Read California Fire and Life for Free Online Page B

bastards
, except it’s no gimme putt in the dark, with your elbows banging against other elbows, and you can’t see a damn thing, and your brain is telling your hands to like
Hurry the fuck up
and your fingers are telling your brain
Fuck you
and then you get the mask on and it’s like
Aaaaaahhhhh
.
    A completely new appreciation for oxygen.
    Then the door comes open and a big beautiful rectangle of light penetrates this contrived little mock hell and some guys are standing and some are keeled over and Jack sees this one guy crouched on the floor. In bad shape, man—dude is still fiddling with his mask. Dude is going to be out in a second, so Jack pushes his down to the guy and holds the mask to the guy’s face and gets him strapped in and then Fuller’s voice comes across the PA screeching,
Get out of there, you total idiots!
    Jack rips his mask off long enough to yell, “Guys! Be cool!”
    The guy nearest the door stands at the side and plays traffic cop, pushing guys through one at a time. Jack’s boy is in bad shape, though, can’t straighten up, so Jack gets a shoulder under his arm and lifts. Waits his turn by the door and carries the guy out onto the fire escape.
    Which is on fire, of course.
    Just fucking outrageous, Jack thinks as he looks up and sees that the roof of the tower is a mass of flames, and the railing of the fire escape is a line of flame, and flames are bursting out the windows they have to get past.
    Jack spots Fuller and the head fireman watching them from a nearby tower, so he sets his boy down and gives him a little shove down the stairs, which is too crowded for the guy to fall anyway, and even if he does, it’s better for him to be seen taking a header than getting carried out of there.
    Just to make things more fun, the firemen are spraying them with a hose, so by the time Jack makes it down the stairs he’s half-choked, semiblinded, singed, bruised and soaked.
    The whole class is sprawled out on the concrete, not caring that they’re lying in puddles, just happy to be breathing and
not on fire
when Fuller comes over and looks down at them.
    Fuller lights himself another cig, has himself a long smirk and asks, “Any questions?”
    Jack raises his hand.
    “Mr. Wade?”
    “Yeah,” Jack says. “Can I go again?”
    Fire school.
    What a ride.
    Better than Knott’s Berry Farm.

14
    Fire school.
    Jack’s having more fun than a boy should have.
    Going to class, studying his ass off, hitting a few beers with the boys in the dorm after shutting the books.
    Fire school is very cool.
    Next thing they get into after fire chemistry is construction. This time it’s no Irish professor but a local good-old-boy contractor with a civil engineering degree who takes them through how a house is built.
    This contractor is classic. Got that greased-back pompadour So-Cal left-over-from-the-Oklahoma-days look. White short-sleeved shirt with a pocket protector. Mechanical pencil and a protractor peeking out of the pocket.
    And the boy knows his shit.
    This is the easy part of fire school for Jack, because he’s been there. Every piece of terminology that the guy writes on the board, Jack has, like
done
. They’re not talking chemistry, drama, sex and Greek mythology now; they’re talking dormers, downspout straps, cripples, floor joists and headers. Talking newels and king posts and trusses and wall sheathing, and these are all things that Jack’s dad taught him the hard way. Which is like, carrying the shit around, putting it in, putting it in wrong and having to rip it out and do it all over again, so Jack knows whereof the contractor speaks.
    Next thing they do is they go over to the shell of a building they got set up in a big old Quonset-hut hangar.
    Damn thing looks like a dinosaur in a museum.
    A two-room house with dormer windows—half of it just the structural shell, the other half finished out with walls, shingles, doors and windows and the rest of the enchilada.
    First each student has to