on the interstate south of Chicago before the sun's all the way up. I didn't pack much. Duffel, boots, the chain around my neck with Claire's ring on it, tucked under my shirt where it lives.

Ninety days. That's what I told Tater on the phone last night. Ninety days to get my head right, then I come back and I get my job back. I do the math against the odometer. Second Saturday of October. That's the day I drive out of here.

Tater said, "Sure, brother." The way you talk to a drunk about his big plans.

The city thins out behind me. Warehouses, then suburbs, then fields. Illinois goes flat and stays flat.

Around Bloomington there's a billboard. Big smiling baby, crib furniture, forty percent off.

My hands tighten on the wheel.

Don't.

I turn the radio up. Some country station, a song about a truck. Good. Trucks are safe. Nobody ever got wrecked by a song about a truck.

Then the song ends and the next one starts, slow, a woman's voice, and I know it from the second note. Claire used to sing it doing dishes. Badly. On purpose, I always figured, because I'd come in to complain and she'd sing louder.

I hit the button. Static. I leave it on static for thirty miles.

Lunch is a diner outside Litchfield, because a man has to eat whether he wants to or not. Vinyl booths. Pie in a case. The waitress is sixty-something with reading glasses on a chain and she calls me hon.

"You want coffee, hon?"